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“New York. Protest for medical freedom, outside Pfizer headquarters, with protesters carrying signs for the Vax injured.

The dam is breaking, they have forgotten that they have to answer to the people. And in the end, the people will not be silenced!”

Video in English

New York. Manifestation pour la liberté médicale, devant le siège social de Pfizer, avec des manifestants portant des pancartes pour les blessés du Vax.

Le barrage se brise, ils ont oublié qu'ils doivent répondre au peuple. Et à la fin, le peuple ne sera pas réduit au silence ! pic.twitter.com/9x6NtfpIYf

— Brainless Partisans 🏴‍☠️☢️☣️🪆 (@BPartisans) February 19, 2023

To consult the Department of Justice’ historic decision click screenshot below

How on earth can we trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice including “fraudulent marketing” and “felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”?  

People were never informed. Both the media and the governments “turned a blind eye”.

Today, we are not dealing with an issue of “fraudulent marketing”: The roll out of Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine in December 2o2o is beyond criminality, it’s genocide.

$2.3 Billion  Medical Fraud settlement with Pfizer.

Statement by DOJ Associate Attorney General Thomas Perelli (2009)

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Our thanks to @BPartisans from Twitter.

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***

The “covid was a lab leak” story was always a back door official narrative that reinforced the reality of the “pandemic” while appearing to be a suppressed “alternative”.

You know, one of those “suppressed alternatives” that end up in the WSJ.

It’s now going to be used to finally bury any hope that 2020-21 will wake us up to the full modern reality of geopolitics.

Remember the grotesque spectacle of supposedly ideologically opposed world leaders all in lockstep, promoting the non-existent “pandemic”, giving the same advice, talking the same talk?

Yeah, they’d much rather you didn’t remember that…

Do you recall how suddenly it was so obvious what they all were?

Little actors, with their lines carefully written for them, scurrying about doing as they’re bidden by forces we had heretofore barely realized were operational?

They suddenly looked so small & ridiculous didn’t they – in their masks & bio-hazard costumes. Speaking with one voice – that belonged to none of them.

We could see they were just employees toeing some company line.

ALL of them. East & West. Left & Right. Putin & Biden. Trump & Xi. All differences forgotten. All rivalries put aside.

Just to sell a lie.

And kill some people with “solutions” to a problem they knew did not exist.

Remember the shock factor as realization dawned – my God, they are literally all in this together and not even pretending otherwise.

Remember how it started to wake us up – like we had never been before?

We had to abandon all our “heroes” because they all abandoned us. Or made it clear they had never really been with us.

They took the covid shilling & got in line to read from the covid script & forced us to face the fact they had never been what we thought they were.

That the world in fact had never been what we thought it was.

I think covid was supposed to launch a brand new geopolitical narrative. I think it was to be the end of “conflict” and the start of the world “coming together” to face a “common threat”.

And I think, like good little actors our global leaders and our tame media were all given new scripts and new motivations. “Ok, guys, in this scene, you’re no longer enemies. You’re seeing that human beings need to work together to overcome terrible existential threats…”

The plan was to get that New Normal communitarian nightmare world all locked in place before we could react – or even get a bead on what was going on.

It was Agenda 2030 in quick time. Six months, not ten years. A bold headlong dash instead of the usual steady creep.

It was crazy.

And it didn’t work.

The fear factor never got high enough. The obvious non-existence of the “threat” became too clear too quickly to too many.

There was pushback. They had to halt and retreat.

And today the New Normal remains just a half-built prison.

They’re still working at it but they have gone back to slow and steady and the 2030 goal. One “shortage”, one act of censorship, one tiny new legislative incursion at a time.

And meanwhile what they REALLY need from us is that we all stop thinking about what we just saw.

It didn’t happen!

You didn’t see supposed autonomous and diametrically oppositional world leaders all suddenly stop being autonomous and oppositional – as if by magic.

You didn’t see them adopt totally new personas on cue and meekly start selling the same pandemic lies, and culling their populations with the same lockdowns & useless toxic vaccines.

It did not look for all the world as if they were all on the same side, working for the same goals.

You didn’t get any kind of glimpse behind the curtain.

You didn’t suddenly get to see how superficial and performative global politics must be.

The New Normal? Please. It was just the old normal, ok? – and frankly we’d be grateful if you’d stop using that particular phrase.

The Great Reset? What even was that? Big ole nothing burger is all.

NO. You were mistaken. Imagining things. Being a conspiracy theorist.

Global politics is NOT performative. Conflicts CAN’T all be turned off in a second when it becomes convenient to do so. And any impression they can was purely accidental/imaginary.

In fact look over there – a war has started! And we can’t stop or prevent it!

See, all nice and old normal.

Oh and ok -sigh… “covid” was a lab leak bioweapon…

We feel forced to admit it.

It was those pesky Russians.

Or maybe those awful Yanks.

Or the Chinese.

Or maybe the Iranians.

Or could be ISIS I guess.

Or Israel.

Pick your side. Any side. We don’t really mind which.

Just so long as you totally forget the most important lesson you are ever going to learn about the nature of geopolitics.

Because if you remember it we are rather screwed, and you will be able to set yourself free.

And we don’t want that do we.

What a dreadful unintended consequence of our crazy little covid gamble that would be!

An awake and free world! – Horrible.

No, boys and girls (and “others”), don’t be playing with any of that nonsense.

Just come back to what you know.

The old show. The familiar songs.

Just keep your seat in our theater.

You know you want to really. It’s warm in here. And kind of reassuring.

Just keep buying our tasty popcorn, keep watching our shows. Cheer your chosen good guys, hiss at your chosen baddies.

All we ask is you never – ever – notice that brick wall at the back.

Or if you do notice it – look away and pretend you don’t.

And by the way, have you ever thought that while prisons might not be free – they are lovely and safe.

Just a thought to leave with you – for future reference.

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***

It has been at least a year and a half since the political West drastically intensified its weapons shipments to the Kiev regime. Ever since, the black markets have been flooded with Western-made arms and munitions, some of which have even started running out from NATO stocks. As late as December, top Western officials have complained about this, including the Pentagon’s Deputy Inspector General for Investigations James R. Ives, who admitted that the US is aware of the lack of effective mechanisms to track Ukraine-bound NATO weapons. Several major US media have called for the Biden administration to send investigators to audit and oversee the use of more than $110 billion in US military and economic “aid” to the Kiev regime.

And yet, the true understanding of the massive scale of this is sorely lacking in the political West. Perhaps it is even being ignored, but the consequences are already there. In addition, while the mainstream propaganda machine is lionizing the Kiev regime forces, presenting them as some sort of mythical heroes supposedly “defending” Europe, the West and the so-called “Euro-Atlantic values”, the Neo-Nazi junta troops’ role is crucial in what can only be described as the world’s largest arms smuggling scheme. Also, this certainly doesn’t exonerate the rest of the Kiev regime and the corrupt oligarchs supporting it, as they too are getting their “slice of the cake”.

Corruption is endemic in Ukraine, but ever since the NATO-backed Neo-Nazi coup in 2014, it has worsened dramatically as the political West started showering the already crooked politicians and bureaucrats with tens of billions of dollars. Everyone from the managers of military warehouses, company and battalion commanders, top military officers, directors of the Kiev regime’s military-industrial complex to the defense minister himself, are engaged in essentially stealing NATO-sourced weapons and then reselling them on the Darknet. The list of those involved also includes the office of the president, the cabinet of ministers, security services and military intelligence.

Up until several years ago, the massive stocks of Soviet-era weapons in Ukraine were the main source of smuggled weapons. However, despite inheriting approximately 30% of the Soviet military, Ukraine somehow managed to expend most of it, much of it ending up on the black markets around the globe. The political West was perfectly aware of this, as NATO had a major role in reselling the weapons to terrorist groups they support in many of the targeted countries. And yet, they still went ahead and provided tens of billions in Western weapons and munitions to the same people smuggling their own for decades.

There’s even fierce competition among Kiev regime institutions for the right to control the extremely profitable arms smuggling business. This includes various intelligence services, such as the SBU and GUR. The latter is the main military intelligence agency which is supposed to play a major role in overseeing the transfer and distribution of NATO weapons. Thus, GUR has a substantial headstart in the arms smuggling scheme, which is causing a lot of envy and frustration in the SBU. Since August 2020, Kirill Budanov has been the head of GUR, a close ally of the Kiev regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky, whose ties to the junta’s top officials allowed him to play a crucial role in the scheme.

On March 5, 2022, mere days after Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, banker Denis Kireev, a member of the delegation for negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, was killed. According to the German publication Bild, Kireev “was shot dead by Ukrainian SBU counterintelligence while trying to avoid arrest.” Two days later, the GUR confirmed that Kireev was their employee, and Budanov himself stated that Kireev had been executed by the SBU, thus confirming that the fierce competition between the two agencies escalated from the very beginning of the special military operation (SMO). It is worth noting that the fact that the SBU and the GUR are “supervised” by various NATO intelligence services also played a major role in the conflict between the agencies.

For instance, the SBU is largely controlled by UK intelligence, primarily the infamous MI6. On the other hand, the GUR has been deeply connected to US services. The looming rivalry erupted after the political West intensified its arms shipments. Budanov’s headstart made it possible for the GUR to oversee the largest contracts for the transfer of Western weapons, further strengthening his position, a state of affairs the SBU didn’t take too kindly. Budanov also worked with intermediaries, such as the Incompass, a company headed by oligarch Sergei Slyusarenko. It is through such companies that GUR manages the supply of weapons from abroad.

Part of the funds embezzled through Incompass ends up in the pockets of Budanov and his associates, with the rest going to the presidential office and even Zelensky himself. In July 2022, the German SWR TV channel reported that Europol had identified “signs” of organized arms smuggling in Ukraine, but gave no further details in order not to incriminate the Kiev regime. The revelation came on the heels of a plane accident that happened in Greece, when a Ukrainian An-12BK aircraft belonging to Meridian, a company registered in Kiev, crashed on July 16, 2022. According to various reports, the airline was working closely with the Kiev regime, including the office of the president and the GUR.

Days before the crash, the plane made several flights to Ostrava (Czechia), Burgas (Bulgaria) and Rzeszow (Poland). The latter is the main NATO transport hub for supplying weapons and other military equipment to the Kiev regime. Each flight included “Stinger” MANPADS, “Javelin” and NLAW ATGMs. In total, approximately 12 tons of missile systems and munitions.

EU politicians, including German officials, also commented on the scandal, with Konstantin von Notz, spokesman for the Bundestag Home Affairs Committee from the “Greens”, acknowledging: “From the experience of the Kosovo war, we learned that weapons from conflict zones often fall into the hands of extremists and organized crime.” Von Notz demanded that the risk of weapons smuggling from Ukraine “be stopped at the international level.”

Additionally, the grain deal was also (ab)used extensively for this purpose, resulting in Russia’s decision to suspend it. The issue was discussed at a meeting of EU interior ministers on July 11, 2022, with Czech Defense Minister Yana Chernokhova admitting that “avoiding arms smuggling will be difficult – we did not achieve this in the former Yugoslavia and certainly will not be able to achieve it in Ukraine”.

This still leaves the question of whether Washington DC is even trying to oversee its massive arms shipments to the Neo-Nazi junta. Many US officials claim they’re unable to audit the weapons once they leave Poland, but the real issue is if they even want to know. Considering the nearly mythical status they’ve given to Zelensky, revealing his involvement with such criminal activities could be rather “uncomfortable” and might even backfire, further exacerbating the growing factionalism within the Neo-Nazi junta.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

The US House of Representatives on 27 February approved Resolution 132, which urges the White House to “remain committed” to implementing unilateral economic sanctions on quake-struck Syria.

In a 414-2 vote, lawmakers resolved that Washington must “remain committed to the protection of the Syrian people including by implementing the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.”

Republican representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie were the only ones to vote against the resolution. While neither has publicly commented on their vote, western media has painted their objection as a refusal to “mourn the victims” of last month’s earthquake.

“I am pleased the House overwhelmingly passed H. Res 132 … [which] urges the administration to remain committed to protecting the Syrian people, including by implementing the Caesar Act,” House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul said following Monday’s vote, stressing his “concern” about the growing push by Arab states to normalize ties with Damascus.

McCaul added that enforcing unilateral sanctions on Syria “must include disallowing any energy deal for Lebanon that benefits the Assad regime.”

Lebanon has been waiting since 2021 for Washington to provide Egypt, Jordan, and Syria with sanctions waivers to launch a desperately-needed energy sharing plan that the US embassy in Beirut brokered.

In 2019, the US Congress passed the Caesar Act, which strictly prohibited states, companies, and individuals from doing business with the Syrian government. This crushing sanctions package came on top of existing punitive measures imposed on Damascus since 2011.

US-imposed sanctions on the war-torn nation have contributed to the tragedy of the Syrians at a time when the country is in the midst of a major humanitarian crisis, with the US occupation and the Kurdish Autonomous Administration controlling vast areas of lands rich in oil, gas, and crops in the northeast of the country, in addition to the Turkish occupation of other regions.

Late last year, the US congress approved yet another sanctions regime against Syria with the so-called Captagon Act, which “constitutes an integrated plan, security, political and economic, to penetrate more into the vicinity of Syria and encircle it and prevent access to raw materials,” according to Syrian researcher Bassam Abdullah.

Monday’s resolution came just weeks after the White House was forced to issue a temporary sanctions waiver for Syria to allow the unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid to the country.

It also coincided with the US occupation army’s latest oil smuggling operation in northeast Syria.

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***

When it comes to explaining away the single largest ecological catastrophe in the history of America, the EPA and Ohio officials just can’t seem to get their stories straight. Every explanation they offer is a contradiction or cover-up. And they refuse to test for the one thing that poses the greatest health hazard of all: DIOXINS.

Dioxins are always created when chlorinated compounds are burned within a certain temperature range. They’re also the most deadly chemical compounds known to humankind, and they can be toxic at parts-per-quadrillion concentrations.

Put another way, it seems that they cause toxic effects on the human body at concentrations 100,000 times lower than where glyphosate begins to show toxicity. That’s just an estimate. The real number may be a million times or more.

Yet the EPA — and Ohio authorities — all refuse to test for dioxins. Or, at least, they refuse to release the test numbers publicly. No doubt they already have their own secret dioxin test results, and they are panicked over those numbers, trying to figure out how to sweep this whole problem under the rug without having to face the reality of an evacuation order that will likely soon be necessary.

The entire town of East Palestine may ultimately have to be condemned, razed and decontaminated. Instead, the EPA is spreading the toxic waste across multiple states. The recent effort to ship over a million gallon of this toxic waste to Texas was thwarted over the weekend, with the EPA now redirecting that toxic waste to Indiana and Ohio, the AP now reports.

And then there’s the issue of the tens of thousands of farms downwind from this disaster… and the countless families who depend on those farms for their food and livelihoods. If there really were no dioxins to be found, the EPA should have already conducted tests, found nothing and released the “all clear” test results publicly.

Why haven’t they done that?

It’s obvious: They’re covering up the dioxin contamination nightmare for as long as possible.

Here are just a few of the many contradictions now emerging from the EPA and Ohio government handling of this incident:

#1) Why are we told by the EPA that vinyl chloride toxic ignition fallout fumes are perfectly safe to live with, but carbon dioxide — necessary for all plant photosynthesis and rain forest growth — is a deadly “pollutant” that threatens human civilization?

Because “science.”

#2) Why are we told that the toxic chemical runoff from the firefighting water sprayed on the chemical fire is so toxic that it has to be injected deep underground so that it won’t surface for thousands of years, but also that the land and water where all those chemicals rained down is now perfectly safe and there’s nothing to worry about?

When it falls on your farm, it’s “safe.” When it falls on the sidewalk, it’s a deadly hazardous waste that must be disposed by an EPA-licensed hazardous waste disposal company.

#3) If the Texas-based hazardous waste disposal company Texas Molecular is already licensed to dispose of vinyl chloride, then why didn’t the railroad just mop up the vinyl chloride and send it to Texas Molecular instead of setting it on fire, creating millions of gallons of contaminated firefighting water?

Just think, you would only be dealing with a few hundred thousand gallons of toxins instead of millions of gallons of toxic water (plus the toxic cloud, fallout, etc.). Whatever happened to the idea of “containment?”

#4) Why are both the EPA and Ohio state authorities completely unwilling to test the surrounding farms for dioxins (which are toxic at parts-per-quadrillion exposure concentrations) but they claim everything is safe enough for families, children and pregnant women to return?

It won’t be long before children are born with birth defects and missing limbs. The EPA already knows this. Maybe they plan to “Tiffany Dover” all the deformed babies or call for post-birth abortions to hide the evidence of their crimes against humanity…

#5) Why do people who already left East Palestine and healed from their original exposure start getting sick again when they return to East Palestine?

Breitbart.com reports on this, revealing how people who feel better after they leave the area begin to experience horrible symptoms as they return.

“Maybe it’s something in the air…”

#6) Every decision made by authorities about how to handle the chemicals had the result of SPREADING them, not containing them

You couldn’t write a better script on how to spread toxic chemicals across multiple states, running the toxic water to Texas and Indiana, while unleashing a toxic cloud over multiple northeastern states. If containment was the goal, the EPA failed miserably.

If only they could contain these toxic molecules as effectively as they contained news about Hunter Biden’s laptop…

#7) If East Palestine first responders had 1.8 million gallons of water to spray on the fire that officials ignited, then they also had enough water to put out the initial small fires that they claim placed the tanker cars at risk (which led to them emptying those cars and igniting the vinyl chloride).

Clearly they had millions of gallons of water available to put out fires. So why didn’t they put out the initial fire and stop this entire disaster from the beginning? Which genius came up with the idea, “Hey let’s set fire to these chemicals because that will make them go away…”

#8) We are told that they had to set fire to the vinyl chloride which had been emptied from the rail tanker cars in order to prevent the risk of a tanker car explosion causing shrapnel injuries, but if the vinyl chloride was already emptied from the tanker cars, the shrapnel explosion risk was already eliminated

In other words, the moment the tanker cars were emptied of the chemical, they no longer had any justification for starting any fire at all. So why did they do it, then?

Likely answer: Somebody ordered them to do it, and they needed a cover story.

Straight-up ecological terrorism, disguised as a railroad accident.

We’re not actually being ruled by idiots, you see. We’re being gaslit by terrorists.

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***

Ministers briefly considered ordering all domestic cats in Britain to be killed amid fears they could be spreading Covid, a former health minister has said.

Lord Bethell said the concern about pets underlined how little was known about the disease at the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.

“What we shouldn’t forget is how little we understood about this disease,” he told Channel 4 News. “There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease.

“In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain. Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?

“And yet, for a moment there was a bit of evidence around that so that had to be investigated and closed down.”

Lord Bethell was Matt Hancock’s deputy in the Department of Health and Social from 2020 to 2021.

His comments came after The Telegraph began publishing details of tens of thousands of leaked Whatsapp messages exchanged between Mr Hancock and other senior figures during the pandemic.

Mr Hancock is fighting claims he rejected advice while health secretary to give Covid tests to all residents going into English care homes.

Mr Hancock’s spokesman said a report claiming he rejected clinical advice on care home testing was “flat wrong” because he was told it was “not currently possible” to carry out the tests.

Click here to read the full article on The Independent.

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Hundreds of schoolgirls in Iran have been hospitalised in recent weeks after being poisoned by what officials have described as an “intentional” gas attack.

Although incidents have been reported across the country, the majority of cases have centred around the holy city of Qom.

BBC Persian reported that as many as 800 students in Qom had been poisoned so far, and that a number of cases had also been detected in the capital, Tehran. Younes Panahi, a deputy health minister, told media that the poisonings were likely intentional – though he later claimed he was misquoted – while Mohammad Jafar Montazeri, the attorney general, has also described them as “probably intentional”.

A doctor who treated some poisoned students told Middle East Eye the victims had “smelled something like the smell of sewage and salt, and had symptoms of dizziness, nausea and difficult breathing”.

He added that a number of those he treated said they had “seen a suspicious thing thrown inside the school”.

Yet so far, no one has been able to pinpoint who might be responsible, with some suggesting an attempt by ultra-conservatives to disrupt the education of girls and others pointing to anti-government opposition groups.

MEE spoke to a teacher in one of the schools affected by the poisoning. The teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said two of her colleagues had also been hospitalised.

“The smell of the poison is like a rotten smell, but it is not gas – it is close to gas smell and at the same time it is something like a thick and pungent smell,” she explained.

“The students faced severe coughs and difficulty in breathing and some were hospitalised.”

Iran’s health ministry has been keen to stress that the effects of the poison have been mild, primarily causing “muscle weakness, lethargy, and nausea for a few hours”.

However, the repeated incidents have left parents deeply worried about sending their children to school, with the lack of information about the nature of the poison – and the culprits – further heightening fears.

“Of 550 people, only four students come to the school. The students are also terrified,” said the teacher.

“The poison effects are to the extent that some of the students aren’t able to walk for a few days.”

‘Extremist’ attacks?

A number of theories have spread about the possible motives for the poisoning of schoolgirls. A popular one is that religious fundamentalist groups may be attempting to prevent the education of women and girls.

One conservative cleric based in Qom, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed it could be the work of  “extremists” inspired by the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

“The number of such extremists is not too much and they can mostly be found in Mashhad, Shiraz, Qom and Isfahan, but they are really a little minority,” he said.

He said these groups viewed the education of girls as spreading “corruption” and undermining both family and Islamic values.

“Such persons’ perception of the religion is reactionary, ridiculous and unwise,” he added.

Other religious and political figures concurred with this theory.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a cleric who was a senior figure in the reformist government of Mohammad Khatami, compared the possible culprits to the Africa-based militant group Boko Haram.

“Extremism, especially the religious ones, are the biggest danger to all societies,” warned Abtahi, while calling on the security apparatus to identify and arrest the extremists.

Meanwhile, Masoumeh Ebtekar, former vice president for women and family affairs, tweeted that the police and judiciary needed to act “immediately” and compared the incidents to a series of acid attacks in the city of Isfahan in 2014, which allegedly targeted women not wearing “appropriate” hijab.

یکماه است که جنایت مسموم کردن دختران تکرار می شود
همه منتظرند بخشهای انتظامی و قضایی فورا اقدام کنند
چرا اینهمه تعلل؟
نکندمثل اسیدپاشان اصفهان شود!
آیا نسبتی بین عدم تصویب قوانین نفی خشونت علیه زنان و این وقایع وجود دارد؟
یک بار برای همیشه حجت را بر متحجران ضد زن تمام کنید.

— معصومه ابتكار (@ebtekarm_ir) February 27, 2023

Counterterrorism calls

A number of people have called on the government to treat the poisoning as terror related and launch counterterrorism investigations.

According to the state-backed Fars News Agency, the security services arrested three suspects on Tuesday in connection with the poisoning.

Fars said there were “unconfirmed” reports linking the poisonings to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group dedicated to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

Although the MEK – who initially supported the 1979 Islamic Revolution, before falling out with the post-Shah administration – carried out numerous deadly bomb attacks in the country in the 1980s, in recent decades they have focused primarily on lobbying foreign governments and campaigning internationally against the Islamic Republic.

On Wednesday, the state-backed Tasnim news agency said there had been another gas attack in the northern city of Ardabil which had forced the hospitalisation of 108 students. The news agency also reported further poisonings at three schools in Tehran.

The ambiguity around the attacks and the lack of information from the government have stoked anger across the country.

Parents have protested outside Qom’s governorate building, calling for more to be done to protect their children.

The poisonings have also come in the wake of months of mass demonstrations that focused on the treatment of women in the country, sparked by the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in custody following her arrest for “inappropriate hijab”.

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***

Over the past year Ottawa has given Ukraine over $2 billion in weapons. The size of the arms donation is unprecedented in Canadian history.

According to a February 17 Le Devoir calculation, Canada has delivered $2.26 billion in weapons to Ukraine. The paper costed 17 different announcements, which include 4 heavy tanks, 4,200 single-use rocket launchers, an anti-aircraft missile system, 4 howitzers with 27,000 shells, 76 drone cameras, 247 armored vehicles and more. On Friday the Liberals announced they were sending four more heavy tanks, an armored recovery vehicle and more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

Since World War II, this quantity of arms donations is unprecedented. The only example that may be comparable is the arms Canada transferred through NATO’s Mutual Aid Program in the decade after the alliance was created. Between 1950 and 1958 Ottawa donated $1.53 billion ($9 billion today) in ammunition, fighter jets, military training, etc. to European NATO countries.

Through this program Canada armed France, Belgium and Britain as they violently suppressed independence struggles in Algeria, Congo, Kenya and elsewhere. In reference to France’s bid to suppress the Vietnamese independence movements, external affairs minister Lester Pearson told Parliament in 1953 that “the assistance we have given to France as a member of the NATO association may have helped her recently in the discharge of some of her obligations in Indo-China.” With 400,000 French troops in Algeria in 1956 Canada transferred hundreds of thousands of bullets to that country.

During the 1950s and 60s Ottawa armed the colonial powers rather than the independence movements. In subsequent years it sold significant amounts of weapons to the US, not the Vietnamese resistance. Likewise, it armed the South African apartheid regime in the 1970s, not Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress. During the 1980s Canadian firms sold Indonesia weapons, not the East Timorese independence movement.

Today, Canada is selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, not the Houthis fighting a vicious foreign invasion of their country. Similarly, Canadian firms sell arms to Israel, not the Palestinians resisting an illegal occupation.

Just months before Russia’s invasion last year, Rwanda instigated a new wave of violence in its three-decade long destruction of eastern Congo. Sending a fraction of the weapons Canada has given Ukraine to Congo would likely end Rwanda’s violence. Or Ottawa could halt Kigali’s violence by severing aid to Rwanda and launching a major diplomatic campaign against it.

Similarly, if Canada and Europe announced a boycott of all contacts and trade with Israel until that country ended its system of apartheid and the illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, change would come quickly.

If Ottawa were truly concerned about sovereignty and international law, wouldn’t it send weapons where they would be most effective in ending foreign aggression and the breaking of international law?

The truth is, rather than defend a country invaded by its neighbor, Canada’s massive arms shipments to Ukraine is designed to fuel and escalate an eight-year-old proxy war that Russia massively expanded 12 months ago. Last week foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly declared, “right now, it’s not time to talk about peace, it is time to arm them.”

Joly went on to say, “I never thought as a progressive politician that I would be saying that.” The foreign minister’s claim to be fighting for peace is nonsense. Amidst Russia massing 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine 13 months ago, Joly traveled to Ukraine to promote NATO expansion, knowing it would increase the likelihood of Russia invading. Additionally, Joly ignored the Minsk II peace accord (the only time she mentioned it was the day after Vladimir Putin recognized the People’s Republic of Luhansk and Donetsk when she could blame Moscow for breaking the accord). Beginning in 2015 Canada’s Operation Unifier military training mission undermined the Minsk peace accord and helped make Ukraine a de facto member of NATO. A year earlier Ottawa helped overthrow elected president Victor Yanukovich who opposed Ukraine joining NATO.

Canada’s open conflict with Russia over the past decade is part of a historic geopolitical struggle to reduce that country’s size and influence. A small number of Canadians fought with the British during the 1850s Crimean war and 6,000 Canadians along with British, American, French and other allied troops invaded Russia in 1918. Afterwards Ottawa refused to recognize the Bolshevik government for more than a decade and promoted Eastern European nationalism during the Cold War. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union Ottawa has devoted significant resources to promoting anti-Russian forces in Ukraine. It immediately began funding anti-Russian Ukrainian civil society groups, which was on display with Canada’s significant role in the 2004 Orange Revolution.

Washington and Ottawa look set to continue fueling the fighting in Ukraine as part of the old geopolitical game. For supporters of the US empire billions of dollars in weapons is a price worth paying to weaken Russia. Hundreds of thousands of lives are not factored into the cost or can be ignored because they are Russians and Ukrainians.

Fortunately, cracks are appearing in the Canadian consensus when it comes to the policy of “fighting to the last Ukrainian”. On CBC The House last week Green party co-leader Jonathan Pedneault criticized “supplying weapons in active conflict areas” while a recent poll suggests the public is becoming increasingly weary of sending ever more arms. Canadians increasingly want peace talks.

Over the weekend, protests critical of Canadian policy were held in a half dozen cities. On Saturday in Montréal 150 rallied in the bitter cold under the banner “No to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. No to NATO’s encirclement of Russia”. They joined over 10,000 in Berlin and thousands in London over the weekend as well as thousands more in Washington DC and Munich the previous weekend.

More and more Canadians of conscience have decided it’s time to stop the madness. Time to end arms shipments now.

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Yves Engler’s latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military.

Featured image: Intertwined flags of the Ukraine and Canada. Image source: Euromaidan Press.

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***

A series of antiwar protests over the weekend saw Western European citizens in mass demanding their governments pursue diplomacy with Russia and halt arms shipments to Kiev. As the current conflict in Ukraine turned one year old, major demonstrations – which saw people united across the political spectrum – were seen in Germany, France, and Italy.

10,000 people gathered in Paris to protest against France’s membership in both NATO as well as the EU. Attendees also demanded an end to the French government’s military aid to Kiev. The demonstration, dubbed the “National March for Peace” was organized by the right-wing Les Patriotes party. According to the group’s leader Florian Philippot – who joined the Paris rally himself – similar but smaller protests were held at 30 other locations throughout the country on Sunday.

On Saturday, thousands of people participated in peace demonstrations in the Italian cities of Genoa and Milan. In Genoa, the rally focused on ending weapons shipments to Ukraine and was organized by union members and left-wing activists, whose slogan was “Lower weapons, raise wages.” 4,000 people from across Italy joined the Genoa protest, along with people from France and Switzerland as well, according to local media reports.

The Collective Autonomous Port Workers (CALP) helped organize the rally with the Italian communist party. They demanded the port of Genoa’s facilities no longer be used to facilitate arms shipments to Ukraine.

CALP’s Riccardo Rudino pointed out that “the conflict in Ukraine did not begin last year” but rather “in 2014, with the massacre of the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass.”

Following the U.S. backed 2014 coup in Kiev – which overthrew the government of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, while over 14,000 people were killed, including thousands of civilians, in Kiev’s war on the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

In London, a large group carried out a similar demonstration calling for peace in Ukraine and an end to the British government’s weapons transfers to Kiev. The event was held by Stop the War Coalition at Portland Place in Central London and was attended by former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Many thousands of people participated in a massive protest in central Berlin, where attendees railed against German military aid to Kiev. The protesters, who were massed at the Brandenburg Gate, demanded additionally that their government engage Russia in peace talks and bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

The organizers say as many as 50,000 people joined the “Uprising for Peace” demonstrations. However, the police offered a lower-end estimate of 13,000 people in attendance. The event was organized by Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of the Links Party (the Left Party) in Germany, as well as a feminist author and campaigner Alice Schwarzer.

Wagenknecht declared neo-Nazis were not welcome at the protest, but anyone else who desired peace “with an honest heart” was welcome to attend. During her speech at the event, Wagenknecht declared the creation of a “new, strong peace movement in Germany.”

She also observed that the myriad protestors were united by the fact that they do not feel represented by the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, in their decision to supply Kiev with weaponry, including main battle tanks.

In a reference to the drastic escalation of Berlin’s involvement in the war since last year, some banners read “Helmets today, tanks tomorrow, the day after tomorrow your sons.”

Other banners carried by the protesters bore such anti war slogans as “Stop the Killing,” “Not My War, Not My Government,” and “Diplomats instead of grenades.”

Two weeks prior to the protest, Wagenknecht and Schwarzer published a “Manifest for Peace” which demanded that Scholz “stop the escalation in weapons deliveries.” The petition has reportedly garnered more than 650,000 signatures, including some prominent intellectuals and political figures.

This weekend’s massive protests in Berlin followed a smaller demonstration at the end of January in Nuremberg, where participants rallied against Scholz’s decision to provide Leopard 2 battle tanks to Kiev. This month, around 10,000 people also protested in Munich during the Munich Security Conference, where Western leaders discussed funding, arming and training Ukrainian forces “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia.

Also on Sunday, in southwestern Germany, protesters gathered at the Ramstein air base – where the Ukraine Defense Contact Group’s meetings on arming Kiev are held – calling for an end to the weapons deliveries while demanding the U.S. Air Force to “go home.”

In Nuremberg, protestors expressed their dire concerns that the German people were being dragged into another war with Russia. As one demonstrator commented “If we Germans get involved in a war, and I personally do not have a war with Russia, then for us Germans, based on history, it is the worst sign that we can send.” The demonstrator continued, “no war must go through Germany, neither with arms deliveries nor anything else, because otherwise, Germany will be in the middle of it again.” He believes this is just what “America wants.”

The latest protests in Germany took place against the backdrop of veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.”

Before the war began, Russia provided roughly a third of Europe’s gas, while Germany depended on Moscow for more than half of its gas supplies. After the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to ship gas to Europe via an undamaged line in Nord Stream 2. This offer was quickly rejected by Berlin.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken celebrated the blasts in the Baltic Sea – which, according to Hersh, were caused by explosives planted by U.S. Navy divers and detonated with a sonar buoy dropped by a Norwegian spy plane. Blinken described the attack as a “tremendous strategic opportunity” to wean Europe off its dependency on cheap Russian energy “for the years to come.” Since the attack, which led to possibly the largest ever leak of methane gas, the U.S. and Norway have taken Russia’s place as Europe’s top natural gas suppliers.

As a result of the economic war on Russia led by the U.S., people across Europe have suffered skyrocketing gas prices and inflation, leaving some struggling to heat their homes during the frigid winter months. The strain is beginning to show, likely playing some role in motivating the spate of protest actions in recent days. Last year, tens of thousands attended similar demonstrations in Italy, Germany, France, and the Czech Republic, with many voicing outrage over pricey foreign aid to Ukraine as their living standards continue to plummet.

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Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on Conflicts of Interest.

Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer and editor at RT.

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***

The escalating violence in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been inevitable for a long time. The century-old Zionist project in Palestine has always been colonisation and exclusion or subjugation of indigenous Palestinians. The problem is, of course, that the Zionists and Israel launched their project as European colonisation of Asian, African and American territories was winding down and indigenous independence movements were rising up against colonial masters.

Palestinians can no longer tolerate constant Israeli abuse by settlers who threaten and attack Palestinian children walking to school, farmers harvesting their olive crop, householders in their homes and drivers travelling from one West Bank urban enclave to another. Palestinians are prepared to respond with stones, gun-fire and Molotov cocktails to Israeli military raids on refugee camps, cities, towns and villages. Consequently, at least 65 Palestinians and a dozen Israelis have died violently this year. Last year was the most deadly for both sides since 2005.

Palestinians did not figure in the 120-year-old Zionist campaign to colonise Palestine. The slogan, “A land without a people for a people without a land”, was first adopted by Christian Zionists in 1843 and subsequently by Jewish Zionists although his was a false premise for colonisation. The man who proposed the founding of a “Jewish State”, Theodor Herzl did not use this slogan as he visited Palestine and knew it to be false.

Overtly, he adopted a paternalistic line toward native Palestinians and said they would benefit from contact with European Jewish colonists. However, covertly, he wrote in his diaries that Palestinians could be pushed across the borders of their country “surreptitiously”. This was, in fact, what happened and is happening but not “surreptitiously” — as an existential aspect of Israeli policy. The very reference of the land as “Palestine” and “Palestinians” as its inhabitants challenges Israel’s legitimacy.

But modern-day Israelis cannot deny that Palestine and Palestinians have a long history. There is mention of “Philistines” in the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament. They were a sea-faring people thought to be from Crete who settled in southern Palestine in the 12th century BC about the same time as the Jewish tribes. They battled each other and the Canaanites who were the masters of the land. “Palalestine” rather than the names of the Jewish kingdoms was mentioned by the 5th century BC historian Herodotus to identify the district of Syria located between Egypt and Phoenicia.

Current attitudes toward Palestine and the Palestinian people were formed by British colonial rule of the country. This was rooted in the 1917 Balfour declaration which stated that the British government “viewed with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best efforts to facilitate this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine…” At that time, 92 per cent of the estimated 700,000 people in Palestine were Palestinian, 8 per cent were Jewish. Since then there has been a concerted effort to continue to deny Palestinians their identity as the indigenous people of the land.

At the time of Israel’s 1948 war of establishment, two-thirds of the population of Palestine was Palestinian. Consequently, if there was to be a Jewish state, the Zionists/Israelis had to clear the land they conquered of Palestinians. Of 1.37 million, 750,000 were driven from the 78 per cent of Palestine held by Israel and 150,000 remained in Israel. The former became “Arab refugees” and latter “Arab Israelis”. In the mouths of many if not most Israelis Palestinians became “Aravim”, aliens, inveterate enemies and, when they did not behave, “terrorists”. Their Palestinian origin was dismissed in the West.

The greatest contribution of Fateh’s leader Yasser Arafat was to put Palestine back on the map of the world, thereby propelling the Palestinian people to the forefront of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Arafat proclaimed victory on this issue in this protracted struggle in November 1974 in has address to the UN General Assembly when he proffered the gun or the olive branch as the means of resolving this conflict.

The Israelis chose the gun and colonisation of the 22 per cent of Palestine they conquered and occupied in 1967. Despite two Palestinian uprisings and promises of Palestinian independence in a truncated statelet, Israel has not wavered from this objective and has not been obstructed or sanctioned by the US, its primary sponsor, or complicit Europe and the United Nations.

This has allowed Israeli “settlers”, i.e., colonists to build up their numbers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and, under Likud chief Binyamin Netanyahu, assume powerful positions in the government. Mainstream Israelis are largely responsible for the rise of the “settlers”, their legitimisation (while breaking international law by colonising occupied territory), and their entry into the mainstream. Before the settlers and the hard right took power, the mainstream majority ignored their ascendancy and did not visit the West Bank, occupied East Jerusalem or Gaza.

Many Israelis opted for “internal exile”, until a serious peace movement emerged during and after Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon with the aim of eliminating Arafat and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. While peaceniks favoured a “two-state solution” involving the emergence of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, their governments, whether Likud or Labour, stepped up colonisation in the land needed for this state. Colonisation continued even after the 1993 Oslo Accords were signed on the White House lawn and there were expectations that a Palestinian state would emerge by 1999. It was hardy surprising that this did not happen. Instead, colonisation has accelerated and under the current settler-friendly Netanyahu government will continue apace.

For him and his ministers, “Aravim” and “terrorists” constitute an obstacle to colonisation and the realisation of the 19th century Zionist project.

The colonists’ storming and burning of the Palestinian West Bank town of Hawara last Sunday was a direct result of Israeli duplicity: Of espousing the “two-state solution” while continuing colonisation. The colonists justify the attack on Hawara and neighbouring towns by calling it “revenge” for the killing of two Israeli brothers earlier in the day. There are likely to be many more Hawaras in the massively one-sided struggle for Palestine. No longer considered by most of the world, including the pro-Israeli Western powers, as a non-people, Palestinians have no choice but to fight for their existence.

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***

Last week I presented our Ban the Jab resolution to the Lee County Florida Republican Party and it passed with 80-90% of the vote. Although, the Lee County GOP has thus far been unable to issue a press release because the wire services are claiming it goes against CDC standards and it incites fear. That’s right, after three years of media hysterics and fear mongering, a press release exposing the C19 injections as bioweapons is inciting fear.

This issue is so popular that it has already started trickling out to become national news without a press release. Last Thursday I was interviewed on Stew Peters, and then Friday, Dr. Francis Boyle was on Stew Peters speaking about the bioweapon. Dr. Francis Boyle was the author of the 1989 Bioweapons and Antiterrorism Act, and is one of the world’s most credible authorities on this topic. Dr. Boyle is clear that the C19 injections meet the legal definition of a biological weapon according to the 1989 bioweapons act that he drafted as well as Florida statute.

The information provided in these interviews lays out the sense of urgency to this issue. The Biden administration is working with the World Health organization to basically over throw the United States government. Essentially, the WHO treaty is written in a way that it will provisionally take effect in May. Naturally, another pandemic is likely planned before the United States Senate would vote down ratification of the treaty. This would mean that WHO could force lockdowns, vaccination, masks, etc.

I know it is not constitutional, but they are doing it. The Supreme Court is compromised. According to Dr. Francis Boyle, they have crossed the Rubicon on this issue. Dr. Boyle is very clear that this is an existential threat to the United States. Most politicians are pretending this treason is not occurring. There are a few things that need to occur. The first is to withdraw from WHO. This is not likely because Biden is collaborating with WHO in this treason and attempt at a global coup.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives need to cut funding for WHO. As much political pressure as humanly possible needs to be put on House members. They need to become afraid of the public if they do not defund WHO.

On the state level, states need to pass simple laws stating that they will not comply with any WHO decisions, and are not under the jurisdiction of WHO. Honestly, secession may need to be on the table.

The other option to save our republic is to get an indictment of Fauci and pharma executives before the coup is completed. Dr. Boyle outlines this in his book Resisting Medical Tyranny. Dr. Boyle argues that the federal government is too corrupt and that it is at the state level that these indictments should be sought.

There are approximately 400 local prosecutors’ offices around the country. A state attorney general, state attorney’s office, which covers several counties, or even a county prosecutor where they have them, could indict Fauci and pharma executives for murder and conspiracy to commit murder. According to Dr. Boyle, once the first indictment is issued the house of cards will fall.

The Ban the Jab Resolution is important. It is an official statement of policy of the Republican Party for Lee County Florida. The resolution states that C19 injections are biological weapons, violate the Nuremberg code, and calls for Governor DeSantis and the legislature to ban the injections, and for the attorney general to confiscate all vials of the bioweapons and conduct a forensic audit.

It also shifts the debate from mandates to banning. Sometimes it is true that the best defense is a good offense. Weapons wise we essentially are using a bottle cap and we moved the needle on this more than our worthless politicians have since the shots came out.

As mentioned, the news wire blocked the Lee GOP press release. It is totally absurd that one of the reasons was that it incited fear. A press release about a vote from one of the major political parties is blocked by a newswire because it incites fear. This is after three years of terrorizing the American public. Is this an illegal in kind donation to the other party?

Still, the word is trickling out and it is having an effect. I was told that the Florida Republican Assembly, which is a statewide conservative organization passed the ban the jab resolution unanimously, they are just waiting for a couple signatures. They may start hitting up the phones once officially passed. Collier County will vote Monday March 6, Santa Rosa County is supposed to take it up Wednesday March 9. Hillsborough County is supposed to take it up in April. This is with censorship. Imagine if a proper press release was allowed.

If a few more counties fall like dominoes then this Ban the Jab movement may take on momentum of its own. If that occurs the governor of Florida will have to act. I also know of people in Georgia and North Carolina that are planning on introducing the Lee GOP Ban the Jab resolution.

The revolt within local Republican parties is the first phase. This will build momentum and pressure will increase on politicians on the local and state level. We punched through in Lee County Florida. If we punch through statewide and ban the jab, other states will follow, and so will indictments.

So back to the question in the title. Did we just start a revolution?

Only time will tell. The answer is, that it depends on you. Don’t ask permission to lead. If we can do it, so can you. If you are a member of a Republican Executive Committee, introduce this resolution. If you are not an executive committee member, call your county GOP and tell them to adopt the Lee County Ban the Jab resolution. This is especially true in Florida, but we wouldn’t be too upset if another state banned it first….

UPDATE: The Patriots of the Florida Republican Assembly, a long standing statewide constitutional conservative organization, passed the ban the jab resolution unanimously, and are burning up the phones to the governor, attorney general, and legislature.

