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Christmas gift exchange between Zelensky and Biden in White House meeting. The Ukrainian president brought to Biden the newly signed law abolishing the Kiev Administrative District Court, already in the crosshairs of the U.S. State Department, which had sanctioned the Tribunal’s president for “human rights violations.” The real reason the Tribunal was abolished is that it had opened proceedings against the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their crimes. For his part, Biden gave Zelensky the first Patriot missile battery and a pledge to provide him with another $45 billion in 2023, adding to the $100 billion already given in the form of weapons and military assistance. Zelensky said in his address to Congress that what the U.S. provided to Ukraine for the war is “an investment in global security and democracy.”

The U.S. Congress has approved military spending of $858 billion for 2023 (13 times that of Russia). The Pentagon’s budget alone shows a 10 percent increase over last year’s, or $70 billion more, or $36 billion more than the President’s own request. U.S. military spending, relative to the Pentagon budget alone, is equivalent to that of the next 10 countries with the highest military spending on a global scale.   Added to the Pentagon budget are other military expenditures of about $400 billion, bringing actual U.S. military spending to more than $1.2 trillion. This colossal increase, headlines the New York Times, creates “a new boom for arms manufacturers.” All this confirms Washington’s willingness to continue to fuel the war against Russia, which is causing an unprecedented crisis in Europe.

On December 15, in an institutional ceremony held in Moscow, the Daria Dughina Medal was established by the Eurasian Movement in honor of the journalist who was murdered last August. This year, it was awarded to Russian-Ukrainian musician Akim Apachev and Hungarian film director Maya Nogradi, editor of Grandangolo, for her film For the Children of Donbass, broadcast on Byoblu on Dec. 1, 2021, viewable here.

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This article was originally published on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

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On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination.  It garnered a great deal of attention.

Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages from many friends and colleagues, people I highly respect, about his monologue’s great significance, so I watched that episode. And then I watched it many more times.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man whom I hold in the highest esteem, tweeted that it was “the most courageous newscast in 60 years.  The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

While I completely agree with his second sentence, I was underwhelmed by Carlson’s words, to put it mildly.  I thought it was clearly “a limited hangout,” as described by the former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

Or listens carefully.

Carlson surely said some things that were true, and, as my friends and many others have insisted, he was the first mainstream corporate journalist to say that “the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

But “involved” is a word worthy of a lawyer, a public relations expert, or the CIA itself because it can mean something significant or nothing.  Or a little of both.  It is a weasel word.

And the source for Carlson’s claim was an anonymous source, someone who he said “had access” to the JFK files that were never released.  We know, of course, that when The New York Times and its ilk cite “anonymous sources,” claiming that they have told them this or that, this raises eyebrows. Or should.  Anyone who closely follows that paper’s claims knows that it is a CIA conduit, but now, those who know this are embracing Tucker Carlson as if he were the prophet of truth, as if a Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox TV host who is paid many millions of dollars, has become the Julian Assange of corporate journalism.

In a 2010 radio interview, Mr. Carlson said, “ I am 100 % his bitch.  Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do.”

The obvious question is: Why would Fox News allow Carlson to say now what many hear as shocking news about the JFK assassination?

So let me run down exactly what Carlson did say.

For five minutes of the 7:28 minute monologue, he said things that are obviously true: that Jack Ruby killed Oswald and that the claim that both acted alone is weird and beyond any odds; that the Warren Commission was shoddy; that the CIA weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” in 1967 according to Lance De Haven-Smith’s book Conspiracy Theory in America; that the CIA’s brainwashing specialist psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West visited Jack Ruby in jail and declared him insane, contrary to all other assessments of Ruby’s mental state; and that the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there was probably a conspiracy in the president’s assassination.

All of this is true but not news to those knowledgeable about the assassination.  Nevertheless, it was perhaps news to Carlson’s audience and therefore good to hear on a corporate news site.

But then, the next few minutes – the key part of his report, the part that drew all the attention – got tricky.

Carlson said that just that day – December 15, 2022 – when all the JFK documents were due to be released but many were withheld, “we spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents.”  Who would have such access, and how, is left unaddressed, but it is implied that it is a CIA source, but maybe not.  It is strange to say the least.

Carlson then said he asked this person, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?”  And the answer was “I believe they were involved.”  Carlson goes on to say, “And the answer we received was unequivocal.  Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

Note the words “hand,” “believe,” “involved,” and then “unequivocal.”

“Hand” can mean many things and is very vague.  For example, in front of his wife, a man tells his friend, “I had a hand in preparing Christmas dinner.”  To which his wife, laughing, replies, “Yes, he did, he put the napkins on the table.”

To “believe” something is very different from knowing it, as Dr. Martin Schotz, one of the most perceptive JFK assassination researchers, has written in his book, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

On Belief Versus Knowledge

It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.

And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth — as opposed to only believe the truth — is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility. It is precisely in moving from belief to knowledge that the citizen moves from irresponsibility to responsibility, from helplessness and hopelessness to action, with the ultimate aim of being empowered and confident in one’s rational powers.

“Involved,” like the word “hand,” can mean many things; it is vague, slippery, not definitive, and is used by tabloid gossip columnists to suggest scandals that may or not be true.

“Unequivocal” does not accurately describe the source’s statement, which was: “I believe.”  That is, unless you take someone’s belief as evidence of the truth, or you wish to make it sound so.

Note that nowhere in Carlson’s report does he or his alleged source say clearly and definitively that the CIA/National Security State murdered President Kennedy, for which there has long been overwhelming evidence.  Such beating-around-the-bush is quite common and tantalizes the audience to think the next explosive revelation will be dispositive.  Yet no release of documents is needed to confirm that the CIA killed Kennedy, as if the national security state would allow itself to be pinned for the murder.

Waiting for the documents is like waiting for Godot; and to promote some hidden smoking gun, some great revelation is to engage in a pseudo-debate without end.  It is to do the killers’ bidding for them.  And it is quite common. There are many well-known “dissident” writers who continue to claim that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the CIA/national security state killed the president.  And this is so for those who question the official story.  Furthermore, there are many more pundits who maintain that Oswald did the deed alone, as the Warren Report concluded and the mainstream corporate media trumpet.  This group is led by Noam Chomsky, whose acolytes bow to their master’s ignorant conclusions.

Maybe we’ll know the truth in 2263.

While it is true that some people change dramatically, Tucker Carlson, the Fox Television celebrity, would be a very unlikely candidate.  He defended Eliot Abrams and praised Oliver North; supported the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; went to Nicaragua to support those Contras; smeared the great journalist Gary Webb while defending the CIA; supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq; and much more.  Alan MacLeod chronicled all this in February of this year for those who have known nothing of Carlson’s past, including his father’s work as a U.S. intelligence operative as director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the body that oversees government-funded media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí and Voice of America – all U.S. propaganda outlets.

Now we are being asked to accept that Carlson is out to show how the CIA is “involved” in the murder of JFK.  Why would so many fall for such rhetoric?

No doubt any crumb of national news coverage about the CIA and the assassination by a major corporate player elicits an enthusiastic response from those who have tried for many years to tell the truth about JFK’s murder.  One’s first response is excitement.  But such reactions need to tempered by sober analyses of exactly what has been said, which is what I am doing here.  I, too, wish it were a breakthrough but think it is more of the same.  Much ado about nothing.  A way to continue to foster uncertainty, not knowledge, about the crime.

I see it as a game of false binaries in the same way the Democrats and Republicans are portrayed as mortal enemies.  Yes, there are some differences, but all-in-all they are one party, the War Party, who agree on the essential tenets of U.S. imperial policy.  They both represent the interests of the upper classes and are financed by them.  They both work within the same frame of reference. They both support what Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, rightly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT).

If one asks a dedicated believer in the truthfulness of The New York TimesCorporation or NPR, for example, what they think of Tucker Carlson, they will generally dismiss him with disdain as a right-wing charlatan.  This, of course, works in reverse if you ask Carlson’s followers what they think of the Times or NPR.  Yet for those who think outside the frame – and they are all non-mainstream – a different picture emerges.  But sometimes they are taken in by those whose equivocations are extremely lawyerly but appeal to what they wish to hear.  This is exactly what a “limited hangout” is.  Snagged by some actual truths, they bite on the bait of nuances that don’t mean what they think they do.

Left vs. right, Fox TV  vs. The New York Times, NPR, etc.: Just as Carlson’s father Dick Carlson ran the CIA-created U.S. overseas radio propaganda under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, so too the present head of National Public Radio, John Lansing, did the same under Barack Obama.  See my piece, Will NPR Now Change its Name to National Propaganda Radio.  Birds of a feather disguised as hawks and sparrows in a game meant to confuse and create scrambled brains.

Lastly, let me mention an odd “coincidence.”  On December 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., nine days before the partial JFK files release and Tucker Carlson’s monologue, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an organization devoted to JFK research, gave a presentation showcasing what was advertised as explosive new information about the Kennedy assassination.  The key presenter was Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and prominent JFK assassination researcher who has sued the CIA for documents involving Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operative George Joannides.

On November 22 Morley had published an article titled “Yes, There is a JFK Smoking Gun.”  It was subtitled: It will be found in 44 CIA documents that are still “Denied in Full.”  The documents he was referring to allegedly concern contacts between Oswald and Joannides in the summer and fall of 1963 in New Orleans and in Mexico City.

“They [the CIA] were running a psychological warfare operation, authorized in June 1963, that followed Oswald from New Orleans to Mexico City later that year,” wrote Morley.

Well, the “smoking gun” documents were not released on Dec 15, although on November 20 and then again at The National Press Club on December 6, Morley spoke of them as proving his point about the CIA’s involvement with Oswald, which has been obvious for a long time.  Although he said he hadn’t seen these key documents but was awaiting their release, he added that even if they were not released that will still prove him correct.  In other words, with this bit of legerdemain, he was saying: What I don’t know, and may not soon not know, supports what I’m claiming even though I don’t know it.  And even if the files were released, he writes, “As for the conspiracy question, the massive withholding of documents makes it premature to draw any conclusions. The undisclosed Oswald operation was not necessarily part of a conspiracy. It might indicate CIA incompetence, not complicity. Again, only the CIA knows for sure.”  So the smoking gun is not a smoking gun and the waters of uncertainty roll on and on into the receding future.

CIA incompetence, not complicity.  Of course.  It ain’t necessarily so.  Or it is, or might be, or isn’t.

Morley is one of  many who still cannot say that the CIA killed the president.  Tucker Carlson can speak of its “involvement” just like Morley. We need more information, more files, etc.  But even if we get them, we still won’t know.  Maybe by 2063.

My question for Tucker Carlson: Who was your anonymous source?  And did your source see the documents that were never disclosed?  What specific documents are you referring to?  And do they prove that the CIA killed Kennedy or just suggest “involvement”?

Finally, as I said before, even as there has long been a mountain of evidence for the CIA’s murder of JFK (and RFK as well, although that is never mentioned), many prominent people continue to play as if there is not.  Listen to this video interview between Chris Hedges and former CIA officer John Kiriakou.  It is all about the nefarious deeds of the CIA.  Right toward the end of the interview (see minutes 32:30-33:19), Hedges says,

“So I have to ask [since he has to answer] this question since I know Oliver Stone is convinced the CIA killed JFK … I’ve never seen any evidence that backs it up …”  and they both share a mocking laugh at Stone as if he were the village idiot when he knows more about the JFK assassination than the two of them put together, and Kiriakou says he too has not seen such evidence.  It’s a disgusting but typical display of arrogance and a “limited hangout.”

Criticize the CIA only to make sure you whitewash them for one of their greatest achievements: the murder of President John F. Kennedy.  This is straight from Chomsky’s playbook.

Beware double-talkers and the games they play.  They come in different flavors.

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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). 

Featured image is from Behind the Curtain

He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book, click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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An earlier version of this posting mistakenly referred to a European Council Amendment of Resolution 2361 which “no longer objects to compulsory vaccination”. That information is incorrect. See: Resolution 2361 (2021) entitled “Covid-19 vaccines: ethical, legal and practical considerations”

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First published on April 11, 2022.

The EU Vaccine Passport Restrictions are Dramatic. Fundamental Rights are being violated.

The substance of the EU procedures concerning the vaccine passport are contained in the EU EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM. (summary below, scroll down for Selected Excerpts and Complete Text).

Summary

.

The Pandemic Treaty = Digital Tyranny

The MEMORANDUM outlined by the EU points to the derogation of fundamental human rights entrenched in the adoption of the EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework.  

As noted in the above Summary, the intent is to extend the Regulation which expires on June 30 2022 for another twelve months until June 30th, 2023.

This extension plays a key role: 

The EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework is slated to be tied into negotiations pertaining to a worldwide “Pandemic Treaty” which were initiated in early March 2022.

On March 3, the EU Council gave:

“a green light to start negotiations on an international pandemic treaty… The Council adopted a decision to authorise the opening of negotiations for an international agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”

What is the timeline

The procedure is slated to be presented to the 76th World Health Assembly in 2023, “with the aim to adopt the instrument [namely the pandemic treaty]  by 2024.”

The object of the Pandemic Treaty consists in creating by 2024  a global health governance entity under WHO auspices.

In turn the Pandemic Treaty would be tied into the WHO’s QR Verification Code project, which is intent upon creating a global digital data bank of 8 billion people.  Both initiatives are to be carried out concurrently by the WHO in liaison with ID2020 and the Gavi Alliance, both of which are funded by the Gates Foundation.

Peter Koenig describes the QR Code as

“an all-electronic ID – linking everything to everything of each individual (records of health, banking, personal and private, etc.).”

According to David Scripac 

 “A worldwide digital ID system is in the making. [The aim] of the WEF—and of all the central banks [is] to implement a global system in which everyone’s personal data will be incorporated into the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) network.”

The March Towards World Government

A Worldwide QR Verification Code lays the groundwork for the instatement of “a Global Police State” controlled by the financial establishment. It’s part of what the late David Rockefeller entitled “The March towards World Government” based on an alliance of bankers and intellectuals.

What is the legitimacy as well as the science behind this diabolical project?

NONE.

Amply confirmed: THERE IS NO PANDEMIC. The alleged Covid-19 Pandemic is based on “Fake Science”. Both the EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework as well as the WHO QR Verification Code are based on outright lies and fabrications. It is now well established that the PCR test which has been used to “detect SARS-CoV-2” is totally invalid.

“Both the WHO and the CDC (with the usual innuendos) have confirmed what was known from the very outset in January 2020, namely that the RT-PCR test used to justify every single policy mandate including lockdowns, social distancing, the mask, confinement of the labor force, closure of economic activity, etc. was flawed and invalid”

The EU Memorandum (below) confirms two types of tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 both of which have been declared invalid:

“According to Regulation (EU) 2021/953, test certificates are to be issued based on two types of tests for SARS-CoV-2 infection, namely

[1] molecular nucleic acid amplification tests (‘NAAT’), including those using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (‘RT-PCR’), and

[2] rapid antigen tests, which rely on detection of viral proteins (antigens) using a lateral flow immunoassay that gives results in less than 30 minutes, provided they are carried out by health professionals or by skilled testing personnel. (emphasis added)”

The  legitimacy of the EU Digital Covid Certification Framework, the Pandemic Treaty and the QR Verification Code rests on the presumption that the alleged “Covid-19 Pandemic is Real” and that the “mRNA Covid-19 vaccine constitutes a SOLUTION to the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.” 

The CDC confirms that the PCR test does not effectively differentiate between “SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses”. As of 31 December 2021, the CDC has declared the PCR test as invalid. 

For further details and analysis click here

Sustained by media disinformation and government propaganda, the mRNA vaccine was put forth as a solution to curbing the pandemic and saving lives.

The Vaccine does not Save Lives 

Amply documented, the Vaccine has triggered from the outset in December 2020 an upward trend in mortality and morbidity.

Extending the Vaccine in the EU as outlined in the “Memorandum” is a crime against humanity. The EU Memorandum must be immediately suspended.

Video: In many countries, there was a significant shift in mortality following the introduction of the mRNA vaccine

The evidence is overwhelming. The official figures (April 2022) point to approximately:

But only a small fraction of the victims or families of the deceased will go through the tedious process of reporting vaccine-related deaths and adverse events to the national health authorities.

The following statement contained in the EU Memorandum is nonsensical:

“Increasing vaccine uptake remains a crucial objective in the fight against the pandemic, given the protection against hospitalisation and severe disease afforded by vaccination

Amply documented, it’s the Covid-19 mRNA “Vaccine” rather than the SARS-CoV-2 virus which is “the killer”. 

In the words of Doctors for Covid Ethics:

“The signal of harm is now indisputably overwhelming, and, in line with universally accepted ethical standards for clinical trials, Doctors for Covid Ethics demands that the COVID-19 “vaccination” programme be halted immediately worldwide.

Continuation of the programme, in the full knowledge of ongoing serious harm and death to both adults and children, constitutes Crimes Against Humanity/Genocide, for which those found to be responsible or complicit will ultimately be held personally liable.”

The Procedures described in the EU Memorandum should be immediately suspended. The Justification for a “Pandemic Treaty” is Based on Lies and “Fake Science”. 

See Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book, specifically Chapters I-III.

The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky,

As a means to reaching out to millions of people worldwide whose lives have been affected by the corona crisis, we have decided in the course of the next few weeks to distribute the eBook for FREE.

Price: $11.50. FREE COPY Click here to download.

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Excerpts of the EU MEMORANDUM, with links to the complete text below.

The document in pdf can be accessed HERE.

The complete document in pdf can be accessed HERE. 

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First published on December 22, 2022

Another United Nations climate conference has come and gone. The twenty-seventh, to be exact.  

Its forgettable full name is the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Or COP27, for short.  

COP27, like all of the UN’s previous annual climate summits (COP1 through COP26), addressed none of the actual existential issues facing humanity. Instead, its delegates, gathered in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, bombarded the rest of us with endless chatter about how human-induced climate change will spell the end of humanity if trillions of dollars aren’t thrown at this alleged catastrophe.  

There was the usual call to action made by the same old summit attendees, who implored nations to reduce carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions before it’s too late to save “Mother Earth.” To that familiar refrain they added a new note: a proclamation of “climate justice” that focused on the need for rich countries to scale up “investment for climate and development” to the lofty tune of $2 trillion a year.  

But could all that blather about climate catastrophe and climate justice be nothing more than a smoke screen covering up a nefarious scheme—a scheme designed to monopolise the world’s resources for the benefit of a select few?    

Before we answer that question, let’s first go over some true facts about climate change and cover the variables that contribute to it. (Note: Natural climate cycles shouldn’t be confused with deliberate weather modification—a separate topic we will discuss further down in this article.)  

Is Climate Change Real?  

First, the question that is probably on everyone’s mind: Is climate change real? Yes, it is. It has been a natural, normal, nonstop phenomenon ever since Earth was formed.  

Second, the corollary question: Is it occurring as a result of human activity? No, it is not.  

To date, not a single scientific study has positively attributed all or part of observed climate change to anthropogenic (man-made) causes.

Granted, there are numerous computer models spewing out doom-and-gloom predictions. But, like all computer models, their outcomes can be manipulated by the variables entered into the algorithms. That is, the programmer can input certain parameters that will enable a specific desired outcome. The sole purpose of these computer models is to present a polished veneer that appears to be credible science. In actuality, these models are hiding the truth and keeping the deception called the “climate crisis” alive.  

A case in point is the infamous “hockey stick” computer-generated temperature graph produced by the equally infamous Michael Mann, a Penn State University professor of atmospheric science. After its initial sensational release in 1998, Mann’s graph was incorporated into the UN’s highly influential Third Assessment Report on climate change in 2001. Since then, the persuasive illustration has been used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to deceive the public into believing the theory of man-made global warming.  

Professor Mann’s graph purports to show the average global temperature over the past 1,000 years. For the first 900 years the graph portrays very little variation in global temperatures. They trend in as straight a line as the shaft on an ice hockey stick lying horizontally on its back side (see below). Then suddenly, in the twentieth century, the graph displays a precipitous rise in global temperature, looking like the hockey stick’s curved blade. 

   Michael Mann’s 1998 “hockey stick” temperature model. Source. 

Mann suggests that this sudden rise in temperature is all due to a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere.  

There is, however, a major problem with the hockey stick diagram: It’s utter fiction.  

In reality, there have been numerous quantifiable stages of cooling and warming of the earth’s climate spanning the millennia. Here are a few notable examples:  

• Fourteenth-century Europe was in a mini-ice age, as revealed by this article in Climate in Arts & History. During the Little Ice Age (1300 CE–1850 CE) global temperatures were significantly cooler—by as much as 2°C (3.6°F), particularly in North America and Europe.  
• Going back further, between 1000 CE and 1350 CE, identified as the Medieval Warming Period, temperatures were significantly warmer than current ones—and that was long before the industrial period. More than 700 scientists from 400 institutions in forty countries have contributed peer-reviewed papers providing evidence that the Medieval Warming Period was as hot or hotter than at present and was a global phenomenon, not just a European regional climate condition, as the IPCC wrongly speculates.  
• Going back further still, there were more warm spells, including a prolonged period during the Bronze Age, known to geologists as the Holocene Maximum (5000 BCE–8000 BCE). During this period, temperatures were significantly warmer than they are today. In fact, a fascinating study conducted by Myers et al. and published inThe Cryosphere Discussions in 2020 concludes that average temperatures, especially in East Antarctica, were a full 5°C (9°F) warmer than at present.  

Yet, despite his having flattened nine centuries of climate variation with his flawed computer program, Michael Mann’s fraudulent temperature model is still being used by the UN’s IPCC.  

Why? Why won’t the IPCC acknowledge that the climate has always changed, as the above three examples demonstrate—and changed, mind you, without any help from us humans?  

We’ll touch on possible motives for the IPCC’s misinformation at the end.  

For now, let’s stick to how the powers-that-be have gone about blaming human activity for natural climate cycles andhow they have hyped a made-up climate catastrophe reminiscent of the fairy-tale emperor’s imaginary clothes.      

Enter, in the decade of the 1960s, the theory of “anthropogenic global warming” or “man-made global warming.” The false notion was first adopted in 1968 by the Club of Rome in its efforts to promote the supposed need for population reduction. It has since been used to great effect by the UN and by other intergovernmental organizations as well as national governments around the world.  

The anthropogenic warming theorists claim that the CO₂ produced by human activity at the start of the twentieth century should have caused the earth’s temperature to rise. They insist there is a direct correlation between CO₂ and global temperature.As CO₂ increases, global temperature, they allege, increases in lock step.    

But is that actually true? Well, if we accept the findings presented by George S. Benton in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (October 1970), a startlingly different picture emerges.  

This intrepid scientist found that, in the 60 years between 1880 and 1940, the earth’s temperature rose approximately 0.6°C (1.0°F). That warming trend took place long before cars and aircraft were invented. Moreover, in the same period, industrial development was relatively insignificant.  

Then, during the post-WW2 economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s, industries were expanding and human production of CO₂ was soaring to new levels. Per the man-made warming theory, global temperature should have increased in those decades. But it didn’t. Instead, it fell significantly—some 0.3°C to 0.4°C—for three decades.  

These facts certainly do not correlate with the global warming theory.

In reality, the earth’s atmosphere didn’t start to warm in the twenty-first century until 1975. This warming trend continued until 2016, when global temperatures were at their peak; they have been declining ever since.  

The proof? All satellite datasets collected from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), the UK Meteorological Office, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), and the University of Alabama (UAH) show global temperatures have been declining since 2016, despite increasing amounts of atmospheric CO₂.  

If we look hard enough, we can find scientific articles laying out these hard facts. For instance, a report from Chris Morrison in The Daily Sceptic informs us that temperatures in the South Pole are now the coldest they have been since records began in 1957 and that Arctic sea ice is making a silent comeback.  

And yet, all of these data have, inexplicably, escaped the attention of mainstream media reporters.  

In the meantime, numerous climate change alarmists, notably former US Vice President Al Gore, desperately cling to the notion that there is a clear correlation between CO₂ and temperature.  

These climate cultists often refer to evidence collected from ice core samples to substantiate their claims.  

To wit: In the 1990s, the classic Vostok ice core sample taken in East Antarctica appeared to show temperature and carbon fluctuations moving in unison. Based on that sample, man-made climate change believers tried to make the case that as CO₂ increased, so, too, did temperature, with no lag time between the two variables. They convinced the scientifically illiterate masses that CO₂ influences temperature.  

But by the early 2000s, new scientific data—this 2001 report by Manfred Mudelsee in the Quaternary Science Reviews (QSR), for instance—made it clear that the exact inverse is true: CO₂ lags temperature. Put another way, temperature changes always precede CO₂ changes.  

Thus, the entire ice core theory was turned on its head by data proving that CO₂ increases as a result of temperature rising, not the other way around. After the temperature rises, it takes, on average, 800 years before CO₂ starts to inch up. This lag is sometimes as much as 2,300 years, other times as little as 300 years.    

The extraordinary thing is that the CO₂ lag is well accepted by climatologists yet is virtually unknown outside these circles. And it is this very same lag that climate charlatans like Al Gore fail to mention when presenting evidence obtained from ice core data.  

Therefore, from the evidence presented above, we can conclude that CO₂, like other greenhouse gases, does notdrive the earth’s climate.  

And that brings us to our next climate-related topic—greenhouse gases.  

Greenhouse Gases  

Gases that trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases (GHG). These are naturally occurring gases that absorb and release infrared radiation within the thermal infrared spectrum. The absorption and release of radiation reduces heat loss from the earth, which in turn causes an increase in atmospheric temperature.  

This reaction is what is commonly referred to as the greenhouse effect. Without these important gases, the earth would be a very cold and uninhabitable place—up to 32°C (57°F) colder, on average.  

By far the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. It constitutes 95 percent of the greenhouse gases by volume and has a dominant effect on our climate.  

Other natural greenhouse gases, such as methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide, (N₂O) are present but make up only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases. Methane, for example, constitutes as little as 0.000175 percent of all atmospheric gases and 0.036 percent of all greenhouse gases. And nitrous oxide’s concentration in the atmosphere is even lower, at 0.000034 percent.    

The second most abundant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Although CO₂ is a greenhouse gas, it is a natural gas,not a pollutant. It is a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle, without which all vegetation on earth would die. Natural levels of CO₂ are approximately 0.04 percent of the total atmosphere.  

Of the 0.04 percent that is CO₂, 95 percent comes from a combination of volcanic activity, decomposing vegetation, bacteria, and the earth’s oceans.  

Therefore, the human contribution to the overall CO₂ in the atmosphere is only 0.0016 percent. And yet it is this miniscule, insignificant percentage that we are supposed to believe is, in some miraculous way, driving humanity toward a climate catastrophe.  

What an illogical and unsupportable conclusion. Even if all human fossil fuel-burning activity were to cease tomorrow, the world’s oceans and volcanoes would continue to produce the vast majority of all CO₂ found in the atmosphere_.  

And even if humans could drastically reduce the level of CO₂, there would be no significant effect on the climate, as we have already seen from the scientific data presented above. Thus, the belief that CO₂ or any other GHG gas (i.e., N₂O) is the prime driver of all climate in the world is preposterous.   

The notion that carbon dioxide is “bad” is equally preposterous. CO₂ is the essential nutrient that generates all life on earth—and has only beneficial effects.  

For instance, plants are so improved by more CO₂ that greenhouse operators often increase the CO₂ concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This should be no surprise, since plants and animals evolved when CO₂ concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Granted, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields over the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO₂ in the atmosphere.  

In addition, research provided by author, public speaker, and climatologist  Timothy F. Ball from the University of Winnipeg reveals “current levels of 392 parts per million (ppm) are approximately one third the optimum for most plants. Empirical evidence from CO₂ levels injected into commercial greenhouses indicate optimum yields at levels between 1000 and 1200 ppm. Interestingly, this is the average level of the last 300 million years.”  

A Word on Nitrous Oxide  

Recently, nitrous oxide (N₂O) has made headlines by joining carbon dioxide and methane in the climate cultists’ pantheon of dreaded anthropogenic gases. In their view, increasing concentrations of N₂O, like CO₂, will lead to unusual and unprecedented warming and thus result in disastrous consequences for humanity.  

Based on this egregious lie, countries around the world are in the process of destroying conventional farming by reducing or eliminating the use of nitrogen fertilizer and its byproduct, N₂O.  

In Canada, for example, the Liberal regime is determined to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture. According to Climate Depot, Liberal Party leaders “want Canadian farmers to reduce their emissions from fertilizer, specifically nitrous oxide emissions, to 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030.”  

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the government plans to shut down 3,000 farms for the supposed purpose of preventing catastrophic warming from N₂O emissions.  

That unsubstantiated claim is effectively refuted by the 2022 research paper Nitrous Oxide and Climate by physicist C. A. de Lange et al. In their detailed analysis, Professor de Lange and his team prove that restricting N₂O emissions is not only completely unnecessary but dangerous as well.  

Under the guise of saving the planet, the vilification of N₂O is nothing more than a ploy by the Agenda 2030 conspirators to intentionally create food scarcity. Clearly the UN’s agenda is not about “ending hunger and achieving food security,” as it claims, but about achieving food insecurity worldwide.    

We may conclude from all the scientific evidence presented above—ice core data, satellite data, and field research—that none of the climate changes over the past several millennia can be explained by CO₂ or by any other greenhouse gas_.  Therefore, the fundamental principle that climate change is occurring due to human activity is absolutely false.     

So, you may be asking, how, then, is the earth’s climate changing? If CO₂ and N₂O are not causing climate change, what is?    

What Does Drive the Earth’s Climate?  

For over two decades, scientists have known that solar activity is the primary driver of climate change.  

In 2011, several leading scientists in Canada set out to prove this cause-and-effect relationship. In a first-of-its-kind event, they appeared before the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Energy to challenge the anthropogenic global warming theory. Of the four scientists who appeared at the hearing, three were specialists in the field of climatology.  

Professor of Earth Sciences Ian Clark from the University of Ottawa was the first of the three to address the committee. Here is what he had to say:  

We have not really seen any global warming for the past 10 years. . . .  This is in stark contrast with the IPCC forecast of an increase of some 0.2 degrees per decade.”  

Clark explained that twentieth-century warming is merely one of a series of warm periods over the past 10,000 years. During these intervals, he noted, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere held relatively steady and, what is more, “CO₂ had nothing to do with these warming periods.”

He demonstrated that in the past 500 million years there has been no indication of a correlation between temperature and CO₂—despite the proven lag factor. How could this be? Water vapor, he related, is responsible for the majority of the greenhouse effect—not CO₂ or any other GHG.

Most importantly, Clark said that “unlike CO₂ [correlations], we have very good correlations between various measures of solar activity and temperature.” He then showed the Senate committee some graphs illustrating the effects of increased solar activity on temperature: as solar activity increased, so, too, did global temperature, and vice versa.  

University of Ottawa Distinguished Professor Jan Veizer spoke next:

Many people think the science of climate change is settled. It is not. . . . [The sun] drives the water cycle; the water cycle then generates climate, and climate decides how much jungle, how much tundra and so on we will have, and therefore drives around the carbon cycle. . . .  The sun also warms the oceans that emit CO₂ into the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO₂ is thus the product and not the cause of the climate.

Got that? “Atmospheric CO₂ is thus the product and not the cause of the climate.”

The third scientist to speak at the hearing was Carleton University Professor of Geology Timothy Patterson. He discussed how his field research in the fjords of British Columbia has revealed consistent correlations between solar cycles and climate over the past 5,000 years:

Hundreds of other studies have shown exactly the same thing. . . . The sun, and not variations in carbon dioxide, appears to be the most important driver of climate change. . . . Solar scientists predict that by later in this decade the sun will be starting into its weakest solar cycle of the past two centuries, and this will likely lead to unusually cool conditions on earth, which may persist for decades. . . . It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world.”

So there we have it. Everything that happens in earth’s atmosphere comes down to the sun. It is the driving force behind climate change and has been since the beginning of time. CO₂ is irrelevant—especially CO₂ stemming from human activity.

That said, there is, however, one aspect of the earth’s atmosphere that is being manipulated by intentionally disruptive human actions. One of the terms for this manipulation is “weather modification.”

Weather Modification

Since the differences between “weather” and “climate” are often misunderstood, let us first look at what differentiates weather from climate before we delve into the topic of weather modification—also referred to as Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD).

Unlike climate, which describes the prevailing weather conditions in a vast area of the globe over a long period of time, weather describes the state of the atmosphere at a specific location and at a specific time. Weather refers to certain characteristics of the atmosphere—temperature, wind, precipitation, and humidity.

It is in the arena of weather that some scientists employed by various government agencies have found ways to alter—even weaponize—local weather phenomena to their advantage.

Judging by reports posted on CNN recently, one could be excused for thinking that weather modification—through either “cloud seeding” or Stratospheric Aerosol Injection(SAI) geoengineering—is a newfangled notion. In reality, the origins of this cloud-seeding technology date back to the 1940s.

In the late 1940s, for example, American mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, was researching weather modification through cloud seeding and its potential uses in climatic warfare.

By the 1960s, atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut (and, yes, brother of famed novelist Kurt Vonnegut) had vastlyimproved the cloud-seeding techniques then in use. While at General Electric Research Laboratory, he employed a solid solution of silver iodide crystals and silver bromide in the cloud-seeding mixture. Silver iodide’s hygroscopic qualities insure that water particles quickly bond with silver iodide’s solid crystalline structure.  

Unsurprisingly, the technology discovered by Vonnegut was put to active military use by the American Empire in its war against Vietnam. From 1967 to 1972, the US Air Force ran Operation Popeye, a highly classified rainmaking program deployed in Southeast Asia. The objective of the operation was to hamper the movement of North Vietnamese troops and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh trail network by prolonging the monsoon season.  

From then on, the potential military benefits of wartime deployment of weather modification technologies were self-evident. So self-evident, in fact, that by 1977 the UN was compelled to introduce a convention prohibiting the use of environmental modification technology in warfare. Both the US and the Soviet Union ratified that convention in 1980.  

Nevertheless, in August 1996, a report commissioned by the US Air Force revealed that the US military was still considering and potentially developing “weather warfare”—specifically, ENMOD systems that would offer “the war fighter a wide-range of possible options” (like generating precipitation or fog or storms) in order to defeat or coerce an adversary.  

Since then, it appears that the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has also been actively involved in ENMOD research, as this March 2009 report in Science magazine informs us.  

However, out of all the weather modification techniques we have briefly examined, none could wreak more potentially devastating effects on the planet than the aforementioned SAI geoengineering. Using this technology, scientists are attempting to play God by interfering with the natural, interconnected climatic life cycle between the sun and the earth.  

I’m speaking now of the insane scheme outlined in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, January 2019 edition), which proposes to inject aerosols into the stratosphere for a prolonged period of time as a means of mitigating the “significant impacts from climate change.”  

What do the authors mean by “impacts”? They’re borrowing the standard propaganda line from the global warming gospel, which infers or outright states that severe weather events—tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and tornados—are all on the rise because of global warming.  

But beware believing them! A quick search on Marc Morano’s Climate Depot reveals numerous studies presented by scientists from around the world—USA, Norway, Germany, and elsewhere—providing evidence to the contrary. Their data refutes the absurd, politically motivated concept being pushed by President Biden, his fellow Democrats, and other climate alarmists—the flawed concept that the world is currently experiencing a “climate emergency” aka “climate crisis.”  

Therefore, since there really are no significant impacts from human-induced climate change, the entire SAI geoengineering concept must be based on a false premise. Obviously, operating on the basis of a false premise can be dangerous. This technology is still in its infancy, but if allowed to proceed to its full development stage, it could have devastating consequences for the environment on a global scale.  

If the UN sponsors and delegates at the COP27 summit were actually concerned for humanity’s well-being, at the very least they should have discussed the possible impacts that weather modification is having on the environment. Also, they should have dealt with the two real existential crises threatening humankind’s survival: the reduction in male sperm counts and soil degradation around the globe.  

To wit: The world population recently hit eight billion, but birth rates across the world are consistently declining. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and a leading scholar of reproductive health, projects that sperm counts of the median male are set to hit zero by 2045.

With the introduction in the 1970s of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plastics, male sperm counts have dropped 50 percent to 60 percent—an average of 1 percent to 2 percent per year—between 1973 and 2011. A recent study from Israel has found that sperm counts worldwide have plunged 62 percent in under fifty years—a decades-long trend that is still accelerating.

COP27 delegates also never discussed the damaging effects GMO crops are having on the environment. (That topic hasn’t been broached at any UN conference, come to think of it.) GMO crops are sprayed with herbicides, such as Bayer’s Roundup, which contain the active ingredient glyphosate, the most ubiquitous cancer-causing herbicide/antibiotic on the planet. Moreover, the devastating effects chemical farming is having on the air we breathe and on the erosion of arable land is also never mentioned at any UN gathering.  

I repeat: If the governments represented at the COP27 summit were actually concerned about saving humanity and wildlife and the environment from all manner of toxins and pollutants, the aforementioned crises would have been at the top of their agenda.  

But, then again, COP has never been about saving the planet or humanity.  

The Real Agenda behind the Man-Made Climate Change Narrative

Since the inception of the aforementioned Club of Rome, a neo-Malthusian think tank founded by David Rockefeller in 1968, the technocrats who seek to rule the planet have been steadily moving humanity toward a neo-feudal dystopian nightmare. For proof, see here and here and here.

In addition to working in or with the UN and its affiliated organs—the World Health Organization (WHO), the IPCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to name a few—these social engineers have been busy harnessing the power of central banks, investment banks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, philanthropic foundations, and billionaires in their bid to eliminate what little remains of national sovereignty and to slowly privatize everything on earth (including “natural assets” such as water and entire ecosystems). 

And, although that conquest by the supranational oligarchy and their social engineers has been in the works for years, their timeline for achieving their goals has been greatly accelerated since 2019 with the launch of the COVID plandemic.

The kickoff of the COVID-19 threat represented the first “COVID” chapter of the cabal’s global takeover playbook. The fear that was created by the introduction of an alleged deadly virus provided the perfect pretext for governments around the world, under the direction of the WHO, to suspend the rule of law and implement draconian measures such as curfews, lockdowns, physical separation, biometric surveillance, and mask wearing—steps that normally would never be accepted by the public but that under the guise of “public safety” were implemented virtually unchecked around the world.

With the successful completion of the COVID chapter, the second “save the planet from catastrophic climate change” chapter in the cabal’s playbook is proceeding as planned. For almost thirty years, the UN and its satellite organizations—the IPCC being the one most tied to this article—have been manipulating the temperature record, utilizing flawed computer climate models, and lying with unverifiable statistics in their bid to fool the world’s population into believing there is a coming climate apocalypse.

I cannot overemphasize the fact that both the “COVID” chapter and the “save the planet from catastrophic climate change” chapter are from the same playbook. Meaning, they are not isolated agendas. The COVID narrative was the test run for what we can expect to see roll out in the very near future with regard to the climate swindle.

For example, the plandemic lockdowns, which were so instrumental in destroying the global economy while simultaneously enriching the billionaire class, are once again being gradually unleashed on an unsuspecting public, but this time in the form of “climate lockdowns.”  

Here’s one illustration of what I mean. The unelected officials at the UN and WEF are introducing the concept of the “15-minute city” as a way to “save the planet” from global warming.

Under this new control grid scheme, cities will be divided into 15-minute districts. Residents will be confined to their respective district to conduct daily business through a series of electronic gates located at key roads leading in and out of the city. After a resident registers his motor vehicle details, every movement his vehicle makes will be tracked and traced via smart cameras. The totalitarians will grant passes to people who need—or how about simply want­—to travel to adjacent zones. If, however, a driver exceeds his maximum allotment of crosses between zones, he will be fined.

Already, on November 29, 2022, the UK’s Oxfordshire County approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones—and that’s only the beginning. Similar plans are being drawn up for the cities of Paris, Brisbane, Melbourne, Portland, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires.

It’s also worth emphasizing that all of the measures implemented by the ruling oligarchy in both chapters of the playbook have absolutely nothing to do with the stated intent of either ensuring public safety or saving the planet from harm.

Not convinced? One need only look at the Finance for climate action: Scaling up investment for climate and development document released at the COP27 summit to see what is really at play. The document is filled with the usual globalist predatory institutions—Global Public-Private Partnerships (G3P) working in tandem with central banks and international asset management corporations. 

On page 44, for instance, we find the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), launched at COP26 in 2021. GFANZ, along with its slew of over 550 major financial institutions, including HSBC, BlackRock, State Street, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank, to name but a few, is apparently leading the charge to facilitate “the decarbonization of the economy.” But, as Whitney Webb explains in her detailed article, GFANZ’s “plans ultimately amount to a corporate-led coup that will make the global financial system even more corrupt and predatory and further reduce the sovereignty of national governments in the developing world.”

And on page 9 of the document, there’s even the clause about “expanding the use debt/climate/nature swaps”—a euphemism used by the predator class to conceal the theft of a nation’s land and natural resources.  

Slogans such as “sustainable agriculture” or “global net zero greenhouse gas emissions” (read: the de-industrialisation of the developing world) used in the document are still more thinly veiled attempts to obfuscate their true agenda.

In conclusion: The climate change “threat” has no more to do with saving the environment than the propaganda about the scamdemic has to do with keeping people “safe and healthy.” Instead, the real scheme behind the man-made climate change/saving Mother Earth narrative is simply a debt-based scam to monopolize the world’s resources for the benefit of the ruling oligarchy, while simultaneously expanding the framework that will, if allowed to come to fruition, manipulate, regulate, and control every single aspect of our lives.

Is that really the kind of world we want to live in?  

It’s time to lift the veil and expose the lie behind the UN’s catastrophic climate change narrative.

*

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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.

He is the author of a recently published e-book, “Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified,” and a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Venue of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh. (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified. Are We Witnessing Humanity’s March Toward Extinction? Viruses Are Our Friends, Not Our Foes

Author: David Skripac

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First published on November 1, 2022

***

It began with Pong, an early home video game involving two pixelated paddles and a ball that introduced millions to the thrill of gaming. What started as an arcade game in 1972 entered homes during the 1975 Christmas season. Since then, electronic video gaming has blossomed into a graphically stimulating multibillion-dollar-a-year industry, entertaining more than 3 billion gamers globally.

But with explosive popularity has come problems. Like other electronics, gaming consoles are linked to a range of environmental threats, from the metals and plastics required to manufacture them, to the fossil fuel-derived electricity that powers them, to the challenges of recycling the devices after the rapidly deployed next generation displaces them.

Although these problems aren’t unique to consoles, the meteoric growth and sheer scale of the industry make it an obvious target for environmentally conscious improvements. With its engaged and discerning consumer base, the gaming industry could be primed for an eco-revolution.

Gaming consoles sourced in mining and drilling

Like other consumer electronics, game console components are sourced via complex global supply chains that rely upon the mining of critical elements (including metals and rare-earth elements) and the production of new plastics, with parts assembled via highly specialized manufacturing processes — linking the gaming industry to oversized carbon emissions and the devastating environmental and socioeconomic impacts of mining and petroleum extraction.

A new console’s ingredient list is stunningly long. It includes gold, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, lithium, cobalt and cadmium — the mining and purification of which are associated with huge energy and water usage, as well as environmental harm. Extracting and processing ores often releases large quantities of hazardous chemicals, such as arsenic or mercury, into surrounding communities and ecosystems. Also, much mining is done in tropical developing nations, where poorly regulated extraction and processing cause deforestation and pollution.

Mining in Borneo, Indonesia. A new gaming console’s ingredient list includes gold, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, lithium, cobalt and cadmium — the mining and purification of which are associated with huge energy and water usage, as well as environmental harm. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

But it’s not all bad news: “I think that there’s a lot of environmental awareness about the need to replace those materials,” said researcher Claire Barlow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. Although progress in that direction is being made, both in terms of engineering and environmental policy, “the downside [is] that the replacements tend not to be so efficient.”

Some raw materials, such as tungsten and gold, are predominantly mined in regions convulsed by civil unrest and inequality, and have been linked to human rights abuses. These so-called conflict minerals have attracted international attention, and the largest console manufacturers have taken steps to track, report and reduce the inclusion of conflict-linked metals in their electronics.

However, other elements such as cobalt are not classified as conflict minerals, so are subject to less stringent monitoring and reporting standards, yet are also commonly mined in dangerous and toxic environments, sometimes by children.

Once extracted, many raw materials go through lengthy, complex refining and manufacturing processes, finally culminating in the production of microchips in highly specialized ultra-clean rooms — all requiring massive amounts of energy.

“Whenever you’re talking about CPUs and GPUs, you’re talking about nanometer-scale engineering and that’s always going to be incredibly [energy] intense,” explained Ben Abraham, founder and CEO of Sydney-based AfterClimate Solutions, a games sustainability consultancy.

In 2019, Barlow and colleague John Durrell took apart a Sony PlayStation 4 to perform a life-cycle assessment of its components. They estimated that the production and distribution of a single console emitted 89 kilograms (196 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. “The main weight of it is the electronics and the control units and that’s the major part of the carbon footprint as well,” Barlow said.

A life-cycle assessment of the Sony PlayStation 4 found that production and distribution of a single console emitted 89 kilograms (196 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. Image courtesy of iFixit PlayStation 4 teardown.

In 2019, Microsoft, in an effort to address consumer concern over the carbon footprint of console manufacture, announced the production of 825,000 carbon-neutral Xbox consoles. The company achieved this by making the consoles using renewable electricity and offsetting the remaining carbon emissions through the Sichuan China Biodigesters project, which distributes small-scale biogas plants to low-income rural households in China. “It’s doing something for [reducing] carbon footprints. It’s very worthy, but it’s absolutely nothing to do with [ending other environmental harm due to] the way they’re making these,” said Barlow. It’s also not clear how profitable, or scalable, this approach is.

There’s another major ingredient that goes into consoles: plastics. The plastic shells that encase gaming electronics are sourced from the world’s oil and natural gas frackwells, with virgin synthetic long chain polymers made in highly polluting petrochemical factories. In the U.S., these are disproportionally located encircling low-income ethnic communities — places like Port Arthur, Texas, and along a sweeping crescent of industrialized Gulf Coast known as “Cancer Alley.” But console manufacturers are taking initial steps to reduce the use of virgin plastics in their products. For example, since late 2021, post-consumer recycled plastics make up at least 28% of new Xbox Series S consoles.

Game consoles: Energy-hungry machines

By the time a new console reaches someone’s home, its production has already generated roughly half of the carbon emissions associated with its entire lifespan. Most of the rest goes into producing the electricity to power this energy-hungry machine.

The latest generation of consoles are capable of impressive performance: highly realistic 4K graphics, vast computer-generated imaginary worlds, immersive multisensory feedback. And to power all this, they use around 200 watts of electricity, placing them at the upper end of household appliances. Multiply that by 3 billion gamers globally.

The Green Gaming Project estimated that 5% of residential electricity use in California is consumed by gaming, including play on consoles, desktop computers and mobile phones. Of those three, “gaming consoles were the largest energy users,” said Norman Bourassa, principal scientific engineering associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, where the project was conducted.

“That’s an alarming number,” he said, because it puts game consoles “in the realm of the highest energy users, like refrigerators.”

The Green Gaming Project conducted extensive energy usage tests on 10 different gaming consoles available between 2000 and 2016. They found that many consoles used more than 100 watts to play a game. Image courtesy of the Green Gaming Project.

The project calculated that U.S. gamers spend $5 billion annually on energy to power consoles and PCs. While these costs might not yet be putting too much strain on individual gamers’ wallets, “the hidden cost is all the CO₂ that we’ve emitted,” Abraham noted. U.S. consoles churn through roughly 34 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, associated with an estimated 24 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

Energy efficiency has long been a priority for console manufacturers, and the latest generation is far more energy efficient than its predecessors. However, “we’ve used the [energy] efficiency gains to support more powerful consoles rather than reducing the impact of producing them or producing them less often,” said Mike Hazas, professor of information technology at Uppsala University in Sweden.

