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An Israeli official said that the US hinted it was preparing a military option against Iran during a meeting between Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Friday, The Times of Israel reported.

The Israeli official said that Gantz told Sullivan that Israel “needs” the US to have a credible military option against Iran. The meeting came as Washington and Tehran are engaged in negotiations to revive the nuclear deal.

The official said that Gantz received “good hints” that the US was preparing a military option. The official didn’t offer details but said the idea of the military option that Israel wants would be to get Iran to make more concessions in negotiations. If not, the US could potentially take military action against the Islamic Republic alongside Israel.

Gantz expressed his opposition to the nuclear deal in the meeting with Sullivan, and the Israelis are stepping up pressure on the Biden administration to abandon the talks. As part of the pressure campaign, the head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, David Barnea, is heading to Washington next week.

Barnea is expected to brief members of the House and Senate intelligence committees on Israel’s opposition to reviving the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA. He will also meet with CIA Director William Burns and other Biden administration officials.

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid slammed the EU’s recent proposal to revive the JCPOA, calling it a “bad deal.” Iran is currently reviewing the US response to the EU proposal, which came after Tehran gave a response of its own.

Lapid said that the EU proposal is not something President Biden said he would pursue during his trip to Israel in July. “We told the Americans: ‘This is not what President Biden wanted.’ This is not what he talked about during his visit to the country,” he said.

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

Featured image is from The Jerusalem Post

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The 80% rise in the U.K.’s cap for consumer electricity and natural gas bills this fall will drive millions of households into energy poverty this winter as the worsening cost-of-living crisis stokes fears of recession.  

All the chatter today among British people is energy regulator Ofgem’s rise in the cap on power bills to a record £3,549 ($4,189) beginning Oct. 1 from £1,971 ($2,330) at present. That cap is expected to rise to £5,439 ($6,427) by January and £7,272 ($8,594) by spring — all due to skyrocketing wholesale NatGas and electricity prices caused by declining Russian energy supplies to Europe, made worse by Western sanctions that have backfired.

Source: Bloomberg

“An increase of this much cannot be budgeted for by households with no wiggle room,” said Peter Smith, director of policy and advocacy for the National Energy Action charity. “Come October, low-income households will simply not turn on their heating.”

Reuters spoke to one Brit, Philip Keetley, who said:

“The cost of living has increased and yet you’re still expected to live on the money provided for when there wasn’t a crisis … I either can have my heating on or eat.”

Another Brit, Dawn White, who has kidney failure, fears the cost of soaring energy costs means she won’t be able to afford life-saving medical treatment:

“Without my (dialysis) machine five times a week, 20 hours, I will die,” the 59-year-old woman said.

Soaring energy inflation has crushed real earnings for Brits, forcing many to pull back on spending.

Source: Bloomberg

The higher cap rate could push inflation to even more elevated levels as U.K. economists at Citi warned CPI inflation could reach a mindboggling 18.6% print in January due to soaring energy prices.

The last time CPI printed above 18% was during the stagflationary years of the mid-1970s (more precisely, 1976) after an oil supply shock led to soaring energy prices worldwide.

Currently, the CPI stands at 10.1% in July for the first time in four decades, primarily driven by skyrocketing food and fuel prices as households crumble under the weight of the cost of living crisis.

Inflation at decades highs has pushed U.K. Misery Index, an economic indicator to gauge how the average person is doing, to three-decade highs, a sign discontent is emerging.

“It’s going to be horrendous,” said Bill Bullen, chief executive officer of Utilita Energy Ltd., which supplies 810,000 homes in the U.K. “We are going to see a big increase in people struggling to pay for their energy bills.”

Last winter’s cap was £1,277, but that was before European leaders sanctioned the hell out of Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine. With the cold season just a few short months away, power prices are already at record highs as Russia’s Nord Stream 1 NatGas pipeline to the bloc experiences supply disruptions.

UK NatGas prices are also hyperinflating.

This winter could be one of the darkest in decades for U.K. households. The government has provided billions of pounds to support families, but that may not reduce the growing discontent.

The resistance is growing as more than 116,000 irritated people have pledged not to pay their electricity bill this fall when the new price cap begins, in a movement called “Don’t Pay U.K.”

“Ofgem just passed a debt and death sentence on millions – we’ve been left with no options but to refuse to pay,”the anonymous group spearheading the effort to have more than one million Brits boycott paying their power bill by Oct. 1.

Soaring power bills will have a devastating impact on society, far greater than the GFC over a decade ago, warned James Cooper, a partner at Baringa. He warned:

“We’re now moving into territory where a majority of households are placed into debt or a very fragile financial position.”

A financial implosion of the households will spur discontent in what could be winter from hell across the U.K.

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This is a very sensitive moment for both Poles, and Ukrainians.  It seems that European border revisionism is just going to start, involving  at least Hungary, Romania and Lithuania. In that case German-Polish relations are crucial.  Already in the early 90s there were many concerns about German revanchism towards former borderlands.  Albeit it has been decided between Washington and Berlin that instead of reclaiming the Polish-German border issue, that would be more profitable to incorporate the entire potential of Poland into the new Great Germany economy area.  Peripherisation of Poland was thus guaranteed by German enterprises, in the interests of American globalism. However situation is dynamic now.  Fragmentation of Europe into an Anglo-Saxon and a Franco-German parts opens the question: what about Poland?

Since Warsaw is determined to follow the Westminster orders, another partition of Poland seems completely realistic, under cover of the territories exchange.  In form of the federation with Ukraine, Poland will supposedly return to the East, and the loss of the Polish colony will be compensated for the Germans by the restoration of their former borders.  Of course, this is only one of the possible scenarios, but we have clearly entered a period of more and more rapid changes, including changes to the World maps.

Working on regaining Polish property in the Eastern Borderlands, I have heard many times doubts whether raising this question poses a threat to our Western territories by stimulating German border revisionism. I have also explained why these issues are not related to each other at all, being associated only in propaganda aimed at preventing Poles from rebuilding their own economic strength.  This does not mean that Szczecin/Stettin, Zielona Góra/ Grünberg, Wrocław/Breslau or Opole/ Oppeln are effectively protected against revanchism. Just opposite, present Polish Government  position may directly lead to the resumption of the western border issue, and thus leave Poland in the shape of the Duchy of Warsaw.

Generalgouvernement für die besetzten polnischen Gebiete

In 1989, taking control over Poland from the Soviets, the United States decided to manage that through its economically key European vassal, i.e. Germany.  In effect Polish industry has been taken over and/or destroyed, Polish market power was fully controlled and significant source of cheap labour force has been secured. What is however even more important, that it costed nearly nothing.  The East and West Germany integration, although being an excellent opportunity to liquidate Germany’s capital surpluses, turned out to be a huge burden and a social failure.  Therefore, Berlin was at no stage interested in repeating this experiment with the areas once lost by the Third Reich, nor to pay pensions to their inhabitants, neither to invest in deprived infrastructure of Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia. Schluß!

German middleman

Position of Poland towards Germany is now quite similar to the Russian-Polish relations in the late 18th century.  The dominant power did not want to annex the subordinate country in whole or even in part as long as it was not necessary, but tried to eliminate, counter and balance competitive influence.  Of course, the difference boils down to the fact that contemporary Germany is by no means an independent nor a prime-class power, only performing American tasks in Central Europe.  So, for the time being, Berlin was staring impotently at Washington’s revealing presence. However, this situation could change if the Anglo-Saxons would try to use Warsaw in a way that could mean direct losses for the German economy.