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***

A new report from the UN was just published. It proposes and discusses ways to cool our planet by restricting sunlight and darkening our skies.

Source: UNEP Document

What is this about? Why block sunlight, of all things? Let me explain.

The UN is worried about climate change. As the efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are faltering, the UN is looking for more ways to cool the Earth. The UNEP’s report details ideas called “Solar Radiation Modification,” the gist of which is to reflect sunlight and prevent it from heating the surface of our planet.

Here are the main ideas that the UN will consider:

• Injecting reflective nanoparticles/sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere (stratospheric aerosol injection)
• Brightening of low clouds over the ocean by seeding ocean clouds with submicron salt particles
• Using space mirrors, that is, many giant mirrors launched into outer space to reflect sunlight.

The UN explains that should the “global stakeholders” decide to proceed, the skies could be darkened within only a few years:

SRM is the only option that could cool the planet within years. To be effective at limiting global warming, SRM would need to be maintained for several decades to centuries, depending on the pace of emissions reductions and carbon removal.

The report does pay lip service to what is undeniable:

• This is an untested planetary intervention
• There could be disparate effects on certain regions

However, you and I can guess we should not expect a careful, conservative review of such proposals by the UN if the “Covid vaccine” experience is any guide.

Injecting Sulfur Dioxide Into the Sky Was Bad for Us – Now It is Good Again

This picture introduces us to the sky-dimming technology being considered:

Source: UNEP Document

The report explains:

Major volcanic eruptions, which introduce large amounts of sulphate particles into the stratosphere, provide a natural analogue for SRM deployment (Figure 4). For example, the 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption caused global annual-mean cooling of about 0.3–0.5°C in the following two years. An SAI deployment would inject aerosols continuously into the stratosphere. It is estimated that continuous injection rates of 8–16 Tg of sulphur dioxide (SO2) per year (approximately equivalent to the estimated injection amount of Mount Pinatubo in the single year of 1991) would reduce global mean temperature by 1°C. An operational SAI deployment could be scaled up to produce global cooling of 2–5°C, albeit with diminishing returns at higher rates of injections.

You are probably not a chemist, and neither am I. However, sulfur dioxide was a free byproduct of coal and oil burning, emitted into the atmosphere until recent decades. Environmental activists and authorities concluded that sulfur dioxide was a pollutant gas contributing to the phenomenon of acid rain and causing significant health problems.

Having been assured that sulfur dioxide was bad for us, we spent billions of dollars eliminating it from coal and oil-burning emissions and building sulfur-capture technology to keep SO2 out of the atmosphere.

Now, it turns out that sulfur dioxide is good for us, and we need to spend even more untold billions to inject it into the atmosphere.

Does this sound stupid to you?

I am sure, however, that investors will earn quite a bit of money from “sulfur dioxide atmospheric injections” right after making billions on “eliminating sulfur dioxide emissions” from coal-burning plants.

Volcano Eruptions Were the Nature’s Experiments

The UN document correctly indicates that volcanic eruptions sometimes fill the skies with ash or sulfur, dim the sun for years, and lead to measurable global cooling episodes. The example listed in the report is the above-mentioned Mt. Pinatubo eruption in 1991, which temporarily cooled our planet by 0.5 degrees C.

However, much darker pages of human history were associated with volcanoes causing catastrophic climate changes.

For example, in 1600, the eruption of the Huaynaputina in Peru caused famines in Europe and led to mass deaths.

In Russia, 1601-1603 brought the worst famine in the country’s history, leading to the overthrow of the reigning tsar. Records from Switzerland, Latvia and Estonia record exceptionally cold winters in 1600-1602; in France, the 1601 wine harvest was late, and wine production collapsed in Germany and colonial Peru. In China, peach trees bloomed late, and Lake Suwa in Japan had one of its earliest freezing dates in 500 years.

So, such global sun-dimming projects may indeed cause global cooling at the cost of poisoning the atmosphere, causing acid rain, and leading to the collapse of agriculture in several regions of the world.

In addition, blocked sunlight will prevent the uptake of CO2 by plants because converting CO2 into plant matter and oxygen needs sunlight:

Source: Wikipedia Photosynthesis

Somehow, the dimmed sunlight inhibiting CO2 sequestration (uptake), and lowering food production, does not bother the proponents of Solar Radiation Modification. And how would solar panels run without the sun?

These are not immediately-actionable plans yet. In some ways, the UN report is exploratory. Nobody is building giant sulfur-dioxide-injecting smokestacks or is launching mirrors into space, as of now.

However, the usual stakeholders, such as Bill Gates, are preparing the right conditions for this to happen:

Source: Popular Mechanics

If This Sounds Crazy to You, Do Not Blame Me!

Imagine a hypothetical layperson named Charlie. Charlie is a reasonable, caring, intelligent, but not well-informed individual who has never heard of sky dimming before. Charlie has a friend named Igor, who reads a wide variety of news and uses mostly reliable sources, such as the UN’s official documents from the UNEP or news magazines such as Popular Mechanics.

If Igor informed Charlie that one of the richest men in the world had convinced the United Nations to seriously consider dimming the sky over the entire planet, injecting acid-rain-causing sulfur gas into the atmosphere, and potentially causing famines in some regions, Charlie would consider the messenger, Igor, a crazy conspiracy theorist.

It is not possible! Charlie would say. Take off your tinfoil hat Igor and get a life.That would be Charlie’s likely answer to such news. Our leading authorities, Charlie would assert, would certainly never consider forcing the entire world to implement such crazy ideas!

The problem is that these disturbing ideas are completely real! This is not even the first time reckless global plans were implemented with the UN backing.

Those same people just made the entire world take unproven Covid vaccines that saw no long-term testing and ended up not working.

Sharing news about these plans is, therefore, a challenge due to the inherent insanity of what the plans propose. I discussed such challenges before, also mentioning sky dimming.

Meanwhile, a path is being laid toward such proposals becoming a reality.

Bill Gates is not messing around. Will his sky-darkening plans come to fruition?

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***

Died Suddenly. Horrible Breaking News That Dr. Makis just dropped.

 

Many dropped while playing their sports and many died in their sleep.

This is a video clip from my most recent interview with Odessa Orlewicz at Librti.com which can be found here:

February 28, 2023 – 96 Canadian children have died suddenly or unexpectedly in the past 3 months (click here).

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This is a video clip from my most recent interview with Odessa Orlewicz at Librti.com which can be found here:

 

 

 

 

Click here to view the interview

Odessa Orlewicz has been at the forefront of reporting on Canadian excess deaths, COVID-19 injuries & deaths, and corruption in the Canadian healthcare system.

My other interviews with Odessa Orlewicz at Librti.com:

February 8, 2023 – Excess deaths, COVID-19 Vaccine injuries and deaths being covered up by the Alberta government (click here)

October 17, 2022 – 80 Canadian doctors who died suddenly or unexpectedly since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines (click here)

September 5, 2022 – 32 Canadian doctors who died suddenly or unexpectedly since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines, and corruption in Canadian healthcare (click here)

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Das Erdbeben in der Türkei und Syrien hat wieder einmal Feinde der USA getroffen. Nun wird darüber debattiert, ob das Erdbeben technisch ausgelöst wurde – von Beamten beobachtete Lichterscheinungen sowie die vorausgehende Schließung einiger Behörden sind ein mögliches Indiz dafür. Doch die Faktenchecker dementieren. Wem soll man glauben – wenn man nicht gerade Physiker ist? Rosalie Bertell, die so genannte Umwelt-Nonne, war eine amerikanische Umweltwissenschaftlerin und Preisträgerin des Right Livelihood Award – also eine renommierte Persönlichkeit.

Vor 20 Jahren schrieb sie das Buch «Kriegswaffe Planet Erde», in der sie unter anderem genau diese Möglichkeit und Praxis anprangert: Die militärische Nutzung von Technologien, die das Wetter, Vulkanausbrüche und Erdbeben kontrollieren und auslösen können. Rosalie Bertell starb 2012. Doch sie hat eine Nachfolgerin: Claudia von Werlhof, emeritierte Professorin für Politikwissenschaft und Frauenforschung in Innsbruck, Patriarchatskritikerin und Autorin zahlreicher Bücher, wurde Bertells «Stellvertreterin im deutschsprachigen Raum». Im Telefonat beantwortet sie vier Fragen.

Christa Dregger (CD): Sie sind Feministin, Rosalie Bertell war Biometrikerin – wie kamen Sie zusammen?

Claudia von Werlhof (CVW): Nach dem Erdbeben in Haiti 2010 hörte ich, dass es möglicherweise künstlich erzeugt worden war. Ich habe mich dann reingehängt, Fakten studiert und mich auch öffentlich dazu geäussert – und wurde dafür von allen Seiten angegriffen. Rosalie Bertell hat mich dann angeschrieben und bestätigte, dass es möglicherweise ein künstlich ausgelöstes Erdbeben war. Ich habe dann ihr Buch «Kriegswaffe Planet Erde» gelesen und bin damit in die Hölle gefahren. Und dann habe ich zusammen mit anderen die «Planetare Bewegung für Mutter Erde» gegründet. Wir ließen das Buch auf Deutsch übersetzen und veröffentlichen, inzwischen hat es die 5. Auflage.

Ich habe Rosalie später in Bonn beim 30. Jahresjubiläum des Alternativen Nobelpreises auch persönlich kennengelernt. Sie hatte den Preis 1986 für ihr erstes Buch über die Wirkung von niedrigstrahliger Radioaktivität erhalten. Seitdem bis zu ihrem Tod haben wir zusammengearbeitet. Für sie war unsere «Kritische Patriarchatstheorie» als Erklärungsansatz neu. Damit erklären wir das Gesamtbild, warum überhaupt Waffen entwickelt werden, die den gesamten Planeten betreffen. Warum will man den Planeten unter Kontrolle bekommen und ihn in eine Waffe verwandeln – mit den Gründen dafür habe ich mich in meiner Arbeit auseinandergesetzt. Aber mir war nicht klar, auf welche Weise das überhaupt möglich ist. Und es ist bis heute so, dass die meisten Leute nicht verstehen, dass, wie und warum z.B. solche Erdbeben künstlich hervorgerufen werden.

CD: Denkst du, dass auch das Erdbeben in der Türkei künstlich ausgelöst wurde?

CVW: Rosalie sagte immer, dass es im Einzelfall schwierig ist, die militärischen Geoexperimente von den echten Erschütterungen des Planeten zu trennen. Doch die Möglichkeiten sind spätestens seit 1976 bekannt durch die Enmod-Konvention, die Environmental Modification Konvention der UNO. In ihr wurden bereits all diese Techniken aufgezählt – bis zu Erdbeben, Vulkanausbrüchen, Wetterveränderungen aller Art. Diese Techniken wurden zum Teil im Vietnamkrieg angewandt. Die technischen Grundlagen dafür stammen von Nicola Tesla. Als der 1943 gestorben ist, hat man sich sofort auf sein Material gestürzt – von Ost bis West – und das dann auch für neue Erfindungen verwendet. Es gibt zahlreiche offizielle Patente dazu, die kann man nachlesen. Das ist ja nicht gesponnen, es ist nur eben Militärtechnologie und deshalb teilweise geheim. Die Technologie wird unter andern schon seit 70-80 Jahren entwickelt und ist in Gebrauch. Rosalie sagte immer, dass neue Kriege immer mit neuen Waffen einhergehen. Dass die Militärtechnologie immer einige Jahrzehnte dem voraus wäre, was die Öffentlichkeit weiss. Und dass die Umweltwaffen Bestandteil der neuen Kriege sein werden.

CD: Ich lese Ihnen mal zwei Stellungnahmen im ARD-Faktenchecker zum Thema vor: Laut Oliver Heidbach, Leiter der Arbeitsgruppe Analyse und Modellierung tektonischer Spannungen am Deutschen GeoForschungsZentrum (GFZ), sei es gar nicht möglich, mit Radiowellen Erdbeben auszulösen. «Radiowellen können mit den hohen Frequenzen im Mega- und Gigahertzbereich in der Erdkruste keine Bewegung des Gesteins erzeugen und somit auch keine Spannungsänderungen hervorrufen.» Der Auslöser von Erdbeben wie das in der Türkei und Syrien sei vielmehr das Überschreiten einer kritischen mechanischen Spannung in der Erdkruste. Auch Yuri Shprits, Leiter der Sektion Weltraumphysik und Weltraumwetter am GFZ, sei «fest davon überzeugt, dass durch HAARP erzeugte Modifikationen der Ionosphäre keine Erdbeben verursachen können». Zudem würde das Auslösen eines Erdbebens gigantische Energiemengen erfordern, die von HAARP nicht erzeugt werden könnten. «Außerdem wäre es unmöglich, die Energie aus der Ionosphäre an verschiedene Orte auf der Erde zu übertragen.»

CVW: Das ist die typische naturwissenschaftliche Anti-Erklärung. Sie geben eine alte Weltanschauung wieder, wonach Materie träge ist. Aber du kennst das Phänomen einer Brücke, über die ein Militärtrupp im Gleichschritt marschiert. Sie können die Brücke zum Einstürzen bringen – und das ist das Prinzip der gepulsten Energien. Nicola Tesla, der 1856-1943 gelebt hat, hat als Wissenschaftler ein neues naturwissenschaftliches Weltbild in Gang gesetzt. Er hat die Materie über ihre elektromagnetischen Eigenschaften definiert. Er hat selbst durch den Einsatz von elektromagnetischen Schwingungen um sein Haus herum Erdbeben produziert. Überall befinden sich diese Schwingungen. Er hat sie verstärkt, bis die frei gesetzte Energie ein Erdbeben erzeugte, das sein eigenes Haus fast zerstört hätte. Tesla hat unsere moderne Welt überhaupt erst ermöglicht. Die ganze Elektronik hätte nicht eingeführt werden können ohne seine Naturwissenschaft. Unsere ganze Welt ist eine Tesla-Welt. Aber ihre Bedeutung für Militärtechnologien wird nach wie vor geleugnet, weil Tesla offiziell nicht gelehrt wird. Auch die Haarp-Anlage fußt auf seiner Arbeit.

Die Haarp-Anlage (Hochfrequenz-Aktiv-Auroral-Forschungsprogramm der US-Armee und Navy) in Alaska wurde durch die Energie von Gaskraftwerken gespeist. Jede der Antennen der Anlage hat über 1 Million Watt produziert und an dieselbe Stelle in die Ionosphäre gepulst. Dort verdichtet sich die Energie wie eine Linse, und von dort kann man einen gerichteten Strahl auf die Erde zurücklenken. Wo der dann ankommt, richtet er großen Schaden an. Rosalie sagte, das sei wie ein Gewehrlauf, der auf die Erde schießt.

Die Haarp-Anlage ist 2015 an die Universität übergeben worden. Ich glaube, sie haben sie deshalb angeblich geschlossen, weil man dort im Internet verfolgen konnte, was geschah. Vor dem Erdbeben von Haiti konnte man z.B. sehen, dass sie im erhöhten Einsatz war. Diese Nachprüfbarkeit der Anlage war für sie ein Nachteil. Aber es gibt 2-3 weitere Dutzend ähnlicher Anlagen weltweit.

Laut Rosalie gibt es zwei Erscheinungen, anhand derer man auf ein künstlich ausgelöstes Erdbeben schliessen kann: das eine sind bestimmte Wolkenformationen, die zeigen, dass in der Atmosphäre bestimmte Wellen mit hoher Energie unterwegs sind. Das andere Merkmal sind Lichterscheinungen am Himmel, ähnlich wie kurze Regenbögen, die sog. Plasma-Streifen, die entstehen, wenn die Energien aus der Ionosphäre die Atmosphäre aufheizen. Und das hat man bei vielen Erdbeben gesehen, z.B. in China.

Auch vieles, was die Türken jetzt gesagt haben, entspricht dem. Türkische Beamte haben gesagt, es gab einen Lichteffekt kurz vor dem Erdbeben. Sie sagten auch, dass Amerikaner mit fahrbaren Radaranlagen in dem Gebiet unterwegs waren, die seien daran schuld. Also – ja: es ist theoretisch möglich, dass das türkische Erdbeben, so furchtbar es ist, künstlich ausgelöst wurde. Den Beweis kann man aber nicht führen.

CD: Könnten die Wetterwaffen auf für den Klimawandel verantwortlich sein?

CVW: Ja sicher. Klima ist sowieso das falsche Wort. Klima ist ein weltweites System, das von der Sonne und der Stellung im Sonnensystem abhängt. Klima kann nicht verändert werden. Man kann das Wetter verändern. Mit der vorhandenen Technologie kann man das Wetter ununterbrochen verändern. Durch die Verschiebung des Jetstreams nach Norden wird es in der Nordhalbkugel heiss und mit der Verschiebung nach Süden dort auch im Sommer eiskalt. Dazu kommt das Sterben der Ozonschicht: Das ist die Schicht, die die Erde umhüllt und die elektromagnetischen Wellen abfängt, die von der Sonne kommen. Trotz des Abkommens, die FCKW-Gase zu verbieten, ist die Ozonschicht nach wie vor stark angegriffen. Neue Löcher sind hinzugekommen, auch über dem Nordpol und der ganzen Nordhalbkugel. Dadurch trifft die Strahlung pur und direkt auf den Erdboden, verändert die DNA der Pflanzen, macht Plankton kaputt und die Ernte. Das ist ein Ergebnis der radioaktiven Verseuchung, zuletzt durch Fukushima, und der Wettertechnologien sowie der Raumfahrt. Das wird aber nicht öffentlich diskutiert.

Die US-Air Force schrieb im Jahr 1996 einen Bericht mit dem Titel «Owning the Weather in 2025». Darin heißt es: «Im Jahr 2025 können die US-amerikanischen Luft- und Raumfahrtkräfte das Wetter beherrschen, indem sie sich neue Technologien zunutze machen und die Entwicklung dieser Technologien auf Anwendungen für die Kriegsführung ausrichten. Eine solche Fähigkeit bietet dem Kriegskämpfer Werkzeuge, um das Schlachtfeld in einer Weise zu gestalten, die nie zuvor möglich war.» 2025 – das sind noch zwei Jahre hin. Das sind keine Geheimnisse, das gibt es im Internet. Wir haben ein Buch herausgebracht, das demnächst auch auf Deutsch erscheint, es heisst «Global WAR-NING!» – also nicht «Global Warming». Darin warnen wir: Geo-Engineering macht uns, die Erde und die Menschheit kaputt. Nicht CO2 ist am so genannten Klimawandel schuld, sondern Geo-Engineering. Wir befinden uns in einem Weltkrieg, die Ukraine ist nur ein Teil davon. Die Wettermanipulationen sind Teil eines Weltkrieges gegen die Erde, um die Erde als Planet, als Makrolebewesen in den Griff zu bekommen.

CD: Mir fällt es schwer, das zu glauben. Wer kann denn Interesse daran haben, sich selber zu zerstören?

CVW: Das ist genau das Problem. Zerstörung wird ja immer als Verbesserung ausgegeben. Das, was von Natur aus vorhanden gewesen ist – die Erde, ihre Lebewesen, die Menschen, die Frauen, Tiere, Pflanzen – war im Patriarchat irgendwie nie gut genug. Sie sollten verbessert, umgemodelt und transformiert werden. Auf dieser Ideologie beruht der ganze technische Fortschritt. Und meine Theorie ist, dass Mutter Natur, die weibliche Kraft, die das Leben hervorbringt, von den Männern, die das Patriarchat gebildet haben, abgelehnt wurde. Denn sie haben selbst die Schöpfungs-Macht beansprucht. Alle Naturprozesse sollen deshalb technisch ersetzt werden, und das wird als Verbesserung ausgegeben. Dem geht immer eine Zerstörung voraus. Denn es gilt als besser, die Erde unter Kontrolle zu haben, als sie machen zu lassen, was ihr entspricht.

Bald sind alle Rohstoffe der Erde verbraucht. Die jetzige Industriegesellschaft soll umgebaut werden, das Ziel ist Bevölkerungsreduktion. Denn wir haben kein Coltan für 8 Milliarden Handybesitzer. Und all das andere auch nicht. Die verbliebenen Menschen sollen in eine völlig andere technische Formation eingebunden werden. Die Integration der Menschen in diese Maschinerie: das ist das Projekt des Transhumanismus. Dann werden die Leute auch nicht mehr natürlich geboren, sondern durch synthetische Biologie und Gentechnologie erzeugt. Transhumanismus bedeutet, den Menschen zu «verbessern». Das ist ein Horrorkabinett, aber nachlesbar bei Yuval Noah Harari, Berater von Klaus Schwab. Wenn die Frauen nicht langsam aufwachen – und auch noch andere dazu am besten – sind wir einfach geliefert.

CD: Aussagen aus “Slowly Wrecking Our Planet” von Rosalie Bertell (ihrem letzten Text):

1946 entdeckte die General Electric Company, dass man durch das Fallenlassen von Trockeneis in einem kalten Raum Eiskristalle «erzeugen» konnte, die denen in Wolken ähnelten. Innerhalb weniger Monate nach dieser Entdeckung wurde Trockeneis aus Flugzeugen in Kumuluswolken abgeworfen, wobei die Wassertröpfchen in Eiskristalle umgewandelt wurden, die dann wie Schnee auf die Erde fielen. Bis 1950 hatten Industrieforscher herausgefunden, dass Silberjodid die gleiche Wirkung hat. Die Ära der Wetterbeeinflussung hatte begonnen.

Im Wettlauf zum Mond entdeckten Anfang 1958 sowohl die Kosmonauten der USA als auch der UdssR den Van-Allen-Gürtel, einen Magnetgürtel, der die Erde vor den zerstörerischen geladenen Teilchen des Sonnenwindes schützt. Zwischen August und September 1958 liess die US-Marine im Rahmen des Projekts Argus drei Kernspaltungsbomben 480 km (300 Meilen) über dem Südatlantik im unteren Van-Allen-Gürtel explodieren. Die US-Atomenergiebehörde bezeichnete es als «das grösste wissenschaftliche Experiment, das je unternommen wurde» (Baldwin). Das «Experiment» hatte weltweite Auswirkungen und erzeugte neue künstliche Polarlichter. Die langfristigen Auswirkungen dieser unglaublichen Zerstörung, die stattfand, bevor die schützende Funktion des Van-Allen-Gürtels verstanden wurde, sind nie aufgeklärt worden. 1962 wurde dieses «große» Experiment am 9. Juli über dem Pazifik im Rahmen des Projekts Starfish ein zweites Mal wiederholt. (…) Später im Jahr 1962 unternahm die U.S.S.R. ähnliche planetarische «Experimente» und schuf drei neue Strahlungsgürtel zwischen 7000 und 13000 km (4300 und 8100 Meilen) über der Erde. (…) Die Generalversammlung der Vereinten Nationen war über diese Aktivitäten so beunruhigt, dass sie am 10. Dezember 1976 ein Übereinkommen über das Verbot der militärischen oder sonstigen feindlichen Nutzung von Umweltveränderungstechniken verabschiedete.

HAARP umfasst derzeit 180 Sendemasten, obwohl es 1994 in modularer Form mit einem Netz von 48 Masten in Betrieb genommen wurde. Es besteht Grund zu der Annahme, dass HAARP weiter auf 384 oder 720 Sendemasten ausgebaut werden kann. Dieser leistungsstarke synchronisierte Transformator wird von einer Reihe von Superdarns (Dual Auroral Radar Netzwerk) begleitet, die die Auswirkungen von Haarp-Manipulationen auf die Ionosphäre der Erde auf der Erdoberfläche kontinuierlich überwachen.

Es scheint nun möglich zu sein, den Jetstream zu «steuern», der die Grenze zwischen warmer und kühler Luft in geografischen Regionen bestimmt, oder die grossen Dampfflüsse zu manipulieren, die den Regen von den Tropen in die gemäßigten Zonen leiten und so Dürren oder Überschwemmungen verursachen. Natürliche Ereignisse oder Instabilitäten wie Monsune, Hurrikane, Tornados usw. in der Atmosphäre können durch «Energiezufuhr» verstärkt werden. Das Einbringen von Öl in tektonische Verwerfungen oder das Erzeugen künstlicher Erdschwingungen mit elektromagnetischen Impulsen kann Erdbeben auslösen.

Die Erde ist bereits ein «Forschungsopfer» des Militarismus geworden, und es ist an der Zeit, Geoengineering als grausame Farce und Verbrechen gegen das Leben selbst zu stoppen.

Sollen wir die Heilung unserer Erde in die Hände derer legen, die seit mehr als 65 Jahren die gröbste Vernachlässigung ihres Wohlergehens an den Tag gelegt haben? Sollen wir diesen herrlichen Planeten wegwerfen, wie wir billigen Plastikschmuck wegwerfen? Es ist an der Zeit, den Planeten Erde zu ehren und zu schützen, wie es indigene Völker seit Tausenden von Jahren tun. Wir müssen anerkennen, dass unsere Lebensphilosophie fehlerhaft ist, denn sie hat uns in diese Krise geführt.

Es ist an der Zeit, das Patriarchat in Frage zu stellen, das die Herrschaft über alles Lebendige impliziert, und den rohen Kapitalismus, der exzessive militärische Gewalt erfordert, um seine gierige Anhäufung natürlicher Ressourcen zu schützen. Wir brauchen dringend einen kritischen Plan für eine intelligentere, weiblichere und menschengerechtere Zukunft. Es besteht ein großer Bedarf, einen nüchternen Blick auf unseren globalen Lebensstil, unsere Philosophie und unsere Sozialplanung zu werfen, damit die Menschen, alles Leben und der Planet Erde eine lange und fruchtbare Ära des Friedens und des Wohlstands erleben können. Unsere Sonne hat noch etwa vier bis fünf Milliarden Jahre Zeit, um uns mit ihrer Energie zu segnen – wir sollten sie nicht verschwenden.

 

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Mit Dank übernommen von zeitpunkt.ch – dort erschienen am 28. Februar 2023

Rosalie Bertell (1929-2912) war eine US-amerikanische Wissenschaftlerin, Autorin, Biometrikerin Umweltaktivistin und katholische Nonne. Seit 1970 arbeitete sie auf dem Gebiet der Umweltgesundheit. Sie war eine Ordensschwester der Grey Nuns of the Sacret Heart, wo sie vor allem für ihre Arbeit in der ionisierenden Strahlung bekannt ist.

Claudia von Werlhof ist Soziologin und Politologin. Sie hatte die erste Professur für Frauenforschung in Österreich inne, angesiedelt am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Sie gilt als Mitbegründerin der Frauenforschung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Bücher-Auswahl: “Die Verkehrung: Das Projekt des Patriarchats und das Gender-Dilemma” und “Väter des Nichts. Zum Wahn einer Neuschöpfung der Welt” (2 Bände, erscheint 2023, Zeitgeist Verlag, Höhr-Grenzhausen)

Christa Dregger-Barthels (auch unter dem Namen Leila Dregger bekannt). Ich bin Redaktionsmitglied des Zeitpunkt, Buchautorin, Journalistin und Aktivistin. Ich lebte fast 40 Jahren in Gemeinschaften, davon 18 Jahre in Tamera/Portugal – inzwischen wieder in Deutschland. Meine Themengebiete sind Frieden, Gemeinschaft, Mann/Frau, Geist.

Bild im Vordergrund: Retter tragen ein Opfer auf den Trümmern, während die Suche nach Überlebenden nach einem Erdbeben in der von Rebellen kontrollierten Stadt Jindires, Syrien, am 7. Februar 2023 weitergeht. [Quelle: usnews.com]

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Fifteen years ago, on February 17th, 2008, a NATO-sponsored Serbia’s province of Kosovo unilaterally self-proclaimed its (quasi) independence. During the first decade of its NATO-protected and controlled „independence“, Kosovo became the first European legalized narco-state, a leading South-East European zone of human trafficking, a fundamental Balkan (together with Bosnia-Herzegovina) recruiting center of the Jihad Islamic fundamentalists for the ISIS at the Middle East and, above all, the cradle of the destruction of the Christianity in Europe to such extent that the Republic of Kosovo(stan) is, basically, today transformed into the first European Islamic Republic in which the biggest portion of non-Albanians are expelled or murdered, but primarily the Christian Serbs.

However, the (quasi) independence of Kosovo(stan) is only a phase of the 1878 project of the creation of Islamic Greater Albania advocated by the First (pan-Islamic) Prizren League and for the first time realized during WWII when B. Mussolini established a Greater Albania with its capital in Tirana including Kosovo as well (without its northern part predominantly populated only by the Serbs). From the time of NATO’s brutal occupation of southern Serbia’s province of Kosovo (officially, Kosovo-Metochia) in June 1999, the systematic destruction of Christian shrines and monuments became an everyday duty of the local Muslim Albanians followed by the organized Islamization of the province by building a huge number of the mosques on every corner in Kosovo(stan).      

Nevertheless, the secession of Islamic Kosovo from Christian Serbia is only a step toward the ultimate political and national goal of Muslim Albanians from the region (85% of all Balkan Albanians) to re-create a Greater Albania from WWII. The political situation in neighboring North Macedonia (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) is also going to the favor of inclusion of the western portion of the NorthMacedonia, populated by ethnic Albanians, into a Greater (Islamic) Albania.  Henceforth, the crucial aim of this text is to analyze the historical and conceptual roots of a Great Albania project with the hope to explain the current events concerning the „Albanian Question“in the Balkans. This text seeks, therefore, to contribute to a better understanding of the foundations of the national project for Great Albania from 1878 onward.  

The political program of a Greater Albania

At the first, it has to be stressed that the concept of a greater ethnic Albanian state, different from the other Balkan nations, did not appear originally as an authentic expression of the Albanian national movement itself. In other words, until the beginning of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875-1878, i.e. Serbian uprising in Bosnia and Hercegovina against the Ottoman yoke followed by Serbia‘s, Montenegro‘s, and Russia‘s war against the Ottoman Empire), Albanians, unlike Serbs, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Romanians did not attempt to create an independent national state for the reason that a regional and religious identity was dominant among the Albanians for whom basically the Ottoman Empire was national (in the sense of confessional) state. In order to preserve predominance of the Islamic values in the everyday life and social relations, Muslim Albanians opposed by different forms of disobedience to the central authority in Istanbul the sultan‘s reforms which the Ottoman Empire tried to implement during the 19^th c., under pressure from the great European powers. Bosnian and Albanian Muslim feudal lords became the strongest defenders, within the European part of the Ottoman Empire, of Islamic theocratic society resisting any attempt from Ottoman central power to introduce some kind of administrative order into the functioning of the state taking into example West and Central European states.

The main power of the expansionist Albanian movement came from Muslim Albanians. With the exception of isolated examples of cultural efforts among the Albanians, mostly those in the Diaspora (Istanbul, Egypt, South Italy), Albanian Muslims have been the most important nation in the Ottoman Empire in its efforts to suppress the Christian movement in the Balkans. With their patriarchal-oriental society of Asian type, they constituted the main obstacle to Europeanization of this part of Europe in the 19^th and 20^th cc. Exceptions to this were an insignificant catholic minority in the north of Albania, mainly in the region of Skadar, and the more numerous orthodox community in the south of Albania, which was strongly influenced by the Greek cultural orbit.

The first pan-Albanian political organization was founded in 1878 in the Kosovo town of Prizren (at that time with the majority of Serbian population) under the name „First Albanian League“. Today, after studying Ottoman historical sources from Istanbul, it is clear that the birth of this league, together with its political program, was not an expression of Albanian original liberation efforts as the league was, in fact, the only Turkish instrument for the preservation of the Ottoman Empire. According to the reports from Krijevski, a French consul in Thessaloniki, Turkish powers gave weapons to the Albanian leaders. However, very soon the league was abolished by the central Ottoman authorities as it started claiming greater autonomy from Istanbul for the lands inhabited by Albanians. According to Albanian demands, an autonomous province of (united) Albania within the Ottoman Empire had to be twice bigger in comparison with present-day Albania (Albania proper, Kosovo, East Montenegro, parts of Central and Southeast Serbia, West Macedonia, and Northeast Greece).

Obviously, for very practical political reasons the formation of the First Albanian League in Prizren coincided with the preparations for the International Berlin Congress dealing with the so-called Eastern Question or remapping South East Europe after the regional crisis in 1875−1878.

The attempt by Russia to solve the Eastern Question by securing its interests by creating a Greater Bulgaria (as a Slavic Orthodox state), at the peace negotiations in San Stefano (1878) between Russia and Ottoman Empire was finally met with fervent opposition from all other (western) major European powers. Although the project of Greater Bulgaria encompassed a significant part of territory inhabited largely by Serbian and Greek population, the central Ottoman authorities, with crucial support from British diplomacy (as historically the main opponent of Russian foreign policy in the East), convinced all other powers that the Albanians are the best defenders against the Russian and Orthodox “threat” to Western Europe. It is the fact that from that time (1878) until the present day the Albanians have been presenting themselves to the public of Western Europe as major defenders against an alleged expansion of Russian Orthodox pan-Slavism into Southeastern Europe. In fact, the western-made and supported „Greater Albania“ megalomaniac project in the hands of Turkish and other powers was to designed to counteract another equal megalomaniac project (of „Greater Bulgaria“) originating from Russia. It was a clear sign that neither Russia nor Western European great powers cared about a justifiable solution to the Easter Question but in essence only about their strategic interests in the Balkans.

The Greater Albanian political concept from 1878 was imbued with the spirit of pan-Islamism and radical political Islam. Only from time to time did the Albanian political elite try to hide the distinctive Islamic feature of the foundations of their ideology, usually prompted by a desire to secure the support of some western power. A militant form of Islam prevailed in Kosovo and Metohija and in Western Macedonia, brought by the Albanian population from the mountainous parts of North Albania who forcefully descended into the gentle and fertile parts of these Balkan provinces. According to German Albanologist Georg Stadtmuller, the regions of Middle Albania constitute the original centers of the Albanian population. Albanian religious heterogeneity and a distinctive tribal identity have historically always been a permanent source of internal conflicts. This “unstable” condition of the Albanian state (established in 1912/1913) threatens primarily non-Albanian people in Albania itself, but also in the neighborhood. In the territory of Albania, large Slavic and Greek settlements have existed for centuries and Slavic and Greek toponyms have been largely preserved up to the present day. However, from the creation of the first Albanian state in 1912/1913, and especially during the rule of the Albanian communist dictator Enver Hoxha, a large part of non-Albanians, particularly the Slavic population, were assimilated by the means of state repression.

The Ottoman conquest of South East Europe and its consequences

It has to be admitted that the Great Albania project is directly connected with the consequences of the Turkish (Ottoman) conquests in South Eastern Europe, and especially with the wars of European Christian powers against the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the 17^th c. It has remained, in a sense, as a long-reaching hand of the Ottoman spirit in Europe, as a vehicle of Oriental kind of life, customs, and mentalities which were characteristic of the territory of South Eastern Europe at the time of Ottoman rule. The Christian population of European Turkey, primarily the Serbs, joined the struggle of the European powers during the Great Vienna War from 1683 to 1699 to expel the Turks from Europe. After the defeat of the Austrian army in 1690 as a reprisal the Serbs have been subjected to massive atrocities and to the first major ethnic cleansing in the region. The Ottoman destructive military campaigns allowed the overflow of Albanian people from their original regions into the countries of their neighbors, both Slavs and Greeks. It was not before the 18^th c. that masses of Albanian stock breeders from the hilly regions of North Albania started descending into the fertile lands of Kosovo and Metohija populated by Orthodox Serbs in overwhelming majority, as well as into the regions of Western Macedonia.

Together with massive and regular atrocities which characterized this conquest of Old Serbia, there were also numerous other ways in which the compact Serbian ethnic body was broken followed by forced Islamization, different forms of robbery, plunder, destruction of religious sites, and many other forms of terror. All of such forms of atrocities are documentary testified by many foreign travel writers but in the first place by Roman Catholic missionaries and visitors (for instance in the report by Roman Catholic archbishop of Skoplje Matija Masarek in 1764). A similar process went on in the Albanian-Greek boundary regions. Albanian migration under the Turks went towards Greek lands, particularly Epir. With the strengthening of the Greek liberation movement, Turkey used Muslim Albanians to secure rule over the largest possible parts of Epir and Thesalia. That Kosovo and Metohija, of which Albanian authors often speak as “Albanian land” were irrefutably the central regions of Serbian settlement, is testified to by the fact that the most important monuments of Serbian architecture and Serbian spirituality were erected there. In Kosovo and Metohija alone 1,400 monasteries, churches, and other Serbian monuments were built. The most famous among them are: the Patriarchy church in Peć, monasteries Banjska, Gračanica, Dečani, St. Archangel near Prizren, Bogorodica Ljeviška in Prizren, etc. A logical question is: why would Serbs erect their central church, the Patriarchy in Peć, in the region where they were not in majority and which was not the central point of their national homeland?

Demographic changes in Kosovo and Metohija

The greatest changes in the ethnic structure of the population of this part of Old Serbia occurred from the middle of the 18^th up to the middle of the 19^th century, and from the time of the Berlin Congress in 1878 up to the liberation of these regions from the Ottoman yoke in 1912 (during the 1912−1913 Balkan Wars). These population changes were, basically, a consequence of the conflict between the Islamic Ottoman-feudal concept on the one hand (supported by Muslim Albanians and Ottoman authority), and the European Christian concept of society on the other hand (favored by Christian Serbs and Serbia’s government). Samuel P. Huntington was quite right when he defined similar processes after the Cold War 1.0 as “conflicts of civilization”. Kosovo and Metohija (Kosovo-Metochia or KosMet) may be the most convincing example of such a conflict today at least in Europe, bearing in mind that the radical Islamic features of the Kosovo Albanian secessionist movement are quite skillfully masked by Western (the USA, the EU and NATO) phraseology and symbols.

Numerous foreign (European) authors testify about the ethnic, political, and religious circumstances in the region of Kosovo and Metohija and around it. These are the works of, for instance, Ami Bue, Joseph Muller, Johan Georg von Han, Ivan Stepanovich Jastrebov, Aleksandar Giljferding, Viktor Berar, Gaston Gravier, and others. For example, Joseph Muller reports the data from 1838 about the religious and linguistic structure of the population in Metohija – in Peć, Prizren, and Djakovica; in Peć, Christian Orthodox and Muslim Serbs were in a majority (92.09%) in relation to the Catholic and Muslim Albanians (4.17%). In Prizren, the percentage of Serbs (Muslims and Christians), from the total population (24.950) amounted to 73.68%, whereas the percentage of Albanians (Muslims and Catholics), amounted to 16.63%. Only Djakovica (a town very close to the border with North Albania) had a clear Albanian majority – the percentage of Albanians (Muslims and Catholics), amounted to 80.76%, whereas the percentage of Serbs (Christians and Muslims), amounted to 18.05%.

The Albanian leagues and their program of Greater Albania

The fact that Prizren, a town in Old Serbia, and on the outskirts of the Albanian ethnic region was chosen as the place for the session of the first Albanian league in 1878 (the Prizren League) testifies to the extremely expansionist nature of the Albanian geopolitical aims of the time. That is exactly where it was necessary to create a strong obstacle to further strengthening the Serbian liberation policy in Old Serbia. And it was not a coincidence that the session of the Albanian league was not held in Albania, like in Durrës, Valona, Tirana, or some other town. From the time of the Great Eastern Crisis (1875−1878) the neighboring regions to Albania such as Kosovo, Metohija, today’s western Slav Macedonia, and northern Epirus, where Albanians had massively settled, mainly in the 18^th and 19^th century, started being referred to as “Albanian lands”. Therefore, the First Albanian (Prizren) League, created on the eve of the sessions of the Berlin Congress in 1878, assumed the obligation to defend the “Albanian lands” from their annexation by the neighboring Christian nation-states (Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia).

The League’s documents reveal the essence of the Albanian movement of the League. The sessions were held in a Prizren mosque, and the special feature of the Statute (Kararname) was Islam. Albania and Albanians were not explicitly mentioned in any of the 16 articles of the Statute, but instead, they speak in general terms of “nation and motherland”, “country”, “our land”, “Balkan country”, “in the Balkans”, and similar. The political subjects of the League are simply Muslims. Article 7 talks of the need for the League with “our long-suffering fellow countrymen and members of the same faith in the Balkans”, and the last Article 16 qualifies the abandonment of the League as the abandonment “of Islam”. It is also telling that Muslim landowners from the Raška (Sanjak/Sandžak) region (today in Serbia and Montenegro) between Kosovo and Herzegovina, and even from Bosnia-Herzegovina were present at this meeting.

Basically, the same ideas served as a foundation program for the so-called Peć League in 1899 and the so-called Second Prizren League in 1943. After the Ottoman authorities were expelled from Europe in 1912−1913 (as a consequence of the First Balkan War), and after the formation of an independent Albanian state in 1913 (under the umbrella of Austria-Hungary), the program`s aims were adapted to the new geopolitical circumstances and new protecting powers. The insistence on a pure ethnic Albanian state is typical for the conceptual program of Greater Albania, as is the rejection of any multi-ethnic concept at the same time. Following such a program, the organized ethnic cleansing of the non-Albanian population from the regions which were proclaimed as “Albanian lands” started right after the Berlin Congress in 1878. During the period from 1876 to 1912 around 150,000 Christian Orthodox Serbs were forced to leave Old Serbia, which was at that time within the territory of the Kosovo vilayet (the biggest Ottoman administrative province). Similar ideas had and Ismail Kemal Bey Vlora, the president of the first Albanian interim government when required by the great European powers to cleanse “Albanian lands” of Slavs and Greeks and praised Albanians for having ousted “Christian Slavs” with their guns and violence.

Independent Albania and Albanians

After the First Balkan war in 1912−1913, in which the Albanians fought on the Ottoman side, the Conference of Ambassadors in London in 1913 determined the borders of the newly created Albanian state. In November 1921, at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris, it was agreed to recognize Albania as an independent and sovereign state. The Albanian state encompassed the biggest part of ethnic Albanian territory. It is clear that in the Balkans with its large-scale migrations and mixing of races, languages, and religions, particularly during the centuries-long Ottoman rule, it was not possible to draw clear ethnic borders for any nation-state. Some Albanians who, as has been already mentioned, settled in Old Serbia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, remained within the borders of the Kingdom of Serbia (later Yugoslavia), but also tens of thousands of Serbs (Christian Orthodox and Muslim), remained in the newly created Albanian state, as well as a large number of Greeks, who, following the decision of great powers, were left in the Albanian state. The regions that the Greater Albania propaganda claims have never been a part of an Albanian state. However, a certain number of Albanian political leaders from the time of Ottoman rule, who lost their privileges with the disappearance of the Ottoman Empire, did not want to accept the borders of the newly created states in the Balkans, and they immediately started their activity aimed at the breaking up these new states, primarily Serbia and Greece. This activity, particularly strong on the eve of WWII, was directly supported by fascist Italy. The Greater Albanian irredentist activity between the two world wars enjoyed strong support from fascist powers, which were also interested in breaking up the newly created Yugoslav state which, they claimed, was the creation of the Franco-British ”Versailles system”. Italy was in first place, but there was also the Third Communist International (Kominterna) with its headquarters in Moscow. The pro-Greater Albanian “Kosovo Committee” joined the Kominterna in 1920. In December 1921 Bajram Curi, one of the leaders of this organization, visited a Soviet emissary in Vienna and discussed the issue of Kosovo and Metohija with him, having handed him a memorandum on the Committee’s intentions. It is conspicuous that between the two world wars, the leadership of fascists and communist political organizations competed in supporting separatism among the Albanians of Kosovo and Metohija. From 1939 an even stronger and better-organized activity of fascist Italy was directed toward Greece and Yugoslavia. Italy invaded Albania from April 7th to 12th, 1939, and occupied it from 1939 to 1943. Already in July 1939, Count Cano gave instructions to Albanian emigrants for action in Epirus and Kosovo and Metohija. He often repeated that irredentism in Kosovo and Metohija was “a knife aimed at the backbone of Yugoslavia!”