As a result, “When there’s a generation change there is an energy consumption jump, but there’s also more fidelity, more features,” said Bourassa. As each new chassis is released, manufacturers do tend to make improvements that can save electricity. For example, “in the PS4 [console] full life cycle they managed to reduce the power consumption and maintain the actual fidelity output of the devices. I recall they did a 40% or more improvement in efficiency.”

While each new generation of consoles sees energy efficiency improvements, simultaneous feature enhancements result in a jump in energy consumption. Each new generation also creates a waste problem through designed obsolescence. Image courtesy of Mills et al. (2018).

Energy savings efforts often don’t save much energy

Some efficiency gains are being driven by national and international policy. In the EU, for example, game consoles and other electronic devices are now required to switch to a low-power standby mode limited to 0.5 watts when not in use. Similar legislation, first adopted in California and since implemented in five other U.S. states, requires standby mode to be initiated within 30 minutes of inactivity and limits maximum power usage.

To meet these requirements, the latest generation of consoles was designed to be extremely efficient when in standby mode. But there’s a problem: Many gamers either don’t know about, or don’t use this feature. “The game design, the gamer’s use of the device, and the energy saving settings in the device are not very well coordinated,” explained Bourassa.

For example, the Xbox Series S’s energy-efficient standby mode uses less than 1 watt, but in many regions the device ships with a less efficient but faster-loading setting called “Instant On,” selected by default. With this setting enabled, the console reboots five to 10 seconds faster, but in standby it uses 10 times more electricity.

“Just think how much money that company spent to design that feature,” mused Bourassa. “They did a lot of research to design it, but I personally think they were probably off the mark in terms of improved energy efficiency settings” that aren’t being used by gamers.

A 2021 analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimated that Xbox Series S and Series X consoles in the U.S. will have wasted 4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2025, simply because the energy-efficient standby mode isn’t being used. The report encouraged Xbox to ship consoles with energy saving as the default option globally, not just in regions where regulations require it.

To meet the requirements of national and international enery-saving policies, the latest generation of gaming consoles was designed to be extremely efficient when in standby mode. But the problem is that many gamers either don’t know about, or don’t use this feature. Image by ELLA DON via Pexels (Public domain).

Another mismatch exists within the architecture of the games themselves. “There are some structural reasons in the way the consoles and games are designed that encourage users to just leave them powered on,” Bourassa said. An example: many games have strategically placed checkpoints where users can save their progress. But when between those milestones, users have found a creative way to take a break without losing their work: They open the options menu.

But what many gamers probably don’t realize is that “when those menus are loaded that console is consuming its max power,” Bourassa explained. Console manufacturers and game designers need to “better address gamer behavior, because right now saving their progress in-game is actually serving to bloat the energy consumption from these devices.”

A related issue: game consoles are often used for more than just playing games. Many consoles support video streaming apps such as Netflix and Hulu, but perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not very efficient at performing these off-spec tasks. A 2013 report by the NRDC found that streaming a movie on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 used 25 times more energy than watching the same movie on a laptop computer. “It’s horrible,” said Bourassa, “A basic computer was able to stream video at a very efficient rate, the consoles were not.” Consumer education could help ease these energy waste issues.

Maximizing the fun per watt

Not all consoles are created energy-equal. For example, when contrasted to the more energy-intensive machines from Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo’s consoles use a fraction of the energy. The hand-held Nintendo Switch, for example, uses just 35 watts to deliver 1080p-quality (high-definition) video games. The console “uses basically as much power as a phone, because it’s got a battery in it so they [need to] prioritize that super-efficient design,” explained Abraham.

The Nintendo Switch “shows what you can do with a lightweight platform,” agreed Hazas, although he acknowledges that the product only “caters to a specific market.” Sony and Xbox users, on the other hand, have come to expect the highest possible performance and top-end graphics technology as standard. Perhaps if users were informed of a product’s energy consumption profile by manufacturers, then gamers might make that a consideration in their purchases.

The Nintendo Switch is a lightweight platform that uses less energy. But it only caters to a specific market. Image by Alvaro Reyes via Unsplash (Public domain).

A major question for the next generation of consoles is whether manufacturers continue down the path of ever-increasing graphics quality. “Companies have this perception that consumers want 4K video, they want [wide] color gamut, they want very intensive color rendering … and all this comes at an energy cost,” Bourassa explained.

But with many current consoles already offering 4k (ultra HD) graphics, manufacturers are pushing up against the limits of human perception. Although the human eye close up can perceive further graphics improvements, for those sitting more than a few feet from the screen, the improvement is imperceptible — which could bring the energy-gobbling high-resolution race to an end.

“What percentage of the gamers out there actually need that high fidelity, and is it really justified for them to continue on chasing that?” questioned Bourassa.

Abraham agreed: 4K appears “to my eyes like looking out a window. If you can’t see [any improvement beyond that], what’s the point” of higher resolution?

Virtual reality (VR) headsets are disrupting this trend by bringing high-resolution graphics to within inches of the user’s face. These peripheral devices are growing in popularity, with around a third of U.S. gamers saying they owned a VR system in 2020. According to Bourassa’s research, VR headsets use between 15% less and 38% more energy, compared to playing on a conventional screen. Those energy savings were achieved by rendering the maximum image resolution only in the center of the user’s field of vision, a technique known as foveated rendering. Advances in eye-tracking technology could enable continued improvements in VR user experience without increasing energy usage.

With many current consoles already offering 4k (ultra HD) graphics, manufacturers are pushing up against the limits of human perception. Image by Alena Darmel via Pexels (Public domain).

Game distribution conundrum: Disc, download or cloud?

A console’s energy use is only part of its environmental story. Users also need to access games, and there are three ways to do that. Traditionally, games were burned onto an optical disc, consuming more virgin plastic and emitting carbon dioxide during distribution. “Making anything physically always has quite a lot of emissions attached to it, it’s always harder than moving around electrons,” said Abraham.

But over the past decade, digital game downloads have risen in popularity. For most games, digital downloads use less energy, but for the largest games, energy use by the internet data centers providing the download can rival the energy needed to produce and transport physical discs. However, with the increasing availability of renewable energy, “there’s a clear pathway … to digital being net-zero,” Abraham said.

The third, and most recent, option for obtaining new games is cloud gaming, which essentially turns a console into a streaming service. “If you play a video game conventionally, all the graphics and everything else [is] rendered locally,” explained Hazas. “Cloud-gaming moves that rendering to a data center and then the data center would stream that video to you.” While this strategy comes with some computational efficiency gains, it also vastly increases the amount of data traffic being sent through the network, which uses large amounts of electricity.

The surprising finding of Hazas’s research is that digital game downloads and updates “can rival the network traffic generated by a cloud-gaming platform,” but it all depends on the size of the game and streaming resolution. He explained that “the network traffic for a 4K game — if you stream it — is much worse,” compared to downloading the game and rendering it on your own console.

Data centers, like this Google center in Georgia, use huge amounts of energy and require regular hardware updates. Although their operations and energy consumption are largely opaque to the public, estimates suggest that cloud streaming and digital game downloads can rival the energy used to physically distribute game discs. Image courtesy of Google.

“The good news is that the big companies … have been really pushing to use more renewables” to power new data centers, Hazas said.

If companies and governments are “committed to provisioning new renewables, to help phase out fossil fuel generation, [then] potentially the sky’s the limit” for energy use, he said. But Hazas warned that it won’t be easy to provide enough renewable energy to meet surging demand in all geographical locations.

Energy use statistics for big Internet data centers often aren’t publicly available, for security and propriety reasons. So it’s difficult to accurately calculate their present energy consumption. “It’s hard to … get a handle on that,” said Hazas, so “one area for improvement overall, both in terms of energy [use], carbon emissions and hardware refreshes, is more industry transparency.”

The greatest energy overuse risk, Hazas suggests, will arise if console makers continue supporting both local gaming and cloud gaming. “You’re potentially heading to a worst of both worlds” situation, with consoles designed to run high-end games often being used to stream video. “By trying to support all styles and all modes of delivery, we end up raising overall [carbon] emissions,” he said.

Coal mining for energy. Experts say the best case scenario would be if gaming companies and governments committed to provisioning new renewables to help phase out fossil fuel generation. But it’s not easy to provide enough renewable energy to meet surging demand in all geographical locations. Image via RawPixel (Public domain).

Planned obsolescence adds to e-waste

New console generations are released every five to 10 years, on average, and planned obsolescence adds to the global e-waste problem, with 50 million metric tons generated annually. “It’s the ethos that there’s going to be a new one [so] they don’t make them to last, and that is just so immoral,” said Barlow.

As with many electronic devices, game consoles are “intrinsically difficult to recycle,” she added, because sealed unit composite construction makes it extremely hard to extract and purify the component metals and minerals. However, e-waste is “a big potential source of [reclaimed] materials and we do need to be looking at this more profoundly,” she said.

Currently, much e-waste ends up in landfills, threatening future ecological and health impacts. Abraham analyzed the chemical composition of the PS4 processing unit and found it contained 54 different elements, including toxic heavy metals such as chromium and lead. Although the analysis didn’t reveal the element quantities in the device, it was “quite shocking to me that they were present,” he said. If these toxic elements find their way out of landfills, leaching into groundwater, for example, they could pose a risk to humans and wildlife.

Fifty million metric tons of e-waste are generated each year. Planned obsolescence in the game console market, where a new generation of consoles is released every five to 10 years, is adding to gaming’s environmental problems. Image by Rwanda Green Fund via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).

The path to environmentally neutral gaming

Awareness of the oversized environmental impact of home electronics has grown rapidly over the past decade among business leaders and consumers. Microsoft has pledged to make its business carbon-negative by 2030, while Sony aims to be carbon-neutral throughout its supply chain by 2040. Both companies, along with Nintendo, say they’re working to improve environmental sustainability and social responsibility at either end of the supply chain. Among these efforts are a phaseout of hazardous chemicals, avoidance of conflict minerals, and use of recycled plastics in production, while developing recycling plans for outdated devices.

International campaigns are having an effect too. The U.N. Environment Programme’s Playing for the Planet, a voluntary alliance of more than 40 console manufacturers and game developers, aims to reduce CO₂ emissions from gaming by 30 million metric tons by 2030.

Still, a carbon-neutral future for console gaming “hangs on factors disappointingly outside the game industry’s control,” Abraham said. “A big part of it comes down to the larger shift to renewables, and the decarbonization of energy systems.” Environmental neutrality would necessitate major changes in the materials and manufacturing methods used to produce consumer electronics — a prospect presently out of reach.

Nevertheless, the trajectory that console manufacturers choose could be heavily influenced by gamers themselves. “If it became the norm that you didn’t buy a new one, but you just replaced some components to upgrade, that would really be transformational,” said Barlow. But, making consoles more repairable and upgradable “takes a real shift in paradigms of customer expectations,” she said.

“We do need a strong consumer voice saying, ‘we don’t need 8K screens’ or ‘I’m OK with the console that I have,’” said Abraham, but this public awareness and pressure will only be effective if it occurs on a large scale. “One person changing  behavior is like a drop in the ocean, so how do we enable those kinds of choices to be easier or better?”

Nintendo and Sony did not respond to Mongabay’s interview request; Microsoft declined to comment beyond their public sustainability reporting and environmental pledges.

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Sources

Aslan, J. (2020). Climate change implications of gaming products and services. (Doctoral dissertation). doi:10.15126/THESIS.00853729

Mills, E., Bourassa, N., Rainer, L.  Mai, J., Shehabi, A., & Mills, N. (2019). Toward greener gaming: Estimating national energy use and energy efficiency potential. The Computer Games Journal, 8(3), 157-178.  doi:10.1007/s40869-019-00084-2

Mills, E., Bourassa, N., Rainer, L., Mai, J., Shehabi, A., & Mills, N. (2018). Green gaming: Energy efficiency without performance compromise. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Retrieved from: https://www.efficientgaming.info/fileadmin/user_upload/2018_Documents/EPC-15-023-Task-7-Report.pdf

Horowitz, N. (2021). Latest game consoles: Environmental winners or losers? Retrieved from Natural Resources Defense Council site: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/noah-horowitz/latest-game-consoles-environmental-winners-or-losers

Marsden, M., Hazas, M., & Broadbent, M. (2020). From one edge to the other: Exploring gaming’s rising presence on the network. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability, 247-254. doi:10.1145/3401335.3401366

Featured image: In 2019, Microsoft, in an effort to address consumer concern over the carbon footprint of console manufacture, announced the production of 825,000 carbon-neutral Xbox consoles. Image by Sam Pak via Unsplash (Public domain).

“You see George, you really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?” — Clarence, from Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life

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This Christmas, we send to you, our dear readers and authors, some love and light as we extend the free distribution of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s PDF book, The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity.

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Global Research wishes everyone a joyful Christmas!

It’s a wonderful life… live!

With you in truth, peace and solidarity,

The Global Research Team

First published on December 26, 2020

The Factory

“And such should childhood ever be,
The fairy well; to bring
To life’s worn, weary memory
The freshness of its spring.

But here the order is reversed,
And infancy, like age,
Knows of existence but its worst,
One dull and darkened page;—”

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon – The Vow of the Peacock and Other Poems  (1835)  

Introduction

The idea of a child-centred Christmas is taken for granted now but in Dickens’ time it was not so assured. A high child mortality rate, child labour, poverty and, a colder, more utilitarian attitude towards children prevailed.  Dickens’ own childhood experiences were bad as he was set to work long hours in  Warren’s Blacking Factory while his father and family languished in a debtors prison. Dickens wanted to write a pamphlet about children but decided a dramatic story would be more effective. His book, A Christmas Carol, while sales were slow initially, went on to become hugely successful and influential, and has never been out of print since.

Dickens at the blacking warehouse, as envisioned by Fred Barnard

In the 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life (directed by Frank Capra), children are associated with family scenes around the hearth but are shielded from potential financial disaster. It’s a Wonderful Life also performed poorly at first, yet has also become a Christmas staple.

The theme of redemption is important to both narratives and both stories turn on the idea of a change of heart for the better by the adults. This change affected the lives of the children in each story yet the children were not aware of the dangers they were in. Thus the concept of childhood as ‘the fairy well’ was well developed, and the ‘freshness of its spring’ being considered a jewel that only grows more beautiful with age.

In this essay I will look at some similarities between the two stories and at what has made for their enduring appeal.

A Christmas Carol

While many differing ideas seem have fortuitously come together for Dickens during the writing of A Christmas Carol the focus on children seems to have been the  most important. Literary influences are given as The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving and a Douglas Jerrold essay from an 1841 issue of Punch, ‘How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas’.

In The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon Irving writes:

“It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent could bestow.”

Child labourers, Macon, Georgia, 1909

Dickens was very aware of the tragedy of child workers and legislation being introduce to improve their conditions at the time. The idea of social unity that Dickens utilises at the end of A Christmas Carol is expressed in another passage by Irving in The Sketch-Book, as we hear echoes of the medieval hall resounding to the sounds of the fun organised in the ancient midwinter tradition of the Lord of Misrule, with children once again to the fore:

“After the dinner-table was removed the hall was given up to the younger members of the family, who, prompted to all kind of noisy mirth by the Oxonian and Master Simon, made its old walls ring with their merriment as they played at romping games. I delight in witnessing the gambols of children, and particularly at this happy holiday season, and could not help stealing out of the drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of laughter. I found them at the game of blindman’s-buff. Master Simon, who was the leader of their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfill the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of Misrule, was blinded in the midst of the hall. The little beings were as busy about him as the mock fairies about Falstaff, pinching him, plucking at the skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws.”

Once again the innocent fun of the children is emphasised.  However, in Jerrold’s essay ‘How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas’, a different kind of father is described, one for whom image is more important than feeling. Mr Chokepear is described as “he himself declares, he is ‘the best of fathers’ — the most indulgent of men”, yet he receives the wishes of a happy Christmas “from lips of ice.” He is the best citizen and best Christian but for one thing:

“We have said all CHOKEPEAR’S daughters dined with him. We forgot: one was absent. Some seven years ago she married a poorer husband, and poverty was his only, but certainly his sufficient fault; and her father vowed that she should never again cross his threshold. The Christian keeps his word. He has been to church to celebrate the event which preached to all men mutual love and mutual forgiveness, and he comes home, and with rancour in his heart—keeps a merry Christmas! […] Gentle reader, we wish you a merry Christmas; but to be truly, wisely merry, it must not be the Christmas of the CHOKEPEARS. That is the Christmas of the belly: keep you the Christmas of the heart. Give—give.”

Dickens is concerned with genuine Christian ideas of Christmas in A Christmas Carol and not hypocritical ones for show only. Therefore, Scrooge is given the opportunity to redeem himself in a genuine way and this genuine transformation means he will be welcomed into the Cratchit’s house and the house of of his nephew for Christmas celebrations.

Thus Dickens was interested in the idea that the bosses should have a genuine change of heart and not a false annual display of good cheer for their friends. Dickens himself was interested in giving practical help to poor children as well.

Coal tub – “A succession of laws on child labour, the so-called Factory Acts, were passed in the UK in the 19th century. Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, those aged 9–16 could work 16 hours per day per the Cotton Mills Act. In 1856, the law permitted child labour past age 9, for 60 hours per week, night or day. In 1901, the permissible child labour age was raised to 12.”

In 1843 Charles Dickens became involved with  with the London Ragged Schools Union and donated funds for their upkeep. They were established to provide free education, food, clothing, lodging and other home missionary services for poor children.

As Claire Tomalin writes:

“From his own deep self he drew the understanding that a grown man may pity the child he had been, and learn from that pity, as Scrooge does. It was also his response to the Ragged School he had visited, and the Report of the Children’s Employment Commission he had read a little earlier, which showed that children under seven were put to work, unprotected by any legal constraints, sometimes for ten to twelve hours a day, inspiring the scene in which the Spirit of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two stunted and wolfish children, calling them Ignorance and Want.” [1]

Of course, while the children may be the focus of Dickens’ Christmas main story, they must not be aware that they are, thus retaining the sacred concept of childhood. Therefore in the narrative the children are affected only indirectly through the changed habits of the adults. This was Dickens’ strategy – to show that the cruelty of the world and the preciousness of childhood could exist side by side. Thus the adults could change their realm, positively affecting the children’s realm, without the two realms interacting with each other, as happened in Dickens’ own childhood. Dickens’ story also added to the growing belief in the importance of childhood not only for children but also for stable adults as Scrooge was shown to have had a lonely childhood himself.

Ignorance and Want from the original edition of A Christmas Carol, 1843

Many film versions have been made of A Christmas Carol from Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost (1901) to A Christmas Carol (2018), a contemporary retelling of the story set in Scotland.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Another popular film with Christmas visions is Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life. Almost one hundred years after Dickens’ novel was published, Capra’s film shows a very different kind of vision of society. Rather than the atomised society of the poor in Dickens’ London, Capra shows a community being pulled and pushed in different directions by individuals with very different objectives. George Bailey faces off Henry F. Potter who is trying to take over the town with cheap, exploitative housing schemes and by buying up everything of value in the town.

As Bailey faces bankruptcy of the Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan through the forgetfulness of his uncle (mislaying a lot of money), Potter seizes the opportunity to destroy Bailey’s bank and take over the town completely. When Bailey arrives home distraught he has angry words with all of his children. They become very upset and burst into tears as they have no idea what has come over their normally loving father.

As a result of this disaster, Bailey wishes he had never been born and is shown a vision of what the town would have become had Bailey’s community spirit and camaraderie with his clients not existed: a mean place, decadent and aggressive with no community feeling or community spirit (like Scrooge, mean, aggressive with no community feeling or community spirit). After the negative scenario he experiences, Bailey rushes home to his wife and apologises to each of his children in turn for his earlier outburst thus keeping the adult and child domains separated, while the adults sort out adult problems.

Unlike Scrooge, in It’s a Wonderful Life the individualist money-pincher Potter is not considered important enough to go through the process of redemption (while he is portrayed as a Scrooge type figure), because  the poor are now portrayed as existing in a community which can ultimately defend itself from Potter’s attacks: by coming together and using collective action to help Bailey. They look to each other for help and not to the rich bankers.

Although both Scrooge and Bailey lend money, Scrooge gives out money to benefit himself while Bailey gives out money to benefit the community. In the earlier ideology of A Christmas Carol, the wealthy must look after or take pity on the helpless poor. However, while Scrooge must save himself, the community saves Bailey.

George Bailey (James Stewart), Mary Bailey (Donna Reed), and their youngest daughter Zuzu (Karolyn Grimes) in It’s a Wonderful Life.

In A Christmas Carol the poor are everywhere but have no real consciousness of their poverty and struggle against poverty despite the odds. In It’s a Wonderful Life the poor are depicted as belonging to a community but gradually grow more conscious of their weak position and unite to defend themselves.

They develop a growing consciousness of the power of the community to use collective action to fight back against those who would keep them poor. As a result, rather than being solely concerned with their own money and future as was shown earlier in the film, they see the importance of community for their own self-protection just in time, and turn up at Bailey’s house to lend, give, donate any money they have to save the bank and their own future. Thus in It’s a Wonderful Life, its the community that redeems itself.

Both Dickens’ book and Capra’s film carried radical messages for their time. Only two years after A Christmas Carol, German philosopher Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845, a book written during Engels’ 1842–44 stay in Manchester, important as the city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Engels believed that Carlyle was the only British writer who had taken account of the poor and so was not yet familiar with A Christmas Carol. Meanwhile Marx saw Dickens as one of a few ‘splendid’ fiction writers in England, “whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together.”

While It’s a Wonderful Life depicts the benefits of a community uniting, it was declared suspect by an unnamed FBI agent who watched the film as part of a larger FBI program aimed at detecting and neutralizing Communist influences in Hollywood. The agent believed that ‘communists’ used two common tricks to ‘inject propaganda into the film’, as Kat Eschner writes:

“These two common “devices” or tricks, as applied by the Los Angeles branch of the Bureau, were smearing ‘values or institutions judged to be particularly American’ – in this case, the capitalist banker, Mr. Potter, is portrayed as a Scroogey misanthrope – and glorifying ‘values or institutions judged to be particularly anti-American or pro-Communist’ – in this case, depression and existential crisis, an issue that the FBI report characterized as a ‘subtle attempt to magnify the problems of the so-called ‘common man’ in society.'”

The organization handed over these incredibly vague results of its investigation to HUAC (House of UnAmerican Activities) which could have led to McCarthyist Hollywood witch hunts. However, the HUAC decided not to follow up on the smears.

Conclusion

In both A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful life, a common theme is the idea that people can change for the better and have a happier life by questioning their own selfish values and motives and by realising that there are greater forces at work which must be reckoned with for survival. Scrooge’s isolation from friends, family and employees led him to fear a lonely death and Marley’s fate. Bailey’s customers also realise that looking after number one might allow them to get by on the level of their own petty concerns, but when something seriously threatening to their homes and families appears on the horizon they are able to club together to prevent the worst. Ultimately it is the children who benefit as the adults unite and solve problems rather than sharing the burden with their children, and in the long term that also makes for a more stable community.

The idea of sheltering children from the cruel world, rather than throwing them head first into it, is still an important issue in the world’s poorest countries today where around one in four children are believed to be engaged in child labour.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Note

[1] Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life (Viking: London, 2011) p149

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The situation with human rights and the freedom of speech in the Baltic states worsens day by day. The persecution of the opposition began long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though. During the pandemic people had been arrested for “the distribution of gossip”. However, since the events of February 24 2022, the situation has worsened dramatically. In Latvia over 20 people have been arrested and over two hundred people have been fined and interrogated for expressing their views. The similar situation is noticeable in other Baltic States.

After more than 30 years of brainwashing by the ruling class it is clear now that the majority of the population, especially youth, is politically unmotivated. Around 15% of the population do not have the right to vote – they hold an “Alien Passport” because they do not have any ancestors that lived in Latvia before 1940. Media freedom is non-existent and government propaganda is everywhere. Therefore the result of the last election is again a victory of pro-US forces.

The attack on working class rights is still ongoing. Recently, the government has decreased the period and the amount of unemployment benefits. Trade unions are very weak to the extent of non-existent. Their leaders are making dirty deals with the government behind the backs of teachers, medical personnel, policemen, etc. The only real activities by trade unions are the distribution of travel and recreation vouchers and the organisation of festive events.

Failing to address social and economic problems of yet another capitalist crisis, the so-called leaders are proposing the only playing card – nationalism, which has led to extreme russophobia. Despite around 40% of the Russian-speaking population, after years of bans and restrictions in public use, there is now a plan to ban it from school programmes altogether.

The communist symbols are banned. There is a law “banning the glorification of communist past” and “denying the Soviet occupation”. Several people are being tried for this.

Latvia now spends more percentage of GDP to help the Ukrainian military than any other country in the world. At the same time, there is a deterioration of health and education systems. The ongoing privatisation and liberalisation lead to more payable services and rising prices for the basic needs. More and more people cannot afford different kinds of necessary medical treatment. Others have to wait for months or even years to be treated. The lack of medical staff, teachers, firemen, etc is becoming alarming. The population is experiencing deteriorating living conditions. The demographic situation is the worst in 100 years.

The Latvian government has started the massive demolition of monuments related to WW2. The biggest memorial to the fighters against nazism in the Baltic States was demolished, despite the fact that polls have shown a negative attitude towards the demolition. Furthermore, the monument was described by the national architect society as “of historical and cultural importance”. Some of the demolished monuments were actually erected to the people killed by Nazis and to the local partisans. They have even demolished the cemetery of soldiers – just scraped by an excavator. The Day of Victory over Nazism is now officially a Commemoration to the victims of the Genocide against Ukranian people while the government officials commemorate the war victims at the memorial to Waffen SS legionnaires.

The corrupt government sells national sovereignty in order to serve foreign interests, forcing the country to join the conflicting imperialistic camp and making its own populations hostage to a potential military conflict. In order to protect this policy from protests of workers and the public in general, they enforce control mechanisms and restrictions of freedom of speech and expression without any hesitation.

The detainment of people without proper trial and medical help, and with no lawyer provided must be stopped immediately.

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Anton Klindzans is a Latvian blogger, former policy advisor for a left group in the European Parliament where he worked for 9 years. He publishes regularly on different platforms.

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With the announcement of the formation of Israel’s 37th government, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling on the Canadian government to expel the Israeli ambassador to demonstrate that it is distancing itself from Israel’s new far-right regime. CJPME notes that the coalition led by Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu, who enshrined Israel’s deeply racist Nation-State Law and whose plans to annex significant portions of the occupied West Bank remain “on the table,” is propped up by even more extreme, far-right elements. The Religious Zionism party (including Jewish Power), whose leaders have promoted vigilante violence, racial segregation, the annexation of the West Bank and the deportation of “disloyal” Israelis and Palestinians alike, is the third largest party in the Knesset and a major coalition partner. Expelling the Israeli ambassador would send a clear and unambiguous signal that the new government’s stated intentions to violate human rights and international law are completely unacceptable.

“Israel’s new far-right government poses a real and immediate threat to the safety and security of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Prime Minister Trudeau must expel Israel’s ambassador and prove that Canada doesn’t hold ‘shared values’ with apartheid and a regime of Jewish supremacy,” added Bueckert.

CJPME notes that Israel’s new government has put the lives of Palestinians into the hands of the most extreme far-right and racist figures in Israeli politics. As Israel’s new ‘National Security Minister,’ Jewish Power’s Itamar Ben Gvir will have control over policing agencies which operate in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), as well as development in the Galilee and the Naqab/Negev where Israel has been seeking to diminish the presence of Palestinian Arab and Bedouin communities. Meanwhile, Religious Zionism’s Bezalel Smotrich has been given unprecedented control over the infrastructure of occupation, putting him in control of policy regarding both Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli human rights groups Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and the Israeli Center for Public Affairs have warned that the signed coalition agreements between Likud and Religious Zionism involve measures that amount to “annexing the West Bank to Israel and strengthening the apartheid regime in the West Bank.”

“We must come to terms with the reality that this far-right government is fundamentally a continuation of Israel’s ongoing racist trajectory,” added Bueckert. CJPME notes that the former ‘change’ government led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid oversaw the extrajudicial execution of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the persecution of leading Palestinian civil society organizations, an aggressive and lethal military offensive against Gaza, the rapid expansion of illegal settlements, and an escalation of violence making 2022 among the most deadly years for Palestinians in the West Bank. CJPME argues that any political opposition to the new government in power must also be extended to the underlying structures of domination and oppression which have violated the rights of Palestinians for many decades, which are increasingly understood as apartheid.

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***

How did our CIA become so immensely powerful and so immensely corrupt?

This book tells a story that feels essentially relevant to me. Nevertheless, it is a story that has not been incorporated into narratives of any of the skeptical and well-informed independent journalists whom I most respect. It is 20 years old now, and the book is as exceedingly readable as it is meticulously documented.

Through wars of conquest beginning in the 19th Century, Japan systematically looted staggering quantities of gold from China, Korea, and SE Asia.

Anticipating defeat in WWII, members of the Japanese imperial family sent the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Chichibu, to bury gold and jewels at dozens of remote sites on occupied Philippine islands. At the conclusion of the war, the driver of Chichibu’s jeep was captured and tortured to disclose the locations of some of the underground sites.

In the Seagraves’ account, the amount of gold is many hundreds of thousands of tons, equivalent in value to the GDP of the entire world today. A portion of this loot funded the Black Eagle Trust, a secret account used to create the CIA and support its clandestine operations, fomenting wars and overthrowing popular governments around the world on behalf of the world’s largest corporations. The M-Fund was used to kickstart “democracy” in Japan by supporting the election of war criminals and reliable anti-communists.

Another major share passed through the personal holdings of Ferdinand Marcos, an American-supported President and then dictator in the Philippines from 1965 – 1986. Other beneficiaries included evangelist Sun Myung Moon, VP Richard Nixon, mobster Meyer Lansky, and Pope Pius XII. In the Seagraves’ story, everyone who came in contact with this treasure was corrupted, participating in murder, treachery, and unspeakable cruelty.

My candidate for the greatest evil in the world today would be the CIA. Whether or not you agree, you have to admit it’s a mystery how this organization acquired so much power so fast. Formed in 1947 from the contained WWII spy operation called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA was already overthrowing foreign governments in 1953, 1954, and 1958, and the American government in 1963. It was the subject of warnings issued by President Truman and by President Eisenhower as he departed in 1961.

By the time President Kennedy left office, it was the CIA that escorted him out, and too abruptly for him to have a chance to warn us. He had exclaimed (after he had been deceived in the Bay of Pigs fiasco) he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the wind.” Who better to place in charge of the Warren Commission investigation into his murder than Allen Dulles — who had been CIA director until JFK fired him after the Bay of Pigs?

The book is meticulously referenced with two CDs full of original documents (no longer available on the Web, to the best of my knowledge). But even more convincing is the level of narrative detail that they offer, detail that may not be relevant to the larger historical perspective, but which makes the volume fun to read, as they validate the Seagraves’ sources.

Their two best sources are Ben Valmores and Robert Curtis, both of whom they interviewed extensively. Ben had been a Filipino boy when he was kidnapped by Japanese military officers and recruited to be valet and personal servant to Prince Takeda, cousin of the Emperor. Though he was kept against his will, he was treated well and eventually came to be trusted by the royal family. As the final surrender of Gen Yamashita was foreseen, Prince Takeda entrusted Ben with a trunk full of maps with coded instructions for locating all 175 treasure vaults. Ben faithfully buried the trunks as he had been instructed, and later resisted many attempts to obtain them by trickery until after Takeda’s death in 1992.

Curtis was an American mining engineer, hired by Marcos to track down and recover Yamashita’s gold, then re-smelt it into bars that could not be chemically distinguished from the product of Filipino gold mines. Marcos originally promised Curtis a share of the haul, but betrayed him once he had served his purpose.

Another source for the book was court records from the case of Roxas vs Marcos, Hawaii 1998. Rogelio Roxas was a private Filipino citizen and amateur treasure hunter. From the court findings:

In 1961, Roxas met a man named Fuchugami in Baguio City, who claimed that his father had been in the Japanese army and had drawn a map identifying the location of the legendary “Yamashita Treasure.” …Roxas organized a group of partners and laborers to search for the treasure and obtained a permit for the purpose from Judge Pio Marcos, a relative of Ferdinand. Judge Marcos informed Roxas that, in accordance with Philippine law, a thirty-percent share of any discovered treasure would have to be paid to the government.

…After approximately seven months of searching… the group broke into a system of underground tunnels…Roxas discovered a gold-colored buddha statue, which he estimated to be about three feet in height. The statue was extremely heavy; it required ten men to transport it to the surface using a chain block hoist, ropes, and rolling logs. Although he never weighed the statue, Roxas estimated its weight to be 1,000 kilograms, or one metric ton. Roxas directed his laborers to transport the statue to his home and place it in a closet.

For context, a ton of gold at today’s price is worth about $50 million, not counting the museum value of an ancient work of art. The court document goes on to relate that Roxas’s house was raided by government agents; Roxas himself was arrested and tortured; just at this time, Marcos declared martial law and installed himself as permanent head of the Philippine government after his elected term should have expired. The testimony of Robert Curtis is cited. Curtis had been hired by Marcos originally to process the gold and make it saleable without suspicion. In the end, Marcos didn’t treat Curtis much better than he treated Roxas, and that may have motivated him to testify for Roxas as plaintiff.

Five years after his death, the Hawaiian jury awarded $43 billion to the heirs of Rogelio Roxas, the largest award in the history of jurisprudence. As the Seagrave book went to press, they were still trying to collect it in 2003.

The man who tortured Price Takeda’s driver later became a kingpin for distribution of the gold. He was Severino Santa Romana, or “Santy”, but was known as Jose Antonio Diaz and a dozen other pseudonyms as he opened personal accounts in 42 countries around the world, with private understandings about who really had control of the gold. He was known as an agent of the American CIA, but the Seagraves make the case that he was a double agent whose first loyalty was to the Vatican.

The involvement of the Pope was discreet and indirect. The Vatican held deposits of Nazi gold, which were retained after the war, and received some of Santy’s accounts. After the War, the Italian electorate was leaning too close to socialism for the taste of our CIA, and Operation Gladio was organized to steer Italian politics in a more favorable direction, using bribes, assassinations, and psy-ops. Much of the fuel for this project was siphoned through the Vatican, which made common cause in part because religion is anathema in communist regimes, and in part for reasons of realpolitik.

Meyer Lansky profited through casinos he operated in the Bahamas, used to launder Nazi loot as well as Yamashita’s gold on behalf of the CIA. The connection was made by Paul Helliwell, who served as global banker for the OSS and later continued in that role for the CIA. Helliwell and Santy’s operation was code-named The Umbrella, with 176 bank accounts, all coded and accessed independently by secret agreements.

Through the 1950s, the M-Fund was administered by Americans and secretly deployed to support the right wing of Japanese politics as a bulwark against communism in Asia. Then Vice President Nixon turned the whole $23 billion over to the (temporarily) ruling Japanese politicians in exchange for a kickback to his own 1960 presidential campaign. Nixon didn’t succeed in 1960, but the 23 billion 1960 dollars has mushroomed in value, and the M-Fund continues to support corruption and distort democracy in Japan today.

And Sun Myung Moon? After Marcos was removed from power in 1986, some American entrepreneurs were emboldened to return to the Philippines for treasure-hunting activities. One group called Nippon Star was convened and equipped by right-wing groups in America, including the John Birch Society and Moon’s Unification Church. They recovered a gold-laden freighter that the Japanese Navy had deliberately sunk in Manila Harbor when it became clear that its cargo could not be delivered to Tokyo.

The Seagraves repeat stories of individuals who recovered billion-dollar shares of Yamashita’s gold and deposited it in vaults of the world’s largest and best known banks. One after another, they returned to reclaim their deposits, only to be told that their certificates were forgeries. The Seagraves conjecture that banks held onto the gold and that bank executives converted the loot to their own accounts.

There may be a 9/11 connection. E.P Heidner reports (not mentioned by the Seagraves) that the Black Eagle Trust held $240 billion in U.S. Treasury notes, purchased with Yamashita gold and redeemable on 12 September 2001. In the days following the WTC attacks, the standard procedures for recording bond transactions were suspended, and this wealth was delivered into private hands without a paper trail.

By the time Santy died in 1974, his liver and his sanity had been destroyed by alcohol. He had never lived lavishly, despite the vast wealth under his control. His many identities and reliably subservient behavior make me think of the CIA’s MKUltra program of mind control, a speculation that is my own and not mentioned in the Seagraves’ account.

In the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, why was the US able to set up a system of world trade based on a gold-backed dollar (at a fixed $35 per oz)?

Why was Japan absolved of making reparation payments to foreigners who were raped and tortured and enslaved during the War, while Germany, in much worse shape financially, was expected to pay reparations?

Why was the OSS — which had been created explicitly to provide intelligence for the Second World War — expanded and extravagantly funded after the war had ended? How did large banks come to wield corrupt and surreptitious power in world affairs? All these questions may have a single answer.

The most important story (as we’ve come to expect) is the one we know least about. Some ginormous, unimaginable quantity of gold was used to kickstart the CIA. Money for bribes and dirty tricks and “wet work” and the temptation of officials, domestic and foreign, who might otherwise be inclined toward honesty. Money to overthrow duly elected leaders and support ruthless dictators in lavish style. This year, the son of Ferdinand Marcos returned to power in the Philippines.

My suspicion is that the American Empire with its worldwide promotion of international business interests above all else is built on Yamashita’s gold.

We have grown up as a nation respected for our free institutions and our ability to maintain a free and open society…The last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people…It is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue.
— Harry S Truman, in a Washington Post Editorial published 59 years ago today

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***

On December 8, The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington hosted a reception in honor of the 31st anniversary of their Armed Forces. Interestingly, the invitation itself displayed the logos of major military contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Pratt & Whitney as the event’s sponsors – right below the official Ukrainian emblems and the Ambassador’s name.

These are all American defense and arms corporations and some of the world’s largest weapons and aerospace manufacturers. Half of Lockheed Martin’s annual sales, for instance, are to the US Department of Defense. These four companies have in fact produced many of the anti-tank missiles and the missile defense systems Washington has been sending to Kiev this year. US President Joe Biden’s administration has committed around $19.3 billion so far in military assistance to Ukraine. The Ukrainian conflict has therefore been very good for the event sponsors’ businesses, even amid the supply chain issues related to the pandemic and semiconductors  shortages.

Regarding the aforementioned logos, a think tank expert quoted by journalist Jonathan Guyer remarks that “It’s really bizarre to me that they would put that on an invitation.”  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow Mat Duss in turn says that

“sustaining American popular support is absolutely essential for Ukraine’s continued defense. So Ukrainian diplomats should probably think harder about how it looks for them to be throwing parties with the defense contractors who are making bank off of this horrible war.”

Guyer writes on how Lockheed has announced that it will go from manufacturing 2,100 Javelin missiles a year to 4,000 (as they are highly on demand in Ukraine). The corporation’s stocks have climbed about 38% this year. President Biden himself, in May, told Lockheed’s workers at the company’s factory in Alabama that

“you’re making it possible for the Ukrainian people to defend themselves without us having to risk getting in a third world war by sending in American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers. And every worker in this facility (…) is directly contributing to the case for freedom.”

Corporate interests in the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine are so blatant and obvious that some critics and activists have been calling it a McProxy War.

Their importance is very well exemplified by the ambivalent role played by a billionaire such as Elon Musk, who could very well be called an American oligarch, even though the Western press only describes Russian billionaires this way. Musk itself is the very face of the convergence of Silicon Valley and defense contractors.

I’ve written on how Washington today wages an aggressive subsidy war (for US companies) against its own European allies. By prolonging the unwinnable conflict in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis in Europe (with the high energy costs), Washington thus renders their rival European companies uncompetitive. In this context, the US subsidies package turns out to be a nail in the coffin for Europe’s industry. I’ve also written on how, besides the more visible American geopolitical-military strategies aimed at encircling Russia,  there is also a geoeconomic dispute and an energy angle to the crisis in Ukraine. Government corruption and private interests are entangled with US geopolitics and geoeconomics: Washington has always wanted to have Europeans buying American LNG and has always worked against any Russian-European gas cooperation.

One should add to this game the interests of defense contractors. The world of such contractors, including the Silicon Valley, and its key players is heavily interwoven with the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. It in fact makes up not the only so-called “military-industrial complex”, as US President Dwight D. Eisenhower called it in his famous 1961 Farewell Address, but also the deep state. These two concepts are related and should be taken seriously. Conspiracy theories apart, according to political scientist George Friedman, there has been a US deep state inscribed in the country’s civil service since at least 1871 – and it has grown in size and power with the rise of independent agencies such as the CIA. University of Wisconsin–Madison historian Alfred W McCoy in turn claimed, in a 2017 interview to the Intercept, that since the September 11 terrorist attacks the US intelligence community responded in such a way that it “has built a fourth branch of the U.S. government” that is “in many ways autonomous from the executive, and increasingly so.”

Rutgers University-Camden associate professor of history Katherine C. Epstein, in her 2014 book “Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain” details the history of how, at the turn of the twentieth century, with the development of the self-propelled torpedo, both the US and the UK came up with a new paradigm by investing in private sector development and research. This changed property rights and national security legislations, thereby intersecting industrialization, geoeconomics and geopolitics.

Experts like Jenna Bednar and Mariano-Florentino Cuélla, who talk about the American “fractured superpower”, and like Nina Hachigian, who coined to term “formestic” to describe the intertwining of foreign and domestic policy, have focused on the role played by subnational actors such as US cities and States in shaping Washington’s foreign policy. However, much attention must also be paid to private corporations and contractors interests as well as its close relations with the US agencies, that is, the American industrial-military complex and its deep state.

The aforementioned four weapons corporations are not just logos in a Ukrainian embassy’s invitation. They are part of a complex web of interests and they too shape Washington’s foreign policy. To sum it up, they have much to gain from US proxy wars – even at the expense of global peace.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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***

Albin Kurti, the prime minister of Kosovo, blames Russia for the rise in tension in the northern part of the partially recognized country. Kurti said Russia has turned its attention to the tiny country formerly ruled by a KLA terrorist, Hashim Thaçi. He resigned to face war crime charges in The Hague. Thaçi and other politicians are accused of murder, enforced disappearances, persecution, and torture of Serbs.

The Hague war crimes tribunal sentenced Salih Mustafa (M. Albright's friend), the former head of the Kosovo KLA, to 26 years in prison (participation in murders, torture and other crimes).
Ex-president of Kosovo Thaci is also awaiting trial in custody.https://t.co/XEnRllL8wL pic.twitter.com/uG2Zf6RJau

— Blog investigatívnej žurnalistiky (@investigativeSK) December 16, 2022

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said the region is on the brink of war.

Russia is a convenient scapegoat now that the USG and its propaganda machine have spent months demonizing Putin and telling lies about what is happening in Ukraine. It’s an easy out for Kurti and Pristina. He can shift blame to Russia while ignoring the complaints of a persecuted Serb minority.

Meanwhile, NATO’s KFOR is ready to insert itself in the latest dispute between Serbians and Albanian Kosovars.

We are closely monitoring the situation in northern #Kosovo. @NATO_KFOR  has the capability & personnel to provide a safe and secure environment & freedom of movement for all communities under our #UN mandate UNSCR 1244 of 1999. pic.twitter.com/jalILscp65

— @NATO – KFOR (@NATO_KFOR) December 16, 2022

“Kosovo’s NATO-led international peacekeeping force KFOR said it is still considering the Serbia’s (sic) request to send its own military to the north of the country as exacerbated tensions enter the 12th day,” reports Euractiv.

KFOR prepares for Kosovo. The Western Balkans boiling pot. pic.twitter.com/0FNtc2LzXR

— AgenforInternational 🇪🇺 (@agenfor) December 22, 2022

Considering NATO’s track record in Kosovo following the imposition of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, any KFOR police action in northern Kosovo—where local Serbs have set up roadblocks in response to the arrest of a Serbian police officer by Pristina—will be resented, possibly forcefully resisted.

After Yugoslavia was bombed into submission by USG president Bill Clinton and NATO in 1999 and the country was subsequently carved up, NATO established its KFOR operation in Kosovo to “keep the peace”—instead, the unit engaged in human trafficking of women and children. They became prostitutes and sex slaves for KFOR troops. The Guardian reported in 2004,

In a report on the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution rackets since Nato troops and UN administrators took over the Balkan province in 1999, Amnesty said Nato soldiers, UN police, and western aid workers operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers.

According to Amnesty International,

Since the deployment in July 1999 of an international peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) civilian administration, Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution. Women are trafficked into Kosovo predominantly from Moldova, Bulgaria and Ukraine, the majority of them via Serbia. At the same time, increasing numbers of local women and girls are being internally trafficked, and trafficked out of Kosovo.

Because the scandal was a major embarrassment for NATO and KFOR, it wasn’t widely covered by the corporate media.

The KFOR mission was initially dubbed “Operation Joint Guardian,” but with guardians like KFOR—whoremongers, slavers, torturers—Kosovo is better off without international “peacekeepers.”

It remains to be seen if Kosovo’s Security Force, established in 2009 and slated to take over from KFOR, will carry on the tradition of its corrupt and degenerate progenitor.

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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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***

An eight-car collision on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) is now being blamed on Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) assistance system. The crash took place in the Bay Area in California on I-80 and left one person hospitalized and eight others with minor injuries.

According to Reuters, a California Highway Patrol report on the incident says that a Tesla Model S traveling on I-80 at 55 mph crossed several lanes of traffic and then slowed abruptly to just 20 mph, at which point it triggered the crash as other cars still traveling at highway speed had no chance to avoid the slow-moving electric vehicle.

An eight-car collision on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) is now being blamed on Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) assistance system. The crash took place in the Bay Area in California on I-80 and left one person hospitalized and eight others with minor injuries.

According to Reuters, a California Highway Patrol report on the incident says that a Tesla Model S traveling on I-80 at 55 mph crossed several lanes of traffic and then slowed abruptly to just 20 mph, at which point it triggered the crash as other cars still traveling at highway speed had no chance to avoid the slow-moving electric vehicle.

As Tesla expanded its beta program for FSD, the system has been implicated in more and more crashes, and in late 2021 the automaker had to issue a recall for cars running firmware linked to so-called “phantom braking” events, where bad software inappropriately triggered the cars’ automatic emergency braking systems.

That’s just one of a litany of problems associated with Tesla’s assistance systems—which have spawned at least 38 NHTSA investigations by this summer, according to Electrek. Ire directed towards FSD and Tesla’s attitude towards deploying the system on public roads even led to a senate candidacy this year.

FSD is an important revenue stream for Tesla. Earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk told investors that it “will become the most important source of profitability for Tesla,” and the company has repeatedly increased the price of the software package, which now costs $15,000.

Originally, access to the beta software was by invitation only, and using it depended upon maintaining a high score in a driver-monitoring system. But Tesla opened the beta up to any car with the right hardware on the same day as the eight-car crash.

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Jonathan is the automotive editor at Ars Technica, covering all things car-related. Jonathan lives and works in Washington, D.C. EMAIL [email protected] // TWITTER @drgitlin

Featured image is from Aurich Lawson/Tesla/Ars Technica

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In a major win for pollinators and other wildlife, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit today ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to protect endangered species from the bee-killing insecticide sulfoxaflor. The court held that the agency’s 2019 decision to allow new uses of sulfoxaflor across more than 200 million acres of pollinator-attractive crops violated the Endangered Species Act.

Today’s ruling comes in response to a legal challenge to the expanded use of the insecticide by the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.

In a strongly worded decision, the court stated,

“When an agency deliberately ignores Congress’s legislative command, it undermines the will of the people and ultimately our constitutional structure of government.”

The court wrote that by routinely registering pesticides without protecting endangered species, which then prompts the public to sue to gain those protections, the EPA is “engaging in a whack-a-mole strategy for complying with the ESA.”

“For far too long, EPA has bent to the pesticide industry’s desire to get their toxic chemicals to market as quickly as possible,” said Sylvia Wu, a senior attorney at Center for Food Safety and counsel in the case. “Today the court told EPA, ‘No more: Congress tasked the agency with protecting endangered species and the environment at-large, not just the interests of the pesticide companies.’”