Putting simply: ALL OF POLAND is part of Germany, economically. That is why Germans have not introduced any directly revanchist politics. The issue of German claims is therefore not in any way related to the issue of Polish property, or even to the Polish eastern border. This is ONLY a derivative of Polish subordination to the German economic policy.  Thus, Germany may submit claims when Poland becomes part of the British Europe project, leaving the European Union.   Exactly like Russia agreed (reluctantly) to the partitions of Poland in the 18th  Century, preferring to control only a part of it, than losing any influence.  The road to losing Wrocław runs through London and Kyiv, not through Lviv. Not Polish, nor even German revisionist attitudes are threats, but Anglo-Saxon imperialism.

British Europe

Prominent Polish politician, Adam Glapinski, President of the National Bank of Poland, an enthusiastic supporter of Anglo-Saxon policy, i.e. provoking Germany to a new partition of Poland, attacks:

“Germany may find itself in a certain chaos, but it would not hinder the realisation of its basic national interests which has been carried for several decades. It used to be about the merge of the German states, or the absorption of practically the GDR, i.e. the former Soviet occupation zone, and since the completion of this task, about regaining some form of their former lands, which are now within the borders of Poland and subordinating the entire belt of countries between Germany and Russia. This is Germany’s  vision of the balance in future Europe. BREXIT opened the way to the implementation of this scenario, based on the cooperation of two empires: Russian and German, with the countries in the middle, within the spheres of influence of both powers”.

This must be understood precisely. The Establishment already knows that  at the moment when Poland accepts these new “British guarantees” (exactly like in 1939, when it provoked  WW2), leaves the EU and announces the establishment of UkroPolin, the “Polish-Ukrainian Union” under Anglo-Saxon administration – Germany will raise the issue of borders.

The transformation of the European Union may be an additional catalyst. Berlin and Paris seem determined to complete the process of its integration, i.e. disclosure as a federal state, more or less within the borders of the euro zone with colonial areas around.  Who drops out, then will suffer the consequences.  As in the case of Greece, the European branch of the global financiers will not only threaten, but simply wind-up local finances and banking. German industrial sector will have to get compensation for the loss of the Polish workers and consumers.  That would be even easier to assimilate Breslau again, than to worry about Rzeszow in the Polish-Ukrainian border, where now about 40% of inhabitants are immigrants from Ukraine.

Another partition of Poland

Even a thousand recovered Polish estates and properties in the East will not shift the course of the Oder and will not affect Polish government on the Western Regained Lands.  One signature on the act of “union” with Ukraine, one move towards the British-Polish-Ukrainian alliance – will detach from Poland everything that was gained in 1945, and maybe more. Berlin will be paid off by Washington and London with Polish lands, and the rest of them will be attached to the Ukrainian colony of Anglo-Saxons, undergoing further accelerated Ukrainianisation.. Thanks to the unanimous policy of the “anti-German government” and the “pro-German opposition”, Poland will lose Wrocław and Szczecin to see how Rzeszów, Przemyśl, Chełm, Lublin and the rest become UkroPolin cities.

Unfortunately, there is no third exit between Berlin and Brussels on the one side, and London and Kiev on the other. Another partition of Poland is already underway.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

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It’s All Political: Julian Assange Appeals His Extradition

August 29th, 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Julian Assange’s legal team has taken its next step along their Via Dolorosa, filing an appeal against the decision to extradite their client to the United States to face 18 charges, 17 based on the odious US Espionage Act of 1917.

Since his violent eviction from the Ecuadorian embassy in April 2019, much to the delight of the national security establishment and its media cheerleaders, Assange has been held captive at Her Majesty’s Belmarsh Prison awaiting his fate.  In a facility reserved for the country’s most hardened criminals, Assange has had to face the COVID-19 pandemic, isolation, limitations on visits, restrictions on regular access to legal counsel, and a stroke.  Warnings about his declining health by health professionals have been coldly ignored.  The agenda is attritive, one of prolonged, even lethal process.

Along this potted judicial road, Assange chalked up a qualified success before District Court Judge Vanessa Baraitser on January 4, 2021, who held that he would be at serious risk of suicide occasioned by the effects of Special Administrative Measures and confinement in the ADX Florence supermax facility in Colorado.  This was deemed oppressive within the meaning of the US-UK Extradition Treaty.  The most obvious aspect of the prosecution – its self-evidently political nature – was given little thought.

Since then, the US government has won each round of legal sparring.  Outrageously, the High Court agreed with the prosecutors in December last year that diplomatic assurances on how Assange would be treated on being extradited – no SAMS, no ADX Facility, even the prospect of seeking a return to Australia to serve the balance of any sentence – could be trusted as fair and ingenuous.  It mattered not one jot that these were made after the original extradition trial and smacked of opportunistic calculation.  The blinkered reasoning of the judges also ignored how US officials had, in the spring of 2017, chewed over the proposed assassination of an Australian subject on British soil.  (At stages, abduction was also floated through the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency.)

Other gaping defects were also put to one side: the revelations of US-directed surveillance efforts of the London Ecuadorian embassy while Assange was in residence; and the fact that a hefty portion of the indictment is based on fabricated testimony from the adventurous conman, embezzler and convicted paedophile Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, Assange found a legal body fixated with one aspect of the case: whether assurances made by the US government were worth any weight at all.  No other blotches and glaring defects mattered.  As matters unfolded, the judges were not even willing to delve into the case.  In the cool words of the Deputy Support Registrar delivered on March 14, “The Court ordered that permission to appeal be refused because the application does not raise an arguable point of law.”

It all fell to the UK Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to act upon what had been a monumental miscarriage of justice.  But blocking the extradition request was too much to expect from an individual who has shown a deep and abiding affection for the national security state.  In July, the Home Office merely reiterated the point the view that “the UK courts have not found that it would be oppressive, unjust or an abuse of process to extradite Mr Assange.”

On August 26, Assange’s legal team filed his Perfected Grounds of Appeal before the High Court of Justice Administrative Court.  The claims stretch back to the original decision of January 4 last year and focus on the seminal points that make the case scandalous.  They include the claim that Assange is being prosecuted and punished for his political opinions (s. 81(a) of the Extradition Act); that he is being prosecuted for speech protected by Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights; that the request itself violates the US-UK Extradition Treaty and international law because it comprises political offences; that the US government has misrepresented core facts of the case to the UK courts; and that the extradition request and its surrounding circumstances constitute an abuse of process.

The application also makes the claim that Patel erred in approving the extradition order on grounds of specialty and because it violates Article 4 of the US-UK Extradition Treaty.  Article 4 stipulates that extradition will not be granted where “the competent authority of the Requested State determines that the request was politically motivated.”  As Julian Assange’s wife, Stella, stated, “overwhelming evidence” had emerged since the previous ruling “proving that the United States prosecution” against the publisher “is a criminal abuse.”

From the issue of ailing health, deemed a primary consideration in the lower court’s approach to Assange, the focus now turns upon the entire raison d’être of the case.  Assange, through provocative publishing, came to be seen as an agent of political disruption and disorder.  An informed populace is, as governments have found out, a dangerous thing.