A Greater Albania during WWII

With the beginning of WWI and shortly after, when fascist powers, headed by Germany and Italy, attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a bloody-style realization of a Greater Albania project started. A larger part of Kosovo and the whole of Metohija were annexed to fascist Greater Albania (under the Italian protectorate), parts of Kosovo were annexed to the newly created Greater Bulgaria, and parts of western today’s North Macedonia also became included in Greater Albania. The Vienna Agreement from April 1941 determined the demarcation line between Greater Bulgaria and Greater Albania, but the Bulgarians were not satisfied in full with such territorial division.

The first official academic-political propaganda of WWII Greater Albania was on May 30^th, 1941 when Mustafa Kroja, the president of Greater Albania’s government in Tirana, held a lecture in the Italian Royal Academy on the natural and historical roots of Greater Albania which had the aim to defend an existence of Mussolini-sponsored Greater Albania. In June 1942 he visited Kosovo-Metohija and at the meeting with the local Albanian leaders, he publicly declared that:

“… the Serbian population in Kosovo should be removed as soon as possible… All indigenous Serbs should be qualified as colonists and as such, via the Albanian and Italian governments, be sent to concentration camps in Albania. Serbian settlers should be killed.”

This speech once again simply confirmed that within the project of Greater Albania, it was no place for any other people but only for ethnic Albanians.

When Italy occupied these „Albanian“ territories immediately started both ethnic cleansing and systematic implementation of the Greater Albanian political and cultural program (Albanization) in all spheres of life. A small number of Serbian children who attended schools under Italian occupation were forced to study in the Albanian language like the children in western portions of Yugoslav Macedonia included in Greater Albania. Serbs were massively expelled from Kosovo and Metohija (around 100,000) and tens of thousands of Albanians from Albania settled there (up to 100,000 people). For instance, by April 1942 as many as 60.000 refugees from Metohija and parts of Kosovo arrived in southern parts of Central Serbia which were at that time under German occupation (German protectorate). These events significantly changed the ethnic structure of this part of Serbia. After the capitulation of fascist Italy in September 1943 the infamous “Skanderbeg SS Division”, made up of Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija, was established under the umbrella of the German occupation forces. This military formation pursued the project of Greater Albania until the final liberation of these regions at the end of WWII.

Yugoslav Communists and Albanians

There were many political decisions made by Josip Broz Tito-led Yugoslav communist movement (the Communist Party of Yugoslavia) before and during WWII which show that the leadership of Yugoslav communists and partisan movement in WWII was consistent with their practical strategy of weakening and as possible as minimizing Serbian factor in future post-war socialist Yugoslavia. As a part of the same strategy, the Albanians in Yugoslavia, especially in Kosovo and Metohija, became very important instruments, particularly in a constant process of destabilizing Serbia as one of the six republics within the Yugoslav federation. This strategy was recognized even by foreigners familiar with Yugoslav politics during WWII.

After the war, it was expected that the expelled Serbs would return to their land in Kosovo and Metohija (during the war it is counted that there were up to 20,000 killed Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija) but, however, in 1945 J. B. Tito’s government legally prohibited the return of expelled Serbs to their prie-war houses and land in Kosovo and Metochija. Therefore, the outcomes of the occupation of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany of Kosovo and Metohija in 1941−1944 followed by the sanctioning of these outcomes by the post-war Yugoslav communist authorities, in fact, supported the realization of a Greater Albanian political project formulated for the first time in 1878. In general, all political decisions concerning Kosovo and Metohija and Albanians done in J. B. Tito`s Yugoslavia (1945−1980) directly contributed to the further development and practical realization of Greater Albanian political ideology which in the new political-socialist environment became covered by the policy of Yugoslav “brotherhood and unity”.

Yugoslav communists permanently practiced the prie-war strategy of the Communist International in Moscow to encourage nationalism of “small nations” and reduce the political influence of the most numerous nation. Therefore, since 1945, the Albanian political authorities carried on the policy of suppression and, in fact, the expulsion of Serbs and Montenegrins (a newly proclaimed nation by the Yugoslav communists) in the province of Kosovo and Metohija and thus having to prepare the ethnopolitical conditions for the province to join the projected Greater Albania in the future. For that purpose, it was used all forms of state administration like police, education, judiciary system, cultural institutions, academic platforms, etc.) in Kosovo and Metohija, which as an autonomous province in the Republic of Serbia has been in the hands of Albanians who as a national minority in Serbia had their Academy of Science in Pristina (probably the unique example for minority rights in the world history), the parliament, the government, the president, the university with classes in the Albanian language, and numerous other institutions. Nevertheless, Albanians abused this maximum possible framework of political and national minority autonomy which was at that time above all European standards, and used the total power they had to indoctrinate the Albanian population and particularly young people with the Greater Albanian national ideology propagating separation of Kosovo and Metohija from Serbia and Yugoslavia with the final political aim of the annexation of this province into neighboring Albania.

The Great Albanian secessionist propaganda achieved its greatest success in the period 1974-1981, after the adoption of the new federal Yugoslav constitution in 1974, which gave the provinces in Serbia (Vojvodina and Kosovo) attributes of statehood and federal constituency (basically, two provinces received the equal political status with six republics). As one of the consequences of the new situation, in practice, there was no border between socialist Yugoslavia and socialist Albania. At the time when Stalinism was at its peak in Tirana, inspiring anti-Serbian propaganda, different types of delegations from Albania’s capital have been regularly visiting Pristina (administrative center of Kosovo and Metohija). A lack of fundamental freedom and political democracy in Albania was followed in Kosovo and Metohija with a policy of ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Montenegrins. Pro-Albanian propaganda was constantly promulgated in the education system as, for instance, some 25% of all textbooks used in schools in Kosovo and Metohija, particularly those on social, historical, and ethnocultural subjects, were imported from Albania (published in Tirana and used in the Albanian education system).

The policy of Albanization was parallel in both Albania and Kosovo and Metohija. In other words, together with the processes of denationalization of Serbian, Greek, Montenegrin, and Macedonian enclaves in Albania, the same policy of Albanization was done in Kosovo and Metohija. In the 1970s, for example, the Albanological Institute in Pristina composed a special list of names that would substitute the existing Serbian and Slavic names in order to hide the ethnic origin of these settlements. The Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija have many scientific magazines but they mainly used them for the propaganda of Kosovo’s secession and its Albanization.

Conclusions

It can be concluded that a Greater Albania project with the leading idea of “all Albanians in one state” represents an example of 19th-century national romanticism questioning at the same time the existence of internationally recognized borders, and jeopardizing stability in the region. The program to create an ethnically pure Greater Albania, finally, represents a direct challenge to regional and even European peace.

The paradox of the whole situation lies in the fact that the Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija, who claim to have been systematically repressed and pursued for centuries, have reached such a level of development being part of Serbia, that, actually, today Kosovo’s Pristina instead of Albania’s Tirana is already playing the role of focal propagandist for the creation of a Greater Albania.

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

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Nikki Haley wants to be president of the USG. The former South Carolina governor and Trump administration ambassador to the United Nations announced her campaign on February 14.

Haley is the first republican to challenge Donald Trump, while DeSantis and others hedge their bets. According to InteractivePolls, Trump holds the lead, followed by DeSantis. Nikki Haley came in at 1%. Only Chris Christie did worse at 0%.

Now that she’s out there, Haley is shooting at targets.

Nikki Haley says Pakistan doesn't deserve billions of dollars from America while it exports terrorism against the United States and allies like India. 🇮🇳🇺🇸

Cut aid to Pakistan and give it instead to India. pic.twitter.com/vitbivBY5L

— Hananya Naftali (@HananyaNaftali) February 27, 2023

I have no idea if Haley bothers to read history. If she does, then it stands to reason she understands her remarks are hypocritical.

As a former ambassador, it is reasonable to conclude Haley should be informed on geopolitical issues, for instance, the war in Afghanistan. I believe she knows virtually nothing about the history of Afghanistan and the interactive relationship between the national security state, its CIA, Pakistani intelligence, and the Afghan Mujahideen in the war against the Soviet Union.

On the other hand, if she does know, and decides to blame Pakistan solely for terrorism in America, she is a political opportunist and hypocrite. But then, of course, deceit and lies are normal behavior for the uniparty political class, especially during elections.

I am reminded, once again, of Gore Vidal, who said America is a land of amnesia. How many Americans actually know the truth about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the CIA? I doubt very many.

Pakistani PM Imran Khan: In 80s we were training these Mujahideen people to do jihad against Soviet when they occupied Afghanistan. So,these people were trained by Pakistan, funded by US's CIA & now a decade later when the Americans come into Afghanistan… (File pic) (1/3) pic.twitter.com/34MQNcnA3X

— ANI (@ANI) September 13, 2019

Prior to September 11, 2001, the corporate media reported on the CIA’s “covert war” in Afghanistan.

“In all, the United States funneled more than $ 2 billion in guns and money to the mujaheddin during the 1980s, according to U.S. officials. It was the largest covert action program since World War II,” reported The Washington Post in 1992, nearly a decade before 9/11. (Steve Coll, Washington Post, July 19, 1992.)

Beginning in 1985, the CIA supplied mujaheddin rebels with extensive satellite reconnaissance data of Soviet targets on the Afghan battlefield, plans for military operations based on the satellite intelligence, intercepts of Soviet communications, secret communications networks for the rebels, delayed timing devices for tons of C-4 plastic explosives for urban sabotage and sophisticated guerrilla attacks, long-range sniper rifles, a targeting device for mortars that was linked to a U.S. Navy satellite, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, and other equipment.

How is it possible Haley knows nothing about the largest and most expensive CIA program in history?

Soon after the USG invaded Afghanistan, Phil Gasper wrote:

With the support of Pakistan’s military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, the U.S. began recruiting and training both mujahideen fighters from the 3 million Afghan refugees in Pakistan and large numbers of mercenaries from other Islamic countries. Estimates of how much money the U.S. government channeled to the Afghan rebels over the next decade vary, but most sources put the figure between $3 billion and $6 billion, or more. Whatever the exact amount, this was “the largest covert action program since World War II”—much bigger, for example, than Washington’s intervention in Central America at the same time, which received considerably more publicity.

Hillary Clinton admitted the CIA created the Mujahideen and al-Qaeda. “We also have a history of kind of moving in and out of Pakistan,” a CNN transcript quotes the former Secretary of State. “I mean, let’s remember here, the people we are fighting today, we funded 20 years ago. And we did it because we were locked in the struggle with the Soviet Union. They invaded Afghanistan and we did not want to see them control central Asia. And we went to work.”

I don’t claim to know what is bouncing around in Nikki Haley’s head. She is a bellicose neocon, and either knows she is lying or she is ignorant of history. Being well-informed on foreign relations and history should undoubtedly be important to a person who has declared her candidacy for president of the USG.

However, consider the demographic Haley is pandering to: “rightwing,” supposedly conservative Americans, including the “America First” nationalist crowd.

The latter will predictably vote for Trump, that is if the uniparty doesn’t somehow manage to disqualify him. That would leave the unpalatable DeSantis up against whomever the democrat faction runs (it will not be Biden).

From this moment in late February 2023 to the November 2024 election, anything might and probably will happen.

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Showdown in Ukraine. Hobbled US Turns to War to Preserve Its Waning Primacy

By Mike Whitney, March 01, 2023

The future of humanity will be decided on a battlefield in Ukraine. That’s no exaggeration. The conflict between the United States and Russia will determine whether global economic integration will expand within an evolving multi-polar system or if the “rules-based order” will succeed in crushing any opponent to its Western-centric model.

The Scholz-Macron Plan: How to Crush Serbia with Her Consent

By Živadin Jovanović, March 02, 2023

Тhis Scholz-Macron “proposal” is but an ultimatum requiring Serbia to recognize the illegal unilateral independence of the so-called Kosovo, accompanied by a list of threats of what will beset Serbia should she fail to abide.

War Propaganda Media Ignores Rising Antiwar Sentiment in America and Europe

By Kurt Nimmo, March 02, 2023

Did you know there are large anti-NATO protests ongoing in Europe? If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising, as the corporate media, stenographers of war propaganda, have ignored thousands, if not millions, of Europeans, arguing NATO is an aggressive and dangerous anachronism that must be abolished.

COVID-19 Vaccine-Injured Doctors Are Finally Starting to Speak Up… And They Are Shocked that the Medical Establishment Abandons Them.

By Dr. William Makis, March 02, 2023

‘I apologize on behalf of my profession for refusing to listen to patients with vax injuries’ – Dr. Michael Huang, physician who treated 4000 COVID patients says he’s seen hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, cancer, pregnancy loss, etc.

Canadian Foreign Policy Is Utterly Barbaric

By Mark Taliano, March 01, 2023

Canada’s foreign policy is basically an appendage of U.S foreign policy, and it is utterly barbaric. Consider the example of Syria. Syria, like Turkey, has recently suffered catastrophic earthquakes.  Whereas humanitarian aid has justifiably poured into Turkey, it barely reaches the vast majority of Syrians.

How Social Networks Became a ‘Subsidiary’ of the FBI and CIA

By Jonathan Cook, March 01, 2023

In 1975, the Church Committee managed to take a fleeting, if far from complete, snapshot of the netherworld in which agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA) operate.

Land Loss and the Renewed Struggle of African American Farmers

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 01, 2023

In the years between 1910 and 2000, African American farmers and agricultural workers lost over 14 million acres of land. One of the major demands of the post-Civil War era was the allocation of land to the formerly enslaved Africans in order to establish a foundation for building a self-sufficient community.

NATO’s Destruction of Libya

By Shane Quinn, March 01, 2023

Libya is among Africa’s biggest countries and it shares a lengthy coastline with the Mediterranean Sea. It was only Gaddafi who had managed to hold together Libya and its fragile national structure, since the state’s independence in the early 1950s. Under Gaddafi, though the country was not a paradise, Libya enjoyed by some distance the best living standards in Africa.

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

By Colin Todhunter, March 02, 2023

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

Commission Reveals that Trudeau Government Lied About Nature of Truckers Protests in Ottawa Last February to Justify Invocation of Emergencies Act

By Ray McGinnis, March 01, 2023

OPS, OPP, RCMP, Canada Border Service Agency and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) were pointing away from ideologically motivated violent extremist (IMVE) threats. CSIS reported on the afternoon of February 14, “Downtown Ottawa…was actually quite festive—not threatening to a passerby.” CSIS entered as evidence before the Commission that they “had no concern with IMVEs in Ottawa.”

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

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The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not quite worth the material it’s printed on.

In January this year, Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court heard that Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accepted a request from the US before Christmas to extradite Duggan.  Duggan is no longer an Australian citizen, but Canberra has often regarded this as irrelevant when it comes to the US-Australian alliance.

In a 2017 indictment unsealed on December 9, Duggan is accused by prosecutors of using his expertise to train Chinese fighter pilots to land on aircraft carriers along with eight co-conspirators working at a South African flight school.  It is also alleged that the US State Department warned him to apply for written authorisation to train a foreign air force in 2008, which is a requirement of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).  The allegation here is that he went ahead without securing authorisation, thereby breaching trafficking and arms control laws between 2009 and 2012.

Duggan has been held since October. In the finest traditions of Australian justice, he is being confined in conditions that suggest presumed guilt.  His lawyer, Dennis Miralis, has stated at various points with some exasperation that his client is “presumed innocent under US law”.  Duggan’s wife, Saffrine, insists that her husband is “a victim of the United States government’s political dispute with China.”

This presumption has also been sorely tested by Duggan’s detention in a two-by-four-metre cell at the Silverwater jail, which also houses convicted terrorists.  Miralis can only assume that the New South Wales Department of Directions has been all too willing to follow instructions delivered from on high.

Earlier this month lawyers for Duggan made a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee challenging these conditions.  Their submission argues that the authorities have failed to protect Duggan from “inhumane and degrading” treatment, failed to segregate him from convicted inmates, violated his right to adequate facilities to enable him to prepare his legal defence, and denied his right to confidential communications.

The submission also references the assessment of a clinical psychologist who visited Duggan in the Silverwater prison.  “The psychologist described Mr Duggan’s conditions as ‘extreme’ and ‘inhumane’.  He advised that Mr Duggan was at risk of a major depressive disorder.”  Another condition causing him even further discomfort is benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Regarded as nothing more than contingent paperwork, citizenship is feeble in prosecutions of Australians by other allied countries.  To the contrary, Canberra has often aided and abetted the undermining of citizens’ rights with a snotty “good riddance” attitude, glad to be rid of supposedly bad apples in the cart.

During the poorly conceived “War on Terror”, a tellingly ghastly response to the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, Australian citizens found themselves captured, rendered and left to decay in detention.  Such names should forever be taught in schools.  They include the Egyptian-Australian national Mamdouh Habib, and David Hicks.

Habib’s arrest in October 2001 in Pakistan and subsequent detention for three years on suspicion of having prior knowledge of the September 11 terrorist attacks, was a fantasy encouraged by both US and Australian personnel.  Despite the US expressing the view in January 2005 that it would not lay charges against Habib, the Australian Attorney-General and Minister for Foreign Affairs were still adamant that Habib had prior knowledge of the attacks, had spent time in Afghanistan, and trained with al-Qaida.

Hicks was sent to the purgatory of Guantánamo Bay in January 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan by forces of the Northern Alliance.  He then became something of a judicial guinea pig, the victim of a military commission system initially deemed by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, unfair and illegal.

What was particularly striking here were the instances of premature adjudication and Australian calls that the US authorities do all they could to try and convict Hicks.  Prime Minister John Howard worried that Hicks, were he not to face a military commission trial in the US, would escape charges in Australia.  He did not “regard that as a satisfactory outcome, given the severity of the allegations that have been made against him.”

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer even dared to claim that Hicks be grateful for not having a longer spell in US captivity.  “He would have been there for years if it hadn’t been for our intervention.”

The subsequent Plea Agreement reached in March 2007, under which Hicks pleaded guilty for “providing material support for terrorism”, saw him receive a seven-year sentence, most of it suspended.  The remaining seven months of the sentence was served in Australia, which the UN Human Rights Committee held to be a “disproportionate restriction of the right to liberty” in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  The HRC also noted that Hicks “had no other choice than to accept the Plea Agreement that was put to him” were he to escape the human rights violations he faced in Camp X-Ray.

On February 18, 2015, the United States Court of Military Commission Review set aside Hicks’ guilty plea and sentence.  The judges noted that the charge of providing material support for terrorism should be vacated, given the Supreme Court ruling in 2014 that being tried for such an offence by a military commission was an “ex post facto violation”.

To crown this appalling resume of achievements is the Australian government’s grossly feeble response to Julian Assange’s continued persecution at the hands of the US Department of Justice in the United Kingdom.  Facing a preposterously broad application of the Extradition Act of 1917, thereby imperilling national security journalism, Australian calls to drop the case have been weak and lukewarm at best.  The trend was set by Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose response to Cablegate in 2010 was to presume Assange was guilty for having breached some regulation, despite failing to identify a single law to that effect.

Given this inglorious record, the Duggan case has an all too familiar feel to it.  The training of Chinese pilots by veteran personnel from a Western country would hardly have raised a murmur when relations between Washington and Beijing were less acrimonious.  Hicks also found himself in the historical crosshairs, foolishly wishing to throw in his lot with forces that were once the anti-communist darlings of the US intelligence community.

The question here is what Australian citizens can do when providing services for foreign countries.  Serving in ultra-nationalist Ukrainian regiments, or moonlighting in the Israeli Defence Force, is unlikely to land you in trouble.  But proffering aeronautical expertise in a private capacity while earning some cash on the side?  How frightful.

If the fevered assessments from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation are anything to go by, the only thing missing in Duggan’s extradition is the welcome card for the US DOJ.  ASIO Chief Mike Burgess, in his annual threat assessment, was eager to justify his agency’s bloated budget.  “More hostile foreign intelligence services, more spies, more targeting, more harm, more ASIO investigations, more ASIO disruptions. From where I sit, it feels like hand-to-hand combat.”

Burgess shows a striking inability to understand why much of this is overegging paranoia.  Academics, business figures and bureaucrats, in suggesting he ease up on ASIO’s foreign interference and espionage operations, could only offer him “flimsy” justifications, such as “All countries spy on each other” and “We were going to make the information public anyway”.

Facing such a jaundiced worldview, Duggan’s future is bleak.  And now that Australia has willingly committed itself to Armageddon in lock-step with US forces in any conflict with the PRC, Canberra is doing everything it can to be an efficient detainer for its enormous and not always considerate friend.

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

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To access the English Translation

The Scholz-Macron Plan: How to Crush Serbia with Her Consent

The Illegal Unilateral Independence of the so-called Kosovo

 

By Živadin Jovanović

Живадин Јовановић

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ЕУ каже да је статусно неутрална. У сваком случају, ЕУ није објавила да је напустила статус неутралности. Генерална скупштина УН је септембра 2010. поздравила спремност ЕУ да „олакшава дијалог страна“, полазећи управо од декларисане статусне неутралности ЕУ, и ништа више од тога. Та улога „олакшивача“ дијалога довела је до тога да се, најпре, појави Шолц-Макронов  «Предлог основног споразума“, да се потом тај «предлог» опрогласи за «нови преговарачки оквир ЕУ, уз подршку САД» да би се испоставило да је у суштини реч о ултиматуму Србији да призна илегалну, једнострану сепаратистичку творевину као себи равног суседа са којим ће сарађивати поштујући  суверенитет, интегритет и државне симболе суседа, да «се неће противити његовом чланству у било којој међународној организацији», укључујући и у ОУН. Иза тих «очекивања» ЕУ и Приштине  следи листа претњи шта ће се десити уколико Србија то не прихвати.

Истина је, дакле, да је ЕУ на драстичан начин, напустила статусну неутралност, стала уз илегално једнострно отцепљење тзв. Косова и да је најновији папир (когод да га је написао, придружио му се или га «само» подржао) доказ да ЕУ, без објаве, излази из мандата Генералне скупштине Уједињених нација. Убеђен сам да је питање веома важно за Србију и да ничему не служи да се понашамо као да је таква «еволуција» улоге ЕУ нормална по било ком основу – правном, политичком, моралном, цивилизацијском. Јер, уколико се не поштују правно обавезујуће одлуке СБ УН као што је то резолуција 1244, нити политички ставови Генералне скупштине о мандату ЕУ за „олакшавање дијалога страна“, имамо одговорност и обавезу према себи, према «orbi et urbi” да кажемо да то није нормално, да није добро за међусобно поверење и да није прихватљиво за Србију.

 Ако смо сагласни да се ради о животним и дугорочним интересима Србије, ако смо уверени у принципијелност, основаност и исправност наших оцена и ставова,  а јесмо, па ако се и поред тога и због тога, било ко љути, онда једино можемо рећи да нам је жао, али да се због тога не повлачимо нити одустајемо од принципа, најмање од интереса који су засновани на тим принципима. Не смемо се повести за тренутним стањем односа са ЕУ или било каквим обећањима тзв. бенефита, нити за краткорочним интересима. Поготову што је и сама ЕУ у дубоким превирањима, Европа и свет такође.

Морамо објективно распознавати смерове стратешких токова а оцене на основу којих  пројектујемо стратегију и путеве остваривања дугорочних интереса, темељити на сопственим искуствима, лекцијама историје, поузданим партнерствима и ослонцима. Шире трендове од којих се не можемо изоловти морамо сагледавати, не из једног, већ из свих важнијих стратешких углова. Бојим се да сада то није случај зато што смо, као земља и народ, у дужем времену изложени претераном утицају једностране пропаганде Запада, њихових извора, погледа и интереса. То није добро ни онда када то долази као резултат добрих намера, а може бити погубно када стиже упарено са стратегијом хегемонизма и доминације.

Само поштовање основних принципа међународног права, Повеље ОУН као и целовито спровођење резолуције СБ УН 1244 представљају кључ за мир, безбедност и бољи живот свих народа на Балкану, укључујући српски и албански народ.

Ничега од тога нема у тзв. Шолц-Макроновом плану представљеном јавности као некакав „Нови преговарачки оквир ЕУ подржан од стране САД“, или као „Основни споразум“ Србије и тзв. Косова. 

Шолц-Макронов тзв. план није никакав оквир за преговоре, праведно или одрживо решење. То је план за дробљење Србије. И то, ако је могуће, уз пристанак Србије.

Ако је тзв. Шолц-Макронов план било какав „кључ“ онда је, то најмање кључ за мир, стабилност и напредак билокојег региона, народа или Европе, као целине. То је план за тоталну доминацију НАТО, на челу са САД, над српским народом и Балкану, за припрему Балкана као стратешког положаја у  глобалном рату против Русије и Кине. То је план-млин за настављање дробљења Србије и целог српског народа на Балкану. Уколико би у том плану било иоле добрих намера, они би се бар потрудили да помену гаранције Савета безбедности УН  према Србији које су њихови претходници дали 10. јуна 1999. године. Да су принципијелни, да стварно поштују принципе и међународно право, да воде предвидиву политику, као што то од других очекују, зашто би онда бежали од УН и од одлука Савета безбедности! Пошто нису, Србија треба да остане верна себи, свом народу, својим прецима, историјском наслеђу и непролазним тековинама цивилизације.

Зашто им је била била неопходна Мелонијева – да Макрон ублажи на баш часну улогу у „двојцу“ са Шолцем, или  да тако проширени ојачају ЕУ димензију „плана“, или да Рим, иако једини сусед, не остане без заслуга за договорену инкарнацију Велике Албаније? У том трију, без обзира на САД као редитеља, ипак, недостаје Риши Сунак у улози Нелвила Чемберлена, како би реприза „спашавања мира“   1938, у Бертсгардену, била бар приближно уверљиво као и премијера пре 85 година.

„Бриселским споразумом“ од 2013. Србија је повукла свој правни и уставни поредак и институције на Северу Покрајине. За узврат је обезбедила ЗСО са извршниом надлежностима, истина, само на папиру. Изгледа да противници Србије које она третира као „једину алтернативу“ смерају да сада у Брислу, након 10 година затезања „конопца до пуцања“, принуде Србију да поново плати формирање ЗСО, макар и по тзв. уставу тзв. Косова, тако што ће се сагласити да је Шолц-Макронов „план“, или „споразум“, добра основа за настављање преговора који ће водити закључивању „свеобухватног правно обавезујућег споразума о нормализацији“. То да „нормализација“, значи међусобно признање, успостављање „добросуседских односа“,  поштовање  реципроцитета, суверенитета и територијалног интегритета страна страна“, чланство тзв. Косова у међународне организације, укључујући УН, све то и много другог у истом смислу, ће саопштити САД, ЕУ, НАТО и Приштина. Ако прихвати то што су јој спремили они који одувек Србији само такве ствари спремају, она би могла и другачије интерпретира своју сагласност, само то не би много мењало ток ствари на штету Србије.

Врло је ризично уздати се у гаранције оних који их до сада нису поштовали, а не инсистирати на постојећим гаранцијама Савета безбедности УН и оних који другачије мисле, који подржавају суверенитет и територијални интегритет Србије. То је готово 2/3 света и то оног чија релевантност у глобалним односима расте, не опада. Притисци и тежина ситуације у којој се Србија налази нису оправдање за удаљавање од права, принципа и постојећих гаранција. Напротив. 26.03.2023.9

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НСПМ (Нова српска политичка мисао), 26.фебруар 2023.

Живадин Йованович является президентом Белградского форума “За мир равных”. Он является постоянным автором Global Research.

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Original in Serbian

The EU claims to be neutral [Kosovo] status-wise. Or at least, the EU has not declared parting ways with its status neutrality. Back in September 2019, the UN General Assembly welcomed “the readiness of the European Union to facilitate a process of dialogue between the parties”, on the basis of the EU’s declared status-neutrality. Тhis Scholz-Macron “proposal” is but an ultimatum requiring Serbia to recognize the illegal unilateral independence of the so-called Kosovo, accompanied by a list of threats of what will beset Serbia should she fail to abide. In addition, this ultimatum is declared to be the position of the entire EU. Its true nature is not altered by being presented to the Serbian public as “a US-backed, EU’s new negotiating framework”. An ultimatum will be an ultimatum, whatever the packaging.

We need to vocalize the truth: firstly, that the EU has drastically abandoned its status-neutrality and secondly, that the latest paper (whoever by written, joined, or backed) is proof of the European Union silently stepping out and beyond of the mandate given to it by the United Nations General Assembly.

I have no doubts whatsoever that this matter is of utmost importance for Serbia, and that it is a fool’s errand trying to act as if this is business as usual. Because if faced with the scenario where the legally binding decision of the UN Security Council are not observed, and the UN General Assembly political guidance on mandating the EU to “facilitate the dialogue between the parties” are disregarded, we have responsibility and duty to say out loud that this is not normal, not beneficial for mutual trust, and not acceptable for Serbia. Rather, it should not be normal or acceptable for any bona fide state member to the United Nations.

If we agree that the ongoing events concern the vital and long-term interests of Serbia, if we are confident that our positions and views are righteous, principled, and well-based – which we are – and if any party gets angered by this, we regret but nonetheless we have to stand our ground, and not retreat. We must not get carried away by a current state of play, or get swayed by any short-term interests. We must discern strategic trends and articulate our positions based on our own experiences, lessons taught by history, and overall trends as evaluated from all important aspects instead of any single angle.

I am afraid that, as a country and a nation, we have been continuously exposed to an excessive influence of the West’s one-sided propaganda, views, and interests. This cannot be good for us, not even if stemming from good intentions; when creeping in as a precursor to the strategy of hegemony and domination, it can be plainly disastrous.

The one true key to peace, security, and a better life for all nations in the Balkans, including the Serbian and Albanian people, lies in the observance of the fundamental principles of international law, the UN Charter, and the consistent implementation of UNSC Resolution 1244.

None of the above is to be found in the so-called Scholz-Macron plan, presented to the public as a sort of “EU’s new negotiating framework, US-backed” or a “Basic Agreement” between Serbia and the so-called Kosovo.

The Scholz-Macron plan is not a framework for negotiations, or for any just or sustainable solution. This is a plan to crush Serbia. If possible, with the consent of Serbia.

If the Scholz-Macron plan is the key to anything, the least of all is it a key to peace, stability and progress of any region, nation, or Europe as a whole. It is the plan for the total domination of the USA-led NATO over the Serbian people and the Balkans, and for setting the Balkans as the strategic stage in the global war against Russia and China. It is the juggernaut plant to keep crushing Serbia and the entire Serbian nation in the Balkans. If their plan had had any good intentions, they would have made an effort to at least refer to the UN Security Council guarantees vis-à-vis Serbia, given by their predecessors on June 10, 1999. If they were principled, if they really respected principles and international law, if they pursued a predictable politics as they expect others to do, why would they stay clear from the United Nations and the decisions taken by the Security Council! Since they were not, and did not, Serbia should remain true to herself, to her people, ancestors, historical heritage and enduring achievements belonging to the world civilization.

Why did they need Meloni? To help Macron water down his not-so-honorable role in ‘duet’ with Scholz? Or to jointly bolster the EU dimension of the ‘Plan’? Or maybe help Rome, as a neighbor, claim a piece of merit for the connived incarnation of Greater Albania? Apart from the USA as mastermind, the trio still misses Rishi Sunak to reprise the role of Neville Chamberlain, so to make rerun of the 1938 “saving the peace” in Berchtesgaden at least as convincing as its premiere was 85 years ago.

Under the “Brussels Agreement” of 2013, Serbia withdrew her legal and constitutional order and institutions in the north of the Province. In turn, albeit in paper only, Serbia ensured the Community of Serbian Municipalities (the CSM) with executive powers. Now, after ten years of ‘stretching the rope’ to the point of snapping, it looks like Serbia’s adversaries, the same one that Serbian leadership swears are the ‘only alternative’, are set on forcing Serbia to pay once more for the establishment of the CSM, that is, an incapacitated CSM fashioned pursuant to the so-called Kosovo Constitution. For this meagre gain, Serbia is expected to agree that the Scholz-Macron plan/agreement is a good basis for the resumption of negotiations that will lead to, and result in, the conclusion of a “comprehensive and legally binding agreement on normalization”.

Then, the USA, the EU, NATO and Priština will proclaim and explain that ‘normalization’ means mutual recognition, establishment of ‘good neighborly relations’, respecting reciprocity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of ‘parties’ and the so-called Kosovo’s full membership in international organizations including the UN, and the like. If Serbia does accept what was devised by those always brewing a same plot for her, she might as well articulate her consent in a different way, but this in itself would not alter the unfolding of events much to the detriment of Serbia.

It is very dicey to rely on the guarantees given by those already proven to have never kept their word, instead of insisting on the existing guarantees given by the UN Security Council and by those who have differing worldviews and who support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia. The latter comprise almost 2/3 of the world, whose relevance in global relations is increasing, rather than decreasing. The pressures and gravity of the situation in which Serbia finds herself are not and cannot serve as justification for shifting away from the rights, principles and existing guarantees. Quite the contrary.

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Translated by Branislava Mitrovic

Živadin Jovanović is President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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***

Neuroticism is “a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings,” as succinctly defined by Psychology Today,

One thing you notice living abroad in certain (not all) non-Western countries, coming from the West, is the neuroticism differential.

Westerners in Bangkok, for instance, get super mad when the bus doesn’t come on time. To cope, they verbally berate minimum-wage workers who have no control over the matter whatsoever. In contrast, the locals shrug their shoulders, chalk it up to fate or whatever, and take the punches as they come.

One comes away with the awful impression that the bus tardiness is not, in the ultimate analysis, the source of the farang’s consternation (“farang” being local jargon for “white foreigner”).

Carl Jung, famed psychoanalyst of posterity, agrees.

Per the video, the basic Jungian dilemma goes like this:

• An individual encounters a problem/crisis.
• The problem or crisis remains unresolved due to an inability or unwillingness to confront it: “If we follow the history of a neurosis with attention, we regularly find a critical moment when some problem emerged that was evaded.” –Carl Jung
• The mental discomfort caused by the unresolved problem or crisis is subconsciously repressed by displacing emotions, self-medicating or engaging in ritual distraction. In one case study, Jung notes of a subject: “By suppressing disagreeable thoughts she created something like a psychic vacuum which, as usually happens, gradually became filled with anxiety.”

“I am not altogether pessimistic about neurosis… Neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure…It is an attempt of the self-regulating psychic system to restore the balance, in no way different from the function of dreams – only rather more forceful and drastic.” -Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life

Unfortunately for the prospects of overcoming neurosis, distraction in the civilized world is easier than ever.

Via Computers in Human Behaviors Reports:

“The pervasiveness of the Internet has raised concern about its (problematic) use and the potentially negative impact on people’s health. Neuroticism has been identified as one potential risk factor of Internet and other online addictions… High levels of neuroticism significantly correlated with all measures of problematic Internet activities.”

Another important factor to consider, offered in the above video (which might speak to the modern world’s neuroticism pandemic) is the helicopter-parenting phenomenon. The child remains an infant forever — never exposed to danger or challenge.

#AiLust Day 4 – The Garden

"And in the evenings, we stayed out playing in the garden til dusk. No smart phones. No Tik Tok. No helicopter parenting. Just unadulterated joy, endless summer afternoons of childhood."#midjourney #midjourneyart #midjourneyV4 #aiart @Ai_Lust_ pic.twitter.com/5ISMvMs6o6

— 💫 The Andorian 💫 (@Sunriseonsuper8) February 16, 2023

As a result of never getting out from under the watchful eye of the parent, the sheltered child simply doesn’t learn through trial and error – the only way to really do it — how to face difficulty and come out on the other side stronger and wiser:

“Though it is a misfortune for a child to have no parents, it is equally dangerous for him to be too closely bound to his family. An excessively strong attachment to the parent is a severe handicap in his later adaptation to the world, for a growing human being is not destined to remain forever the child of his parents.” -Carl Jung

Lastly, the COVID-19 hysteria and lockdowns didn’t do any wonders in terms of combatting neurosis either. Via CNBC:

“In 2021 and 2022, the 30 and younger group experienced a significant increase in neuroticism, which is a tendency to see the world as distressing or unsafe, and a decrease in agreeableness and conscientiousness.”

In the future you won't read history books. You'll see a video like this one and go "I got it, I know what 2O2O was like".pic.twitter.com/2A1ripllyo

— The Conundrum (@wakeupfromcovid) November 10, 2021

What we have here is a toxic cocktail of negative social trends and influences that, taken together, seem to dramatically increase neurosis.

Everyone is neurotic to some degree. As Psychology Today annotates in its definition of neurosis, “all personality traits, including neuroticism, exist on a spectrum—some people are just much more neurotic than others.”

So no one is ever going to shirk neurosis totally. But there are ways to conquer it so that it doesn’t hijack your life: face down your fears head-on. Get out of your own headspace. Brave the unknown. Get outside. Ditch the social media. It’s the only way forward.

*

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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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***

Did you know there are large anti-NATO protests ongoing in Europe? If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising, as the corporate media, stenographers of war propaganda, have ignored thousands, if not millions, of Europeans, arguing NATO is an aggressive and dangerous anachronism that must be abolished.

Millions of Europeans also demand their governments stop sending military hardware to Ukraine and get serious about a negotiated peace and the prevention of WWIII and nuclear annihilation.

Anti-NATO protests are hitting Italy. Protesters in Genoa & Rome have taken to the streets against NATO’s WARMONGERING politicians leading Europe into WWIII. Here’s a sample: pic.twitter.com/AMHTZ9LKua

— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) February 27, 2023

💥🌐💥
Today is a day full of protests around Europe:

Large crowds gather in London to protest for peace and against sending weapons to Ukraine

Anti-NATO Protests taking place across many Europe cities,with citizens fed up support of Kiev taking a toll on their livelihoods. pic.twitter.com/kNuJInHPtG

— Tyler Popp (@ThatTylerPopp) February 25, 2023

Activists picket near the Ramstein airbase in Germany, headquarters for the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa and also for NATO Allied Air Command. They protest against further arms supplies to Ukraine and demand peace talks. pic.twitter.com/bgC0UTWVwx

— Mats Nilsson (@mazzenilsson) February 26, 2023

As to be expected, coverage of the demonstrations was virtually nonexistent in the corporate war propaganda media. Reuters reported on the protests, but you will need to get out your wallet or scale a paywall to read what I can only assume is a downplay of growing outrage in Europe.

Politico ignored the protests and focused on Belgians expressing “solidarity with Ukraine for the one-year anniversary of the invasion by Russia.”

The same message was sent out by the CIA’s “RadioFreeEurope” and “RadioLiberty” (sic). “A long Ukrainian flag was spread across at the main Republic Square as people laid flowers in memory of the victims of war in front of the Ukrainian Embassy,” reports the Cold War relic.

I don’t believe the memory of 14,000 ethnic Russians slaughtered in the Donbas and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine by neo-nazi thugs figured into this solemn remembrance.

Public opinion is shifting fast in Germany and recent polls show over half in Germany oppose arming Ukraine further. The protests are now large enough that they cannot be hidden…

Over 50,000 show up at anti-war rally in Berlin

"We do not want German tanks to fire on the… https://t.co/Mc23Rj9XLo pic.twitter.com/8aIcN4X9Mc

— GraphicW (@GraphicW5) February 26, 2023

Why is Western media ignoring the anti-war protests happening in London (and Berlin) against sending weapons to Ukraine? pic.twitter.com/AOifXNQ9uq

— sarah (@sahouraxo) February 26, 2023

The answer is obvious. In the 1950s, the CIA turned corporate media into its “Mighty Wurlitzer” of propaganda. “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media,” admitted William Colby, former CIA Director, cited by Dave Mcgowan in his book, “Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See.”

“By the early 1950s,” writes former Village Voice reporter Deborah Davis in “Katharine the Great,” the CIA “owned… respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst.”

Alex Constantine writes,

Most consumers of the corporate media were – and are – unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs. A network anchorman in time of national crisis is an instrument of psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media. He is a creature from the national security sector’s chamber of horrors. For this reason consumers of the corporate press have reason to examine their basic beliefs about government and life in the parallel universe of these United States.

Lies of omission are a crucial element of the national security state’s “psychological warfare” against rational thought and the desire for peace. For over a year, the corporate media, long ago twisted into a propaganda tool by the state, have lied repeatedly, in serial fashion, about the nature of the conflict in Ukraine.

In America, antiwar protests were similarly ignored by the corporate war propaganda media.

Thousands of protesters for peace in Ukraine marched through Washington, D.C., over the weekend at the Rage Against the War Machine protests. pic.twitter.com/K5ttcSdDKq

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) February 20, 2023

As if on cue, blue-checkers—such as Ford Fischer, an “independent journalist” with White House press credentials—have denounced the effort to end the conflict as a white supremacist conspiracy.

VIDEO THREAD: Yesterday, Matthew Heimbach, one of the most prominent leaders in the American neo-Nazi movement in the mid-2010's, showed up at the "Rage Against the War Machine" rally in DC.

As I approached him and his group, he was being questioned by someone on whether he… https://t.co/WpOL5GLuI9 pic.twitter.com/E406fLf82D

— Ford Fischer (@FordFischer) February 20, 2023

In addition, if you are against war, it means you’re probably a commie.

The organizers of the “Rage against the war machine” rally in the US forgot to tell their minions not to bring the terrorist colors and patches to the protest. You know, because it should have looked as if they were neutral. pic.twitter.com/Dab1kcYZJo

— Operator Starsky (@StarskyUA) February 20, 2023

Finally, according to blue-checker Zachary Petrizzo of The Daily Beast, many Rage Against the War Machine participants were Putin lovers.

The “Rage Against the War Machine” rally in DC has kicked off, where Russian flags are flying. pic.twitter.com/V7u4Hb0OD5

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) February 19, 2023

“Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda,” write Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the U.S. that could escalate into nuclear war

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

‘I apologize on behalf of my profession for refusing to listen to patients with vax injuries’ – Dr. Michael Huang, physician who treated 4000 COVID patients says he’s seen hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, cancer, pregnancy loss, etc.

Click here to view the video

Vaccine injured physicians are starting to speak out…

Dr. Melissa Halvorson Smith MD

Dr. Melissa Halvorson Smith is a gynecologist from North Dakota and heads the Women’s Health Center. She was injured by 2 doses of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. In her words (click here):

Dr. Smith has been shocked by the horrible treatment she has received from her physician colleagues as a COVID-19 vaccine injured patient.

Dr. Shmuel Shapira MD

Dr. Shmuel Shapira MD MPH (Col) led Israel’s effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine and was the Head of the Department of Military Medicine of Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine and IDF Medical Corps (read more here):

“Professor Shmuel Shapira might be the most senior ranking medical-scientist in the world to openly criticize the COVID vaccines.”

On May 13, 2022, Dr.Shapira said: “I received 3 vaccinations (Pfizer), I was physically injured in a very significant way as many others were injured”

Dr. Kerryn Phelps MD

Dr. Kerryn Phelps is the former President of the Australian Medical Association (AMA). She and her partner were COVID-19 vaccine injured. She is the highest ranking Australian medical doctor to admit to being COVID-19 vaccine injured (read more here):

“This is an issue that I have witnessed first-hand with my wife who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet”

“I continue to observe the devastating effects a year-and-a-half later with the addition of fatigue and additional neurological symptoms including nerve pains, altered sense of smell, visual disturbance and musculoskeletal inflammation. The diagnosis and causation has been confirmed by several specialists who have told me that they have seen ‘a lot’ of patients in a similar situation.”