In today’s ruling the court gave the agency a 180-day deadline to provide the public with an opportunity to comment on the expanded use of the insecticide.

The EPA originally approved sulfoxaflor in 2013, but the 9th Circuit vacated the approval for failing to comply with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. FIFRA requires that all pesticide applications must show that the pesticide will not cause “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.”

The EPA issued the 2019 approval to expand use of sulfoxaflor on a wide range of crops that attract bees, including soybeans, cotton, strawberries, squash and citrus. The agency action came despite the fact that its own scientists found the insecticide could threaten honeybee colonies and other pollinators.

The EPA also weakened the few spraying restrictions it previously had in place to protect native pollinators and other wildlife, eliminating all requirements for buffers even during aerial spraying.

The EPA admitted to the court that it had not considered any of sulfoxaflor’s effects on species protected by the Endangered Species Act. The agency belatedly issued a draft endangered species assessment earlier this summer. In the draft assessment, the EPA found sulfoxaflor is potentially putting 24 species of insects in jeopardy of extinction, including the Karner blue butterfly and American burying beetle.

“This decision is a huge win for monarch butterflies, rusty patched bumblebees and all the other struggling populations of insects and birds constantly under threat from harmful insecticides,” said Stephanie Parent, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity and co-counsel on the case. “It’s long past time for the EPA to take meaningful action to protect our most imperiled wildlife and put protections in place for endangered species before approving use of toxic pesticides on millions of acres of crops.”

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***

Faced with criticism on whether the United States should trumpet its “unbreakable bond” with an incoming Israeli government headed by fascist parties, lawbreakers and homophobes, the Biden administration has squirmed.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken observed defensively this month that Washington would “gauge the government by the policies and procedures, rather than individual personalities”.

What suffering might have been avoided had the US previously been prepared to judge Israel based on policy? Not least, the necessary pressure might have been exerted to prevent 2022 from becoming the bloodiest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005.

But, despite what Blinken says, Israeli governments are never held to account for policy, whether it be illegal settlement-building, the 15-year siege of Gaza and its regular bombardment, or house demolitions in East Jerusalem.

Instead, US administrations have been only too ready to accept from Israel’s leadership any security rationalisation or placatory promise – and declare the most unlikely Israeli prime ministers “peacemakers“.

But Blinken’s observation was preposterous for a further reason.

How exactly can the “personalities” in the new government – the most religious and far-right in Israel’s history – be divorced from its policies?

Consider one such “personality” in Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition. In a recent interview with Channel 4, Zvika Fogel not only demanded the scrapping of “proportionality”, the cornerstone of international humanitarian law, but then specified: “If it is one Israeli mother crying, or a thousand Palestinian mothers crying, then a thousand Palestinian mothers will cry.”

Fogel’s view is not surprising. He belongs to the fascist Jewish Power party. Before he became a politician, he served in several senior roles in the Israeli military, including being in charge of Southern Command, which covers Gaza. Over the years, he enjoyed plenty of scope to implement his worldview.

A tight leash?

It is not clear yet whether Fogel will get a government job. But his boss in Jewish Power, Itamar Ben-Gvir, certainly will.

Netanyahu needs to keep sweet Jewish Power and its sister parties: Religious Zionism and Noam. Running together, they won the third-largest tally of votes in last month’s general election. Despite wide support, they represent the interests of the most unhinged, violent elements within the settler movement.

Until this electoral upset, Ben-Gvir was best known for repeated incidents of thuggery and racist incitement.

He has been filmed attacking Palestinian shopkeepers in Hebron and brandishing his personal firearm at Palestinians. In 2007, he was convicted of supporting a terror organisation, the outlawed Kach party of the virulent anti-Arab racist Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Ben-Gvir averted any danger of a second conviction by rebranding Kach as Jewish Power. Now the terror organisation is in government.

Netanyahu understands only too well that he has embarrassed his US superpower patron by getting into bed with openly fascist parties.

This is why last week he did his best to play along with Blinken’s pretence. “Coalitions make interesting bedfellows,” Netanyahu told the US radio station NPR, adding: “They [Religious Zionism] are joining me. I’m not joining them.”

He argued that Ben-Gvir had “modified a lot of his views” since his 2007 conviction – and that in any case, as prime minister, Netanyahu would keep him on a tight leash.

“With power comes responsibility… I certainly will ensure that that will be the case,” he reassured.

Except that is not how it has looked from the way the coalition negotiations have unfolded – not in the least. Netanyahu needs Ben-Gvir propping up his government far more desperately than Ben-Gvir needs to serve as a nondescript rightwing cog, or a placeholder, in another Netanyahu government.

This is going to look like no other Netanyahu cabinet. The new prime minister will be far weaker, far less dominant than the Netanyahu we are used to.

Give away the store

Netanyahu’s top priority is subverting the Israeli legal system so that his current trial on bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges can be brought to a halt. A conviction and jail sentence would finish his political career.

Religious Zionism shares Netanyahu’s goal. They want to destroy what they consider a “leftist” Supreme Court, leaving the way unimpeded to create an even more strictly Jewish society, both religiously and ethnically.

But whereas Netanyahu is looking out chiefly for himself, Ben-Gvir is a zealot. He campaigned on a promise to shake up Israeli politics and drive it even further to the ultra-nationalist, religious right. Given his self-cultivated image as a fearless political bruiser, Ben-Gvir cannot be seen backing down.

Which explains precisely how the coalition negotiations have played out. Netanyahu has given away the store on issues that matter most to Ben-Gvir and his allies.

They will have unfettered control over key areas of policy that can help seed their revolution: security forces inside both Israel and the occupied territories, the running of the occupation, education programmes and Jewish identity.

Netanyahu has no time to waste. Last week, he began rushing through legislation to pass greater powers to his extremist allies and cement their backing.

Ben-Gvir’s main political ally, Bezalel Smotrich of Religious Zionism, will become the first politician with direct power over the misnamed Civil Administration, the military dictatorship that runs the day-to-day affairs of the occupation. He will be able to further immiserate Palestinians while aiding the most extremist Jewish settlers, his friends, in their land grabs.

He can even make conditions harsher in Gaza, by refusing permits to transfer goods into the coastal enclave or awarding permits to Palestinians who need to leave to study or for emergency medical treatment.

All-out war

Ben-Gvir, meanwhile, is being given control of a new national security ministry, a post created for him with vastly expanded powers. His scope for making mischief will be unprecedented.

The role of the previous internal security ministry was to deal with policing inside Israel. Historically, the chief area of friction has been over the police’s treatment of a Palestinian minority in Israel of nominal citizens, a fifth of the Israeli population. These third-class citizens, the remnants of the Palestinian population who survived mass expulsions in 1948, have been forced mostly to live in segregated communities, away from the Jewish majority.

The Palestinian minority has long complained that the Israeli police do not deal with the real crimes that affect them, instead defining any political activity or protest in their communities as criminal. The far-right wants the police to crack down even harder.

Ben-Gvir will oversee not only the regular police but take charge of the Border Police, a large paramilitary force that operates both in the occupied territories and inside Israel. Until now its activities in the West Bank have been run by the Israeli army.

Control of the Border Police gives Ben-Gvir critical leverage over how relations with the Palestinian populations on either side of the Green Line are managed. The Border Police are invariably on the front line in handling Palestinian protests and enforcing house demolitions.

Ben-Gvir will also oversee a notorious undercover unit, the mistaravim, that infiltrates Palestinian protests, often acting as agents provocateur and providing the Border Police with the pretext to violently break up demonstrations and arrest organisers.

His new role will mean Ben-Gvir gets to decide how, or even if, the Border Police enforce Israeli court orders to dismantle structures set up by extremist Jewish settlers on Palestinian land in violation of Israeli law – as well as, of course, international law. Those lawbreakers are Ben-Gvir’s closest allies.

And he will be micromanaging the same police force that is supposed to keep the peace on the al-Aqsa mosque plaza between Palestinian worshippers and Jewish zealots who want to set the Middle East on fire by praying there – as a prelude to destroying the mosque. Those zealots include Ben-Gvir himself.

If all this wasn’t enough, he will oversee the issuing of gun licences too, potentially allowing him to arm a far larger swath of the Jewish population. The outgoing defence minister, Benny Gantz, has warned that Netanyahu is giving Ben-Gvir his own “private army“. That is the aim.

Ben-Gvir now has multiple ways to antagonise, inflame and outrage Palestinian communities on both sides of the Green Line to the point of all-out confrontation. A third intifada has never felt closer.

Pushed to the brink

For decades Israeli governments have required their security services to maintain a precarious balancing act – or what some misleadingly term “shrinking the conflict“.

On the one hand, the job of the military, the police and the intelligence agencies are to crush any sign of Palestinian nationalism, such as support for a Palestinian state, while also driving Palestinians off the bulk of the territory that would constitute such a state, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The long-term aim is to cultivate a sense of hopelessness to encourage Palestinians to look for a life elsewhere, in exile.

But on the other hand, the security services are supposed to avoid using too much force, too quickly or on too many fronts, in case it unites Palestinians into open revolt.

Two major intifadas and several minor ones, including in May 2021, are evidence of the self-sabotaging nature of the task. There is simply no way to enforce apartheid and carry out ethnic cleansing that is not going to be rejected by its victims.

Over the years, Israel has sought to refine its balancing act, through official Palestinian collaboration. The first intifada ended with Oslo’s 1993 “peace process” and promises of a cumulative transfer of powers to a government-in-waiting, the Palestinian Authority under Yasser Arafat.

A second intifada erupted only a few years later, in 2000, as it became clear to Palestinians that Israel was not serious about self-rule. It took a new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to help restore the balancing act.

Israel intensified the pressure while Abbas conferred a “sacred” duty on his security forces to keep Palestinian protests off the streets.

Subcontracting the occupation’s security to the Palestinian Authority has bought Israel time.

The point is that, however brutal the current occupation is, and however badly Israel’s minority of Palestinian citizens are treated, the Israeli security services’ playbook is to push Palestinian society to the brink, but not – at least intentionally – over it.

War with Palestinians

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich have no such qualms. They want escalation and confrontation now, and they want it to the bitter end. Their whole project is premised on a war with the Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and inside Israel, to make inevitable a formal annexation by Israel of Palestinian territory.

They do not want incremental pressure. They do not want security cooperation with the PA. They want the PA gone. They do not want distinctions between Israel and the occupied territories. They do not want welcomes on the White House lawn, or dinner with American Jewish leaders. They do not want Palestinians leaving in 10 or 20 years. They want mass expulsions now.

In their view, only a no-holds-barred war on all Palestinians will be sufficient to crush their resistance and justify expulsions on such a grand scale. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s goal is a second Nakba, a repeat of the events of 1948 when Palestinians were driven out of most of their homeland.

Israel’s direction of travel has long been obvious to Palestinians. A new generation has been readying different vehicles of resistance, such as the Jenin Brigades and the Lions’ Den in Nablus, as faith in the PA erodes ever more deeply. Israel is gradually being forced to take back a “policing” role in West Bank communities as its own trust in PA “security cooperation” collapses.

A recent poll found nearly three-quarters of those living in the West Bank support the creation of armed groups, separate from the Palestinian Authority, to protect their communities.

Netanyahu has now cocked the gun and handed it to Ben-Gvir to start an annexation war. Washington may hope the incoming prime minister can restrain his extremist colleagues. But the truth is they now have the whip hand.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

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***

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has repeated a call for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be assassinated, saying that the only way the war in Ukraine could end is if Russia “breaks” and someone “takes Putin out.”

“How does this war end? When Russia breaks, and they take Putin out. Anything short of that, the war’s gonna continue,” Graham said on the Fox News program America Reports on Wednesday.

Graham said the US is “in it to win it, and the only way you’re gonna win it is to break the Russian military and have somebody in Russia take Putin out to give the Russian people a new lease on life.”

Lindsey Graham says the only way the war in Ukraine will end is if Russia "breaks" and someone "takes Putin out" pic.twitter.com/M5do9Oj06q

— Dave DeCamp (@DecampDave) December 23, 2022

The hawkish senator made similar comments back in March when he asked if there was a “Brutus” in Russia who could kill Putin. In his comments on Wednesday, Graham also said the Biden administration should send Ukraine the advanced and long-range weapons that Kyiv has been asking for.

When asked to what extent the US should continue to support Ukraine in the war, Graham replied, “completely, all in without equivocation.” He said the US needs to provide Ukraine with longer-range weapons to help “dislodge” Russia from areas of eastern Ukraine, including Crimea.

He said if Ukraine had larger drones, such as Reapers and Gray Eagles, Ukraine would “kill tons of Russians without losing any Ukrainians in the endeavor.” Ukraine has asked for Gray Eagle drones, which can fly for about 30 hours and are capable of carrying powerful Hellfire Missiles, but the Biden administration has held off from sending them so far.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image: Senator Lindsey Graham (Source: Wikipedia)

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***

The irresponsible and destabilizing work done by some Western journalists concerning the Ukrainian conflict is well known. However, recent data show that the reality appears to be even worse. A study carried out by the University of Mainz revealed that the main German media outlets acted decisively in the dissemination of anti-Russian thoughts in society, making public opinion accept the pro-war actions of the German government. Indeed, there appears to be an extremely complex coordinated effort in which state agents and the private media work together in order to incite the anti-Russian mentality.

The study showed how journalists spread pro-war ideas, with a speech in favor of NATO, inducing readers to support the anti-Russian policy that became the main characteristic of the German government since February. The research focused on journalistic coverage made in the initial months of the Russian operation, between February 24 and May 31, evaluating the content of more than 4,300 different articles published by the eight largest German newspapers and TV stations: FAZ, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Bild, Spiegel, Zeit, ARD Tagesschau, ZDF Today and RTL Aktuell.

The Mainz’s researchers noted that in 64% of the articles Ukraine was described positively, seeming like the “right side”. Specifically regarding Vladimir Zelensky, 67% of the coverage pointed him positively. While, on the other hand, in 88% of the cases Russia was portrayed in a negative way, in addition to Vladimir Putin being described as an “enemy” in 96% of the articles. Also, 93% of the articles point to Moscow as the “culprit” for the conflict, while only 4% place the West as “co-responsible” – the numbers pointing to Ukraine as the culprit are even smaller: 2%.

In only 10% of the analyzed texts, Russian reasons for starting its military operation were considered. The focus of 80% of news coverage was on the narrative exposed in official speeches by Ukrainian, European and American authorities. With this, the German people were practically forced to believe the baseless discourse that Moscow “unjustifiably invaded” Ukraine.

It must also be noted that before the Russian operation began, over the past eight years, the German media – and Western media as a whole – also ignored facts such as the 2014 coup d’état, the presence of neo-Nazi militias in Ukrainian territory and the ethnic genocide in Donbass. So, without knowing these previous facts, naturally German readers, when faced with the Russian bombings in February, believed in the “invasion” narrative, since they were not aware of the local military context.

Another interesting fact is that in 66% of the articles, anti-Russian economic sanctions were defined as the most efficient way to end the war. Regarding military support, 74% of the reports endorsed the “need” to send weapons to Ukraine. Diplomatic measures were mentioned very infrequently, with virtually no support of diplomacy and international dialogue among German journalists. The case is really curious as it reveals how the press tried to help the German government to convince public opinion about the efficiency of coercive measures.

Despite Germany having a political posture absolutely submissive to NATO, the decision to join the anti-Russian coercion would naturally not be seen with good eyes by the local population. The country is extremely dependent on Russian gas, and the end of energy cooperation is the cause of a real social and economic catastrophe. Currently, mass protests occur frequently in Germany, as with the arrival of winter the people begin to realize the negative impacts of the government’s stance. However, if the journalistic coverage had been operated honestly, without biased pro-war speeches, possibly the protests would have started earlier, and the people would have put pressure on Berlin not to get involved in the war plans of the Atlantic alliance.

In fact, the researchers showed something that many analysts had already previously denounced: there is cooperation between the main media outlets and the liberal governments in the NATO countries. It is media coverage with intense anti-Russian and pro-war propaganda that allows public opinion to accept the irresponsible measures taken by Western politicians. Whether this action is spontaneous or coordinated between government strategists and press editors is impossible to say. However, considering the high level of public-private cooperation in these countries, it is difficult to think that this is not a planned and strategically calculated action.

In parallel, the independent press, which shows the truth about events in Ukraine, is often censored, with complex intelligence operations in place to remove all forms of pro-Russian content from the internet. This shows how Western discourse on “liberal values” and “democracy” turns out to be a mere propaganda: NATO countries are only interested in ensuring Western unipolarity.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Peru remains a center of resistance to the removal of President Pedro Castillo in a political coup by the Congress on December 7.

Castillo is still incarcerated on numerous charges including corruption and violation of the state constitution.

The former union leader and left-wing president has rejected these allegations and is demanding to be released from detention immediately. On December 22, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) was in Peru to investigate the current political turmoil.

As part of the assertion that he remains the legitimate head-of-state in Peru, Castillo requested a meeting with the IACHR delegation saying that the conditions under which he is being held are a violation of his human rights. Castillo, along with thousands across the South American country, are calling for the resignation of the recently installed President Dina Boluarte, the immediate release of the former president, the dissolving of Congress and the holding of national elections.

Castillo has received significant international support from several governments throughout the region. Mexico has repeatedly called for the president’s release along with Bolivia, Argentina, Colombia, Honduras and others. The Mexican government of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has granted political asylum to the family of Castillo, who have already left Peru.

The Mexican ambassador to Peru, Pablo Monroy Conesa, was expelled by the Boluarte government claiming that statements made by officials were hostile to the current coup regime in Peru. Since the impeachment of Castillo on December 7, the military has moved to seized control of all major transportation and infrastructure institutions in the country. This has taken place amid continuing strikes by workers, farmers and youth who have blocked roads, highways, airports and trains. On December 22, the defense minister, Luis Alberto Otarola, was appointed as prime minister of the government in Lima.

Mexican President AMLO announced that his government would seek to maintain diplomatic relations with Peru under the existing administration of Boluarte. The president was concerned about the status of Mexican citizens living and working in Peru.

Telesur reported on the diplomatic crisis between Mexico and Peru that:

“Regarding the current situation in Peru, marked by a political and social crisis, AMLO described Boluarte’s administration as ‘a very questioned government.’ In this sense, he denounced the use of repression in the face of the conflict instead of opting for dialogue and ‘the democratic method’ of early elections. AMLO criticized ‘the attitude of the so-called political class, of the economic and political power groups in Peru.’ The Mexican President accused them of being ‘those who have maintained that crisis in that country because of their ambitions.’”

AMLO characterized the Peruvian society as being under a “state of siege” since December 7 when Castillo was removed from office and arrested by  the security forces. In addition, the Mexican leader criticized United States Ambassador Lisa Kenna who met with the Boluarte government, giving the regime legitimacy.

Other imperialist centers also met with Boluarte including the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK). State Department spokesperson Ned Price went as far as to commend Boluarte for protecting Peruvian institutions and publicly proclaimed the recognition by the U.S. of the coup which resulted in the existing regime. (See this)

The left-wing governments in South America, Central America and the Caribbean are constantly under threat by the U.S. Cuba has been under a blockade for the last six decades and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela defeated numerous coup attempts engineered by Washington and its allies in the region over the last two decades.

Peru has been undergoing political turmoil in recent years. The impeachment of Castillo and the ascendancy of Boluarte marked the sixth person to hold the office of the presidency in as many years.

Castillo is being held in pretrial detention which could last up to 18 months. After this period if he is not released, a judicial panel will decide his fate as it relates to the charges filed against him.

The country has been impacted by the worldwide rise in inflation. In Peru the rate of inflation is approximately 8.5%. Since the December 7 coup, uncertainty has increased both inside and outside the South American state.

A report published by Telesur noted:

“On Thursday (Dec. 22), the visit to Peru of the IACHR Secretary Tania Reneaum and her team concludes. They held meetings with authorities and organizations to gather information on the institutional crisis that the country is going through.

Since December 7, thousands of citizens have taken to the streets to demand new elections, the closure of Congress, and the release of Castillo, whom lawmakers removed to appoint then-Vice President Boluarte in his place. With the support of the Armed Forces, her administration has harshly repressed social protests, which has left 27 citizens dead and dozens of people injured and detained. In this regard, prosecutor Karen Obregon opened an investigation into the heads of the Police and the Army as alleged perpetrators of 10 deaths in the department of Ayacucho.”

State of Emergency Declared by Installed President Boluarte

A 30-day state of emergency was declared by Boluarte after riot police and the military were not able to quell the initial wave of demonstrations. Peru, which in addition to its mining resources, is a center of tourism attracting hundreds of thousands every year to the ancient civilization of Machu Picchu. During early and mid-December, thousands of tourists have been unable to get transportation out of the area due to the popular uprising against the removal of Castillo.

In a first-person account of the situation in Peru, the Jurist printed a report from a law student which said:

“My flight was cancelled, since the protesters had taken over the airport and for safety reasons all the airlines suspended their flights until further notice. For this reason, I had to resort to another means of transport. There were no buses that provided the transportation service, there were only cars and since I needed transportation, I had to travel by hired car. However, I was unable to complete my journey as the roads were blocked…. A little later, the police arrived and started throwing tear gas canisters to try to disperse the protesters. The policemen were throwing many tear gas canisters, and they were also pushing the protesters, despite the fact that there were young people and older adults. This made the protesters angry and a fight started between the protesters and the police. I ran and tried to take refuge in some nearby houses because the situation was getting worse. I was afraid that the police would stop me or that the protesters would attack me.”

In a gesture to the popular movement, the Peruvian Congress passed a bill to hold elections by mid-2024. This measure differed from the proposal put forward by Boluarte who wanted elections to be held by December 2023. However, many outstanding issues remain within the context of these proposals.

Will the state of emergency be lifted along with the release of ousted President Castillo? This an important question because of the more than two dozen people already reported killed since December 7 must be addressed by the judicial system.

The bill in question was sponsored by the Constitutional Commission President Hernando Guerra, a far-right lawmaker and supporter of the party controlled by former presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori. However, this decision to move the elections from 2026, must be approved by the legislative session, which does not convene until March 1, 2023.

This latest political crisis in Peru has regional and international implications. The administration of President Joe Biden has not made any substantial changes in U.S. policy towards Latin America.

The objectives of Washington and Wall Street in the region remain essentially the same. The U.S. wants to maintain control of the domestic and foreign policy of the governments throughout Latin America. This can only be done through the utilization of economic control and military domination.

All throughout South America, Central America and the Caribbean, the masses of people yearn for genuine liberation and sovereignty. In order for these objectives to be realized a protracted struggle must be waged against the U.S. and its surrogates so that total liberation and self-determination can be achieved.

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

Featured image: Peru workers in support of Pedro Castillo after coup

One hundred and eight years ago this Christmas Eve, The Great War, the “War to End All Wars” was in its fourth month. It had already bogged down into trench warfare.

For those unfamiliar with the term, it consisted of many miles of trenches on either side of “No Man’s Land,” a strip of land of varying width, cratered with shell holes, filled with broken equipment, concertina wire, bodies, wounded and dying men. The men of both sides lived pretty much in misery, soaking wet, feet rotting, hunkered down in their trenches.

The “strategy” was pretty simple. A General on one side or the other would order his troops to attack. They would charge into a storm of shot and shell trying to take the trenches of their opponents.

Often, they were beaten back with terrible losses. Sometimes they took their objective. Then the General of the other side would order his reserves to the front to counterattack. Often the “victors” would be driven back to their original trench lines. If they kept the captured trenches, the other side would build another trench line and No Man’s Land would be moved a few yards or a few hundred yards one way or the other.

On Christmas Eve, 1914, the front was fairly quiet. In one sector, both sides were celebrating Christmas as best they could. The Germans were singing Christmas Carols and had small trees decorated with candles in their trenches. The British and French heard them and began singing their own carols.

After a while, a lone German soldier entered No Man’s land, singing Silent Night and carrying a lit Christmas tree. He placed it on the stump of a shattered tree and finished the carol. Nobody fired at him. A British officer climbed out of his trench and walked toward the young man. A German officer came from his line and they met and talked. It was decided that, though they would be shooting at each other the next day, that Christmas was something they could share.

Soon, Germans, French and British troops all met together! They shared their various liquors, tobacco and rations, showed photos of loved ones and of home. A soccer field was set up and soccer games were played, Germans vs the Allies.

Both sides discovered they were not fighting monsters, they were fighting people just like themselves, people waiting for the end of the war so they could go back home to their jobs and families.

Then, the Generals on both sides found out about the truce and ordered their men back to their own trenches. They forbade any “fraternization” with the enemy under threat of Courts-martial and a firing squad, and so the war dragged on for four more years and the death toll was in the millions. The devastation was unthinkable. The maimed and crippled were everywhere.

Finally, at Versailles, the armistice was declared and the troops could go home. Two decades later, an even more horrible war broke out and enveloped the world again.

I have often wondered what might have happened had the two armies enjoyed the truce, met their enemies and found them to be just like they were and decided to throw down their guns and go home. The truce could have spread like wildfire up and down the trench lines, and the war could have been over.

I can almost hear them slapping each other on the backs and saying, “If the Generals want this war so much, let them get in the trenches and fight each other. We’re going home!”

What a different world this could have been.

***

Written on Christmas Eve 2014

‘Twas a century ago this Christmas Eve
Heaven seemed to give the soldiers leave
Even to set their guns aside, and in friendship believe.

Christmas carols rang out across that blasted earth
Hungry and tired, both sides dreamt of home and hearth.
Rising from his trench, a young German walked into that No Man’s Land;
In his hands was a candle lit Christmas tree, his song was of a silent night.
Still, no shots from the West. The song done, the tree planted on a shell-blasted stump,
Then, from both sides, officers walked to the tree and talked, a decision was made.
Men decided that, though soon they must kill again, Christmas should be a time of peace.
Along the front a truce was set. Men met, shared songs, rations, liquor and, family photos.
Soccer was the only war that night, Allies versus Germans, and no one knows who “won.”

The night was filled with love and brotherhood, food and schnapps, brandy, rum and song.
Realizing that they were fighting “themselves,” too bad they didn’t throw down their guns.
Up and down the front it could have spread, troops throwing down their guns, marching home.
Calling out to the generals, if they truly wanted a war, to fight it out between themselves.
Ending four years of horror, before it had hardly begun.

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(Originally published September 11, 2022)

“I am an Anti-War Activist and I am innocent! I have done more against terrorism than anybody. Everything I have done was always good for the security of the United States and good for security in the Middle East.”

– Susan Lindauer shouting on the day she was arrested by the FBI under the Patriot Act. [1]

“We will need more public support in order for that to happen. And that public support is growing now that we’re making the ties between the false flag of Covid and the vaccinations over the last two years to 9/11. In fact, I’ve developed a presentation on the parallels between 9/11 and Covid, the amazing parallels. I didn’t actually develop it, it was developed by Kevin Ryan, masterfully. What I did was codified it and refined it, and that attracted the attention of Dr. Rashid Buttar. So, I – he wanted me to speak, and I did, in San Antonio, at the advanced medicine there to 1,000 attending medical people. So, that was an incredible opportunity.”

 – Richard Gage AIA (from this week’s interview)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW


Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

An entire generation of new human beings have been born, grew up and are now entering the work force, university and college – all without ever knowing the age before the war on terrorism. The Patriot Act, anti-terrorism legislation, and the threat of attacks is part of daily life. Like taxes and death.

The incident now referred to as the September 11 attacks, or 9/11, has been the principal culprit in transitioning us all to this new normal. Witnessing airlines departing from their courses and crashing into the symbol of financial opulence known as the World Trade Center in New York City served to convince millions of horrified citizens in the United States and around the world that something has to be done to prevent brutalities like this one from assaulting freedom in America and centres around the world.

But along with the masses of hopeful people bowing their heads down as Heads of State Bush and Cheney, dispense their own blessings of military vengeance, another element entered the stage. Blasphemers who look at the facts around the official story and realizing that not only does it not stick together, but a rival explanation bearing the name “false flag” is in clear site.

This group of “harlots” and “trouble-makers” eventually got a name – the 9/11 Truth movement. And it encompassed hundreds of dedicated researchers. And it turns out that one of the most intelligent and thorough contributors to the research is Michel Chossudovsky! On September 12, 2001, he wrote the famous article Who is Osama Bin Laden, which pointed to his persuasive arguments of Al Qaeda as in fact a creation of the CIA!

Since that date, Global Research became a major champion of all public discussion around what was wrong with what we were told and how the U.S. sought it as an excuse for going to war for other reasons.

As the 21st anniversary of the incident which marked the calendar date forever as a day if infamy, the Global Research News Hour marks the occasion by continuing the process of relentless examination of the facts in spite of a persistent rant by politicians and the media to the effect that such an endeavor is another gesture of “conspiracy theory.”

Our first guest, the founder and former CEO at Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, Richard Gage, AIA, takes us through the events TODAY to not only raise awareness of evidence of the World Trade Center towers being brought down by controlled demolition rather than airplane collisions, but also to hold government authorities accountable through court hearings. He also addresses how he addresses the changing mentality now that mainstream media is not as popular as it used to be. And he also breaks down community events marking the anniversary.

Our next guest, Susan Lindauer, when she tried to raise awareness about what she knew of the attacks after being guided by Intelligence officials, ended up detained under the Patriot Act for “Organizing Resistance to the United States” in Iraq and spent months in jail before her release. She wrote the about the experience in her 2010 book Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act And the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq.

Richard Gage, AIA is a 30-year San Francisco Bay Area architect and member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founder and former  CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He now leads the charge for a new WTC investigation. Be sure to check out events this weekend on the site at RichardGage911.org

Susan Lindauer is an antiwar activist and a former CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency Asset covering Iraq and Libya, who negotiated the return of the weapons inspectors to Baghdad.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 362)

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Transcript of Richard Gage AIA. September 7, 2022

Global Research: So, this is Michael Welch for the Global Research News Hour. I have with me Richard Gage, A.I.A. He is a 30-year old, San Francisco, Bay Area architect and member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founder and former CEO of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He now leads the charge for a new WTC investigation at richardgage911.org. Mr. Gage became interested in researching the destruction of the WTC high-rises after hearing the startling conclusions of a reluctant 9/11 researcher, David Ray Griffin, on the radio in 2006 which launched his own, unyielding quest for the truth about 9/11. The organization he founded, AE911Truth, now outnumbers more than 3,500 architects and engineers demanding a new investigation into the destruction of all three World Trader Center high-rise buildings on 9/11. He has also been a frequent guest on the Global Research News Hour. Richard, it is a privilege to have you back on the Global Research News Hour. Welcome.

Richard Gage: Thank you, Michael. It’s my privilege, really. Thank you.

GR: Now, if you don’t mind, would you like to explain, first of all, what were your reasons for no longer being associated with AE911Truth?

RG: Well, they weren’t my reasons. They were the PR consultants reasons, actually, over at AE911Truth. Here’s what happened, in a nutshell: Spike Lee, the famous director, became aware of the 9/11 evidence. He saw our documentary, he says, “You’ve got to come here.” He flew me to Brooklyn, and I spent two hours with him presenting the evidence. It was awesome. He was in tears. And he says, “I’m going to get this out on September 11th, on HBO, in my mini-series called ‘New York Epicenters.’” So, we were all excited about that, and then we have a lot of pressure from the industry – movie industry, I guess, HBO or something, on Spike Lee. We also had Slate Magazine putting in his face, a quote that I made in an obscure radio interview about Covid, where I was concerned that the disease that was going around was yet another false flag operation. And a scam, essentially… and the danger of the vaccine, that were forthcoming. So, I was shocked, I think, to – we all were – to hear that he pulled this half-hour segment due to, I think, primarily, the pressure from the media and, perhaps, also, to some extent due to my own comments on Covid which contradicted his own worldview regarding Covid and the vaccines. So, it’s some mix of that. Later, he acknowledged that he, “Didn’t have a choice,” in pulling that 30-minute segment, and that was somewhat reassuring to me. But, in the meantime, the PR consultant for Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth had told the board that this was a crisis and that the CEO had to go, because this could plague you for years to come. Which is ridiculous, but it took more than half of our board to vote against keeping me. So, it was quite a vigorous debate, to put it mildly.

GR: Yeah, very devastating, I’m sure. And of course, it centres the whole idea – I mean, if you thought that 9/11 Truth was a difficult one, I mean even just bringing up the whole – any doubts. I don’t know if you were all that certain about it, but doubts about Covid, that’s a no-go, you know? I can sort of relate. You know, you’ve been working continuously, breaking down the science of the collapses and evidence of explosions. Evidence of high temperatures only generated by explosives, and so on. You explained it, Leroy Hulsey, of the Alaska, Fairbanks, explained it here on the show, in detail. His expo – study of WTC 7 – I was just wondering, could you bring us up, more up-to-date as to whether there are new studies or contributions that strengthen your case?

RG: Well, the Hulsey study completely pulled the rug out from underneath the NIST report. This is a foray for those who don’t know about it, a 4-year, $300,000 major university study. So, Professor Hulsey determined that fire was not the cause of the collapse of this building. That the – the building had to have all the columns removed within a second of each other in order for this collapse to occur, which was incredible support for the work that we have done over the last 15 years and assembling 3,500 architects and engineers demanding a new investigation of the destruction of all three World Trade Center skyscrapers. We have put that study out into the academic environment with thousands and thousands of postcards alerting the engineering community to the study. We don’t have any major support that arises anywhere near the level of credibility that the Hulsey study has put forth. And we don’t have support yet from Congress. So, where we are getting some action is in the courts.

GR: Yes.

RG: And we’re delighted to – in fact – have Mick Harrison, the litigation director of the Lawyers Committee for 9/11 Inquiry representing us in getting our evidence, the 60 exhibits that have already been submitted to the US attorney, to be given to the special grand jury. We have sued to make sure that happens. And we are appealing the faulty decision on the part of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and we’re going to be discussing taking that all the way to the top. So, that’s incredible. We’re making a film to document, for the grand jury specifically, and then for everybody else, also, those 60 exhibits will be brought to life by myself, and experts, with regard to the technical evidence and looking right into the camera, showing them all the evidence. And then, also, Mick Harrison will be explaining to the grand jury what their opportunities are with regard to this evidence, what does the evidence mean in these cases. What are there – who can they subpoena, who can they ask for material persons, material interests. So, we’re filming that now and that’s very exciting. We’ll be discussing that film and the opportunities and updates from the lawyers committee for 9/11 inquiry at our event, which is on September 11th, which is on our website. It will be shown livestream to everybody. It is —

GR: (inaudible)

RG: — nine – excuse me – what?

GR: Just a livestream showing, right?

RG: Yeah, livestream on richardgage911.org. So, that will be there the day before the September 11th event, the lawyers committee, of which I’m on the board. We’re putting our own event together on September 10th with all of the attorneys speaking about different subjects. And that is lcfor911.org.

GR: You know, I was wondering how you’ve been – you said you’ve been lobbying politicians, like for years. And it’s well-known that one outspoken member of Congress, Cynthia McKinney, a vocal supporter of yours and of 9/11 truth generally and you saw what happened to her, she lost her seat. We saw what happened in the investigation into 9/11. Even if you win the support of any politicians that might agree with you, is it realistic to think that anyone would stand up in full view of the mainstream media and spout what is now branded a conspiracy theory?

RG: We will need more public support in order for that to happen. And that public support is growing now that we’re making the ties between the false flag of COVID and the vaccinations over the last two years to 9/11. In fact, I’ve developed a presentation on the parallels between 9/11 and COVID, the amazing parallels. I didn’t actually develop it, it was developed by Kevin Ryan, masterfully. What I did was codified it and refined it, and that attracted the attention of Dr. Rashid Buttar. So, I – he wanted me to speak, and I did, in San Antonio, at the advanced medicine there to 1,000 attending medical people. So, that was an incredible opportunity. Then, at the Red-Pill Expo in Indianapolis, Doctor – excuse me, G. Edward Griffin asked me to speak there, and we did. So, it is getting out there. Now, Dr. Mata Bassetti, who works with the Children’s Health Defense organization is working with me to create a joint presentation. He’ll be taking the COVID side, I’ll taking the 9/11 side. We’re going back and forth, and we’ll have this prepared through the collective evolution YouTube platform of Joe Martino. So, that’s going to be – so, with all these efforts and the legal cases, including the FOIA case that we’re winning in court – there are some success stories – to get the information that NIST and FEMA had in order to produce their final reports on Building 7. That’s now coming to us, and that will yield all kinds of opportunities as well. I think with all of this happening, it may not be this year, but I think it’s rapidly developing, this cross-pollination between these two truth movements is, in particular, going to be extremely effective in waking people up.

GR: Richard Gage, you know, for almost 21 years, people have been speaking out against the official story of 9/11. On the one hand, I would say millions of people have already gotten the message about 9/11 being an inside-job. However, from the standpoint of the professional class and the mainstream media, your position is an urban legend by now, it’s a conspiracy theory. And you know that today, unlike in 2001, much of the public doesn’t trust mainstream media anymore, you know, generally. Partially, I suspect, as a result of 9/11 truth. But, this is presented as the ability of alternative media to spread misinformation without getting their facts straight, you know what I mean? So, this is how you get your beliefs dismissed. And I’m wondering, how do you cope, or adapt, to what I see – and maybe you see it, too – as a different dynamic playing out in world news and analysis?

RG: My job is to continue educating the public, the academic professions, the media, and the government as to the truth about what happened to these three World Trade Center skyscrapers. And now, as acting independent from me, AE911Truth. Now with richardgage911.org, we’re drawing these parallels and being much more effective, and there’s much more acceptance. I cannot speak, I don’t have the crystal ball, as to when we’re going to break through, or when the “conspiracy theory” label is going to be an asset, rather than a liability for the truth movement. So, I don’t have direct answers to your very excellent questions. I just know that we are making progress. That I’ve got more requests for interviews this season than I ever have before. That is a sign, in and of itself, because as you know, I’m not with AE911Truth anymore, and yet, I have doubled the number of interviews I’m being asked to give, such that I —

GR: (inaudible)

RG: — yeah, it’s pretty incredible.

GR: Yeah, well just to secure the point a little, maybe, the point I’m making is that, unlike yesteryear, today you find people embracing lots of conspiracy theories, including a lot that aren’t even true: you notice that chemtrails from airplanes cause climate change; the Earth is flat; man faked the voyage to the moon or vaccines will kill you; the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. People put those all in the same camp. And your analysis of 9/11, while it’s, you know, impeccable, it’s – I guess you could say it’s a needle in a haystack of conspiracy theories. I mean I’m wondering, does this not pose a challenge to you as a 9/11 truther, who is being called a conspiracy theorist yourself, to cope with realities in the public square today?

RG: I don’t think that’s a concern. I have certainly looked into many of these conspiracy theories and I can tell you the world does not work the way we think it does. So, I think anybody evaluating any conspiracy theory, as they call it, or alternative truth-based information, as others call it, has to be evaluated. Evaluate the evidence, I encourage everybody. And this is what I do myself, before you jump on the bandwagon of labelling something a conspiracy theory. That’s what we try to encourage people whom we are educating about the 9/11 catastrophe, also, and the truth about it. I don’t know what else I can tell you about that, Michael.

GR: Okay, fair enough. But before we close, maybe is there an event on the – you mentioned the streaming of the film already. But, I mean, is there anything else happening on the anniversary of 9/11 that maybe you haven’t mentioned to us yet, or maybe a couple of details you’d like to throw in?

RG: Sure, you bet. In the Netherlands, Jan van Aken has a 12-hour presentation on September 11th. I don’t even know how to direct you to that web site, because I don’t know it, but it’s going to be in Dutch if anybody speaks Dutch. The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth are having their own event on Friday, September 9th. That, people can learn more about on their web site. The Lawyer’s Committee for 9/11 Inquiry is having their event on Saturday, September 10th, beginning, I think, at 1:00 P.M. Eastern. And that’s going to be the board of lawyers with a very interactive environment where people will be encouraged to ask questions and to provide feedback to the lawyers who are deciding, you know, how to proceed with these various cases. They’re looking for people’s feedback. I’ll be speaking as one of the panelists on September 10th there, and I’ll be discussing the evidence for the explosive demolition of the Twin Towers. The film that we’re making that I mentioned, “9/11: Crime Scene to Courtroom,” my event on September 11th brings honour to David Ray Griffin who’s let the 9/11 truth movement know that he only has a few months to live. So, we’re going to be spending time honouring his work and him. And he’ll be watching, as we anticipate he will, at this point. And we’ll – Elizabeth Woodworth will be presenting her decades-long work with David, including the points of consensus in the 9/11 consensus panel, which is 911consensus.org. And so, that and also, we’ll be focusing on Osama Bin Laden who most of us don’t know a whole lot about, even in the 9/11 truth movement. But, James Corbett of the Corbett Report, who will be joining us live, also, in this event, will be introducing his third, in a series of three, film documentary called “False Flags: the Secret History of Al-Qaeda,” which exposes the lie surrounding Osama Bin Laden and some of the truth that we’re still unaware of. That’s a pretty amazing opportunity, as well. So, that all happens September 11th, 10:00 A.M. Pacific livestream, that’s going to be about seven hours in and of itself.

GR: Wow, amazing stuff. And then, just to point out that David Ray Griffin is such a legend, so to have this while he’s still alive, it’s certainly – that alone would be a much, you know, desire to go out and participate while we still can.

RG: Yeah.

GR: Great stuff. It’s been a really speaking to you again, Richard Gage. Best of luck with your upcoming awareness-raising, and take care.

RG: Thanks. Thanks so much, Michael. You take care, too. We’ll see you on the 11th at the event.

GR: Richard Gage, A.I.A. is the founder and former CEO of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth. You can follow up on his recent efforts at a WTC investigation at the site, R-I-C-H-A-R-D G-A-G-E 911.org.

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

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Notes:

1. Susan Lindauer (2010), p.4, ‘Extreme Prejudice: The Terrifying Story of the Patriot Act And the Cover Ups of 9/11 and Iraq’, published by Susan Lindauer 

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***

The wave of the Polish return migration from the UK immediately before and after Brexit is noticeable both in absolute numbers and in the subjective perception of the Polish community in Britain. Popular understanding of this phenomenon, also based on the justifications given by the returners, most often refers to ethnicity, family ties, traditions, and cultural issues. 

Albeit, considering the scale of Polish migration to the UK (about one million) deeper analyse of that phenomenon considers an important contribution to understanding both the current condition of the Eastern-European economy and the true meaning of crisis and transformation of the capitalist system, of which global labour migrations  constitute a driving force.

Strategies or impulses?

The classical study of migrations likes clear divisions, like into ‘storks’, i.e. seasonal workers, ‘seekers’ roaming between various national labour markets,

‘hamsters’ working to obtain the assumed level of capital (both financial and human one) allowing them to return to the country and permanent emigrants, consistently uninterested in returning to their former homeland (Mąkosa, 2018, p. 143).  Although, the current situation of the global market strongly hinders such clear categorisations.

Moreover, such analysis is not facilitated by the attitude of the surveyed ones.  If we were to rely solely on the explanations of the returnees, we would be dealing with a mix of nostalgia, awakened / restored hopes and aspirations, and/or an accumulation of negative emotions related to emigration, prompting immigrants to act.  It would therefore be a complex of issues relating to ethnicity and family ties, tradition and culture.  Some researchers, however, question such explanations, trying to reach the socio-economic basis for changing the earlier decision to permanently leave the old countries (Fox, Moroşanu and Szilassy, 2015; Cross, 2021).

It is also worth to investigate the socio-economic explanation of these decisions change about the permanent immigration.  Immigrants who have lived in the UK for several years now are going to come back, emphasising ‘sudden impulse’ as the reason for their decisions, which led them to post thousands of photos of ‘the last coffee before return way to Poland’ on social media.  The massiveness of this phenomenon, however, indicates a different motivation than just an ‘impulse’.

Outclassing and back again

Previous research on the East-European emigration to the UK confirms that a significant proportion of newcomers taking up employment in the British labour market felt outclassed in relation to their previous position in their home countries (Johnston, Khattab i Manley, 2015, pp. 197-199, 201-204).  Considering economy as a whole, that means ignoring the potential and tangible losses, e.g. in unearned taxes and undermined growth (Platt, 2021, p. 11).

Also in the realities of the UK education system, ethnic minority representatives choose university more often than the native British youth, but it is much more difficult for them to find a job as graduates, and they are also underrepresented in the apprenticeship (Blundell et al., 2021, p. 13).

It is estimated that in the pre-pandemic period, not using the skills of minority representatives according to the qualifications, costed the UK budget up to £8 billion a year (Šestanović, Qureshi and Khawaja, 2021, pp. 3, 13).  There are doubts whether these objective inequalities and contradictions affect the state of class consciousness of Polish workers in the UK, but an analogous reaction with the opposite direction can be noticed.

Professional advancement in the British labour system created new corporate ties, evolving to the new class identification, which favoured the return to the old countries in the position of the comprador managerial / expert group.  Both of these factors should be examined: the denial of one’s own position within the globalised working class, which is sometimes associated with ethnic or racial prejudices, and the ease of identifying with higher class positions DESPITE real ethnic and cultural barriers.

Liberal uncertainty

Migration studies often focus on the situation of the labour-supplying (sending) countries and carry out a comparative analysis with the host (destination) countries to confirm economic basis of the decision to emigrate (Mąkosa, 2018, pp. 142-143).

Paradoxically, analysing return emigration, non-economic and cultural considerations are emphasised, as well as rationality/optimality of choice is assumed, understood mostly as achieving a level of accumulation that allows active participation in the capitalist market of the home country (Dustmann and Weiss, 2007, p. 250; Dustmann, Fadlon and Weiss, 2010, p. 7; Wahba, 2021, p. 6).

Variability of decisions is considered a natural and immanent feature of the current global labour market, in line with assumptions of ‘liquidity‘, ‘deliberate indeterminacy’ and ‘intentional unpredictability’(Jancewicz, Kloc-Nowak and Pszczółkowska, 2019, p. 104).  The weakness of this approach is its discontinuity (distinguishing national economies in a globalist reality) and inconsistency (mixing the material conditions and  the level of consciousness).  Recognising return migration as a class-conditioned process is therefore an important research gap.

Not-White-Enough, but still not aware…

Of course, the importance of racism and xenophobia should not be underestimated.  Negative and even hostile attitude of the White British is often experienced by immigrants in the UK, including those coming from Eastern Europe, stigmatised as ‘not white enough’ (Manley, Khattab and Johnston, 2019, pp. 926-927; Rzepnikowska, 2019, pp. 63-64).  However intersectionality approach and superdiversity concept prescribe a broader analysis, considering the factors of class, gender, age and health condition (Brynin, Longhi and Zwysen, 2019; Vertovec, 2007).

What should be be examined are not only subjective feelings of intolerance and alienation, but also the objectivised level of inequality and exploitation in the British labour market.  In fact, as Lukács (1988) has convincingly explained, class affiliation does not have to be self-conscious, but depends solely on our attitude to the means of production.

The dialectic distinction between Klasse an sich and Klasse für sich, a class in itself and a class for itself, questions one of the basic assumptions of liberal, or in fact post-humanist, hegemony – namely, the priority of self-identification, eliminating not only the essence of being a worker (also the migrant one), but even being a human being.  In turn, consciousness while consistent with the objective facts is, in fact, the beginning of organisation, which is an indispensable condition for moving from the position of objects guided by misunderstood ‘impulses’ – to the subjectivity, even within the extremely dehumanized modernity.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Asia Society Report

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***

During this year, the U.S. Government has allocated $112 billion to Ukraine, in order to defeat Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine.

Russia allocates normally $60 billion per year for its entire military, but this year has increased that 40% to $84 billion, because of its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia invaded Ukraine because, on 17 December 2021, Russia had demanded that the U.S. Government and its NATO anti-Russian military alliance stop trying to place its missiles on and near Russia’s borders (especially in Ukraine, which is the nearest of all bordering nations to Moscow);

And, on 7 January 2022 America and NATO said no.

Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022, in order to prevent Ukraine from becoming a launch-pad for U.S. missiles. That’s what the war in Ukraine is — and always has been — about, from the Russian viewpoint: not being faced with U.S. missiles that are only a five-minute missile-flight-time away from Russia’s central command in Moscow.

The war in Ukraine started in February 2014, by America’s coup there that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected neutralist government and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian and pro-American one on Russia’s border, in order ultimately to become able to place just 317 miles away from the Kremlin U.S. missiles which would be only a five-minute flight-time away from nuking Russia’s central command — far too little time in order for Russia’s central command to be able to verify that launch and then to launch its own retaliatory missiles. It would be nuclear checkmate of Russia, by the U.S. (with the assistance of its NATO allies, which then would include Ukraine).

Whereas Russia’s objective is to not become nuclearly checkmated by America placing its missiles that close to Moscow, America’s objective is to nuclearly checkmate Russia in order to capture the world’s largest and most resource-rich country — to force Russia to capitulate and become another U.S. ‘ally’ (that is, vassal-nation).

President Biden had requested Congress to add $38 billion more this year for Ukraine than the $67 billion that was funded earlier in the year, but Congress decided to increase his requested amount by $7 billion (almost a 20% increase in his suggested increase), so that there will be a total of $45 billion added to the $67 billion previously allocated, for a total U.S. allocation to Ukraine this year of $112 billion.

That amount is $28 billion more than Russia will have spent this year for all of its military — the vast majority of which Russian military expenditure isn’t being allocated to the war in Ukraine, but instead to other aspects of Russia’s defense against the threat to its national security from America and its allies. America alone has been spending annually  on its military around 20 times what Russia has been spending on its; and, in order to make America’s expenditure appear not to be so gargantuan as it actually is, large portions of it are being paid out from other federal Departments than the Defense (or Aggression) Department, but the total annual U.S. military expenditures have, for over a decade, been over a trillion dollars per year.

On November 16th, I headlined “U.S. Will Have Spent $100B on Ukraine This Year”, and now it’s clear that my prediction was on the conservative side, by $12 billion.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

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

Featured image: Blinken at the U.S. embassy in Ukraine, Sept. 8. Credit: @SecBlinken

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***

Africa has been a continent exploited since the European scramble carved it out in lines of a draughtsman’s crude design.  Its resources have been pilfered; its peoples enslaved for reasons of trade and profit; its political conditions manipulated to favour predatory companies.

A similar pattern is detectable in the digital world.  The slavers have replaced their human product with data and information. The ubiquitous sharing of information on social media platforms has brought with it a fair share of dangerous ills. A $2 billion lawsuit against Facebook’s parent company Meta, which was filed in Kenya’s High Court this month, is a case in point.

The petitioners, Kenyan rights group Katiba Institute, and Ethiopian researchers Fisseha Tekle and Abrham Meareg, argue that Meta failed to employ sufficient safety measures on the Facebook platform which would have prevented the incitement of lethal conflict.  Most notable were the deaths of Ethiopians arising from the Tigray War, a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, and seen the displacement of 2.1 million Ethiopians.

Abrham Meareg’s case is particularly harrowing.  His father, chemistry Professor Meareg Amare Abrha and an ethnic Tigrayan, was singled out and harassed in a number of violent and racially inflammatory Facebook posts.  Two posts screeching with slander (complicity in massacres; aiding military raids, corruption and theft) and death threats found their way onto a page named “BDU STAFF”, which sported over 50,000 followers at the time.

The posts also included the professor’s picture and home locality. Complaints to the platform by his son received no response.  The posts remained up for four weeks.  Meareg Amare was subsequently assassinated after leaving his work at Bahir Dar University.  According to his son, the killing “was orchestrated by both state and non-state actors.”

Rosa Curling, Director of the non-profit campaign outfit Foxglove, an organisation supporting the petitioners, is convinced that the professor would still be alive had the posts been removed.  She also makes a salient point.  “Sadly, ‘engaging’ posts are often violent or shocking, because people react to them, share them, comment on them.  All those reactions mean the Facebook algorithm promotes the post more, and can make hate posts and violence go viral, and spread even further.”

Meta, in response, has trotted out the standard, disingenuous deflection, giving us an insight into a parallel universe of compliance.  “We have strict rules about what is and isn’t allowed on Facebook and Instagram,” declared Meta spokesperson Mike DelMoro.  “Feedback from local civil society organizations and international institutions guides our security and integrity work in Ethiopia.”

Meta’s content moderation hub for Eastern and Southern Africa is located in Nairobi.  But questions have been raised about how adequate its staffing and resourcing arrangements are.  DelMoro claims there is nothing of interest on that score.  “We employ staff with local knowledge and expertise, and continue to develop our skills to detect harmful content in the country’s most commonly spoken languages, including Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya.”

The treatment of staff at Meta’s main subcontractor for content moderation in Africa, Sama, is also the subject of another lawsuit.  That action alleges the use of forced labour and human trafficking, unequal labour relations, attacks on unions and a failure to provide sufficient mental health and psychosocial support to hired moderators.

Abrham Meareg and his fellow petitioners are demanding, along with Facebook’s halting of viral hate and demoting of content inciting violence, the employment of greater numbers of content moderators versed in a range of languages.  The legal filing also demands that Meta issue an apology for the professor’s death and establish a restitution fund for victims of hate speech or misinformation posted on the company’s platforms, including Facebook and Instagram.

Such actions are becoming regular fare.  All tend to follow a similar blueprint.  In December last year, a class action complaint was lodged with the northern district court in San Francisco claiming that Facebook was “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in south-east Asia.”  The language proved instructive: a company, operating much in the traditional mercantilist mould, a plunderer of resources, its gold the product of surveillance capitalism.

Lawyers representing the petitioners also submitted a letter to Facebook’s UK office stating that their clients had been subjected to acts of “serious violence, murder and/or other grave human rights abuses” as part of a genocidal campaign waged by the military regime and aligned extremists in Myanmar.

As with the case lodged in Kenyan High Court, the grounds against Facebook were that its algorithms amplified hate speech against the Rohingya populace; it failed to adequately invest in local moderators and diligent fact-checkers; it failed to remove posts inciting violence against the Rohingya; and it did not shut down or delete specific accounts, groups and pages that encouraged ethnic violence.

Despite such actions, there is nothing in the way Meta operates to suggest a change in approach.  As far long as the wallets stretch, platforms such as Facebook will continue to use devilish algorithms to boost bad behaviour.  In the scheme of things, such behaviour, however hateful or misinformed, sells.  The dragon of surveillance capitalism continues to thrive with fire breathing menace.

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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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The political history of a country has been the fight between the “have yes” and ” have no”, between the strong and the weak and between the elite group and the ordinary people.

Humanity has tried to solve this fight through peaceful relations with little success. More frequent solution has been massive uprisings, bloodless civil wars and bloody revolutions.

The political history of South Korea has been the fight between the elite pro-Japan conservative force (PJCF) (Chin-il-pa 普守親日派) and the progressive liberal nationalist force (PLNF) (jin-bo-ae-guk-se-ryok (进步愛國派).

The PJCF-PLNF fight has been continuing since 1945, the year of Korea’s “liberation” from Japanese colonialism. Up to now, the fight has had cyclical variations and neither force has received fatal blow.

However, since the PJCF took over the power this year (May 9, 2022), the fight has become more aggressive and its outcome may have serous impacts not only on the survival of South Korea as a genuinely democratic country but also on the dynamics of regional economy and security.

This paper intends to examine the evolution of current PJCF-PLNF battle, the nature of the fight and its possible impacts.

Evolution of PJCF-PLNF Fight

The Western media treats South Korea as one country, but in reality, there are two South Koreas, one for the PJCF and, the other, the PLNF. Each has different way of looking at Korea and different role it has to play in Korean collective life.

Of course, there are those who are neutral and take side depending upon the policies of the two organized forces. At present, the political distribution of the South Korean population is as follows: the PJCF (30%), the PLNF (40%) and the neutral (30%).

The PJCF-PLNF fight has had the following periods of evolution: 1910-1945, 1948-1987, 1987-1998, 1998-2008 2008-2017 and 2017-2022, 2022-present.

1910-1945: Period of Japanese occupation in Korea and the formation of PJCF and PLNF

The Japanese brutal and illegal occupation of Korea had the tragic footprint of dividing Koreans between the pro-Japan force and the anti-Japan force.

Many Koreans had to work to survive under the Japanese colonial government. But, there were those who more than worked for the Japanese; they actively participated with the Japanese masters in the terrible crimes of oppressing and exploiting Koreans. These Koreans were regarded by other Koreans as “traitors”.

The traitors participated in the theft of lands, houses and other assets belonging to Koreans.

They participated in capturing more than 250,000 teenage Korean girls to be sent to the horrible military Comfort Women camps to be raped more than 20 times a day by Japanese soldiers during the entire duration.

They also collaborated in mobilizing 800,000 Korean workers to work as slaves in Japanese mines and factories under less than sub-human living conditions.

They helped for the conscription of a huge number of Korean youth to be sent to the frontline to kill Korean patriots.

Even worse, these traitors actively helped in killing Korean identity.

Koreans were forced to throw away Korean names and adopt a Japanese name. My family had a Japanese name. At schools, it was forbidden to speak Korean language. Koreans were forced to go to Shinto shrines every day. At schools, the history of Korea was forbidden to teach. The whole process of uprooting the Korean identity was to enslave Koreans. Even the Korean native trees were to be replaced by Japanese trees.

Under these conditions, the Korean population was sharply divided between the pro-Japan group which became later the PJCF and the anti-Japan group which became later the PLNF. This was the beginning of a century-old fight between these two political forces in South Korea.

1948-1987: Period of PJCF governments of Rhee Syngman (1948-1960), Park Chung-hee (1962-1979) and Chun Doo-hwan (1980-1987)

This period was the darkest Korean post-war history of brutal police dictatorship and military dictatorship under which South Koreans had to go through violent human right violation and suffering from fear and insecurity.

In 1945, Korea was liberated from the Japanese yoke. People filled the streets, singing, dancing and shouting “Long Live Korea!”

The priority in the mind of Koreans was the punishment of the traitors. But, to the dismay of Koreans, the traitors were welcomed by the US military government (1945-1948) and, in fact, they ruled Korea for the American interests.

In 1948, Rhee Syngman established the first civilian government after the departure of the American military government. He was elected after the assassination of Kim Gu, the president of the Korean Provisional Government along with other nationalists.

In 1962, General Park Chung-hee took power after a coup-d’état and ruled South Korea until 1979. Then, in 1980, General Chun-Doo-hwan snatched the power through another coup d’état.

These three presidents had several things in common.

First, they took power by force or by rigged election: Rhee Syngman by rigged election and, both Generals Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan by coup d’état.

Second, they ruled force and violence: Rhee Syngman by police dictatorship and the two generals by military dictatorship. This is explained by the lack of legitimacy of their government which made it impossible for them to take power in legitimate way.

Third, being denied by the Koreans, they felt insecure and, to protect themselves, they formed a tight knit community. Now, to maintain the community, they decided to cumulate money and assets by all means including immoral and illegal ways. This has led to the creation of corruption community and corruption culture.

Fourth, to expand and strengthen the corruption community, they intensified the violation of citizens’ freedom and their right to decent living. They imposed unfair wage and oppressed labour union. They embezzled public funds; they gave illegal grants to the members of the corruption community; the bribe money was a lucrative source of their income.

Fifth, these three presidents were devoted pro-Japan leaders. There were logical reasons for this. Rhee Syngman survived as president for 12 years owing to the supporters who had collaborated with Japan (traitors).

General Park Chung-hee was a Japanese army officer who wrote allegiance to the emperor of Japan with his own blood so that he could be admitted to the Japanese military academy in Manchuria. He killed Korean patriots for Japan.

He established the pro-Japan Republican Party with $66 million given in 1965 by Kishi Nobuske who was the worst racist and the most brutal oppressor of Chinese and Koreans in Manchuria. He was known as “Showa demon”.

General Chun Doo-hwan was a faithful subordinate to his boss, General Park. After the assassination of his boss in 1979, he stole the power by coup d’état in 1980. Chun was the most brutal dictator and he was ready to do anything as long as he can stay in power.

In fact, he killed thousands of innocent Gwangjoo citizens in order to prevent the opposition from challenging his power. He tried to become eternal president as his boss had wanted, but failed.

The three presidents of the PJCF ruled Korea with brutal police and military force. In order to keep power, they massacred hundreds of thousands of citizens who were suspected to be against the regime. They arrested, incarcerated, tortured and killed tens of thousands of college students to prevent anti-regime demonstrations.

But the PLNF was organized and fought against the dictators. The core of the PLNF was filled by students. The students organized huge street demonstrations four times during this period:

• The Student Revolution of April 19 1960,
• The BUMA Protest on October 16 1979,
• The Kwangju Democratic Movement on May 18, 1980,
• The Democratic Movement of June 1987.

The PLNF had important victory through these uprisings. The three presidents ended their presidency in a tragic way.

Rhee Syngman was chased by the students and fled Korea, in 1960, on an American CIA plane.

General Park Chung-hee failed to become permanent president, because he was assassinated in 1979 by his CIA director.

General Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death in 1996 for his crime of killing Kwangju citizens. He was also the most corrupted leader and the worst abuser of power.

To be sure, this was a significant victory of the PLNF over the PJCF. But, the corruption culture of the PJCF remained in tact.

1987-1993: Period of PJCF government of Rho-Tae-woo (1987-1993)

This was the period of the birth of a new constitution allowing the regime of direct election of the president made possible by the huge June Democratic Uprising in 1987.

The president was General Rho Tae-woo who was relatively peaceful compared to his violent friend, General Chun Doo-hwan. Rho Tae-woo avoided confrontation with PLNF, but he was accused for corruption.

As far as the PJCF-PLNF fight was concerned, no major change took place under Rho Tae-woo.

1993-1998: Period of the coalition government of PJCF-PLNF under Kim Yong-sam (1993-1998)

Despite the coalition between the two political forces, this period brought a major victory of PLNF. President Kim Yong-sam of PLNF was successful in bringing General Chun Doo-hwan and General Rho Tae-woo to the court. General Chun was given death penalty for his crime of Kwangju massacre. General Rho got the prison term for corruption.

1998-2008: Period of PLNF government under Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003) and Rho Moo-hyun (2003-2008)

This period was one of the major victories of PLNF over PJCF. In fact, during this period, there was major change in economic policy more in favour of the ordinary people and new basis for the North-South dialogue.

In 1998, the foreign reserve crisis hit Korea hard. Countless small and medium businesses had to close; several Chaebols went bankrupt and an army of jobless went hungry. Millions of poor Koreans gave their gold wedding rings, necklaces and golden properties to pay the debt to IMF.

But, above all, President Kim Dae-jung who took over power in 1998 imposed bold reform of Chaebols, which weakened considerably the strength of the corruption culture of PJCF.

Moreover, he undertook several reforms designed to make the income distribution more equal such as the regime of minimum income, the promotion of labour union, increase of corporate taxes, the incentives given to SMEs and measures.

President Rho Moo-hyun gave another big blow to PJCF. To begin with, he made substantial social and industrial reforms leading to a more equal distribution of income. Another major reform undertaken by President Rho was the de-bureaucratization of the Korean rigid and unproductive bureaucracy leading to the weakening of the corruption culture developed by the PJCF.

The measures taken by the two presidents of the PLNF could have slowed down the flow of public money toward the PJCF.

There was another event which took place in this period, namely, the “Sunshine policy” which could have damaged the PJCF’s interests.

The North-South tensions had been a useful tool of winning major election of the PJCF and promoting the close ties between the PJCF and Japan. The sunshine policy has surely hurt such tie.

Thus, the two presidents of the PLNF were relatively successful in improving income distribution and reducing the North-South tension resulting in a meaningful victory of the PLNF over the PJCF.

2008-20017: Period of PJCF government by Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017)

This period was marked by a strong comeback of the PJCF. Under presidents Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, the PJCF became successful in three fields of battle.

First, the distribution of income and assets was made more unequal through lower corporate taxes, more grants to PJCF-friendly institutions and individuals and, above all, the cutting of spending for the ordinary people’s wellbeing.

The notorious case of embezzling public funds was the 4-River Development Project involving billions of US dollars and so-called the Natural Resource Diplomacy. Nobody knows how much money went to the pockets of the PJCF members.

Second, the North-South tension was made to increase by stopping all North-South relations including the closing of the Gaesung Industrial Complex and the denial of the access to Gum-gwang-san tourist resort facilities.

Third, the PJCF was successful in taking out from history textbooks the story of the crime against comfort women. In addition, they put in history textbooks the Japanese claim that Japanese occupation of Korea was for the good of Korea.

This was indeed a big victory for the PJCF. But, in order to protect this victory, the PJCF deployed the following methods of discouraging dissidence.

First, the PJCF media justified the wrongdoings of the PJCF and criticized the normal doings of the dissidents.

Second, the police, the prosecutors and court judges overlooked the wrongdoings of the PJCF and accused the dissidents for fabricated crimes.

Third, they produced a blacklist of 10,000 artists, cinema people, intellectuals and possible dissidents and reduced or stopped official subsidies.

Fourth, they even eliminated in 2014 a legally-constituted political party of liberal ideology, the Unified Progressive Party.

Fifth, prominent leaders of the PLNF were victims of illegal incarceration or, worse, they were victims of frame up of sexual misconduct so that they cannot continue their political leadership.

These measures did not involve guns and tortures, but they were quite effective in discouraging dissidence.

But, the PLNF were not idle. They stood up and bravely fought back. For eight months from august 2016 to April 2017, not less than 17,000,000 people of all walks of the society and of all ages went down to the streets and shouted the impeachment of Park Geun-hye who stepped down as president and went to prison for corruption, abuse of power and incapability to run the government.

In short, during the 9-year period, the government of the PJCF put almost everything they had to destroy the PLNF but they did not foresee the impact of the Candlelight Revolution.

Candlelight Protest around Sejong Center at Gwanghwamun (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

2017-2022: Period of PLNF government of Moon Jae-in (2017-2022)

During this period, the PLNF government of Moon Jae-in hit hard the core of the PJCF making them to feel threatened to lose their wealth and privileges.

This period was marked by the brilliant success of the Moon Jae-in government’s national policies and desperate counter attack of the PJCF through two strategies to destroy the PLNF government of Moon.

Being threatened by Moon’s anti-corruption culture of PJCF and their friends, they fought back.

Having lost the election, they used the tactic they had been using all these years. These are the conspiracies of the prosecutors supported by the corrupted media.

The prosecutors gave themselves two tactics:

First, they eliminated potential PLNF leaders to succeed Moon Je-in in the future through the fabricated evidences of sexual abuse or bribes. Several potential leaders of PLNF were put in prison by the prosecutors and some others killed themselves due to the pressure punt on their families by the PJCF media and prosecutors.

Second, the PJCF media was given two functions. To begin with, they supported prosecutors’ criminal operation of accusing the PLNF for fabricated evidence of crime and the media’s job was to print whatever the prosecutors tell them. In other words, the PJCF media performed the kangaroo court to condemn the innocent before the court judgment.

Moreover, the mission of the PJCF media was to discredit whatever the Moon government did. They never printed or broadcasted Moon’s success as a national leader or international leader.

Moon’s visit to various countries for the promotion of Korea’s interests were seldom published or aired on TV. On the other hand, if Moon’s government makes a slight mistake, it becomes a federal case and they dramatize it as if it would bring the end of Korea.

Despite the violent anti-Moon tactics of PJCF, the government of Moon was able to accomplish major reforms for the benefit of all Koreans not just for the elite group of the PJCF.

President Moon Jae-in challenged the PJCF in four areas of dispute which were vital for the survival of the PJCF: unequal income distribution, the corruption culture, North-South tension and Japanese neo-colonialism.

Unequal Income Distribution: The measures adopted by Moon Jae-in in order to assure more equal income distribution included the following: reduction of grants and subsidies to Chaebols, increase of corporate tax, creation of more jobs through the development of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the increase of minimum wage, more income transfer to the poor and the increase of the supply of public goods such as free lunch for school kids, more coverage of medical care insurance.

Corruption Culture: The measures designed to destroy the corruption culture consisted of the following:

First, the cabinet ministers, advisors and other key positions in the government were corruption-free.

Second, the family members and relatives of the president were excluded from government jobs.

Third, the government stopped receiving bribes from Chaebols.

Fourth, President Moon has reformed the National Information Service so that it can no longer gather citizens’ information for political purpose.

Fifth, President Moon has established special bureau of criminal investigation of high ranking civil servants, the Bureau of Corruption Investigation for Officials of High Ranking (gong-soo-tcho).

Sixth, PLNF government of Moon Jae-in sent President Lee Myung-bak to prison for corruption and abuse of power.

The North-South tension: The North-south tension has been a gift for the PJCF for two reasons. It makes the Koreas’ reunification more difficult on the one hand, and on the other it facilitates PJCF’s victory at major elections allowing it to keep power.

The North-South tension has given the opportunity for the PJCF to create a climate of fear which allowed the PJCF to boost its militarism providing electoral comparative advantage.

The PJCF fear the reunification because, under a unified Korea, they will become a marginal political force and possible target of revenge for their collaboration for Japanese oppression of Koreans.

But to the disappointment of the PJCF, President Moon has been able to alleviate the North-South tensions.

Remember, in 2017, President Donald Trump was ready to attack North Korea, most likely encouraged by South Korea’s PJCF and Japan.

But, owing to North Korea’s trust in President Moon Jae-in and the brilliant diplomacy of Kim Yo-Jung, sister of Kim Jung-un, North Korea came to the Pyeong-Chang Winter Olympics of 2018 leading to the Kim-Trump summit in Singapore in June 2018, their Hanoi-Summit of 2019 and their Panmunjom summit of 2021.

Kim Yo-jong (far right, upper row), South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at the 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony (Licensed under KOGL Type 1)

True, the North-South peace process hit the wall in Hanoi that was too high to go over. But, the North-South peace process allowed the Korean peninsula to enjoy three-year peace and a hope for reunification.

The Kim-Trump summits and peace on the peninsula were a huge disappointment for the PJCF. It became impossible to demonize North Korea, because the diplomacy of North Korea revealed that Kim Jung-un was a “normal leader” and North Korea was not a hell. The demonization of North Korea no longer became an alibi for PJCFs election victories.

Japanese neo-colonialism: It is true that Japan left Korea in 1945. But the Japanese colonialism has never left Korea. In other words, the Japanese neo-colonialism has replaced its old colonialism. By neo-colonialism, I mean the colonialism in which the coloniser is absent physically in the colonized country.

The execution of the neo-colonialism is conducted by an agent. In Korea, the PJCF has been the agent ever since 1948.

Since 1948, South Korea has been the target of Japanese neo-colonialism in three areas: economic development, the denial of Japanese war crimes against the Koreans and the fear of Koreas’ reunification.

So, South Korea has been the target of Japanese economic neo-colonialism, security neo-colonialism and political neo-colonialism.

Economic neo-colonialism: The Han River miracle was partly attributable to the Japanese neo-colonialism in which Japan provided high value-added intermediary goods and services, while South Korea assembled these intermediary good to produce finished goods.

The value-added of the intermediary goods and services, in the case of smartphones, accounts for as much as 95% of the sale price leaving merely 5 % of the sale price to the job of assembling the intermediary goods and services to produce the smartphone.

Under such situation, South Korea has had to live with trade deficit with Japan until the Japan trade war in 2019. After this trade war, Korea’s dependence on Japan for key intermediary goods and services has declined.

Security Neo-colonialism: The peace process was not welcomed by Japan for it will lead to the reunification of Koreas which will be a threat to Japan. Hence, the continuation of the North-South tension was Japan’s interest in Korea. Japan has surely asked the PJCF to maintain the North-South tension for Japan. This is the security neo-colonialism.

To the disappointment of Japan, the government of Moon Jae-in was successful in reducing the North-South tension through the peace process. Thus, President was good in weakening PJCF’s role for Japanese neo-liberalism.

Political Neo-colonialism: One of the most important issues for Japan has been the denial of its war crimes, especially the crime of collective raping of 250,000 Korean young girls for the whole duration of the Pacific War.

This crime is impossible to accept for the Japanese Neo-Meiji Restoration Group (NMRG) who is suspected to dream for Holy War 2.0. For this, the NMRG needs the active participation of the Japanese people on the one hand and, on the other, they need to convince the Koreans that Japanese colonialism is beneficial to Korea.

Japan has asked the PJCF to take out from history textbooks the story of comfort women. In fact under the PJCF government of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, it was done. Thus, the PJCF did a good job to please their Japanese master.

But PLNF put the history of Japanese war crimes including the crime against the comfort women back into history textbooks.

Thus, President Moon Jae-in has caused significant damage to the interests of the PJCF. As a matter of fact, the PJCF seems to have felt threat of their survival and might have decided to revenge.

The revenge battle begun with the election of Yoon Suk-yeol as president in May 2022.

2022-Now: period of PJCF government of Yoon Suk-yeol

On 9 May, 2022, there was the presidential election. The candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) representing the PLNF was Lee Jae-myung, while that of the People Power Party (PPP) representing the PJCF was Yoon Suk-yeol.

Lee Jae-myung was a lawyer who has spent his whole career for the poor and the weak. As a mayor of Sung-nam city, he has implemented several public policy measures including the system of “basic income”, which can be spent in his city and corruption-free management of the city budget.

On the other hand, Yoon Suk-yeol has spent his career in arresting people as prosecutor and in 2021, he was appointed by President Moon as prosecutor general.

The presidential election took place on May 9, 2022. To the great surprise of all, Yoon Suk-yeol won, albeit a very small margin of 0.73%. Yon got 48.56% of votes, while Lee got 47.83% of votes.

Yoon was elected despite a long list of reasons against his victory. He had many sins and defects. Nevertheless, he won. But, why? The most important reason for voting Yoon was the wish of the PJCF people to revenge Moon Jae-in government and recover the wealth, the income and the privileges which they think they have lost due to Moon’s government. They thought that Yoon Suk-yeol, the merciless prosecutor was the right man who could do the revenge for them.

Yoon Suk-yeol made his name by destroying Professor Cho-guk, his wife and his children on the basis of controversial and fabricated evidence for the simple reason that the professor as Minister of Justice wanted to reduce the power of the prosecutors.

This seems to have pleased the PJCF and voted for Yoon Suk-yeol for the simple reason that he could arrest and put all the PLNF leaders in jail and restore South Korea where the corrupted PJCF could dominate again. In fact, it is what Yoon has been doing for last 6 months since he became president.

Impact of PJCF’s Victory

As mentioned above, the government of Moon Jae-in has surely destroyed the lucrative source of bribe money and other types of illegal and immoral money, power and privileges of PJCF. The PJCF and those who received some benefits from the PJCF voted for Yoon Suk-yeol to recover what was taken away by Moon government.

However, a good part of those who voted for Yoon realize now that they made a mistake of choosing a wrong man.

What is important is what the Yoon government wants and how he intends to get what it wants. What it wants is not the promotion of national interests; what it wants is the promotion of the collective interests of the corrupted community of the PJCF. To be more precise, what it wants is the advancement of the interest of Yoon’s family and his devoted friends.

To attain such objective, Yoon needs a regime of dictatorship, to be more precise, the dictatorship of prosecutors. In fact, most of the positions of power within the government and government-funded institutions are filled by prosecutors and personal friends of Mrs. Yoon, Kim Gun-hee.

As a result, policies designed to advance the wellbeing of the population are absent. This is reflected in major national policies, namely, economic policy, social policy, security policy and foreign policy.

Yoon’s economic policy is simply the neo-liberal policy of th 1970s and 1980s. The first thing his government did was to cut the corporate tax, increase subsidies to Chaebols, allow the Chaebols to exploit SMEs and weaken the negotiation power of labour unions. This is the usual way of getting bribe money for the PJCF.

This Chaebol-first policy is bound to make it difficult to prepare for   coming digital-based 4th technological revolution.

The trade policy is a part of economic policy. Since Yoon government joint the Japan-US policy of China containment, the exports to China radically fell and the trade deficit with China has been increasing.

Yoon’s social policy is extremely harmful not only to the welfare of the people but also to economic growth. Yoon cut down most of all the funds allocated to the elderly, the jobless, the handicapped and other minority groups. Moreover, Yoon is planning to cut the minimum wage.

There is another negative impact of such anti-welfare policy. It is the inevitable worsening income distribution in favour of the well-to-do at the expense of the majority of the consumers. This leads to the weakening of consumer demand and provoke stagnation of the economy.

Yoon’s foreign policy is simply a disaster. He spent all his life in the office of prosecutor and only thing he knows well is to catch those liberal and democratic minded people and put them in jail on the basis of fabricated evidence of wrongdoings.

Yoon is totally ignorant about foreign policy. The tragic thing is that he does not know the fact that he is ignorant. He has with him experienced experts in foreign relations. But, it is reported that he never listens the experts’ advice.

The world was surely scandalized to see clearly that Yoon does not know the ABC of politics as pointed out by the Economist (August 25, 2022). He does not know the ABC of diplomacy either.

The world saw strange behaviours of Yoon and his wife at the NATO meeting (June 28), the funeral ceremony late Queen Elisabeth II (September 19), the UN General Assembly (September 28), the ASEAN meeting (November 11) and the G20 meeting (November 16).

These behaviours have made South Koreans ashamed of Yoon and his wife. What Yoon has obtained through these international meetings was the fall of Korea’s credibility as a reliable country. Moreover, these behaviours have led to the critical damage of Korea’s trade and security.

Yoon’s participation at the NATO meeting, the ASEAN meeting and the G20 meeting have put ROK to join the camp of China bashing and China containment strategy. This has seriously hampered the previous governments’ effort to maintain friendly relations both with the U.S. and China on the one hand, and, on the other, to increase trade surplus with China.

Yoon’ speech at the UN General Assembly did not include ROK’s DPRK policy letting Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida to handle the North Korean issues. This naive gesture of Yoon was intended to discredit the peace process of the previous government of Moon Jae-in.

His declaration of pre-emptive attack against North Korea during his presidential campaign and persistent belligerent anti-DPRK words and behaviour have worsened the North-South tension and increased the Korea risk, hurting foreign investment.

Yoon’s courting for Japan-ROK summit and his official support for Japan’s Indo-Pacific Strategy (FOIP) prepared the ground for Japan-ROK military alliance, which will eventually force the ROK armed forced to join the Sino-US war along with Japanese forces.

What makes South Koreans the most worried about the possible Japan-ROK military alliances is the reunification of Korea by the allied armed forces of ROK, Japan and the U.S. which may lead to the presence of Japanese military, something which Koreans hate to see, except the Yoon’s pro-Japan conservative force in South Korea.

All in all, Yoon’s internal as well as his external policies is total fiasco. Moreover, the Itaewon disaster (the 10.29 Disaster) is likely to be the coup de grâce to his political career.

The persistent refusal of admitting the responsibility of the tragedy and the apparent involvement of “shaman” Cheon-dong stir up even the controversies surrounding the relation between the shaman and Yoon Suk-yeol and his controversial wife.

Yoon Suk-yeol having failed completely as president, he is speeding up the creation of prosecutor dictatorship and this will expand and intensify popular uprising.

Already on October 9, no less than 400,000 people went to the street and shouted “Down Yoon Suk-yeol and “Special probe for Kim Gun-hee!”

It is possible that the ongoing battle between the two political forces is the end of century-old fight between the pro-Japan conservative force and the progressive liberal nationalist force.

If the PJCF wins, South Korea will go back what it was 50 ago. On the other hand, if the PLNF wins, the policy of Moon Jae-in will come back and South Korea will march toward a better society where justice, equality, freedom and prosperity will prevail far all.

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Dr Joseph H. Chung is professor of Economics at Quebec University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) and member of the Research Center in Integration and Globalization (CEIM-UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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First published on January 20, 2022

***

The roll out of the new C-Band 5G service by AT&T and Verizon scheduled for January 19, has raised alarms for major airline executives who have warned that it will create “catastrophic” interference with flight navigation systems and pilot safety during take off and landing.  The risks will be greater during bad weather. Among the warnings are major disruptions in commerce and supply chain, the overriding of aircrafts’ electronic safety systems and radio altimeters, and the grounding of flights that will leave “tens of thousands of Americans grounded.”

According to CNN, the airlines estimate that upwards to 1,000 flights will be disrupted daily. The 5G threat is particularly heightened in low-visibility conditions. Chief executives from American Airlines, United, Delta, Southwest and Jet Blue have demanded that 5G be blocked within a two-mile radius of major US airports. FedEx and UPS have also joined the airlines’ complaints. Foreign airlines such as Dubai’s Emirates, Air India, Japan Air, Lufthansa and British Airways have already changed or canceled flights to the US. Two of the world’s largest plane manufacturers, Airbus and Boeing, have also issued warnings.

This has become an ongoing battle between the Federal Aviation Administration and the private telecomm industry and its Washington lobbyists. The FAA has been warning about 5G interruption of planes’ navigation systems for quite some time.  The telecomm industry’s unwillingness to budge is most disturbing because the Biden administration has already permitted 90 percent of wireless tower deployment to roll out as scheduled.  It is only in the vicinity of major airports where the FAA and airlines demand restrictions due to safety concerns. However, as we have reported for the past several years, the telecomm giants, notably AT&T and Verizon, and its leading media spokespersons at CNN and the New York Times, have undermined and denied 5G’s risks, especially to human health and the environment, ever since wireless technologies were first commercialized.

5G is destined to be a permanent fixture across the nation. There is barely a chance to prevent it. The thousands of medical and environmental studies confirming high EMF’s dangers and the petitions signed by thousands of international scientists to halt its deployment are unequivocally ignored or worse ostracized and canceled.

It is estimated that there are over 10,000 peer-reviewed clinical studies mentioning serious molecular biological injury and defects to organs, neurons, cells and cellular function, and DNA damage to plants, animals and humans alike.  Between August 2016 and September 2018 alone, over 400 new studies on electromagnetic radiation risks were compiled by public health Professor Joel Moskowitz at the University of California at Berkeley.

Despite the pandemic, lockdowns and social distancing have not hindered 5G’s progress to connect every American into its spider’s web.  In December 2019, T-Mobile reached its goal of nationwide 5G coverage of over 1.3 million square miles (34 percent of the US) and AT&T reached its milestone to reach 179 million people. The 5G roll out is also crucial for international globalists to usher in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The World Economic Forum’s presentation, “Why is 5G Important for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” outlines the multi-trillion dollar impact advanced connectivity will have on manufacturing, wholesale and resale, smart cities and homes, public services, transportation, real time banking, finance and insurance, agriculture and forestry, micro chip surveillance, real estate, education, mining, health and medicine.

We must not hold any false hopes that the Biden administration will ultimately side with the airlines’ safety concerns. During the 2020 election, the Biden campaign received $97 million from the Communications/Tech sector versus Trump’s $18 million.  Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, AT&T and Comcast overwhelmingly contributed to Biden’s war chest.

The American public is being bamboozled with blatant falsehoods to embrace 5G as a necessary and innovative technology that will benefit and improve our lives. But the real truth is the exact opposite.

The following information has been abbreviated from scientific literature that is fully validated and has been stated by international experts such as Drs. Devra Davis and Martin Pall about EMF’s adverse effects to government leaders and national legislators repeatedly. This outline was presented by Dr. Martin Pall, a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Medical Sciences at Washington State University to the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Pall is recognized worldwide as an expert in EMF and 5G’s detrimental effects on biological systems and the diseases associated with wireless technologies.

• Lower Fertility: Alters the structure of the testes and ovaries, lowers sperm count and the number of egg follicles, increases spontaneous abortion and lowers the levels of three sex hormones.
• Neurological and Neuropsychiatric Effects: There has been a dramatic increase in the following conditions since the advent of mobile phones, the internet, and wireless technologies:  insomnia, fatigue, depression, headaches and cognitive dysfunction, anxiety, and loss of memory. Animal studies have shown that EMFs produce major changes in brain structure, which is likely happening to everyone who has extensive daily exposure to EMFs
• Cellular DNA Damage: There are three types of DNA damage observed in EMF exposure:  single and double DNA breaks and oxidized DNA bases.  These can cause cancer and mutations in the sexual germ lines.
• Apoptosis: EMFs contribute to programmed cell death that in turn leads to reproductive and neurodegenerative disorders.
• Oxidative Stress: Free radical damage that has been associated with numerous health conditions including cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, myocardial infarction, stroke, chronic inflammation, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, cellular death and aging
• Endocrine Effects: According Dr. Pall, every hormonal system in the body is adversely affected by EMF exposure.
• Excessive Intracellular Calcium: Ca2+ is critical for cellular activity
• Cancer: There are 35 separate scientific reviews of the body of peer-reviewed literature providing evidence that EMFs increase carcinogenesis, promote and progress tumor development and contribute to metastasis.

There are also other medical conditions that have been shown to be associated likely with EMF exposure:

• Cardiac Effects. EMFs interfere with the electrical control of the heart that can produce tachycardia, bradycadia, arrhythmia and abnormal heart palpitations.
• Early Onset of Alzheimer’s and Dementia: In recent years and in parallel with increased EMF exposure, signs of symptoms associated with Alzheimer’s are being observed in people age 30 and younger. Dr. Pall has called this “digital dementias.”
• ADHD and Autism: The epidemic in ADHD and autism witnessed in each younger generation may be caused by late prenatal and early post-natal EMF exposure. Each of these neurological conditions is associated with the increase of calcium over-penetrating cell linings due to EMF pulsations and disrupting synapse formations.

Everyone will be affected by 5G’s radiation. But it will not require three decades to observe its injurious effects. Unlike cigarettes, nobody has a choice whether you wish to be exposed to 5G or not. 5G’s EMF radiation is all-pervasive.

The mainstream media, in particular the New York Times, which has a collaborative agreement with the leading 5G provider Verizon, have no intention to warn the public about any of the scientific findings mentioned above. There is a growing consensus in the scientific and medical community that 5G will usher an epidemic of disease never before witnessed in human history. It is too difficult to make forecasts. Nevertheless, if the past and current research on EMF’s adverse effects on health and the environment during the past 50 years are any indication, we are entering a new epoch of disease and neurological disorders that humanity is completely unprepared to handle.

This is a consequence of what happens when an entire nation is trapped into carelessly trusting elected presidents and legislators whose campaigns are bankrolled by the Telecomm giants and Silicon Valley, and a media empire ruled by serial liars and masters of disinformation campaigns for private corporate interests. This is vulture capitalism at is worse.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Binyamin Netanyahu today heads the most extreme right-wing government in the history of this modern 74-year-old state, and it will not go unnoticed that there is a criminal element at its centre. That indicates a current threat to world peace – an unpredictable, extremist government controlling the only undeclared nuclear weaponised state in the world, with enough nuclear and other WMD to destroy the whole Middle East including the Gulf.

That indicates a potential existential threat to global peace and brings the likelihood of WW3 ever closer. Which is why NATO must stop the shockingly misplaced support for this neo-colonial, nuclear armed entity that wishes to expel five million indigenous people from their hereditary lands.  For well over 1000 years the Palestinian Arab had been the dominant demographic of Palestine until the political power grab of 1948 that dispossessed him.  That position must now be reversed. There must be a two-state solution and until such time, all NATO bilateral trade with the now extremist Israel should cease.

Furthermore, the American taxpayer should stop the US Congress from sending billions of dollars every year to prop-up the new government of allegedly corrupt Netanyahu. Failing to do so, brings war ever closer to Europe and the entire world. This is the factual situation that pertains today. Not alarmist, but realistic. Unless there is a global, paradigm shift in the current arming and supporting of this violent occupier of Palestinian land, then global peace can turn into global war, overnight.

To put this into context, the fact that the nuclear-weaponised state of Israel comprises just 1/1000th of the global population means that the members of the extremist Netanyahu government, are today the most powerful, nuclear-armed politicians anywhere in the entire world, on any continent – with Netanyahu, currently on trial for bribery and corruption, as prime minister. Let that terrifying truth sink in as both Britain and America continue to supply him with billions of dollars-worth of arms and funding to finance his violent, unlawful annexation programs in the West Bank, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

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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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Dr. Kerryn Phelps, a medical practitioner and former member of Australia’s Federal Parliament, said she and her wife suffered “devastating” vaccine injuries from their COVID-19 vaccines.

In a submission to an ongoing parliamentary inquiry into long COVID, Phelps, a former president of the Australian Medical Association, also accused government health regulators of censoring discussion about vaccine side effects.

Phelps described her and her wife’s adverse reactions to the vaccine in detail and called for research into vaccine injury beyond myocarditis and pericarditis.

She testified that her wife, Jackie Stricker-Phelps “suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes,” and continues to suffer ongoing neurological symptoms, musculoskeletal inflammation and fatigue.

Phelps also was diagnosed with vaccine injuries, including intermittent fevers and cardiovascular issues, following her second Pfizer dose in July 2021.

Dr. Kerryn Phelps, a medical practitioner and former member of Australia’s Federal Parliament, said she and her wife suffered “devastating” vaccine injuries from their COVID-19 vaccines.

In a submission to an ongoing parliamentary inquiry into long COVID, Phelps, a former president of the Australian Medical Association, also accused government health regulators of censoring discussion about vaccine side effects.

Phelps described her and her wife’s adverse reactions to the vaccine in detail and called for research into vaccine injury beyond myocarditis and pericarditis.

She testified that her wife, Jackie Stricker-Phelps “suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes,” and continues to suffer ongoing neurological symptoms, musculoskeletal inflammation and fatigue.

Phelps also was diagnosed with vaccine injuries, including intermittent fevers and cardiovascular issues, following her second Pfizer dose in July 2021.

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The globalist technocrats are intent on monopolizing the entire food supply. They already have a monopoly on grains and have made headway in genetically engineered (GE) seafood. The next targets include lab-grown meats and dairy substitutes

Biomilq, made from cultured breast tissue, will be marketed as a breast milk substitute

The company Helaina is working on creating glycoproteins “identical to those found in breast milk.” Those proteins can then be added to a variety of infant formulas, seniors’ nutrition and, eventually, all sorts of foods

The justification for creating synthetic milk substitutes is, of course, preventing and reversing “climate change.” That’s the justification used to sell virtually all fake foods. In reality, however, they will perpetuate and worsen adverse effects on the environment

Lab-created foods are ultraprocessed and therefore qualify as junk food. Fake meat and dairy cannot replace the complex mix of nutrients found in grass fed beef and dairy, and it’s likely that consuming ultraprocessed meat and milk alternatives may lead to many of the same health issues that are caused by a processed food diet

The starting ingredients in fermented synthetic biology products are cheap sugars derived from GE corn and soy. All GE crops are grown in environmentally destructive monocultures, and use loads of herbicides such as glyphosate, pesticides like neonicotinoids and synthetic fertilizers. As a result, they’re loaded with chemical residues that end up in the final product

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The globalist technocrats are intent on monopolizing the entire food supply. They already have a monopoly on genetically engineered (GE) grains and have made headway in GE seafood. The next targets are lab-grown meats and dairy substitutes. There’s even a lab-made breast milk alternative on the way called Biomilq, which is made from cultured breast tissue.¹

Another company, Helaina, aims to create glycoproteins “identical to those found in breast milk,”² which can then be added to a variety of infant formulas. They may also be used in seniors’ nutrition and eventually, all sorts of foods.

Many familiar globalists are invested in these faux dairy ventures. Biomilq investors, for example, include Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson, Masayoshi Son, Jack Ma, Michael Bloomberg and Marc Benioff.³

The first Biomilq product is expected to be ready for the market within the next three to five years.⁴ Other animal-free milk products are expected to hit the shelves sometime between 2023 and 2024.^5,6 That includes ice cream made with lab-grown diary, which will go into Ben & Jerry’s product line.⁷

In the Environmental Health Symposium video above, Alan Lewis reviews what goes into the making of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology goes by many names, including “gene edited fermentation” and “precision fermentation products.”

While that sounds fairly innocuous, synthetic biology manufacturers rarely ever discuss what goes into the feed they use to grow the target organism, or what happens to the waste at the end of the fermentation process. That’s understandable, as both raise a number of serious questions.

What Are the Base Ingredients?

As explained by Lewis, the starting ingredients in fermented synthetic biology products are cheap sugars derived from GE corn and soy. All GE crops are grown in environmentally destructive monocultures with taxpayer subsidies, and use loads of herbicides such as glyphosate, pesticides like neonicotinoids and synthetic fertilizers. As a result, they’re loaded with chemical residues that end up in the final product.

In addition to a base of sugars, hundreds of other ingredients may be added to the ferment in order to produce the desired end product, such as a certain protein, color, flavor or scent.

As explained by Lewis, the most-often used microorganism in the fermentation process is E.coli. The E.coli is gene-edited to produce the desired compound through its digestive process. It also needs to be antibiotic-resistant, since it needs to survive the antibiotics used to kill off other undesirable organisms in the vat.

Aside from the desired target metabolite, these gene-edited organisms may also be spitting out any number of non-target metabolites that have completely unknown environmental consequences and health effects.

How Are Synthetic Biology Ferments Created?

As explained by Lewis, the various “feed” ingredients are placed in a fermentation bioreactor set at 87 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit for anywhere from 24 to hundreds of hours to grow the target microorganism. The target organisms in the ferment consume the nutrients they need, and what’s left over after those organisms are extracted is hazardous biowaste.

Importantly, while traditional fermentation processes, such as the making of beer, produces waste products that are edible by animals, compostable and pose no biohazard, the same cannot be said for these GMO synthetic biology ferments. The biowaste must first be deactivated, and then it must be securely disposed of. It cannot go into a landfill.

It’s important to realize that they are creating GMO organisms that have never existed on earth before, and these organisms and their waste are neither edible nor compostable, and there are unknown risks involved with unintentional or intentional release of these organisms into the environment.

They may also result in novel foodborne illnesses. And, since antibiotics are used to prevent the growth of undesirable organisms in the ferment, antibiotic-resistant organisms are automatically integrated into the final product. The types of foodborne illness that might be caused by gene-edited E.coli and its metabolites are anyone’s guess at this point. Nobody knows what such illness might look like.

The Fake Justification for Fake Foods

The justification for creating synthetic biology for food, including milk substitutes, is to prevent and reverse “climate change.” As reported by CNBC in June 2020:⁸

“Biomilq co-founder and CEO Michelle Egger … and her co-founder, CSO Leila Strickland, hope that the breast milk produced by Biomilq from culturing mammary epithelial cells will help reduce the carbon footprint from the global infant formula market …

‘Right now, by the estimations we have been able to make, at least 10% of the dairy market globally ends up in infant formula,’ Eggers said. ‘That means per-infant-fed formula in the U.S., 5,700 metric tons of CO2 are produced, and 4,300 gallons of freshwater are consumed each year to feed a child. Parents want to do what’s best for their kids but shouldn’t have to decide between feeding their children and protecting the planet.'”

While the push for synthetic biology is built on the idea that it will somehow save the environment from the ravages of factory farming, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and monocultures, it’s incredibly misleading, because it doesn’t address the fact that there are environmentally beneficial ways to farm, and we really should switch to those instead of transitioning into factory laboratories where everything that comes out of it is a biohazard.

Fake Food Manufacturing Creates Toxic Waste Products

In February 2021, the Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit group behind the alternative protein industry, released a techno-economic analysis of cultivated meat, which was prepared by consulting firm CE Delft.⁹ In it, they developed a model to reduce the current costs of cultured meat production down to a point that would make it economically feasible in full-scale plants by 2030, a model they said is “feasible.”

In attempting to create cultured meat on the scale that would be necessary to feed the world, logistical problems are numerous and, possibly, insurmountable. There are waste products — catabolites — to deal with, as even cultured cells excrete waste that is toxic.

Oxygen and nutrients must also be adequately distributed to all the cells, something that’s difficult in a large reactor. Stirring the cells faster or adding more oxygen may help, but this can cause fatal stress to the cells.¹⁰

The environmental “benefits” are also on shaky ground when you factor in soy production as well as the use of conventional energy sources. When this is factored in, GFI’s life-cycle analysis found that cultured meat may actually be worse for the environment than conventionally produced chicken and pork.^11,12

Repeat of a Failed System

Yet, the push for the creation of synthetic biology continues. In the foreword to Navdanya International’s report “False Solutions That Endanger Our Health and Damage the Planet,” Vandana Shiva details how lab-grown foods are catastrophic for human health and the environment, as they are repeating the mistakes already made with industrial agriculture:¹³

“In response to the crises in our food system, we are witnessing the rise of technological solutions that aim to replace animal products and other food staples with lab-grown alternatives. Artificial food advocates are reiterating the old and failed rhetoric that industrial agriculture is essential to feed the world.