In giving the rules of the sordid game away – exposing the atrocities, the abuses of power, the bankruptcy of unrepresentative politics – the Australian founder of WikiLeaks became the most prominent political target of the US imperium.  Journalism and activism have, in Assange, combined, his case nothing if not political.  It remains to be seen if the “competent authority”, to use the words of the poorly drafted, ill-weighted Extradition Treaty, agrees.

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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 Lawyers for Assange

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***

‘What we’ve seen in terms of severity of Covid disease in children is that it is actually less than influenza for most age groups in terms of risk of hospitalization,’ the former immunization chair admitted earlier this week.

The doctor who served as Canada’s chair on immunization is now admitting what critics of the COVID narrative have been saying all along, that the flu is deadlier than COVID among young people.

“What we’ve seen in terms of severity of Covid disease in children is that it is actually less than influenza for most age groups in terms of risk of hospitalization,” Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh, who served as the chair of Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) from 2017 to 2021, told reporters at a press conference in Quebec earlier this week.

“And so, at one point in time, we’ll have to treat this virus as all the others and not be as stringent in trying to see where it’s coming from, trying to prevent its transmission completely, mainly because we now have — most of us — underlying immunity, be it through vaccination and/or previous infection,” added the doctor, all but confirming what dissidents of the mainstream COVID-19 narrative have been arguing since the onset of the so-called pandemic.

While government health authorities and the mainstream media have consistently pushed for the experimental injection of children, mandatory masking policies in schools and even school closures as a way of combatting COVID-19, LifeSiteNews has reported from the beginning that there exists a growing body of evidence indicating that masks are ineffective, that COVID poses little to no risk to children and that the COVID-19 vaccines cause more harm than they mitigate in young people.

In fact, Quach-Thanh’s admission that the flu is deadlier than COVID among children has been known for over a year, with researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reporting in the summer of 2021 that they found a “mortality rate of zero among children without a pre-existing medical condition such as leukemia” when they “analyze[d] approximately 48,000 children under 18 diagnosed with Covid in health-insurance data from April to August 2020.”

Despite the existence of such evidence, doctors in Canada have been continually censored, fired and even stripped of their medical licenses for refusing to go along with the push to vaccinate children against the highly survivable virus.

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Featured image: Dr. Caroline Quach-Thanh (Screenshot from a Youtube video via LSN)


“The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity”

by Michel Chossudovsky

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0

Year: 2022

Product Type: PDF

Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store!

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

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“I hate Indians. They are beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits.”—Winston Churchill

Under the British-Raj, India suffered countless famines. From 1760 till 1943, India suffered from terrible famines on a regular basis. Contrast that with the fact that there have been no famines anywhere in India since independence. Previously, when famine hit the country, indigenous ruler kings were quick to respond with useful measures to avert these famines. After the advent of the British rule, the story was different. First of these famines took place in 1770 till 1773. It killed 10 million people. It was followed by severe ones in 1783.

Bengal was the first to experience the devastating effects of the British rule after East India Company became virtual rulers of the province post Battle of Plassey in 1757 CE. That famine of 1768 CE killed nearly 10 million people in Bengal and Bihar.

Under Churchill’s warped policies, despite having a substantial harvest in 1942, massive areas of Indo-Gangetic plain were hit with famine the next year, Bengal being the worst.

Though the numbers vary, according to the Woodhead Commission, while famine and subsequent epidemics killed over 15 million Indians in these parts of the country, Churchill’s government diverted food grains supply to Greece and Yugoslavia from India.

Some of India’s grain was also exported to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) even though the island wasn’t suffering the same hardship; Australian wheat sailed past Indian cities (where the bodies of those died of starvation littered the streets) to ports in Balkans and Mediterranean while offers of American and Canadian food aid were turned down. India was not allowed to use its own sterling reserves, or its own ships to import food.

India had enough food supply to feed the starving, but the British chose to export millions of pounds of grain abroad. Great Indian nationalist, shri Dadabhai Naoroji noted that while Orissans perished in droves in 1866, India had actually exported over 200 million pounds of rice to Britain.

Leopold Amery, the Secretary of State for India and Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, soon to be appointed the new viceroy of India, were deliberating how to ship more food to the colony. But the irascible Prime Minister Winston Churchill was coming in their way. Despite their efforts to convince Churchill, Bengal’s famine could not be prevented.

Formerly, the Indian rulers, upon the possibility of an approaching famine, would waive their taxes and adapt compensatory measures such as irrigation, tax-waivers etc. to provide as much relief as possible to the farmers. The colonial rulers continued to ignore any warnings although starvation had set in from early 1770. Then the deaths started from 1771. But the Company raised the land tax to 60% in order to compensate themselves for the lost revenue.

Following is the timeline of major famines in India during the British-Raj:

  • Doji Bara Famine or Scull Famine of 1791-92: Occurred in Madras Presidency as well as Indian Princely states of Hyderabad, Southern Maratha country, Deccan, Gujarat and Marwar. People died in huge numbers; could not be cremated or buried. 11 million perished during the years 1788-94.
  • Agra Famine of 1837-38: It occurred in Central Doab and trans-Jumna districts of North- Western provinces (later Agra-province), including Delhi and Hissar. At least 800,000 people died.
  • Upper Doab Famine of 1866: Happened in Upper Doab of Agra, Delhi and Hissar Divisions of Punjab under the British territory, also in the Eastern Rajputana under Indian kingdoms/Princely states. 2 million Indians perished.
  • Orissa Famine of 1866-67: Occurred in British Territory of Bihar, Bellary and Ganjam districts of Madras. 1 million people (814,469 in Orissa, 135,676 in Bihar and 10,898 in Ganjam district) perished.
  • Rajputana Famine of 1869: Happened in Ajmer, Western Agra, and Eastern Punjab under the British and Rajputana under the Indian Kingdoms and Princely states. 1.5 million people succumbed to hunger.
  • Great Famine of 1876-78 and Southern India Famine of 1876-78: Happened in British territory of Madras and Bombay and Indian kingdoms/Princely states of Mysore and Hyderabad. 5.5 million people starved to death in British territory. Mortality is unknown for princely states. Total famine mortality estimates vary from 6.1 to 10.3 million.
  • Indian Famine of 1896-97: Occurred in British territory of Deccan, Bombay, Madras, Bengal, United Provinces, Central Provinces as well as in parts of Punjab, Specially Bagar tract; also in Indian Kingdoms and Princely states of northern and eastern Rajputana, Hyderabad and parts of Central India. 5 million people perished in British territory.
  • Indian Famine of 1899-1900: Occurred in Bombay Central Provinces, Berar, Ajmer as well as parts of Punjab, especially Bagar tract; also Rajputana, Hyderabad, Central India, Baroda, Kathiawar and Kutch. 1 million people died in British territories. Mortality is unknown for princely states.
  • Bengal Famine of 1943-44: Occurred in Bengal. 1.5 million people starved to death while 1 million dies from epidemics.

Famines were used as strategic weapons by the British-Raj. Starving millions could not offer stiff resistance to the alien power.

Every famine disaster in India was a godsend gift to missionaries as they were able to convert lakhs of desperate people by promising lifesaving grain. Major conversions of Hindus to Christianity around each famine and epidemic during the British Raj debunks the claims by missionaries that Hindus are converting to Christianity to “escape” the caste system.