“Dr. Phelps revealed she was also diagnosed with a vaccine injury from her second dose of Pfizer in July 2021, “with the diagnosis and causation confirmed by specialist colleagues”.

“In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.”

“Dr. Phelps said both reactions were reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) “but never followed up”.

“She revealed she had spoken with other doctors “who have themselves experienced a serious and persistent adverse event” but that “vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about”.

Dr. Danice Hertz MD

Dr. Danice Hertz, a 64 year old physician was “horribly ill” and “incapacitated” after getting Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Her story is here (click here):

“Dr.Hertz, a gastroenterologist who retired in October, got her first and only dose of Pfizer’s vaccine on Dec. 23, 2020”

“Within 30 minutes, I started experiencing adverse effects”

“Hertz said within 24 hours she developed neurological symptoms, including severe paresthesias in her face, tongue, scalp, chest wall and limbs, as well as tremors, twitching, weakness, headaches, tinnitus and imbalance.”

“I saw six neurologists, five allergists, three rheumatologists, and no one had a clue,” Hertz said.”

“Dr. Danice Hertz said people like her who have been seriously injured by COVID vaccines are being dismissed or ignored, and because health officials won’t research their injuries and potential treatments, they have nowhere to turn.”

“After taking the Pfizer injection Danice got neuropathy, mast cell activation, pericarditis and many other symptoms. She has now seen 22 different doctors and still hasn’t recovered.” (click here)

Dr. Stephen Wright MD 

Dr. Stephen Wright (UK) died at age 32, from blood clots caused by the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Mark Steyn conducted several interviews with the family:

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***

With Russia’s military operation in Ukraine evidently destroying NATO’s ambitions, Washington is becoming increasingly frustrated that Moscow has not been isolated. Russia did not economically collapse, as was predicted in the West, partly because of the robust and longstanding relationship it has with India. It is unsurprising that in only a matter of days, Germany and the US have pressured India to capitulate their sovereignty and serve Western interests instead of their own.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sought assurances from India on February 25 that it would not only refuse to block, but also support efforts to isolate Russia. Following his talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the chancellor refused to reveal what exactly they discussed in relation to Ukraine.

Although the contents of the discussion were cited as being confidential in nature, it is likely that Scholz did not want to humiliatingly admit that India refused to step back from its tried and tested relationship with Russia. Scholz did reveal though that he and Modi had discussed the war in Ukraine “very extensively and very intensely.”

It is noted that this trip was Scholz’s first official visit to India but his fourth meeting with Modi since taking office in 2021. Although they also discussed ways to boost economic cooperation, including through a free trade agreement between the European Union and India, it cannot be overlooked that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in New Delhi only days after Scholz.

Days before arriving in the Indian capital, Blinken said that countries like India, which have not joined the West in denouncing Russia’s military operation, were on a supposed trajectory away from alignment with Moscow. He stressed that the process would not occur “in one fell swoop.”

“There are countries that have long-standing, decades-long relationships with Russia, with the Soviet Union before, that are challenging to break off in one fell swoop. It’s not flipping a light switch, it’s moving an aircraft carrier,” Blinken said in an interview with The Atlantic on February 24.

However, for all of Blinken’s claims that India is moving away from Moscow, there is no actual suggestion that this is occurring. The US and India cooperate through the QUAD format, a naval bloc aimed against China, but this has not meant India’s submission to Washington, as the Americans evidently anticipated.

Although India has faced sustained and continued pressure from the West to distance itself from Moscow, New Delhi has thus far resisted, citing its longstanding ties with Russia and its economic and oil interests. It cannot be overlooked that Russia has been India’s largest weapons supplier since the Cold War-era, particularly since the US traditionally favoured Pakistan.

However, Washington in recent years has looked to turn New Delhi away from its main military supplier (but without wanting to adjust its policy to Pakistan).

“India for decades had Russia at the core of providing military equipment to it and its defences, but what we’ve seen over the last few years is a trajectory away from relying on Russia and moving into partnership with us and other countries,” Blinken said, without mentioning the fact that India is moving towards home-grown production, something that Russia is playing a key role in.

None-the-less, it is expected that Blinken, in the same way as Scholz, will try and convince India to change course regarding its ties with Russia.

As Bloomberg reported, citing Kpler’s lead crude analyst, Viktor Katona, “India purchased almost no Russian oil a year ago, but has become a crucial market after the US and European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow. The Asian country imported around 1.85 million barrels a day from Russia in February, close to its potential maximum of about 2 million barrels a day.”

The cold hard facts are that Moscow and New Delhi have a longstanding relationship that India will not break just for the sake of serving Western interests. Beyond the time-tested security ties, Russia offers energy hungry India the best deal for oil, something that will not be sacrificed because of a far-off war in Eastern Europe.

According to QUARTZ, India has in less than a year saved an estimated $3.6 billion by increasing Russian oil imports. This is a significant amount for a country that depends on imports to meet 85% of its petroleum needs.

It is recalled that in November 2022, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said “Russia has been a steady and time-tested partner. Any objective evaluation of our relationship over many decades would confirm that it has actually served both our countries very, very well.”

With this statement, he effectively confirmed a continuance of the current policy despite sustained pressure – a pressure that Scholz and Blinken are the latest to apply. They are however also the latest that were unable to convince New Delhi to change its policy regarding Russia.

*

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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***

A year ago Canadian mainstream media and politicians described an unruly mob headed for Ottawa. 

On January 26, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians there was a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” coming to Ottawa in a “so-called freedom convoy.”^[1]

A few protesters arrived in Ottawa on January 28, with the majority coming the next day.

On Valentine’s Day, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to crush the protest. Bank accounts of hundreds of protesters were frozen. After the police crackdown on protesters, Bill Blair, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, said it was “textbook” police action: “It restored my pride in my profession.”

Blair continued, “what I witnessed [was]…an entirely professional proportional, measured response. They moved slowly, methodically, respectfully….I’ve never seen it done better than what I witnessed here in the City of Ottawa as they…peacefully as possible, brought this to a resolution.”

On February 22 the Liberal-NDP coalition ratified the invocation of the Emergencies Act. But a day later the Act was rescinded. The Emergencies Act legislation of 1988 required that, on the occasion of its use, an inquiry must be held to determine if it was justified.

What Sparked the Protest?

Truck drivers had been designated essential service workers transporting groceries, hospital supplies, factory parts and other critical goods. In March 2021, Trudeau had called them “heroes.” But in November 2021, the government announced that the truck driver exemption from vaccination would end, requiring proof of vaccination in order to cross the Canada-USA border. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturing Coalition, Canadian Trucking Alliance and Private Motor Truck Council of Canada were among those urging the government to reverse policy.

The Private Motor Truck Council of Canada (PMTC) warned that “over 31 thousand cross-border truckers will leave the industry.” The Canadian Trucking Alliance had similar estimates of drivers who would exit the industry. The PMTC estimated that, if the government postponed its regulation until at least April 15, 2022, only “22,800 drivers would exit the cross-border industry if given the extra time” to decide whether to get vaccinated.^[2]

Image is from Uncancelled

The government did not produce any statistics proving truck drivers, who travel alone in their trucks, were a source of Covid-19 infection in Canada. One could infer, by the government’s hard line, there was a solid basis for fearing truck drivers were spreading Covid-19 when crossing the international border, though not when they traveled interprovincially.

When asked in January 2022 by the House of Commons Health Committee, “Neither Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos nor Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam were able to provide any data about COVID-19 and truck drivers.” [3]

It was not enough for the Public Health Agency of Canada to advise all truck drivers who were ill with any symptoms to stay home. It was not enough to simply require truck drivers to take a PCR rapid test before a trip across the border, allowing drivers who tested negative to proceed. It did not matter that truck drivers were not interacting with retirees or seniors in assisted-living facilities, those most vulnerable. Or that the overall infection fatality rate for Covid-19 was about 0.25% with 99.75% of the population who got Covid surviving.^[3]

The new border restrictions for truck drivers at the USA-Canada and USA-Mexico border were outliers. In Africa, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, truck drivers were deemed essential service workers. Concerned about supply chains and economic well-being, other nations gave truck drivers the same exemptions that were suddenly denied them at Canada-U.S. border points.

The Official Story

As truck drivers headed from the British Columbia coast on January 23, 2022, a media narrative instantly emerged. It depicted protesters headed for Ottawa as the worst of the worst. On January 25, a CTV headline screamed: “‘So many angry people’: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory.” CTV interviewed Kurt Phillips, founder of Anti-Racist Canada, who warned that he had

“seen people online calling the trucker convoy Canada’s version of the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, for the truckers to ram their trucks into Parliament, and people encouraging the hanging of politicians.”^[4]

The Convoy was next framed as an inspiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Russian actors” had instigated the convoy. On January 28, CBC reporter Nil Köksal mused,

“Given Canada’s support of Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia… there is a concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, perhaps even instigating it from the outside.”

The CBC quietly retracted the statement on February 4^th.^[5]

On January 29, CTV journalist Mackenzie Gray posted a photo of an individual carrying a Confederate flag. Gray tweeted above the photo, “We’ve got our first [C]onfederate flag of the day here on Parliament Hill.” Florida Governor Ron Desantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, responded on Twitter to Gray’s tweet, observing “You claim to be a journalist, so why don’t you interview him? You can ask him who he is—and why he is flying a Confederate flag. If you just post a picture like this with no context, it looks like you’re implying the entire convoy are racists. How do you know he isn’t a plant?”^[6]

The Toronto Star reported

“The appearance of a Nazi flag at the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Ottawa drew widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. Opponents of the protest said it was proof of white supremacist sympathies lurking beneath the movement’s surface, while supporters said it was unfair to paint the entire convoy as hateful because of a few bad actors.”^[7]

On January 29, it was reported that a woman was yelling “freedom,” and dancing on the tomb of the unknown soldier. The National Observer asked the Chief of the Canadian Defense Staff, General Wayne Eyre, for a comment. He responded,

“I am sickened to see protesters dance on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrate the National War Memorial. Generations of Canadians have fought and died for our rights, including free speech, but not this. Those involved should hang their heads in shame.”^[8]

On the morning of February 6, Matias Muñoz alleged two arsonists came to an apartment building lobby in downtown Ottawa at 5:00 a.m. Muñoz tweeted: “One of them taped the door handles so no one could get out.” This apparently included the arsonists. According to the story, a tenant, who saw the arsonists lighting a fire in the lobby, asked if they were truckers. And then decided to go to bed without calling 911. Which is what you would do if you knew you were in a building that was on fire. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson held an emergency meeting of city council condemning the “malicious intent” of the convoy protesters. “Yesterday we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent of the protesters occupying our city.”^[9]

Convoy protesters were also accused of being terrorists. Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans referred to the protest as part of a “nationwide insurrection,” and the protesters themselves as “terrorists” and “mercenaries.”^[10] A repeated talking point was that the protesters intended to orchestrate their own version of the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., here on Parliament Hill. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Justin Trudeau and others in the Liberal cabinet inferred a plot to overthrow the government was in motion.

In early February, Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, decried an anti-Semitic flyer alleged to be the work of Ottawa protesters titled “Every Single Aspect of the COVID Agenda Is Jewish.” It turned out the offending flyer was from a photo taken in Miami, Florida, two weeks before the Ottawa protest began.

Image is from The Post Millennial

In addition, the truckers were painted as delinquent parents whose children should be taken away from them. “I can only say that there have been ongoing reports regarding child welfare concerns, and that we consider all information received to determine the best response,” said a spokesperson for the Ottawa Children’s Aid Society. After the Emergencies Act was invoked on February 14, bringing children to the demonstrations was prohibited. If a child were in the cab of a truck, it would result in a potential fine of $5,000 or up to five years in prison. Ottawa police said roughly 25% of the vehicles in the blockades had children in them.^[11]

In an opinion piece to The Globe and Mail, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin wrote “The Ottawa truck convoy has revealed the ugly side of freedom.” McLachlin wondered “what does this vaunted ‘freedom’ mean? The answer is, everything and nothing. Everything: the right not to wear masks in public places; the right not to be vaccinated; the right to hold Ottawa’s downtown residents and businesses hostage; the right to malign public officials and call for the Prime Minister’s death; the right to shout epithets at people of colour.” To date, no protesters connected to the Freedom Convoy have been charged, or face pending legal action, in relation to uttering death threats against Justin Trudeau.^[12]

There were also suggestions in the media that protesters threatened to bomb the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.^[13]

Politicians lined up to rebuke a protest they described as “illegal.” Yet, on February 7, 2022, Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean ruled the protest was legal. He wrote, “the defendants and other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest.” McLean also issued an injunction against honking of horns, with which residents and businesses understandably took issue.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stated that “threats of rape” by truckers in Ottawa was one of the catalysts for the Liberal government invoking the Emergencies Act.^[14]  He also alleged protester trucks in Ottawa contained weapons.

Public Order Emergency Commission Established

For a majority of Canadians following the mainstream news, the Prime Minister had fended off an insurrection. White supremacists, misogynists, and homophobes had been sent packing. Nonetheless, the nation would have to go through the perfunctory exercise of determining if there was anything to tweak regarding the Liberals’ invocation.

Passed in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act legislation states there are unique circumstances by which the act can be invoked. These are that “The emergency must be a ‘national emergency,’ which means an ‘urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature’ that either ‘(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or (b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.’”

A Growing Counter-Narrative

In late April 2022, Justin Trudeau appointed Chief Justice Paul Rouleau to head the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC).

By the time Rouleau was appointed to head the POEC, articles had already appeared in the press calling into question the media narrative about the Freedom Convoy. Indo-Canadian reporter Rupa Subramanya wrote several articles and was interviewed about her experience speaking with the protesters.

Subramanya explained,

“I wanted to go there and make up my own mind. The reality of these protesters, the truckers, starting from Day One, is very different from the received narrative that was already in place—propaganda—because that is really what it amounted to. These people were a cross-section of Canadians. They were mostly working-class. I encountered people of colour. I saw new immigrants. I saw children. I saw women. I saw the old, the young. Franco-Canadians, Anglo-Canadians. A lot of camaraderie. I spent three weeks at the protest every day, several times a day. I didn’t encounter a single racist, white supremacist, or even a misogynist. These were some of the warmest, friendliest, people I’ve ever met in my life [after] two decades here in Canada. It was quite unusual that my perspective, as a person of colour who went into the protests, was so different from the mainstream coverage. There was this total disconnect between what was being said and what I personally experienced.”

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) held a press conference on February 8 stating that no protester was under suspicion for the attempted arson of a residential building in downtown Ottawa. The OPS subsequently charged two Ottawa-area men with the arson in March 2022.^[15]

On March 24, 2022, Interim Ottawa Police Service Chief Steve Bell confirmed there were no weapons in protesters’ vehicles in Ottawa. These and other allegations about the protesters were discredited in the months following the protests. Protesters had not called in bomb threats against hospitals, threatened or committed rape. The woman who danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier turned out to be from Quebec and was not involved with the Ottawa protests, despite the good luck of the media to catch her “freedom” yells with the cameras rolling. And video of protesters being beaten with rifles, kicked by police, and trampled by horses, put the lie to Bill Blair’s pride in the “textbook” police action to crush the protest in Ottawa.

But, these news reports challenging the initial headlines dribbled out over weeks and months, and were under-reported. The majority of Canadians were still reeling and felt threatened, disgusted and agitated by the news reports about the Freedom Convoy protesters. Watching the nightly news, the specter of seditionist, violent, racist, white supremacist truckers trying to topple the sitting government set in stone an emotional scar that has yet to heal. For protesters, and those who supported them, however, the news coverage confirmed a slanted mainstream media bias resembling textbook propaganda.

Sensing the historic importance of this unfolding story, I flew from Vancouver to Ottawa to attend hearings one week in mid-November 2022.

“Lack of Violent Crime Was Shocking”

During the Public Order Emergency Commission, numbers of police were called to testify. It was revealed that earlier on the day the Emergencies Act was invoked, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) issued an internal intelligence briefing memo. Titled “Operational Intelligence Report,” it summarized the Ottawa protest, stating,

“The mood today was again calm, festive, and family oriented. Speakers were again telling people to walk away from agitators and thanked the police for remaining calm. Many of the speakers were promoting love and peaceful protest, some even taking quotes from the Bible. Speakers were also wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s.” The memo noted there were “children on Wellington Street playing hockey.”

Superintendent Patrick Morris,

“the foremost authority in the Province of Ontario regarding Intelligence” with the OPP, testified before the POEC. He said of the protest, “the lack of violent crime was shocking….If there was an actual threat, then there would have been an investigation, and if it was an actual threat, I assume the Ottawa Police Service would have laid a charge for uttering threats.” Morris agreed it was “hard to lay a charge” “or even to ascertain if it’s an actual threat if you can’t identify the individual.”

“Comments made…by public figures…the media…were not premised in fact”

Regarding the media coverage and statements by politicians about the protest, Morris stated “I was concerned by the politicization and I was concerned by hyperbole and I was concerned by the affixing of labels without evidence to individuals’ movements et cetera.” In a letter entered as evidence at the Commission, TDF lawyer Alan Honner quoted Morris’s letter where it states, “But now the public discourse is dominated by political figures and the media, and the commentary is providing a very different picture from what law enforcement collectively gathered. It is painting a different picture. It speaks to extremism. It offers parallels to terrorism. It speaks of sedition.”

Morris elaborated in his testimony that his letter reflected his concern about “comments made publicly, by public figures and in the media that I believed were not premised in fact….I was leading the criminal intelligence collection of information and the production of criminal intelligence in relation to these events. So, I believed I was in a unique situation to understand what was transpiring. So, when I read accounts that the State of Russia had something to do with it; Or that this was the result of American influence, either financially or ideologically; Or that Donald Trump was behind it; Or that it was un-Canadian; Or that the people participating were un-Canadian and that they were not Canadian views and they were extremists; I found it to be problematic, because what I ascertained from my role…I did not see validation for those assertions….I did not see information that substantiated what was being said publicly and via the media. And I found that the subjective assertions sensationalized…and exacerbated conflict….So the labelling was problematic to me.”

Morris further stated in a letter, “I do not know where the political figures are acquiring information or intelligence on the extent of extremist involvement.” He was emphatic, “I want to be clear on this. We produced no intelligence to indicate these individuals would be armed. There has been a lot of hyperbole around that.” During his testimony, Supt. Morris confirmed that at no point did he receive any reliable intelligence that there was any risk to national security due to the Freedom Convoy protests.” In cross-examination with Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Supt. Morris confirmed that at no time did any violence against property take place. No arson, no destruction, no vandalism, no bombing.^[16]

“The narrative about what was happening in Ottawa was being controlled…”

Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent Carson Pardy, testifying on October 21, 2022, stated that the media depiction of the protest in Ottawa was

“problematic. The narrative about what was happening in Ottawa was being controlled and was one-sided.

There were a lot of good things happening. We heard about the bouncy castles and there were prayer meetings in the morning…. This is a family event. Bring your kids. There’s a bouncy castle. We can have fun.”

Pardy found media rhetoric about protesters being extremists

“problematic…because I’ve been involved in events from the past, G-summits…where we had a lot of extremist views. There was fringes of it…that were not a major concern….The profile of the protester at this event was unlike none that I’ve seen in my 36-year career. We had everything from grandparents. You know, my first day on this assignment, I was shown a picture of two officers that had worked for me in the past, who were retiring, who were in the crowd with the protesters. We saw children. We saw a lot of crestfallen police officers, military, nurses. So it wasn’t your normal group of people that you’re dealing with.”

Margaret Hope Braun, a mother of two from Peterborough, Ontario, was at the protest on Valentine’s Day. During her testimony before the Commission, she recalled: “I witnessed hundreds of roses being offered to the police officers. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of trying to heal the divide…being created between us and the police.…[T]he streets of Ottawa were covered in roses that day.”

Source: theepochtimes.com

OPS, OPP, RCMP, Canada Border Service Agency and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) were pointing away from ideologically motivated violent extremist (IMVE) threats. CSIS reported on the afternoon of February 14, “Downtown Ottawa…was actually quite festive—not threatening to a passerby.” CSIS entered as evidence before the Commission that they “had no concern with IMVEs in Ottawa.”

In the aftermath of the Valentine’s Day invocation of the Emergencies Act, Supt. Morris reported on February 22 the Freedom Convoy protest was “not comprised of ideologically motivated violent extremists. The actual leaders are not violent extremists with histories of violent criminal acts.”

Former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly testified before the POEC. He confirmed it was “correct” that at no time before Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022, did the OPS issue any form of formal notice to the protesters that they had been designated an unlawful assembly and must disperse. The protests were not a criminal matter under section 63 of the Criminal Code. There was no declaration that the Ottawa protests constituted a riot.

OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, with a certificate from the University of St. Andrews in Terrorism Studies, also testified. He agreed that, “based on all OPP intelligence and the intelligence provided by the RCMP and federal intelligence agencies to the OPP…there was no credible threat to the security of Canada.”

Carrique confirmed it “would be my understanding” that in order to invoke the Emergencies Act, there needs to be a “credible threat.” He agreed that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protected citizens’ rights to assemble and protest. He agreed that this includes protesting government policies. Carrique also concurred that the trucks that were arriving in Ottawa in late January 2022 “did so at the direction of police officers.”^[17]

If the protest in Ottawa had become unlawful, as determined by the OPS or OPP, the Riot Act could have been enforced and the protest declared a riot. Arrests would have ensued, all under the existing laws of the Criminal Code. But prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, not a single charge of unlawful assembly was laid against any protester in Ottawa.

Agreement Between City of Ottawa and Protesters to Remove Vehicles

Serge Arpin, Chief of Staff to the Mayor of the City of Ottawa, testified that, by noon on February 14, 2022, 102 protest vehicles had been moved out of a four-block by five-block area in downtown Ottawa. Most of these had left the city.

The protesters were on schedule to remove 75% of the vehicles from downtown Ottawa, and leave the city by February 16. With so many vehicles scheduled to leave Ottawa voluntarily, the need for tow-truck drivers would be moot. Remaining protest vehicles were to be confined to Wellington Street along Parliament Hill, taking up their complaint with the Trudeau government. ^[18]

Under testimony, Kim Ayotte, General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services with the City of Ottawa, confirmed that the movement of vehicles onto Wellington Street “got stopped by police.”

Movement out of Ottawa, or over to Wellington Street, was not blocked or abandoned by the protesters. It was the police who blocked the movement of protest vehicles. Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller pointed out, “the difficulty in moving individuals to Wellington Street after the agreement was announced…was only stopped because the police wouldn’t let them on to Wellington and because the police then also stopped them from leaving the streets they were parked on…”^[19]

Emergencies Act Threshold for “threat to national security” Not Met

The government’s justification for invoking the act was not based on any of the tests of the Emergencies Act being met. CSIS Director David Vigneault admitted the four criteria for declaring a public order emergency were not met.

1)    Was there espionage? “No,” said Vigneault.

2)    Was there foreign interference, sabotage? “No,” said Vigneault.

3)    Was there any serious violence associated with the protests? “No actual serious violence,” said Vigneault.

4)    Was there a plot to overthrow the government? “No. Didn’t even investigate. It was so nonexistent,” said Vigneault.^[20]

RCMP officer emails reflected a lack of urgency. “It would be a stretch to say the trucks barricading the streets and the air horns blaring at whatever decibels for however many days constitute the ‘use of force.’”^[21]

“There was no serious violence in Ottawa”

Jody Thomas, the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, was appointed on January 11, 2022. A month later she advised Justin Trudeau to declare a national emergency. Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer Cara Zeibel asked Thomas at the POEC, “you understand that currently the definition of a Public Order Emergency in the Emergencies Act is tied exclusively and exhaustively to the definition in the CSIS Act?” Thomas testified, “The Federal Government legal opinion is different, and there will be legal arguments to that end.”

Lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, Rob Kittredge, took Jody Thomas through the CSIS Act tests for declaring an emergency. She confirmed there was no espionage, no sabotage, no foreign interference.

But what about serious violence? Thomas replied by swapping the word “serious” for “continual.” Said Thomas, “There was continual violence in the streets of Ottawa…” Kittredge asked her to be specific about what she meant by “continual violence.” Thomas identified “harassment, people being followed, people being intimidated, the noise, the pollution…”^[22] Yet, incidents of harassment, stalking and physical intimidation are matters police address every day across the nation upon receiving a complaint.

I spoke on the phone with Freedom Convoy protest leader Tom Marazzo. Expanding on his testimony before the POEC, Marazzo told me he was continually in contact with the OPS Police Liaison Teams (PLTs) during the protests in Ottawa. He told me the PLTs would alert him if there was anyone blocking an emergency lane. Protest leaders, police and City of Ottawa officials all agreed that these needed to be cleared.

Yet, on one occasion it turned out an emergency lane in downtown Ottawa was being blocked by the City of Ottawa’s own equipment vehicles. Marazzo confirmed that any protesters intimidating or harassing Ottawa citizens would be counterproductive to the aims of the protest. But the PLTs never brought to any protest leaders’ attention even one instance of a protester intimidating or harassing local residents. The disconnect between the rhetoric of protesters being violent and what was happening on the ground was problematic.

Eventually, Jody Thomas conceded, “No, not serious violence.” In a February 21, 2022, email, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Brian Brennan wrote “There was no serious violence in Ottawa, the main reason for the Emergencies Act.”

Expanding the Definition of Threat

Considering the lack of serious violence, Jody Thomas quickly reframed matters. She stated, “A Public Order Emergency is broader as defined in the CSIS Act.” She elaborated: “There’s a range of threats that need to be considered when you’re talking about this country, economic security; The threat of IMVE; The rhetoric of threats against public figures; The inability to conduct a livelihood in the City of Ottawa—as an example, the Coutts border blockade…; The threat to public institutions and the undermining of the confidence in public institutions.”

Thomas identified “economic security” as a national security threat. Yet, in contrast with the border point blockades in February 2022, the Liberal government dealt with the 2020 protests differently. From January to mid-March 2020, First Nations protesters variously blocked construction of a BC pipeline, disrupted BC Ferry sailings, shut down CN Rail freight and VIA Rail passenger service for over a month, blockaded an Ontario highway and more. Through eleven weeks of economic disruptions, Prime Minister Trudeau maintained the importance of engaging in dialogue with protesters to resolve matters.^[23]

The Coutts, Alberta, border blockade and arrests of persons in possession of weapons were handled by the RCMP under existing Canadian law. However, the “threat to national security” was becoming fungible, an elastic term the government could shape for its own purposes in order to invoke the Emergencies Act at will.

Legal Opinion to Expand Definition of “Threat Remains Secret

The Liberals, on a legal opinion to expand the definition of threat, invoked the Emergencies Act. Asked about the basis for the legal opinion, Justice Minister David Lametti, testified, “For reasons of solicitor-client privilege [he] could not describe the various kinds of legal analysis relied upon by cabinet.” Justice Rouleau told Lametti that, by taking this position, the government is asking Canadians to “just assume (it) acted in good faith,” to just “trust us.” Asked if he agreed “that Section 2 of the CSIS Act has a different meaning…a different scope based in its reference in the Emergencies Act,” Lametti responded “I will neither confirm nor deny that.”

In addition to David Lametti and Jody Thomas, another person who recommended that the Prime Minister invoke the Emergencies Act was Janice Charette. Named Interim Clerk of the Privy Council in March 2021, Charette was confirmed in her role in May 2022, three months after the Ottawa protests. She has a B.A. in Commerce and served in a number of capacities as Deputy Minister of Human Resources, as well as for Immigration and Health Canada. However, Charette had no background in national security. She said under oath, “I’m not an expert in any of these domains. My assessment from a layman’s point of view was it [the protest] was not legal.” Charette’s assertion contradicted Ontario court rulings on February 7, and again on February 16, 2022 that the protest was legal.

“A meaning can have different meanings at the end”

Ms. Charette fretted that the government “didn’t really have a full 360-degree view” of the protest. She urged her Incident Response Group to “really think outside the box.” Yet, this did not include meeting with some of the protest leaders. Since early February, protest leaders sought a meeting with senior Public Health Agency of Canada staff and politicians. Still, the government declined to meet with protest leaders, even to gain a more expansive view of the facts on the ground.^[24]

Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Nathalie Drouin, explained one of the reasons the Prime Minister was advised to invoke the Emergencies Act. “[We] couldn’t wait to invoke the Emergencies Act because then it would have been a national security threat.” By waiting any longer, Drouin explained, “we would have been in a situation where the threat would have materialized.” By underscoring her panicked reasoning, Drouin made clear no threat to national security had actually materialized. Asked about the definition of “threat” in the Emergencies Act, Drouin stated a “meaning can have different meanings at the end.”^[25]

Drouin took part in Justin Trudeau’s February 14, 2022, phone calls with the First Ministers of the Canadian provinces and territories. It was clear to her that a majority of provincial premiers opposed the looming federal government decision. Drouin summed up that viewpoint, “that there is a risk that invoking the Emergencies Act can inflamate [sic] the situation.”

Vulnerable to Challenge

Janice Charette was shown a memo where she commented on the legal advice the government was relying on as a basis to invoke the Emergencies Act. She stated, “In our view, this fits within the statutory parameters of the Emergencies Act, but this conclusion may be vulnerable to challenge.” The Emergencies Act states that it is to be a measure “of last resort” when all other options under the laws of the land are exhausted.

Yet, not all other options had been exhausted. By February 14, OPS, OPP and RCMP did not view the protest as unlawful. Had it been deemed unlawful, the Riot Act could have been used to declare the protest a riot. As well, the OPS had signed off on a detailed 73-page plan with the RCMP and OPP to de-escalate the protest. Under testimony, Prime Minister Trudeau referred to it as a “so-called plan.” When shown the plan during his testimony, Trudeau stated he had never seen the plan. Nonetheless, he asserted he had “no confidence” in the plan.^[26]

During Charette’s cross-examination by Canadian Constitutional Foundation lawyer Sujit Choudhry, she confirmed that CSIS Director Vigneault was not asked to speak during the February 13 Liberal cabinet meeting regarding the need to invoke the Emergencies Act.Choudhry said to Charette, “I would like to put this point to you.…[I]n a constitutional democracy, to prevent the abuse of executive powers by an elected government, it is imperative that the views of a professional non-partisan and expert security services be front and center and that they not just be a factor, but that they be at the core of whether a government decides to invoke emergency powers.”^[27]

Nathalie Drouin jumped in, responding to Choudhry’s point by stressing other threats to the nation: “We saw kids, you know, being used as [human] shields.” Children were sitting with their parents in their trucks to keep warm. Children were making snow sculptures, playing in bouncy castles and playing hockey.

When pressed under cross-examination to substantiate allegations of rape committed by Ottawa protesters, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said, “The absence of a criminal charge doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.” Freedom Convoy lawyer Eva Chipiuk tweeted in reference to a riot in Vancouver on June 15, 2011, after the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, “Compare 1 night of Stanley Cup rioting where 268 people were charged with a total of 814 charges to 3 weeks of Freedom Convoy and 11 charges, ZERO hate crimes, and we don’t know how many of those were protesters because @OttawaPolice did not provide those details.”

Preceding the Liberal cabinet retreat on January 24, 2022, Alexander Cohen, Director of Communications to the Minister of Public Safety, and Mary-Liz Power, Issues and Policy Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office, were sending texts to each other. Their text messages discussed the best ways to exploit a narrative to frame the protest traveling to Ottawa as a “January 6-style insurrection” and as “extremists.”

Vaccine Mandates and Canadian Charter Rights

Justice Rouleau was petitioned to have the Right Honorable Brian Peckford testify. Peckford was one of the speakers at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, and the last living person who signed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was enshrined in 1982.

Image: Brian Peckford screenshot/YouTube/ CBC NL – Newfoundland and Labrador

The protesters were not only challenging the rationale for the vaccine mandates in Canada, but the infringements on Canada’s charter.

This included the right of all Canadian citizens to mobility. Quoting Section 6 of the Charter, Peckford said to the protesters, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.”

As stated in all Canadian passports, “The Minister of Foreign Affairs requests…all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer [of the passport] to pass freely, without delay or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.” But the Commission was not interested in having such an eminent person involved with the protest give testimony.

Testifying before the POEC, Prime Minister Trudeau stated,

“We have a robust, functioning democracy and public protests are an important part of making sure…Canadians are getting messages out there and highlighting how they feel about various issues. But using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worrisome.”^[28]

As someone who previously voted for Justin Trudeau in a federal election, I find his apprehension of the right to public assembly and free speech worrisome.

Trudeau is saying Canadians have the right to protest. But if those protests are used to demand changes in government policy, the current Canadian government will tell those protesters that they have crossed a line. It seems the prime minister thinks of democracy as something that citizens engage by keeping their heads down, watching what they say, and not publicly questioning government action. The invocation of the Emergencies Act by Justin Trudeau on February 14, 2022, was political theater.

It was not a last resort. It was a choice made by a government that would not countenance public debate about the basis for its continued pandemic measures. And by January 2022, by expanding pandemic measures, Canada was now an outlier. Where dialogue was the solution to address eleven weeks of national protest in early 2020, Trudeau closed the door to any possibility of discussion with protesters in January 2022 before they arrived. Documents entered as evidence before the POEC suggest the Liberals were restless to invoke the Emergencies Act many days prior to February 14, 2022. When asked under oath at the inquiry “when did the Emergencies Act come into play as a possibility?” Trudeau replied “from the very beginning.”

Under cross-examination by Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland conceded that the regulation to force cross-border truckers to get vaccinated was to compel “as many Canadians to get vaccinated.” This was the real purpose.

Another indicator of the trajectory Canada is on is the matter of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Back in mid-February 2022, on social media, Peterson questioned the wisdom of interim Ottawa police Chief Steve Bell. At the time, Bell was threatening protesting parents in Ottawa with having their children removed. Peterson commented,

“‘Children removed’ how exactly? Why, exactly? By whom, exactly? Sent to where, exactly? And for how long, exactly? Think this through, Canadians. This is a bad decision.”

For this, and a handful of other political opinions unrelated to his work, it was announced on January 3, 2023, that Dr. Peterson faces a mandatory six-month re-education by the Ontario College of Psychologists. Otherwise, he will lose his license to practice.^[29] The message to all Canadians when exercising free speech? Stifle your dissenting political opinions.

Did the Liberal Cabinet Break the Law?

In early February 2023, Attorney General David Lametti lost a key Federal Court ruling on his use of emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy. Justice Richard Mosley ordered internal emails, contradicting Liberal cabinet claims of a national crisis, must be admitted into evidence in a court case with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Mosley found “Evidence of the cabinet proceedings that led to the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was not disclosed despite repeated requests.” He concluded the internal emails were “essential to the just and proper determination” of whether cabinet broke the law.^[30]

Over the decades, progressive and “classic Liberal” voters in Canada—like myself—have looked over our shoulders nervously at attempts by conservative governments to reign in democratic freedoms. Thirty years after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted into the Canadian Constitution, Justin Trudeau warned citizens to “listen very carefully to those who choose to divide, or play up fears and insecurities as a way of advancing a political agenda.” Ironically, Trudeau’s present Liberal government in Ottawa offers up a sobering lesson. An autocratic trajectory can also be instigated by political parties in the middle of the political spectrum, as well as on the “left.” This is no time for Canadians to be complacent.

Citizens in other countries should pay attention. What other governments might now feel emboldened by Trudeau’s actions, opt to freeze their citizens’ bank accounts?

Note: Justice Paul Rouleau, a former executive assistant to Liberal Prime Minister John Turner, released his Report on February 17. He concluded, “reluctantly,” that the Trudeau Government was correct in its decision to invoke the Emergency Act.

Rouleau explained

“I do not come to this conclusion easily as I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming. Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I arrived at.”

Rouleau recommends the tests named in the existing Emergencies Act for declaring a state of emergency—espionage, sabotage, serious acts of violence, plots to overthrow the government, foreign influence—be omitted.

He recommends that perceived threats be the measure for invoking the Emergencies Act in the future. His report will be considered by the Trudeau cabinet as it crafts revisions to existing legislation.

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Global Research Video Produced by Jean Francois Girard

Are the protesters really what he claims them to be?

I was there for four days with my camera, I never saw or witnessed anything close to what he describes. 

Is it possible this is all made up? If it is, what is the purpose?

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Ray McGinnis is author of Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored, and Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Writing and Appreciating Sacred Poetry. Ray attended the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings in November and heard over a dozen witnesses testify. He lives in Vancouver, Canada and can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. Rachel Gilmore, “‘Fringe minority’ in truck convoy with ‘unacceptable views’ don’t represent Canadians: Trudeau,” Global News, January 26, 2022.
   https://globalnews.ca/news/8539610/trucker-convoy-covid-vaccine-mandates-ottawa/

2. Kevin Heppner, “Thousands of truckers prepared to walk due to vaccine mandates, warn Canadian trucking groups,” Real Agriculture, Altona, AB, December 13, 2021. https://www.realagriculture.com/2021/12/thousands-of-truckers-prepared-to-walk-due-to-vaccine-mandates-warn-canadian-trucking-groups/ 
3. According to Health Canada, as of January 26, 2023, there were 4,560,962 cases of Covid-19 in Canada with 50,629 total deaths from Covid-19, that is, 1.11% or almost five times what this article states. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/ 
4. Ben Cousins, “‘So many angry people’: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory,” CTV, January 25, 2022. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/so-many-angry-people-experts-say-online-conversation-around-trucker-convoy-veering-into-dangerous-territory-1.5754580 
5. “CBC issues clarification over claim Kremlin behind truckers’ protest,” Toronto Sun, February 4, 2022.https://torontosun.com/news/national/cbc-issues-clarification-over-claim-kremlin-behind-truckers-protest 
6. Christina Pushaw, Twitter, January 29, 11:20 a.m. https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1487506015709011972?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1487506015709011972|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftnc.news%2F2022%2F01%2F30%2Fthe-canadian-legacy-medias-ten-worst-spins-on-the-truckersforfreedom-convoy%2F 
7. Omar Mosleh, “Why banning hateful symbols like the swastika is nearly impossible,” Toronto Star, February 7, 2022. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/07/nazi-flag-at-freedom-convoy-sparks-bill-to-ban-hateful-symbols-but-enforcement-is-seen-as-tricky.html 
8. Nicole Thompson, “Anti-vaxxers danced on Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrated National War Memorial,” National Observer, January 29, 2022.
   https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/01/29/news/anti-vaxxers-danced-tomb-unknown-soldier-and-desecrated-national-war-memorial  
9. Ottawa police arson unit investigates fire lit in downtown apartment lobby,” CBC, February 7, 2022.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-investigation-fire-apartment-lobby-1.6342347  
10. Rupa Subramanya, “Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans has upped the ante.” https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/1582432989027258369 
11. Amanda Connolly and Ahmar Khan, “Ottawa police issue new warning amid convoy blockade: ‘leave the area now,’” Global News, February 16, 2022 https://globalnews.ca/news/8624024/ottawa-convoy-blockade-police-action/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-investigation-fire-apartment-lobby-1.6342347  
12. Beverley McLachlin “The Ottawa truck convoy has revealed the ugly side of freedom,” Globe and Mail, February 22, 2022. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-ottawa-truck-convoy-has-revealed-the-ugly-side-of-freedom/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 
13. Rupa Subramanya, “Justin Trudeau’s case against the Freedom Convoy falls on its face: How are our elected officials who purvey what can only be called misinformation be held to account?” National Post, October 21, 2022. 
    https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rupa-subramanya-justin-trudeaus-case-against-the-freedom-convoy-falls-on-its-face  
14. Liz Braun, “Conservative politicians question sexual assault threat from truckers,” Toronto Sun, February 28, 2022. https://torontosun.com/news/national/conservative-politicians-question-sexual-assault-threat-from-truckers  
15. Craig Lord, “Ottawa man charged in February apartment arson, police dismiss convoy connection,” Global News, March 21, 2022.  https://globalnews.ca/news/8698744/ottawa-arson-freedom-convoy-arrest/  
16. “Supt. Patrick Morris, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 19, 2022, pp. 184-305. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-5-October-19-2022.pdf  
17. “Comm. Thomas Carrique, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 27, 2022, pp. 229-245,  https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-11-October-27-2022.pdf 
18. “Mr. Serge Arpin, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 17, 2022, pp. 194-329.
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-3-October-17-2022.pdf 
19. “Mr. Kim Ayotte, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 18, 2022, pp. 208-277. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-4-October-18-2022.pdf 
20. “CSIS Director David Vigneault, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 21, 2022, pp. 1-162. 
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-27-November-21-2022.pdf  
21. “Emails Ridicule Mark Carney,” Blacklock’s Reporter, December 12, 2022. https://www.blacklocks.ca/emails-ridicule-mark-carney/  
22. “Ms. Jody Thomas, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 172-323. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-25-November-17-2022.pdf  
23. John Paul Tasker, “Trudeau calls for ‘dialogue’ as blockade cripples rail network, while Scheer says clear out protesters,” CBC, February 14, 2020.
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/transport-minister-dialogue-blockade-1.5463960  
24. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 105-309. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  
25. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 105-309. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  
26. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 25, 2022, pp. 83-84 (also pp. 3-192). https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-31-November-25-2022.pdf 
27. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 242-255. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  
28. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 25, 2022, pp.3-77, during examination by POEC Commission lawyer Ms. Shantona Chaudhury. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-31-November-25-2022.pdf 
29. Editorial, “The Orwellian re-education of Jordan Peterson,” Toronto Sun, January 6, 2023. https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-the-orwellian-re-education-of-jordan-peterson  

30. “Can’t Hide Emails: Fed Judge,” Blacklock’s Reporter, February 2, 2023. https://www.blacklocks.ca/cant-hide-emails-fed-judge/   

Featured image is from vladtepesblog.com

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Activists plastered hundreds of suspected Covid “vaccine” injuries and deaths onto the doors and windows of the CBC building on Front St. early this morning.

The CBC, Canada’s taxpayer-funded media corporation, has been charged by many to be complicit in propagandist lies over the safety of the experimental gene therapies.

Without any critical investigation, the CBC and other mainstream media outlets continue to push the “safe and effective narrative” in spite of overwhelming evidence of catastrophic and unprecedented levels of adverse events.

Seeking to bring attention to the injuries and deaths temporally related to Covid-19 “vaccines,” the activists worked feverishly to get the profiles up. Security guards were present but did not intervene.

Special report coming soon.

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***

Canada’s foreign policy is basically an appendage of U.S foreign policy, and it is utterly barbaric. Consider the example of Syria.

Syria, like Turkey, has recently suffered catastrophic earthquakes.  Whereas humanitarian aid has justifiably poured into Turkey, it barely reaches the vast majority of Syrians.

Why is this?  The answer is simple. Criminal unilateral coercive measures levied against Syria and Syrians allow aid to terrorist-occupied areas on the one hand, and deny aid to all areas governed by the democratically-elected, overwhelmingly popular, secular, pluralist government of Syria led by President Bashar al-Assad. (1)

The aid to al Qaeda terrorist-occupied areas such as Idlib is hoarded and controlled (2) by terrorist-warlords as it trickles down to the people. (3) In fact the legitimate Syrian government recently attempted to ship aid into Idlib, but al Julani, former al Qaeda boss, now rebranded HTS boss, refused a convoy of aid coming from Damascus, saying that “he wouldn’t legitimize the internationally recognized Syrian government and he wouldn’t accept the aid.” (4)

Meanwhile, the truth of Canada’s foreign-policy barbarism is concealed by a vast war-propaganda complex which creates false perceptions of Canada’s humanitarianism as it doubles-down on barbarism. The deception is so great that people trying to help Syria are actually helping al Qaeda.