Real, nutrient-rich food is gradually disappearing, while the dominant industrial agricultural model is causing an increase in chronic diseases and exacerbating climate change.

The notion that high-tech, ‘farm free’ lab food is a viable solution to the food crisis is simply a continuation of the same mechanistic mindset which has brought us to where we are today — the idea that we are separate from and outside of nature.

Industrial food systems have reduced food to a commodity, to ‘stuff’ that can then be constituted in the lab. In the process, both the planet’s health and our health have been nearly destroyed.”

Lab-Made Foods Are Junk Foods

It’s important to realize that all lab-created “foods” are ultraprocessed, and will likely impart the same kind of ill health effects as other ultraprocessed foods. In 2018, Friends of the Earth (FOE), a grassroots environmental group, released a report that posed critical questions about the trend toward synthetic biology. In it, they stressed the highly-processed nature of these products:¹⁴

“Various ‘processing aids’ are employed to make some of these products, including organisms (like genetically engineered bacteria, yeast and algae) that produce proteins, and chemicals to extract proteins.

For example, chemicals like hexane are used to extract components of a food, like proteins (from peas, soy, corn etc.) or compounds (from genetically engineered bacteria) to make xanthan gum … disclosure of these ingredients is not required.

Other processing aids (e.g. bacteria, yeast, algae), including those that are genetically engineered to produce proteins, are also not currently required to be disclosed on package labeling. The lack of transparency makes it difficult to assess the inputs and impact of their use.”

Basically, what the globalist cabal is attempting to do is to eliminate conventional farming methods like raising cattle for beef and dairy products, and replace them with synthetic, patented reproductions. In short, they’re taking whole foods and turning them into ultraprocessed junk foods, all while trying to convince you the junk food is healthier for you.

Synthetic Biology Is Part of a Control Scheme

Aside from the potential health hazards, lab-grown foods rely on monocultured crops that destroy the soil, resulting in carbon release. So, right there, the climate change justification falls apart. Since synthetic biology relies on GMO monoculture, it creates the very things they claim to counteract: environmental degradation that results in climate change.

As noted by Lewis, synthetic biology, which is the latest addition to the patented, genetically modified organism (GMO) food system, also results in a “massive shift in ownership and concentration of wealth … and control over our food supply.”

In short, synthetic biology creates reliance on industry that can then be used to manipulate and control the population in any number of ways. In the long term, people will eventually lose the know-how of producing their own food using traditional methods, and this may well be part of the plan.

The globalist cabal intends to create a one world government, and what better control tool than having everyone completely dependent on the state for all of its food?

Protect Your Health by Avoiding Frankenfoods

The drive for plant-based alternatives to real animal food, be it meat or dairy, isn’t due to health, or even to support vegan or vegetarian diets. Those truly interested in eating a plant-based diet can do so by eating real plants, after all, and in so doing can enjoy the many health benefits that eating plant foods provides. No, it’s about creating a system of control through food. It’s also a way to control people’s health.

It’s already known that the consumption of ultraprocessed food contributes to disease,¹⁵ but manufactured fake meat and dairy may also pose additional unknown risks.¹⁶ The benefactor of ill health, of course, is Big Pharma.

The processed food industry has spent many decades driving chronic illness that is then treated with drugs rather than a better diet. Synthetic foods will likely be an even bigger driver or chronic ill health and early death.

The fact is, fake meat and dairy cannot replace the complex mix of nutrients found in grass fed beef and dairy, and it’s likely that consuming ultraprocessed meat and milk alternatives may lead to many of the same health issues that are caused by a processed food diet. So, if you want to really protect your health and the environment, skip pseudofoods that require patents and stick to those found in nature instead.

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Notes

^1, 4 Alarabiya.net May 3, 2022

² Food Navigator December 12, 2022

^3, 8 CNBC June 16, 2020

⁵ Startup Daily July 27, 2021

⁶ Sydney Spring Herald September 13, 2022

⁷ ZME Science December 9, 2022

⁹ Techno-Economic Analysis for the production of cultivated meat February 2021

^10, 12 The Counter September 22, 2021

¹¹ LCA of cultivated meat – February 2021, Page 3

¹³ Children’s Health Defense April 5, 2022

¹⁴ Friends of the Earth, From Lab to Fork, June 2018 (PDF)

¹⁵ BMJ 2018; 360:k322

¹⁶ Consumer Reports, August 29, 2019, Impossible Burger, What is it?

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The 15th session of the Conference of Parties (COP15) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) concluded in the early hours on Monday, December 19th with the adoption of the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), known as the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework.  The UNCBD is a multilateral treaty with three core goals, “the conservation of biological diversity; the sustainable use of its components; and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.” Additionally, the post-2020 GBF defines targets for biodiversity conservation for the next decade, and with nearly 200 Parties and an estimated 15,000 attendees present for the biodiversity summit, there were various obstacles and points of tension that Parties did not agree on. 

Although the framework includes 20 references to Indigenous Peoples, and some references to our rights including the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), human rights, and the rights of Mother Earth, COP15 prioritized the expansion of false solutions, harmful instruments, and the financialization of Mother Earth over the true protection of biodiversity. In section C, Considerations for the implementation of the framework, made reference to rights of nature and the rights of Mother Earth as being an integral part of its successful implementation. While rights of Mother Earth are aligned with Indigenous Peoples’ worldviews and part of our own stewardship practices, these references are nothing more than recommendations for Parties and there remains a gap in implementation.

Of the 23 Targets in the framework, seven targets included references to Indigenous Peoples. Traditional [Indigenous] Knowledge was also referenced ten times and Free, Prior and Informed Consent was referenced twice. However, the concerns for implementation despite these references are apparent in Target 21, where the text states, “…traditional knowledge, innovations, practices, and technologies of Indigenous Peoples and local communities should only be accessed with their free, prior and informed consent [FPIC], in accordance with national legislation.” Ultimately, this means that FPIC is contingent on whether that Party recognizes the rights of Indigenous Peoples and that it is subject to national legislation first and foremost.

Prominent on COP15’s agenda also included new financial instruments tied to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and foregin debt, the expansion of nature-based solutions (NBS), including biodiversity offsets through the framework, as well as digital sequencing information (DSI) and the expansion of geoengineering technologies. The final text of COP15, the post-2020 GBF, includes a range of false solutions that cater to private finance. These false solutions include NBS, the financialization and commodification of nature, geoengineering, and offsetting schemes as well as genetic engineering in the forms of synthetic biology and gene drives. By continuing to promote and proliferate these false solutions, the framework subordinates the sacredness of Mother Earth, her web of life, to the chains of the markets, capitalism and the growth of the corporate dominated systems. The passage of this framework does not question the viability of a global economy whose jurisprudence places property rights above all, and a system that prioritizes private interests over Indigenous and human rights.

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Finance was another major theme at COP15, including discussions on banking, insurance, and hosting the first ever ‘Finance and Biodiversity Day’ at the global biodiversity summit. Private interests pushed to establish a uniform system of standards and metrics for measuring ‘natural capital’, which includes biodiversity, as well as to create a new type of ‘biodiversity credits’ to be harmonized with other carbon markets in the future. Not only are these efforts pushing for the more swift and aggressive commodification of Mother Earth, but are also paving the way for debt-for-nature swaps, in which countries in debt, mostly in the Global South, would pay off debt by handing over their biodiversity to banks.

Debt for nature is a dangerous concept that threatens the sovereignty and tenure of Indigenous Peoples, and prevents developing nations from attaining economic power. The inclusion of private and financial sectors has culminated so far into profit-driven frameworks that are antithetical to natural law. Biodiversity is not a metric, nor translates into shareholder gains and financial market reporting. To attach ownership and price tags on the natural resources that maintain the balance of earth’s systems that sustain all life further commodifies Mother Earth and does not address the true threats to biodiversity loss, rather is an expansion of false solutions.

Moreover, Target 3 in the post-2020 GBF sets out a 30×30 goal, to conserve 30 percent of the world’s lands and 30 percent of the world’s waters for biodiversity conservation. While Parties and private interests acknowledge that Indigenous Peoples have a unique and crucial role in preserving biodiversity, there remains a gap for ensuring the protection of Indigenous Peoples’ sovereignty over their lands on Target 3, that goes beyond just mere recognition and respect for the rights of Indigenous Peoples over their territories. In achieving Target 3, there has been an aggressive push to include market-based approaches and in terms of implementation, there is a real risk and threat to ensuring Indigenous Peoples’ rights over their lands, waters, and territories are upheld, which includes the implementation of their Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) to engage on this conservation target.

IEN’s Carbon Policy Educator, Thomas Joseph, shares his concerns regarding Target 3 in the framework, “The ratification of Target 3, which focuses on the implementation of  the global 30×30 initiative, is nothing more than manifest destiny in the 21st century. This will lead to the largest land and resource grab of Indigenous Peoples’ territories since westward expansion. The Kunming-Montreal Global biodiversity framework guarantees a continuation of the commodification of our Mother Earth using market based mechanisms like nature-based solutions and carbon trading. Our relationship with our Mother Earth must change and we cannot use market approaches or colonial tactics to preserve the remaining biodiversity.”

Another key vehicle in achieving targets outlined in the GBF are nature-based solutions (NBS). However, the discussions at COP15 fixated on how to financialize nature and co-opt Traditional Indigenous Knowledge. While Parties might highlight the role of Indigenous Peoples and local communities in the implementation of NBS projects, they perpetually disregard and downplay the risks of human rights violations, land and resource grabs, and the unintended negative impacts of associated climate and biodiversity projects led by the private sector.

Furthermore, digital sequencing information (DSI) was another focal point at COP15. This included interventions related to the access to information derived from genetic resources and the altering of genes in the name of preserving biodiversity. At COP15, technical and policy information around DSI was intentionally hidden and obscured from Indigenous Peoples. DSI is not only dangerous because of its potentially destructive and irreversible ecological impacts, but particularly for Indigenous Peoples because it is a way for governments and private industry to extract, commodify, and monetize Traditional Indigenous Knowledge. Likewise, DSI poses the risk of restricting Indigenous Peoples’ benefits or use of their own genetic resources. Indigenous Peoples’ communities and lands have already become testing sites for new, risky technologies without their Free, Prior and Informed Consent.

IEN’s Executive Director, Tom BK Goldtooth shares his reflections on this year’s global biodiversity summit, “The outcome of the UNCBD COP15 leaves Mother Earth open to be bought and sold by the private sector and through carbon trading. Violating Traditional Indigenous Knowledge, the agreement embraces the risky and dangerous gene drive extinction technology. Indigenous Peoples are not safe from this new agreement. Rather, we stand at more of a risk of being forced into a capitalist system that demands the expansion of the destruction of Mother Earth in order to continue its continuous growth. We are at a point of no return to stop biodiversity loss and climate change, and it is clear that the UNCBD and UNFCCC are not the platforms to deliver the frameworks that will prevent a global catastrophe.”

All in all, COP15 prioritized the continued commodification and exploitation of Mother Earth over finalizing a global framework that upholds Indigenous and human rights. Private interests paired with developed countries pushed for false solutions that put profit over biodiversity protection, yet again let those who are driving immense biodiversity loss off the hook, leaving those on the frontlines without adequate resources or protection to continue to protect the remaining biodiversity on Mother Earth. Stay tuned for Indigenous Environmental Network’s full analysis of the outcomes of COP15 in early 2023.

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This paper examines labor abuses during the war in Afghanistan, focusing on how the U.S. is denying legally-required compensation to foreign workers in war zones. The U.S. government leaned heavily on contractors to do its essential work during the war in Afghanistan. In 2020, approximately 65% of wartime contractors were citizens of Afghanistan or a third-party country, such as Nepal. This paper focuses on how the U.S. military and Department of Labor have done little to enforce the U.S. Defense Base Act (DBA), which calls for the provision of compensation to all workers, regardless of their nationality, injured under U.S. contracts, and for the provision of financial compensation to their kin in case of death.

Through FOIA requests and interviews with over 200 third-country nationals, many of them Nepali, the authors found that:

• Over twelve years between 2009 and 2021, the Department of Labor fined contracting companies performing work in Afghanistan only six times for failing to report Defense Base Act claims for their employees. The total amount of these fines amounted to just $3,250.
• The Army Contracting Command-Afghanistan was able to show that it terminated just four contracts in Afghanistan due to contractor failure to purchase DBA insurance between 2009 and 2020.
• Of the Nepali contractors the authors interviewed, they found 12 cases of contractors who were injured or killed while working under U.S. government subcontracts in Afghanistan, which were not properly compensated. In two additional cases, they interviewed Nepalis who received DBA compensation for injuries in Iraq only after filing legal challenges with the help of American lawyers.

SIGAR has estimated that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers alone paid companies $58.5 million between 2005-2011 that was supposed to go towards insurance premiums for their workers, but which was instead pocketed. Even though the U.S. has withdrawn from Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command reports that it still relies on more than 21,000 contractors in its area of responsibility — more than 9,000 of whom are third-country nationals.

This report notes there is reason to believe the exploitative practices that lead to these violations may become even more egregious in the future, since they will be difficult to monitor in conflict zones where wars are smaller and there is less international media attention.

Click here to read the full paper.

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Featured image: Kathy Kelly and Maya Evans walk with children at the Chamin-E-Babrak refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan, January 2014. (Abdulhai Darya)

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As U.S. military forces continue to kill and wound civilians in multiple countries during the ongoing 21-year War on Terror while chronically undercounting such casualties, a pair of Democratic lawmakers on Monday asked the Pentagon to explain discrepancies in noncombatant casualty reporting and detail steps being taken to address the issue.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—who have both led calls to hold the military accountable for harming noncombatants—said they are “troubled” that the Pentagon’s annual civilian casualty report, which was released in September as required by an amendment Warren attached to the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), again undercounts noncombatants killed by U.S. forces.

“In this year’s report, the department reported that approximately 12 civilians were killed and five were injured in Afghanistan and Somalia as a result of U.S. military operations during 2021,” the lawmakers wrote. “However, the report did not admit to any civilian deaths in Syria, despite credible civilian casualty monitors documenting at least 15 civilian deaths and 17 civilian injuries in Syria in 2021.”

The U.K.-based monitor group Airwars counted between 12 and 25 civilians likely killed by U.S. forces, sometimes operating with coalition allies, in Syria alone last year, with another two to four people killed in Somalia and one to four killed in Yemen.

Airwars does not track civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan, where all of last year’s casualties acknowledged by the Department of Defense (DOD) occurred. These incidents include an errant August 29 drone strike that killed 10 people—most of them members of one family—including seven children.

“The report also appeared to undercount additional civilian casualties from Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) that occurred prior to 2021,” the lawmakers’ letter continues, referring to the anti-Islamic State campaign launched during the Obama administration and ramped up under then-President Donald Trump—who infamously vowed to “bomb the shit out of” ISIS militants and “take out their families.”

We need the full picture of what’s happening and where to address civilian casualties resulting from U.S. actions. That’s why @SenWarren and I want answers about the Department of Defense’s underreporting. pic.twitter.com/mYErmuCrfX

— Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (@RepSaraJacobs) December 20, 2022

“For example, the report… only disclosed four civilians killed and 15 civilians injured as a result of the March 18, 2019 strike in Baghuz, Syria,” the lawmakers noted. “But The New York Times investigated this strike in 2021, finding evidence that the military concealed the extent of the civilian casualties, and according to Airwars, local sources alleged that the strike resulted in at least 160 civilian deaths, including up to 45 children.”

“This vast difference between independent reporting and the DOD investigation raises concerns and undermines DOD credibility on civilian casualty reporting,” Warren and Jacobs stressed.

“One reason for this underreporting appears to be that DOD is not giving appropriate weight to outside sources when investigating casualty reports,” the letter contends. “The significant discrepancies between DOD and outside reporting suggests outside sources are still not being sufficiently incorporated into DOD assessments.”

The congresswomen also expressed concern that “this year’s report revealed that DOD made only one total ex gratia payment in 2021, despite an annual $3 million authorization from Congress,” a reference to the compensation sometimes paid by the U.S. military to relatives of civilians its forces kill.

“It is a continued betrayal of our values to continually undercount and refuse to acknowledge or take proper steps to address the civilian casualties that result from U.S. military action,” Warren and Jacobs wrote.

Declaring that “the protection of civilians is a strategic priority as well as a moral imperative,” the Pentagon in August published its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP), which lays out a series of policy steps aimed at preventing and responding to the death and injury of noncombatants.

These steps include establishing a civilian protection center of excellence, improving commanders’ understanding of civilian environments, developing standardized incident reporting and data management processes, and improving the military’s ability to assess and respond when noncombatants are harmed by U.S. attacks.

Almost immediately after publication of the CHMR-AP, Jacobs, along with Reps. Jason Crow (D-Col.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), and Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) formed a new congressional caucus to “conduct oversight and advance policies to prevent, reduce, and respond to civilian harm.”

Any time the U.S. or partners’ actions result in civilian harm, it hurts our reputation and undermines our national security by creating powerful recruiting tools. I’m proud that I secured $25 million to implement DoD’s CHMR-AP, which aims to reduce and prevent civilian harm. pic.twitter.com/9PyaAdq2oe

— Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (@RepSaraJacobs) December 12, 2022

Spearheaded by Jacobs, the caucus worked to include $25 million in funding for CHMR-AP implementation in the $858 billion 2023 NDAA.

“Every time Congress is briefed about an instance of civilian harm, we are almost always told that the service member followed the proper protocol and processes,” Jacobs told Politico earlier this month. “So I think it’s clear that it’s an institutional not an individual problem.”

While it is notoriously difficult to track how many civilians have been killed by a military that, in the words of Gen. Tommy Franks, doesn’t “do body counts,” researchers at the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimate that combatants on all sides of the U.S.-led War on Terror have killed as many as 387,000 civilians as of late last year.

Airwars, meanwhile, said last September that U.S. airstrikes alone have killed as many as 48,000 civilians in nearly 100,000 bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen since 2001.

On November 30th, an alleged US drone strike reportedly killed up to three civilians, including a woman and two children, and injured up to five others, and two paramedics, in the Hadba Al-Awshan market area in Yemen. (Image from @bdallhbnbwdals1) https://t.co/rvD3AMbCnB pic.twitter.com/WAOtu0PhMO

— Airwars (@airwars) December 15, 2022

The killing continues. Since November, Airwars has posted credible reports of civilians killed by U.S. airstrikes in Syria (two incidents) and Yemen, where two children and a woman reportedly died when a U.S. drone bombed their home in the Al-Hadba area of Al-Wadi while targeting al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula militants on November 30.

Meanwhile, Airwars reports that hundreds of al-Shabaab fighters have been killed in numerous U.S. air and drone strikes in Somalia in recent weeks.

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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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

Price: $9.40

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Although Humanity has evolved a lot up to date, contemporary U.S. administrations continue to use in their relations with Latin America a policy whose beginnings date back to 1823.

Time and again, they use it as a basis for justifying their actions: the much-used Monroe Doctrine, but it’s better known as “America for the Americans”, sought in its beginnings to ensure Washington’s dominion over lands that were colonies of European metropolises, such as Spain.

Almost two centuries after this idea was first put forward, in the 21st century, the then U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, in a speech before the Organization of American States (OAS) in 2013, declared the Monroe Doctrine dead when he assured that its era was over.

Five years later, in September 2018, speaking at a high-level debate in the UN General Assembly, then U.S. President Donald Trump “revived” it.

Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the intrusion of foreign powers, he said in reference to the support that China and Russia were giving to several Latin American nations.

According to Trump at the time, formal U.S. policy since President James Monroe (1817-1825) dictates that “we reject the interference of foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs”.

With the stroke of a pen, the words of Kerry, who was part of Barack Obama’s cabinet (2009-2017), were erased, while Joe Biden was at that time the Vice President of the United States.

In January 2021, Biden assumed the presidency of the North American nation and many questions arose as to what his position would be towards Latin America and the Caribbean during the next four years. After all he had campaigned to improve relations with Cuba which Trump had buried under 243 additional sanctions.

Would he re-bury the Monroe Doctrine, and what policies would guide his relations with the region? The questions are many, as are the expectations.

America vs Western Hemisphere

First, we should go back to the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (in power from 1801 to 1809), who formulated the idea of the “Western Hemisphere” to refer to the American continent.

In short, he postulated that the populations of the American hemisphere, from north to south, have a special inherent, unique and natural relationship among themselves, well-differentiated qualitatively and separated from their links with the extra continental world, explained Cuban researcher Raúl Rodríguez.

But in reality, this doctrine is based on the phrase:

“The American continents, because of the free and independent condition they have assumed and maintain, should no longer be considered as susceptible to future colonization by any of the European powers”.

Reworkings  and Adjustments

The Monroe Doctrine is one of the many means by which the United States has been expanding its hegemonic eagerness over the Latin American and Caribbean region since the early stages of its existence as a nation, Rodriguez pointed out. Over the years, he added, this policy has been reworked and adjusted.

Such is the case of Pan-Americanism, highly questioned by Cuban National Hero José Martí, since it was constituted as a way of institutionalizing imperialist domination over Latin American peoples at the beginning of the last decade of the 19th century.

This is maintained in the context of the transition to the imperialist stage in the United States and continues to the present day, including the creation of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, in 1947, and the OAS, in 1948, the expert explained.

Both are pillars of the system currently comprising the Inter-American Development Bank and a multitude of other entities.

More recently, said Rodriguez, the idea of the Western Hemisphere has formed the conceptual basis for other regional summits and periodic meetings of heads of state and government that have been held regularly since the Summit of the Americas in Miami in 1994.

Currently, the fundamental feature of the validity of the Monroe Doctrine is the strengthening of the inter-American system, with emphasis on its economic, political, institutional and military components.

All this in order to consolidate a bloc to counteract the economic and technological ascendancy of China and the political, diplomatic and scientific challenge represented by Russia, said the Cehseu director.

In addition, the aim is to unify and extend the model of representative democracy and market fundamentalism, that is, the U.S. capitalist model as a formula for the entire continent, he stressed.

“Remember that the region of the world that inspired the first doctrinal formulation of foreign policy in the United States – Monroism – was, precisely, Latin America.”

“Therein lies the old pretext that the powerful neighbor to the North protected the interests of our countries against the appetites of the old European colonial powers.”

But now they revive it in a new form to argue objections to the Chinese and Russian presence in the continent and, as it is clear, what is really at stake is will the U.S. hegemonic grip prevail in the geopolitical dispute taking place in Latin America, said Rodriguez.

Old Policies that Refuse to Go Away

Also almost 200 years ago, U.S. President James Polk concurrently decided in 1846 that his country’s “manifest destiny” was to expand, and he waged war against Mexico.

Mexico lost more than half of its territory to the Americans, who took over the lands that now make up California, Utah, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico.

Then, in 1898, U.S. President William McKinley invaded Spanish colonies in the Caribbean, such as Cuba and Puerto Rico (the latter territory remains to this day).

And lets not forget that Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, Guatemala… are on the long list of countries that were invaded and occupied by Washington.

Meanwhile, the US Central Intelligence Agency has backed military coups in Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and more recently in Venezuela and Bolivia, as revealed by its own analysts.

When Trump invoked the Monroe Doctrine in 2018 by name, experts in the area warned that the mere mention of that policy awakened the historical memory of the repression from numerous military and economic interventions promoted by Washington in Latin America.

Historically, it is just a given that the leaders of the North American nation perceive Latin America as a sort of extension of their territory, the so-called “backyard”.

Given their geographic location, the countries of the area are the closest source of raw materials and natural resources, and also in geopolitical terms, they are considered important for the national security of the United States, according to Jorge Hernandez, a CEHSEU specialist.

U.S. interests in the region are based on a geopolitical conception and the need to build a sphere of influence, that has been the perspective once the U.S. nation reached the imperialist stage, he said.

Invasions, interventions, the establishment of military bases, the plundering of natural resources, interference in the internal affairs of other countries, subversion plans, sanctions and blockades… are elements of Washington’s strategy, which is repeated, with one variant or another, throughout history, both distant and recent.

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***

Consider just how fortunate we are to have the Twitter Files. Every few days, we are seeing dumps of documents from the operations of Twitter before Elon Musk took over. This weekend’s release was especially shocking. It revealed a close and symbiotic relationship between the company’s management and the FBI, which employs 80 people to police social networks and flag posts. They aren’t looking for crime. They were focused on wrongthink on matters of politics. 

In other words, all our worst suspicions have been confirmed. We still await the Covid files but let there be no doubt about what they will show in grim detail. Twitter worked with government to throttle the reach and searchability of accounts that took issue with the main messaging of the CDC/HHS from early in lockdowns to the present. We already knew that Facebook had deleted 7 million posts in the second quarter of 2020. Twitter pulled some 10,000 accounts down.

Twitter is now mostly open, for now. The rest of the venues remain wholly controlled. Brownstone has posts tagged, throttled, and sometimes deleted from LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and it is a constant struggle to avoid Google’s own push against our content. Even ridiculous sites with no credibility or reach appear high in search engines when our content is searched. This is not an algorithm at work.

On this basis alone, it is fair to say that we are still in lockdown nearly three years later. The point of such top-down censorship is not only to control the public mind. It is also to keep all of us from finding each other. It truly did work for a very long time. It took nearly a year for the group that we now know as the anti-lockdown movement to form. Even when Brownstone was founded, I had not known about Justin Hart’s Rational Ground. Now of course we work closely together.

The impact of all this work to keep us apart has been huge. It’s why those of us who resisted from the very beginning felt so very alone, and we could not understand why. Were we going crazy? What is wrong with people that they seem not to be objecting to having their schools and churches closed? Why was the media demonizing people for wanting to get haircuts? Whatever happened to the Bill of Rights and why does no one seem even to be complaining about what was happening?

Let us pause to explore the meaning of lockdown. We often hear now that the US never did lock down, as ridiculous as that sounds. Epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya grew so tired of hearing this claim that he formulated a definition: any government policy that seeks to keep people physically separate under the excuse that doing so mitigates against some crisis. This would include claims, for example, that other people are biohazards, and would include fear-mongering propaganda, and much else.

Think back to March 16, 2020 in the White House press conference when Deborah Birx summed up the whole theme of the day. “We really want people to be separated at this time, to be able to address this virus,” she said. If you think about it, that is surely among the most draconian demands ever made by any government against its people. It means the abolition of freedom and society too. It’s utterly astonishing, and yet the media gathered there just nodded heads as if this were completely normal.

Part of the mandatory separation – part of the lockdown – was information control to keep people who opposed what was happening from finding each other. This trick truly did work because all our usual methods for digital socializing came to be nationalized overnight. We did not know this because there was no real announcement but it was nonetheless real. We had come to rely on social media to give us a sense of the public mind but that came to an end during the most shocking policies ever imposed on so many Americans. And the policy happened all over the world except for one state and about 5 nations.

The lockdown included information control and that was crucial. As for the possibility of hearing the opinions of others, we also faced egregious stay-at-home orders and limits on the numbers of people who could even enter our own homes. I’ve not seen a complete study on what happened but in Western Massachusetts where I was at the time, no more than 10 people were allowed to meet in one setting. Thus no weddings, funerals, or large house parties. Private citizens became so zealous in their enforcement of this that they would fly drones over communities to look for cars bunched up and rat out the address to the local media. This truly did happen.

Only now do we see the larger point. It was to prohibit an opposition from forming and to gaslight the whole population into thinking that everyone was going along with this, since this was nothing but “common sense public health measures.” Anthony Fauci told us this many times. This might also have contributed to the huge decline in the health of the population. People lost a sense of hope and turned to substance abuse and overeating. Gyms were closed and so were all in-person AA meetings. The lockdowns contributed as much as 40 percent to the overall excess deaths in that year alone.

Eventually of course many things opened up but unvaccinated visitors from other countries are still not allowed in, which is an outrage. I have a conductor friend from the UK who has constant invitations to conduct in the US but he is simply not allowed into the country. For three years now!

Question: have we really ever left lockdowns? We are far less free today and far more censored. Twitter is an aberration among the major tech platforms. Media is controlled too. But for Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and few others, plus the mighty Epoch Times, where would we even get our news? And thank goodness for Substack, which has allowed so many writers and researchers to have an outlet. The point is that these are all lights peeking through a darkness that is still being imposed from above. Which is to say: the emergency for human liberty is still with us.

They wanted to keep us separate, and the excuse was a virus. The rule of separation (and the stickers are still everywhere in this country) was truly to keep us apart. One of the most powerful books to come out of our era is Naomi Wolf’s The Bodies of Others. The core theory was that separating humans from other humans was the whole point: to take away our social connection and the possibility of living a dignified life of our own choosing. The only beneficiaries to the policy were tech, media, and government. Her book is a classic for the ages.

Part of this separation included the attack on small business and traditional commerce. The word commerce comes from commercium in Latin, a word that figured prominently in a composed verse from medieval Christianity that became a much-loved motet: O Admirabile Commercium. The point is to draw attention to the exchange between time and eternity as instantiated in the incarnation that Christmas celebrates.

Commerce has long been the meeting place for humans to form social order. Trade means mutual benefit, finding value in each other. That it came under such severe attack makes sense from the point of view of a ruling class that was attacking human association at its root.

Even today, we are having difficulty finding each other and are relieved when we do so. I was struck by this during the Brownstone holiday party a few days ago. There we were all together, the room filled with incredibly energy, everyone toasting friendship and connection, smiles everywhere, a profound sense of gratitude for the physical space that allowed us to meet and eat, all of us knowing full well that we went months and even a year and longer when we could not do this by order of government edict. Just discovering each other, and sharing tales and ideas, amounts to an act of defiance.

Two Christmases came and went when we were told that meeting and celebrating the season was a biohazard and not recommended. In some places, it was forbidden. It’s hard to imagine a more grim policy and it still shocks us to think back and realize that it was all deliberate. One means to reverse this horror is simple: find friends, celebrate together, share stories and ideals, promote peace and love, and work to rebuild what we have lost.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker, Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute, is an economist and author. He has written 10 books, including Liberty or Lockdown, and thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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***

Since the earliest days of the pandemic, over-the-top, hysterical fearmongering has been an intricate component of the Public Health™ messaging.

Scared slaves are compliant slaves.

The New York acting health commissioner, Dr. Mary Bassett, for instance, last year admitted that a health advisory released by the state intentionally exaggerated the risk of COVID to children to “motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination” – “motivate” being a euphemism for “manipulate”.

Here’s her defense of the state’s propaganda, in which she admits the strategy:

“The numbers that we gave on pediatric admissions weren’t intended to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infection, these were small numbers. That was based on 50 hospitalizations, and I’ve now given you some larger numbers, but they’re still small numbers. It really was to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination.”

Sorry to bust up the manipulation ploy. pic.twitter.com/y9msS5K3sq

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) December 29, 2021

Not content with merely inflating hospital admissions numbers and dancing on the graves of unvaccinated public figures who died allegedly due to COVID while ignoring vaxxed deaths, the Public Health™ technocrats also engage in semantical engineering.

Via NBC:

“Referred to as the “nightmare” variant in some reports, XBB is the combination of two omicron subvariants – BA.2.10.1 and BA.2.10.75 – and is said to have a “significant growth advantage,” said Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, an infectious disease specialist and the technical lead for COVID-19 response at the World Health Organization.”

https://t.co/lMqltQEWil pic.twitter.com/RSxewrNNJJ

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) December 8, 2022

The unelected Public Health™ overlords decided that the endless litany of new variants with nerdy names like Beta 543 or whatever fail to produce sufficient panic in the population to entice them to scurry to Walgreens™ for their twelfth Booster™.

Sober risk-reward assessments don’t move pharmaceutical products.

Before COVID, scientists and medical doctors were still permitted to say in public that most viruses evolve to become more infectious and less pathogenic without fear of losing their license to practice and having their careers sabotaged.

This makes logical sense, as SARS-CoV-2’s prime directive, like any living organism’s (or semi-living organism in the case of a virus), is to survive and replicate. If it can figure out how to evade immune reaction and not kill its host, it’s likelier to thrive.

At the tail-end of the above-cited NBC article, nestled far below the headline, you’ll find the caveat, lonely and totally out of step with the panicked tenor of every preceding paragraph:

“There have been no signs of increased severity in the XBB, BQ.1.1 and BQ.1 variants.”

Reason and logic, alas, went out the window almost three years ago. So each new mutation of the virus elicits ever-greater levels of pearl-clutching by the corporate media increasingly desperate to retain the attention of an audience that – except for the most fringe sects of the Branch COVIDians like the Zero COVID cult – is ready to move on.

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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, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Some of America’s most advanced military aircraft conducted drills in South Korea on Tuesday as a show of force against North Korea. Pyongyang recently announced that it had made advancements toward deploying a surveillance satellite. 

US B-52s and F-22s took part in a new round of war games in the skies over the Korean Peninsula, joined by South Korean F-35s and F-16s. The B-52 is capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and has long served as one of Washington’s primary strategic bombers.

The joint military exercises came soon after the DPRK carried out a test of a newly developed spy satellite, which is among a range of military tech Pyongyang has vowed to produce to better counter the United States.

Throughout 2022, Washington, Seoul and Pyongyang have engaged in a series of escalatory actions. North Korea has conducted a record number of missile tests – including multiple intercontinental ballistic missile launches – and fired projectiles over Japanese territory. US officials, among them Vice President Kamala Harris, have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons against the DPRK and increased deployments of strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula. Seoul and Washington regularly carry out large-scale, live-fire war games, including the largest aerial military drills ever held between the two countries.

Additionally, the US and South Korea have entered into a trilateral defense agreement with Japan, largely looking toward Pyongyang and Beijing. The North has denounced the security pact, suggesting the United States intends to create a NATO-like alliance in the Pacific.

The heightened military tensions in 2022 are a break from the previous four years. Starting in the second half of the Donald Trump administration, Washington and Seoul scaled back their military activity and opened up a dialog with Pyongyang, ultimately netting a drastic reduction in war games and weapons tests on all sides. However, the Joe Biden White House has broken with the policy of engagement, almost entirely favoring military action over diplomacy.

*

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute.

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

Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.

Featured image: US B-52H, F-22, and C-17 aircraft fly together during a joint air exercise with South Korea, December 20, 2022. (Credit: Republic of Korea Defense Ministry)

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***

The man in green, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, has arrived in the US to demand more money be shoveled into the bottomless pit that is Ukraine.

Zelensky arrives at White House for Biden talks via @RTENews https://t.co/YE097e7k23

— Declan Costello🐀 (@Decdexter65) December 21, 2022

Earlier this week, I saw a young woman standing on the corner of an intersection as I drove home from the grocery store. She had a cardboard sign and it read: NEED $TO PAY RENT. PLEASE HELP. GOD BLESS.

Since the pandemic, every busy intersection in this city has at least one or two homeless people begging for money and asking for help. In the past, the street corner beggars were mostly male drug addicts and alcoholics, but now they are young men and women. I occasionally see mentally ill people pacing up and down sidewalks—shoeless, dazed, and ignored. The street is where you go when there are no other options.

More than half of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and the situation for the middle class grows more perilous with each passing day. Meanwhile, the rich get richer (making a fortune during the pandemic), thanks in large part to the bankster cartel, the Federal Reserve.

In a somewhat more perfect world, the government would reform monetary policy, audit the federal reserve, and preferably get rid of it altogether. But that’s not going to happen. The staggering debt will not be addressed, nor will it be forgiven. Generations to come will be forced to pay off a stratospheric debt accumulated by spendthrifts, psychopaths, and warmongers. It is part of a long-term plan to reduce millions of people to poverty and dependence on the state.

However, the way things are going, I’m not sure if there will be future generations. Sorry to be a bummer, but I see very little if any light at the end of the tunnel. If the trajectory we are following continues, we will end up with nuclear winter and dystopia.

Short of “draining the swamp,” torching K Street, and salting the ashes, the current monetary and military insanity will continue until the bottom falls out. The lesson of Trump is that any political outlier not a member of the uniparty political class—not taking orders from the elite and the national security state—will be attacked, threatened, investigated, slandered by the corporate media, de-platformed, and have his or her life destroyed.

Zelenskyy’s pathetic entreat for endless money will not fall on deaf ears. Both factions of the uniparty are gung-ho on gifting the ultranationalist whack jobs in Ukraine with tons of cash and weapons, much of the latter ending up in Africa, specifically in the Lake Chad Basin, and into the hands of Boko Haram and ISIS. In addition, USG-supplied weapons arrive in Finland “where ‘three of the world’s largest motorcycle gangs’ now operate, including Bandidos MC, which ‘has a branch in every major city in Ukraine.’”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov said back in April that USG weapons are now filtering into West Asia. “The diplomat went on to say that it is obvious that Kiev, which has no control over the militants’ actions, will be unable to ensure the safe storage and non-proliferation of these weapons, which may then end up in the shadow markets of other countries.”

Short of nuclear war, nuclear winter, and species extinction, the ruling elite, and its embedded neocons, will continue the long-term effort to destroy the middle class.

During my research following the events of 9/11, I read up on Leo Strauss and his disciples. Strauss believed a deceitful and amoral ruling class, based on Plato’s Republic model, should rule, and the lower classes, locked in poverty and ignorance, should throw themselves headlong into perpetual war.

For the original neocon philosophers (notably, Leo Strauss, Alexandre Kojève, and Carl Schmitt), it was imperative the lower classes, the engineered poor kept in blinkered ignorance, understand

that man’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and “creature comforts.”

I am convinced we are on the cusp of that horrid future now—that is if the psychopaths, brimming with hubris and malignant narcissism, do not blow up the world in their deluded conviction the “exceptional nation” can do no wrong and cannot be defeated.

*

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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.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

America’s War Against the People of Korea: The Historical Record of US War Crimes

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 22, 2022

The Korean War (1950-1953) was the first major military operation  undertaken by the US in the wake of  World War II,  launched at the very outset of  what was euphemistically called “The Cold War”. In many respects it was a continuation of World War II, whereby Korean lands under Japanese colonial occupation were, from one day to the next, handed over to a new colonial power, the United States of America.

Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable. America’s Post 9/11 Nuclear Doctrine

By William M Arkin and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 22, 2022

The geopolitics of America’s nuclear doctrine (NPR 2001) are outlined: Russia and the “Axis of Evil”, China and the status of Taiwan, Israel, Iran and the Middle East, North Korea. The modalities consist in integrating a new category of nuclear weapons (allegedly safe for the surrounding civilian population) into the conventional war arsenal.

The Hidden History of the Korean War

By Dr. T. P. Wilkinson, December 21, 2022

The only war in the official history of the United State that was lost, was also the first war in which Jim Crow, the apartheid regime created in the US after the Civil War and Reconstruction, was not the policy of the US military. How African-Americans came again to challenge the imperialist war machine in the 1960s cannot be understood without uncovering the decades of silence and deception that have covered the first war the US regime truly lost—although it has never officially ended.

World War I, “An Un-Christian Like Patriotic Fervor”: The 108th Anniversary of the Christmas Truce of 1914

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, December 21, 2022

108 years ago this Christmas Eve something happened in the early months of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war. The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again.

New Breakthrough in Australia-China Relations

By Prof. Michelle Grattan, December 20, 2022

Australia’s relations with China will take another major step forward this week with Foreign Minister Penny Wong travelling to Beijing for the resumption of the bilateral Foreign and Strategic Dialogue, which has been on hold since 2018.

Modi Ignores West’s Sanctions on Russia

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, December 20, 2022

For India, the reorientation of Russian economic diplomacy toward the Asian region presents huge business opportunities. Who would have thought nine months ago that Russia was going to be the largest supplier of oil to India, leapfrogging Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US?

The Inflation Hoax

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, December 16, 2022

The Fed thinks that the inflation is the result of the trillions of dollars of Covid payments that were dumped into the economy.  To the extent that this money was simply replacing the lost wages, salaries, and business earnings from the lockdowns, there would be no net addition of money, just a replacement.  I don’t have the data on the lost earnings from the lockdowns, but it is obvious that there was a large supply disruption.

Putin Attempting to Prevent a Repeat of the Clinton-Yeltsin Destruction of Russia

By Kurt Nimmo, December 16, 2022

In a speech delivered in 2007, well before the current crisis, Vladimir Putin “reserved his bitterest complaints… for the US drive to expand Nato into former Soviet eastern Europe and for the plans to deploy parts of the missile shield in central Europe. ‘Why do you need to move your military infrastructure to our borders?’” he asked.

How Blackrock Investment Fund Triggered the Global Energy Crisis

By F. William Engdahl, December 21, 2022

The energy crisis is a long-planned strategy of western corporate and political circles to dismantle industrial economies in the name of a dystopian Green Agenda. That has its roots in the period years well before February 2022, when Russia launched its military action in Ukraine.

The War Moves Forward as Outlined by the RAND Corporation on Behalf of the Pentagon. “NATO Is Not Part to the Conflict”

By Manlio Dinucci, December 18, 2022

The United States, the European Union, and other countries have so far “donated” about 100 billion euros of military supply to Ukraine. It is money directly or indirectly coming out of our pockets. This figure is constantly increasing. The European Union will train 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers in two camps in Poland and in another member state.

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***

Introductory Note 

This incisive article by William Arkin summarizes the key elements of America’s nuclear doctrine, formulated both before and in the immediate wake of September 11, 2001. 

The article was originally published by the Los Angeles Times on March 10, 2002, a few months prior to the official release of the infamous 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the Cold War era has been indefinitely scrapped.

The NPR 2001 confirms America’s foreign policy stance:

the pre-emptive use of nukes as a means of “self-defense” against both nuclear and non-nuclear states.  

Nuclear weapons are also slated to be used in the conventional war theater. 

Post Cold War Nuclear Doctrine. NPR 2001 (Drafted 21 Years Ago) Sets The Stage

Let us be under no illusions. 

Today, nuclear war is on the drawing board of the Pentagon.

The 2001 NPR (full document) released (officially) in July 2002 is of utmost significance. It determines America’s nuclear doctrine. It has a direct bearing on our understanding of the war in Ukraine, and the danger of a World War III scenario. For details, see  also NPR 2001 (excerpts by FAS).    

The geopolitics of America’s nuclear doctrine (NPR 2001) are outlined: Russia and the “Axis of Evil”, China and the status of Taiwan, Israel, Iran and the Middle East, North Korea.

The modalities consist in integrating a new category of nuclear weapons (allegedly safe for the surrounding civilian population) into the conventional war arsenal.

Minimizing Collateral Damage while “Blowing up the Planet” 

Here are some of the highlights outlined in William Arkin’s article, most of which are being implemented: 

• “...the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries … naming not only Russia and the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–but also China, Libya and Syria.”
• “nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis.”
• “…using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks”
• “the NPR lists a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan as one of the scenarios that could lead Washington to use nuclear weapons.”
• “nuclear strategy …viewed through the prism of Sept. 11.  faith in old-fashioned deterrence is gone”
• “developing such things as nuclear bunker-busters and surgical “warheads that reduce collateral damage,”
•  “cyber-warfare and other nonnuclear military capabilities would be integrated into nuclear-strike forces”
• “the integration of “new nonnuclear strategic capabilities” into nuclear-war plans.
• “expand the breadth and flexibility of U.S. nuclear capabilities.
•  “what has evolved since last year’s [September 11, 2001] terror attacks is an integrated, significantly expanded planning doctrine for nuclear wars.”

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 10, 2022, December 22, 2022

***

Secret Plan Outlines the Unthinkable

The Bush administration, in a secret policy review completed early this year, has ordered the Pentagon to draft contingency plans for the use of nuclear weapons against at least seven countries, naming not only Russia and the “axis of evil”–Iraq, Iran, and North Korea–but also China, Libya and Syria.

In addition, the U.S. Defense Department has been told to prepare for the possibility that nuclear weapons may be required in some future Arab-Israeli crisis. And, it is to develop plans for using nuclear weapons to retaliate against chemical or biological attacks, as well as “surprising military developments” of an unspecified nature.

These and a host of other directives, including calls for developing bunker-busting mini-nukes and nuclear weapons that reduce collateral damage, are contained in a still-classified document called the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which was delivered to Congress on Jan. 8.

Like all such documents since the dawning of the Atomic Age more than a half-century ago, this NPR offers a chilling glimpse into the world of nuclear-war planners: With a Strangelovian genius, they cover every conceivable circumstance in which a president might wish to use nuclear weapons–planning in great detail for a war they hope never to wage.

In this top-secret domain, there has always been an inconsistency between America’s diplomatic objectives of reducing nuclear arsenals and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, on the one hand, and the military imperative to prepare for the unthinkable, on the other.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration plan reverses an almost two-decade-long trend of relegating nuclear weapons to the category of weapons of last resort. It also redefines nuclear requirements in hurried post-Sept. 11 terms.

In these and other ways, the still-secret document offers insights into the evolving views of nuclear strategists in Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s Defense Department.

While downgrading the threat from Russia and publicly emphasizing their commitment to reducing the number of long-range nuclear weapons, Defense Department strategists promote tactical and so-called “adaptive” nuclear capabilities to deal with contingencies where large nuclear arsenals are not demanded.

They seek a host of new weapons and support systems, including conventional military and cyber warfare capabilities integrated with nuclear warfare. The end product is a now-familiar post-Afghanistan model–with nuclear capability added. It combines precision weapons, long-range strikes, and special and covert operations.

But the NPR’s call for development of new nuclear weapons that reduce “collateral damage” myopically ignores the political, moral and military implications–short-term and long–of crossing the nuclear threshold.

Under what circumstances might nuclear weapons be used under the new posture? The NPR says they “could be employed against targets able to withstand nonnuclear attack,” or in retaliation for the use of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons, or “in the event of surprising military developments.”

Planning nuclear-strike capabilities, it says, involves the recognition of “immediate, potential or unexpected” contingencies. Show me why. “All have long-standing hostility towards the United States and its security partners. All sponsor or harbor terrorists, and have active WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and missile programs.”

China, because of its nuclear forces and “developing strategic objectives,” is listed as “a country that could be involved in an immediate or potential contingency.” Specifically, the NPR lists a military confrontation over the status of Taiwan as one of the scenarios that could lead Washington to use nuclear weapons.

Other listed scenarios for nuclear conflict are a North Korean attack on South Korea and an Iraqi assault on Israel or its neighbors.

The second important insight the NPR offers into Pentagon thinking about nuclear policy is the extent to which the Bush administration’s strategic planners were shaken by last September’s terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Though Congress directed the new administration “to conduct a comprehensive review of U.S. nuclear forces” before the events of Sept. 11, the final study is striking for its single-minded reaction to those tragedies.

Heretofore, nuclear strategy tended to exist as something apart from the ordinary challenges of foreign policy and military affairs. Nuclear weapons were not just the option of last resort, they were the option reserved for times when national survival hung in the balance–a doomsday confrontation with the Soviet Union, for instance.

Now, nuclear strategy seems to be viewed through the prism of Sept. 11. For one thing, the Bush administration’s faith in old-fashioned deterrence is gone. It no longer takes a superpower to pose a dire threat to Americans.

“The terrorists who struck us on Sept. 11th were clearly not deterred by doing so from the massive U.S. nuclear arsenal,” Rumsfeld told an audience at the National Defense University in late January.

Similarly, U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said in a recent interview, “We would do whatever is necessary to defend America’s innocent civilian population …. The idea that fine theories of deterrence work against everybody … has just been disproven by Sept. 11.”

Moreover, while insisting they would go nuclear only if other options seemed inadequate, officials are looking for nuclear weapons that could play a role in the kinds of challenges the United States faces with Al Qaeda.

Accordingly, the NPR calls for new emphasis on developing such things as nuclear bunker-busters and surgical “warheads that reduce collateral damage,” as well as weapons that could be used against smaller, more circumscribed targets–“possible modifications to existing weapons to provide additional yield flexibility,” in the jargon-rich language of the review.