Lord “Butcher” Lytton had issued specific orders that news of the famine be suppressed for the arrival of Queen Victoria in whose honor Grand Durbar was organized in Calcutta while horrific famine was going on killing nearly 100,000 Indians in Madras Presidency.

Adding it all up, from around 35 million Indians have perished due to famines under the British- Raj because of their criminal and intentional neglect to take remedial measures.

Amazingly, we have never been taught in high school or college history classes about these genocides under the British-Raj. It should be taught at high school level all over India.

While millions of Indians were dying from starvation, Londoners were dancing in their ornate dancing halls sipping scotch whiskey and enjoying the massive loot of their crown colony by the Empire.

This is the legacy of the British-Raj.

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Chaitanya Davé is a Chemical Engineer based in Southern California, founder and president of “Pragati Foundation”, a non-profit charity helping the poor villagers of India, Nepal, Haiti, USA-homeless. Author of three books: Crimes against Humanity, A Shocking Record of US Crimes since 1776-2007, Collapse: Civilization on the Brink-2010, and Capitalism’s March of Destruction (2016-20).

Featured image: Hindus and Muslims, with flags of Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, collecting clothes to be burnt as a part of the non-cooperation movement 

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Mütter und Väter in der Welt: Noch nie war die Lage so ernst und unser aller Zukunft so bedroht wie heute! Politiker wie die britische Außenministerin Liz Truss sind im Zusammenhang mit dem Ukraine-Krieg bereit, „notfalls Atomwaffen einzusetzen“ (1). Damit wäre unser aller Schicksal und die Zukunft unserer Kinder besiegelt.

Nach Auffassung des renommierten amerikanischen Völkerrechtsexperten Francis Boyle ist seit dem Nürnberger Kriegsverbrechertribunal 1945 allein die Drohung mit Atomwaffen „Atomterrorismus“ und ein „Verbrechen gegen Frieden und Menschlichkeit“ (2). Hinzu kommt, dass die US-NATO sich bereits auf einen großen Krieg vorzubereiten scheint (3). Die Schweizer „UNCUT-NEWS“ titelten hierzu: „Hat der Dritte Weltkrieg bereits begonnen? (WORLD WAR 3 HAS ALREADY BEGUN)“ (4)

Doch nicht nur korrupte Regierungsvertreter, skrupellose Milliardär-Technokraten oder größenwahnsinnige „Menschenfreunde“ müssen aufhören zu hassen – auch wir Väter, Mütter und Großeltern sowie alle vernunftbegabten Menschen weltweit stehen in der Pflicht, nicht mehr zu hassen und die Vernunft zu Rate zu ziehen.

Früher – im Mittelalter – hat nur der Glaube gegolten. Seit einiger Zeit hat der Mensch jedoch begonnen, die Vernunft zu Rate zu ziehen, hat angefangen, zu beobachten, sich die Natur zu erklären und sie sich in den Dienst gestellt. Der hellsichtig gewordene Mensch, der sich als Herr seines Schicksals weiß, verschreibt sich dem Geist und der Lebensform der permanenten Empörung gegen das Unrecht (5). Er richtet seine Liebe auf die Erde und die Mitmenschen – vor allem auf seine Kinder. Das ist sein Glaube, seine Leidenschaft, seine Zukunft. In der mitmenschlichen Gemeinschaft schafft er sich eine Heimstätte, ein Zuhause, das ihm aus einer Anteilnehme an den Freuden und Leiden der Mitmenschen erwächst.

Heute wissen wir, dass der Krieg nur Werke der Zerstörung vollbringen kann – wie zum Beispiel in der Ukraine, in Afghanistan, in Syrien oder im Jemen. Niemals dürfen wir von ihm unser Heil erwarten. Die geschichtliche Betrachtung zeigt sogar, dass der Niedergang der Kultur immer mit Kriegen verbunden war. Das Unglück Spartas und der Aufstieg und Fall des römischen Reiches sind historische Beispiele. Wird Amerika folgen?

Hass und Groll vergiften nicht nur die internationale politische und kulturelle Atmosphäre und erschweren oder verunmöglichen dadurch friedliche Lösungen, sie vergiften auch unser eigenes Leben und die menschliche Gemeinschaft. Wer jedoch die Vernunft zu Rate zieht, der wird einen Weg finden, einen Beitrag zur Völkerverständigung und zum Frieden zu leisten und der Jugend eine lebenswerte Zukunft zu ermöglichen.

Am 20. August 2022 machte die Holocaust-Überlebende Vera Sharav aus den USA bei einer Gedenkveranstaltung zum 75. Jahrestag der Einführung des Nürnberger Kodex auf die unheilvollen Parallelen zwischen den 1930er Jahren und der Gegenwart aufmerksam. Sie verglich die aktuelle politische Situation mit den Anfängen des Nationalsozialismus, wo Grundrechte ebenfalls schrittweise aufgegeben und Menschengruppen gezielt diffamiert und ausgegrenzt wurden. Wörtlich sagte sie: „Der Holocaust begann nicht erst in den Gaskammern von Auschwitz und Treblinka“ (6). Schließlich prophezeite sie: „Wenn wir nicht alle Widerstand leisten, wird es nie wieder so sein!“ (7)

Deshalb sollten wir nicht schweigend und mit verschränkten Armen darauf warten, bis die Welt automatisch wieder „ins Lot kommt“ oder der Planet eben eines Tages verglüht und die Welt leider untergegangen ist. In diesem Fall wären wir tatsächlich die letzte Generation (Rosalie Bertell).

*

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor a. D.), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Schwerpunkte: Klinische-, Pädagogische-, Medien- sowie Individual-Psychologie). Viele Jahrzehnte unterrichtete er, bildete Hochschulabsolventen fort, gründete in Köln zusammen mit Kollegen eine Modellschule für ehemalige Schulversager, bildete an der Bayerischen Akademie für Lehrerfortbildung und Personalführung Beratungslehrkräfte für alle Schularten aus und war schließlich Staatlicher Schulberater für die Landeshauptstadt München. Als Pensionär arbeitete er viele Jahre als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung und eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Sein Lebensmotto (nach Albert Camus): Geben, wenn man kann. Und nicht hassen, wenn das möglich ist.

Noten 

https://de.rt.com/international/131481-liveticker-zum-ukraine-krieg-kiew/

https://uncutnews.ch/die-eigentliche-bedrohung-durch-atomwaffen-ist-atomterrorismus-und-ein-verbrechen-gegen-frieden-und-menschlichkeit-prof-francis-boyle/

https://de.rt.com/europa/146945-schutz-vor-bedrohungen-bereitet-sich/

https://uncutnews.ch/hat-der-dritte-weltkrieg-bereits-begonnen/

https://www.globalresearch.ca/actuality-french-philosopher-writer-existentialist-atheist-stamp-albert-camus/5790202

https://de.rt.com/meinung/146892-holocaustuberlebende-vera-sharav-diesmal-wird/

https://uncutnews.ch/holocaust-ueberlebende-vera-sharav-wenn-wir-nicht-alle-widerstand-leisten-wird-es-nie-wieder-so-sein-vollstaendige-rede-nuernberg-20-august-2022/

Featured image is from Countercurrents


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   

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***

Mothers and fathers of the world: never before has the situation been so serious and the future of all of us so threatened! Politicians like the British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are prepared to “use nuclear weapons if necessary” in connection with the war in Ukraine (1). This would seal the fate of all of us and the future of our children.