Consider, for example,  the case of the Canadian-funded White Helmets.  Known and documented, the White Helmets are not the legitimate Syrian Civil Defense. (The real Syria Civil Defense was established in 1953, and is recognized by the International Organization for Civil Defense in Geneva.) They are instead, as pointed out by John Pilger, a “propaganda construct”. They operate solely in terrorist-occupied areas and hence they would be more accurately described as Al Qaeda rescuers.

Vanessa Beeley recently pointed out that the White Helmet brand has been

“extensively damaged by Syrian civilian accusations including theft, murder, torture, detention, being embedded with armed groups dominated by Al-Qaeda, organ trafficking, child abduction for presenting their chemical weapon staged events, and of course they were proven to be staged after the Douma 2018 chemical attack when the OPCW dissident inspectors, who were on the ground, pointed out that the events at the Medical Center in Douma were staged as I had already confirmed visiting the Medical Center days after the alleged attack.” (5)

The plight of Syria and the Syrian people, victimized by Western unilateral coercive measures, by Western-supported terrorists, including ISIS and al Qaeda, and now by hypocritical and toxic earthquake response measures, is yet one more sordid example of the need to honour and enforce international law and the charter of the United Nations. Any so-called “Rules Based Order” as offered by Washington, would surely be more of the same: degenerate barbarism.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) e-mail/newsletter from Syria Support Movement: What we’ve learned about how to send donations to Syrian earthquake victims (mailchi.mp)

(2) News Desk, “Qatar, US encourage legitimizing former Al-Qaeda leader in Syria: Report.” The Cradle,  23 February, 2023 (Qatar, US encourage legitimizing former Al-Qaeda leader in Syria: Report (thecradle.co)) Accessed 28 February, 2023.

(3) Saffa Syria, “Al Qaeda Propagandists abuse Earthquake-struck Aleppo Children.” Syria News, 25 February 2023. (Al Qaeda Propagandists abuse Earthquake-struck Aleppo Children (syrianews.cc) ) Accessed 28 February, 2023.

(4) Vanessa Beeley, “Multi-million-fund al-Qaeda/White Helmets are back.” (Multi-million-funded Al Qaeda/White Helmets are back. – YouTube) 25 February, 2023. See also:( Multi-million-funded Al Qaeda/White Helmets are back./ By Vanessa Beeley – Mark Taliano)   Accessed 28 February, 2023.

(5) Ibid

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***

Covid vaccines are linked to a 20 percent rise in new diagnoses for at least three months after vaccination; a second report finds even higher risks for people with preexisting autoimmune problems

Adults have sharply higher risks of being diagnosed with heart, skin, and psychiatric conditions for at least 90 days after they receive Covid jabs, a peer-reviewed study of almost 300,000 people in California has shown.

The researchers examined new diagnoses given to the same people before and after they were vaccinated to see whether the shots changed the risk of new health problems.

They found that people were about 21 percent more likely to receive a new diagnosis in the three months after a shot, compared to the three months before. With almost 240 million American adults jabbed, the rise translates into millions of extra new medical problems found in the months after vaccination, and tens of millions worldwide.

Serious conditions such as hypertension were about 25 percent more likely to be diagnosed in the three months following a shot than the three months before, the researchers found.

Depression, eczema, diabetes, and cellulitis were 10 to 20 percent more likely.

Myocarditis diagnoses had the highest additional risk. They were about 2.6 times as likely overall, with an even higher risk in men. Myocarditis is a known side effect of the mRNAs, so the fact it had a particularly high rate of extra diagnoses provides strong evidence that the signal the researchers found was real.

Overall, the researchers reported that the 284,000 Covid-vaccinated adults they examined received almost 6,000 additional diagnoses of health conditions in the 90 days after being jabbed compared to the 90 days before.

With about 237 million American adults vaccinated, that estimate would translate into about 5 million extra diagnoses for problems like diabetes in the three months following the shots. Worldwide, the number could be up to 25 million.

In the chart below, the blue column is the risk someone will be diagnosed with a new condition following vaccination, compared to the risk before.

For example, about 2,560 out of the 284,000 people were diagnosed with hypertension up to three months after vaccination, compared to 2,080 of the same people up to three months before. The extra 480 cases translated into a 23 percent higher risk of hypertension following vaccination. Because the number of cases was so high, the risk was highly statistically significant, meaning the finding probably was not due to chance.

(Apologies for the laptop screenshot)

SOURCE

The study’s researchers are a group from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a big hospital system in Los Angeles. Their findings were published in Nature Cardiovascular Research in December. But the paper has received almost no attention, a common response to reports that raise questions about the safety of the vaccines.

The researchers also noted that in a smaller sample of adults infected with Covid, new diagnoses for health conditions rose about 40 percent in the three months after infection compared to the three months before.

That fact should come as no surprise. Viral infections are both a marker for and a potential cause of ill-health. Further, people are likely visit their doctors both while they are sick with Covid and shortly after they recover. Those contacts provide a chance for them to receive new diagnoses.

In contrast, people generally receive Covid shots at clinics or pharmacies, not from their doctors, so the chance that the process of receiving a new shot will lead to a diagnosis is minimal.

Thus, if Covid jabs are not harmful, mass vaccinations should not impact the timing of illnesses or their diagnoses. New diagnoses should be scattered randomly before and after the shots.

In fact, people who are feeling ill when they are due for a vaccination may be likely to delay the jab and go to a physician instead. They may then receive a diagnosis that would be counted as occurring before the shot, not after.

This “healthy vaccinee bias” should mean that new illness diagnoses are less likely for a few days after vaccination than before, even if the shots have no effect. As a result, the 20 percent increase in common diagnoses after vaccination is particularly stunning.

Meanwhile, researchers in Hong Kong independently found an even sharper increase in autoimmune “flares” following Covid shots.

The risk of new episodes of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and other serious autoimmune conditions roughly doubled following the shots in a group of 562 patients with those conditions they followed, compared to 1,055 who did not. The paper was published February 17 in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology and Immunology.

SOURCE

But not all vaccines carried the autoimmune risk.

Only mRNA shots did. Chinese-style inactivated virus vaccines did not. Hong Kong used both types of jabs, making a direct comparison possible. The researchers suggested that the mRNA shots cause the flares by stimulating a specific immune receptor that causes the release of inflammatory cytokines.

“Risk-benefit considerations in patients with active rheumatic disease may favor inactivated virus rather than mRNA vaccines to avoid the risk of flare-ups of any severity,” the researchers wrote.

Americans do not have that option, as the United States does not allow the use of Chinese inactivated Covid vaccines.

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Featured image: NOT a Vaccine: the mRNA COVID vax is a chemical pathogen production device and a technocratic, transhumanistic tool to repgrogram you. Image credit: Jordan Henderson

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***

Four days ago, Sameh al-Aqtash returned from Turkey, where he had been supporting earthquake victims as a volunteer. On Sunday evening, the 37-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli settlers rampaging through his village, Zatara, in the occupied West Bank.

Zatara is located south of Nablus, near an infamous Israeli military checkpoint where, according to residents, soldiers abuse Palestinians on a daily basis. Only 100 people live in Zatara and they are all members of the same family. Most of them are women and children.

The Israeli settler attacks began after a suspected Palestinian gunman killed two settlers near the town of Huwwara on Sunday afternoon. In response, hundreds of Israelis attacked Palestinian towns and villages, wounding nearly 300 and burning homes to the ground.

Despite Zatara being around six kilometres from Huwwara, where the settlers were killed and the mob violence was at its worst, a group of Israelis attacked the village and began trying to remove its main gate.

Abdel Moneim, Aqtash’s brother, was with him as they rushed to stop the settlers’ vandalism.

“We all hurried, including Sameh, and stopped the settlers at the gate and prevented them from entering,” he told Middle East Eye.

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***

Abusive government behavior has again been found to be too sensitive to national security to face legal challenges in the court system. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court’s dismissal of the Wikimedia Foundation’s lawsuit against a National Security Agency surveillance program revealed a decade ago by Edward Snowden. With “state secrets privilege” barring litigation, that leaves upcoming congressional debates over renewal of the law authorizing the program as the only recourse for civil liberties advocates.

“The U.S. Supreme Court today denied the Wikimedia Foundation’s petition for review of its legal challenge to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ‘Upstream’ surveillance program,” Wikimedia announced February 21. “Under this program, the NSA systematically searches the contents of internet traffic entering and leaving the United States, including Americans’ private emails, messages, and web communications. The Supreme Court’s denial leaves in place a divided ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which dismissed Wikimedia’s case based on the government’s assertion of the ‘state secrets privilege.'”

“This decision is a blow to the rule of law,” commented Alex Abdo, of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which worked with Wikimedia and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The government has now succeeded in insulating from public judicial review one of the most sweeping surveillance programs ever enacted. If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia’s challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans’ privacy by reining in the NSA’s mass surveillance of the internet.”

The “Upstream” surveillance program at issue collects “communications ‘to, from, or about'” a foreign target designated under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according the NSA. In the clearer language of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “upstream surveillance involves collecting communications as they travel over the Internet backbone, and downstream surveillance (formerly PRISM) involves collection of communications from companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo.”

As Edward Snowden revealed and the NSA conceded, this broad surveillance may be authorized against foreign targets, but frequently scoops up Americans—often deliberately. “The government is increasingly using these broad and intrusive spying powers in run-of-the-mill criminal investigations against Americans, circumventing their Fourth Amendment rights,” the ACLU warned in 2020.

Wikimedia argues that the NSA’s surveillance discourages people from using Wikimedia’s Wikipedia to research sensitive topics for fear of attracting government attention. The organization points to a 2016 article in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal that reported “a statistically significant immediate decline in traffic for [privacy-sensitive] Wikipedia articles after June 2013, but also a change in the overall secular trend in the view count traffic, suggesting not only immediate but also long-term chilling effects resulting from the NSA/PRISM online surveillance revelations.”

But in court, federal attorneys insisted that the NSA’s surveillance programs are such secret-squirrel stuff that national security would suffer if the nation’s snoops were compelled to explain how their activities can possibly square with constitutional protections for individual rights. The court bought it.

“In a divided ruling on Wednesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the lawsuit must be dismissed after the government invoked the ‘state secrets privilege’, which meant that a full exploration of the issue in a court would damage national security,” Reuters reported in 2021. That decision was left to stand last week by the Supreme Court.

As I’ve pointed out before, state secrets privilege has a sketchy history, evolving from bad official behavior after a 1948 plane crash that killed several civilian observers. When the observers’ widows sued in United States v. Reynolds, the government argued that information about the plane was too super-secret to be revealed in court (a complete lie concealing official negligence, by the way). The Supreme Court agreed that some things are too sensitive to reveal in legal proceedings and gave officialdom a free pass to invoke the phrase “national security” as a shield against accountability. That disturbs even some modern members of the Supreme Court.

While not entirely questioning the existence of state secrets privilege, it “is no blunderbuss and courts may not flee from the field at its mere display,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote last year in a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the majority’s invocation of the privilege in United States v. Zubaydeh. “Recent history reveals that executive officials can sometimes be tempted to misuse claims of national security to shroud major abuses and even ordinary negligence from public view.”

That case involved detention and torture at a black site in Poland under circumstances the government clearly found embarrassing. The Wikimedia lawsuit involves allegations of widespread domestic snooping that also reflect poorly on the powers that be. Political inconvenience is a lousy reason for preventing legal challenges to unconstitutional and criminal government conduct.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s decision leaves little recourse for determining the extent of domestic surveillance by the NSA and seeking its end. The spy agency says it cut back after “inadvertent compliance incidents related to queries involving U.S. person information.” But that leaves the public taking the NSA at its word and wondering just what is going on behind the scenes.

Edward Snowden revealed just how far we should trust the intelligence apparatus.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act‘s Section 702, which authorizes the Upstream surveillance at issue in Wikimedia’s litigation, is up for reauthorization this year, and the NSA very much wants to retain its broad power. It faces calls for reform from civil libertarians outside government, but also from Republicans and Democrats concerned about intrusive spying on Americans.

“While surveilling foreign targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the US government collects exabytes of data pertaining to American citizens,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) objected earlier this month. “The Constitution requires a warrant to query that vast database for Americans. End warrantless spying now.”

Similarly, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has long called for the intelligence community to reveal how many Americans it sweeps up, and for curbs on such snooping.

With litigation against domestic spying thwarted by the invocation of “state secrets privilege,” Congress, for all its many faults, may be the last line of defense.

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J.D. TUCCILLE is a contributing editor at Reason.

Featured image is from Medical Extremism

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***

My last-minute trip to Karachi was painful, an 18-hour flight through four countries. But that was before I met with my client, Ahmed Rabbani, and learned how he and his brother, Abdul, had fared on their way back from Guantanamo Bay.

Half a lifetime ago they had both endured their rendition trip to Cuba. Last Friday, after 20 years of detention without charge, now cleared for release as “no threat to the US or their coalition partners”, they flew back home.

It is an illustration of the gulf between Guantanamo and the real world that such flights remain shrouded in secrecy – as if someone might try to waylay the aircraft that was finally delivering liberty. The US government gave me only a few hours’ notice of their departure, so I could not get to Pakistan ahead of them, and was still in Britain.

But this meant I was able to follow their journey across the Atlantic on a plane tracker app. It was thrilling to see them flying to freedom, but I feared that, instead of delivering the apology that was long overdue, the US would take a stab at a final flight of abuse.

Sadly, this came to pass. Ahmed, 53, later described how little had changed in his treatment despite the passing years. Theirs was a 21-hour flight, only three hours longer, but infinitely worse than mine. There were 30 American soldiers on hand to handle two shackled prisoners.

Once more (still presumed innocent of any crime), Ahmed and Abdul, 55, were forced to wear ear-muffs and eye covers lest they might somehow divine their route back to Pakistan. If they wanted to use the toilet they still had to endure the humiliation of having soldiers watch.

One final torment behind them, they landed in Islamabad at noon on 24 February. In that instant, their world changed. The Pakistan Federal Investigation Agency official who greeted them showed respect.

And then came the moment that had eluded Ahmed for so long: there, in front of him, was his 20-year-old son Jawad. Ahmed’s wife had been pregnant when he was abducted on 10 September 2002. Father and son had never before met, never touched.

“Waa-llaah!” said Ahmed, the age-old exclamation.

“We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” said Jawad, hugging his dad for the first time.

A thousand battles

I have often met Jawad. I am keen to support his dream of becoming a human rights lawyer. He will never enjoy another human moment quite like that first meeting. I wish I could have been there for this encounter, but as it happened I was about to leave the UK.

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***

On Monday, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price would not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal, actually referring questions on the subject to the Israeli government itself. After the briefing, I received a written response to detailed questions regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal I submitted on Feb. 13, below.

The State Dept. is, as I charged, maintaining — actually escalating — a decades long cover-up in not acknowledging Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal. This is for the apparent purpose of not invoking the Glenn-Symington amendment to the Arms Export Act, which prohibits aid to nuclear proliferators. Archbishop Desmond Tutu admonished the Biden administration to end this cover-up in his last article, published by the Guardian a year before his death: “Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons: The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.” Clearly, the administration is not heeding Tutu’s words.

This comes at a time when the Biden administration is reportedly greenlighting Israeli threats to attack Iran, a subject which Price passed on addressing at the news conference.

Video (transcript below):

Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, who has closely tracked US policy toward Israel’s nuclear weapons program, said today: “This is a major policy disclosure breakthrough. The State Department is admitting that formal US acknowledgement of Israel’s nuclear weapons program and accountability to U.S. taxpayers who want Arms Export Control Act compliance is Israel’s decision.

“For example, ongoing lack of progress on JCPOA negotiations over Iran’s thus far non-weapons producing program means zero AECA [Arms Export Control Act] enforcement on Israel’s program. Israeli declarations that a rival’s delivery systems are ‘nuclear capable’ means zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program.

“Israeli ‘discovery’ or suspicion of the existence of any ‘rogue’ nuclear facility such as the one Israel destroyed in Syria in 2018  mandate zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program. False but enduring US intelligence community 2001 assertions that aluminum tubes bound for Iraq were to be used for centrifuges or that country was determined to procure uranium from Niger mandate zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program. CD’s seized by Mossad from “Iran’s nuclear archive” reported in 2018 mandate zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program.

“If such a State Department position and foreign aid law had been in place in 1963, when JFK was fighting to keep the Israelis from producing nuclear weapons at Dimona, Israel could have delayed enforcement. The Israeli government, through publications financed by the Jewish Agency and distributed in the United States, was accusing Egypt of building ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in order to ‘launch a war of extermination against Israel.’” [See graphic below]

”The Department of State’s declared position means that Israel effectively controls when, if ever, the US will uphold AECA. Given Israel’s position of ‘nuclear ambiguity’ over its own weapons and constant generation of often false reports about its regional rivals, AECA enforcement will never happen.”

Transcript:

HUSSEINI: Yeah, I ask you about the apparent Israeli violations of the Arms Export Act a week or two ago [“State Dept. Claims ‘We Follow the Law in Every Instance’ but Stonewalls on Law About Israeli Nukes”], and you said you weren’t familiar with the laws that would cut off funding to any state that was a nuclear proliferator. Do you have anything further on that?

PRICE: I believe the team provided you some additional background on that. [They emailed me that they would but didn’t give a substantial response until after I asked this question (below)] As in the past, we’re just not in a position to comment specifically on this. Would refer you and any questions you may have on this —

HUSSEINI: But how do you have – how do you expect to have any credibilityon this subject when you can’t even acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal?

PRICE: Again, I just don’t have anything to offer on this, so we’d refer any questions to the Israeli government. As a practice, when it comes to just about any country, certainly any partner, we don’t speak in detail to the capabilities, to the programs of partners around the world, just as we would expect they would not speak to ours.

Yes.

HUSSEINI: You’re referring me to the Israeli government about their own nuclear program?

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

PRICE: That’s correct.

HUSSEINI: About their own nuclear program – you can’t acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons program?

Full transcript of Feb. 27 news conference. Full video.

After questioning State on Feb. 13, I was asked to submit more information to State, which I did that day:

The Symington and Glenn Amendments in the Arms Export Control Act 22 USC §2799aa-1 forbid US aid to clandestine nuclear weapons state non-NNPT signatories unless presidents obtain a waiver from Congress.

Israel has been acknowledged by the US as a nuclear weapons state.

The 1974 CIA SNIE states “We believe that Israel already has produced nuclear weapons.”

The Department of Defense report Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations clearly documents Israel’s nuclear weapons production facilities, revealing:

1. The Israelis were “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.”

2. “The SOREQ and the Dimona/Beer Shiva facilities are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. The SOREQ center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration and non-destructive testing to electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety. This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

3. “The capability of SOREQ to support SDIO and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

While there are provisions in USC §2799aa-1 for presidents to obtain waivers from the Congress for continued aid, as recently as 2018 a member of congress confirmed that no such waivers had ever been issued. (attached)

My unanswered question remains, specifically, how can past, present and future U.S. foreign aid to Israel be lawful under the Symington Glenn amendment restrictions found currently in USC §2799aa-1 and in force since 1976?

I had some communication but did receive a response until Feb. 27 at 9 p.m. from State, which makes no reference to the law cited. This is especially remarkable since the entire exchange took place because Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson claimed: “We follow the law in every instance.”

U.S. policy on this issue has been consistent for decades. The United States has long supported universal adherence to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and remains firmly committed to the goal of a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. We have urged all states that have not yet done so to accede to the NPT and to accept full-scope IAEA safeguards on all of their nuclear activities.

However, we acknowledge that achieving these goals in the Middle East is a long-term objective that will require essential precursors to be in place, including a comprehensive and durable regional peace and compliance by all regional states with their existing nonproliferation commitments and obligations.

So, Israel has to make peace with everyone before the US will acknowledge it has nuclear weapons.

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Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: Middle East Eye)

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***

Volodomyr Zelensky has a lot of powerful backers around the world, and from afar, the Ukrainian president seems politically invincible.

He’s got the Uniparty in Washington, D.C. on his side, coupled with the international globalists in the robust World Economic Forum-attached network, along with the public-private asset management behemoth financiers in BlackRock and co, and another heavy line of credit through the IMF-World Bank group.

Domestically, it’s an entirely different story. The Ukrainian people are suffering greatly under Zelensky, with mandatory conscription and half the country’s land mass now exposed to the horrors and bombardment of an indefinite war footing. Kiev once pursued neutrality and embraced its role as a buffer state as the functioning gold standard for geopolitical relations. Now, at the insistence of the western ruling class, Ukraine has committed realpolitik seppuku and has become fiercely antagonistic to its more powerful neighbor.

The corporate press and D.C. institutions have insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s standing is most at risk of a coup or popular overthrow, but there is no evidence for such an assertion. In fact, polling from the independent Levada-Center shows Putin’s approval rating has spiked to over 80 percent since the commencement of the war in Ukraine. Zelensky, on the other hand, is heading in the opposite direction, becoming increasingly unpopular as the war drags on.

The Zelensky government is fighting wars on two fronts, having engaged in ethnic cleansing against large swaths of its own population, especially the third of the country that is now labeled as enemies of the state due to their Russian ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

Moreover, despite the seemingly endless rounds of Western supplies and money disbursements contributing to the war effort, Ukraine is losing this conflict badly, and their citizens are paying the greatest price for it.

In order to protect his government and his personal standing in office, Zelensky has spent recent weeks and months conducting a Great Purge within Ukraine.

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***

“Light at the end of the tunnel” was an iconic phrase used by the warmongers who kept the U.S. in Vietnam long after the War had been lost. The implication was that insiders could see through the fog of war and know that things were getting better. It was a lie.

In January 1966, long before the military height of the War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told President Johnson that the U.S. had a one-out-of-three chance of winning on the battlefield. But Johnson, like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, and Nixon after him, didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. So, he ginned up a simplistic lie and “soldiered on.”

The lie was blown by the Tet Offensive in January 1968. More than 100 U.S. military installations were attacked in a simultaneous nationwide assault that stunned the U.S. The broadcaster, Walter Cronkite, then “the most trusted man in America,” bellowed on national television, “I thought we were supposed to be winning this damned thing.” It was the beginning of the end of the U.S.’ murderous and failed occupation.

We’re now facing another light-and-tunnel event, this time in Ukraine. Only now, it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the tunnel at the end of the light. What do we mean by that?

Until now, it’s been all light. Remember when the scrappy Ukrainian forces were kicking the barbarian Russian hordes’ asses? When every development betrayed the Russians’ clod-footed strategy, its soldiers’ bad morale, its army’s poor provisioning and worse leadership, and the perilous political situation for Putin back home? The testosterone was flowing. The bravado was intoxicating. The exceptionalism was sublimely seductive. It was only a matter of time and pluck and determination before Ukraine would bloody the bully’s nose and show it what the West was made of.

Remember?

No more.

You can prosecute a war for only so long on the strength of smoke and mirrors, delusions and illusions, lies and press releases. Eventually, however, reality catches up with you. The thuggishly propagandized American citizenry couldn’t know it, but that catching up began in the first weeks of the War and has only accelerated since.

Within the first week of the War, Russia had destroyed Ukraine’s air force and air defenses. By the second week, it had taken out most of Ukraine’s armories and weapons depots. Over following weeks and months, it systematically demolished artillery shipped in from former Warsaw Pact, now NATO, countries in Eastern Europe. It dismantled the country’s transportation and fuel supply systems. It has recently taken out most of the country’s electrical infrastructure.

The Ukrainian army has lost an estimated 150,000 troops, a pace more than 140 times the rate of U.S. losses in Vietnam. This, at a time when 10 million of its formerly 36 million people have fled the country. The military is down to dragooning 16-year-old boys and 60-year-old men to man the barricades. It cannot get replacement ammunition. Russia has knocked out some 90% of Ukraine’s drones, leaving it largely sightless. Delivery times for the tanks that are the hoped-for “game changer” are running into months and years. Not that that will matter.

Remember all the other failed “game changers”? The M777 howitzers and the Stryker armored fighting vehicles? The HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and the PATRIOT air defense systems? All were going to turn the tide at one time. All have proven impotent to stop Russia from seizing 20% of Ukraine’s territory and annexing it and its people to Russia.

The U.S. lost the economic war, as well. Remember Joe Biden’s delusional prediction that the U.S. would see that “the ruble will be reduced to rubble”? And that “the most stringent sanctions regime in history” was going to “weaken” Russia, perhaps even leading to Putin’s overthrow? Most of it backfired, badly. Last year, the ruble reached its highest exchange rate in history. Russia’s 2022 trade surplus of $227 billion was up 86% from 2021. The U.S.’ trade deficit over the same period rose 12.2%, and is approaching $1 trillion.

As a result of all of the above and more, the tide of insider opinion has turned against the War. Senior officials in Europe are talking openly about how the losses are unsustainable and they need to get back to security architectures that prevailed before the poisoned CIA-supported coup in Maidan in 2014. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently let slip that “It will be very, very difficult to eject the Russians from all of occupied Ukraine in the next year. The Washington Post warned recently that Ukraine faced a “critical moment” in the war, belaboring the fact that U.S. support was not limitless and would soon be reached. Hint. Hint.

The Rand Corporation, one of the U.S.’ best-connected strategic whisperers, just published a report stating that “The consequences of a long war far outweigh the benefits.” It explicitly states that the U.S. needs to husband its resources for its more important upcoming conflict with China. Newsweek headlined that “Joe Biden Offered Vladimir Putin 20 Percent of Ukraine to End War.” It also revealed that “Nearly 90 percent of the world isn’t following us on Ukraine.” Vast swaths of Latin American, Africa, and Asia refuse to support the U.S. in its demand for sanctions against Russia.

These are not “Light at the end of the tunnel” divinations. Quite the contrary. If there’s a common thread running through it all it is the sickening recognition that the war is lost, militarily, economically, and diplomatically, that there is no plausible scenario in which those losses will be turned around by soldiering on, and that what is needed now is a hide-the-loss, get-out-any-way-you-can, face-saving exit strategy.

That will not be available, either. That’s where the tunnel at the end of the light comes into play.

Even before the U.S. and its NATO puppets undertook the War, the rest of the world—and that means most of the world—was congealing itself into an anti-Western economic and security bloc. Led by China and its strategic ally, Russia, that bloc includes more than a dozen trade and security organizations. Those include the BRICS confederation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, working explicitly to devise multi-polar institutions to stand up to the U.S.’ unipolar hegemonic model.

It includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security compact made up of leading nations from east, central, and south Asia, including China, Russia, India, and soon, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. It is explicitly working to devise measures to prevent the kind of predatory military assaults the U.S. carried out against Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

The organizing economic engine behind these efforts it is China’s Belt and Road Initiative. BRI is a dizzyingly ambitious plan to connect Asia and more than 100 nations with 21st Century economic infrastructure, everything from highways and high-speed rail lines, to power generation, energy pipelines, communication systems, cities, ports, and more. It is critical to understand why BRI poses such daunting challenges to U.S. supremacy in the world.

Infrastructure is so powerful because it spins off a vast, unimaginable array of secondary, and tertiary economic benefits. It was the railroads in the nineteenth century that bound the U.S. together as the world’s first continental-scale market. Manufacturers could produce for a larger market, and, therefore, at larger scale, and, therefore, at lower cost, than could producers anywhere else on earth.

The railroads made the U.S. the largest market in the world for iron, steel, machine tools, grading equipment, farm equipment, and scores of other commercial and industrial products essential to a modern industrial economy. The U.S. began the 1800s with 1.5% of the world’s GDP. It ended the century with 19% of a four-times larger number, making it the largest economy in the world.

Similarly, automobiles. People think it was Henry Ford and mass production that made the Twentieth Century “The American Century.” In fact, it was the build-out of millions of miles of roads and, later, interstates, without which automobiles would have remained expensive playthings of the wealthy. Those roads stitched the country together into an asphalt network that allowed individual mobility, by virtually anybody, anywhere, down to every street address in the country. The world had never seen anything like it.

The secondary and tertiary economic effects were astounding, everything from the world’s largest markets for steel, glass, plastics, and rubber, to gasoline, diesel, highway construction on a continental scale, repair shops and drive-ins, to the entire panoply of culture we know of as suburbia. The Twentieth Century was the Century of the Automobile. The infrastructure the U.S. built to make it possible was the major reason—at least economically—that the U.S. led the world for most of that century.

China is now proposing to do the same for Asia in the Twenty-First Century, but on a much larger scale. It is leading an infrastructure build-out that will dwarf Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system. It will serve most of the five billion people in Eurasia, thirty TIMES more than the 150 million people Eisenhower’s project helped.

Wisely, China has ensured that all of the 100+ nations joining BRI are enriched by their participation, whether building themselves up domestically, or extending their reach internationally. It is the largest, most compelling, geographically extensive, nationally inclusive, mutually enriching economic enterprise in the history of the world. The U.S. is not part of it.

Finally, there is the matter of the dollar. Since the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, the global economy has used the dollar as the primary currency of international trade. This has given the U.S. an “exorbitant privilege” in that it can essentially write an unlimited stream of hot checks to the world, because countries need dollars to be able to conduct international commerce. The U.S. “sells” them dollars by issuing Treasury debt, which is a universally fungible international medium of exchange.

One of the consequences of this arrangement is that it has allowed the U.S. to spend far beyond its means, running up $32 trillion of debt since 1980, when its national debt stood at a mere $1 trillion. The U.S. uses this debt to, among other things, fund its gargantuan military with its 800 military bases around the world, which it uses to do things like destroy Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and a host of lesser predations on other countries. All the world sees this and is repulsed by it.

The world sees how dollar hegemony underwrites the U.S.’ ability to carry out or attempt coups in Honduras, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Belarus, Egypt, Syria, and, of course, Ukraine, among others. And these are just those in the past two decades.

The same dollar hegemony underwrote U.S. predations in the latter part of the Twentieth Century against Iran, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, and dozens of other countries. Again, the rest of the world sees this. U.S. citizens, rapturously oblivious in their hermetically sealed media bubble, do not.

The world saw how the U.S. stole $300 billion of Russian funds that were held in Western banks, part of its sanctions regime against Russia for its role in the Ukraine war. They’ve seen how the U.S. has carried out similar thefts against dollar-denominated funds of Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iran. It sees how the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates to take care of U.S. needs makes capital flow out of other countries, and how it makes their currencies fall, forcing inflation on them. Not a single country in the world is left untouched.

The cumulative impact of these facts is that many countries would rather not be held hostage to the implicit and explicit negative consequences of dollar hegemony. They also want to remove the “exorbitant privilege” that they believe the U.S. has abused to their individual and collective detriment.

They have begun—again, led by Russia and China—to build an international finance and trading system that doesn’t rely on dollars, that uses countries’ local currencies, gold, oil, or other assets to trade. This received special impetus last year when Saudi Arabia announced it would begin accepting Chinese yuan in exchange for its oil. Oil is the world’s most valued internationally-traded commodity, so the perception is that a dam is beginning to break.

It will take years before an equally functional substitute for the dollar is devised but what began a few years ago as a trickle has gained momentum and urgency as a consequence of U.S. actions in Ukraine. When the dollar is no longer the world’s international reserve currency and nations don’t need dollars to trade with each other, the U.S. will no longer be able to fund its massive budget and trade deficits by writing hot checks. The withdrawal will be agonizing and will greatly circumscribe the U.S.’ role as global hegemon.

U.S. actions in Ukraine have driven together its two greatest adversaries, Russia and China. They, joined by India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and dozens of other countries, are carrying out a Mackinder-feared Eurasian integration that will leave the U.S. outside of the world’s largest and most dynamic trading bloc.

The U.S.’ military failure has advertised, once again (after Iraq and Afghanistan), the relative impotence of U.S. military solutions. Yes, it can still destroy small, defenseless countries like Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But against a peer competitor that has chosen to stand up to it, the U.S. has, frankly, been handed its ass. All the world can see it.

Events have shown the hollowness of U.S.-led economic and financial systems, as well, especially compared to China. China’s economic performance has far surpassed that of the U.S. It has lifted more people out of poverty more quickly than any country in the history of the world. Its growth has made it the largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity terms. While average inflation-adjusted incomes in the U.S. are little higher than they were 50 years ago, incomes in China are up more than 10 TIMES over the same period. And it has done this without brutalizing and pillaging other nations that refuse to bend to its hegemonic will.

And, the War has betrayed, as nothing else possibly could, the diplomatic isolation of the U.S., with the vast majority of the world’s people refusing to implement U.S.-demanded sanctions against Russia. Its destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline is recognized as the greatest act of state-sponsored terrorism in history, easily surpassing 911 in terms of the hundreds of millions of people it will hurt. And this, to one of its putative allies, Europe. Imagine what happens to its enemies.

This is the tunnel at the end of the light, a multi-polar as opposed to a unipolar world. It means increasing isolation of the U.S. from the rest of the world, the closing in of options, the narrowing of opportunities, the loss of strategic primacy that once graced the greatest power in the history of the world. It will mean dramatically reduced power and influence vis-à-vis the U.S.’ strategic adversaries, and markedly constrained ability to operate militarily, economically and financially in the world, what with the hot checkbook soon to be taken away.

In twenty or thirty years, the U.S. will still be a substantial regional power, perhaps like Brazil in South America, Iran in West Asia, or Nigeria in Africa. But it will not be the global hegemon it once was, able to project and inflict power in the world as it has done for the last century. The U.S. abused its providential anointment as the exceptional nation. That abuse has been recognized, called out, and is now being acted against by most of the other nations of the world. The future will be very different for the U.S. than it has been for the past 80 years, since the end of World War II when it towered over the rest of the world like a giant among pygmies. Ukraine will prove to have been the turning point in this transformation, the tunnel at the end of the light.

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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Robert Freeman is Founder and Executive Director of The Global Uplift Project which builds small-scale infrastructure projects in the developing world to improve humanity’s capacity for self-development. Robert taught economics and history at Los Altos High School where he also coached the Speech and Debate team, including producing a national champion in 2006. He has traveled extensively in both the developed and developing world. He is the author of “The Best One Hour History” series which includes “World War I” (2013), “The InterWar Years” (2014), “The Vietnam War” (2013), and other titles.

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In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

Even prior to Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, the threat of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia was intensifying. After all, in August 2019, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, long heralded as a pillar of arms control between the two superpowers.

“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise,” declared Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the announcement. “With the full support of our NATO allies, the United States has determined Russia to be in material breach of the treaty and has subsequently suspended our obligations under the treaty.” No evidence of that breach was offered, but in Trump World, no evidence was needed.

Then, on February 21st of this year, following the Biden administration’s claims that Russia was no longer abiding by its obligations under the New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms accord between the two nations, Putin announced that he would end his country’s participation.

In the year since Russia’s initial assault on Ukraine, the danger of nuclear war has only inched ever closer. While President Biden’s White House raised doubts that Putin would indeed use any of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ominously reset its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest since its creation in 1947. Those scientific experts weren’t buying what the Biden administration was selling.

“As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States… stands in jeopardy,” read a January 2023 press release from the Bulletin before Putin backed out of the agreement. “Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026. This would eliminate mutual inspections, deepen mistrust, spur a nuclear arms race, and heighten the possibility of a nuclear exchange.”

Of course, they were correct and, in mid-February, the Norwegian government claimed Russia had already deployed ships armed with tactical nukes in the Baltic Sea for the first time in more than 30 years.

“Tactical nuclear weapons are a particularly serious threat in several operational scenarios in which NATO countries may be involved,” claimed the report. “The ongoing tensions between Russia and the West mean that Russia will continue to pose the greatest nuclear threat to NATO, and therefore to Norway.”

For its part, in October 2022, NATO ran its own nuclear bombing drills, designated “Steadfast Noon,” with fighter jets in Europe’s skies involved in “war games” (minus live weaponry). “It’s an exercise to ensure that our nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective,” claimed NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, but it almost seemed as if NATO was taunting Putin to cross the line.

And yet, here’s the true horror story lurking behind the war in Ukraine. While a nuclear tit-for-tat between Russia and NATO — an exchange that could easily destroy much of Eastern Europe in no time at all — is a genuine, if frightening, prospect, it isn’t the most imminent radioactive peril facing the region.

Averting a Meltdown

By now, we all ought to be familiar with the worrisome Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex (ZNPP), which sits right in the middle of the Russian incursion into Ukraine. Assembled between 1980 and 1986, Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear-power complex, with six 950-megawatt reactors. In February and March of last year, after a series of fierce battles, which caused a fire to break out at a nearby training facility, the Russians hijacked the embattled plant. Representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were later sent in to ensure that the reactors weren’t at immediate risk of meltdown and issued a report stating, in part, that:

“…further escalation affecting the six-reactor plant could lead to a severe nuclear accident with potentially grave radiological consequences for human health and the environment in Ukraine and elsewhere and that renewed shelling at or near the ZNPP was deeply troubling for nuclear safety and security at the facility.”

Since then, the fighting has only intensified. Russia kidnapped some of the plant’s Ukrainian employees, including its deputy director Valery Martynyuk. In September 2022, due to ongoing shelling in the area, Zaporizhzhia was taken offline and, after losing external power on several occasions, has since been sporadically relying on old diesel backup generators. (Once disconnected from the electrical grid, backup power is crucial to ensure the plant’s reactors don’t overheat, which could lead to a full-blown radioactive meltdown.)

However, relying on risk-prone backup power is a fool’s game, according to electrical engineer Josh Karpoff. A member of Science for the People who previously worked for the New York State Office of General Services where he designed electrical systems for buildings, including large standby generators, Karpoff knows how these things work in a real-world setting. He assures me that, although Zaporizhzhia is no longer getting much attention in the general rush of Ukraine news, the possibility of a major disaster there is ever more real. A backup generator, he explains, is about as reliable as a ’75 Winnebago.

“It’s really not that hard to knock out these kinds of diesel generators,” Karpoff adds. “If your standby generator starts up but says there’s a leak in a high-pressure oil line fitting, it sprays heated, aerosolized oil all over the hot motor, starting a fire. This happens to diesel motors all the time. A similar diesel engine fire in a locomotive was partly responsible for causing the Lac Megantic Rail Disaster in Quebec back in 2013.”

Sadly enough, Karpoff is on target. Just remember how the backup generators failed at the three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Many people believe that the 9.0 magnitude underwater earthquake caused them to melt down, but that’s not exactly the case.

It was, in fact, a horrific chain of worsening events. While the earthquake itself didn’t damage Fukushima’s reactors, it cut the facility off from the power grid, automatically switching the plant to backup generators. So even though the fission reaction had stopped, heat was still being produced by the radioactive material inside the reactor cores. A continual water supply, relying on backup power, was needed to keep those cores from melting down. Then, 30 minutes after that huge quake, a tsunami struck, knocking out the plant’s seawater pumps, which subsequently caused the generators to go down.

“The myth of the tsunami is that the tsunami destroyed the [generators] and had that not happened, everything would have been fine,” former nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! “What really happened is that the tsunami destroyed the [sea] pumps right along the ocean… Without that water, the [diesel generators] will overheat, and without that water, it’s impossible to cool a nuclear core.”

With the sea pumps out of commission, 12 of the plant’s 13 generators ended up failing. Unable to cool, the reactors began to melt, leading to three hydrogen explosions that released radioactive material, carried disastrously across the region and out to sea by prevailing winds, where much of it will continue to float around and accumulate for decades.

At Zaporizhzhia, there are several scenarios that could lead to a similar failure of the standby generators. They could be directly shelled and catch fire or clog up or just run out of fuel. It’s a dicey situation, as the ongoing war edges Ukraine and the surrounding countries toward the brink of a catastrophic nuclear crisis.

“I don’t know for how long we are going to be lucky in avoiding a nuclear accident,” said Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA in late January, calling it a “bizarre situation: a Ukrainian facility in Russian-controlled territory, managed by Russians, but operated by Ukrainians.”

Bad Things Will Follow

Unfortunately, it’s not just Zaporizhzhia we have to worry about. Though not much attention has been given to them, there are, in fact, 14 other nuclear power plants in the war zone and Russia has also seized the ruined Chernobyl plant, where there is still significant hot radioactive waste that must be kept cool.

Kate Brown, author of Plutopia, told Science for the People last April:

“Russians are apparently using these two captured nuclear installations like kings on a chessboard. They hold Chernobyl and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power reactor plants, and they are stockpiling weapons and soldiers there as safe havens. This is a new military tactic we haven’t seen before, where you use the vulnerability of these installations, as a defensive tactic. The Russians apparently figured that the Ukrainians wouldn’t shoot. The Russians noticed that when they came to the Chernobyl zone, the Ukrainian guard of the Chernobyl plant stood down because they didn’t want missiles fired at these vulnerable installations. There are twenty thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, more than half of them in basins at that plant. It’s a precarious situation. This is a new scenario for us.”

Of course, the hazards facing Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl would be mitigated if Putin removed his forces tomorrow, but there’s little possibility of that happening. It’s worth noting as well that Ukraine is not the only place where, in the future, such a scenario could play out. Taiwan, at the center of a potential military conflict between the U.S. and China, has several nuclear power plants. Iran operates a nuclear facility. Pakistan has six reactors at two different sites. Saudi Arabia is building a new facility. The list only goes on and on.

Even more regrettably, Russia has raised the nuclear stakes in a new way, setting a distressing precedent with its illegal occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl, turning them into tools of war. No other power-generating source operating in a war zone, even the worst of the fossil-fuel users, poses such a potentially serious and immediate threat to life as we know it on this planet.

And while hitting those Ukrainian reactors themselves is one recipe for utter disaster, there are other potentially horrific “peaceful” nuclear possibilities as well. What about a deliberate attack on nuclear-waste facilities or those unstable backup generators? You wouldn’t even have to strike the reactors directly to cause a disaster. Simply take out the power-grid supply lines, hit the generators, and terrible things will follow. With nuclear power, even the purportedly “peaceful” type, the potential for catastrophe is obvious.

The Greatest of Evils

In my new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, I probe the horrors of the Hanford site in Washington state, one of the locations chosen to develop the first nuclear weapons for the covert Manhattan Project during World War II. For more than 40 years, that facility churned out most of the plutonium used in the vast American arsenal of atomic weapons.

Now, however, Hanford is a radioactive wasteland, as well as the largest and most expensive environmental clean-up project in history. To say that it’s a boondoggle would be an understatement. Hanford has 177 underground tanks loaded with 56 million gallons of steaming radioactive gunk. Two of those tanks are currently leaking, their waste making its way toward groundwater supplies that could eventually reach the Columbia River. High-level whistleblowers I interviewed who worked at Hanford told me they feared that a hydrogen build-up in one of those tanks, if ignited, could lead to a Chernobyl-like event here in the United States, resulting in a tragedy unlike anything this country has ever experienced.

All of this makes me fear that those old Hanford tanks could someday be possible targets for an attack. Sabotage or a missile strike on them could cause a major release of radioactive material from coast to coast. The economy would crash. Major cities would become unlivable. And there’s precedent for this: in 1957, a massive explosion occurred at Mayak, Hanford’s Cold War sister facility in the then-Soviet Union that manufactured plutonium for nukes. Largely unknown, it was the second biggest peacetime radioactive disaster ever, only “bested” by the Chernobyl accident. In Mayak’s case, a faulty cooling system gave out and the waste in one of the facility’s tanks overheated, causing a radioactive blast equivalent to the force of 70 tons of TNT, contaminating 20,000 square miles. Countless people died and whole villages were forever vacated.