It also proposes to train U.S. Special Forces operators to play the same intelligence gathering and targeting roles for nuclear weapons that they now play for conventional weapons strikes in Afghanistan. And cyber-warfare and other nonnuclear military capabilities would be integrated into nuclear-strike forces to make them more all-encompassing.

As for Russia, once the primary reason for having a U.S. nuclear strategy, the review says that while Moscow’s nuclear programs remain cause for concern, “ideological sources of conflict” have been eliminated, rendering a nuclear contingency involving Russia “plausible” but “not expected.”

“In the event that U.S. relations with Russia significantly worsen in the future,” the review says, “the U.S. may need to revise its nuclear force levels and posture.”

When completion of the NPR was publicly announced in January, Pentagon briefers deflected questions about most of the specifics, saying the information was classified. Officials did stress that, consistent with a Bush campaign pledge, the plan called for reducing the current 6,000 long-range nuclear weapons to one-third that number over the next decade. Rumsfeld, who approved the review late last year, said the administration was seeking “a new approach to strategic deterrence,” to include missile defenses and improvements in nonnuclear capabilities.

Also, Russia would no longer be officially defined as “an enemy.”

Beyond that, almost no details were revealed.

The classified text, however, is shot through with a worldview transformed by Sept. 11. The NPR coins the phrase “New Triad,” which it describes as comprising the “offensive strike leg,” (our nuclear and conventional forces) plus “active and passive defenses,”(our anti-missile systems and other defenses) and “a responsive defense infrastructure” (our ability to develop and produce nuclear weapons and resume nuclear testing). Previously, the nuclear “triad” was the bombers, long-range land-based missiles and submarine-launched missiles that formed the three legs of America’s strategic arsenal.

The review emphasizes the integration of “new nonnuclear strategic capabilities” into nuclear-war plans. “New capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging threats such as hard and deeply-buried targets (HDBT), to find and attack mobile and re-locatable targets, to defeat chemical and biological agents, and to improve accuracy and limit collateral damage,” the review says.

It calls for “a new strike system” using four converted Trident submarines, an unmanned combat air vehicle and a new air-launched cruise missile as potential new weapons.

Beyond new nuclear weapons, the review proposes establishing what it calls an “agent defeat” program, which defense officials say includes a “boutique” approach to finding new ways of destroying deadly chemical or biological warfare agents, as well as penetrating enemy facilities that are otherwise difficult to attack. This includes, according to the document, “thermal, chemical or radiological neutralization of chemical/biological materials in production or storage facilities.”

Bush administration officials stress that the development and integration of nonnuclear capabilities into the nuclear force is what permits reductions in traditional long-range weaponry. But the blueprint laid down in the review would expand the breadth and flexibility of U.S. nuclear capabilities.

In addition to the new weapons systems, the review calls for incorporation of “nuclear capability” into many of the conventional systems now under development. An extended-range conventional cruise missile in the works for the U.S. Air Force “would have to be modified to carry nuclear warheads if necessary.” Similarly, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter should be modified to carry nuclear weapons “at an affordable price.”

The review calls for research to begin next month on fitting an existing nuclear warhead into a new 5,000-pound “earth penetrating” munition.

Given the advances in electronics and information technologies in the past decade, it is not surprising that the NPR also stresses improved satellites and intelligence, communications, and more robust high-bandwidth decision-making systems.

Particularly noticeable is the directive to improve U.S. capabilities in the field of “information operations,” or cyber-warfare.

The intelligence community “lacks adequate data on most adversary computer local area networks and other command and control systems,” the review observes. It calls for improvements in the ability to “exploit” enemy computer networks, and the integration of cyber-warfare into the overall nuclear war database “to enable more effective targeting, weaponeering, and combat assessment essential to the New Triad.”

In recent months, when Bush administration officials talked about the implications of Sept. 11 for long-term military policy, they have often focused on “homeland defense” and the need for an anti-missile shield. In truth, what has evolved since last year’s terror attacks is an integrated, significantly expanded planning doctrine for nuclear wars.

***

Our thanks to William Arkin and the Los Angeles Times. Copyright Los Angeles Times

*

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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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

“Putin Has Misread the West (And) if He Doesn’t Wake Up Soon, Armageddon Is Upon Us”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and Mike Whitney, December 20, 2022

With a history such as mine, I was surprised when I took an objective position on Russian President Putin’s disavowal of US hegemony, and found myself labeled a “Russian dupe/agent” on a website, “PropOrNot,” which may have been financed by the US Department of State, the National Endowment for Democracy, or the CIA itself, still harboring old resentments against me for helping President Reagan end the Cold War, which had the potential of reducing the CIA’s budget and power.

NATO Decides to Attack Russia in Ukraine

By Kurt Nimmo, December 21, 2022

But NATO has always been very clear: Ukraine CANNOT LOSE. For Washington, the only solution would therefore be for NATO forces to enter Ukraine, hoping that this will end the Russian offensive. The calculation is that Vladimir Putin will not want to directly face NATO with the possible (nuclear) consequences, and will therefore then retreat.

Video: Panama Commemorates Those Who Died in the 1989 Illegal US Invasion, Noriega Was a CIA Asset

By Don Hank, December 21, 2022

Today is an official day of mourning in Panama. It is a bank holiday and most businesses are closed. Americans like to think they did Panama a favor by invading and ridding the country of the dictator. If you go to the official web site, you will see cited a very LOW number of deaths due to Bush Senior’s 1989 invasion, which in fact killed thousands of Panamanian citizens.  

Australia’s Wieambilla Killings: The Sense Behind Senseless Murder

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 21, 2022

The contradiction behind the messages is clear.  This was a “sophisticated” operation involving surveillance.  It was planned. Those unfortunate police officers were lured to an isolated Queensland property where they were “executed”.

Jordan Vows Crack Down on Protestors “Tied to Terrorism”

By Steven Sahiounie, December 21, 2022

Yesterday, three more policemen were killed in the same area that saw the murder of the deputy police chief on Thursday and the wounding of two others. The unrest and murders occurred in the southern area near Maan.  The area has supported the Radical Islamic ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS.

Bill Gates Plans for New Catastrophic Contagion

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, December 21, 2022

Over time, it’s become clear that the globalist cabal seeking to implement a one world government repeatedly tell us what they’re about to do. They hold dress rehearsals in the form of tabletop exercises, and they’ve revealed their plans in various reports and white papers through the years.

Peru Coup: CIA Agent Turned US Ambassador Met with Defense Minister Day Before President Overthrown

By Ben Norton, December 20, 2022

The US ambassador in Peru, Lisa Kenna, worked for the CIA for 9 years, as well as the Pentagon. One day before the coup against elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo, Kenna met with Peru’s defense minister, who then ordered the military to turn against Castillo.

Former German Chancellor Merkel Admits that Minsk Peace Agreements Were Part of Scheme for Ukraine to Buy Time to Prepare for War with Russia

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, December 20, 2022

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with Die Zeit, published on December 7, that “the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It…used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine.”

Insider Tells Tucker Carlson That CIA Was Directly Involved in JFK Assassination

By Catherine Salgado, December 20, 2022

Speculation about the circumstances and motivations behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, rife at the time the tragedy occurred, has never stopped. While Kennedy’s murderer was declared soon after the assassination to have worked alone, one insider claimed to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was directly involved with JFK’s assassination.

What “Victory” and “Defeat” Would Mean in Ukraine’s War. “Regime Change in Russia”

By Eric Zuesse, December 21, 2022

In order to be able accurately to define “victory” in the war in Ukraine, the pre-requisite is to define whom the two sides are that wage this war. For example: when America fought in WW II, it was waging war in foreign battlefields and with its own troops and weapons, and even if America were to win in any of those battlefields, it still could have been defeated in WW II simply by Hitler’s winning WW II.

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

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***

Abstract

All-cause mortality by week in Australia shows that there was no detectable excess mortality 13 months into the declared pandemic, followed by a step-wise increase in mortality in mid-April 2021, synchronous with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine prioritizing elderly, disabled and aboriginal residents.

The excess mortality in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022; 14 % larger all-cause mortality than in recent pre-vaccination periods of same time duration;

62 million administered vaccine doses) was 31±1 thousand deaths, which is more than twice the deaths registered as from or with COVID‑19.

In addition, a sharp peak in all-cause mortality (mid-January to mid-February 2022; 2,600 deaths) is synchronous with the rapid rollout of the booster (9.4 million booster doses, same time period), and is not due to a climatic heatwave.

We give thirteen numbered arguments as to why we conclude that the excess mortality in Australia is causally associated with the COVID-19 vaccine.

The corresponding vaccine injection fatality ratio (vIFR) is approximately 0.05 %, which we compare to estimated vIFR values from the USA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and from all-cause mortality data for India, Southern states of the USA, Michigan (USA) and Ontario (Canada).

*

Australia experienced a significant and sustained increase in all-cause mortality, starting with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout aimed at high-risk residents in mid-April 2021, whereas it saw no detectable excess all-cause mortality up to that point during 13 months of a pandemic that was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020.

Starting in mid-April 2021, the all-cause mortality per week in Australia shows a sustained increase of >10 %, during which it never returns to its seasonal low value (of approximately 3,000 deaths/week) and attains highs of >4,000 deaths/week in June-July-August 2022. The step-wise increase in all-cause mortality remains large up to the final date of presently consolidated official government statistics (week-34 of 2022, week ending 28 August 2022) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a).

Over the measured period of the step-wise increase in all-cause mortality (mid‑April 2021 through August 2022; 14 % larger all-cause mortality than in recent pre-vaccination periods of same time duration; 62 million administered vaccine doses) there are 31±1 thousand excess deaths of all causes in Australia, whereas no excess deaths are detected in the prior 13-month period since a pandemic was declared (mid-March 2020 through mid-April 2021).

The excess all‑cause mortality following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout (31,000 deaths, mid‑April 2021 through August 2022) is more than twice the total number of deaths registered as being from or with COVID-19 (14,014 deaths, 1 January 2020 through 29 August 2022; WHO, consulted 20 December 2022, https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/au).

The above points are corroborated and illustrated in the following figures.

Figure 1A: All-cause mortality in Australia, all ages, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 1B: All-cause mortality in Australia, ages 85+ years, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 1C: All-cause mortality in Australia, ages 75-84 years, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 1D: All-cause mortality in Australia, ages 65-74 years, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 2: All-cause mortality in Australia, all ages, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022), compared to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Cumulative 1st doses of the vaccine. Orange: Cumulative 2nd doses of the vaccine. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

The vaccine rollout is shown in more detail as follows.

Figure 3A: Cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered (all dose types) by time (24 February 2021 through 22 August 2022) by state in Australia (as indicated, in the sequence NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT, ACT). (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

Figure 3B: Daily and 7-day average daily reported COVID-19 vaccine doses (all dose types) administered by time (1 March 2021 through 22 August 2022) in Australia. (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

Mortality and vaccination data specifically for the state of Victoria (VIC), Australia, is shown, for example, as follows.

Figure 4A: All-cause mortality in the state of Victoria (VIC), Australia, all ages, from week‑1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 4B: Daily and 7-day average daily reported COVID-19 vaccine doses (all dose types) administered by time (28 February 2021 through 22 August 2022) in the state of Victoria (VIC), Australia. (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

The step-wise increase in mortality is evident in Figure 1 (A through C), and it is synchronous with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout (Figures 2, 3 and 4).

The step-wise transition to a regime of larger all-cause mortality is also seen in the different states of Australia. The example of Victoria is shown in Figure 4. The same phenomenon occurs in the all-cause mortality of all the eight states of Australia, although not clearly in NT (Northern Territory) (Appendix 1).

In addition to the above-described step-wise change in regime of all-cause mortality, there is a prominent peak in all-cause mortality, having a full duration of seven weeks, from mid-January to mid-February 2022. It is not consistent with a seasonal feature and it is synchronous with a large burst in COVID-19 vaccine dose delivery (Figures 1, 3B and 4), which was the rollout of the booster (3rd doses) in Australia. The said 7-week-duration peak in all-cause mortality is prominent in the states NSW, QLD and VIC, but is essentially not present in the other states (Appendix 1). The booster rollout is shown in the following Figures 5 and 6.

Figure 5: Daily and cumulative booster (3rd doses) rollout in Australia. The time axis is from 10 November 2021 through 22 August 2022. (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

Direct comparisons between all-cause mortality by week for the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 peak and booster delivery by week are shown below, for Australia and for the states NSW, VIC and QLD (Figures 6A through 6D).

Figure 6A: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in Australia. All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

Figure 6B: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in NSW (Australia). All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. Both mortality and booster delivery are for NSW. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

Figure 6C: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in VIC (Australia). All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. Both mortality and booster delivery are for VIC. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

Figure 6D: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in QLD (Australia). All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. Both mortality and booster delivery are for QLD. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

The integrated excess mortality in the 7-week-duration peak, relative to its baseline, is approximately 2,600 deaths, compared to approximately 9.4 million booster doses delivered over the duration of the mortality peak. This corresponds to a vaccine injection fatality ratio (vIFR) of approximately 0.03 %, which in turn is not too different from the vIFR of 0.008 % for 65+ year old USA subjects injected with the Janssen vaccine, calculated from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data by Hickey and Rancourt (2022) (their Table 1).

An alternative hypothesis for the 7-week-duration mortality peak would be that it was caused by an Australian summer heatwave affecting Eastern Australia. This hypothesis is not tenable with the climatic and mortality data, which we demonstrate in Appendix 2.

For the following reasons (presented as numbered points), taken together, we conclude that the 16-month (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) sustained regime of large excess all-cause mortality in Australia may largely or predominantly be caused by its vaccine rollout, including the booster (3rd doses).

1 – There is a clear temporal association between the new regime of heightened all‑cause mortality and the vaccine rollout, whereas Australia did not have detectable excess mortality up to the start of the rollout, during 13 months of a pandemic that was declared by the WHO on 11 March 2020. (Figures 1, 2, 4 and 6; and Appendix 1)

2 – The excess mortality in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) for Australia (all ages) is 31,000 (±1,000) deaths (Figure 1A), which is more than twice the total number of deaths registered as being from or with COVID-19 (14,014 deaths, 1 January 2020 through week ending 29 August 2022; WHO, consulted 15 December 2022, https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/au).

Note that the percentage of total COVID-19-assigned deaths that are “with COVID-19” (rather than “from COVID-19”) varies between approximately 10 % and 30 %, in the period January 2022 through August 2022 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022b; their figure entitled “Proportion of deaths from and with COVID-19 during the Omicron wave”, and see “Proportion of deaths from and with COVID-19 during the Omicron wave by state of registration”). Here, death “from COVID-19” means that COVID-19 is assigned as “the underlying cause of death as the disease or condition that initiated the train of morbid events leading to death”, whereas other diseases and conditions reported as contributing to death are “referred to as associated causes” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022c). In fact, 95.4 % of deaths “from COVID-19” in Australian death certificates had non-COVID-19 “causal sequences of events” and/or “pre-existing chronic conditions” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022c; their table entitled “Number of deaths due to COVID-19 that has associated conditions”).

The question is unavoidable: Why would Australians suddenly (at the start of the vaccine rollout) start dying in excess of something mostly if not entirely other than COVID-19, after 13 months of a declared pandemic during which there was no detectable excess all-cause mortality?

3 – The mean vIFR in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) for Australia, therefore, would be:

31 K deaths  /  62 M vaccine doses[1]  =  0.05 %

which is larger than the vIFR of 0.008 % for 65+ year old USA subjects injected with the Janssen vaccine, calculated from the VAERS data (Hickey and Rancourt, 2022; their Table 1), and smaller than the estimated 1 % calculated for the excess mortality event in India (Rancourt, 2022), and for excess mortality peaks for several Southern states of the USA (Rancourt et al., 2022). As such, the 0.05 % estimated mean vIFR for Australia is within an expected range for real‑world circumstances.

4 – In addition to the above-described vaccination-period regime of all-cause mortality (mid-April 2021 through August 2022), there is a prominent peak in all-cause mortality from mid-January to mid-February 2022, having a full duration of seven weeks, which is synchronous with a large burst in COVID-19 vaccine dose delivery (Figures 1, 3B, 4 and 6). The said large burst in vaccine dose delivery was the rollout of the booster (3rd doses) in Australia (Figures 5 and 6).

We stress that Figure 6, showing a high degree of synchronicity (in both position and width) between the mid‑January to mid-February 2022 all-cause mortality peak and the booster (3rd doses) delivery pattern, with the booster delivery surge generally leading the mortality surge by approximately 1 week, represents strong evidence for a causal relation; the strongest we have seen in all-cause mortality data.

5 – The said prominent peak in all-cause mortality from mid-January to mid-February 2022 has an integrated excess mortality in its 7-week duration, relative to its baseline, of approximately 2,600 deaths, compared to approximately 9.4 million booster doses delivered over the duration of the mortality peak. This corresponds to a calculated vIFR for the specific mortality peak:

2.6 K deaths  /  9.4 M vaccine doses^[2]  =  0.03 %

which is comparable in value to that obtained (0.05 %) for the mean vIFR in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) for Australia.

6 – The impact of the rollout would be sudden, as observed (Figures 1, 2, 4A and 6; and Appendix 1), because Australia prioritized elderly, disabled and aboriginal residents (Australian Government – Department of Health and Aged Care, 2021).

7 – The step-wise increase in all-cause mortality, into the regime of excess all-cause mortality (mid‑April 2021 through August 2022) occurs simultaneously in mid‑April 2021 across all of Australia, in the eight states (see Appendix 1), rather than showing any distribution of starting times, which would be compatible with a spreading infectious disease seeding different regions at different times and spreading at different rates depending on regional differences of social and health conditions.

In this regard, theoretical models of spreading and emerging pandemics show high sensitivity of dynamic outcomes to seeding, societal population size, and inferred social and health conditions (Parham and Michael, 2011; Hasegawa and Nemoto, 2016; Ma et al., 2022).

8 – The VAERS data of the USA unambiguously shows excess all-cause deaths immediately following injections with each of the three types of COVID-19 vaccines used in the USA, with a prominent peak within 5 days of injection and an exponentially decaying excess mortality extending 2 months following injection (Hickey and Rancourt, 2022; see their Figs. S3 through S5). The integrated mortality by number of injections following injection (injection toxicity or vIFR) increases exponentially with age, as does the batch to batch variability of toxic effect (Hickey and Rancourt, 2022; see their Fig. S6). The latter observations of exponential increases with age mean that the injections represent fatal challenges in proportion to frailty of the subject.

9 – Detailed histopathological and immunohistochemical autopsy studies have demonstrated that the COVID-19 vaccines are causes of death, both in otherwise healthy subjects and in elderly subjects with comorbidities (Choi et al., 2021; Schneider et al., 2021; Sessa et al., 2021; Gill et al., 2022; Mörz, 2022; Schwab et al., 2022; Yoshimura et al., 2022).

10 – The Australian Government interprets both test results (cases) and the mortality as occurring in four “waves”, which it describes by time period as follows (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022b):

• “Wave 1: as occurring between March and May 2020. The predominant variant during Wave 1 was the original virus strain.
• Wave 2: as occurring between June and November 2020. Wave 2 predominantly occurred in Victoria. The variant during Wave 2 was the original virus strain.
• Delta wave: as occurring between July and December 2021.
• Omicron wave: as occurring during 2022 (until the end of September 2022). Due to the length of this wave and the higher number of deaths […].”

We have not found any study establishing a scientific basis for the Australian Government’s assignation of these waves. Furthermore, the said Government’s assignation is irreconcilable with:

1. the absence of detected excess mortality in March-May 2020 (Figure 1; and Appendix 1),
2. the absence of detected excess mortality in Australia (Figure 1A) and in Victoria (Figure 4A) in the period June-November 2020 (and see Appendix 1),

• a Delta-variant wave (July-December 2021) that would have missed both the mid-April 2021 step-wise surge in excess all-cause mortality and the 7-week-duration mid-January to mid-February 2022 peak in excess all-cause mortality, and

1. an Omicron-variant wave (2022) that would have caused two distinct and prominent features in excess all-cause mortality, namely the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 7-week-duration peak and the large surge that followed starting in May 2022 (Figure 1A).

The official interpretive situation is similar, although less sophisticated, to that employed by Dhar et al. (2021) who postulated that the April-July 2021 “second wave” event in Delhi (the capital city of India) was due to the Delta variant, which would have quickly swept Delhi to become predominant because it would have higher transmissibility and larger immune escape than concomitantly circulating variants. However, Dhar et al. estimate the needed characteristics of Delta by fitting a model to the epidemiological data and to the variant predominance estimated by genomic measurements from small non-randomized cohorts. Leaving aside the large known and unknown uncertainties throughout their exercise, basically, the inferred characteristics of Delta are obtained by fitting to the data, rather than being independently measured in a controlled clinical trial. Under such circumstances, the mortality event creates an illusion of the needed Delta for Delhi, but an actual Delta cannot be concluded to have caused the mortality event.

Likewise, the Australian Government’s assignation of COVID-19 waves for Australia is merely a naming exercise of reported test results (case statistics), coupled to sparse and unreliable genomic measurements (Australian Government – Department of Health and Aged Care, 2022). The Australian Government’s assignation is contradicted by hard data of all-cause mortality by time.

11 – A similar synchronicity between vaccine dose delivery and excess all-cause mortality is observed in connection with the so-called “vaccine equity” campaigns in the USA. An anomalous fall-2021 peak was interpreted as being caused by the vaccines, and is prominent in the 25-64 years age group in 21 states of the USA, most notably including Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana (Rancourt et al., 2022). The data for Mississippi is shown below (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Rancourt et al. (2022), their Fig. 11B. All-cause mortality by week (light-blue), cumulated number of people with at least one dose of vaccine (dark-blue), cumulated number of fully vaccinated people (orange) and cumulated number of people with a booster dose (yellow) by week from 2019 to 2022, for 25-64 years age group in Mississippi. Data are displayed from week-1 of 2019 to week-5 of 2022.

In the study by Rancourt et al. (2022), it was concluded that significant (detectable by all-cause mortality) vaccine-induced mortality occurred primarily among fragile groups, characterized by high degrees of poverty, disability, obesity, diabetes, and high medication rates. The vaccine injection was seen as an additional challenge, often accelerating and causing death in residents with comorbidities.

12 – Another example of probably causal synchronicity between a rapid COVID-19 vaccine rollout prioritizing elderly, frail and disabled residents and large excess all‑cause mortality is that of India (Rancourt, 2022). In that case, the early rollout of the vaccine in April-July 2021 was devastating, causing the deaths of approximately 3.7 million residents, on administering approximately 350 million doses of the vaccine (in a population of 1.39 billion). This corresponds to an effective vIFR (per-dose toxicity) of approximately 1 %. It is also approximately the same vIFR (1 %) as is consistent with the anomalous fall-2021 peak in excess all-cause mortality occurring in high‑poverty states of the USA, which was interpreted as being caused by the vaccine (Rancourt et al., 2022; and see the data for Mississippi shown in Figure 7).

Clearly, frail residents are susceptible to being fatally harmed by the injection and should be protected against state-run injection campaigns implemented without stringent individual clinical risk assessment. It appears that the population-wide COVID-19 vIFR can be as large as 1 % (India, Southern USA states), and is approximately 0.05 % in Australia.

Both India and Australia had virtually no detectable excess all-cause mortality after a pandemic was declared by the WHO, until their respective COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, which makes the synchronicity association relatively easy to assign.

13 – Two more examples of synchronicity between a rapid COVID-19 vaccine rollout prioritizing elderly and vulnerable residents and large excess all‑cause mortality occur for Michigan, USA (Rancourt et al., 2022) and Ontario, Canada.

Key figures for Michigan, USA are as follows (Figure 8). The COVID-19 vIFR in the main rollout of the vaccine in Michigan is comparable in value to that for the vaccination period for Australia (0.05 %).

Figure 8: All-cause mortality by week (light-blue), cumulative number of people with at least one dose of vaccine (dark-blue), cumulative number of fully vaccinated people (orange) and cumulative number of people with a booster dose (yellow) by week from 2019 to 2022, and by age group for Michigan, USA. Data are displayed from week-1 of 2019 to week-5 of 2022. Upper panel: (Rancourt et al., 2022; their Figure 11G) Michigan, 25-64 years age group. For the 25-64 years age group, the vaccination data is for the 18-64 years age group. Lower panel: (Rancourt et al., 2022; their Figure 11H) Michigan, 65+ years age group. The discontinuous breaks in cumulative number of vaccinated individuals are artifacts.

A key figure for Ontario, Canada is as follows (Figure 9).

Figure 9: All-cause mortality by week (light-blue), cumulative number of people with at least one dose of vaccine (dark-blue), cumulative number of fully vaccinated people (orange) and cumulative number of people with a booster dose (purple) by week from 2010 to 2022 (upper panel), and from 2019 to 2022 (lower panel), in the province of Ontario, Canada. Both mortality and vaccination are for the age group 65-84 years. (Rancourt et al., manuscript in preparation)

A clear non-seasonal peak is seen in this age group (65-84 years) in Ontario, which is synchronous with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout to this age group (Figure 9); and a particularly large and sharp mortality peak is synchronous with the booster rollout to this age group the following winter season (Figure 9). Here, again, the corresponding COVID-19 vIFRs are comparable in value to that for the vaccination period for Australia (0.05 %).

As further discussion, we make the following observations and comments.

As outlined above, less than and approximately half of the excess deaths of all causes in the vaccination period are deaths registered as COVID-19 deaths. The COVID-19-registered deaths have the following properties (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022c):

1. Attribution of death “from COVID-19” versus “with COVID-19” is based on a qualitative evaluation susceptible to bias
2. 4 % of deaths “from COVID-19” in Australian death certificates had non-COVID-19 “causal sequences of events” and/or “pre-existing chronic conditions”

• The deaths statistics by age and sex are typical of all-cause old-age deaths statistics in Western societies

61. The three “most commonly certified acute disease outcomes of COVID-19” were: pneumonia (61.4 %), respiratory failure (15 %), and other infections (11.2 %)
62. The three most common pre-existing conditions in certified “with COVID-19” deaths were: chronic cardiac conditions (39.0 %), dementia (30.5 %), and chronic respiratory conditions (17.8 %)

Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that the vaccine injections caused death by providing an additional and significant challenge to already chronically frail or vulnerable subjects, and that COVID-19 itself may not have provided a significant contribution, as we already demonstrated for the Southern states of the USA (Rancourt et al., 2022), and as is apparent for India (Rancourt, 2022).

In this context, and given the “most commonly certified acute disease outcomes of COVID-19”, it is important to note that Australia, like virtually all Western jurisdictions, dramatically reduced its antibiotic prescriptions after a pandemic was declared by the WHO (Gillies et al., 2021; Rancourt et al., 2022). This would mean that, not only were chronically frail residents challenged with the toxic injections, but they may also not have been provided the normal treatments against respiratory bacterial infections.

Finally, we note that there is starting to be some acknowledgement in the mainstream media suggesting that vaccine harm in Australia may be much larger than generally admitted by the medical establishment. The recent public testimony and submission to Parliament of former federal MP and former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Dr. Kerryn Phelps stands out in this regard (Chung, 2022).

In conclusion, the declared pandemic would have had to entirely spare Australia any detectable deaths for more than a year, while it raged in many other places around the world, before it showed any virulence, suddenly in mid-April 2021, when vaccines coincidentally were being rolled out to the elderly and most vulnerable. In addition, a sharp peak in all-cause mortality (mid-January to mid-February 2022) would be synchronous with the rapid deployment of the vaccine booster (3rd doses) purely by coincidence, without any explanation (plausible or not) being provided.

On the contrary, our analysis leads us to conclude that the excess mortality in the vaccination period (31±1 thousand deaths, mid-April 2021 through August 2022; 14 % larger all-cause mortality than in recent pre-vaccination periods of same time duration; 62 million administered vaccine doses), which is more than twice the deaths registered as from or with COVID‑19, and the sharp peak in all-cause mortality (mid-January to mid-February 2022; 2,600 deaths), which is synchronous with the rapid rollout of the booster (9.4 million booster doses, same time period) are causally associated with the COVID-19 vaccine. We give thirteen numbered arguments as to why we make this conclusion.

The corresponding vaccine injection fatality ratio (vIFR) is approximately 0.05 %, which is intermediate between the value from VAERS for ages 65+ years with the Janssen vaccine in the USA (0.008 %) and the value for India’s vaccine rollout and for Southern states of the USA subjected to “vaccine equity” campaigns (1 %).

Of course, this is diametrically opposite to the proposal that the COVID-19 vaccine would have saved any lives; a proposal that is not substantiated by extensive study of all-cause mortality data (Rancourt et al., 2022).

*

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Hickey and Rancourt (2022): Hickey, J. and Rancourt, D.G. /// Nature of the toxicity of the COVID-19 vaccines in the USA /// ResearchGate [Preprint] (9 February 2022). Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358489777_Nature_of_the_toxicity_of_the_COVID-19_vaccines_in_the_USA /// Archived at: https://archive.ph/LZpRj

Ma et al. (2022): Ma C, Li X, Zhao Z, Liu F, Zhang K, Wu A, Nie X. /// Understanding Dynamics of Pandemic Models to Support Predictions of COVID-19 Transmission: Parameter Sensitivity Analysis of SIR-Type Models /// IEEE J Biomed Health Inform., 2022, Jun; 26(6): 2458-2468. doi: 10.1109/JBHI.2022.3168825. Epub 2022 Jun 3. PMID: 35452393; PMCID: PMC9328724. https://doi.org/10.1109/jbhi.2022.3168825

Mörz (2022): Mörz, M. A /// Case Report: Multifocal Necrotizing Encephalitis and Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination against COVID-19. /// Vaccines 2022, 10, 1651. https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10101651

Parham and Michael (2011): Paul E. Parham, Edwin Michael /// Outbreak properties of epidemic models: The roles of temporal forcing and stochasticity on pathogen invasion dynamics /// Journal of Theoretical Biology, Volume 271, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 1-9, ISSN 0022-5193, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.11.015 .

Rancourt (2022): Rancourt, DG /// Probable causal association between India’s extraordinary April-July 2021 excess-mortality event and the vaccine rollout /// Correlation Research in the Public Interest, 5 December 2022 /// https://correlation-canada.org/report-probable-causal-association-between-indias-extraordinary-april-july-2021-excess-mortality-event-and-the-vaccine-rollout/

Rancourt et al. (2022): Rancourt, D.G., Baudin, M. and Mercier, J. /// COVID-Period Mass Vaccination Campaign and Public Health Disaster in the USA: From age/state-resolved all-cause mortality by time, age-resolved vaccine delivery by time, and socio-geo-economic data /// Research Gate (2 August 2022) /// https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362427136_COVID-Period_Mass_Vaccination_Campaign_and_Public_Health_Disaster_in_the_USA_From_agestate-resolved_all-cause_mortality_by_time_age-resolved_vaccine_delivery_by_time_and_socio-geo-economic_data /// Also available at: https://vixra.org/abs/2208.0023

Schneider et al. (2021): Schneider, J., Sottmann, L., Greinacher, A. et al. /// Postmortem investigation of fatalities following vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines. /// Int J Legal Med 135, 2335–2345 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-021-02706-9

Schwab et al. (2022): Schwab, C., Domke, L.M., Hartmann, L. et al. /// Autopsy-based histopathological characterization of myocarditis after anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination. /// Clin Res Cardiol (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00392-022-02129-5

Sessa et al. (2021): Sessa, F.; Salerno, M.; Esposito, M.; Di Nunno, N.; Zamboni, P.; Pomara, C. /// Autopsy Findings and Causality Relationship between Death and COVID‑19 Vaccination: A Systematic Review. /// J. Clin. Med. 2021, 10, 5876. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10245876

United Nations (2022): United Nations data /// “Deaths by month of death” /// UN (11 August 2022), accessed 2 December 2022, https://data.un.org/Data.aspx?d=POP&f=tableCode%3A65

Yoshimura et al. (2022): Yukihiro Yoshimura, Hiroaki Sasaki, Nobuyuki Miyata, Kazuhito Miyazaki, Koji Okudela, Yoko Tateishi, Hiroyuki Hayashi, Ai Kawana-Tachikawa, Hiromichi Iwashita, Kazuho Maeda, Yoko Ihama, Yasuyoshi Hatayama, Akihide Ryo, Natsuo Tachikawa  /// An autopsy case of COVID-19-like acute respiratory distress syndrome after mRNA-1273 SARS-CoV-2 vaccination  /// International Journal of Infectious Diseases 121 (2022) 98–101, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijid.2022.04.057

Notes

[1] Cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered: All doses, including boosters, are counted individually; administered 14 April 2021 through 25 August 2022, 63.01M – 1.36M = 62M. Our World in Data, accessed 16 December 2022: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~AUS&Metric=Vaccine+doses

[2] Estimated using cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered: All doses, including boosters, are counted individually; administered 8 January 2022 through 21 February 2022, 53.4M – 44.0M = 9.4M. Our World in Data, accessed 16 December 2022: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~AUS&Metric=Vaccine+doses

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

Appendix 1: Step-wise increase in all-cause mortality occurs in mid-April 2021 in all the states in Australia

Here, we show the all-cause mortality data for Australia and for each state of Australia (as labelled in the panels of Figure A1-F1), and including the 72-week vaccination period integrations, described in the present article.

We also provide the following table of corresponding vaccine-period excess mortalities.

Table A1-T1: Integrated all-cause mortality (72 weeks), differences and ratios

*The baseline-period 72-week-integrated mortality was estimated from an inspection of the values on the graphs (Figure A1-F1) for periods prior to the vaccination period, in such a way as to be representative of the value that would be predicted in the absence of the vaccination campaign and its effects.

Figure A1-F1 (containing 9 panels) follows.

APPENDIX 2: Mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak not caused by a heatwave

This appendix is concerned with the question of whether the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all-cause mortality in Australia (occurring in NSW, VIC and QLD; see Appendix 1) can be due to a climatic heatwave.

It is important to address this question because sharp all-cause mortality peaks are often associated with exceptional summer heatwaves in mid-latitude countries (e.g. Rancourt et al., 2022, cited in the present article).

The most important heatwave to affect Eastern Australia over more than the last three decades was in 2009. The government report [Australian Government – Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statement 17: The exceptional January-February 2009 heatwave in south-eastern Australia (issued 4 February 2009, updated 12 February 2009), http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs17d.pdf , accessed 18 December 2022] describes it this way:

“An exceptional heatwave affected south-eastern Australia during late January and early February 2009. The most extreme conditions occurred in northern and eastern Tasmania, most of Victoria and adjacent border areas of New South Wales, and southern South Australia, with many records set both for high day and night time temperatures as well as for the duration of extreme heat.

There were two major episodes of exceptional high temperatures, from 28-31 January and 6-8 February, with slightly lower but still very high temperatures persisting in many inland areas through the period in between.”

This exceptional 2009 heatwave did not cause any significant peak in all-cause mortality, as shown in Figure A2-F1, below. In fact, heatwaves essentially do not cause peaks in all-cause mortality in Australia, presumably because it’s always hot in the summers. Figure A2-F1 does not show any peaks, 1980-2022, which could be interpreted as summer heatwave peaks.

Also, there are no Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statements (SCSs) 2006-2022, which can be interpreted to be associated with or similarly associated to the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all‑cause mortality occurring in Eastern Australia (NSW, VIC, QLD) (see Appendix 1). See the list of SCSs here: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/ . Archived on 18 December 2022 here: https://archive.vn/WDlPA

And the Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology, “Monthly Weather Review, Australia, January 2022” report [Product code IDCKGC1AR1. Prepared on 27 April 2022. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mwr/aus/mwr-aus-202201.pdf ] makes no mention of any climate or weather event that could be associated with the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all-cause mortality occurring in Eastern Australia (NSW, VIC, QLD).

That the 2022 all-cause mortality peak of concern is not due to a heatwave is again corroborated by the fourteen maximum daily temperature maps for Australia shown below, for the years and dates as indicated on the maps.

[Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ . Specifically: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/rmse_archive.jsp?map=maxave&period=daily&year=2022&month=1&day=12 ]

The mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all-cause mortality occurring in Eastern Australia (NSW, VIC, QLD) (see Appendix 1) — seen in Figure A2-F1 and in Figures 1, 2, 4A and 6 of the present article — is not due to any climate, weather or temperature event or anomaly.

Figure A2-F1: All-cause mortality in Australia, all ages, from January 1980 through August 2022. Light-blue: All-cause mortality by month, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 16-month periods (May 2021 through August 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st month of its 16-month integration period. The labelled vertical line shows January 2009, which had a record-breaking heatwave and virtually no associated increase in mortality. February has lower mortality because it generally has only 28 days. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a) for 2015-2022; United Nations (2022) for 1980-2014.)

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If Olga Lebedeva and Pravda.ru can be believed, NATO is on the verge of entering the war in Ukraine.

“Such announcements were heard from officials of the Polish Ministry of Defence, the General Staff of the NATO alliance, officers of the French army and (of course) the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence,” according to Lebedeva.

“The main reason would be the very next Russian general offensive that NATO is planning and which according to it would decimate the Ukrainian army not only in the Donbass but also on the Kiev side (many Russian units are in combat situation in Belarus at the borders with Ukraine),” explains Rusreinfo.ru, a Russian website.

But NATO has always been very clear: Ukraine CANNOT LOSE. For Washington, the only solution would therefore be for NATO forces to enter Ukraine, hoping that this will end the Russian offensive. The calculation is that Vladimir Putin will not want to directly face NATO with the possible (nuclear) consequences, and will therefore then retreat.

The idea here is that the entrance of NATO into the conflict will strike fear into Russia and Putin and his generals and they will rethink the SMO and retreat with tails tucked.

Not going to happen.

In any case, this is a very bad calculation since it is clear that Russia will go to the end of the mission assigned by Vladimir Putin. Counting that our forces will retreat in the face of a few NATO regiments whose arms problems Russia is experiencing is a ridiculous calculation… and which will very quickly prove to be extremely deadly.

Is it possible the USG and NATO believe their own lies about Ukraine?

The war propaganda corporate media insists Ukraine is winning. “Russia is losing the war it started against Ukraine thanks to military support from the West. Now, NATO should provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with the offensive firepower and air defense Ukraine needs to end it,” writes a USG propagandist working for the 1945 website, a site churning out pro-war commentary for the propaganda media.

Fatigue has set in as the USG and its “partners” in Europe have emptied their arsenals. “Despite Washington’s assurance of supporting Kyiv for ‘as long as it takes,’… the fact is the U.S. will not be able to maintain the supply of high-end ammunition to Ukraine indefinitely,” reports the International Business Times, despite death merchants cranking out new bombs and missiles.

The USG is determined to follow through on its delusional policy of victory in Ukraine and the project to destroy Russia. Rusreinfo.ru notes

the European and American governments have an agenda to follow, made urgent by the announced dollar crash on the one hand and by the current economic debacle that will only increase in Western countries. A state of war would trigger martial law and global control of the population as it has been developed in recent years under the pretext of “covid”. They may also think that a state of war would reunite the citizens behind them.

Another delusion. Indeed, the American people are opposed to Russia’s SMO and support Ukraine, while at the same time, thanks to USG propaganda and omission, are ignorant of what Ukraine’s ultranationalists have done to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. In essence, the American people are supporting the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk. They are unwittingly facilitating atrocities reminiscent of those committed by Hitler and the Nazis (the Nazi Reichskommissariat Ukraine tested genocide in Eastern Europe under a Führer Decree).

Unlike Biden, and his neocon and humanitarian interventionist “advisers,” the American people want a peace deal and an end to the war. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs conducted a poll last month.

A just-completed November 18-20 Chicago Council survey finds that large majorities of Americans continue to support US assistance to Ukraine, both economically and with military equipment. But as the fighting drags into winter, the overall US public is now divided on whether the United States should support Ukraine as long as it takes or if it should urge Kyiv to settle for peace as soon as possible. (Emphasis added.)

Not that the political class, the uniparty, taking orders from a global elite, will be bothered with the wishes of the American people, who only matter every two years during elections of handpicked selected candidates.

“U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley held a joint news conference on Wednesday after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group,” Reuters reported, around the same time the results of the above poll were released.

Austin and Milley both said the United States would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Milley, the top U.S. general, cautioned that Russia still had significant combat power inside of Ukraine despite suffering military setbacks in its invasion.

“The probability of a Ukrainian military victory — defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they claim as Crimea — the probability of that happening anytime soon is not high, militarily,” Milley told the news conference.

“Politically, there may be a political solution where, politically, the Russians withdraw. That’s possible,” he added, saying Russia “right now is on its back.”

Milley and Austin are pushing the USG “take down Russia” narrative, never mind this will not happen and Putin has warned existential threats levied against Russia will result in a thermonuclear response.

Russia will not exit Ukraine short of accomplishing its objectives—making certain NATO is not on its border, disarming a Russophobic post-coup ultranationalist government, and making sure Ukronazis are unable to terrorize and bomb ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (and now Russia proper in Kursk, Briansk, Shebekino, Belgorod, and Klintsy).

Earlier this month, the Pentagon urged Ukraine to strike inside Russia. Now there is talk of a direct NATO intervention in Ukraine.

Does anybody still have any doubt that this is US/NATO's proxy war against Russia? pic.twitter.com/TfNnZDo0b3

— Hassan Mafi ‏ (@thatdayin1992) December 11, 2022

The USG realizes the Ukrainians are unable to defeat Russia, thus the only option is for direct NATO involvement above and beyond the current proxy war. On December 12, Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary general of NATO, admitted the alliance will soon enter the fray directly.

NATO Chief says a full-blown Russia-NATO war is a “real possibility” that may go “horribly wrong,” as he charges ahead.
How can a warmonger we never elected drag us into a war we never authorized, that can kill us all with no questions asked? https://t.co/bi0iZHPDmu

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) December 13, 2022

Adam Kinzinger, a House Republican, proposed a new Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowing USG troops to enter Ukraine to restore “the territorial integrity of Ukraine” in the event Russia uses WMDs. According to The Libertarian Institute,

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Kinzinger has repeatedly pushed to escalate a situation that his policy helped to create. On March 3, 2022, he publicly called for a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine to “prevent Russian air attacks.” If enforced, a no-fly zone in Ukraine would see U.S. forces shooting down Russian planes and even attacking targets in Russia.

Keep in mind the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives in January.  It is reported they will attempt to audit the weapons going to Ukraine. However, this does not mean they oppose USG involvement in the war. In March, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Putin a “ruthless thug” who, according to USA Today, “invaded a sovereign country and is responsible for the killing of innocent people.” Biden, Pelosi, and McConnell are on the same page, thus underscoring the unanimity of the uniparty in regard to killing Russians.

No mention of the millions of people killed by the USG war machine since the end of WW2. A “carefully researched article by James A. Lucas documents the more than 20 million lives lost resulting from US led wars, military coups and intelligence ops carried out in the wake of WWII, in what is euphemistically called the ‘post-war era’ (1945- ),” writes Michel Chossudovsky.

Lucas writes the USG and its satraps are responsible for mass deaths in Angola, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, East Timor, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungry, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian War, Korea, Laos, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Sudan, Vietnam, Yugoslavia (and Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, not mentioned).

Most Americans are unaware the USG is the world’s most prolific mass killer since the end of WWII.

This instilled ignorance, and the basic intellectual incuriosity of the average American, will allow the USG to dive further into the bloody Ukraine war, and without large antiwar demonstrations of the sort that came to an end during the USG invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many leaders and members of former antiwar movements and organizations were subsumed into the uniparty, on the “Democrat” side under Barack Obama, the man responsible for 30,000 deaths in Libya and the importation of jihadi cutthroats into Syria’s “civil war,” actually a covert campaign by the USG and Israel to reduce Syria to the failed state status suffered by Iraq after two brutal invasions and a medieval sanctions regime (resulting in a million Iraqis killed).

So long as the war propaganda media can divert attention away from the violent policies and behavior of the USG and its neoliberal predatory agenda, and the people remain ignorant of reality and mindlessly offer consensus for mass murder in the name of a perverse reformulation of democracy, there will be no stopping psychopaths from dragging the country into a war that very well may spell extinction for humanity and a majority of all living creatures.

*

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Today is an official day of mourning in Panama. It is a bank holiday and most businesses are closed.  

Americans like to think they did Panama a favor by invading and ridding the country of the dictator. If you go to the official web site, you will see cited a very LOW number of deaths due to Bush Senior’s 1989 invasion, which in fact killed thousands of Panamanian citizens.  

There was no mention in the US press that Noriega was a CIA asset, but declassified documents revealed that he was.  

He was trained at the notorious School of the Americas in torture methods. He was groomed for the position of president, and then after the mysterious plane crash that killed strongman Omar Torrijos, the extremely popular leader responsible for the handover of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians under Carter, the reins of government were turned over to the vicious dictator Manuel Noriega, all with Washington’s blessings.  

When Noriega started bad mouthing the US, Bush went after him, first organizing a coup, which succeeded, but the US betrayed the coup plotters, who were then punished by Noriega. The US then went after the army group that had tried to cooperate with the US to oust Noriega, illegally sending troops to areas outside the Canal Zone. The purpose of this betrayal was to take complete control of the military power in Panama, and this led to the bloody invasion that we are commemorating today.  

There was indiscriminate shooting of civilians, as described in the documentary linked below. The Panamanians I have spoken with all agree that the US invaders in 1989 were vicious killers, very different from the US service people in the Canal Zone, who had been very friendly with the locals, giving them well-paid jobs, which disappeared after the signing of the Carter-Torrijos treaty.  

In this web site you will see president Cortizo taking credit for making this a national Day of Mourning. In fact, I was here on Dec 20 during one of the years of the Martinelli presidency and I remember that president commemorating the Panamanians who died in the invasion.  

But lying is what politicians do, and their henchmen are journalists.  

This documentary is the closest you will get to a true picture of what actually happened, click the image below to watch the video.

*

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Featured image: Elements of 1st Bn, 508th Infantry parachuting into a drop zone, during training, outside of Panama City. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

The contradiction behind the messages is clear.  This was a “sophisticated” operation involving surveillance.  It was planned. Those unfortunate police officers were lured to an isolated Queensland property where they were “executed”.  The details were initially sketchy, but that did not prevent the general sentiment from simmering away: this was, in the words of a statement by the Queensland Police Union, a “senseless murder of colleagues”.  That account has been trotted out with unanimity.

It began as an inquiry about a missing person, involving four officers from Tara sent to a Wieambilla property in the Western Downs region, some 270km west of the Queensland capital, Brisbane.  According to Ian Leavers, President of the Queensland Police Union, two officers, constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, were shot on arrival around 4.45pm in “a ruthless, calculated and targeted execution of our colleagues”. Of the two remaining officers, one was wounded, while the other escaped.  A neighbour, Alan Dare, going in to assist, was also killed.

The three individuals accused of perpetrating the shootings were brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train, and Gareth’s wife Stacey Train.  They were subsequently killed by specialist police forces at the site.

Murder, in many instances, is filled with sense and planning.  As disturbing it may well be, an intention to kill can conform to a set of presumptions that make sense within a particular world view.  That view is often alloyed by a number of disturbing influences, the contaminant that sets the fuse.

To that end, it would be appropriate to investigate what the motivations of these figures are.  But efforts to do so have been uneven.  Media outlets have not held back in portraying the individuals as members of the mad, the deranged, the delusional.  These cloddish efforts do little to illuminate and much to obfuscate.

The quest to not understand has been aided by the conspiracy label attached to the three individuals.  Gareth Train, for one, believed that the 1996 Port Arthur massacre had been a false-flag operation; tactical police had set out to target “conspiracy talkers” and “truthers”.  He also had a YouTube channel, since deleted, replete with posts covering conspiracies on COVID, anti-vaccination and the sovereign citizen movement.  That same channel featured footage from Gareth and Stacey Train showing the prelude to the attack, including coverage of the shootings.