According to the renowned American international law expert Francis Boyle, since the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1945, the mere threat of nuclear weapons is “nuclear terrorism” and a “crime against peace and humanity” (2). In addition, the US-NATO already seems to be preparing for a major war (3). The Swiss “UNCUT-NEWS” headlined: “Has the Third World War already begun? (WORLD WAR 3 HAS ALREADY BEGUN)” (4).

But it is not only corrupt government officials, unscrupulous billionaire technocrats or megalomaniac “humanitarians” who must stop hating – we fathers, mothers and grandparents, as well as all rational people worldwide, have a duty to stop hating and to consult reason.

In the past – in the Middle Ages – only faith was valid. For some time now, however, man has begun to consult reason, has begun to observe, to explain nature to himself and to put it at his service. Man, who has become clairvoyant, who knows himself to be the master of his destiny, dedicates himself to the spirit and the way of life of permanent indignation against injustice (5). He directs his love towards the earth and his fellow human beings – above all towards his children. This is his faith, his passion, his future. In the human community he creates a home for himself, a home that grows out of his participation in the joys and sufferings of his fellow human beings.

Today we know that war can only accomplish works of destruction – as for example in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria or Yemen. We must never expect our salvation from it. Historical observation even shows that the decline of culture has always been associated with wars. The misfortunes of Sparta and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire are historical examples. Will America follow suit?

Hatred and rancour not only poison the international political and cultural atmosphere, making peaceful solutions difficult or impossible, they also poison our own lives and the human community. However, those who consult reason will find a way to contribute to international understanding and peace, and to give youth a future worth living.

On 20 August 2022, at a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the introduction of the Nuremberg Code, Holocaust survivor Vera Sharav from the USA drew attention to the ominous parallels between the 1930s and the present. She compared the current political situation with the beginnings of National Socialism, where fundamental rights were also gradually abandoned and groups of people were deliberately defamed and excluded. Literally, she said: “The Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka” (6). Finally, she prophesied, “If we don’t all resist, it will never be like this again!” (7)

Therefore, we should not wait in silence and with folded arms until the world automatically “gets back on track” or the planet just burns up one day and the world unfortunately ends. In that case, we would indeed be the last generation (Rosalie Bertell).

*

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and graduate psychologist (specialising in clinical, educational, media and individual psychology): He specialises in clinical, educational, media and individual psychology.) He taught for many decades, trained university graduates, founded a model school for former school failures in Cologne together with colleagues, trained counselling teachers for all types of schools at the Bavarian Academy for Teacher Training and Personnel Management and was finally a state school counsellor for the state capital Munich. As a retiree, he worked for many years as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral values education and an education for public spirit and peace. His motto in life (after Albert Camus): Give when you can. And not to hate, if that is possible.

Notes

(1) https://de.rt.com/international/131481-liveticker-zum-ukraine-krieg-kiew/

(2) https://uncutnews.ch/die-eigentliche-bedrohung-durch-atomwaffen-ist-atomterrorismus-und-ein-verbrechen-gegen-frieden-und-menschlichkeit-prof-francis-boyle/

(3) https://de.rt.com/europa/146945-schutz-vor-bedrohungen-bereitet-sich/

(4) https://uncutnews.ch/hat-der-dritte-weltkrieg-bereits-begonnen/

(5) https://www.globalresearch.ca/actuality-french-philosopher-writer-existentialist-atheist-stamp-albert-camus/5790202

(6) https://de.rt.com/meinung/146892-holocaustuberlebende-vera-sharav-diesmal-wird/

(7) https://uncutnews.ch/holocaust-ueberlebende-vera-sharav-wenn-wir-nicht-alle-widerstand-leisten-wird-es-nie-wieder-so-sein-vollstaendige-rede-nuernberg-20-august-2022/

Featured image is from Countercurrents


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   

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Listen, Mothers and Fathers! The Future of Our Children Is at Stake

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

During his trip to the Indo-Pacific in May, U.S. President Joe Biden made his first stop in South Korea where he hoped to inaugurate a new golden era of U.S.-South Korean relations.

South Korea’s newly elected President Yoon Suk-yeol was a conservative who had promised a tough stance against North Korea. A RAND Corporation analyst heralded him as “Biden’s perfect South Korean partner.”

The U.S. has maintained tens of thousands of soldiers in South Korea since the Korean War ended in 1953 with an armistice, not a peace treaty, and established 15 military bases there.

During their meeting, Biden and Yoon agreed to “expand the scope and scale” of combined military exercises and training, and discussed the possibility of deploying strategic military assets, “fighters, bombers, or missiles,” to South Korea to bolster its deterrence capabilities against North Korea, which had been ruled for the last 75 years by the socialist Kim dynasty.

Neither Biden nor Yoon, however, factored into their plans the large-scale protests which broke out on August 13 in Seoul in reaction to the military exercises, and others that may yet follow.

Named “Ulchi Freedom Shield” after a seventh Century Korean General, the military exercise have involved thousands of troops in live-fire exercises combining land, sea and air forces, and joint mock attacks assisted by drone surveillance.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un denounced these drills as a “dress rehearsal for northward invasion,” while a columnist for a North Korean newspaper wrote: “how could anybody only see a terribly dangerous tumult [since the U.S. and South Korea were] playing with fire at the front door of [North Korea’s] home.”

The drills coincided with rising tensions with China resulting from Nancy Pelosi’s inflammatory visit to Taiwan and the Biden administration’s sending of warships into the Taiwan Strait in violation of international law. Yoon had inflamed China through his decision to add more anti-missile batteries employing the U.S. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, which could be reconfigured to peer into Chinese territory.[1]

Yoon has also committed South Korea to a closer security relationship with Japan, with Japanese naval units joining the U.S. and South Korea for missile search and tracking exercises off the coast of Hawaii.

Protests in Seoul against THAAD missiles. [Source: defensenews.com]

Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in (2017-2022), had tried to repair relations with Beijing by pledging the “Three Nos”—that Seoul would not deploy any additional THAAD systems; would not participate in U.S.-led missile defense networks; and would not form a trilateral military alliance with Washington and Tokyo.

During Donald Trump’s presidency, regular U.S.-South Korea drills were suspended. Trump and Moon held talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and drew down military cooperation as a sign of goodwill toward Pyongyang.

In a sign of today’s worsening relations, North Korea responded to the “Ulchi Freedom Shield” drills by launching two cruise missiles into the Sea of Japan.

“No War Rehearsal”

The August 13 protests in Seoul were timed to coincide with National Liberation Day, celebrating the 77th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula’s liberation from Imperial Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.

Participants took to the streets and chanted anti-U.S. slogans, shouting “Dissolve [South] Korea-U.S. alliance” and “This land is not a U.S. war base.”

Protest in Seoul. [Source: english.almayadeen.com]

Placards at the rally read “No war rehearsal, No U.S.” and “No [South] Korea-U.S.-Japan military cooperation.”

Yang Kyung-soo, chief of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), said at the protest rally that staging military exercises in preparation for a war is “tantamount to intending to wage a war,” according to local newspaper Chosun Ilbo.