All of this is to say that nuclear waste, whether on a battlefield or not, is an inherently nasty business. Nuclear facilities around the world, containing less waste than the underground silos at Hanford, have already shown us their vulnerabilities. Last August, in fact, the Russians reported that containers housing spent fuel waste at Zaporizhzhia were shelled by Ukrainian forces. “One of the guided shells hit the ground ten meters from them (containers with nuclear waste…). Others fell down slightly further — 50 and 200 meters,” alleged Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official there. “As the storage area is open, a shell or a rocket may unseal containers and kilograms, or even hundreds of kilograms of nuclear waste will be emitted into the environment and contaminate it. To put it simply, it will be a ‘dirty bomb.’”

Ukraine, in turn, blamed Russia for the strike, but regardless of which side was at fault, after Chernobyl (which some researchers believe affected upwards of 1.8 million people) both the Ukrainians and the Russians understand the grave risks of atomically-charged explosions. This is undoubtedly why the Russians are apparently constructing protective coverings over Zaporizhzhia’s waste storage tanks. An incident at the plant releasing radioactive particles would damage not just Ukraine but Russia, too.

As former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is the greatest of evils and such evils rise exponentially with the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. Worse yet, a radioactive Armageddon doesn’t have to come from the actual detonation of nuclear bombs. It can take many forms. The atom, as Einstein warned us, has certainly changed everything.

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Joshua Frank, a TomDispatch regular, is an award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor of CounterPunch. He is the author of the new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America (Haymarket Books).

Featured image is from South Front

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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For well over three decades, the political West has been exerting unprecedented pressure on Serbia. The incessantly belligerent and imperialist power pole invested decades and enormous resources to fragment and reduce Serbian ethnic space to only a fraction of what it was just 30 years ago. This was accomplished through the backing of various Neo-Nazi and terrorist groups and setting up their respective regimes in areas previously controlled by Serbia. These vassal entities would then conduct ethnic cleansing of native Serbs from the area, engineering their respective majorities in certain regions which would then be incorporated by the said NATO vassals or turned into new states and statelets by carving them up from Serbia.

A prominent example of this is the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia, which the belligerent alliance took by force in 1999, after the illegal bombing that was the focal point of almost ten years of continuous US/NATO aggression.

Now, after over two decades of crawling US-backed separatist actions by the illegal narco-terrorist government in Pristina, the European Union is pushing the final solution that would be the last nail in the coffin of Serbia’s sovereignty. Months of tremendous pressure from the US, EU and NATO have pushed Belgrade to the brink. The previously veiled threats by Brussels and Washington DC have become as direct as they could possibly be, particularly since the start of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe.

Serbia’s continuous refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow is seen as nothing less than “heresy” in the political West. The small country is rather unique in this regard, as it’s still the only one in Europe that has not imposed them. The result is a constant exacerbation of the political West’s hostility towards Serbia, which is now being forced to finally renounce its well-over-a-millennium-old land occupied by NATO forces. The so-called Franco-German plan, in the works for several months now, means the de facto recognition of the illegal “State of Kosovo”. One of its points represents quite possibly the pinnacle of the utter hypocrisy and double standards the political West is well-known (or rather infamous) for.

Namely, Article 3 states that “the sides… …reaffirm the inviolability… …of the border existing between them and undertake fully to respect each other’s territorial integrity”. It’s rather laughable to suggest that Serbia’s territorial integrity will be “respected” by the very separatists aiming to take approximately 12% of its land (recognized by the UN). Worse yet, Serbia is now forced to “respect the territorial integrity” of the illegal US-backed narco-terrorist entity currently occupying its southern province. Unfortunately, the Serbian government has also been trying to circumvent Western pressure by voting for anti-Russian resolutions in the UN General Assembly, hoping to relieve at least some pressure from Washington DC and Brussels, but it’s now obvious all this was in vain.

In doing so, the Serbian government went against the vast majority of its own electorate, which is overwhelmingly pro-Russian (and has been for centuries).

For years, Belgrade has been trying to maintain its (official) neutrality, but as the political West operates under the “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy framework, this is effectively considered “hostile” and now, the Serbian government is forced to make choices which will effectively mean political suicide in a country whose populace is well aware of the malice and harm caused by Washington DC and Brussels. And yet, even the attempts to appease the political West have been completely in vain, as the pressure on Serbia and its sovereignty and territorial integrity continues unabated.

On the anniversary of Russia’s special military operation, the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution condemning Russia and “supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine”. Serbia was forced to vote in favor, meaning that Belgrade officially supports the territorial integrity of the illegal Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, but it violates its own by “respecting” the “territorial integrity” of the NATO-backed narco-terrorist entity in Pristina. To make matters worse, it is doing so while siding with the political West, the greatest threat to its very existence, against Russia, its only true ally in the international arena. The cognitive dissonance in this case is hardly comparable to any other geopolitical situation anywhere in the world.

Serbia is a perfect example that appeasement will not only fail to produce the desired results, but also backfire. Despite well over two decades of accepting virtually every political West’s “suggestion”, the blackmails continue. The very next step is extremely likely to be the termination of Republika Srpska, forcefully integrated into “independent” Bosnia and Herzegovina nearly 30 years ago.

Soon after, the question of sanctions against Russia will surely be presented as “vital” to Belgrade’s “Euro-Atlantic future”. And yet, even if Serbia accepts this, Washington DC and Brussels will certainly demand further subservience, including possible sanctions against China, another global power Serbia has good relations with.

Unfortunately, Serbia is a perfect example of how any attempt to maintain sovereignty and territorial integrity while trying to appease the political West is not only absurd, but also a dangerous fantasy that will always end in utter disaster for anyone attempting it. True sovereignty and independence can only be guaranteed with the complete dismantling of the political West and the emergence of the multipolar world order which would ensure that neocolonialism and imperialism are defeated once and for all. Sadly, there’s only one known way to achieve this.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

On the short roof outside the bedroom window, two black vultures sit, staring in.  They have come to remind me of something.  I put my book down and peer back at these strange looking creatures. The book: Our War: What We Did in Vietnam And What It Did to Us by David Harris.  I had read it when it was first published in 1996 and it has stuck with me, as has the utterly savage U.S. war against Vietnam that killed so many millions, what the Vietnamese call The American War.

I am of the same generation as Harris, the courageous draft resister and anti-war campaigner who died on February 6.  Like him, many of us who were of draft age then have never been able to extricate the horror of that war from our minds.  Most, I suppose, but surely not those who went to Vietnam to fight, just moved on and allowed the war to disappear from their consciousness as they perhaps tried to think of it as a “mistake” and to live as if all the constant American wars since weren’t happening.  As for the young, the war against Vietnam is ancient history, and if they learned anything about it in school, it was erroneous for sure, a continuation of the lie.

But it was no mistake; it was an intentional genocidal war waged to torture, kill, and maim as many Vietnamese as possible and to use drafted (enslaved) American boys to do the killing and suffer the consequences.  It’s Phoenix Program, the CIA’s assassination and torture operation, became the template for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, CIA black sites, hybrid wars, terrorist actions, etc. up to today.  Harris writes:

[that] . . . . “calling the war a mistake is the fundamental equivalent of calling water wet or dirt dirty. . . . Let us not lose sight of what really happened.  In this particular ‘mistake,’ at least 3 million people died, only 58,000 of whom were Americans.  These 3 million people died crushed in the mud, riddled with shrapnel, hurled out of helicopters, impaled on sharpened bamboo, obliterated in carpets of explosives dropped from bombers flying so high they could only be heard and never seen; they died reduced to chunks by one or more land mines, finished off by a round through the temple or a bayonet through the throat, consumed by sizzling phosphorous, burned alive by jellied gasoline, strung up by their thumps, starved in cages, executed after watching their babies die, trapped on the barbed wire calling for their mothers.  They died while trying to kill, they died while trying to kill no one, they died heroes, they died villains, they died at random, they died most often when someone who had no idea who they were killed them under the orders of who had even less idea than that.

That’s the truth.  Unvarnished.  But such historical truth hurts to consider, for it reminds us that the belief in the U.S.A.’s good intentions is a delusion. The war against Vietnam was immoral, but even that word fails to grasp it.  Pure evil is truer.  And to consider that war on military terms alone, one must accept the fact the U.S. lost the war despite all its military technology.

Time, that truly mysterious bird, forces us back to the past as it perpetually opens to the future – all in the meditative present.  I look out the window and think how each of us lives in the time circles of our days, morning till night and then the same again and again as these small carousels carry us like arrows to the day time runs out for us. Time is a circle and an arrow within a circle and . . . pure mystery. It encloses us. And when we are gone, as is dear David Harris, the circle game goes on and on as yesterday’s wars are resurrected today.  An unbroken circle of human madness.  Yet many carry on in hope because conscience calls.  And now is all the time we have.

I am writing this on Ash Wednesday, the day Christians begin Lent and take ashes on our foreheads to remind us of our mortality – dust to dust.  Six weeks later comes Easter, the Resurrection from the dead, the day of hope.  Six circular weeks celebrated every spring within the circle of every year on a calendar that moves straight ahead with the clicking of the numbers.  Death, hope, and resurrection, even as history suggests it is hopeless to stop wars. That the vultures always triumph.  Yet many carry it on in hope because conscience calls.  And all time is now.

Yes, I look out and the vultures’ gaze reduces me to a cataleptic state for a few moments. Then the thought of David Harris and his book on the table transports me back to the past, while my vulture visitors mouth the words “Evermore, Evermore” to remind me that the same war vultures are here now and are eager for prey in the future.  They devour the dead.  They have never left, just as the truth about the U.S. war against Vietnam has not, if one allows it to sink in. It is a lesson not too late for the learning, for the United States warfare state has continued to wage wars all around the world. None are mistakes.  It would be a terrible mistake to think so.

Cuba, Iraq, Serbia, Nicaragua, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Chile, Indonesia, China, Afghanistan, Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, Russia via Ukraine, etc. – all intentional and all based on lies.  It’s the American Way, just as it was for Vietnam.

Quoth the vultures “Evermore.”

Like David Harris, I refused to go to the war but the war came to me.  When I became a conscientious objector from the Marines, I avoided killing Vietnamese but their killing by my countrymen has haunted me to this day. Unlike David, who was far more courageous than I, I didn’t go to prison, although I was prepared to do so. But I learned then, and have never forgotten, that my country is controlled by blood-thirsty vultures.

Flying back in time, I remember a conversation I had with a friend on the plane to Marine boot camp at Parris Island, that infamous torture chamber in South Carolina where boys are made into professional killers.  I told him how confused I was since I hadn’t been raised to kill people.  Actually the opposite.  As a good Catholic boy, I was taught to love others, not to kill them.  No one I knew ever said they saw a contradiction.  Yet here I was going to do that.  It was insane.  I kept conflating the slogan “The Marines Build Men: Body, Mind, and Spirit” with the advertising jingle I grew up hearing from the New York Yankees’ announcer, Mel Allen, who would intone the sponsor’s (Ballantine Beer) slogan: remember fans “The Three Ring Sign: Purity, Body, and Flavor – So Ask the Man for Ballantine.”  Then there was the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: let us pray; men built by the Marines; purity and impurity, body, God’s body, bodies denied and maimed, killing other bodies, “In the Name of the Father and the Son and… “  It all felt so bizarre and my mind was a confused whirligig of contradictions.  What the hell was I doing on that plane, I thought.  Whose life was it anyway?

October 6, 1966.  Zippo Squads on CBS News, setting fire to peasant huts in Vietnam.  When I was younger, a Zippo lighter seemed so cool and manly.  Silvery and clicky, a cigarette in the corner of my mouth.  A real tough guy.  John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart.

Memories.  That’s what vultures can do.  One look and you are gone.

In the 1960s, things were simpler.  Although there were many newspapers then, and people read much more, it was television with its few major networks that fixated people.  Unlike today – when there is no military draft, the realities of U.S. wars are hidden from television viewers, and the internet is regularly scrubbed of the grizzly truth of our wars – in the 1960s, bloody images from Vietnam became a staple of the evening news shows.  Harris writes:

We must not forget: it was a more simpleminded age, the information superhighway was still a deer trail, and network television was taken as reality, giving the folks back home a vivid, utterly riveting look at what some of their boys were going through, a kind of visceral access available to no previous generation of Americans.

To accompany those sights and sounds, the folks back home were also given a running explanation of what was going on from their government. And the latter created the war’s second front.  Unprecedented visibility ensured that in this war, the government fought one war in the paddies against its NLF and North Vietnamese adversaries and another over the U.S. airwaves, trying to put the appropriate spin on events and convince America that there really was some important reason for going through all this. There wasn’t enough political support for the war to do otherwise, and television had too much impact. The obvious consequence was that Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon spent a good deal of their energy playing to the cameras, just trying to make the war look like what America thought its wars should look like.

More simpleminded it may have been, but that so-called simplemindedness together with the visual imagery from Vietnam – despite all the government propaganda – did help turn many people against the war despite Nixon’s ruthless ability to keep it running so long.

Everything is different today, except for the propaganda and the wars.  A look back to Vietnam is crucial for understanding what’s happening now, for it makes absolutely clear that the U.S. government has no compunction about killing millions of innocent people for its evil ends, whatever they may be.

Then, it would destroy a village in order to save it; today, it will destroy the world in order to save it.  It is the logic of madmen in the grip of evil beyond description. Yet most people repress the thought that nuclear war is very close.

All the mainstream media headlines about Ukraine echo the U.S. propaganda about the American War against Vietnam.  Just substitute the word Russian for National Liberation Front or Viet Cong.  They are suffering extraordinary casualties.  The tide is turning.  “The enemy was being taught the hard way,” writes Harris, “that aggression does not pay.  We were steadily destroying their capacity to fight . . . . Victory was just around the corner.”

It’s easy to laugh at the parallels until a vulture comes calling.  The seeming unreality of their visitation is only equaled by the delusional nature of what passes for news today.

Quoth the Vultures “Evermore.”

David Harris was right about the 1960s when he said, “All that craziness had compromised the nation’s epistemology, rendering our accustomed patterns of knowing dysfunctional.”  This is true a thousand times over today.  If the ‘60s were simpler times, the digital internet revolution and AI have scrambled many people’s minds into a morass perfectly suited for today’s government lies.  “Not only was it hard to know what was really going on,” he writes of Vietnam, “but it was even hard to know how we would know what was really going on if we stumbled over it.”

Then came a shocking surprise: the Tet Offensive that began on January 31, 1968 when everything became quite clear.  This massive attack by the NFL and VC was “the mother of all such epiphanies.”  All official lies were exposed and any prominent dissenter to these lies about the war had to be eliminated, thus Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in quick order by the government that would go on for seven more years to wage its genocidal war against the Vietnamese and neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

That was long ago and far away, but it’s worth contemplating.  No one knows what exactly is around the corner in Ukraine.  But then, I didn’t expect two vultures to visit me with their warning.

I’m just passing on their message.  Epiphanies happen.  But so do cataclysms.

All time is now.

Although David Harris has died, he and the many others, such as Randy Kehler,  who were caged in federal prisons for resisting the draft and opposing the war against Vietnam, live on to inspire us to believe that if we resist the warmongers, someday all free birds might chant in unison “Nevermore.”

Here’s their story, a revelatory film about David and those who refused the siren song of evil: The Boys Who Said No

True patriots.

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

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

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***

The future of humanity will be decided on a battlefield in Ukraine. That’s no exaggeration. The conflict between the United States and Russia will determine whether global economic integration will expand within an evolving multi-polar system or if the “rules-based order” will succeed in crushing any opponent to its Western-centric model. This is what’s taking place in Ukraine today, in fact, all of the recent government-prepared documents related to national security identify Russia and China as the greatest threats to US hegemony. For example, take a look at this brief clip from the 2021 Congressional Research Service Report titled Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress:

The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia… is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: (1) that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests….

From a U.S. perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)

That sums up US foreign policy in a nutshell; “prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon” at all cost. Now check out this summary of the 2022 US National Defense Strategy by Andre Damon at the World Socialist Web Site:

These documents, which were not seriously discussed in the US media, make clear the fundamental falsehood that the massive US military buildup this year is a response to “Russian aggression.” In reality, in the thinking of the White House and Pentagon war planners, the massive increases in military spending and plans for war with China are created by “dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment.”

These documents make clear that the United States sees the economic rise of China as an existential threat, to be responded to with the threat of military force. The United States sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.” (“Pentagon national strategy document targets China”, Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site)

These two excerpts are by no means a comprehensive summary of US foreign policy objectives, but they are a pretty effective thumbnail sketch. Bottom line: The war in Ukraine is not about Ukraine. America’s clearly articulated strategic objectives are as follows: To weaken Russia, topple its leader, take control of its vast natural resources and move on to containing China. Simply put, Washington’s escalating aggression in Ukraine is a Hail Mary pass aimed at containing emerging centers of economic power in order to preserve its waning position in the global order.

This is the geopolitical chess match that is being played behind the cover of “a war against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.” People should not be hoodwinked by that absurd deception. This war was concocted as a desperate attempt for the United States to defend its flickering global hegemony. That’s what Ukraine is really all about. It’s a clash between the warmongering western oligarchs who have a stranglehold on the US media and political establishment and the emerging economies that are using the market system to link their resources and manufactured goods to countries around the world through “high-speed” infrastructure and cooperative development.

So, the question everyone must ask themselves is this: Do you want to see more economic integration, lower prices, more shared prosperity and less war or another 80 years of onerous and arbitrary sanctions, color-coded revolutions, regime change operations, genocidal interventions and bioweapon warfare (Covid-19)? Which do you want?

Perhaps, you are one of the millions of Americans who believe that China is an enemy of the United States. Perhaps, you are also unaware of the role the US played in creating modern China. Here’s a question for you: Did the US and western corporations move their operations en masse to China to escape the high costs of production in the US?

answer– Yes, they did.

And, did they betray US workers because they didn’t want a fair wage to interfere with their excessive profit-making?

answer– Yep.

And, did they offshore their businesses, outsource their product manufacturing and do everything in their power to make themselves winners while robbing American workers of the opportunity of making a decent wage so they could put food on the table?

answer– They sure did.

Then who is actually responsible for the rise of China?

answer– Western corporations are responsible. If Americans want to blame someone, blame them!

But now the corporate mandarins and other elites are unhappy with China because China will not allow them to take control over their markets, financial system and currency as they have in America. So now these same cutthroat corporations want us to fight a war with the monster that they created?

Can you see that? Can you see that the relentless provocations against China have nothing to do with US national security or US interests. We are being led by the nose to fight and die for the cadres of voracious western oligarchs who have settled on China as the next target of their grand looting operation.

But let’s forget the past for a minute and focus on the future, after all, that’s what really matters, right?

Well then, which country has a more “positive vision” for the future: China or the United States?

Have you ever heard of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive, multi trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that is the centerpiece of China’s foreign policy? It is the biggest infrastructure program in history and more 150 countries have invested in the plan already. It is a development-oriented project aimed at increasing connectivity through high-speed rail, shipping lanes and ports, skyscrapers, railroads, roads, bridges, airports, dams, power stations, and railroad tunnels. By increasing the speed of travel, China’s products and merchandise will get to markets faster generating greater prosperity for itself and for the other countries involved. And, keep in mind, the BRI will link countries around the world in a high-speed system that will not require its participants to follow a specific economic model dictated by Beijing. In other words, the Belt and Road Initiative is free market economics without the politics. It’s a “win-win” situation for everyone, a guarantee of mutual prosperity absent political manipulation, coercion or exploitation.

The venal oligarchs that run the US can’t even imagine a project of this scale or potential. In fact, they can’t even pony-up enough money to keep the trains on the rails in America. The profits these billionaire parasites extract from their activities invariably come from stock buybacks, tax evasion, and other sleight-of-hand, debt-layering ponzi-scams that benefit no one and merely shift more of the nation’s wealth into their own bulging bank accounts. Of course, ripping off the country would be bad enough, but now we see how this same class of miscreants have settled on public health as a means for amplifying their political power so they can impose repressive, police-state measures that greatly curtail the freedom of the entire population. In short, they want absolute social control and they aren’t going to let-up until they get it.

Where is the “positive vision” in this behavior?

There isn’t one. America used to be a country of ideas, ideals and vision. Now it is an oligarch-run detension center in which all hope for the future has been ruthlessly extinguished by a handful of mercenary billionaires.

At least, in the case of China, we can imagine a better, more prosperous world that is interconnected and more accessible to everyone. But what about the United States? Are we supposed to believe that fighting a war in eastern Europe is going to improve our lives? Are we supposed to believe that the only way “we can stay on top” is by pushing everyone else down? Are we expected to hate China and Russia even while our own government demonizes 80 million of us for voting for the wrong presidential candidate or for not supporting the terrorists who burn and loot our cities or for believing that the people in East Palestine are more deserving of our support and assistance than the Nazi stormtroopers in Kiev?

The fact is, our leaders cannot imagine devoting public resources to a giant interconnected infrastructure project like BRI, because that would mean less lucre for themselves. So, they’ve decided to destroy it just like they destroyed Nord Stream. Just read the press reviews on this groundbreaking project. Western journalists can’t find a ‘good word’ to say about it. A vast area in the center of America was fiendishly nuked with vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene, but the western media would rather criticize China’s ambitious BRI project than hold their paymasters accountable. Go figure.

The same rule applies to Russia. The Biden team and their wealthy allies don’t want closer relations between Germany and Russia because closer relations mean more prosperity for both countries, and Washington can’t have that, which is why they blew up the pipeline that was Germany’s lifeline to cheap fuel. That’s how Washington solved the problem. It pushed Germany and Russia down so the US could remain on top. Who doesn’t see this?

In contrast, the Belt and Road Initiative provides a positive vision for the future, which is an idea that the majority of the world supports. It puts us on a path to an interconnected world in which people can raise their standards of living, make a meaningful contribution to their communities, and enjoy their own culture and traditions without fear of being sanctioned, incarcerated or bombed to death. This is an excerpt from China’s Global Times:

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has already become a well-received international public good and an important platform for international cooperation…

“BRI transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games, and created a new model of international cooperation. It is not an exclusive group that excludes other participants but an open and inclusive cooperation platform. It is not just China’s solo effort, but a symphony performed by all participating countries….

Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013, the initiative has always been development-oriented, and consistent efforts have been made to ensure that it is high-standard, sustainable and people-centered….

By August, China’s goods trade with countries participating in the BRI had reached around $12 trillion and the country’s non-financial direct investment in those countries surpassed $140 billion. … By the end of 2021, Chinese enterprises had invested $43 billion in the construction of economic and trade cooperation zones in BRI countries, creating more than 340,000 local jobs, official data showed…

China is open to other countries’ and regions’ participation in the BRI and is considering connecting with infrastructure initiatives proposed by other nations to provide more good-quality public goods for the world…. China hopes to join hands with all partners to advance the high-quality development … stressing that China aims to strive for global connection rather than fragmentation, for mutual opening-up rather than shutting doors, for mutual integration rather than zero-sum games.(“BRI remains open, inclusive for all, transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games“, Global Times)

What is the American-led project that rivals the Belt and Road Initiative?

There isn’t one. The US allocates over $1 trillion per year for lethal weaponry and war-making, and trillions more to bail out the Wall Street banksters, and trillions more to shut down all the businesses across the country that were forced to comply with the diktats of billionaire elites who wanted to inject the population with their toxic slurry, but zero for any global infrastructure project that would peacefully bring the world’s people closer together through commerce and recreation.

No one is saying that China is perfect, at least, I’m not. Nor do I want to live in China. I don’t. I’m an American and I plan to die here.

But I’m not blind. It’s easy to see that this war with Russia has nothing to do with “unprovoked aggression.” That is merely a smokescreen that’s being used to conceal the real objective, which is to preserve America’s global hegemony. What we need to do now, is honestly analyze ‘what is happening’; try to understand ‘why it is happening’, and, then, figure out what the outcome will be if the United States prevails. In other words, do we want to perpetuate an oligarch-controlled system that crushes Russia, contains China, starves Europe of the energy it needs, sabotages the Belt and Road infrastructure plan and reinforces the same failed policies that brought us Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq?

Do we want that? Do YOU want that?

The American people want their government to cooperate with other nations in order to create a more prosperous and peaceful world. They don’t want a new world order and they certainly don’t want a Third World War.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

All images in this article are from TUR

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***

The big Covid news the last couple of days has been that the US Department of Energy, via the Wall Street Journal, has claimed that a laboratory leak is the “most likely” origin of “Covid”.

Citing “new evidence”, a DoE panel has amended their assessment from 2021, essentially switching “we don’t know” to “it probably came from a lab”.

This is just the latest step in the lab-leak theory’s remarkable journey from fringe idea to mainstream position, or from “conspiracy theory to government debate”, according to Forbes’ article timelining the whole process.

You know what OffG thinks of the lab-leak theory, we did a fact-check on it back in 2021, and then addressed it again in 2022: “Lab leak” theory makes no sense, and only reinforces the mainstream narrative.

Further, it can now be used as fuel for the “new cold war” narrative.

The US can blame China for creating the virus, while China can either claim it was natural or that the US released it in an act of “bio-terrorism”.

Both sides will claim the other side’s vaccines don’t work, but that theirs do. And, make no mistake, both sides will still very much want to vaccinate everyone.

In some ways this is a symptom of the failure of the Covid narrative. The greatest propaganda push of all time ran out of steam just two years in, and is suddenly fighting defensively simply to hold itself together. Because the “lab leak” debate is very much a fallback position. A retreat in good order, protecting – at all costs – the fundamental lie of “Covid”, viz – there was no new disease.

Let’s say that once more with feeling….

There was NO NEW DISEASE!

There were the old flu symptoms, there was a new name, and there was a crappy test.

And that is all.

This is the one admission the establishment will never make, because it totally breaks their narrative.

Kills it stone dead.

Every other “admission”, debate or idea – “lab leak”, early treatment, government panic, “we underestimated natural immunity”, “the vaccine trials were misleading” – can eventually be brought back around to justifying lockdowns and other authoritarian “public health measures”.

If not for Covid, then for the next “pandemic”.

Patrick Henningsen put it perfectly on Twitter:

For those of you who are getting excited over the recent ‘Lab Leak’ psy-op by US govt, understand that by endorsing the myth of a Covid super virus, you are enabling all the stupid & dangerous ‘mitigation’ measures too… pic.twitter.com/3MR52xBj10

— Patrick Henningsen (@21WIRE) February 27, 2023

Further, every other admission preserves the idea that while governments might lie, they might manipulate, they might “panic”, they might be incompetent, they might be corupt, they may even do quite obscene things, they definitely don’t just make stuff up and pretend it’s real.

That’s a very important line that needs to never be crossed. They will tacitly admit to almost anything else – never that. Because once you start pulling on that thread, who knows what might unravel.

Hopefully the US Department of Energy and the Wall Street Journal throwing their collective weight behind the “lab-leak” theory finally wakes people up to what it really is and always has been.

There’s an old axiom in politics that says you should never believe something until it’s been officially denied.

The reverse holds true: Never believe something once it’s been officially endorsed.

They’ll admit to anything but the truth.

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***

Here is U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has triggered "the most massive violations of human rights" in the world today, the head of the United Nations said Monday, as the war pushed into its second year with no end in sight and tens of thousands dead. https://t.co/XpM0Lu7rb8

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 28, 2023

I don’t recall this level of denunciation and condemnation on the part of UN officialdom when George W. Bush invaded Iraq and killed over a million people.

There was criticism, most prominently by then Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan. He said the neocon invasion violated the UN Charter. Kofi said it was illegal.

Nothing came of this, naturally. There are rules, and they are “based” on whatever the rulers dictate, and the rules then and now dictate the USG, the United States Government, may do as it wishes, no different than any other enforcer of an authoritarian ideology.

The double standard is plain as day. The USG may, without fear of repercussion, and under the cover of false pretense and engineered lies, invade another county, kill thousands if not millions of its citizens, and claim it is promoting “democracy.”

Even if it is revealed a war is based entirely on lies and fabrication, as the Iraq war obviously was, the perpetrators, the neocons in this instance, not only escape culpability, they are allowed to retreat to think tanks and media corporations. Is it any wonder they seep back into government—or never left in the first place—and are now once again dictating foreign policy?

The neocons are the foreign policy establishment, never mind which of the two uniparty factions we might be talking about. During Bush II, Dick Cheney was allowed to drive the neocon foreign policy dream, or nightmare rather, and oversee the widespread destruction across the Middle East.

Back in the day, the neocons were viewed as a republican thing. However, the early neocons were democrats disenchanted with the peace movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, in addition to a dislike of cultural values taking shape in 1960s America.

For the neocons, the democrat faction is a natural home, primarily due to its renewed interest in a belligerent foreign policy, most prominently under President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. “If anything, on foreign policy,” write Marshall Auerbach and James Carden,

the Democrats have moved rightward in recent years, having fallen not only under the spell of “Russiagate” but also increasingly under the influence of neocons and other former Bush officials… The Democrats have also displayed a rather supine obeisance regarding the country’s intelligence community, despite many well-documented lies or half-truths that would, at the very least, justify some skepticism about their claims or motivations.

The “Democratic establishment rehabilitated the neocons,” writes Omar Hassan,

…the neocons dutifully supported Biden against Trump. And the president-elect is filling his administration with militaristic hacks. For instance, Antony Blinken, Biden’s choice for secretary of state, was a supporter of the Iraq invasion. Jake Sullivan has been appointed as a national security adviser after spending years on the board of right-wing think tank Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Elon Musk, all of a sudden a geopolitical expert (despite his war profiteering), was paraphrased recently by Rep. Gosar of Arizona,

Elon is correct. Both Nuland and Blinken have a deeply rooted irrational hatred of Russia, and they seek to get the US involved in another world war. These are dangerous fools who can get us all killed.https://t.co/PCkxUkQYqW

— Rep. Paul Gosar, DDS (@RepGosar) February 23, 2023

Considering the current hysterical political climate, Gosar’s remark, for a government official, is quite amazing. He will be denounced as a Trump stooge and a Russian disinformation bot, never mind the truth spoken.

Call it the Curse of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the russophobic Pole that served as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard” sketched the contours of Russia’s prophesied fall and the capture of Eurasia for neoliberal exploitation. Dr. Carl Boggs writes for Global Research,

None other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, once president Jimmy Carter’s foreign-policy guru, laid out an imperial strategy that would ultimately lead to the gates of Moscow, in his 1997 manifesto titled The Grand Chessboard.  Brzezinski believed the noble superpower was entitled to whatever natural resources it could access in Eurasia, a territory stretching from Europe to the borders of China.  Here it was determined that oil, gas, mineral, and other reserves dwarfed those accessible anywhere else on the planet.  Russia itself would be a special prize, just as Wilson in his ill-defined global liberalism had been the first to recognize. (Emphasis added.)

The subjugation of Russia, the neocon-proposed dismemberment of its union, a return to the 1990s (widespread poverty, disease, alcoholism, shortened life spans), and the repeat of a Nazi invasion (and Napoleon’s before that) have galvanized the Russian people.

There will not be a Ukraine-style coup in Moscow. It remains to be seen what will happen in Ukraine. However, as Russia considers the treachery of the USG and its partners (Minsk I, II), the outrageous war propaganda coming primarily from the USG corporate media, the nonstop stoking of dangerous russophobia, and above all providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to neo-nazi psychopaths, we can reasonably predict the war will continue.

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

In the years between 1910 and 2000, African American farmers and agricultural workers lost over 14 million acres of land.

One of the major demands of the post-Civil War era was the allocation of land to the formerly enslaved Africans in order to establish a foundation for building a self-sufficient community.

As the Union army swept across Georgia and other coastal areas of the southeast from Florida to South Carolina, General William T. Sherman in January 1865 issued his Special Field Order No. 15 which provided for the confiscation of Confederate controlled land and its redistribution to emancipated Africans. On January 12, Sherman met with leaders within the African community, many of whom were Baptist and Methodist ministers, who urged the Union military forces and President Abraham Lincoln to take immediate action.

The policy had the approval of President Lincoln and the agency founded during this period known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to assist Africans in their effort to transition from captivity under the Confederacy to being controlled by the Union military into an independent existence after the war.

The Order took control of huge swaths of land and granted each enslaved family 40-acre plots along with mules. The notion of 40 acres and a mule for formerly enslaved Africans grew out of a practical post-Civil War necessity in regard to disempowering the slavocracy and providing the capacity of Blacks to gain self-reliance.

An entry in the Encyclopedia of Georgia says of this period that:

“The immediate effect of Sherman’s order provided for the settlement of roughly 40,000 Black Americans (both refugees and locals who had been under Union army administration in the Sea Islands since 1861). This lifted the burden of supporting the freedpeople from Sherman’s army as it turned north into South Carolina. But the order was a short-lived promise for Blacks. Despite the objections of General Oliver O. Howard, the Freedmen’s Bureau chief, U.S. President Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman’s directive in the fall of 1865, after the war had ended, and returned most of the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it.”

Despite this historic betrayal by Lincoln’s successor, President Johnson, African Americans through their own initiatives within a weakened Southern economy and racist political structures, were able to acquire approximately 16 million acres of land from the period of Reconstruction to the eve of World War I. Most of these land holdings were utilized as family farms by the millions of African Americans remaining in the former Confederate states after collapse of Reconstruction and the institutionalization of Jim Crow segregation through legislative and court actions on local, state and federal levels.

Consequently, the call for reparations to be paid to the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans must also extend to the post-Civil War and Reconstruction period. African Americans continue to be impacted by the legacy of Atlantic slave trade and the domestic national oppression experienced in the U.S. some 160 years since the Emancipation Proclamation.

Even Bloomberg News, a publication which reports on and analyzes the dimensions of Wall Street transactions and global commerce noted in an article published in 2022:

“African-American farmers lost about $326 billion worth of land in the U.S. due to discrimination during the 20th century, a study found. From 1922 to 1997, Black farmers in 17 American states saw a precipitous decline in their acreage caused by state-sanctioned violence and intimidation, according to the paper. The study, which analyzed U.S. Department of Agriculture census data, will be published in the American Economic Association’s Papers and Proceedings journal. Reuters reported on the study earlier.”

Another source, the American Bar Association, emphasized in an article published on their website in January 2023, said of the historical theft of Black owned land in the U.S.:

“By 1997, Black farmers lost more than 90 percent of the 16 million acres they owned in 1910.

In a recent study, we used county-level Census of Agriculture data to estimate the value of the lost Black agricultural land from 1920 to 1997. For all counties in each of the 17 (mostly southern) states that comprised over 90 percent of all Black-owned farmland, we calculated the yearly acreage loss, multiplied by the county-level estimate of per-acre land values. We then compounded those land- loss values forward to the year 2020 at a rate of return of 6 percent per year for the appreciation of the land and a rate of return of 5 percent per year for the income the land could provide. Our results yield a cumulative value of Black land loss of about $326 billion. To put this figure in perspective, if this represented the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country, that country would rank 41st out of 213 countries in the world ranking of GDP in 2020. This would be in the top 20 percent of countries, ahead of South Africa, Finland, and New Zealand.”

African American Farmers Intervene

In 1981 in Southwest Tennessee, where the movement for voting rights in Fayette and Haywood counties took place beginning in 1959, Thomas Burrell, a leader of the Concerned Black Farmers of Tennessee (CBFT), held a 23-day direct-action occupation of the Department of Agriculture offices in Tipton County. Burrell and his comrades brought nationwide attention to the plight of African American farmers due to the discriminatory practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture through its Home Farms Administration (HFA) which allocates loans to agricultural producers.

Burrell pointed out during the 1980s through the early 2000s, that at his peak he had farmed 3500 acres in adjacent Haywood, Fayette and Madison counties. The demonstration by the CBFT sparked Black farmers in North Carolina, Georgia and other states to take decisive action. They organized into several organizations, hired lawyers and took their complaints to the federal courts.

These efforts led to a renewed Black farmers movement in the U.S. The farmers gained the support and sympathy of a wide spectrum of African Americans including the Congressional Black Caucus and several publications. Progressive and Left-wing organizations as well viewed the struggle against the Agriculture Department and FHA as a continuation of the disenfranchisement and disempowerment of the African American people.

In an article by Gary Gant, the President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), he reflects on the legal decisions which resulted from the class action lawsuit:

“On March 2, 1999, Judge Paul Friedman (U. S. District Judge for the District of Columbia), the presiding Judge in the class action lawsuit of Timothy Pigford, et al., v. Dan Glickman, Secretary, U. S. Department of Agriculture held a fairness hearing wherein the Black farmers and those representing the other side gave testimony as to what they called ‘the fairness and adequacy’ of the lawsuit. Like many of those Black farmers present that day, Thomas Burrell felt then that the lawsuit was not adequate. One of the original plaintiffs in the case against the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the alleged racist and discriminatory practices of the old Farmers Home Administration, Burrell had hopes of seeing America’s Black farmers gain more than a paltry monetary payment from their admitted wrongdoers. ‘In 1982, it was predicted that unless something changed at USDA, Black farmers could be extinct by the year 2000,’ said Gary Grant, president of Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. ‘We have dropped from almost one million in 1920 to less than 18 thousand in 1998. The class action lawsuit ensures – from my perspective – the total demise of the Black farmer in America within the next five or six years.’”

Another class-action lawsuit filed in October 2022 charged the federal government with not paying the settlements which had been agreed upon in earlier legal rulings. During subsequent administrations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to pay up to $2.4 billion to aggrieved African Americans.

Black farmers organizations say that they continue to suffer under the institutional racism of the USDA and other financial institutions. Land loss has not let up while impoverishment of African Americans in the rural South remains constant.

Image: John Boyd and member of the National Black Farmers Association 

An Associated Press report on the latest legal action by African American farmers says:

“John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association and one of four plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said that the new programs don’t match the USDA’s earlier offer to pay off 120 percent of the debt of farmers who are socially disadvantaged…. He said the guarantee of future federal debt relief caused some farmers to invest in their farms, only to be left in worse financial condition after the law changed and payments were delayed. The lawsuit is pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and Boyd said he hopes it will put pressure on the government to act.”

These developments portend much for the ability of the federal government and courts to address the fundamental issues of national oppression and economic exploitation against African Americans. The more than one century of Black land loss has its counterpart in urban and suburban areas as well. During the Great Recession beginning in 2005 and beyond, African Americans lost more than half of their household wealth through subprime mortgage lending which impacted the entire country.

Under capitalism the problems of farm and household losses have not been effectively addressed. The reparations needed to compensate for these aspects of national oppression can only be resolved under a socialist system where land can be nationalized in the interests of workers and farmers.

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

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***

A look at US-based think tank CSIS’ war game regarding a “Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”

Western military leaders and the Western media itself suggests China is pushing for war with the US over Taiwan by 2025;

It is actually the US rushing to war over Taiwan before China’s military and economic power surpasses the US and closes the door indefinitely to Washington’s ability to use its military to coerce and threaten China;

Taiwan is officially considered by the United States as part of China under the One China policy it itself agreed to with Beijing;

US arms sales to Taiwan, visits to Taiwan without Beijing’s approval, and even stationing US troops on Taiwan constitute violations of Chinese sovereignty and are deliberate attempts to provoke war;

US-based think tank CSIS war gamed a scenario in which China is provoked and invades Taiwan;

CSIS admits Chinese military capabilities are comparable to the US’ but ultimately the US could defeat an attempted amphibious landing on Taiwan;

CSIS admits Taiwan’s infrastructure and industry would be destroyed but it would maintain its political autonomy, trading its physical existence in to maintain its political existence;

It is clear the US is simply attempting to disrupt the peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the rest of China and forcing China to pay the highest price possible to defend its sovereignty.

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***

Robert Gates, the former US Secretary of Defense, wrote in his memoirs that when the decision was made to launch a military attack against Afghanistan in 2001, that nobody in Washington had a real idea of how complex a nation it is. This included Afghanistan’s various ethnic groups and the rivalries between urban and rural areas of the country.

It was a similar story with Iraq which the US, with heavy British support, invaded in the spring of 2003. Gates admitted “nearly always, we begin military engagements–wars–profoundly ignorant about our adversaries and about the situation on the ground” (1). Gates went on that the George W. Bush administration (2001–09) was unaware of how degraded Iraq was by 2003. The country, already poor, had suffered years of crushing financial measures imposed on it by the Western powers.

President Bush’s successor, Barack Obama (2009–17), was hardly more enlightened in relation to the north African state of Libya, which the US, alongside its NATO allies France and Britain, started bombing in March 2011.

Libya’s rural structure is based on many tribal groups, for which blood and affinity were the main unifying force. When Muammar Gaddafi took power in Libya in 1969, he at first tried to reduce the significant influence of the nation’s tribes. Colonel Gaddafi believed it would be difficult to integrate them fully into the new, modern Libya which he planned to construct. He considered that tribalism weakened loyalty to the state, shifting power away from the government.

Gaddafi had grown up in a semi-nomadic Bedouin tribe in northern Libya. He understood the tribal life and mentality. With Gaddafi’s attempt to negate the power of the indigenous communities, he divided Libya into zones that split the tribal borders. His policy separated certain tribes and merged them with others into a common zone.

Yet Gaddafi was unable to completely subdue the tribal authority. Out of Libya’s more than 140 tribes, between 30 to 40 of them possessed varying degrees of political sway (2). Recognising it would be dangerous to alienate the indigenous people, Gaddafi pragmatically negotiated alliances with them. In this way he won a certain amount of loyalty from the tribes, or at least neutrality, in which the clan chiefs did not pose a threat to Gaddafi’s leadership or to his government in Tripoli, the capital city.

Libya is among Africa’s biggest countries and it shares a lengthy coastline with the Mediterranean Sea. It was only Gaddafi who had managed to hold together Libya and its fragile national structure, since the state’s independence in the early 1950s. Under Gaddafi, though the country was not a paradise, Libya enjoyed by some distance the best living standards in Africa. By 2010, the year before the NATO bombardment of Libya began, a UN Human Development report placed Libya at the top end of the high human development bracket (3). With regards to living conditions, Libya was ranked 53rd out of more than 190 countries in the human development table.

In 2010 living standards in Libya – based on life expectancy, annual income, etc. – were superior in comparison to major countries like Brazil, China and India. Standard of living in Gaddafi’s Libya was also better than people were experiencing in places like Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Macedonia and Albania.

In mid-January 2011, armed protests against Gaddafi’s government occurred in the Libyan cities of Benghazi, Derna and Bayda. These were not peaceful demonstrations and resulted in dozens of deaths. Many of the insurgents had been encouraged by Anglo-French special forces. The rebels were also advised to secure control over Libya’s oil installations, located in the northern parts of the nation.

 

It was in early 2011 that the second-in-command of the extremist organisation Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, sent veteran terrorists to Libya so as to establish a foothold in the country (4). Western news agencies, and television networks, were portraying the anti-Gaddafi insurgents as benign civilians, despite the fact that video clips showed the “moderates” walking around heavily armed. Intelligence amassed by the CIA, however, stated that the opposition by themselves did not have enough strength to overthrow Gaddafi. That could be done only with outside interference which was well under way.

Elite soldiers from a NATO and EU state, the Netherlands, belonging to the Korps Commandotroepen (KCT), were taken prisoner by Gaddafi’s troops in Sirte, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Sidra, at the end of February 2011. These special forces from the Royal Netherlands Army entered Libya by helicopter (5). On 24 February, a British vessel called ‘HMS Cumberland’ had arrived into the port of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, and British Special Air Service (SAS) commandos walked off the ship. In the weeks before the March 2011 NATO bombing had commenced, special forces from the US, France and Britain were present on Libyan soil; among them were CIA personnel, MI6 officers and French secret agents.