An ABC investigative report into the background of the trio noted, among other things, the conduct of Gareth and Tracey on their move in 2011 to the small town of Camooweal, about 13km from the Northern Territory border in far west Queensland.  “We were invited to tea at their house,” noted a resident, who noticed “their pig dogs inside the house in cages” and Gareth’s “big collection of hunting knives and he then told us he was a social worker.”

Gareth, the accounts note, had a certain lusting for blood.  “Sometimes we would see Gareth with his knives running around with dogs chasing the pigs,” another resident stated.  Given the ecstasy shown by many an Australian in massacring “feral” invasive species, not to mention the occasional native one, this crude behaviour is hardly eyebrow raising.  But this is Gareth, the cop killer, so all must be exceptional and unusual in his universe.

A closer reading of such accounts suggests that what the Trains did was less a case of being remarkable than the fact it was done so openly.  Slaughtering animals is all good, but do not do it in front of children.  Paul (not his real name) recalled how Gareth would “butcher” the pigs and hang the carcasses facing the local school.  “There would be a smell of offal and blood running onto the footy field.”

Using the analytical template for the standard nutter and the unhinged lunatic, interest focused on Gareth Train’s views expressed on fora dedicated to conspiracies and survivalism.  “I currently live on my rural property in western Queensland were [sic] I have been building an ‘ark’[,] homesteading for the last five years preparing to survive tomorrow. I am not interested in indoctrinating or convincing anyone of anything.”

The last line is worth recalling but has gotten lost in the speculative literature warning about rampaging conspiracy theorists willing to tear their way through the security and law enforcement establishment.  It’s easy to forget that the survivalist, conspiracy tribe seeking arks and sanctuaries from impending cataclysm is a large one.  It includes a good number of terrified billionaires, among them the libertarian Peter Thiel, who hopes to set up shop in New Zealand when calamity strikes.

Nicholas Evans, an academic in policing and emergency management, illustrates  the fear of his colleagues: “[t]he killings are the clearest example of what security, policing researchers, and law enforcement have warned of – conspiracy beliefs can be motivators for actual or attempted violence against specific people, places and organisations.”

In the saturation of grief, the police have been less than forthcoming about why they sent junior officers to this particular property in the first place.  Queensland Police Service commissioner Katarina Carroll conceded she did not have the “full extent of information” about the Trains.

The Queensland Police have resolutely refused to answer questions about whether officers had made a prior visit to the property, or the extent of knowledge about the shooters.

The now deleted YouTube channel features videos suggesting a history with authorities, expressed through paranoid language.  And as with much in the way of paranoia, kernels of veracity might be picked.  “You attempt to abduct us using contractors,” goes one caption.  “You attempt to intimidate and target us with your Raytheon Learjets and planes.  You sent ‘covert’ assets out here to my place in the bush.  So what is your play here?  To have me and my wife murdered during a state police ‘welfare check’?  You already tried that one.”

Gareth’s brother Nathaniel was also one who came across the police radar, having driven a 4WD packed with loaded guns and military knives through a New South Wales border gate into Queensland last December.  This was in breach of COVID-19 regulations.  Nathaniel was subsequently found disposing of some of the items in a creek near the Queensland town of Talwood, an incident reported to police.  The fact that these included three loaded firearms might have struck law enforcement as odd.

On Radio National on December 21, the Queensland Police Union again reiterated the view that there was no credence to claims that police had made a previous visit to the property.  Instead of discussing such details, Leavers has something else in mind: purchasing the property of the shooters in Wieambilla, rendering the profane sacred.

This macabre object has a broader purpose: “The last thing we want to see is the anti-vaxxers, pro-gun, conspiracy theorists to get this land and use it for their own warped and dangerous views.”  Comprehending or even seeking to understand such individuals was simply intolerable.  “They are absolutely un-Australian and I don’t want it to be used for them to promote themselves.”  Let ignorance reign so that others may live happily.

*

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

Featured image is from Queensland Police News

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***

Yesterday, three more policemen were killed in the same area that saw the murder of the deputy police chief on Thursday and the wounding of two others. The unrest and murders occurred in the southern area near Maan.  The area has supported the Radical Islamic ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS.  Large amounts of guns and ammunition were seized by the police. Experts are wondering if this might be the beginning of an uprising in Jordan. Using the cover of fuel price increases as the catalyst of a deadly uprising, recalling the 2011 staged uprising in Deraa, Syria which was engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood on the heels of a similar US-NATO attack on Libya.

Funeral of the Jordanian police officer that was killed by the Muslim Brotherhood

Dozens of people have been arrested by Jordanian security forces, accused of involvement in recent protests and violence sparked by the rise in fuel prices.

Colonel Abdul Razzaq Dalabeh, the deputy police chief of Maan province, was killed after being shot in the head on December 15 in Al-Husseiniya after he confronted protesters.  Two additional policemen were shot and wounded in the same area.  Reinforcements were called up to crack down on the protests and to find the killer of Dalabeh.

Fuel prices have almost doubled in Jordan in the last year. The diesel used by trucks and buses has caused major transport cost increases. Jordan depends on imports from neighboring countries by land.  Home heating oil costs have made people choose between eating and heating in a country that is bitterly cold in winter and may be blanketed with snow in places.

More than a week ago, cab and truck drivers began strike actions. Bus drivers and merchants joined them with shops shuttered in protest on December 14.  Protests then escalated to blocking roads with burning tires and confrontations with security forces.

Previous fuel increases and protests

In 1999, Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein took the throne as King of Jordan.  The following year Bashar al-Assad was elected President of Syria.

In 2012, Jordan increased gasoline prices by 10% which resulted in protests. That was the year after the Syrian conflict began.

Jordan has no oil or gas resources

Jordan is located in the Middle East and surrounded by some oil-rich nations like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but Jordan has no oil or gas resources, is dependent on imports, and is affected by the increasing prices of energy caused in part by the Ukrainian conflict.

The IMF loan

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is headquartered in Washington, DC. approved a $2 billion loan in 2012, and called for Jordan to increase their fuel prices to the consumers, which resulted in protests.  Jordan’s economy was under extreme pressure as thousands of Syrian refugees poured over the border into the Zaatari camp.

Jordan participated in the attack on Syria

The King of Jordan played a pivotal role in the US-NATO attack on Syria orchestrated by President Obama.  The King can’t say no to the US because Jordan receives a great deal of its annual budget from the US government. Many of the weapons and fighters in Syria came through the Jordanian border at Deraa, which was the staging place of the “uprising”.  The US government sent the weapons they had confiscated in Libya, while overthrowing the government there, to be transported to Syria via the Jordanian border at Deraa.  The Al Omari Mosque in Deraa in March 2011 became the arsenal for the terrorists following the Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Jordan has always had Muslim Brotherhood followers in the country and has suffered violent attacks by them in the past. The Muslim Brotherhood is an internationally recognized terrorist group following Radical Islam, but the US has never banned it.

Part of the US plan for regime change in Syria was the establishment of refugee camps, such as in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. The refugees living in camps perpetuate an image that Syria is not safe enough to live in, and this promotes the regime change goal.  In reality, Syrian refugees have returned from Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. The Lebanese government is in the process of sending refugees back home, especially those that were in the Arsal camp which was populated by Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and their wives and children. In the upcoming Turkish Presidential elections in six months, all the parties vying for the office have pledged to forcefully return all the refugees to Syria.

Jordan is facing violence carried out by domestic terrorists. President Assad had said that if you feed a monster, it may turn to bite you.  The monster is Radical Islam. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the US Congress and admitted, “we created them”, which referred to Al Qaeda and how the CIA had created the terrorist group to fight for US interests in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.  Al Qaeda, the US-sponsored Free Syrian Army, Jibhat al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and finally ISIS all have the same ideology, which is the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jordan participated in the US-NATO attack on Syria, and after 12 years is facing the same terrorist ideology, but this time directed at the Amman government, instead of Damascus. The monster has turned to bite the hand that fed it.

Israeli occupation

More than half of the 6.3 million population of Jordan is Palestinian.  They are the survivors and descendants of the founding of Israel in 1948 and were made refugees after their homes, farms, and businesses were taken by Israeli settlers.  The UN has registered over 2 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

In April, the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE met together in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The leaders called on Israel to stop all actions that undermine the two-state solution and to return to negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under UN resolutions.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi received Jordan’s King Abdullah and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed at Cairo Airport, and they stressed “the importance of sustaining efforts to restore calm in Jerusalem, and the need to respect the legal and historical status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

On December 17, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority called King Abdullah II of Jordan and said, “the State of Palestine and its people are keen on the security and stability of Jordan”, and that “the security and prosperity of Jordan are part of the security and prosperity of Palestine”.

Abbas thanked the King for his unending support of the Palestinian cause, which is tied to the Jordanian custodianship over Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem.

The King is the custodian of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and is a 41st-generation direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.  The king of Jordan, its mainly Palestinian population, and his Palestinian wife, Queen Rania, are all tied to the past, present, and future of Palestine.

On December 18, Israeli occupation forces blocked the main entrance to the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilia city in the northern West Bank. Israeli forces shut down the main entrance to the town with a metal gate, blocking the movement of Palestinian traffic through the entrance.

Human rights groups have said,

“Restricting movement is one of the main tools Israel employs to enforce its regime of occupation. Israel imposes restrictions on the movement of Palestinians within the West Bank, and travel between it and the Gaza Strip, into East Jerusalem, Israel, and abroad.”

The violence now brewing in Jordan may be tied to the King’s resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

Massive Protests in Jordan against the rise of fuel prices

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

All images in this article are from MD; featured image: King of Jordan giving his condolences to the family of the police officer that was killed

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First published on Global Research in 2014.

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mohammed Ali (born Cassius M. Clay) is probably the most famous draft resister in US history. When refusing to accept the draft in 1967, during the American war against Vietnam he told the Press:

“No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end… Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam, while so-called Negro people in Louisville[1] are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights.”

The only war in the official history of the United State that was lost, was also the first war in which Jim Crow, the apartheid regime created in the US after the Civil War and Reconstruction, was not the policy of the US military. How African-Americans came again to challenge the imperialist war machine in the 1960s cannot be understood without uncovering the decades of silence and deception that have covered the first war the US regime truly lost—although it has never officially ended.

Bruce Cumings, certainly the most authoritative if not the sole US expert on this mysterious conflict, wrote,

“Americans know the Korean War as a “forgotten war”, which is another way of saying that generally they do not know it. A war that killed upwards of four million people, 35,000 of them Americans, is remembered mainly as an odd conflict sandwiched between the good war (World War II) and the bad war (Vietnam).”

This reflects what might be called an especially American form of Manichaeism—for Americans there is only the “good” and the “bad”. The ability to judge either their own individual behaviour or that of their government is limited by this narrow dualism, a recurrent pattern in the way they perceive both domestic and foreign affairs. It is what made Jim Crow a most stringent and insidious form of social engineering: white and black, good and bad, sin and salvation, communism (without understanding it) and democracy (without having it). Bipolar disorder predates the pharmaceutical and confessional waves of the last two decades. In fact this disorder, going back to the country’s founding myth, has been a fundamental obstacle to comprehending the vicious invasion of a fiercely independent Asian country, under the pretext of preserving these supposedly clear moral categories. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, staunch Presbyterian and corporate mercenary, declared the necessity of a “Christian war” in Asia.[2]

I.F. Stone, a unique American journalist, tried to breach the insipid and seemingly impenetrable barrier in the consciousness of Americans when he first published his Hidden History of the Korean War in 1952—in the midst of brutal fighting in Korea and political purging in his own land. Stone wrote:

“Writing in an atmosphere much like that of full war, I realised that I could be persuasive only if I utilised material which could not be challenged by those who accept the official government point of view. I have relied exclusively, therefore, on United States and United Nations documents, and respected American and British newspaper sources.”[3]

Stone’s history is damning although he deliberately used only published sources and not the disclosure of classified documents. His hidden history is a case study in how the control of the narrative—to use a modern term—successfully prevented and prevents obvious criminal conduct by the government and military from being recognised for what it is.

Hence Professor Cumings asserted that Stone’s non-conformist history “is a textbook on how to read… People with a built-in indifference to history are ill accustomed to retrospective digging, to lifting up rugs, to searching for subterranean forces and tendencies. Exploring the labyrinth of history is alien to the American soul, perhaps because an optimistic people find knowledge of the past too burdensome in the present”[4]

But just maybe even more problematic are the basic lies upon which the US founding myth was based and had to be enforced upon every new wave of cheap immigrant labour imported to dilute the poison of Negro slavery and Native American annihilation from which the hypocritical optimism was born. The US war against Korea was only possible because the US regime had emerged from the “good war” with the only industrial economy intact and capable of fulfilling its founder’s “manifest destiny” to replace the empires of their European forebears. This manifest destiny replaced Britain’s “white man’s burden” with the war against communism and nationalism. This optimism, born from decimation of a continent filled with virtually defenceless indigenous, driven by uprooted and exploited labour, was only possible with a culture of forgetting, forgetting the mass murder, the slavery, the poverty and oppression to which immigrants had been subjected in Europe before they came to North America. Two world wars had taught Germans and Japanese their tenuous place in this white man’s republic, racially divisible under god.

I.F. Stone explains the way the war was fabricated by a man William Manchester called an “American Caesar”.[5] He shows that this nominally United Nations war was a process of transforming the continental warrior state into a full-fledged global war machine for whom the very scent of peace was deemed revolting, esp. for dividends. Repeatedly Stone refers to the threat of “peace”. Chapter 15 is called, “Peace alarms”. Chapter 28 is called “Anti-peace offensive”. Chapter 33, “Hiding the Lull” describes how MacArthur’s headquarters worked to conceal the actual decline in combat activity—except US bombing. Chapter 41 is called “Postponing Peace Again”. In fact Stone shows on numerous occasions that the worst fear of those US warlords in Asia and Washington was that “peace might break out”.[6] Even MacArthur’s field commanders lied beyond the distortions for which William Westmoreland would be grated years later. Stone writes:

“Eighth Army Headquarters claimed to have killed or wounded 69,500 of the enemy from January 25 to midnight February 9, an average of about 4,600—or as Headquarters put it, “almost” a “full division” a day. Comparisons with the peak battles of World Wars I and II will indicate what a feat this was… If the figures given out that day at Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway’s Headquarters were correct, then the push through the no man’s land south of Seoul must rank with the Battle of Stalingrad, the climax of World War II…”[7]

This was somehow plausible—and even acceptable– to Americans since they were repeatedly told how their clean-cut American soldiers were confronting endless “hordes” of Asians. Even the British press could not swallow the official reporting. The Daily Mirror published a story headlined: “Fairy Tales from Korea”.[8]

Aside from the exhaustion of the belligerents during the US Civil War—from 1860 – 1865—after the horrific violence waged by the industrialised armies of the mercantile North against the feudal armies of the Southern latifundista, there has been little serious bloodshed in the history of US conquest—at least as far as whites have been concerned. Hence the optimism that prevails among the warmongering classes seems to have arisen from the exceedingly modest waste of white lives in the two hundred years of the republic’s continental and colonial expansion.

Stone repeatedly demonstrates that Douglas MacArthur always lived up to the reputation he enjoyed among his fellow general officers—as a man who knew how to stage a show. MacArthur’s wilful deceit and manipulation of the US media assigned to his headquarters in Tokyo was every bit as contrived as the embedded reporting and isolated journalist pools of the Grenada invasion (1983) and the endless Gulf Wars starting in 1991. It should be no surprise however that a third generation colonial slaughterer should follow his return to the Philippines (where his father had also been military governor) to pursue the conquest of the rest of Asia, absorbing on the way the colonies and dependencies of Europe’s bankrupt empires.

However Stone rightly distinguishes between MacArthur’s limitless egotism and the genteel ambitions of the Northeastern establishment personified in Dean Acheson, whom the British antecedents thought “was their picture of what a foreign secretary should be: cultivated, personable and superbly tailored.”[9] Where Stone becomes problematic is precisely in this aspect of his analysis. If MacArthur and the rest of the military establishment in Washington were bent on presenting the war in terms of the controlling narrative: good v. bad, communist v. democracy, Christianity v. atheism, and ultimately whites v. non-whites, who were the real targets of the propaganda—the psychological operations at the core of the war against Korea. What made the war against Korea, essentially a civil war to reunify a peninsula that had been colonised by Japan with US brokerage and then partitioned against both Allied promises and the will of the Korean inhabitants, necessary?[10]

It could not have been the general population, including the Black Americans still targets of Jim Crow and white terrorism at home. It could not have been the socialists who emerged in the US as a potent force in the labour movement, abetted by the grudging US alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. Nor could it have been the average working class man or woman whose claims to a peace dividend were to be foiled by America’s corporate elite. Stone was not privy to NSC 68—promulgated just before 1950 and only declassified in the 1970s. Nonetheless Stone was well aware of the corporate forces prepared to fight against social expenditure but perfectly willing to adopt military Keynesianism if it meant windfall weapons profits.[11]

Stone’s Hidden History leaves us with the facts of war: the total destruction of Korea, esp. north of the 38^th parallel. He documents endlessly, from reports in the New York Times and other newspapers of record, that despite the lack of an enemy in the field that had no interest in demolishing its homeland, the Supreme Commander exercised carte blanche (pun intended) to saturate the entire peninsula with high explosives and napalm. The logical conclusion of Stone’s story is that the US regime destroyed non-white Korea—like so many Vietnamese villages thereafter—to save it. But for whom? Stone only hints at the answer.

Today the territory of the Palestinian nation has been virtually obliterated by a US client state. However the debate in the US persists in the same way it did between 1950 and 1953. Perhaps what Stone missed—or was simply unable to say in public—is that same issue which conceals the war against Palestine: Namely the entrenched power of an elite US ruling class.

This imperial consensus however is not uniform in its particular objectives or interests. It only coalesces when there is active warfare. It has only recently been acceptable in albeit limited public venues to discuss the “Israel lobby”. In 1950, it was impossible for anyone to discuss the “China lobby”. Stone tells us that powerful factions in the US elite could not agree whether the dictates of empire meant that US power should be focussed on Europe and the threat posed by the Soviet Union to the expansion of US corporations into European markets or—as the faction to which John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen in CIA belonged felt—directed toward the endless wealth to be plundered in Asia. The evacuation of Britain, France and the Netherlands from their plantation and mining possessions—not least of which the CIA-favoured opium trade, controlled from Shanghai until 1949—promised huge opportunities.

MacArthur’s role ought to be seen in this light. The decision to attempt “rollback” in Asia, rather than “containment” was made possible by the US atomic arsenal. This fearsomely obscene weapon had already been deployed against “non-white hordes” in Japan and appeared no doubt the weapon of choice for US re-conquest of China. Sheer numbers would have made an invasion and occupation of China impossible. The victory of Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party resulted in the expulsion of the last of China’s great warlord drug dealers from the mainland. Not only Chiang Kai-Shek but also his banking and pirate backers in the US, Japan and Britain would have profited immensely from a restoration of the status quo ante.[12] To pursue this goal MacArthur cut the Korean War out of whole cloth and deliberately created conditions which would replicate the rationale used to defend the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The mystery with which Stone left his readers in 1952 was why did the US regime ultimately stop its campaign to conquer China? Was it the repeated refusal of the Chinese and Russians to intervene far enough to provide objective justification for MacArthur’s fake war against communism? Was it the realisation in Washington that having destroyed all of Korea they could not have fought a two front, perhaps even nuclear war? Perhaps it was precisely the outbreak of a precursor to what has been erroneously called “Vietnam syndrome”, the puncturing of pride within the ruling elite and the choice in Washington and New York to make more money at home and in Europe?

According to Gerald Horne, the Korean War was a major catalyst for Truman’s half-hearted attempts to abolish the US apartheid system of Jim Crow.[13] While the war in Korea served well to establish the post-war military-industrial complex, against which Eisenhower belatedly warned, it did not produce the desired domestic harmony. The Korean War was waged at home against every dissident group that had survived the New Deal and the US victory over the Axis. However, by attacking a fiercely nationalist, non-white country while attempting to preserve all the vestiges of centuries of white privilege at home, the elite was forced for a brief moment to choose. Could it crush nationalism (anti-colonialism) abroad and equality at home? Could it win an absolute ideological victory in Europe while terrorising Blacks in America? Could it arm and train segregated military units and construct the national police force which today keeps the largest prison population in the world under lock and key?

Stone does not ask any of those questions. But then these issues were not yet part of the official and respected narrative.

In 1954, the US regime was compelled to use federal authority to suppress the most atrocious practices of its racist system. It could be confronted with this domestic crime all the way through to the finish of its only “bad war”. Mohammed Ali was only born in 1942, less than ten years before the war against Korea started. However he was only the most famous of those Blacks who refused to join in the annihilation of non-whites throughout the world to support liberties never respected at home. Refusing to go to Vietnam—where both the death squads and saturation bombing deployed by the US Armed Forces in Korea were enhanced and modernised–Ali put it quite bluntly. “My enemy is the white people not the Vietcong.” Sometimes the US ruling elite is forced to recognise the potential hazard of such honesty in the face of their own egregious deceit.

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Notes

[1] Louisville, Kentucky, where Mohammed Ali was born.

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In order to be able accurately to define “victory” in the war in Ukraine, the pre-requisite is to define whom the two sides are that wage this war.

For example: when America fought in WW II, it was waging war in foreign battlefields and with its own troops and weapons, and even if America were to win in any of those battlefields, it still could have been defeated in WW II simply by Hitler’s winning WW II.

Any given battlefield was only a part of the war itself; and that war, WW II, was not defined by any one of its many battlefields. There is a difference between a battlefield in which a war is being waged, versus the war that is being waged.

However: when America fought and still fights in Syria, it wages war on that battlefield against Syria, for regime-change in that nation; and ONLY by replacing Syria’s Government with one that the U.S. Government supports would America (and its allies in that war) “win” that war, in that battlefield (Syria), which is that war’s ONLY battlefield.

In that instance, then, winning that battlefield is the same as winning the war there, by America and its allies, against that nation.

America (unlike in WW II) does not wage this war against Syria by using its own troops and weapons but instead by hiring proxy armies — mainly separatist Kurds and Al Qaeda-led jihadists — in order to achieve there a regime-change that the U.S. Government approves of.

Unless and until that is done, America will have lost the war that it is fighting in Syria. (Perhaps this is a reason why U.S. troops are not fully withdrawn from there though Syria’s Government has repeatedly ordered them to leave: America doesn’t want to lose in Syria, as it did lose in Afghanistan and in Vietnam.) However: the war in Syria is not between Syria’s Government and America’s proxy-armies there; it is instead a war between America and Syria, which is being waged by America in that battlefield, using foreign troops, to defeat Syria.

Similarly, the war in Ukraine is not a war between Ukraine versus Russia, but, in Ukraine’s case, Ukraine is only a proxy battlefield and proxy army on America’s side.

The war in Ukraine is a war that America initiated against Ukraine in February 2014 by America’s coup there that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected and neutralist Government and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian and pro-American one on Russia’s border in order ultimately to become able to place just 317 miles away from the Kremlin U.S. missiles which would be only a five-minute flight-time away from nuking Russia’s central command — far too little time in order for Russia’s central command to be able to verify that launch and then to launch its own retaliatory missiles.

For America to win that war, by Ukrainians, in the battlefield of Ukraine (i.e., by that proxy army, in that proxy battlefield against Russia) would be to checkmate Russia and so to transform Russia into another U.S. vassal-nation, regardless of what Russians might want — and this is what the U.S. regime demands: “regime-change in Russia.” That is America’s (and its ‘allies’ or vassal-nations’) goal there.

For Russia to win that war in the battlefields of Ukraine would be for Russia to defeat the U.S.-imposed government there and to establish in Ukraine not the neutralist Government that had been there before America’s take-over of Ukraine in 2014 but instead a Russian-imposed Government that will order all U.S.-and-allied troops and advisors — including from all of America’s vassal-nations and especially from NATO — out of the country, and close the door, seal Ukraine’s borders against all U.S. vassal-nations.

That would mean telling all Ukrainians who want to leave for “The West” to go and never come back into Ukraine. At that time, Russia would invite the U.S. and its vassal-nations (or ‘allies’) to provide to any such Ukrainian any assistance, financial or otherwise, that the person might need in order to relocate into the U.S. empire. However, even if the U.S.-and-allied side refuse to provide any such assistance, the person must relocate and never come back — even if the person would then be stateless. Anyone who wishes to remain in Ukraine would be required to sign an oath of loyalty to the new, pro-Russian, Ukrainian Government. That would automatically entail the right to vote in the new Ukraine’s future elections.

The only alternative to there being a clear win of this war by either side would be for America to agree to Russia’s demand that America recognize the legitimacy of the then-existing line of separation between the two sides, and for Russia to relocate its own capital away from Moscow, to Novosibirsk (1,900 miles away from Ukraine) or some other city that would be far enough away from NATO so that America would not within the forseeable future any longer be able, at all realistically, to aspire to checkmate against, and grab control over, Russia. That would entail concessions by both sides, no win for either side. (Moving the capital to Novosibirsk would also place the capital near the center of Russia and within its Asian part — better suited for the future, nearer to China, Beijing being 1,865 miles away.) America would continue to be the world’s biggest threat to peace; the only way to stop that would be for Russia to win in Ukraine against America.

America is attempting to carry out the plan that Cecil Rhodes came up with in 1877, and that Harry Truman committed America to on 25 July 1945, and that GHW Bush, starting on 24 February 1990, committed America and its allies to continue at least until Russia becomes conquered. Barack Obama merely started the present phase of this “Rhodesist plan”, a phase that could produce a nuclear WW III and end everything, if Russia fails to achieve a clear win against the U.S. empire.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

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

Featured image is from commons.com.ua/

“…and the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame; And on each end of the rifle we’re the same” — John McCutcheon

108 years ago this Christmas Eve something happened in the early months of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war.

The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again.

“Christian” Europe was in the fifth month of the war of 1914 – 1918, the so-called Great War that finally ground to a mutually suicidal halt after four years of exhausting trench warfare, with all of the original participants financially, spiritually and morally bankrupted.

British, Scottish, French, Belgian, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian clergymen from church pulpits in those Christian nations were doing their part in fomenting a decidedly un-Christ-like patriotic fervor that would result in a holocaust that destroyed four empires, killed upwards of 20 million soldiers and civilians, physically wounded hundreds of millions more and caused the psychological and spiritual decimation of an entire generation of young men whose spiritual care was supposed to be the responsibility of those clergymen.

Christianity, it should be remembered, began as a highly ethical pacifist religion based on the teachings and actions of the nonviolent Jesus of Nazareth (and his pacifist apostles and followers). Christianity survived and thrived despite persecutions until it became the largest religion in the Roman Empire by the time Constantine the Great became emperor and usurped the religion into becoming OK with homicidal violence. Since then, the nations that profess Christianity as their state religion have never allowed the mainline churches to truly exercise the radical peacemaking of the original form of Christianity as Jesus had taught.

So, contrary to the ethical teachings of Jesus, most modern Christian churches have not been active resisters to its particular nation’s imperial aspirations, its nation’s aggressive wars, its nation’s war-makers or its nation’s war profiteers. Instead, the church has, by and large, become a bloody instrument of the satanic in support of whatever sociopathic warmongers and sociopathic corporations are in power.

So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see that the religious leaders on both sides of World War I were convinced that God was on their particular side and therefore not on the side of those professed followers of Jesus that were fingered as enemies on the other side. The incongruity (believing that the same god was blessing the lethal weapons and protecting the doomed sons on both sides of No-Man’s Land) failed to register with the vast majority of combatants and their spiritual counselors.

So, early in the war, pulpits and pews all over Europe reverberated with flag-waving fervor, sending clear messages to the millions of doomed warrior-sons that it was their Christian duty to march off to kill the equally doomed Christian soldiers on the other side of the line. And for the civilians back home, it was their Christian duty to “support the troops” who were destined to return home dead or wounded, psychologically and spiritually broken, disillusioned – and faithless.

A mere five months into this frustrating war (featuring trench warfare, artillery barrages, withering machine gun fire, and, soon to come, unstoppable armored tanks, aerial bombardment and poison gas), the first Christmas of the war on the Western Front offered a respite to the exhausted, freezing and demoralized troops.

Christmas was the holiest of Christian holidays and every soldier in the frozen trenches was slowly coming to the abrupt realization that war was NOT glorious (as they had been led to believe). The new experiences of death, dying, hunger, frostbite, sleep deprivation, shell shock, traumatic brain injuries and homesickness, the traditional hopefulness of the spirit of Christmas had a special meaning for the troops.

Christmas reminded the soldiers of the good food, warm homes and beloved families that they had left behind and which – they now suspected – they might never see again. The soldiers in the trenches desperately sought some respite from the misery of the rat and lice-infested, corpse-infested and increasingly frozen trenches.

They did not yet realize that even if they survived physically, they might not survive psychically or spiritually.

Trench Warfare in 1914

In the excitement leading up to the war, most frontline soldiers had been convinced that God was on their side, that their nation was pre-destined to be victorious and that they would be “home before Christmas” where they would be celebrated as conquering heroes.

Instead, each frontline soldier was at the end of his emotional rope because of the unrelenting artillery barrages against which they were defenseless. If they weren’t killed or physically maimed by the artillery shells and bombs, they would eventually be emotionally destroyed by “shell-shock” (now known as combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder – PTSD).

The soldier-victims of battlefield cruelty often suffered depression, suicidality, hyper-alertness and horrifying nightmares and flashbacks (which was usually misdiagnosed as a “hallucination of unknown cause”, a reality that would condemn millions of future soldiers to be mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia and thus mistakenly treated with addictive, brain-altering psych drugs).

Many World War I soldiers suffered any number of traumatic mental and/or neurological abnormalities, including traumatic brain injury, which only became a diagnosable affliction several wars later.

Among the other common war-induced “killers of the soul” were the starvation, the malnutrition, the dehydration, the infections (such as typhus and dysentery), the louse infestations, the trench foot, the frostbite and the gangrenous toes and fingers. If any of the tormented survivors got back home in one piece, they would not really appreciate being treated as military heroes in memorial day parades staged in their honor. They knew – if they were being totally honest with themselves – that they not heroes, but rather they were victims of a sick, delusional, militarized culture that glorified war and killing and then abandoned the wounded survivors, whom they wouldn’t or couldn’t understand.

Poison gas attacks from both sides, albeit begun by the scientifically-superior Germans, began early in 2015, and Allied tank warfare – which was a humiliating disaster for the British innovators of that new technology – wouldn’t be operational until the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

One of the most stressful and lethal realities for the frontline soldiers was the suicidal, misbegotten, “over the top” infantry assaults against the opposition’s machine gun nests. Such assaults were complicated by the presence of shell holes and the rows of coiled barbed wire that often made them sitting ducks. Artillery barrages from both sides commonly resulted in tens of thousands of casualties in a single day.

The “over the top” infantry assaults sacrificed hundreds of thousands of obedient soldiers in the futile efforts to gain ground. Those assaults were stupidly and repeatedly ordered by senior officers such as Sir John French and his replacement as British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. Most of the old-timer generals of a century ago had trouble admitting that their outdated horse and sabre cavalry charges across the muck of No-Man’s Land were both hopeless and suicidal.

The general staff planners of their disastrous attempts to end the war quickly (or at least end the stalemate) were safely out of the range of enemy artillery barrages. The national war-planners were safely back in Parliament or in their castles, and their aristocratic generals were comfortably back at their warm and dry headquarters far away from the battles, eating well, being dressed by their orderlies, and drinking their tea and claret – none of them at any risk of suffering the lethality of war.

Psychologically distressing screams of pain often came from the wounded soldiers who were helplessly hanging on the barbed wire or trapped and perhaps bleeding to death in the bomb craters between the trenches. Often the dying of the wounded would linger for days, and the effect on the troops in the trenches, who had to listen to the desperate, unanswerable cries for help was always psychologically devastating. By the time Christmas came and winter hit, troop morale on both sides of No Man’s Land had hit rock bottom.

Christmas in the Trenches

So on December 24, 1914, the exhausted troops settled down to their meager Christmas with, for the lucky ones, gifts from home, special food, special liquor, special chocolate bars and the hope for peace, if even for one night.

On the German side, a magnanimous (and deluded) Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that 100,000 Christmas trees with millions of ornamental candles be sent to the front, expecting that such an act would boost German troop morale. Using the precious supply lines for such militarily unnecessary items was ridiculed by the most hardened officers, and nobody suspected that the Kaiser’s Christmas tree idea would backfire – instead becoming a catalyst for an unplanned-for and unauthorized cease-fire, orchestrated by non-officers and unheard of in the history of warfare. It was to become censored out of mainstream history books for most of the next century.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a spontaneous, unauthorized event that happened at a number of locations all along the 600 miles of triple trenches that stretched across Belgium and France, and it was an event that would never again be duplicated.

”Joyeux Noel”

Ten years ago, “Joyeux Noel” (French for “Merry Christmas”) received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for best foreign film of 2005. It tells the moving tale that was adapted from the many surviving stories that had been told in letters from soldiers who had participated in the truce. It was almost a miracle that the truth of that remarkable event survived the powerful censorship.

Courageous German soldier Singing in No Man’s Land – Christmas Eve 1914

As told in the movie, in the darkened battlefield, some German soldier started singing the beloved Christmas hymn “Stille Nacht”. Soon the British, French and Scots on the other side of No Man’s Land joined in with their versions of “Silent Night”. Other Christmas songs were sung, often as duets in two tongues. Before long, the spirit of peace and “goodwill towards men” prevailed over the demonic spirit of war, and the troops on both sides began to sense their common humanity. The natural human aversion to killing other humans broke through to consciousness and overcame the fear, patriotic fervor and pro-war brain-washing to which they had all been subjected.

Soldiers on both sides courageously dropped their weapons, came “over the top” in peace to meet their former foes face-to-face. To get to the neutral zone, they had to climb over barbed wire, walk around shell holes and over frozen corpses (which were later to be given respectful burials during an extension of the truce, with soldiers from both sides helping one another with the gruesome task of burying their comrades).

Graves in No Man’s Land – Christmas Day 1914

Treasonous French, German and Scottish Lieutenants – Christmas Day, 1914

The spirit of retaliation had been replaced by a spirit of reconciliation and the desire for real peace on earth. New friends shared chocolate bars, cigarettes, wine, schnapps, soccer games and pictures from home. Addresses were exchanged, photos were taken and every soldier who genuinely experienced the emotional drama was forever changed, having an aversion to kill men who were not demons but rather exactly the same as they were.

And the generals and the politicians back home were appalled.

Fostering Peace on Earth in Times of War is an Act of Treason

Fraternization with the enemy (as well as refusing to obey orders in time of war) is universally regarded by military commanders as an act of treason and a serious crime deserving of severe punishment. In most wars throughout history, such “crimes” were often dealt with by severe beatings and often firing squad. In the case of the Christmas Truce of 1914, most commanding officers feared mutiny if severe punishments were carried out so, instead, not wanting to draw public attention to an incident that was potentially contagious and could stop the war, they  censored letters home and tried to ignore the episode.

War correspondents were forbidden to report the incident to their papers. Some commanding officers threatened courts martial if fraternization persisted. They understood that getting to know and befriend a supposed enemy was bad for the killing spirit of war.

There were punishments that were carried out against some of the most conscientious soldiers who refused to fire their rifles. The French Catholic and British Protestant Allied troops naturally began questioning the moral legitimacy of the war and so they were re-assigned to different – and less desirable – regiments.

German troops were either Lutheran or Catholic, and the consciences of many of them had been revived by the truce. Refusing to obey their orders to kill, many of them were sent to the Eastern Front where there were much harsher conditions. Separated from their comrades who had also experienced the spirit of Christmas, they had no choice but to fight and die in the equally suicidal battles against their Russian Orthodox Christian co-religionists. Very few Allied or German soldiers who experienced the Christmas Truce of 1914 survived the war.

If humanity is truly concerned with the barbaric nature of militarism, and if our modern-era false flag-generated wars of empire are to be effectively derailed, the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 needs to be retold over and over again.

The satanic nature of war became obvious to the ones who experienced the Christmas Truce in 1914, but war profiteers have been trying –with great success – to cover it up ever since. Flag-waving patriotism and telling fake or exaggerated stories of universal military heroism have worked well to glorify what is blatantly inglorious.

The satanic nature of war has existed ever since greed took over natural humane values and somebody found out that he could dominate somebody else (or steal his possessions) with the threat of bodily harm. The satanic nature of homicidal violence, whether state-sponsored or simply a solitary act, was recognized as evil by the nonviolent Jesus and his earliest followers 2000 years ago.

Both ancient and modern wars have been unjustifiably glorified in history textbooks and, if civilization is to survive, they need to be exposed as satanic.  Violence begets violence and wars are contagious. Wars are universally futile, seem to be contagious, never truly end and their extremely high costs makes them a very poor return on investment.

Modern American wars are now being fought by vulnerable, thoroughly indoctrinated, post-adolescent, Call of Duty first person shooter gamers who liked the adrenalin high of killing virtual “bad guys”. Sadly, unbeknownst to them, they are at high risk of having their emotional and spiritual lives negatively and permanently altered by the physical, mental and spiritual damage that always comes from participating in actual homicidal violence.

Combat war can easily doom its participants to a life overwhelmed by the wounds of war (PTSD, sociopathic personality disorder, suicidality, homicidality, loss of religious faith, traumatic brain injury, malnutrition from the highly processed military food, autoimmunie disorders because of the military’s over-vaccination programs with neurotoxic vaccines, and addictive drug use [either legal or illegal]). What is most important to realize is that all those lethal effects are totally preventable.

Society has an Ethical Duty to Warn

It seems to me that it would be helpful if moral leadership in America, especially its Christian leaders, would discharge their duty to warn their children and adolescents about all of the serious consequences that being in the killing professions can have on their souls and psyches.

Without such countervailing truths being told by a nation’s moral leadership, war planners have an easy time keeping potential  soldiers from recognizing the humanity of those that are fingered as enemies, whether they are Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Russians, Vietnamese, Chinese or North Koreans. I have been repeatedly told by military veterans that military chaplains, who are supposed to be nurturers of the souls of the soldiers that are in their “care”, never bring up, in their counseling sessions, the Golden Rule, Jesus’ clear “love your enemies” commands, his many ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount or the biblical commandments that say “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s oil”.

Military chaplains (as is true with military psychiatrists as well) are just well-paid cogs in the apparatus of making war maximally efficient for their military, economic, political and corporate overlords. In fairness, I suppose, military chaplains have probably never been schooled – beginning with their Sunday School upbringings – in the profoundly important gospel truths about humility, mercy, non-violence, non-domination, non-retaliation, unconditional love and the rejection of enmity. Is it too late to start asking them to do what Jesus would have them do?

Theological Blind Spots of War

One theological blind spot about war was nicely illustrated near the end of “Joyeux Noel” in a powerful scene depicting a confrontation between the Christ-like, altruistic, antiwar Scottish chaplain and his pro-war Calvinist bishop. As the humble chaplain was mercifully administering the “last rites” to a dying soldier, he was approached by the bishop, who had come to chastise the chaplain for fraternizing with the enemy during the Christmas Truce. The bishop summarily relieved the simple pastor of his chaplaincy duties because of his “treasonous and shameful” Christ-like behavior on the battlefield.

The authoritarian bishop refused to listen to the chaplain’s story about his having performed “the most important mass of my life” (with enemy troops participating in the celebration) or the fact that he wished to stay with the soldiers that needed him because they were losing their faith in God. The bishop angrily denied the chaplain’s request to remain with his men.

Christmas Eve Mass, France, Dec 24, 1914

The bishop then delivered a rousing pro-war, jingoistic sermon (which was taken word-for-word from a homily that had actually been delivered by an Anglican bishop later in the war). The sermon was addressed to the fresh troops that had to be brought in to replace the veteran soldiers who had suddenly become averse to killing, and were refusing to fire on the “enemy”.

The image of the dramatic but subtle response of the chaplain to his sacking should be a clarion call to the Christian church leadership – both clergy and lay – of every militarized, so-called “Christian” nation. This chaplain, after listening to the bishops sermon, simply hung up his cross and walked out of the door of the field hospital.

“Joyeux Noel” is an important film that deserves to be annual holiday viewing. It has ethical lessons far more powerful than the traditional fare of “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “A Christmas Carol”.

One of the lessons of the story is summarized in the concluding verse of John McCutcheon’s famous song about the event: “Christmas in the Trenches”:

“My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. In the decade prior to his retirement, he practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) and preventive mental health care”. Since his retirement, he has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American imperialism, friendly fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, and the dangers of Big Pharma, psychiatric drugging, the over-vaccinating of children and other movements that threaten American democracy, civility, health and longevity and the future of the planet. Many of his columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn, http://www.globalresearch.ca/authors?query=Gary+Kohls+articles&by=&p=&page_id= or at https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

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First published on December 16, 2022

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Perhaps some vegans would agree with the World Economic Forum’s attempt to sell the idea that only a dictatorship can ensure that methane emitting cows, real food supporters and mixed farmers will not disrupt the path of global salvation set out by the proponents of a ‘Green New Deal’.

Whatever opinions may be held, the interpretation of what constitutes a ‘Green’ diet is not being decided by common sense oriented consumers of pro-ecological foods.

Amongst the fake foods being pushed forward as ‘world saving’, synthetic beef is already in production in Israel, Holland, Indonesia and the USA.

The motivation to create such a product centres around the story that cows give off methane thereby contributing to global warming.

This piece of so called ‘science’ has given a boost to the vegan argument that mankind should adopt a purely vegetable, grain, fruit and nut diet – and that farm animals should be phased-out of agricultural practices altogether.

The more thoughtful ones rightly point-out that some 70% of all agricultural grains are used to feed livestock instead of to feed human beings direct, thus producing a huge imbalance in global food availability and efforts to eradicate poverty and starvation.

This argument, widely adopted by the vegan lobby – should be recognised as valid – provided it is seen in the context of a long, gradual evolutionary transformation of farming systems and human dietary trends. But not as reason to force veganism on a generally omnivorous global human family, overnight.

Veganism has already advanced quite rapidly in the ‘health conscious’ segment of modern Western society; but it is riven with confusions and extremism.

Most of the younger generation know absolutely nothing about food and farming, plant processing or modern food production methods.

They can’t make an informed distinction between ‘grass-fed’ (no grains), low stocking density, free ranging well cared for livestock – and cereal fed, highly intensive, high stocking rate ‘coral’ based animal concentration camps.

Starting from here, the vegan goes only by what he/she is informed is a ‘healthy meat free diet’, via the heavily slanted projections of corporate advertising.

But is it healthy?

Unfortunately not. Unless organically grown (a tiny minority), the vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains  that form the typical vegan diet are all the product of intense agrichemical farming methods that use synthetic nitrogen, carcinogenic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and monocultural (non rotational) soil depleting field management methods.

Such foods are also grown by ‘hydroponic’ methods. Here vegetables are grown in large vertical greenhouses using no soil at all, just water drip fed with chemicals. The mechanics of this system are largely robotic.

The majority of vegans have no idea about any of this. They judge all by the words of the propaganda machine which pumps out glossy photos of perfect looking veggies being eaten by perfect looking people in perfect looking homes and perfect looking restaurants.

The sales pitch for vegan is as brutal as any other corporate backed global market promotion.  It is hugely misleading, deeply divisive and increasingly political. It conveys the sense of ‘purity’ on one hand and ‘degenerate’ attitudes on the other; when of course the reality is neither.

There is a clear moral statement behind vegan and vegetarian, but it only becomes a broader force for the good when it involves eating such foods grown caringly, organically and locally.

The rest is simply about supporting the centralisation, globalisation and ‘devitaminisation’ of the food chain. The hypermarket/supermarket New World Order.

This takes us straight back to the deeply deceptive WEF Green New Deal agenda for a fascistic, corporate ‘Zero CO2’ food and farming future ‘To save the world from global warming’.

If we want to be on the right side of the laws of nature – then we must feed ourselves via human scale, ecological and time honoured methods of environmentally friendly farming.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside and Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is strongly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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

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***

Mike Whitney: You think that Putin should have acted more forcefully from the beginning in order to end the war quickly. Is that an accurate assessment of your view on the war? And—if it is—then what do you think is the downside of allowing the conflict to drag on with no end in sight?

Paul Craig Roberts: Yes, you have correctly stated my position. But as my position can seem “unAmerican” to the indoctrinated and brainwashed many, those who watch CNN, listen to NPR, and read the New York Times, I am going to provide some of my background before going on with my answer.

I was involved in the 20th century Cold War in many ways: As a Wall Street Journal editor; as an appointee to an endowed chair in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, part of Georgetown University at the time of my appointment, where my colleagues were Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, and James Schlesinger, a Secretary of Defense and CIA director who was one of my professors in graduate school at the University of Virginia; as a member of the Cold War Committee on the Present Danger; and as a member of a secret presidential committee with power to investigate the CIA’s opposition to President Reagan’s plan to end the Cold War.

With a history such as mine, I was surprised when I took an objective position on Russian President Putin’s disavowal of US hegemony, and found myself labeled a “Russian dupe/agent” on a website, “PropOrNot,” which may have been financed by the US Department of State, the National Endowment for Democracy, or the CIA itself, still harboring old resentments against me for helping President Reagan end the Cold War, which had the potential of reducing the CIA’s budget and power. I still wonder what the CIA might do to me, despite the agency inviting me to address the agency, which I did, and explain why they went wrong in their reasoning.

I will also say that in my articles I am defending truth, not Putin, although Putin is, in my considered opinion, the most honest player, and perhaps the most naive, in the current game that could end in nuclear Armageddon. My purpose is to prevent nuclear Armageddon, not to take sides. I remember well President Reagan’s hatred of “those godawful nuclear weapons” and his directive that the purpose was not to win the Cold War but to end it.

Now to Mike’s question, which is to the point. Perhaps to understand Putin we need to remember life, or how it was presented by the West to the Soviet Union and the American broadcasts into the Soviet Union of the freedom of life in the West where streets were paved with gold and food markets had every conceivable delicacy.

Possibly this created in the minds of many Soviets, not all, that life in the Western world was heavenly compared to the hell in which Russians existed. I still remember being on a bus in Uzbekistan in 1961 when a meat delivery truck appeared on the street. All traffic followed the truck to the delivery store where a several block long line already waited. When you compare this life with a visit to an American supermarket, Western superiority stands out. Russian hankerings toward the West have little doubt constrained Putin, but Putin himself has been affected by the differences in life between the US in those times and the Soviet Union.

Putin is a good leader, a human person, perhaps too human for the evil he faces. One way to look at my position that Putin does too little instead of too much is to remember the World War II era when British Prime Minister Chamberlin was accused of encouraging Hitler by accepting provocation after provocation. My own view of this history is that it is false, but it remains widely believed. Putin accepts provocations despite having declared red lines that he does not enforce. Consequently, his red lines are not believed. Here is one report:

RT reported on December 10 that “The US has quietly given Ukraine the go-ahead to launch long-range strikes against targets inside Russian territory, the Times reported on Friday, citing sources. The Pentagon has apparently changed its stance on the matter as it has become less concerned that such attacks could escalate the conflict.”

In other words, by his inaction Putin has convinced Washington and its European puppet states that he doesn’t mean what he says and will endlessly accept ever worsening provocations, which have gone from sanctions to Western financial help to Ukraine, weapons supply, training and targeting information, provision of missiles capable of attacking internal Russia, attack on the Crimea bridge, destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, torture of Russian POWs, attacks on Russian parts of Ukraine reincorporated into the Russian Federation, and attacks on internal Russia.

At some point there will be a provocation that is too much. That’s when the SHTF.

Putin’s goal has been to avoid war. Thus, his limited military objective in Ukraine to throw the Ukrainian forces out of Donbass meant a limited operation that left Ukrainian war infrastructure intact, able to receive and deploy advanced weapons from the West, and to force Russian withdrawals to lines more defensible with the very limited forces Putin committed to the conflict. The Ukrainian offensives convinced the West that Russia could be defeated, thus making the war a primary way of undermining Russia as an obstacle to Washington’s hegemony. The British press proclaimed that the Ukrainian Army would be in Crimea by Christmas.