That newspaper reported that some of the KCTU members had carried out anti-U.S. demonstrations earlier in the month near U.S. military bases across South Korea, demanding the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

In late June, civic groups carried out civil disobedience in front of the Jeju-do island Naval Base demanding a halt to maritime war drills and closure of the base—which was built on a pristine World Heritage Site.

Jeju-do island was the site of a horrific series of massacres by U.S. and South Korean troops on the eve of the Korean War.

Source: researchgate.net

Peace activist Choi Sung-hee wrote that the protests in Jeju-do in late June were more than just opposition to a particular military exercise; they were part of a “struggle against the preparations for war in Northeast Asia and the wholesale militarization of the ocean, earth, sky, and space.”

This is equally true of the August 13 protests, which might initiate a tidal wave that sets back Biden and Yoon’s militarist designs.

*

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Note

  1. Beijing retaliated by suspending Chinese group tours to South Korea and obliterating the China business of South Korean supermarket giant Lotte, which had provided land for the missile system. 

Featured image: People rally against the planned South Korea-U.S. military drills in Seoul, South Korea, August 13, 2022. [Source: eng.chinamil.com]

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***

Guest is Florian Schilling, Scientific director of a company near Munich, which produces natural manufactures. He is a naturopath and former project manager at the Bumrungrad International Hospital Bangkok: Research projects in the field of Transnational Science.

This session is about the immune escape in mRNA-injected individuals. Why the “vaccination” campaigns won’t work and the vaccinated will never achieve full immunity again – and herd immunity is thus permanently “history”.

  • On the updated “vaccines” – what to think and expect from them.
  • Outlook for the situation in the fall, what the politicians are planning and how one can prepare oneself in the best possible way.

*

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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  • Tags: , ,

“Back Door Oil Sales”, Washington Is Furious. It Can’t Stop a Prospective Russian-Iranian Oil Swap Deal

By Andrew Korybko, August 27, 2022

The Russian and Iranian economies will mutually benefit by selling discounted resources on the global market while countries like India will accelerate their rise as multipolar Great Powers through the purchase of these exports. Their trilateral axis will continue becoming a force to be reckoned with, especially if the first two coordinate their natural gas activities seeing as how they account for the largest such reserves in the world.

America Imported Over $6 Billion in Goods From Russia Since Ukraine Invasion

By Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter, August 29, 2022

In response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, US President Joe Biden vowed to isolate and “cripple” the Russian economy. However, Moscow has been able to maintain its economic strength, in part by exporting over $1 billion per month in wood, metals, food and other goods to the US.

Falling Military Recruitment Is Another Sign of Waning Faith in the Regime

By Ryan McMaken, August 29, 2022

The US Army reports it is having some serious problems when it comes to recruiting new soldiers. Last month, according to the AP: “Army officials … said the service will fall about 10,000 soldiers short of its planned end strength for this fiscal year, and prospects for next year are grimmer.”

Three Major Attacks in Syria in 24 Hours

By Steven Sahiounie, August 29, 2022

On August 24, the US military in Syria carried out a retaliatory airstrike on a militia that the US claims previously attacked the Al Tanf base on August 15. US F-15 and F-16 jets dropped guided bombs on nine ammunition and storage bunkers in Ayyash, near Deir al-Zour in the early hours of Wednesday; however, the militia may not have been responsible for the August 15 attack.

Ukraine Uses NATO Ammunition in Attacks on Nuclear Power Station. Dangers of Radioactive Leaks

By Ana Luisa Brown, August 28, 2022

Representatives of the civil-military administration of the Zaporozhie region denounced today that Ukrainian troops use artillery with NATO ammunition in attacks on the Energodar nuclear power plant.

Censorship, Big Tech, and Psychological Warfare

By Mark Taliano, August 27, 2022

Right now beneath the sunny blue skies and seeming normalcy, genocide is occurring globally. The experimental mRNA injections are bioweapons disguised as vaccines. They are neither safe nor effective. Some of the jabs may be placebos, some batches may be  worse than others and, fortunately, not all will be adversely affected to the same degree.

NATO’s Article 4 and Article 5 Jeopardize American Sovereignty at the Norfolk Naval Base

By Renee Parsons, August 27, 2022

As if the US contribution of  “roughly” 75% of NATO’s budget was not enough of a gift, the American public and much of Congress have remained oblivious to collaborators within the US government who have relinquished the Norfolk Naval Station to NATO forces.   With its military forces led by a NATO Supreme Allied Commander at Norfolk’s Joint Warfare Centre and hundreds of new nation member resident-families, NATO has its roots firmly ensconced at the Norfolk facility since at least 2020.  

Amnesty’s Report on Violations Committed by Ukraine Military Directed against Civilians. Storm of Media Criticism

By Marc Vandepitte, August 27, 2022

There has been a lot of buzz about Amnesty International’s recent report on the violations committed by the Ukrainian military in the war with Russia, although this was a balanced and cautious report indeed. The attacks against this human rights organization are far from innocent. Background and interpretation of this issue.

US Pressures Japan to Cancel Constitution’s Peace-Clause. China and Japan Must Thus Finally Agree Now, to Avoid a War.

By Eric Zuesse, August 26, 2022

America especially wants Japan to invade China when and if China invades (so as to retake control over) the “Republic of China”, which is China’s province of Taiwan, which province Japan had conquered from China in 1895, and which province the United States Government in 1945 forced Japan to return to China, as part of Japan’s WW II surrender, which today’s U.S. Government now wants to reverse, so that China can now become captured by America as Japan was captured in 1945.

US Pressures India to Imitate Europe’s “Self-sabotaging Energy Policy”

By Ahmed Adel, August 26, 2022

Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar confidently boasted recently that the world has accepted India’s energy policy and bilateral relations with Russia. Jaishankar’s statement prompted US State Department spokesperson Ned Price to say that it is going to be a long-term proposition for New Delhi to reorient foreign policy away from Moscow – but despite the QUAD alliance, India is unlikely to abandon its relations with Russia.

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***

In response to Russia’s attack on Ukraine, US President Joe Biden vowed to isolate and “cripple” the Russian economy. However, Moscow has been able to maintain its economic strength, in part by exporting over $1 billion per month in wood, metals, food and other goods to the US. 

More than 3,600 ships from Russia have arrived at US ports since February 24, according to statistics cited by the Associated Press. While that is nearly half of the shipments over the same period compared to last year, it still amounts to over $6 billion in imports.

The number of Russian products entering US ports suggests Biden is falling short of his pledge to isolate Moscow’s economy. Due to so-called “wind down” periods that allow companies to complete previous deals, some of the goods continue to enter the country long after the White House announced sanctions on those products, including oil and gas. Paradoxically, other Russian imports, such as fertilizer, came at the request of the Biden administration, which has urged American companies to make up for shortages.

And while the White House has seized several luxury yachts owned by rich Russians with loose ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the AP found that American and European firms are importing millions of dollars in metal from a Russian company that makes parts for Moscow’s fighter jets, highlighting another odd discrepancy in Biden’s sanctions campaign.

Despite diplomatic pressure from Washington, other American allies are increasing their economic ties with Russia. Turkey – a NATO member – has doubled its imports of Russian oil this year.

During Biden’s presidency, he has taken several steps to strengthen ties with New Delhi, with American troops currently engaged in war games with India on the Chinese border. But like Ankara, the country has similarly significantly increased energy imports from Moscow. The Indian rupee has also become a major currency for the diamond trade, allowing buyers to bypass US sanctions.