The Italian journalist, Franco Bechis, wrote that France’s foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) had been planning the revolt in Libya since the autumn of 2010 (6). One of Gaddafi’s close colleagues, the Chief of Protocol Nuri al-Mismari, who had fallen out with his leader, abandoned Libya in October 2010 and, by way of Tunisia, he moved on to France. In Paris, al-Mismari spoke at length to the French authorities about the situation in Libya, and he also met with the French military. The plot against Gaddafi involved opposition figures in Benghazi. On 23 December 2010 three Libyan insurgents arrived in Paris, named Ali Ounes Mansouri, Farj Charrant and Fathi Boukhris – they would help to organise the effort to topple Gaddafi, along with France’s military and al-Mismari.

The French leadership and its president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–12), wanted to oust Gaddafi for various reasons. Gaddafi was showing too much independence and unpredictability for the West’s liking. In 2009 the Libyan leader had compelled the French energy multinational, Total, to accept inferior terms relating to oil and gas deals from Libya (7). Total’s contract for the exploitation of oil fields with Libya’s state-owned firm, the National Oil Corporation (NOC), was considerably reduced. Moreover, the French had to accept lower terms (30%) from Libya’s gas production rate, whereas with previous contracts they had taken 50%. (8)

It was the case that the American fossil fuel corporations, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, were forced by Gaddafi’s government to accept lesser deals from Libya in 2009. Libya contains the largest oil reserves in Africa and the quality of its petroleum is very good. The British had investments too in Libya, worth £1.5 billion, mainly in the oil industry (9). Even before Gaddafi’s demise Lord Stephen Green, the British Minister for Trade and Investment, travelled to Tripoli in late September 2011 at the head of a delegation of businessmen, including officials from British Petroleum (BP) and Shell. They were in Libya to have talks concerning business deals with the National Transitional Council, the new de facto government of Libya.

A report from the Guardian newspaper on 26 September 2011 noted,

“British companies are not alone in seeking to make money in post-Gaddafi Libya… The best hotels in Tripoli and Benghazi are buzzing with visiting businessmen as well as security consultants, diplomats, and journalists”. (10)

It may be worth pointing out that the terrorist organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), had performed a central role in the insurgency against Gaddafi. The LIFG commander was Abu Yahya al-Libi, a top-ranking member of Al Qaeda. As with al-Libi, the Al Qaeda boss, Osama bin Laden, was firmly backing the rebellion in Libya and also in Syria.

At the start of April 2011, Bin Laden outlined his desire to see Gaddafi gone and he described the unrest as “a great and glorious event” (11). In a message of 28 March 2011, Bin Laden wrote that he was proud of the response of his “Libyan brothers” who joined the revolt in the country, and that more Al Qaeda fighters were then entering Libya, while others were being prepared to train in neighbouring Algeria.

As was the case in Syria the Western powers and the extremist groups, though for differing reasons, wanted the same immediate outcome: the removal of Gaddafi and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

In late February 2011 Sarkozy, as though he was the ruler of Libya, said at a news conference, “Mr Gaddafi must leave” (12). In mid-March, president Obama echoed his French counterpart, “Mr Gaddafi has lost legitimacy and he needs to leave”, a view which was shared by Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president. (13)

Obama was being regularly encouraged by his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to intervene militarily in Libya. On 26 February 2011, the White House accused Gaddafi of “continued violation of human rights and brutalization of its people” (14). This opinion was reiterated by German leader Angela Merkel, who 8 years before had supported the US-led invasion of Iraq. Obama and Merkel neglected to mention that Libya, as noted earlier, enjoyed the best living conditions in Africa, with the highest life expectancy on the continent.

Shortly before the attack on Libya, when the West proposed to the UN Security Council a no-fly zone over Libya, their politicians failed to provide evidence that Gaddafi was using military aircraft against protesters. Proof could not be found and so nothing justified the establishment of a no-fly zone, or a NATO intervention. It was a pretext to allow the West to assail Libya from the air and to replace Gaddafi. On 30 June 2011 Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, said in an interview that one of Libya’s major errors had been to delay the purchase of weaponry from Russia. (15)

NATO was providing material aid to extremist groups in Libya, such as the LIFG (16). Five months into the assault, a NATO vessel sailed into the Libyan shoreline loaded down with weapons. Emerging from the ship were soldiers from the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), SAS commandos and units from the French Army Special Forces Command (BFST). These groups had formulated a plan for the capture of Tripoli, and the city would subsequently fall on 28 August 2011. Now that Tripoli had been lost, the end was not far away for Gaddafi. With crucial NATO support, he would be killed less than two months later in Sirte, to the east of Tripoli.

Following NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in Libya, at the end of 2011 the country’s UN human development ranking had already fallen 11 places to 64th. By 2019, Libya’s position had plummeted to 110th position (17). From the final year of Gaddafi’s reign, this is one of the steepest drops recorded for any nation relating to living standards. After Gaddafi’s ousting, Libya became a broken country fought over by rival factions. The state had lost the power to govern.

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

1 Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (WH Allen, 6 August 2015) End Chapter, Reflections

2 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019) p. 100

3 Human Development Report 2010, 20th Anniversary Edition, p. 158 of 238

4 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer 1st edition, 23 June 2017) p. 161

5 Ibid., p. 176

6 Franco Bechis, “France had been preparing to overthrow Gaddafi since November [2010]”, Voltairenet.org, 25 March 2011

7 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 172

8 Ibid.

9 “British trade mission seeks to make most of Libyan goodwill”, The Guardian, 26 September 2011

10 Ibid.

11 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 161

12 “France’s Sarkozy says Gaddafi must go”, Reuters, 25 February 2011

13 “Libya: US and EU say Muammar Gaddafi must go”, BBC, 11 March 2011

14 “Readout of President Obama’s Call with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany”, 26 February 2011

15 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 171

16 Ibid., p. 160

17 Human Development Report 2019, p. 315 of 366

Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU

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History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests

By Shane Quinn

The first two chapters focus on German preparations as they geared up to launch their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbarossa, which began eight decades ago. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavic peoples. Analysed also in the opening two chapters are the Soviet Union’s preparations for a conflict with Nazi Germany.

The remaining chapters focus for the large part on the fighting itself, as the Nazis and their Axis allies, the Romanians and Finns at first, swarmed across Soviet frontiers in the early hours of 22 June 1941. The German-led invasion of the USSR was the largest military offensive in history, consisting of almost four million invading troops. Its outcome would decide whether the post-World War II landscape comprised of an American-German dominated globe, or an American-Soviet dominated globe. The Nazi-Soviet war was, as a consequence, a crucial event in modern history and its result was felt for decades afterward and, indeed, to the present day.

Click here to read the e-book.

Invoking the Russell-Einstein Manifesto against Nuclear War

By Emanuel Pastreich, March 01, 2023

The need for intellectuals to commit themselves body and soul to the common good, and the opposition to world war, and nuclear war, is only the greater at this horrible moment of taunting and daring launched by Presidents Biden and Putin today.

China’s Peace Plan for Ukraine: America Does Not Want Peace, Prepare for a Horrific Global War?

By Michael Snyder, February 28, 2023

Of course any peace plan proposed by China was not going to be perfect.  But for the good of humanity our leaders should be willing to at least sit down and talk with the Russians.  Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, eventually somebody will use nuclear weapons.

Western Leaders Privately Say Ukraine Can’t Win the War

By Joe Lauria, February 28, 2023

Western leaders privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine can not win the war against Russia and that it should begin peace talks with Moscow this year in exchange for closer ties with NATO.

Video: “Never Again Is Now Global”: Part IV. This Time Around We’re All Jews

By Vera Sharav and Children’s Health Defense, February 28, 2023

Never Again Is Now Global,” a five-part docuseries highlighting the parallels between Nazi Germany and global pandemic policies. Each one-hour episode focuses on recent testimonies by Holocaust survivors and their descendants who discuss comparisons between the early repressive stages under the Nazi regime that culminated in the Holocaust and global COVID-19 policies.

Calling the 2014 Overthrow of Ukraine’s Yanukovych a “U.S. Coup” Is True, and Extremely Important.

By Eric Zuesse, February 28, 2023

On February 25th, Elon Musk tweeted “That election was arguably dodgy, but no question that there was indeed a coup.” By “That election,” he was referring to Viktor Yanukovych’s having won the Presidency of Ukraine in an election.

Avalon Militarism. Australia’s Air Show, a Celebration of Aerospace

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 28, 2023

Also known as the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defence Exposition, Avalon 2023 promises to “showcase” much in the “dynamic world of aviation, aerospace and space, new materials, fuels and ways of flying”.

The Antiwar Movement Roars Back to Life

By Rep. Ron Paul, February 28, 2023

On February 19th, the National Mall in Washington, DC saw its largest antiwar rally in 20 years. The speakers list included four former US presidential candidates and a broad and diverse collection of antiwar activists from beyond the left and right.

Call for the Total Evacuation of East Palestine Due to Extremely Toxic “Dioxin Fallout” that Will Poison the Land and Crops for Generations

By Mike Adams, February 28, 2023

The toxic cloud event that’s dropping extremely toxic dioxins across a large area of residential housing and farmland was deliberately generated by the open burning of vinyl chloride, creating combustion byproducts of dioxins which are many orders of magnitude more toxic and dangerous than the original substance.

A Nanny State Idiocracy: When the Government Thinks It Knows Best

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, February 28, 2023

The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

By Rejecting China’s Peace Plan West Pushes Beijing Closer to Russia

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 28, 2023

On the first anniversary of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, China presented a peace plan, aimed at re-establishing diplomacy and bilateral negotiations. Consisting of twelve points, the proposal reflects the stance of neutrality of the Chinese government, which has refused to support anti-Russian resolutions at the UN, maintaining a strong direct dialogue with Moscow which allows it to develop more realistic proposals, unlike the Western unilateral demands of Russia’s retreat.

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I wrote this call for sanity to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto (back in 2015).

The need for intellectuals to commit themselves body and soul to the common good, and the opposition to world war, and nuclear war, is only the greater at this horrible moment of taunting and daring launched by Presidents Biden and Putin today.

Although I most certainly cannot agree with President Biden, I am not sure that I can support the rhetoric of President Putin either.

Politicians and heads of state are the least equipped to respond to critical historical questions, especially concerning nuclear war. I would like to call on everyone to pull together and write up a similar manifesto, this time explaining how the president invokes powers that he does not possess.

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Call for Sanity on 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Foreign Policy in Focus

July 9, 2015

(drafted by Emanuel Pastreich)

It was exactly 60 years ago that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered together with a group of leading intellectuals in London to draft and sign a manifesto in which they denounced the dangerous drive toward war between the world’s Communist and anti-Communist factions. The signers of this manifesto included leading Nobel Prize winners such as Hideki Yukawa and Linus Pauling.

They were blunt, equating the drive for war and reckless talk of the use of nuclear weapons sweeping the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, as endangering all of humanity. The manifesto argued that advancements in technology, specifically the invention of the atomic bomb, had set human history on a new and likely disastrous course.

The manifesto stated in harsh terms the choice confronting humanity:

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto forced a serious reconsideration of the dangerous strategic direction in which the United States was heading at that time and was the beginning of a recalibration of the concept of security that would lead to the signing of the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 and the arms control talks of the 1970s.

But we take little comfort in those accomplishments today. The United States has completely forgotten about its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty, and the words “arms control” have disappeared from the conversation on security. The last year has seen the United States confront Russia in Ukraine to such a degree that many have spoken about the risks of nuclear war.

As a result, on June 16 of this year Russia announced that it will add 40 new ICBMs in response to the investment of the United States over the last two years in upgrading its nuclear forces.

Similar tensions have emerged between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Isles and between the United States and China over the South China Sea. Discussions about the possibility of war with China are showing up in the Western media with increasing frequency, and a deeply disturbing push to militarize American relations with Asia is emerging.

But this time, the dangers of nuclear war are complemented by an equal, or greater, threat: climate change. Even the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, told the Boston Globe in 2013 that climate change “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

More recently, Pope Francis issued a detailed, and blunt, encyclical dedicated to the threat of climate change in which he charged:

It is remarkable how weak international political responses (to climate change) have been. Consequently the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.

As the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto drew near, I became increasing disturbed by the complete inaction among the best-educated and best-connected in the face of the most dangerous moment in modern history and perhaps in human history, grimmer even than the catastrophe that Russell and Einstein contemplated. Not only are we facing the increased likelihood of nuclear war, but there are signs that climate change is advancing more rapidly than previously estimated. Science Magazine recently released a study that predicts massive marine destruction if we follow the current trends, and even the glaciers of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula, once thought to be the most stable, are observed to be melting rapidly. And yet we see not even the most superficial efforts to defend against this threat by the major powers.

I spoke informally about my worries with my friend John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus and associate of the Asia Institute. John has written extensively about the need to identify climate change as the primary security threat and also has worked closely with Miriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies on efforts to move the United States away from a military economy. Between the two of us we have put together a slightly updated version of the manifesto that highlights climate change — an issue that was not understood in 1955 — and hereby have published it in the form of a petition that we invite anyone in the world to sign. This new version of the manifesto is open to the participation of all, not restricted to that of an elite group of Nobel Prize winners.

I also spoke with David Swanson, a friend from my days working on the Dennis Kucinich campaign for the Democratic nomination back in 2004. David now serves as director of World Beyond War, a broad effort to create a consensus that war no longer has any legitimate place in human society. He offered to introduce the manifesto to a broad group of activists and we agreed that Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute and World Beyond War would co-sponsor the new manifesto.

Finally, I sent the draft to Noam Chomsky who readily offered to sign it and offered the following comment.

Last January the famous Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest it has been since a major war scare 30 years ago.  The accompanying declaration, which warned that the constant threat of nuclear war and “unchecked climate change” severely threaten human civilization, brings to mind the grim warning to the people of the world just 60 years ago by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, calling on them to face a choice that is “stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” In all of human history, there has never been a choice like the one we face today.

The declaration on the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto is displayed below. We urge all people who are concerned about humanity’s future and about the health of the Earth’s biosphere to join us in signing the declaration, and to invite friends and family members to sign. The statement can be signed at the petition page on DIY RootsAction website:

Declaration on the 60^th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 9, 2015

In view of the growing risk that in future wars weapons, nuclear and otherwise, will be employed that threaten the continued existence of humanity, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.

We also propose that all governments of the world begin to convert those resources previously allocated to preparations for destructive conflict to a new constructive purpose: the mitigation of climate change and the creation of a new sustainable civilization on a global scale.

This effort is endorsed by Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute, and World Beyond War, and is being launched on July 9, 2015.

You can sign, and ask everyone you know to sign, this declaration here.

Why is this declaration important?

Exactly 60 years ago today, leading intellectuals led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered in London to sign a manifesto voicing their concern that the struggle between the Communist and anti-Communist blocs in the age of the hydrogen bomb guaranteed annihilation for humanity.

Although we have so far avoided the nuclear war that those intellectuals dreaded, the danger has merely been postponed. The threat, which has reemerged recently with the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, has only grown more dire.

Moreover, the rapid acceleration of technological development threatens to put nuclear weapons, and many other weapons of similar destructiveness, into the hands of a growing circle of nations (and potentially even of “non-state actors”). At the same time, the early possessors of nuclear weapons have failed to abide by their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to destroy their stockpiles.

And now we are faced with an existential threat that may rival the destructive consequences even of a full-scale nuclear war: climate change. The rapacious exploitation of our resources and a thoughtless over-reliance upon fossil fuels have caused an unprecedented disruption of our climate. Combined with an unmitigated attack on our forests, our wetlands, our oceans, and our farmland in the pursuit of short-term gains, this unsustainable economic expansion has brought us to the edge of an abyss.

The original 1955 manifesto states: “We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings,” members of the human species “whose continued existence is in doubt.”

The time has come for us to break out of the distorted and misleading conception of progress and development that has so seduced us and led us towards destruction.

Intellectuals bear a particular responsibility of leadership by virtue of their specialized expertise and insight regarding the scientific, cultural, and historical forces that have led to our predicament. Between a mercenary element that pursues an agenda of narrow interests without regard to consequences and a frequently discouraged, misled, and sometimes apathetic citizenry stand the intellectuals in every field of study and sphere of activity. It falls to us that it falls to decry the reckless acceleration of armaments and the criminal destruction of the ecosystem. The time has come for us to raise our voices in a concerted effort.

Initial Signers

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus, MIT

Last January the famous Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest it has been since a major war scare 30 years ago.  The accompanying declaration, which warned that the constant threat of nuclear war and “unchecked climate change” severely threaten human civilization, brings to mind the grim warning to the people of the world just 50 years ago by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, calling on them to face a choice that is “stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” In all of human history, there has never been a choice like the one we face today.

Helen Caldicott, author

It was the Russell Einstein manifesto on the threat of nuclear war 60 years ago that started me upon my journey to try to abolish nuclear weapons. I then read and devoured the three volumes of Russell’s autobiography which had an amazing influence upon my thinking as a young girl.The manifesto was so extraordinarily sensible written by two of the world’s greatest thinkers, and I am truly amazed that the world at that time took practically no notice of their prescient warning, and today we are orders of magnitude in greater danger than we were 60 years ago. The governments of the world still think in primitive terms of retribution and killing while the nuclear weapons in Russia and the US are presently maintained on hair trigger alert, and these two nuclear superpowers are practicing nuclear war drills during a state of heightened international tension exacerbated by the Ukrainian situation and the Middle East. It is in truth sheer luck that we are still here on this lovely planet of ours.

Larry Wilkerson, retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

From central Europe to Southwest Asia, from the South China Sea to the Arctic, tensions are on the rise as the world’s sole empire is roiled in peripheral activities largely of its own doing and just as largely destructive of its power and corruptive of its leadership. This, while humanity’s most pressing challenge–planetary climate change–threatens catastrophe for all.  Stockpiles of nuclear weapons add danger to this already explosive situation.  We humans have never been so powerfully challenged–and so apparently helpless to do anything about it.

Benjamin R. Barber, president, Global Parliament of Mayors Project

Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything

David Swanson, director, World Beyond War

John Feffer, director, Foreign Policy in Focus

Emanuel Pastreich, director, The Asia Institute

Leah Bolger,  chair, coordinating committee, World Beyond War

Ben Griffin, coordinator, Veterans For Peace UK

Michael Nagler, founder and president, The Metta Center for Nonviolence

John Horgan, science journalist & author of The End of War

Kevin Zeese, co-director, Popular Resistance.

Margaret Flowers, M.D., co-director of Popular Resistance

Dahr Jamail, staff reporter, Truthout

John Kiriakou, associate fellow, Institute for Policy Studies and CIA Torture Whistleblower

Kim Hyung yul, president of the Asia Institute and professor of history, Sook Myung University

Choi Murim, professor of medicine, Seoul National University

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel

Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former US diplomat

Mike Madden, vice president, Veterans For Peace, Chapter 27 (veteran of the US Air Force)

Chante Wolf, 12 year Air Force, Desert Shield/Storm veteran, member of Chapter 27, Veterans For Peace

William Binney, former NSA technical director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis and co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center.

Jean Bricmont, professor, Université Catholique de Louvain

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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.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Eleven days after the outbreak of full scale hostilities with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Israeli Air Force on October 17 bombed the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip killing over 500 civilians at a conservative estimate. Overall Palestinian casualties from Israeli strikes over the past 11 days had reached well over 16,000 by that time, although the destruction of the hospital sparked particular international outrage from across the non-Western world with harsh condemnations made from Russia and India to Southeast Asia and Africa.

With the incident gaining particularly high publicity, due largely to the significant international attention that has for decades been concentrated on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has also served to highlight a long history of air strikes hitting and often entirely eradicating hospitals. While these serious war crimes have often gained little attention, a recent history of such attacks over the past 75 years serves to place the latest attack on the Palestinian hospital in context.

Israeli Strike on Al Ahli Arab Hospital

Second World War 

During the Second World War the use of incendiary weapons to carry out firebombing raids by the U.S. Army Air Force allowed it to effectively erase entire portions of cities and their populations, with these indiscriminate attacks resulting in the destruction of multiple hospitals from Dresden in Germany to Tokyo in Japan.

The firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, resulted in the bloodiest night in the history of war with Japanese deaths estimated at well over 100,000. With entire districts of the city and their populations erased effectively overnight, multiple hospitals, schools, temples and other targets were eradicated.

The attack represented among the most serious war crimes in history and caused far more civilian deaths than any other on record, destroying the homes of 372,000 families. General Curtis LeMay who oversaw the attack stated that it killed more than both the later nuclear attacks on Japanese cities combined, with higher estimates for the death toll reaching 500,000.

With smaller firebombing raids targeting the populations of 66 other Japanese cities, mass civilian casualties and the destruction of multiple hospitals with their patients still in them occurred across the country at the hands of the U.S. Army Air Force, culminating in nuclear strikes on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The nuclear attack on Hiroshima destroyed 18 hospitals and 32 first-aid centres, with 90 percent of the city’s medical doctors killed or seriously injured, while in the attack on Nagasaki the city’s chief medical facilities were destroyed including the Nagasaki Medical University and its related hospital, the Urakami branch of Mitsubishi Hospital, Urakami First Hospital.

Tokyo (left) and Hiroshima After American Bombings

After the Second World War the continued use of incendiaries for mass bombing raids to target cities from end to end ensured that hospitals would continue to be destroyed in subsequent conflicts. During the Korean War the Supreme Commander of U.S.-led coalition forces General Douglas MacArthur ordered the bombing of “every means of communication, every installation, factory, city and village” in North Korea, stating on a separate occasion regarding the northern half of the country that due to the intensity of Western bombing “this area will be left a desert.”

With Assistant State Secretary Dean Rusk assuring that bombers would attack “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another,” hospitals were far from exempted. The bombing campaign was estimated by the end of the war to have destroyed approximately 1000 hospitals across North Korea as well as killing the majority of the 3–4 million North Koreans estimated to have died in the war.

Air Force General Curtis LeMay later recalled of the bombing of North Korea:

“Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population,” with other estimates being as high as 30 percent.

During the Korean War the initiation of similar firebombing or nuclear attacks against cities across China was widely advocated for by key figures in the American political and military leadership, MacArthur among them, with nuclear weapons forward deployed and their use authorised accordingly. It was primarily the presence of Soviet forces in China, and the demonstrated vulnerability of American bombers to MiG-15 fighters which China was being supplied with, which ensured Chinese cities were not targeted as those in Japan and North Korea had been. 

Pyongyang After American Bombings

In the 1960s and 1970s American bombing raids against cities across North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia caused significant casualties and similarly destroyed hospitals across all three countries, and after the Cold War’s end the Gulf War saw Iraqi hospitals similarly targeted. Where hospitals were not hit directly, the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure including sewage and electricity placed them at serious risk.

An example was revealed in a July 1991 interview by Patrick Tyler from the New York Times with the director of Baghdad’s Saddam Paediatric Hospital, Dr. Qasm Ismail, who recalled that on the first night of the Western air campaign the targeting of civilian infrastructure cut off his hospital’s electricity. As a result:

“mothers grabbed their children out of incubators, took intravenous tubes out of their arms. . . . Others were removed from oxygen tents, and they ran to the basement, where there was no heat. I lost more than 40 prematures in the first 12 hours of bombing.”

The bombing of the Infant Formula Production Plant in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad on the seventh day of the war, which Washington at the time claimed was a biological weapons facility but which was later disproven, was one of the examples of an attack on Iraq’s ability to provide healthcare which gained greater levels of publicity.

Attacks on pharmaceutical facilities, paired with economic sanctions preventing the import of key medicines, could at times be more devastating than direct strikes on hospitals themselves, with a notable other example that decade being the American missile strike on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan seven years later in 1998. Washington similarly claimed this was a chemical weapons facility which was again later disproven. 

Remains of the Kunduz Trauma Centre in Afghanistan

In 1999 a massive NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia similarly saw hospitals widely targeted. Australian journalist John Pilger referred to civilians being “blown up in crowded passenger trains and buses, in factories, television stations, libraries, old people’s homes, schools and 18 hospitals, many cut to pieces by the RAF’s [British Royal Air Force’s] thousands of ‘unaccounted for’ cluster bombs which fragment into shrapnel.”

A notable example was the Royal Netherlands Air Force’s attacks on a crowded marketplace, a hospital, a university and several shops, in the Serbian city of Nis from May 7–12. When not attacking hospitals directly, the Western air campaign caused food and fuel shortages, loss of access to medicines, destruction of water, sewage and sanitation systems, and breakdowns in healthcare which ensured that hospitals could not function effectively.

Moving into the 21st century air strikes on key medical facilities continued to be launched, with one of the most prominent examples being a strike on the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul, Afghanistan, with a subsequent second strike on the facility also being launched destroying the food and medical supplies for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees. With NATO forces launching strikes in the country for close to two decades, Afghan medical facilities were far from safe. One of the subsequent attacks which gained most publicity was the October 2015 U.S. Air Force strike on the Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Médecins Sans Frontières, during which patients were reported to have burned to death in their beds. An AC-130U gunship was used in the attack. Although far from isolated, the incident gained more publicity than other attacks on Afghan medical facilities because the targeted building was operated by a Western organisation. Thus while Israel’s targeting of a Palestinian hospital has been widely condemned and represents a serious war crime, as the world’s leading power and claimed upholder of international norms the conduct of the United States in wartime has for decades made attacks on medical facilities far from abnormal. 

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Featured image: AC-130U Gunship, Al Ahli Arab Hospital Attack, B-52 Bombing Vietnam, Bombing of Baghdad; all images in this article are from MWM

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NewsGuard is a self-appointed misinformation watchdog. It seems to be just one more way Americans are not allowed to think for themselves. Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz claim it is the “librarian for the internet.” Set up specifically to rate online journalistic integrity, Brill states NewsGuard provides services that “explain to people something about the reliability and trustworthiness and background of those who are feeding them the news.” Eric Effron is the organization’s Editorial Director.

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I knew exactly what would happen when China unveiled their peace plan for the conflict in Ukraine.  The night before, I told my wife that western leaders would immediately dismiss it.  Sadly, that is precisely what happened.  Of course any peace plan proposed by China was not going to be perfect.  But for the good of humanity our leaders should be willing to at least sit down and talk with the Russians.  Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, eventually somebody will use nuclear weapons.  And once things go nuclear, we could be facing a nightmare scenario in which hundreds of millions of people die.

This is not a game.

At some point, peace talks may become impossible.  So if we have an opportunity to talk now, we should grab it.

But instead, our leaders made it abundantly clear that they aren’t even interested in considering China’s peace plan…

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking on CNN, brushed off the Chinese proposal, saying it should have ended after the first bullet point, which calls for “respecting the sovereignty of all countries.”

“This war could end tomorrow, if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine and withdrew its forces,” he said.

Asked about the proposal, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “China doesn’t have much credibility” in light of its failure to condemn Putin’s war.

And Volodymyr Zelensky is completely rejecting the idea of ever negotiating with Vladimir Putin…

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly rejected the idea of negotiating a peace deal that would see Ukraine lose any of its territory. Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin – even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started.

“It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there,” he said.

I think that Zelensky would see things quite differently if he was one of the men that was being forced into the meat grinder in eastern Ukraine.

According to a former U.S. Marine that is fighting there, the “average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours”…

The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours, a former US Marine fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas told ABC News.

“It’s been pretty bad on the ground. A lot of casualties. The life expectancy is around four hours on the front line,” American Troy Offenbecker said.

It is a really, really horrible war.

But those that are far from the front lines can afford to talk about how glorious the war is…

Just one day before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion, the official Twitter account for the NATO military alliance has come under criticism for a post that said Ukraine is “hosting one of the great epics of this century” and compared the war to Hollywood movies.

The post, which quoted a Ukrainian soldier named Pavlo, said: “We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.”

The idea of comparing the war, which has claimed thousands of lives, seen widespread destruction, and destabalised the world’s food and energy supplies, to fictional characters was quickly deried by many on the social media platform.

I would like to see leaders from both sides be forced to serve on the front lines.

If that ever happened, this war would end really quick.

Sadly, a conflict with Russia is apparently not enough, and so the Biden administration is now relentlessly provoking the Chinese.

This week, a new round of sanctions that were announced by the Biden administration actually included entities located inside China…

The White House has announced yet another package of sweeping sanctions targeting Russia on the one-year anniversary of its brutal invasion of Ukraine – with new efforts to target third countries including China for sanctions evasion.

And it is being reported that the U.S. will soon “quadruple” that number of U.S. troops in Taiwan…

The US is expected to quadruple the number of forces deployed to Taiwan in the coming months as tensions with Beijing continue to simmer.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the Pentagon plans to deploy between 100 and 200 troops to the self-ruled island, up from around 30 a year ago.

Service members from the Marines and the special forces have been sent to Taiwan in the past and the number has fluctuated over the years.

The Chinese consider Taiwan to be their sovereign territory.

This is something that they believe with a passion.

And so the fact that the Biden administration will be sending more U.S. troops to the island has really pissed them off…

A commentator for the Global Times, a media project of the Chinese Communist Party, issued a threat to the United States on Thursday night, intimating that China would not hesitate to engage U.S. forces stationed in Taiwan if the Chinese launched an invasion of the island nation.

Hu Xijin, formerly the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, reacted to a Wall Street Journal report about U.S. troops traveling to Taiwan by calling it “illegal” and suggesting that the Chinese would treat them as enemy combatants.

“It’s illegal for these US soldiers to go to Taiwan and Chinese mainland won’t take any responsibility for their safety,” tweeted Hu. “If we take military action when necessary, they’ll be wiped out together with the resisting Taiwan troops. They can also be eliminated first as the invading army.”

But most Americans don’t understand any of this.

Most Americans have absolutely no idea that we are literally on the verge of a war with China.

Unfortunately, such a conflict is getting a little bit closer with each passing day.  In fact, we just witnessed a very alarming incident over the South China Sea…

A voice, saying it’s coming from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) airport, crackles over the radio of the US Navy P-8 Poseidon as a CNN crew, given rare access aboard the US flight, listens in.

“American aircraft. Chinese airspace is 12 nautical miles. Not approaching any more or you bear all responsibility,” it says.

For some reason, the U.S. Navy aircraft was carrying a CNN crew, and the Chinese fighter jet got so close to them that they “could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with”…

In a few minutes, a Chinese fighter jet armed with air-to-air missiles intercepts the US plane, nestling in just 500 feet off its port side.

The Chinese fighter jet was so close, the CNN crew could see the pilots turning their heads to look at them – and could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with.

Why does the Biden administration see the need to endlessly provoke China at a moment like this?

It is madness.

We could easily find ourselves involved in conflicts with both Russia and China at the same time, and I have been precisely warning of such a scenario for a very long time.

Unfortunately, we have a hothead in the White House that is in an advanced stage of mental decline.

And he is surrounded by irrational warmongers such as Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland.

They do not want peace.

So global war is coming, and I would strongly encourage you to get prepared for such an outcome.

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Michael Snyder has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

It is finally here! Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

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***

Western leaders privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine can not win the war against Russia and that it should begin peace talks with Moscow this year in exchange for closer ties with NATO. 

The private communications are at odds with public statements from Western leaders who routinely say they will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes until it achieves victory on the battlefield.

The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the private remarks to Zelenksy, said:

“The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say.

‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner earlier this month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported.

According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”

Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.

A Return to Realism

At the Munich Security Conference last week, Gen. Petr Pavel, the Czech Republic’s president-elect and a former NATO commander, said:

“We may end up in a situation where liberating some parts of Ukrainian territory may deliver more loss of lives than will be bearable by society. … There might be a point when Ukrainians can start thinking about another outcome.”

Even when he was a NATO commander Pavel was a realist in regard to Russia. During controversial NATO war games with 31,000 troops on Russia’s borders in 2016 — the first time in 75 years that German troops had retraced the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union — Pavel dismissed hype about a Russian threat to NATO.

Pavel, who was chairman of NATO’s military committee at the time, told a Brussels press conference that,

“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.”

The German foreign minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also embraced realism towards Russia, saying:

“What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering. Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”

Instead of an aggressive NATO stance towards Russia that could backfire, Steinmeier called for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he said, adding it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.” Under U.S. leadership NATO clearly did not follow that advice, as it continued to deploy more troops to Eastern Europe and to arm and train Ukraine (under cover of pretending to back the Minsk Accords to end the Ukrainian civil war).

Before its intervention in Ukraine, Russia cited NATO’s eastward expansion, the deployment of missiles in Romania and Poland, war games near its borders and the arming of Ukraine as red lines that the West had crossed.

After a year of war, Western leaders appear now to be turning to a realist approach. Macron, for instance, at the Munich Security Conference dismissed any talk of regime change in Moscow.

 No US Reaction

Left to Right: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at Munich Security Conference. (Schulmann/MSC)

Washington has not commented on the Journal‘s story about the peace talks-for-arms proposal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month discussed with The Washington Post arming Ukraine post-war but he did not say that Ukraine should seek peace talks.

“We have to be thinking — and we are — about what the postwar future looks like to ensure that we have security and stability for Ukrainians and security and stability in Europe,” Blinken told the conference in Munich.

The proposal to bring Ukraine even closer to NATO than it already is, with greater access to weapons after the war, should be on the agenda at NATO’s annual meeting in July, said Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, at the Munich conference.

“The NATO summit must produce a clear offer to Ukraine, also to give Zelensky a political win that he can present at home as an incentive for negotiations,” a British official told the Journal. 

The deal with NATO would not include membership with its Article 5 protection, the newspaper reported.

“We would like to have security guarantees on the path to NATO,” Zelensky told a press conference on Friday, however.

In the meantime, Macron, according to the WSJ report, said that Ukraine should press forward with a military offensive to regain territory in order to push Moscow to the peace table.

There has been no reaction from Moscow about the proposal. Geo-political analyst Alexander Mercouris, in his video report on Saturday, said Russia would likely be incentivized to continue fighting rather than enter peace talks with the knowledge that Ukraine would be heavily armed by NATO after the war.

“The Russians are never going to agree with something like this,” Mercouris said. “They must be saying to themselves that instead of agreeing to this plan, it actually makes more sense … to continue this war because one of [Russia’s] objectives is the total demilitarization of Ukraine.”

What the Western powers are proposing is the opposite, he said. Given that Russia considers it is winning and “there seems to be a general acknowledgment amongst Western governments that Ukraine can’t win this war … where is the incentive for … Russia to even consider this plan?”

For Moscow, Mercouris said, Ukraine’s demilitarization is an “absolute, existential matter.”  If Ukraine is going to get even more advanced weapons from NATO after the war as opposed to what it would get “whilst the war is still underway, then it makes even less sense” for Russia “to stop the war and agree to this plan.”

Russia is facing a “weakening adversary now,” Mercouris said, and Moscow clearly prefers that to facing a “strengthened adversary later.”

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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

Featured image: Élysée Palace where Macron and Scholz told Zelensky to seek peace. (U.S. State Dept.)

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The horrific environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio has contaminated the air, the soil and the water in much of the region.  So how much, if any, of the food that is grown in that part of the country will be safe to eat?  I had not thought about that question too much until I received a very alarming phone call.  One of the people that I spoke to during that phone call was a woman that I know personally.  I have known her for years, and I have visited with her in her own living room, and so I can vouch for her honesty.  She told me that her “son-in-law manages three organic food farms in California, Idaho, and Washington State”, and that he is “warning family and friends to get ready for severe food shortages starting this spring”.  Apparently there are several factors that will cause food supplies to be tighter, and one of the biggest is the fact that the “Ohio spill has contaminated a lot of land and water”.  Apparently there is a scramble “to find clean food” and her son-in-law is receiving lots of phone calls from buyers in the eastern half of the nation that want to buy what his farms are producing.

We will just have to wait and see if things will be as bad as this source is suggesting.

But we do know that some companies have already started to take action due to concerns about contamination.

For example, one grocery chain has already removed bottled water from store shelves “because it was bottled 25 miles from the derailment”…

Weeks after a train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border left hazardous chemicals burning from railcars, fears of the potential impacts are being felt in places far from the accident.

Grocery chain Giant Eagle, with hundreds of stores in five states including Ohio and Pennsylvania, pulled bottled water off shelves out of an “abundance of caution” because it was bottled 25 miles from the derailment.

And we also know that large numbers of animals are dying.

In fact, officials are now publicly admitting that approximately 43,000 “fish, amphibians, crustaceans and other aquatic animals” are already dead…

The derailment in East Palestine potentially killed more than 43,000 fish, amphibians, crustaceans and other aquatic animals in nearby streams, state officials said Thursday.

It will take time for the stream ecosystem to recover, said Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

“We know it won’t be quick,” she said. “But it’s going to come back.”

Ultimately, the final death toll among animals will inevitably be much larger.

Another thing that we know is that lots of people that live in and around East Palestine are getting sick.  The following example comes from the New York Post…

Wade Lovett’s been having trouble breathing since the Feb. 3 Norfolk South train derailment and toxic explosion here. In fact, his voice sounds as if he’s been inhaling helium.

“Doctors say I definitely have the chemicals in me but there’s no one in town who can run the toxicological tests to find out which ones they are,” Lovett, 40, an auto detailer, said in an extremely high-pitched voice. “My voice sounds like Mickey Mouse. My normal voice is low. It’s hard to breathe, especially at night. My chest hurts so much at night I feel like I’m drowning. I cough up phlegm a lot. I lost my job because the doctor won’t release me to go to work.”

We have never seen anything quite like this before, and there are so many questions that are going unanswered.

Right now, a lot of people are wondering why the EPA has suddenly stopped all shipments of contaminated waste from the disaster site…

Federal environmental authorities have ordered a temporary halt in the shipment of contaminated waste from the site of a fiery train derailment earlier this month in eastern Ohio near the Pennsylvania state line.

Region 5 administrator Debra Shore of the Environmental Protection Agency said Saturday the agency ordered Norfolk Southern to “pause” shipments from the site of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine but vowed that removal of the material would resume “very soon.”

Why can’t they tell us why they made this decision?

And why won’t Joe Biden go to Ohio?

When he was directly asked about visiting East Palestine, this is how he responded…

The president answered, ‘At this point, I’m not,’ but then he appeared confused and strained as he tried to explain himself.

‘I did a whole video, I mean, um, what the hell, on,’ Biden rambled as he looked for reporters to fill in the gap.

‘Zoom?’ one of the reporters said, trying to help the president.

‘Zoom! All I can think of every time I think of Zoom is that song in my generation, Who’s Zoomin’ Who,’ he said, referencing the Aretha Franklin song.

Come on Joe.

Is that really the best that you can do?

Meanwhile, we continue to see very odd disasters happen at critical facilities all over North America.  On Thursday, massive fires suddenly erupted at three different Pemex facilities…

Three separate fires at Petroleos Mexicanos facilities on Thursday killed one worker, left at least eight people injured and several others missing, putting the Mexican state oil company’s safety record under scrutiny ahead of its earnings call on Monday.

There were three separate fires in three different oil refineries owned by the same company, Pemex. All in one day.

What is going on???pic.twitter.com/4KJ55ARd49

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) February 24, 2023

Are we supposed to believe that three separate facilities all had catastrophic “accidents” on the exact same day?

Here in the United States, more than 100 food processing facilities have been mysteriously destroyed over the past couple of years.

How many incidents have to happen before authorities will finally admit that there is some sort of a pattern?

Food production just keeps getting hit over and over gain, and this comes at a time when the global food shortages that we have been anticipating have already begun.

I would highly recommend stocking up while you still can, because we are moving into times of great uncertainty.

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Michael Snyder has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

It is finally here! Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

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***

“Never Again Is Now Global,” a five-part docuseries highlighting the parallels between Nazi Germany and global pandemic policies.

Each one-hour episode focuses on recent testimonies by Holocaust survivors and their descendants who discuss comparisons between the early repressive stages under the Nazi regime that culminated in the Holocaust and global COVID-19 policies.

Watch the trailer of part 4 below. And click here to watch the full episode.

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***

On February 25th, Elon Musk tweeted “That election was arguably dodgy, but no question that there was indeed a coup.” By “That election,” he was referring to Viktor Yanukovych’s having won the Presidency of Ukraine in an election about which even the British Guardian newspaper had headlined on 8 February 2010, “Yanukovych set to become president as observers say Ukraine election was fair”, and it made clear that even Western international observers there were testifying to the authenticity of that electoral win by Yanukovych, such as by its reporting that, “Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said there were no indications of serious fraud and described the vote as an ‘impressive display’ of democracy.” However, Elon Musk, without citing any evidence, was now saying otherwise: that Yanukovych’s win had been “arguably dodgy” — and (despite that tweet) he provided no argument at all to back up that ‘arguably’ allegation.

Only fools cite tweets that have no links to any evidence, as being evidence for anything other than that the tweeter had made that given assertion. As a general rule, tweets are the least-reliable source of information. Certainly Musk’s tweet was. However, he also said there that there was “no question that there was indeed a coup.”

Anyone who has at all followed the evidence on that matter knows that it unquestionably WAS a coup that overthrew Yanukovych in February 2014; and even the head of the “private-CIA” firm Stratfor said on 19 December 2014 that the overthrow of Yanukovych that had occurred then was “the most blatant coup in history.” It was that, because the evidence that it was is not only this smoking gun that it was a U.S. coup, but because there was plenty more of high quality evidence and all of it showed the same thing: it was a coup by (or “on behalf of”) the Obama Administration. (Obama and his team, and all ‘allied’ countries, however, and all of the Western news-media, called it instead a ‘democratic revolution’. This is George Orwell’s 1984 made real. It’s not real history, but real deceit.)

The fools who follow Musk’s opinions should know that he himself thinks that coups are just fine: when Elon Musk received on 24 July 2020 a tweet from an “Armani” saying, “You know what wasnt in the best interest of people? the U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there [for Tesla cars’ batteries].” Later that day, Musk replied:

“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

He likes coups that profit himself personally, but apparently there are some coups that he disfavors — and he doesn’t ever explain (or at least not honestly) why. Maybe, for twitter-followers, “why” just isn’t an interesting question? (Maybe that’s why they use social media — instead of articles like this, that link to their primary sources — to ‘know’ what’s ‘going on’ in ‘the news’?)

Musk’s stupid tweet about Ukraine was likewise in response to something that one of his followers had tweeted: He was responding to one of his twitter followers, “KanekoaTheGreat” having tweeted quoting Professor John Mearsheimer’s having said in the September/October 2014 issue of America’s most prestigious — and strongly pro-U.S.-empire or “neoconservative” or pro-Military-Industrial-Complex — Foreign Affairs magazine, “For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a “coup”—was the final straw.” Ultimately, that’s what Musk was responding to — not the evidence, but instead the opinion there, in that prestigious, overwhelmingly pro-U.S.-coups and empire, magazine, from (as it turns out) a professor who was arguing that the coup had been merely (and only) a mistake:

On February 17th, under the headline “John Mearsheimer’s Misrepresentations In Order To Be Allowed Space On U.S. Propaganda-Media (i.e., U.S. ‘News’-Media)”, I had pointed out numerous distortions of the historical record regarding that coup — such as his alleging it to have been due to a “flawed view” (not a vicious, or even just a “false” view, but merely “flawed” — and he doesn’t so much as hint at in what way “flawed”) including “such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy,” which “went awry in Ukraine [and, again, he doesn’t hint at in what way ‘awry’],” and on and on — as-if it weren’t what it actuallhy WAS: which was the U.S. Government’s bipartisan neoconservative obsession to trap Russia’s Government, to checkmate it, into its being forced to yield, finally and inexorably, to the control by the U.S. Government. That’s imperialism — and there wasn’t a word about it — except one passing reference, which was 180 degrees in the false direction: against actually the victim-country, NOT against the aggressor:

In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

And that distractionary and deceptive reference is to Russia’s ‘imperialism’, NOT to America’s own authentic hyper-imperialism that Russia is now responding to (and which imperialism entails a military budget that now (including what’s hidden in non-‘Defense’-Department agencies but is still for military purposes) is half of the entire world’s military spending, and it pays for 900 foreign military bases and much more that is counterproductive if it has any real impact at all on protecting U.S. national security. (It’s not “the Defense Department”; it is “the Aggression Department.”)