What Putin needed was a quick victory that made it completely clear that Russia had enforceable red lines that Ukraine had violated. A show of Russian military force would have stopped all provocations. The decadent West would have learned that it must leave the bear alone. Instead the Kremlin, misreading the West, wasted eight years on the Minsk Agreement that former German Chancellor Merket said was a deception to keep Russia from acting when Russia could have easily succeeded. Putin now agrees with me that it was his mistake not to have intervened in Donbass before the US created a Ukrainian army.

My last word to Mike’s question is that Putin has misread the West. He still thinks the West has in its “leadership” reasonable people, who no doubt act the role for Putin’s benefit, with whom he can have negotiations. Putin should go read the Wolfowitz Doctrine. If Putin doesn’t soon wake up, Armageddon is upon us, unless Russia surrenders.

MW: I agree with much of what you say here, particularly this: “Putin’s inaction has convinced Washington… that he doesn’t mean what he says and will endlessly accept ever worsening provocations.”

You’re right, this is a problem. But I’m not sure what Putin can do about it. Take, for example, the drone attacks on airfields on Russian territory. Should Putin have responded tit-for-tat by bombing supplylines in Poland? That seems like a fair response but it also risks NATO retaliation and a broader war which is definitely not in Russia’s interests.

Now, perhaps, Putin would not have faced these flashpoints had he deployed 500,000 combat troops to begin and leveled a number of cities on his way to Kiev, but keep in mind, Russian public opinion about the war was mixed at the beginning, and only grew more supportive as it became apparent that Washington was determined to defeat Russia, topple its government, and weaken it to the point where it could not project power beyond its borders. The vast majority of the Russian people now understand what the US is up-to which explains why Putin’s public approval ratings are presently at 79.4% while support for the war is nearly universal. In my opinion, Putin needs this level of support to sustain the war effort; so, postponing the mobilization of additional troops has actually worked to his benefit.

More importantly, Putin must be perceived to be the rational player in this conflict. This is absolutely essential. He must be seen as a cautious and reasonable actor who operates with restraint and within the confines of international law. This is the only way he will be able to win the continued support of China, India etc. We must not forget that the effort to build a multipolar world order requires coalition building which is undermined by impulsive, violent behavior. In short, I think Putin’s “go-slow” approach (your words) is actually the correct course of action. I think if he had run roughshod across Ukraine like Sherman on his way to the sea, he would have lost critical allies that will help him establish the institutions and economic infrastructure he needs to create a new order.

So, my question to you is this: What does a Russian victory look like? Is it just a matter of pushing the Ukrainian army out of the Donbas or should Russian forces clear the entire region east of the Dnieper River? And what about the west of Ukraine? What if the western region is reduced to rubble but the US and NATO continue to use it as a launching pad for their war against Russia?

I can imagine many scenarios in which the fighting continues for years to come, but hardly any that end in either a diplomatic settlement or an armistice. Your thoughts?

Paul Craig Roberts: I think, Mike, that you have identified the reasoning that explains Putin’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine. But I think Putin is losing confidence in his approach. Caution about approaching war is imperative. But when war begins it must be won quickly, especially if the enemy has prospects of gaining allies and their support. Putin’s caution delayed Russia’s rescue of Donbass for eight years, during which Washington created and equipped an Ukrainian army that turned what would have been an easy rescue in 2014 like Crimea into the current war approaching a year in duration. Putin’s caution in waging the war has given Washington and the Western media plenty of time to create and control the narrative, which is unfavorable to Putin, and to widen the war with US and NATO direct participation, now admitted by Foreign Minister Lavrov. The war has widened into direct attacks on Russia herself.

These attacks on Russia might bring the pro-Western Russian liberals into alignment with Putin, but the ability of a corrupt third world US puppet state to attack Russia is anathema to Russian patriots. The Russians who will do the fighting see in the ability of Ukraine to attack Mother Russia the failure of the Putin government.

As for China and India, the two countries with the largest populations, they have witnessed Washington’s indiscriminate use of force without domestic or international consequence to Washington. They don’t want to ally with a week-kneed Russia.

I will also say that as Washington and NATO were not constrained by public opinion in their two decades of wars in the Middle East and North Africa, based entirely on lies and secret agendas, what reason does Putin have to fear a lack of Russian public support for rescuing Donbass, formerly a part of Russia, from neo-Nazi persecution? If Putin must fear this, it shows his mistake in tolerating US-financed NGOs at work in Russia brainwashing Russians.

No, Putin should not engage in tit-for-tat. There is no need for him to send missiles into Poland, Germany, the UK, or the US. All Putin needs to do is to close down Ukrainian infrastructure so that Ukraine, despite Western help, cannot carry on the war. Putin is starting to do this, but not on a total basis.

The fact of the matter is that Putin never needed to send any troops to the rescue of Donbass. All he needed to do was to send the American puppet, Zelensky, a one hour ultimatum and if surrender was not forthcoming shut down with conventional precision missiles, and air attacks if necessary, the entirety of the power, water, and transportation infrastructure of Ukraine, and send special forces into Kiev to make a public hanging of Zelensky and the US puppet government.

The effect on the degenerate Woke West, which teaches in its own universities and public schools hatred of itself, would have been electric. The cost of messing with Russia would have been clear to all the morons who talk about Ukraine being in Crimea by Christmas. NATO would have dissolved. Washington would have removed all sanctions and shut up the stupid, war-crazy neoconservatives. The world would be at peace.

The question you have asked is, after all of Putin’s mistakes, what does a Russian victory look like? First of all, we don’t know if there is going to be a Russian victory. The cautious way that Putin reasons and acts, as you explained, is likely to deny Russia a victory. Instead, there could be a negotiated demilitarized zone and the conflict will be set on simmer, like the unresolved conflict in Korea.

On the other hand, if Putin is waiting the full deployment of Russia’s hypersonic nuclear missiles that no defense system can intercept and, following Washington, moves to first use of nuclear weapons, Putin will have the power to put the West on notice and be able to use the power of Russian military force to instantly end the conflict.

MW: You make some very good points, but I still think that Putin’s slower approach has helped to build public support at home and abroad. But, of course, I could be wrong. I do disagree strongly with your assertion that China and India “don’t want to ally with weak-kneed Russia”. In my opinion, both leaders see Putin as a bright and reliable statesman who is perhaps the greatest defender of sovereign rights in the last century. Both India and China are all-too-familiar with Washington’s coercive diplomacy and I’m sure they appreciate the efforts of a leader who has become the world’s biggest proponent of self-determination and independence. I’m sure the last thing they want, is to become cowering houseboys like the leaders in Europe who are, apparently, unable to decide anything without a ‘nod’ from Washington. (Note: Earlier today Putin said that EU leaders were allowing themselves to be treated like a doormat. Putin: “Today, the EU’s main partner, the US, is pursuing policies leading directly to the de-industrialization of Europe. They even try to complain about that to their American overlord. Sometimes even with resentment they ask ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ I want to ask: ‘What did you expect?’ What else happens to those who allow feet to be wiped on them?”)

Paul Craig Roberts: Mike, I agree that Russia for the reasons you provide is the choice partner of China and India. What I meant is that China and India want to see a powerful Russia that shields them from Washington’s interference. China and India are not reassured by what at times seems to be Putin’s irresolution and hesitancy. The rules that Putin plays by are no longer respected in the West.

Putin is correct that all European, and the Canadian, Australian, Japanese, and New Zealand governments, are doormats for Washington. What escapes Putin is that Washington’s puppets are comfortable in this role. Therefore, how much chance does he have in scolding them for their subservience and promising them independence? A reader recently reminded me about the Asch experiment in the 1950s, which found that people tended to conform to the prevalent narratives, and of the use to which Edward Bernays analysis of propaganda is put. And there is the information given me in the 1970s by a high government official that European governments do what we want because we “give the leaders bags of money. We own them. They report to us.”

In other words, our puppets live in a comfort zone. Putin will have a hard time breaking into this with merely exemplary behavior.

MW: For my final question, I’d like to tap into your broader knowledge of the US economy and how economic weakness might be a factor in Washington’s decision to provoke Russia. Over the last 10 months, we’ve heard numerous pundits say that NATO’s expansion to Ukraine creates an “existential crisis” for Russia. I just wonder if the same could be said about the United States? It seems like everyone from Jamie Diamond to Nouriel Roubini has been predicting a bigger financial cataclysm than the full-system meltdown of 2008. In your opinion, is this the reason why the media and virtually the entire political establishment are pushing so hard for a confrontation with Russia? Do they see war as the only way the US can preserve its exalted position in the global order?

Paul Craig Roberts: The idea that governments turn to war to focus attention away from a failing economy is popular, but my answer to your question is that the operating motive is US hegemony. The Wolfowitz Doctrine states it clearly. The doctrine says the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that could serve as a constraint on US unilateralism. At the 2007 Munich security conference Putin made it clear that Russia will not subordinate its interest to the interest of the US.

There are some crazed neoconservatives in Washington who believe nuclear war can be won and who have shaped US nuclear weapons policy into a pre-emptive attack mode focused on reducing the ability of the recipient of a first strike to retaliate. The US is not seeking a war with Russia, but might blunder into one. The operative neoconservative policy is to cause problems for Russia that can cause internal problems, distract the Kremlin from Washington’s power moves, isolate Russia with propaganda, and even possibly pull off a color revolution inside Russia or in a former Russian province, such as Belarus, as was done in Georgia and Ukraine. People have forgot the US-instigated invasion of South Ossetia by the Georgian army that Putin sent in Russian forces to stop, and they have forgot the recent disturbances in Kazakhstan that were calmed by the arrival of Russian troops. The plan is to keep picking away at the Kremlin. Even if Washington doesn’t meet in every case with the success enjoyed in the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, the incidents succeed as distractions that use up Kremlin time and energy, result in dissenting opinions within the government, and that require military contingency planning. As Washington controls the narratives, the incidents also serve to blacken Russia as an aggressor and portray Putin as “the new Hitler.” The propaganda successes are considerable–the exclusion of Russian athletes from competitions, refusals of orchestras to play music of Russian composers, exclusion of Russian literature, and a general refusal to cooperate with Russia in any way. This has a humiliating effect on Russians and might be corrosive of public support for the government. It has to be highly frustrating for Russian athletes, ice skaters, entertainers, and their fans.

Nevertheless, the conflict in Ukraine can turn into a general war intended or not. This is my concern and is the reason I think the Kremlin’s limited go-slow operation is a mistake. It offers too many opportunities for Washington’s provocations to go too far.

There is an economic element. Washington is determined to prevent its European empire from being drawn into closer relations with Russia from energy dependence and business relationships. Indeed, some explain the economic sanctions as de-industrializing Europe in behalf of Washington’s economic and financial hegemony. See this.

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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). 

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***

In a recent CHD.TV episode of “Good Morning CHD,” three Canadian doctors — Drs. Charles Hoffe and Stephen Malthouse and Chris Shaw, Ph.D. — discussed Canada’s disturbing normalization since 2016 of “medical assistance in dying” (“MAID”) and their government’s possibly imminent endorsement of the practice for “mature minors” who request death without parental knowledge or consent.

“Physician-assisted suicide,” “assisted suicide,” “assisted dying” and euthanasia — each with slightly different legal connotations — all refer to medical interventions to expedite death, with the main distinction being “who performs the final, fatal act.”

Last year, 3.3% of deaths in Canada occurred under MAID, representing “a growth rate of 32.4% over 2020,” and “steady year over year growth” in all provinces, including in the 18- to 45-year age group.

Among the first 100 patients to avail themselves of MAID in the province of Ontario, more than 5% were younger adults ages 35-54.

In the Netherlands and Belgium, other countries that allow euthanasia, those under age 60 account for 12.5% and 15% of those euthanized, respectively.

What the Canadian doctors were discussing on “Good Morning CHD” was a consequential 2021 modification to Canada’s original MAID law, eliminating the criterion that previously had made it a requirement for a candidate’s death to be “reasonably foreseeable” — and making decisions about eligibility far more subjective.

Even for those with “reasonably foreseeable” deaths, the bill eliminated a formerly mandated 10-day “reflection period” and downgraded the requirement for independent witnesses from two to one.

The three doctors and other critics of the more expansive policy warn that it will “nurture the country’s growing culture of death” and open the door to even more widespread implementation of a practice that is already ethically contentious, particularly since the Canadian government has pledged to consider eligibility for minors as young as 12 if deemed “capable of making decisions with respect to their health.”

Extending MAID eligibility to youth — which could be on the horizon as soon as 2023 — would mean that “before children in Canada can drive vehicles, they may be allowed to consent to physicians taking their lives.”

As Hoffe wryly commented to his two colleagues, “It is amazing the lengths that the government seems to be going to — to reduce the population.”

A growing trend, including in the youngest

Legalization of euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide is a growing trend worldwide, exhibiting a “momentum” that “appears unstoppable.”

Not only are more and more nations endorsing a practice that was “prohibited and morally condemned” throughout much of human history, but every country or jurisdiction that allows it is experiencing the same year-over-year growth as Canada.

And when it comes to hastening death for young people, in particular, Canada is not entirely an outlier.

Belgium, in 2014, became the first country to legalize lethal injection for children of all ages, having laid the groundwork 12 years earlier with legal euthanasia — explicitly defined as “medical treatment” — for adults and emancipated minors.

In 2016 and 2017, according to the Daily Mail, Belgium’s “radical laws” enabled the putting to death of three children and 19 young adults under age 30. Belgium reported another child euthanasia death in 2019, a year in which the country euthanized a “record number” of people overall.

Also in the vanguard of kiddie euthanasia is the Netherlands, where a 2002 law not only established the practice for adults — with the range of eligible conditions expanded in 2007 — but allowed euthanasia for children ages 12 and up. Parental consent is not required for those 16 or 17 years old.

In the first decade, there were five assisted deaths in Dutch adolescents, including one 12-year-old.

Under a “devil’s bargain between medical professionals and prosecutors,” Dutch doctors also can kill certain babies in their first year without fear of prosecution, as long as they follow a designated protocol.

In late 2022, a member of the Quebec College of Physicians proposed something similar to the Canadian parliament, suggesting that babies with “severe deformations or very grave and severe syndromes” be candidates for assisted suicide.

Objecting, a horrified bioethicist and physician noted that this would leave too “much room for parental, physician, personal, social and economic bias.”

Given the unwarranted fear-mongering about pediatric COVID-19 — used to justify misleading and ultimately genocidal vaccine mandates for kids — it is noteworthy that during the pandemic years, the Netherlands joined Canada in pointedly escalating its kid-focused euthanasia legislation.

In late 2020, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, began taking steps to extend “active termination of life” to children ages 1-12, first stacking the deck with a favorable commissioned report from the Dutch Society of Pediatrics.

Dutch Health Minister Ernst Kuipers renewed the case for under-12 euthanasia in a June 2022 briefing to members of parliament.

Meanwhile, in May 2022, Colombia became the first Latin American country to endorse medically assisted suicide, having made euthanasia legal in 1997. The laws apply to children as young as 6.

Switzerland, where assisted suicide (but not euthanasia) has been legal for seven decades, has played an influential role in normalizing the practice for all ages, even attracting lucrative “suicide tourism” in slick designer-furnished clinics due to its willingness to provide death to foreigners.

As long as “patients commit the act themselves and helpers have no vested interest in their death,” there is no specified age limit, prompting The Guardian to observe in 2014, “technically even a healthy young person could use such services.”

According to studies of that time period, 1 in 5 assisted suicides in Switzerland involved adults under age 65, including individuals as young as 18.

A year ago, Switzerland legalized a fancy new way for people to kill themselves that is likely to appeal to young people — a space-age “coffin-like capsule with windows” designed so that the decedent-to-be can push a button, flood the interior with nitrogen and die within 10 minutes.

Why die? Let me count the ways

In 2017, Kees van der Staaij, the leader of the Netherlands’ Christian SGP party, communicated his concerns — in the Wall Street Journal, no less — about his country’s “euthanasia culture,” and other prominent figures agreed the situation might be “getting out of hand.”

That year, Dutch politicians discussed the option of legalizing euthanasia for “perfectly healthy” people, allowing “any person age 75 or over who decides their life is ‘complete’ to receive euthanasia.”

In 2015, Belgian doctors agreed to euthanize a healthy 24-year-old woman who convinced herself of a lifelong “death wish” despite growing up “with a quiet, stable family.”

Canada’s 2021 relaxation of its criteria for hastening death suggests that concerns about an out-of-hand process are legitimate — 219 individuals “whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable” immediately opted that year for assisted death, with nearly half of that group (46%) citing “neurological” problems as a reason to die.

Between 2011 and 2014 in the Netherlands, doctors euthanized 110 individuals solely for mental disorders, including a man in his 30s “whose only diagnosis was autism.”

In a study published in 2020, European researchers cautioned that granting euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (EAS) “based on a perception of the patient’s illness as being untreatable with no prospect of improvement, could … in many cases fail to meet the due care criteria listed in EAS laws.”

They added, “This practice neglects the individual’s potential for having a life worth living.”

In Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere, some suggest that the ranks of assisted suicide candidates increasingly are likely to include not just youth and the mentally ill but also other marginalized groups, such as the homeless, the poor, the disabled, those with chronic pain — and “even dissenters who the government feels are not fit for society.”

Critics posit that instead of preserving human dignity, medically assisted death “seems to be a way to kill the vulnerable,” with the availability of assisted suicide “inducing hopelessness … and removing pressure for an improvement in psychiatric and social services.”

In fact, cost-benefit analyses have been creeping into the assisted death calculus for some time, with research and reports issued in advance of Canada’s 2021 amendments describing how doctor-assisted death could “save millions.”

Observers also note “the pressure on aging, low-birthrate societies to cut their health care costs” and describe doctors “allegedly suggesting [assisted suicide] to … sick people seeking a quietus for reasons linked to financial stress.”

Even euthanasia’s most ardent supporters are concerned that the “financial gutting of the healthcare sector” will encourage desperate people to resort to assisted death.

Overt … and covert

In the U.S., physician-assisted suicide is legal for adults in 10 states plus the nation’s capital, with half having legalized it just in the last five years: Oregon (law passed in 1994 and implemented in 1997), Washington (2009), Montana (2009), Vermont (2013), California (2015), Colorado (2016), the District of Columbia (2017), Hawaii (2018), Maine (2019), New Jersey (2019) and New Mexico(2021).

Reflecting the pandemic-spurred trend toward remote healthcare, Vermont’s governor signed a law this year to permit telemedicine as a route for “aid in dying.” The bill makes it possible for patients to waive the “two in-person consults and … 48-hour waiting period” ordinarily required to get a prescription, and also grants healthcare providers and pharmacists full legal immunity.

The enthusiasm that these jurisdictions display for the “freedom” to die — employing loft rhetoric about “dignity” and “humane” policies — contrasts sharply with their abysmal and malevolent performance during the pandemic, when all (with the exception of Montana) stood out in their willingness to destroy people’s livelihoods and use authoritarian measures to suppress constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

The contrast was also evident in Spain, which chose — coincidentally or not — to legalize adult euthanasia in 2021. The same prime minister who vigorously enforced pandemic lockdowns and restrictions unironically declared that the euthanasia decision made his country “more humane, fairer and freer.”

As the pandemic disturbingly revealed, however, it is not just overt euthanasia that is on the rise — governments also appear increasingly willing to put their citizens to death without admitting to it.

In the U.K., which nominally promises a jail sentence of up to 14 years for those who help others to die, credible on-the-ground reports described the use of covert euthanasia as a “medical protocol,” with damning evidence including the health secretary’s unprecedented acquisition of a two-year supply of the execution drug midazolam in March 2020.

Citizens refer to the death of more than 136,000 elderly residents of U.K. care homes since April 2020 as the “Midazolam Murders,” but they also point out that “the UK Government and its institutions have been acting as if euthanasia is perfectly legal” for far longer, since at least 2008.

The ventilator- and remdesivir-only COVID-19 protocols inflexibly adhered to by U.S. hospitals immune from liability and salivating over hefty financial incentives — were another form of covert murder, as was the withholding around the world of safe and inexpensive treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

And of course, the aggressive imposition of mandates for known-to-be-dangerous COVID-19 shots took government-instigated death and disability to even more shocking levels.

Describing how medically assisted suicide has become a cherished “progressive” and “liberal” value, one writer asks, “What if a society remains liberal but ceases to be civilized?”

As the cultural conditioning favoring euthanasia ramps up, citizens everywhere urgently need to query their governments’ uncivilized motives for both silently and openly celebrating death, rather than life.

*

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***

To the onlooker, Israel is visibly changing. The shift is most conspicuous from the outside: the world sees a western liberal democracy moving with alarming speed towards ultra-nationalism, fundamentalism, racism, fascism and the breakdown of democratic structures as a result of the recent election. 

While correct, this view is also distorted. It assumes that until now, Israel was indeed a western democracy, and that it is now visibly becoming something else. The truth, however, is less about Israel fundamentally changing, and more about it shedding its masks and disguises.

What is changing is the appearance. The cracks appearing in Israel’s image bear little relation to the underlying essence. From this standpoint – and this standpoint only – the new government can be viewed as a harbinger of a positive message: the truth about Israel will come to light, albeit at a heavy cost in terms of the oppression of Palestinians and the rupture of fragile democratic structures that hitherto served Israel’s Jews.

The new government will be the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history. The truth, at least in terms of the ideology of most of its ministers, is that it will also be the most extremist government anywhere in the West today. The extreme right in Israel is much more extremist than the right in Europe, and perhaps even than in the US.

It will now rule Israel and control the most senior positions. A government in which Benjamin Netanyahu is the standard-bearer for the secular and liberal is a very extremist government indeed.

Threats lie in wait from all sides: destruction of the justice system, harm to minorities, a shameless ramping-up of Jewish supremacy, the heavy hand of religion in everyday life, and an occupation ever more cruel to its Palestinian subjects. It is difficult at such an early stage to know which of these will actually come to pass.

Israel has already had right-wing governments and extremist parties whose ascension to power had a moderating effect on their plans, for all kinds of reasons. “Things look different from here than they did from there” is the usually-accepted explanation. But it is certainly within the realm of possibility that Netanyahu’s new partners are made of sterner stuff and will carry out the looming threat of regime change in several areas of crucial significance for Israel.

Hitting the panic button

Faced with a potential actualisation of this extreme scenario, the Israeli left and centre have hit the panic button, notably by embarking on a campaign of attempted intimidation. Not a day passes without another prophecy of doom – and some, if not all, of these predictions will surely be borne out.

Nevertheless, one cannot help but ask: is the threatened change really such a radical one? Was Israel truly such a lone outpost of democratic norms, equality under the law, protection of human rights and sanctity of judicial systems that this new government could enter stage right and destroy it all?

Was that Israel of the “good old days” – the one before the new government – a country so far removed from fascism, ultra-nationalism and apartheid that the new government can come to power and change everything, so that Israel turns into that kind of country now?

Obviously not. Without downplaying the dangers posed by the new government and its chosen path, one cannot help but notice that the alarmist campaigns in response to its declarations seem to have a covert subtext about how good it was here when the Zionist left and centre were in power; how all of that will come to an end now, and how bad it will all be. That picture, however, is far from accurate.

Consider the 166 Palestinians, including at least 39 children, who died by acts of the Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the beginning of this year. An additional 49 Palestinians, including 17 children, who were killed in Gaza during Israel’s three-day onslaught in August on the besieged strip.

Were they killed under the terrifying new government featuring Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, or under the so-called “government of change” featuring the liberal promises of Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, whose tenure is now ending?

The difference between regimes will most likely be, first and foremost, one of rhetoric: the centre-left tries to gloss over the facts, whereas the extreme right will hide nothing. In some ways, this may prove advantageous.

The new government, by word and deed, may force Israel’s allies, along with the almost non-existent leftist camp in Israel, to look honestly at Israel and acknowledge the reality. With a government like the one that’s coming, no longer will there be an option to ignore, avert the gaze and obfuscate, attempting to make do with weak condemnations and clinging to a fictitious “peace process” or a two-state solution that has long been unrealistic.

The new government will force the West to look at Israel and admit, at least to itself: this is an apartheid state. Continuing the masquerade ball with Israel will become untenable. The new government may even compel Israel’s allies to move one step forward and, for the first time in Israel’s history, take practical actions against it.

Reason for hope

Not all of this may happen. Israel may not radicalise to the extent that some would have us fear; or, despite its radicalisation, the West – especially the US – may go on insisting that rhinestones are diamonds, claiming that Israel is the West’s frontline outpost in the Middle East and insisting that criticism of the state is forbidden because of the Holocaust.

But there is also another possibility. When Israel legislates appalling ultra-nationalist laws; when house demolitions and expulsions in the occupied West Bank soar; when Israel’s Supreme Court is stripped of all power; when the army kills unimaginable numbers of Palestinians and the annexation of the occupied territories becomes a fact no longer deniable – perhaps then, the West will have no other option than to turn its back on its beloved Israel, world champion of impunity, for whom almost everything is permissible.

Perhaps then, the West’s position will have to change. Maybe the West will finally understand that there is no legal or moral difference between the occupation in Ukraine and the occupation in Palestine, and that the measures it took immediately against the Russian occupation can finally be considered against the Israeli occupation, after 55 years that only postponed the ultimate outcome?

It is true that the new government, and especially some of its ministers, may take irreversible steps that could further amplify inequality, oppression, deprivation, discrimination and Jewish supremacy in all areas of life. Also true is that the first to pay the price for all this will be Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Their lives could certainly change, but let us bear in mind that their situation has already been intolerable for decades.

A handful of human rights activists in Israel may also pay a price, along with freedom of expression, which is already facing significant attempts at curtailment.

In addition, the expected damage to governmental checks and balances could endanger the entire state structure, from a planned “override clause” undermining the power of the Supreme Court in a country without a constitution, to proposed legislation designed to allow convicted criminals to serve in government. Many opinion pieces have already been written to warn against these dangers, which should not be taken lightly.

Meanwhile, the time has come for Israel to undergo a fundamental shakeup, including in the attitude of its friends in the West. For more than five decades, Israel has claimed that the occupation of 1967 was temporary, and the world bought into that bluff.

The new government will put an end to that. The occupation will be permanent, not temporary, and there will clearly be no intention to ever grant national rights to half the people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

This demands an international response; it is not an internal Israeli matter. Anyone who thinks that Israel will ever change course willingly, of its own accord, does not know Israel very well. Israel has no reason and no incentive to do so. The world has thus far accepted Israel with its apartheid and its oppression, while Israel ignores the international community, its institutions and its decisions.

No other country can thumb its nose at international law as Israel does and not pay a price. But apparently, there is a point at which a critical mass of insolence, arrogance and over-confidence could leave the world no choice but to take action. The hope is that this new government will bring Israel closer to precisely that point – apart from which, few hopes are evident in the vicinity.

*

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Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper’s deputy editor. He was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso.

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***

The US ambassador in Peru, Lisa Kenna, worked for the CIA for 9 years, as well as the Pentagon. One day before the coup against elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo, Kenna met with Peru’s defense minister, who then ordered the military to turn against Castillo.

The US ambassador in Peru, a veteran CIA agent named Lisa Kenna, met with the country’s defense minister just one day before democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo was overthrown in a coup d’etat and imprisoned without trial.

Peru’s defense minister, a retired brigadier general, ordered the military to turn against Castillo.

The coup set off mass protests all across Peru. The unelected regime has unleashed brutal violence, and police have killed numerous demonstrators.

Meanwhile, the US government has staunchly supported Peru’s unelected coup regime, which declared a nation-wide “state of emergency” and deployed the military to the streets in an attempt to crush the protests.

Esto no es la Guerra de las Galaxias es Chorrillos, Lima pic.twitter.com/KFluRVJFAu

— HezSocial (@ZLaicos) December 15, 2022

Most governments in Latin America have criticized or even refused to recognize Peru’s unelected coup regime, including Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and various Caribbean nations.

The CIA has organized many coups against democratically elected left-wing leaders in Latin America, from Guatemala’s President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to Chile’s President Salvador Allende in 1973.

When the Donald Trump administration nominated Lisa Kenna to be ambassador to Peru in 2020, the State Department released a “certificate of competency” that revealed that, “Before joining the Foreign Service, she served for nine years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.”

This important fact is curiously absent from most of Kenna’s bios, including her page on the US embassy’s official website.

Under Trump, Kenna also served as executive secretary of the State Department and was “senior aide” to Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who previously headed the CIA.

In regard to his work for the notorious spy agency, Pompeo admitted in 2019, “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.”

At a Congressional nomination hearing in 2020, Kenna admitted that, as executive secretary, she saw “nearly all” of the memos that were sent to Pompeo, adding, “I am aware of the vast majority of” calls made to and by him.

Kenna also previously worked for the Defense Department and served State Department roles in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Swaziland, and Pakistan.

When President Joe Biden entered in January 2021, he kept Kenna as ambassador in Peru.

The current US Ambassador in Peru. pic.twitter.com/iUAbnR6Hzp

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) December 13, 2022

On December 6, 2022, Kenna met with Gustavo Bobbio Rosas, a retired brigadier general from the Peruvian military who had officially been appointed as defense minister the day before. (A local media outlet reported that the meeting was on December 5, but that appears to have been an error.)

Peru’s Ministry of Defense published a photo of their friendly chat.

At the time of this meeting, it was known in Peru that the notoriously corrupt, oligarch-controlled congress was preparing for a new vote to overthrow democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo.

Ahora 📸 | Ministro de Defensa, Gustavo Bobbio, se reúne con la embajadora de @USEMBASSYPERU, Lisa Kenna, para abordar temas de interés bilateral. 🇵🇪🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/9p7JuKNx75

— Mindef Perú (@MindefPeru) December 6, 2022

Article 113 of Peru’s constitution allows the unicameral congress to remove presidents simply by voting to declare that they have a “moral incapacity,” in a process known as “vacancy.”

Peru’s congress is well known for its extreme corruption. In the infamous “Mamanivideos” scandal, congress members from the far-right Fuerza Popular party were filmed bribing other congress members to vote against impeaching previous right-wing President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Fuerza Popular is run by the family members of Alberto Fujimori, the far-right dictator who ruled Peru with an iron fist from 1990 until 2000. With the support of the US government, Fujimori committed genocide, sterilizing approximately 300,000 Indigenous people, while killing, torturing, and disappearing large numbers of leftist dissidents.

The Mamanivideos scandal showed that it is quite easy for Peru’s rich oligarchs to buy votes in congress to overthrow democratically elected presidents.

And as soon as Castillo entered office on July 28, 2021, the congress tried to do exactly this.

Just one day after the US ambassador met with Peru’s defense minister, on December 7, 2022, the right-wing-dominated congress launched a parliamentary coup against Castillo, using article 113.

This was the third coup attempt in just over a year by Peru’s congress, which in September 2022 had a mere 7% approval rating.

Hoping to stop the coup, Castillo responded by trying to dissolve the congress. This is allowed in cases of obstructionism by article 134 of Peru’s constitution.

Defense Minister Bobbio immediately denounced the president’s actions. He published a video resigning from his position (that he had only held for three days).

Pronunciamiento| Presento mi renuncia de manera irrevocable a mi cargo de Ministro de Defensa. pic.twitter.com/efFC0cwZ34

— Gustavo Bobbio Rosas (@GustavoBobbio_) December 7, 2022

In the video, Bobbio told Peru’s armed forces not to support President Castillo and to oppose his attempt to dissolve the coup-plotting congress.

Bobbio claimed Castillo was launching a “coup attempt,” but in reality Bobbio was instructing the Peruvian military to support a coup against the democratically elected president, on behalf of a notoriously corrupt oligarch-controlled congress that had almost no support from the population.

While Bobbio ordered the military to rebel against the president, the US government promptly attacked Castillo.

Former CIA agent and current Ambassador Kenna tweeted, “The United States categorically rejects any extra-constitutional act by President Castillo to prevent the congress from fulfilling its mandate.”

Los Estados Unidos insta enfáticamente al presidente Castillo a revertir su intento de cerrar el Congreso y permitir que las instituciones democráticas de Perú funcionen según la Constitución. Alentamos al público peruano a mantener la calma durante este tiempo incierto.

— Lisa Kenna (@USAmbPeru) December 7, 2022

Kenna failed to mention article 134 of Peru’s constitution, which states:

The President of the Republic is authorized the dissolve the Congress if it has censured or denied its confidence to two Councils of Ministers [the official name of Peru’s cabinet]. The dissolution decree contains the call for elections for a new Congress.

When Castillo moved to dissolve the congress, he cited article 134 and he made it clear that it was only going to be a “temporary” closure. The president said new congressional elections would be held as soon as possible.

Kenna ignored all of this context. Instead, the ambassador declared, “The United States emphatically urges President Castillo to reverse his attempt to close the congress and allow the democratic institutions of Peru to function according to the constitution.”

By this, the CIA veteran meant that Castillo should simply allow the anti-democratic, oligarch-controlled congress to launch a coup against him.

The US embassy in Peru subsequently published an official statement echoing exactly what Kenna had said.

This was Washington’s green light for Peru’s corrupt, right-wing-dominated congress to overthrow President Castillo, and for the state security services to arrest him, without trial.

pic.twitter.com/cyDlKaxiC8

— Embajada EEUU Perú (@USEMBASSYPERU) December 7, 2022

Mere hours after Castillo was imprisoned, the oligarch-controlled congress appointed his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as leader of the country.

Boluarte promised on the floor of the congress that she would create “a political truce to install a government of national unity” – that is, a pact with the right wing.

Boluarte had been expelled in January 2022 from the leftist Perú Libre party that Castillo had campaigned with. She proudly declared that she “had never embraced the ideology” of the socialist political party.

The day after the coup, on December 8, the State Department gave its rubber stamp to Boluarte’s unelected regime.

“The United States welcomes President Boluarte and hopes to work with her administration to achieve a more democratic, prosperous, and secure region,” stated Brian A. Nichols, the US assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs.

“We support her call for a government of national unity and we applaud Peruvians while they unite in their support of democracy,” the top State Department official added.

EE. UU. da la bienvenida a la presidenta Boluarte y espera trabajar con su administración para lograr una región más democrática, próspera y segura. Apoyamos su llamado a un gobierno de unidad nacional y aplaudimos a los peruanos mientras se unen en apoyo de su democracia. -BAN

— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 8, 2022

In the mean time, the Peruvian people were filling the streets, condemning the coup against their elected president.

Peru’s police responded with violence, harshly cracking down, killing several protesters.

On December 14, the coup regime imposed a national “state of emergency” for 30 days, and said it might also declare a curfew.

At the same time, the coup regime also said it plans to sentence Castillo to 18 months in “preventative prison,” without a proper trial that resembles anything remotely like due process.

Just one day before the coup regime made these authoritarian announcements, former CIA agent and current US Ambassador met with Peru’s unelected leader, Dina Boluarte, and reiterated Washington’s wholehearted support.

La presidenta @DinaErcilia Boluarte recibió a la embajadora de @USEMBASSYPERU, Lisa Kenna, quien reiteró el pleno respaldo de su país a la institucionalidad democrática en el Perú y a las acciones del gobierno constitucional para estabilizar la situación social.
🇵🇪🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/30EqAa75lx

— Presidencia del Perú 🇵🇪 (@presidenciaperu) December 13, 2022

Kenna praised the right-wing “unity government” that Boluarte pledged to form, adding, “We hope to strengthen our bilateral relationship.”

Me reuní con la presidenta Boluarte para reiterarle el compromiso de los EE.UU. con la defensa de la democracia y el respeto a las instituciones. Junto con la @presidenciaperu y el gobierno de unidad que se comprometió a formar, esperamos fortalecer nuestra relación bilateral.

— Lisa Kenna (@USAmbPeru) December 13, 2022

Brian Nichols, the top State Department official on Latin America, added with a touch of deep irony, “We support the Peruvian people and their constitutional democracy.” He urged protesters to “reject violence.”

On the same day, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia released a joint diplomatic statement with a completely contrary message, supporting elected President Castillo, saying he was the victim of “anti-democratic harassment.”

Apoyamos al pueblo peruano y a su democracia constitucional. Alentamos a los Peruanos a juntarse pacificamente en apoyo a las reformas que Perú necesita y a rechazar la violencia. Trabajaremos con @presidenciaperu para avanzar estas metas. -BAN https://t.co/AnrrDnxUzi

— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 13, 2022

In a press briefing on December 13, the State department was asked about the protests in Peru.

State Department spokesman Ned Price – who, like Lisa Kenna, was also a CIA agent – emphasized Washington’s steadfast support for Peru’s coup regime.

“We do commend Peruvian institutions and civil authorities for safeguarding democratic stability,” he said, as Peru’s repressive police killed protesters.

Just witnessed a protestor shot in head by police outside our hotel in #lima. Not sure he survived. Police response becoming more violent tonight #DinaBoluarte #sosperu #PedroCastillo #ProtestasContraElCongreso #protestasenlima #Peru #ahora pic.twitter.com/8HJe3cTxvC

— M M (@MMinperu) December 13, 2022

Instead of condemning the rampant police brutality, the US State Department blamed the protesters themselves. Price stated,

“we are troubled by scattered reports of violent demonstrations and by reports of attacks on the press and private property, including businesses.”

“When it comes to Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, we of course do recognize her as such. We will continue to work with Peru’s democratic institutions, and we look forward to working closely with President Boluarte and all branches of the government in Peru,” the former CIA agent stressed.

State Department on Peru 🇵🇪 (Tuesday's daily presser):

– Commends Peru's institutions and authorities "for safeguarding democratic stability"

– "troubled by (..) violent demonstrations" and "reports of attacks on the press and private property"

– recognizes Dina Boluarte pic.twitter.com/AVj3F1cOds

— Camila (@camilapress) December 15, 2022

In addition to serving as a CIA agent for nine years and current US ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna worked as a:

• political adviser to the secretary of defense
• director of the Iraq office on the National Security Council at the White House
• deputy director of the Iraq political office at the Department of State
• chief of the political section at the US embassy in Jordan
• political/military officer at the US embassy in Egypt
• staff member at the US embassy in Swaziland
• staff member at the US consulate general in Peshawar, Pakistan

At a Congressional nomination hearing on July 23, 2020, Kenna boasted of her US-supremacist worldview, stating,

“The longer I have been in public service, the more I am convinced that America is the world’s most exceptional nation.”

She also vowed,

“I will maintain the United States’ vital relationship with Peru which has long been one of our closest partners in the region. Recently, Mission Peru has performed heroically to sustain our strong partnership and serve our fellow Americans in these challenging times.”

At the time of the hearing, Peru had a right-wing government, led by President Martín Vizcarra.

Kenna praised Peru’s conservative government, “as founder of the Lima Group,” for backing the United States in its right-wing coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro, claiming, “The U.S. and Peru are also growing our shared support for a peaceful return to democracy in Venezuela.”

She also pledged in the hearing that, as US ambassador to Peru: “I commit to meet with democratically oriented opposition figures”; “We also commit to meet with independent, local press in Peru”; and “I am committed to meeting with human rights, civil society, and other non governmental organizations in the United States and in Peru.”

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Featured image: Ex CIA agent and US ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, meets with its defense minister two days before a coup against its elected left-wing President Castillo (Source: Multipolarista)

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The UN Officer of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a press release detailing the views of its experts on the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians during the past year, which they say has seen the worst death rate among the Occupied population since the organization began systematically tracking fatalities in 2005.

The experts rebuked Israel for the excessive use of force deployed by Israeli forces against Palestinians and the unbridled violence of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank, which have left 150 Palestinians dead this year in the Occupied West Bank, including 33 children. In addition, militant, armed Israeli squatters have killed two or possibly three Palestinians this year.

Palestinian violence was responsible for the deaths of four security personnel, one guard for a squatter settlement, and five squatters on stolen Palestinian land.

The experts issued a joint statement, saying

“We remind Israel that pending the dismantlement of its unlawful occupation, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory must be treated as protected persons, not enemies or terrorists.”

Quite the opposite — they pointed out that Israeli officials have the responsibility under international law to attend to the security and welfare of the Occupied population.

Fanatical Israeli squatters who have built on land owned by Palestinian families and walk around armed are a particular concern for the UN human rights experts. They say that:

“Armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorising entire communities with complete impunity.”

Worse, there are credible reports of Israeli troops actually helping the squatters commit mayhem on Palestinians. The experts observed, “Disturbing evidence of Israeli forces frequently facilitating, supporting and participating in settler attacks, makes it difficult to discern between Israeli settler and State violence.” They added, “The impunity of one is reinforced by the impunity of the other.”

Each year has seen more Israeli squatter attacks than the year before since 2016. Ironically, it was in 2016 that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution demanding an end to such Israeli squatting.

There is something horribly wrong with Israeli military rules of engagement, which are producing this high death toll among the Palestinians. The experts point out that Occupation troops can only deploy firearms against persons from the Occupied population when the latter pose an imminent threat to life. That is, you can’t just shoot down unarmed people, and you can’t shoot someone in the head who has been taken down and immobilized, regardless of what he had been doing up to that point. The experts warn that these cavalier approaches to taking human life “may amount to extrajudicial execution – a violation of the right to life – and wilful killing prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute.”

Ultimately, the experts say, it is the Israeli determination to colonize the Palestinian West Bank that is driving this drumbeat of violence against the indigenous population:

“Illegal settlement poses a corrosive threat to Israeli society as a whole, and unless Israeli forces abandon this dominant settler mindset and rightfully treat Palestinians in the occupied territory as protected persons, Israel’s deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023. No peaceful settlement can be pursued under Israel’s repressive occupation: a reality that should be a wake-up call for all decision-makers.”

Their expectation that the lives of Palestinians are about to get harder, though they did not say so, is justified by the formation of the most far right wing, extremist government in the country’s history, with cabinet members who are themselves illegal squatters on stolen Palestinian land and who champion more such theft.

The experts issuing this statement are Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, Morris Tiball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,and Clément Voule, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association.

Ms. Albanese has a law degree from the University of Pisa and a Master of Law in Human Rights from London University’s SOAS. She is finishing a Ph.D. in International Refugee Law at Amsterdam University’s Law School. An Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, Albanese is the author of Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford U.P., 2020). Her highly knowledgeable critique of Israeli Occupation policies toward the Palestinians has led to a smear campaign against her, predictably and pitifully attempting to depict her concern for the rights of Palestinians as a form of bigotry toward Jews.

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Featured image: Shireen Abu Akleh was an icon in Palestine and throughout much of the Arabic speaking world for her reporting from the occupied territories (Illustration/MEE)

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday marks a new stage in the bilateral relationship between the two time-tested friends, both contextually and from a long-term perspective.

The media may find it alluring to link Modi’s call to Ukraine developments despite the Indian and Russian readouts (here and here) making it clear that Russian-Indian bilateral relations dominated the conversation. 

Nonetheless, it is very significant that Modi was not deterred by the fact that although this is not era for wars, the Ukraine conflict in all probability will only escalate, and there is a greater likelihood than ever before that Russia may be compelled to seek a total military victory, as the US is leaving it with no option by doggedly blocking all avenues for a realistic settlement and is furtively climbing the escalation ladder. 

Without doubt, the Biden Administration’s reported decision to deploy Patriot missile in Ukraine is a major escalation. Moscow has warned of “consequences.” Again, Moscow has confirmed that the US planned, masterminded and equipped Ukraine with the military capability to attack deep inside Russian territory — hundreds of kilometres, in fact — including against base at Engels where Russia’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers are stationed. The two superpowers never before targeted each other’s nuclear assets. 

So, there is no question that Modi’s initiative at this point in time to discuss “the high level of bilateral cooperation that has been developing on the basis of the Russian-Indian privileged strategic partnership,” including in key areas of energy, trade and investments, defence & security cooperation, conveys a huge message in itself.

It quietly underscores a medium and long term perspective on the Russian-Indian relationship that goes far beyond the vicissitudes of the Ukraine conflict. Put differently, India will not allow its long-standing ties with Russia to be held hostage to Western sanctions. 

For India, the reorientation of Russian economic diplomacy toward the Asian region presents huge business opportunities. Who would have thought nine months ago that Russia was going to be the largest supplier of oil to India, leapfrogging Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US? According to Reuters, India purchased about 40% of all export volumes of Russian Urals grade oil transported by sea in November, when European countries accounted for 25%, Turkey 15% and China 5%.

The figures speak for themselves: in November, while Russia supplied 909,000.4 barrels of crude oil to India per day, the corresponding figures were for Iraq (861,000.4), Saudi Arabia (570,000.9), and the US (405,000.5) Suffice it to say that when Modi upfront listed energy as his talking point with Putin, it reconfirms that India is giving a wide berth to the G7’s hare-brained scheme to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports. 

But all good things have a flip side to it. As the volume of India-Russia trade shoots up — with Russia emerging as India’s seventh largest trading partner, rising from 25th place — the imbalance in the bilateral trade is also widening, as Moscow prioritises India (and China) as preferred trading partners. 

EAM Jaishankar’s recent Moscow visit focused on a list of 500 items that Russia would be keen to source from India. Importantly, this is also about a supply chain for Russian industry / economy. Jaishankar reportedly gave an interim reply of India’s readiness to start supplying spare parts necessary for airplanes, cars and trains.

Some Russian experts have talked about India as a potentially significant “trans-shipment” state for Russia’s “parallel imports” — that is, Russia can buy not only Indian goods from India but also products from third countries.

Meanwhile, turning away from the European market, Russia also seeks business opportunities for its export basket that includes mineral products, precious metals and products made from them, aluminium and other non-ferrous metals, electric machines, vehicles, pharmaceutical, chemical, rubber products, etc. 

Clearly, there are systemic issues to be addressed such as transportation logistics; payment mechanism, collateral sanctions. However, for the near term, all eyes are on the Russian oil exports to India in the time of the G7 price cap. 

The Russian government daily Rossyiskaya Gazeta reported on Tuesday, “It is expected that Russia, in response to the price ceiling, will adopt an official ban on selling oil under contracts where the “ceiling” will be mentioned or the marginal price for our oil will be indicated.” That is, Moscow will insist on an embargo on supplies basically restricted to the G7 and Australia. 

China and India are  not affected, as they haven’t joined the price cap. The following excerpts from the Moscow daily outlines the state of play:

“There are no real mechanisms that could enforce these [G7] restrictions… already, about a third of Russian oil exports leave Russian ports without indicating the final destination. That is, a so-called “grey trade zone” is growing before our eyes, which allows traders to purchase Russian raw materials without the risk of falling under secondary sanctions… discount [ie., fair prices] allows the Asia-Pacific countries, primarily China and India, to increase purchases of Russian raw materials.” 

The fascinating part is that not only is the so-called “grey zone” expanding steadily but alongside, other suppliers have begun to adjust to the prices of Russian oil in the Asia-Pacific region — that is, to the real equilibrium prices or discounted prices. Curiously, even Western countries are in a position to receive relatively inexpensive Russian oil through third parties.

The bottom line is that the Biden administration’s goal was not to limit the volume of Russian oil exports but focused on the revenues of the Russian budget from oil production and the world oil market. Rissyiskaya Gazeta concludes: “In fact, so far what is happening does not contradict either our aspirations or the desires of the United States.” [See my article Race for Russian oil begins, The Tribune, Nov. 28, 2022]

This new-found pragmatism in the US calculus about the limits to sanctions took a curious turn in Thursday when the US blacklisted the Russian billionaire-oligarch Vladimir Potanin but exempted two of his biggest assets from the purview of sanctions — MMC Norilsk Nickel and Tinkoff Bank — on the specious ground that his holdings are less than 50% in these two companies [but are only 35%!]   

Why so? Because, MMC’s share in the world market of high-grade nickel is 17%, palladium 38%, platinum 10%, rhodium 7%, copper and cobalt 2% each; and, sanctioning the Russian company could sharply aggravate the world market for non-ferrous metals and can hurt US manufacturers. 

Clearly, the law of diminishing returns is at work in the continued weaponisation of sanctions against Russia. Indian business and industry should pay close attention to Modi’s far-sighted initiative on Friday.

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Featured image: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar (L) met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow, November 8, 2022 (Source: Indian Punchline)