Though the Western economic war was meant to negate Moscow’s military might and bring it to the negotiation table, it has so far seen little success. With Russian energy exports topping pre-war levels in recent months and the ruble rallying against the dollar, Russia’s economy appears to have fared far better than much of Europe since fighting erupted last winter.

*

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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 Insitute and a staff writer at RT. Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.

Featured image is from The Libertarian Institute

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***

The US Army reports it is having some serious problems when it comes to recruiting new soldiers. Last month, according to the AP: “Army officials … said the service will fall about 10,000 soldiers short of its planned end strength for this fiscal year, and prospects for next year are grimmer.”

The army is not alone in missing recruitment goals:

Senior Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps leaders have said they are hopeful they will meet or just slightly miss their recruiting goals for this year. But they said they will have to dip into their pool of delayed entry applicants, which will put them behind as they begin the next recruiting year.

In fact, recruitment prospects are so grim that 2022 is looking to be the worst recruiting year for the army since 1973, when the US military transitioned to an all-volunteer—i.e., nonconscripted—force. The days of the post-9/11 surge in enlistments are long gone, and noted for two lost wars in recent years, the US military now faces a new environment of declining public support. Moreover, with its recent drive to showcase its commitment to so-called woke policy goals, the military may be alienating conservatives—a group that has long been a reliable source of recruits and political support.

Ultimately, of course, the military can always get more troops by raising pay and lowering standards. The latter requires only a policy change. And, given the federal government’s ability to essentially print money, the former is unlikely to be an insurmountable problem for the Pentagon either.

The good news, however, is that the military’s recruiting woes are likely yet another signal of declining support for the federal government and its institutions. The federal government has benefited immensely from the fact that the military has long been one of the most popular institutions within the central government. Even as many Americans claim they distrust the government or oppose “the bureaucracy,” widespread support for the government military bureaucracy has long helped to prop up the legitimacy of federal institutions. If falling enlistments are an indication of declining faith in the military overall, that would be a positive development, indeed.

The Economics of Recruitment

As has often been the case in the past, the military is now struggling to find enough willing recruits in an environment of low unemployment. After all, many recruits are motivated at least in part by promises of steady income, veterans’ benefits, and tuition reimbursement. These benefits look relatively less attractive when private-sector jobs are easy to find.

As a result, the military has been “throwing cash” at the problem. All the services are now “leaning on record-level enlistment and retention bonuses” to attract recruits, with higher bonuses for riskier or more skill-intensive work.

Military recruiting efforts, however, have long sought to “subsidize” salaries by promising psychic profits in the form of positive emotions obtained by fulfilling one’s supposed patriotic duty. Another benefit suggested by recruiters has been an alleged opportunity for “adventure.” Historically, recruitment efforts have relied on promising a variety of nonmonetary forms of “payment.”

In their analysis of military recruitment efforts, Peter Padilla and Mary Riege Laner identified at least four different types of benefits promised to potential recruits. These include patriotism, adventure/challenge, job/career/education, social status, and money. Emphasis has differed based on social trends (such as the prevalence of antiwar sentiment) and, of course, on the personal preferences of individual recruits.

The military, in any case, has recognized the need to appeal to all these aspects to meet recruitment goals. Even when military pay is generous, it is still necessary to get potential recruits to accept a job in which one cannot legally quit. Moreover, if a large number of potential recruits view the military as pursuing values and goals contrary to their own, monetary rewards would have to be raised quite high to overcome nonmonetary concerns.

Another strategy that can increase recruitment is to lower (or change) standards for new recruits. This has been done in various ways. For example, as tattoos have become more fashionable among middle-class youth, the military has granted many more waivers. The Air Force is now considering allowing members to grow beards. These changes, however, are based largely on appearance. Broader changes that would qualify as truly lowering standards include efforts to lower physical fitness requirements for women, older members, and marijuana users. For more than a decade now, the army has also been accepting more and more recruits with lower scores on aptitude tests and with no high school diploma.

Of course, there is no “correct” number of employees for the armed forces, and there is no functioning marketplace in the provision of “defense.” The size of the US military is arbitrarily determined by Congress and the White House based on political interests and goals. The military is nonetheless partly constrained by market realities, and by the subjective values of potential workers.

Support for the Military Is Falling

All else being equal, however, falling enlistment is evidence that workers are less interested in serving in the military outside mere economic considerations. This is reflected in the survey data suggesting that the military’s reputation among members of the general public has declined significantly.

For example, as the Military Times reported last year, “About 56 percent of Americans surveyed said they have ‘a great deal of trust and confidence’ in the military, down from 70 percent in 2018.” Moreover, according to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who believe that military officers “have high ethics” dropped 10 percent from 2017 to 2021.

As has long been the case, the military remains among the more trusted institutions in the US, but, as even the relentless promilitary Heritage Foundation admits:

A more candid appraisal, however, would see this for what it is: a vote of declining confidence by America in its oldest and heretofore most trusted institution.

More worrisome still—from the Pentagon’s perspective—is that much of this decline is coming from a drop in conservative and Republican support. Gallup reports that in its survey, military officers’ “image among the GOP is now the lowest Gallup has recorded since the first reading, in 2002, a period spanning Republican and Democratic presidencies.”

Moreover, political rhetoric among many conservatives has decidedly turned against the Pentagon. This was noted last year in Foreign Policy:

The long Republican romance with the military appears to have finally come to an end. And as conservative politicians and pundits have put the U.S. military—and especially the top brass—in their cross hairs, their supporters and listeners have taken note. The consequences for the U.S. military could be dire.

Part of this is apparently due to the growing feeling among conservatives that military bureaucracy has committed itself to so-called woke politics. From Tucker Carlson to Ted Cruz to Sabastian Gorka, conservatives apparently are not nearly as enamored with the US military establishment as they once were. As Tucker Carlson complained back in May:

Most of the generals we see quoted in the press seem more committed to meeting some counterproductive diversity goal—hiring more pregnant Air Force pilots, assembling the world’s first transgender SEAL team—than on defending the United States.

The Effect on Enlistments

These trends among historical supporters of the military may be finally showing up in recruitment realities. It’s difficult to directly measure the ideological leanings of new recruits. After all, enlistment forms don’t ask for one’s political and ideological beliefs. But we can indirectly make some guesses about who is joining the military based on where most of the recruits are coming from. For example, as the New York Times reported in 2018, military recruiters rely heavily on new recruits from the nation’s most politically conservative region—the South—to meet recruiting goals:

In 2019, Fayetteville, N.C., which is home to Fort Bragg, provided more than twice as many military enlistment contracts as Manhattan, even though Manhattan has eight times as many people. Many of the new contracts in Fayetteville were soldiers signing up for second and third enlistments…. Military service was once spread fairly evenly—at least geographically—throughout the nation because of the draft. But after the draft ended in 1973, enlistments shifted steadily south of the Mason-Dixon line. The military’s decision to close many bases in Northern states where long winters limited training only hastened the trend.

The significance of geography for new recruits can also be seen in the fact that politically conservative regions also tend to grant military recruiters better access to local schools. As school districts in many left-leaning urban areas restricted recruiters’ access to high school students in recent years, this has further increased the reliance on recruits from promilitary suburbs, exurbs, and rural towns. These are areas that tend to be more politically conservative. Moreover, new recruits lopsidedly come from families with a history of military service. While the extent to which military personnel support Republicans has been overstated, the military does nonetheless lean conservative. All this would suggest that new recruits come both from households and regions that lean conservative themselves.