This is the hidden reality: and neither Musk nor Mearsheimer, nor any other mouthpiece of the U.S. Establishment or the “Deep State” lets its audience in on it — and on the EVIDENCE that this IS the reality.

The U.S. coup against and that grabbed Ukraine was a very intentional, and very evil — not at all unintentional or ‘by mistake’ — U.S. coup, and Putin is being villainized in U.S.-and-allied media for finally responding to it in Russia’s case. Not ONLY was it “a coup” but it was a U.S. coup, and it was by careful and evil design, no mere (nor Mearsheimer) ‘error’.

This is — on steroids — the 1962 Cuban-Missile-Crisis in reverse: Ukraine is only a 300-mile or five-minute missile-flying-time distance away from The Kremlin and decapitation of Russia’s ability to fire-off its retaliatory weapons (within less than five minutes) against a U.S. blitz-attack. Russia needs to prevent that.

“The West” — including all of NATO — are 100% the aggressors in this matter. And that fact is unmentionable in U.S.-and-allied media.

To top it all off: on February 25th, another budding U.S. politician, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, is apparently entering the U.S. Presidential primaries campaiging for the Republican (traditional fascist) nomination, by tweeting:

The main thing should be the main thing: focus on China. China wants the Ukraine war to last as long as possible to deplete Western military capacity before invading Taiwan. It’s working: we think we *look* stronger by helping Ukraine, but we actually *become* weaker vs. China.

Perhaps in foreign affairs, while the Democrats (liberal fascists) will be campaigning for war against Russia to precede war against China, the Republicans (conservative fascists) will be campaigning for war against China to precede war against Russia. It’ll be a contest about which ‘enemy’ to hate first. Either way, the owners of mega-corporations such as Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil will be beaming. They’re the realconstituency in this ‘democracy’.

It’s like: Will the flavor be chocolate, or will it be vanilla? Either way, it’ll be loaded with sugar, artificial flavoring, and artificial coloring, and will fatten you, and rot your teeth, just the same, no matter how different the taste is. And those are the only two ‘choices’. That’s all the billionaires are offering, in the political market. Truth isn’t anywhere on the menu, from either Party.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

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

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***

Wade Lovett’s been having trouble breathing since the Feb. 3 Norfolk South train derailment and toxic explosion here. In fact, his voice sounds as if he’s been inhaling helium.

“Doctors say I definitely have the chemicals in me but there’s no one in town who can run the toxicological tests to find out which ones they are,” Lovett, 40, an auto detailer, said in an extremely high-pitched voice. “My voice sounds like Mickey Mouse. My normal voice is low. It’s hard to breathe, especially at night. My chest hurts so much at night I feel like I’m drowning. I cough up phlegm a lot. I lost my job because the doctor won’t release me to go to work.”

Despite his health woes, Lovett and his fiancée, Tawnya Irwin, 45, spent last Thursday delivering bottled water to locals. They picked up new cases outside a home on East Clark Street which has become the heart of East Palestine’s homegrown campaign to fight back against the forces that upended the lives of roughly 4,700 residents and their animals.

Locals are frustrated and furious over what they say has been a lack of real information and help from both local officials and the Biden Administration. Last week, East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway ripped President Biden for heading to Ukraine for a surprise visit instead of the scene of the toxic train derailment, calling it “the biggest slap in the face.”

Click here to read the full article on NYP.

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Featured image: @blckndgldfn/Twitter (left); @StrictlyChristo/Twitter (right)

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***

The global pandemic was not completely catastrophic in its effects.  It led to the cancellation, and postponement, of wasteful projects and events.  It spared public money.  But as the pandemic slides into the shadow of policymaking, bad habits have returned.  The profligates are here to stay.

One such habit is the Avalon air show, a celebration of aeronautical militarism in the southern hemisphere best done without.  In 2021, the organisers announced with regret that the event would be cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainty.  Last October, however, organisers promised a return to form in 2023.  Those with tickets “can look forward to a whole new program with jaw-dropping aerial displays, a refreshed food and beverage offering, and live entertainment.”

Also known as the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defence Exposition, Avalon2023 promises to “showcase” much in the “dynamic world of aviation, aerospace and space, new materials, fuels and ways of flying”.

The program features both a specialist dimension and complimentary conferences “open to any accredited Trade Visitor”.  The specialist aspect will feature presentations from, among others, the Royal Australian Air Force, Australian International Aerospace Congress, Australian Association for Unscrewed Systems (AAUS), Australian Industry Defence Network (AIDN), and the Australian Airports Association.

With this military bonanza unfolding on February 28, the Australian Defence Minister, Richard “Call me Deputy Prime Minister” Marles, has tooted his justifications for more hardware, more military merchandise and more engagement with the defence industry.  His address to the Avalon 2023 Defence and Industry Dinner revealed a boyish credulity typical in so many who lead that portfolio.  The boys-with-toys credo becomes all seducing.  Air forces, he noted, “are the coolest part of any military.”  Trying to amuse, he called Top Gun Maverick “an important and insightful documentary”.

With that treacly tribute out of the way, Marles could get down to the business of frightening Australians and delighting the military industrial mandarins.  Australia faced “the most challenging and complex set of strategic circumstances we’ve seen since the Second World War.”  The “global rules-based order” had been placed “under immense pressure”, largely due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  “The post-Cold War era – a period of democratic expansion and unprecedented integration of global trade and investment – is now over.”

The scriptwriter had evidently gone to sleep in drafting such words.  The post-Cold War era was streaked by brutal invasions and interventions (Iraq and Libya, to name but two instances), supposedly by the rules-abiding types in Washington, London and Canberra.  The Russian invasion did feature the imposition of will by a larger state on a smaller neighbour using “power and might”, but the US-led invasion that kicked the hornet’s nest of sectarian violence in 2003 came from the same stable of thought.

The speech then follows a familiar pattern.  First, call out the Russians.  Then highlight the Oriental Armed Scourge to the North.  “In the Indo-Pacific, China is driving the largest conventional military build-up we’ve seen anywhere in the world since the Second World War.  And much of this build-up is opaque.”

Australia’s security, assured by its remote location and geography, could no longer be taken seriously.  “Today we face a range of threats – including longer-range missiles and hypersonics and cyber-attacks – which render our geographic advantages far less relevant.”

The enemy could do damage from afar, causing harm “without ever having to enter our territorial waters or our air space.”  It was therefore important to place Australian defence upon the footing of “being able to hold any potential adversaries at risk much further from our shores.”

This was a rather devious way of laying the ground for more cash and larger budgets, ignoring the clear point that Australia has no truly mortal enemies, but wishes to make them as Washington’s obedient deputy.

One particular product is meant to take centre stage.  The Australian Defence Force is lagging in the department of murderous drone technology.  One promises to be unveiled at Avalon.  As reported by the national broadcaster, “The unscrewed air system has been developed by BAE Systems Australia and is designed to be stored in shipping containers.” The device is allegedly capable of carrying a lethal payload in excess of 100 kilograms.

Australia’s Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, has made no secret of his desire for low-cost killer drones.  “We’ve seen a proliferation of low-cost drones and loitering munitions delivering both ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and fires to great effect,” he told a Melbourne audience filled with foreign air force chiefs and senior officials, “they don’t replace the roles of contemporary combat aircraft, but they might serve as a useful complement.”

With that in mind, the RAAF was “considering the potential of low-cost drones that bring mass to our air combat system, and we’re considering what new measures are necessary to defend against them.”  Such views thrilled the war mongering offices at The Australian, which expressed satisfaction that Australian military policy was finally “moving in the right direction.”

Chapman has been particularly busy in the leadup to the Avalon airshow, walking the tightrope of defence propaganda.  Self-praise and capability must be balanced against a fear of achievement on the part of an adversary.

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review last week, the Air Marshal revealed that the RAAF had also joined the hysteria about targeting high altitude surveillance balloons.  He also defended the merits of the F-35 fighter jet, praising their pilots as having “retained an edge over drones or other unscrewed platforms despite advances in technology.”

China, however, was causing jitters in the area of hypersonic missiles, capable of delivering a warhead at five times the speed of sound with extreme manoeuvrability.  “I think China is in front when it comes to hypersonics […] and that is something we are actively working to address.”  Thank goodness, then, for the Avalon Air Show, even if the organisers were not sagacious enough to invite both Chinese and Russian manufacturers.

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

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***

On February 19th, the National Mall in Washington, DC saw its largest antiwar rally in 20 years. The speakers list included four former US presidential candidates and a broad and diverse collection of antiwar activists from beyond the left and right.

The aptly-named “Rage Against War Machine” rally drew thousands of attendees, however many pro-war advocates eagerly pointed out that it did not match in size some of the larger rallies against the Iraq war 20 years ago.

To that I say, “who cares”? The US mainstream media engages in war propaganda non-stop, with the only exception being Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. So I think it’s a miracle anyone had the courage to travel to the heart of the war machine in Washington, DC to make their voices heard! We don’t need a majority to fight back – an educated and dedicated minority will do quite nicely. And we certainly had that at the rally!

As I sat in the green room waiting to speak, I had the opportunity to visit with former Democrat presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich and former Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Political commentators Jimmy Dore and Chris Hedges were there, along with many leading and well—spoken libertarians. Everyone backstage carried the same message: we must put aside our differences to build a new, broad coalition against this war!

I believe the antiwar movement is starting to catch fire both at home and overseas. The DC rally was followed by much larger antiwar rallies in Paris, Berlin, London, and elsewhere.

Several recent polls, including by Pew and AP, show that American support for Ukraine is evaporating. Even in the EU, new polls show a public turning sharply against their governments’ support for the war. According to a recent Ipsos poll, less than half of Germans support continuing to send weapons to Ukraine. Change is in the air.

The DC rally took place in the backdrop of Seymour Hersh’s explosive investigative report demonstrating how the US government blew up the Nord Stream pipelines and the mainstream media’s desperate attempt to cover it up. The truth is coming out, and it’s even uglier than we imagined.

The US mainstream media is clearly getting nervous that its control over the narrative is also evaporating. How do we know they’re nervous? They have turned up their lies and slanders of antiwar rallies and voices.

Rachel Maddow, who fed America a steady stream of “Russiagate” lies for the past six or so years, let loose with a slanderous blue streak about the Rage Against the War Machine rally. Literally everything Maddow said in her post-rally rant was objectively false and her mischaracterization of rally participants as “weird” was devious. She falsely claimed that the rally was full of “white supremacists,” “Proud Boys,” and “anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.”

No one who was at the rally would have had any idea what she was talking about. But her job was not to describe the rally, it was to defame it. What does Maddow’s hysterics about the rally show? They are nervous. It shows that the mainstream media, despite having near-total power, is afraid. They are afraid they are losing the narrative. Good. It’s about time. Let’s hope that more Americans begin to rage! Rage against the war machine!

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URGENT: Today we join Eric Coppolino in calling for the immediate, total evacuation of East Palestine, Ohio due to the dioxin fallout now taking place there. The full interview with Eric Coppolino is now available at the bottom of this article. The interview also appears at the HR Report channel page on Brighteon.com.

The toxic cloud event that’s dropping extremely toxic dioxins across a large area of residential housing and farmland was deliberately generated by the open burning of vinyl chloride, creating combustion byproducts of dioxins which are many orders of magnitude more toxic and dangerous than the original substance.

Understand that the combustion of chlorinated compounds always results in the formation of dioxins. This simple fact is known by all competent chemists and is openly admitted by the EPA itself on its dioxins warning page, which states:

Studies have shown that only small amounts of chlorinated materials in waste are required to support dioxin formation when burning waste… Much of the dioxins created and released into the air through backyard burning settle on plants. These plants are, in turn, eaten by meat and dairy animals, which store the dioxins in their fatty tissue. People are exposed to dioxins primarily by eating meat, fish, and dairy products, especially those high in fat. Backyard burning occurs most commonly in rural farming areas where dioxin emissions can more easily be deposited on animal feed crops and grazing lands. These dioxins then accumulate in the fats of dairy cows, beef, poultry, and swine, making human consumption of these harmful chemicals difficult to avoid.

Near-PERMANENT ecological destruction on a scale never before witnessed

The EPA even states that dioxins are PBTs, which means 1) Persistent. 2) Bioaccumulative. 3) Toxic. This means they don’t go away, they accumulate up the food chain to achieve higher and higher concentrations, and 3) They are toxic. As the EPA explains:

Dioxins are classified as persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic pollutants (PBTs). PBTs are highly toxic, long-lasting substances that can build up in the food chain to levels that are harmful to human and ecosystem health. Persistent means they remain in the environment for extended periods of time. Bioaccumulative means their concentration levels increase as they move up the food chain. As a consequence, animals at the top of the food chain (such as humans) tend to have the highest dioxin concentrations in their bodies.

What sort of health problems are caused by dioxin exposure?

1) Immune suppression.
2) Infertility, spontaneous abortions.
3) Extreme hormone disruption.
4) Developmental disorders in babies and children.
5) DNA mutations.
6) Cancer.

Via the EPA:

Dioxins are potent toxicants with the potential to produce a broad spectrum of adverse effects in humans. Dioxins can alter the fundamental growth and development of cells in ways that have the potential to lead to many kinds of impacts. These include adverse effects upon reproduction and development, suppression of the immune system, disruption of hormonal systems, and cancer.

The “controlled burn” actually transformed a relatively harmless chemical into an extremely toxic, deadly chemical that will persist across Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York State for CENTURIES

The media and government are both repeatedly using the phrase, “controlled burn” to describe the setting fire to the liquid vinyl chloride monomer that was being carried by the Norfolk Southern railroad.

Vinyl chloride is made solely of three elements: Carbon, hydrogen and chlorine. In its simplest form, it looks like this (the monomer, liquid form is on the left, and the solid poly form is on the right):

Although vinyl chloride is somewhat toxic, it’s nowhere near as toxic as the dioxins created by burning vinyl chloride without fully incinerating it. Low-temperature combustion actually produces far more toxic compounds than what you started with, in other words.

Put another way, if you incinerate it as a hazardous waste at > 2000 degrees (F), you will destroy the molecule’s morphology and end up with just the individual elements such as carbon and hydrogen, each of which is relatively harmless by itself.

But if you ignite vinyl chloride in an open ditch, you create a dioxin factory that produces extremely toxic molecules from the combination of heat and oxygen. The hydrogen, carbon and chlorine are combined with oxygen from the open air (hence the fact that the burn was actually uncontrolled, not controlled), and you produce molecules like this: (2,3,7,8 TCDD)

Image source: Restoration and Remediation Magazine Online, RandRmagonline.com

After this relatively low-temperature combustion (an open fire in a ditch), you have now converted relatively harmless vinyl chloride into extremely toxic, persistent toxins known as dioxins.

Burning the vinyl chloride was an act of ecological terrorism and a crime against nature and human civilization

In effect, you’ve just increased the toxicity of this substance by perhaps 10 orders of magnitude or more, given that dioxins can be toxic at exposures well below billionths of a gram. A femtogram is one millionth of one billionth of a gram, and dioxins can produce toxic effects at femtograms of exposure.

In fact, competent scientists have concluded that there is no safe level of exposure to dioxins. Not even one femtogram. That’s because at any level, dioxins begin to produce toxic effects on biology, no matter how small the exposure.

Put another way, by setting fire to the vinyl chloride, the railroad turned their relatively non-toxic product into an insanely toxic chemical bomb and released it into the open air.

To call this a “controlled burn” is a crime. The media is gaslighting the entire nation by refusing to report on dioxins.

Whoever set fire to this vinyl chloride in an open ditch just carried out the worst act of ecological terrorism ever recorded in North America.

As Restoration and Remediation magazine explains, these dioxins are the most toxic chemicals known to humankind…

Post-structure fire and wildfire settings, especially those where plastics, synthetic materials, electronics, or PVC have burned, extremely hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals are created that are typically overlooked altogether.  One chemical in particular, dioxin, some consider to be one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.

Not only is this substance extremely toxic to all life, and far more lethal than asbestos or lead, it is also known to the World Health Organization as a member of the so-called “Dirty Dozen” – a group of dangerous chemicals also referred to as persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

POPs are chemicals of global concern due to their potential for long-range transport, persistence in the environment and atmosphere, ability to bioaccumulate in ecosystems, as well as their significant negative effects on human health and the environment. Bioaccumulation is the accumulation of chemicals in organisms from the surrounding environment through skin absorption, ingestion, and inhalation.

As this article explains — a fact that can be confirmed by any competent chemist, dioxins are created when chlorinated compounds are ignited or combusted:

Dioxins are formed when products containing carbon and chlorine burn, especially plastic, paper, pesticides, herbicides or other products where chlorine is used in the manufacturing process. Dioxins do not typically exist in materials before they are burned and are especially prevalent in structure fires and wildfires.

When set on fire, dioxins are formed and then chemically bond to smoke particles

From the R and R magazine, link above:

Depending on the temperature in a fire, dioxins can be adsorbed or chemically bound to smoke particles or remain in a vapor phase. Adsorption is when particles bond with one another, similar to how a magnet bonds with iron, rather than being absorbed like a sponge absorbs liquids.

This means that when you are observing the giant smoke column rising from East Palestine and spreading over the entire area like a giant toxic doom cloud, you are seeing dioxins spreading through the air with the smoke. The following photo is essentially showing a dioxin cloud spreading in an uncontrolled manner, into the atmosphere:

All the people who have been breathing in the fallout areas in the aftermath of East Palestine are breathing in highly toxic dioxins:

TCDD can enter your body if you inhale contaminated particulate, have skin or eye contact with contaminated soot, ash, or other materials, or eat contaminated food.  Due to the fact that ultra-fine smoke particulate matter generated in fires is often less than 3 microns in size (half the size of a red blood cell), inhalation of dioxin-laden particulate can easily bypass the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

Here’s another list of some of the effects of dioxin exposure, via the same source linked above:

Other adverse health effects may include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, porphyria, endometriosis, early menopause, reduced testosterone and thyroid hormones, altered immunologic response, skin, tooth, and nail abnormalities, altered growth factor signaling, and altered metabolism.

Diseases which have been linked to dioxin seem endless. Ingesting dioxin can also result in congenital malformations, spontaneous miscarriages, and a fatal, slow wasting syndrome similar to AIDS. Dioxin is strongly suspected of contributing to pathology of the urinary and hematological systems, growths in the colon, gallbladder complications, multiple myeloma, and lung, larynx and prostate cancer.

According to researcher Joe Thornton, “Dioxin’s health effects include endocrine disruption, reproductive impairment, infertility, birth defects, impaired neurological development, damage to the kidneys, and metabolic dysfunction. There is no evidence that there is a safe level of dioxin exposure below which none of these effects will occur.”

Long-term DNA mutations / DNA damage, even affecting pregnancies TWENTY YEARS after exposure

From the same source linked above:

TCDD is genotoxic and a known mutagen. A mutagen is a physical or chemical agent that causes a mutation, which is a change in the DNA of a cell. DNA changes caused by mutagens may harm cells and cause certain diseases, such as cancer.  TCDD alters the genetic structure of living cells. The effect TCDD has on cell structures and genes can be passed down to future generations. In 2012, a scientific study found that dioxin affects not only the health of an exposed rat, but also unexposed descendants through a mechanism of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance. Michael Skinner, Ph.D., a professor in the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University, discovered that “exposure to dioxin caused changes in the DNA methylation patterns of sperm that were transmitted across generations to affect the health of multiple generations of descendants. The grandchildren of exposed rats showed dioxin-induced effects ranging from polycystic ovarian disease to kidney disease. Due to its extremely long half-life, dioxin may still affect pregnancies occurring even 20 years after exposure.”

This means the toxic dioxin gas bomb just released over Ohio is also a genetic mutation bomb that will destroy the lives of millions of people for generations to come.

This is, in fact, far worse then Chernobyl, a Soviet nuclear accident that killed dozens and poisoned hundreds of thousands over time. What just happened in Ohio will poison millions of Americans and likely kill tens of thousands, if not many more.

This event dwarfs Chernobyl, yet the entire U.S. corporate media is complicit in this criminal cover-up that also involves the EPA, CDC, White House, Governor of Ohio, the railroad company and more.

We are going to start seeing babies born with deformed faces and limbs over the next several years. We are going to witness mass human suffering, animal die-offs and “dead zone” areas where no animals can survive.

There’s much more coming on this. Watch for my full interview with Eric Coppolino to be posted here, and also watch for NaturalNews.com’s upcoming report on natural phytochemicals that can help block and detox dioxins from the body, according to published medical and scientific research.

Finally, note that we are adding dioxin testing to our food science lab using one of our mass spec instruments (a tandem ms/ms combined with a GC interface) and we hope to have dioxin testing up and running within 90 days. More updates coming…

Watch the full interview with Eric Coppolino here, in the Situation Update podcast (the interview starts at around the 19 minute mark): click this or click screen.

 

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A London hospital has taken down a display of artwork designed by Palestinian schoolchildren from Gaza after complaints by a British pro-Israel charity.

According to a statement by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), the hospital was compelled to remove the artwork following a complaint by the NGO on behalf of a number of Jewish patients, “who said that they felt vulnerable and victimised by this display”.

The artwork contained a display of decorated plates, along with illustrations of their significance. Entitled “Crossing Borders – a festival of Plates”, the display was shown by the entrance to the children’s outpatients’ department at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

It was designed by children at two schools run by UNRWA in Gaza and transferred onto the plates by children at the Chelsea Community Hospital school. The caption for one of the display plates was: “The olive branch is the symbol of peace and is used to express the wish for an independent Palestinian state.”

The group said: “The drawings from Gaza all appear to be professional artwork, in the same style, and carried out by the same person,” although it was said to have been designed by children at the Beit Lahia Girls’ School and the Jabalia Prep Boys’ A School in Gaza.

UKLFI said in the complaint that some of the artwork displayed Palestine as covering the entire area of Israel.

If you feel "vulnerable" and "victimised" having to look at a display of artwork by children from Gaza, imagine how those children feel when an Israeli soldier is pointing a gun at them. And get over yourself.https://t.co/A29Ql1Lh3X

— Frank Owen's Legendary Paintbrush 🟨🟥🥀🇵🇸🇾🇪 (@WarmongerHodges) February 24, 2023

Another description of a plate says: “The olive branch is the symbol of peace and is used to express the wish for an independent Palestinian state.”

“However, the picture on the plate accompanying the text shows the Dome of the Rock with a large Palestinian flag, implying that Jerusalem and in particular the site of what had been the Jewish Temple, would be part of a Palestinian state,” UKLFI said. The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque are located in East Jerusalem, an area designated as Israeli-occupied territory in international law since 1967.

Israel has imposed a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. The siege and several Israeli military operations against Gaza have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, and left many suffering post-traumatic stress disorders.

Update – the apartheid apologists at UK lawyers for Israel edited the text in their ludicrous article, removing “delighted” and “designed by children from Gaza”, so they can appear less unhinged.

A case study in the re-writing of history.

Original & updated. pic.twitter.com/gYVx4XQibt

— kristyan benedict (@KreaseChan) February 24, 2023

UKLFI claimed that the young students at the two Gaza schools had been taught with Hamas ideology embedded within their curriculum.

“The fact that adults could find a piece of artwork done by children intimidating, that an outfit such as the UKLFI could move to issue a complaint, and finally for the hospital to actually remove the artwork, is utterly bizarre,” said Anas Altikriti, CEO of The Cordoba Foundation, a UK-based research group.

Middle East Eye has reached out to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital for comment.

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I was actually talking to Cory Morningstar, who put me on track to investigate the White Helmets. So I think she wrote about them originally in 2014- one year after they were established by British Military Intelligence operative, James Le Mesurier, employed by Analysis Research and knowledge (ARK) group that’s headed up by very probably an MI6 operative Alistair Harris, who’s operating in a number of countries around the world on behalf of the British government.

And we were both talking about the fact that we’re suddenly post-earthquake seeing wall-to-wall propaganda resurrecting the White Helmet brand, that of course had been extensively damaged by Syrian civilian accusations including theft, murder, torture, detention, being embedded with armed groups dominated by Al-Qaeda, organ trafficking, child abduction for presenting their chemical weapon staged events, and of course they were proven to be staged after the Douma 2018 chemical attack when the OPCW dissident inspectors, who were on the ground, pointed out that the events at the Medical Center in Douma were staged as I had already confirmed visiting the Medical Center days after the alleged attack.

So the brand itself had been we thought irreparably damaged. They tried to revive it in Ukraine. The White Helmets go to Ukraine…That didn’t really work. In fact, it really worked against them because people then started to affiliate them with the Nazi elements in Ukraine, particularly with the mercenaries going from the northeast of Syria into Ukraine to fight alongside the Azov and Aidar battalions, and also of course more recently the influx of ISIS from Syria into Ukraine to fight alongside the Ukrainian forces such as they are now.  But suddenly after the earthquakes, or the two earthquakes, major earthquakes that hit Syria on the 6th of February, we’ve seen it’s like Groundhog Day. We’ve gone back to the 2013 promotional material wall-to-wall across all media outlets, who are the White Helmets, the same kind of copy-paste Syria Campaign narratives that were produced back then, who are they volunteers- three thousand volunteers saving 115 lives in Syria etc….But what I want to focus on today is the fact that here in Syria we see that the West collectively and their allies in Israel and the Gulf States, namely Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are capitalizing on the humanitarian tragedy on the earthquake to effectively revive the military war against the Syrian government.

I mentioned attacks carried out by ISIS…The Western media is portraying attacks by Assad personally… Of course that’s what they’ve always done against terrorist positions in the Northwest….And reality those so-called attacks have been defensive campaigns to prevent the advance of the armed groups dominated by Al-Qaeda, known to be a U.S admitted to be a U.S. asset inside Syria.. And so the White Helmet Resurrection in my view is part of this drive to re-arm, re-equip and refinance the armed groups in the Northwest to lead a military campaign alongside ISIS in the Northeast, Central Syria and the southeast, and bolstered by the latest Israeli aggression on the 19th of February around 1:00 am when they attacked various sites in Syria, including a number of sites in Damascus, killing five Syrian civilians, injuring dozens, more damaging the Damascus Citadel’s archaeological institutes destroying historical documents by UNESCO heritage site in Sweida- to the south of Damascus- 300 kilometers away from the U.S military base in al Tanf.

So, what I’m trying to say today to people that are not aware of who the White Helmets are and who may be getting pulled into funding the various donation sites that are associated with the White Helmets… I want to try and point out how this uptake in funding has come as a result of the earthquake.. So in other words the earthquake is being exploited by the West, while of course they’re maintaining to a large degree the majority of the sanctions against the bulk of the Syrian population- 80% living under the Syrian government protection.

So first of all, let’s have a look. I’ll run through quite quickly, and I’ve only really taken a small percentage of the funding campaigns that are out there linked to the White Helmets. So first of all we see secretary Antony Blinken: “Today, I’m announcing plans for additional 100 million dollars to provide life-saving aid in Turkey and Syria”.

And I have to say also when they mentioned Syria, they’re talking about Northwest Syria. They’re talking about the pocket of Syria that is controlled by Al-Qaeda or Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Abu Muhammad al-Julani (the head of HTS) who by the way refused the Convoy of 14 trucks of humanitarian aid that came from Damascus through southern Idlib, and after a week of negotiation between Syrian Arab Crescent the UAE and the armed groups dominated by al-Julani, Al-Julani put out a statement saying that he wouldn’t legitimize the internationally recognized Syrian government and he wouldn’t accept the aid.

Activists on the ground told me he was asking for ten thousand dollars per truck for it to enter Idlib to bring aid to the Syrian people under their occupation. So Blinken basically goes on this is all part of this kind of rebranding or cleaning up of the White Helmet brand. So here he states that he’s honored to meet representatives of the Syria Civil Defense, of course we know there are not the Syria Civil Defense. The real Syria Civil Defense was established in 1953 in Syria and it’s the only recognized, Syria Civil Defense by the International Organization for Civil Defense in Geneva. Added to the U.S. So Blinken’s talks about 100 million which will be distributed part of it through USAID, we have Germany offering 30 million euros for NGOs. We assume among those will be the White Helmets in the Northwest again controlled by Al-Qaeda. Samantha Power, who heads up USAID under the Biden Administration is talking look at the second part of her tweet 85 million in funding, and of course she had a conversation with Raed Al Salah (the head of the White Helmets).

And so we know that much of this funding will in effect go to the White Helmets. The White Helmets putting out their thank you tweet to Samantha Power, the USAID Bureau for humanitarian assistance, lead photographed alongside a White Helmets management. And I have to say all of this money to our knowledge is coming into bank accounts in Istanbul, that are managed by the three directors of the White Helmets: Raed Saleh, Farouq Habib and Munir Mustafa,  and of course we would like to have some transparency on how this money is going to be distributed into the Northwest which as I keep saying is under the control of al-Qaeda, again from Samantha Powers. So she very kindly adds on an additional 5 million to assist with rescue equipment fuel for life-saving operations and crucial support for ambulance networks. We’ll come on to that later.

Interesting here, I just want to point out look at the uniform and the branding of the White Helmets. We’re going very much towards kind of EU-UK fire Brigade insignia, and notice of course that everything is in English despite the fact that they work in an Arabic speaking environment. Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, the United States Representative for the US, is talking about the decision to open two additional border crossings. So again, this is related in my view to the uptick in military support for the armed groups, and the Revival of the military campaign to topple the Syrian government while Syria itself is at its most vulnerable. Qatar which of course originally put in around 3 billion into supporting regime change in Syria from 2011 onwards, and whose media was responsible for much of the propaganda that demonized the Syrian government.

Now interesting that they do actually state that they’re going to support the operations of the White Helmet, but they’re a little bit coy about mentioning the amount. They say that basically they are fundraising 10 million dollars and they set aside one million. But we can assume that an awful lot more will be coming in from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Canadian government will provide an initial 10 million in aid to Turkey and Syria. And Denmark alongside the UK krona 20 million to the Syria civil defense. So again going directly to the White Helmets. And I think that’s around 2 million. I think sterling and a little bit more than that in dollars. The UK government not to be outdone commit to additional funding to the White Helmets to support search and rescue in Syria.

The White Helmets thanked the British delegation, which was headed up by the right honorable Andrew Mitchell who’s the Minister of State for development and Africa. Of course he was honored to meet the white Helmets Heroes involved in search and rescue operations in Northwest Syria. They’ve released an additional 4.3 million pounds. The UK foreign office funds the White Helmets year on year 2.2 million minimum, and I believe that 4.3 million has just been increased to 5 million.  I’ll do a summary of all the funding so far at the end,, but then let’s get on to what I call the kind of billionaire complex, influencer cartels “Choose Love” which was previously help refugees has had a target of 4.164 million to raise for the White Helmet. I recommend everybody goes to the UK column article: “White Helmets, Halal Systems and the Grotesque Militarization of Humanitarianism in Syria” where you will find a lot of information about Choose Love or help refugees as it was previously.

This rebranding of these NGOs, or the members of the NGO complex is very common when their reputation is tarnished. The rebranding happens just as of course it did with al-Qaeda in Syria multiple times, then we have a AVAAZ, instrumental in funding the war campaign against the Syrian government from 2011 onwards. I mentioned Danny Abdul day, and before if people remember back in, I think it was 2012 of ours had the smuggle hope for Syria Campaign, which raised over 2 million to equip the so-called citizen journalists, who produced much of the early propaganda before the White Helmets took over. So the latest of our campaigns.

I also want to draw your attention to the language that’s being used by the major and by these funding campaigns. It’s doomsday in Turkey and Syria. I’ve seen this across multiple media outlets again pushing the very familiar tagline on the White Helmets, one brave group of Syrian volunteers who’s already responding literally digging people out of trouble with bare hands. Pay attention to that sentence “The white helmets are the best hope for people in parts of Syria”. Will they admit they omit the fact that “it’s the part of Syria that contains the majority of al-Qaeda and affiliated armed terrorist groups including the Uyghurs from China, Chechens, Saudi Arabians, Afghanistanis, Turkistanis, etc….”And then they are crying out for rescue supplies: fuel and an emergency shelter,  and our movement could provide it in hours. That’s interesting. Avaaz could provide materials for the White Helmets in the Northwest now.

You’ll also be seeing- and that’s where I  really want to draw people’s attention to this. You’re going to be seeing a lot of images like this: White Helmets holding children aloft, a lot of cheering and shouting and a lot of cameras, a lot of mobile phones and very clean children and children that don’t look remotely traumatized by six -now ten- days under the rubble. You’re going to see a lot of that.. Don’t please be fooled by it.

The real theory of civil defense, the Syrian Arab Crescent and the various emergency relief teams inside proper Syria are too busy actually doing their work to pose for photo opportunities. But note here the White Helmets thank of ours then you have what’s this one the Voices Project USA, which is effectively Syria Campaign. Syria campaign established by Ayman Asfari, a UK based Syrian oil baron investigated by the serious fraud organization that looked into his funding of the conservative party under Theresa May. And this is the American version of the Syria Campaign. But the Syria campaign have their own funding campaign going again showing very emotive pictures of the White Helmets: “GoFundMe” that shut down multiple fundraisers for people inside Syria under the government protection, but however managed to raise a hundred thousand to support the White Helmets riots ahead of the White Helmets was actually allowed to start a funding campaign with Gulf. On me it wasn’t shut down. The mayor of London said it can’t. In Trafalgar Square, City Hall is assisting the Syrian community and creating Syria house a space where they can pay their respects, and we even have the royal family involved in Trafalgar Square. The king looks very sorry. Syrian Community tent where members of the Syrian Community can come together to support those who need it most and guess who’s on the left of King Charles ( in the photo) that’s Ayman Asfari, who I just mentioned, who has pretentions to the throne of Syria. The king himself has committed to making a donation to the DEC appeal that has raised over 60 million for Northwest Syria.

Now this is where it gets kind of interesting. So here we’ve got an interview on Le devoir. So in this interview I’ll translate from French. We’ve heard the cries of people under the rubble but they said we don’t have equipment to save them that’s the White Helmets, and here you have one of the primary members of the White Helmets talking about the White Helmets’ needs: fuel,  search and rescue equipment, heavy vehicles, spare parts for vehicles, tires for vehicles.

Now remember how many millions are being pledged to this organization of less than 3 000 volunteers. Now in amongst the media campaign I found these photographs of the lack of heavy machinery, while the White Helmets are allegedly digging people out from under the rubble and then let’s have a look back at this. This is the White Helmets YouTube channel in Idlib. 15.2k subscribers. It’s been running since 2013, and if you can play the video Mike, I just want to show from one year ago amount of Machinery that the White Helmets had available to them. And at one point that I want to make during this video is the White Helmets operate with an annual budget from their various sponsors in the west and in the Gulf States and Israel, 35 million  per year.

The real serious civil defense, 10 000 volunteers across 80 percent of the population of Syria, have an annual budget of 50 000. While the White Helmets have all of this equipment. And while the White Helmets had in fact stolen equipment from the rails of Syria civil defense -when they occupied areas where the real Syria civil defense operated. In Aleppo- for example, I spoke to one of the captains of the Syria civil defense the real one and he told me that for 44 collapsed buildings they only had seven machines to actually help them dig people out from under the rubble.

So this gives you an indication and a comparison between the two organizations: One funded by the West in order to destabilize their country and criminalize the Syrian government. The other, the genuine Syria civil defense that is working for the Syrian people. So I want to look at this very quickly. This is the Syria Regional program for USAID final report 2020 and note in the small print at the bottom that “USAID and now the British government siphoned their funding not directly to the White Helmets but through Chemonics  International.

And let’s have a look. So this was since 2013 to 2020. I’ve circled in Red. So 46% of the funding, 25.2 million went to the supply of heavy equipment for the White Helmets. So their claims that they don’t have heavy equipment available are false, and so therefore one has to ask: Where are the millions going??? and let’s just do a quick recap of what I’ve talked about. So, Blinken talked about 100 million [part of it via USAID], and we also have to remember USAID’s connections to the CIA. Germany 30 million Euros. So, 31.7 million dollars USAID, 85 million plus an extra 5 million for the White Helmets, Denmark in collaboration with the UK 1.9 million, the UK FCDO about 6 million. Choose Love $4.8 million. DEC that I mentioned that the King Charles is going to be donating to 72 million dollars,  Qatar at least 10 million. So the total is 316 million so far.

And as I said I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve not looked into the EU, the UN pledges, etc…, and the White Helmets 20 million minimum. So their annual budget is 35 million. They’re getting that anyway one assumes, and here we have 20 million on top for 3 000 volunteers that already have all the equipment they need to dig people out. So why is this money needed. And just a quick reminder from John Pilger award-winning journalist/ film maker as he said: “I think in 2016 or 2017, the White Helmets are complete propaganda construct”, and he also mentioned they’re working alongside Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda in Syria.

NOTE: Avaaz is U.S.-based nonprofit organization launched in January 2007 that promotes global activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. In 2012, The Guardian referred to Avaaz as “the globe’s largest and most powerful online activist network

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***

An interesting story was reported on Feb.26, 2023 by News 8 WTNH, New Haven, CT. They took the story down about 24 hours later but it is still available on EIN Presswire (click here).

“Nearly 500 people from Washington, Oregon and Idaho gathered at the Wenatchee Convention Center in Washington State on Saturday, January 28 to hear and share stories of…injuries and deaths from COVID shots and hospital protocols; careers upended and families torn apart by mandates; and numerous harms from closures of schools, businesses and churches.”

“Heart screening was available and conducted using multifunction cardiogram technology, or MCG, provided by HeartCARE Corp”

“we had the opportunity to perform Multifunction Cardiogram™ screens on a variety of participants…over half of those tested (16 of 30 people) (53%) had positive markers for myocarditis. Two of these were active duty US Military pilots.“

Studies on rates of post COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis

The rates of post COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis are much, much higher than what Public Health Authorities have admitted to (most will admit to about 1:5000).

There are two key studies on what the real rates of post COVID-19 vaccine heart damage may actually be:

1. Prospective Thailand study of 202 boys showed 1:30 (7/202) boys ages 13-17 developed myocarditis or pericarditis within a week after 2nd dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA (click here).
2. Professor Christian Mueller, University Hospital Basel Switzerland conducted testing on 777 healthcare workers within a week after COVID-19 booster shot, and found increased troponinemia in 22/777 (1:35) that had no other cause other than the COVID-19 booster shot (click here)

   “The actual incidence of post-vaccination myocardial lesions is 2.8% vs 0.0035% of myocarditis in retrospective studies (unvaccinated)”

   “The incidence of myocardial lesions is 2.8% (1:35), or 800 times higher than the usual incidence of myocarditis (in unvaccinated)” the researchers add.

My Take…

I believe myocarditis (heart inflammation) is responsible for vast majority of post COVID-19 sudden deaths that we are seeing now, and health authorities have intentionally downplayed the risk of myocarditis post COVID-19 vaccination.

They don’t want to conduct autopsies on sudden deaths now, because they don’t want us to know that the risk of post-vaccine myocarditis and sudden cardiac death was always much higher than what they admitted to publicly.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health admitted to a myocarditis risk of 1 in 5000 and he was lambasted by pharma-captured Ontario doctors who didn’t want any truth to be known (click here)

But both the Thailand study and Swiss study suggest a myocarditis risk of 1:30 or 1:35per vaccine dose. That means 3% of all COVID-19 vaccinated people could be walking around with heart inflammation (myocarditis) they don’t know they have, which puts them at increased risk for sudden cardiac death, during exercise or in the early morning hours (the trigger for sudden cardiac death is a surge of stress hormones).

The Washington event cardiac testing was not scientific and 53% of people walking around with myocarditis seems very unlikely. But it raises a crucial question.

WHAT IF the risk of post COVID vaccine myocarditis actually increases with time?

As reported by Dr.Peter McCullough, we know that spike protein circulates at least 28 days after injection, and gets delivered to the heart during that time (click here).

The Thailand and Swiss studies tested people only within the 1st week after COVID-19 vaccination and 3% had heart inflammation or heart damage.

What if this gets worse as time goes by? What if the risk of myocarditis actually increases from 3% because the spike protein which inflames the heart continues to circulate for 28 days after injection and probably even longer?

That is what this Washington public cardiac testing is suggesting.

I am also concerned about those 2 pilots with inflamed hearts.

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***

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”—Simone Weil, French philosopher

***

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.

For instance, an animal welfare bill introduced in the Florida state legislature would ban the sale of rabbits in March and April, prohibit cat owners from declawing their pets, make it illegal for dogs to stick their heads out of car windows, force owners to place dogs in a harness or in a pet seatbelt when traveling in a car, and require police to create a public list of convicted animal abusers.

A Massachusetts law prohibits drivers from letting their cars idle for more than five minutes on penalty of a $100 fine ($500 for repeat offenders), even in the winter. You can also be fined $20 or a month in jail for scaring pigeons.

This overbearing Nanny State despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

Consider, for example, that businesses in California were ordered to designate an area of the children’s toy aisle “gender-neutral” or face a fine, whether or not the toys sold are traditionally marketed to girls or boys such as Barbies and Hot Wheels. California schools are prohibited from allowing students to access websites, novels or religious works that reflect negatively on gays. And while Californians are free to have sex with whomever they choose (because that’s none of the government’s business), removing a condom during sex without consent could make you liable for general, special and punitive damages.

It’s getting worse.

Almost every aspect of American life today—especially if it is work-related—is subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control, whether you’re talking about aspiring “bakers, braiders, casket makers, florists, veterinary masseuses, tour guides, taxi drivers, eyebrow threaders, teeth whiteners, and more.”

For instance, whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 3 American occupations requires a license.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.

“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek.

“Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”

This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.

That explains how a fisherman can be saddled with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water. Or why police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public unless portable toilets are also made available.

The laws can get downright silly. For instance, you could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

However, the consequences are all too serious for those whose lives become grist for the police state’s mill. A few years back, police raided barber shops in minority communities, resulting in barbers being handcuffed in front of customers, and their shops searched without warrants. All of this was purportedly done in an effort to make sure that the barbers’ licensing paperwork was up to snuff.

In this way, America has gone from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation. And “we the people,” sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, have allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.

We increasingly find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.

In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration.What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.

A special report by CNBC breaks down the national numbers:

One out of 100 American adults is behind bars — while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

According to the Washington Post, these funds have been used to buy guns, armored cars, electronic surveillance gear, “luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.” Police seminars advise officers to use their “department wish list when deciding which assets to seize” and, in particular, go after flat screen TVs, cash and nice cars.

In Florida, where police are no strangers to asset forfeiture, Florida police have been carrying out “reverse” sting operations, where they pose as drug dealers to lure buyers with promises of cheap cocaine, then bust them, and seize their cash and cars. Over the course of a year, police in one small Florida town seized close to $6 million using these entrapment schemes.

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras—used in 24 states and Washington, DC—are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash.

One small Florida town, population 8,000, generates a million dollars a year in fines from these cameras. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in heft fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

The problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.