In other words, the military has becoming increasingly reliant on a dwindling number of communities and families. The military brass admits this model is not sustainable.

The larger issue here is not whether or not the military can meet recruitment goals without big changes to current standards and pay. After all, if the economy continues to weaken and unemployment rises, this could bail out recruiters in a big way. Rather, the enlistment situation helps to illustrate what may be a developing and hopeful trend in which many conservatives are finally abandoning their long love affair with the US regime through its military institutions.

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Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

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Three Major Attacks in Syria in 24 Hours

August 29th, 2022 by Steven Sahiounie

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***

On August 24, the US military in Syria carried out a retaliatory airstrike on a militia that the US claims previously attacked the Al Tanf base on August 15. 

US F-15 and F-16 jets dropped guided bombs on nine ammunition and storage bunkers in Ayyash, near Deir al-Zour in the early hours of Wednesday; however, the militia may not have been responsible for the August 15 attack.

The Al Tanf base is an illegal US military base in southeast Syria established in 2016, on the Damascus to Baghdad highway, near the borders of Iraq and Jordan. The US military invaded Syria in 2015 while fighting ISIS. Despite ISIS being defeated in 2019, the US occupation forces have never left Syria.

ISIS did invade Syria and caused a great deal of death and destruction; however, the US and their Kurdish allies were not responsible for the defeat of ISIS.  The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) is the national army in Syria and is comprised of hundreds of thousands of Syrians, as it is a compulsory service for every Syrian male over the age of 18, who is not enrolled in a University.  On the ground as well as the Russian army and air force base in Syria.  A few thousand US troops and their Kurdish militia, the SDF, played a small part in the defeat of ISIS in Syria as compared with the Syrian and Russian armies.

On August 15, the Al Tanf base was attacked by drones, but according to US Central Command, caused no casualties and no damage. The US has stated the recovered drone parts lead them to believe it was an Iranian-backed militia in Syria who carried out the attack.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, issued a statement denying Iran had any link to the groups the US has blamed.

Major General John Brennan, the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force, associated with Operation Inherent Resolve, said, “Coalition personnel retains the right to self-defense, and we will take appropriate measures to protect our forces.”

Under international law, the people under military occupation by foreign invaders have the right to repel the invaders and force them out, and the right to self-defense.  Invaders have no such rights.

The eastern desert areas in Syria are inhabited by local tribes.  These are hard-living, sturdy people who are not afraid to stand their ground and are well-armed in most cases.  In history, these are peoples who have fought each other and invaders over the millennia.  The tribes have decided they want the US invaders out of the country, primarily as they see the US sanctions on Syria as the foremost obstacle to reconstruction and recovery from the devastation caused by armed conflict beginning in 2011.  The tribes have rejected the US-backed militias, such as the Kurdish SDF, and the terrorists who were following Radical Islam, such as those in occupation of Idlib.  The US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) was not supported by the tribes, and after the FSA morphed into Al Qaeda the tribes fought battles to drive the terrorists westward into their current enclave at Idlib.

Syria has a severe electricity shortage, with most households getting about one hour per day.  Syria does not have full electricity because the US military has occupied the oil fields and confiscated the oil, thus preventing its domestic use to generate electricity.  The tribes, and indeed all Syrian residents, desperately want the US military out so they can once again produce electricity, and gasoline for domestic use.  US sanctions prevent importing petroleum products, which led to the US high-jacking Iranian oil tankers coming to Syria previously.

Misyaf

On August 25, Israel targeted the city of Misyaf in the Hama province.  The attack came from Israeli warplanes over the Mediterranean Sea near Tartus, as they fired several missiles at Misyaf.  Syrian air defenses responded and most of the missiles were downed, but one missile caused a fire that threatened to spread into a wildfire but was eventually contained by residents and firefighters. Syrian Arab News Agency reported that two civilians were wounded in the attack.

Israel always coordinates with the US military on airstrikes it conducts in Syria.

Deir Ez Zor

The Euphrates river splits the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, with the US and their Kurdish SDF allies on the east side, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and their allies west of the river.

The Al-Omar oilfield is the largest in Syria, and before 2011 Syria was energy self-sufficient.  Syria produced enough domestic oil and natural gas to meet the needs of the nation in electricity production, cooking gas, diesel fuel for heating and transportation, as well as gasoline for cars and transportation.  Before the US-NATO war for regime change, Syria even exported gas and oil.

Once the US military invaded, they set up a base at the Al-Omar oilfield and confiscated the oil produced.  In cooperation with their Kurdish allies, the US looted the oil and transported hundreds of tankers full to the Kurdish region in neighboring Iraq for resale on the black market.  This is the same oil that ISIS used to sell to Turkey for $17 per barrel.

On August 25, Syrian Arab tribes in the northern suburbs of Deir Ez Zor attacked the base housing US military at the Al-Omar and Conoco oil fields, leaving three US servicemen with minor wounds, after the residential area at the base was hit by missiles causing a massive fire.

The tribes temporarily wrested control of the oil field from the US military, their security contractors, and the SDF.  Battles soon ensued at Azbay, in the northern suburbs of Deir Ez Zor, between the Syrian Arab tribes against the US and their SDF allies.  The US called in helicopters and reinforcements to the oil field, and ambulances were seen responding.

The US has 28 military bases in Syria, located at strategic oil and gas wells in the east of Syria.

The US responded by air strikes on an SAA position in al-Mayadeen, a suburb of Deir Ez Zor. This is the fifth attack on the US military base at the Al-Omar oil field this month.

Syria says it will drive the US from Syria if they will not leave voluntarily. Local tribes and residents have been resisting the US occupation by blocking the path of US military vehicles, throwing stones at vehicles, and in some cases attacking bases.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, while speaking to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2021, said, “Just as we managed to wipe out terrorists from most of Syria, we will work to end the occupation with the same resolve and determination, using all possible means under international law.”

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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.

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The Netherlands Is Building an Ark for Its Bees

August 29th, 2022 by Anne Pinto Rodrigues

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***

Summer is here, and some public outdoor spaces in the Dutch city of Utrecht are a riot of colors: wildflowers in myriad hues of orange, red, yellow and purple pop in the sun. More than mere beautification projects, these wildflower patches are among an array of Dutch initiatives to help insect pollinators — part of an ambitious national strategy to support honey bees, wild bees, hoverflies, beetles, butterflies and other species.

The Netherlands is one of only a handful of countries that has a comprehensive strategy aimed directly at stemming the decline in pollinators. Launched in 2018, the National Pollinator Strategy encompasses a range of ongoing efforts and carries clear and measurable benchmarks for success. Already, it is providing a roadmap for other countries looking to conserve their pollinators.

Prioritizing pollination

The Netherlands’ awareness of the importance of pollinators began growing over the past decade following dramatic declines in bee populations that began in the mid 1940s. As wilderness and countryside became farmland and towns, and pesticides grew in use, more than half of the country’s nearly 360 bee species have become endangered. “There are too many pressures on the Dutch landscape,” says Marten Schoonman of the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden.

Acknowledging the critical role played by pollinators in agriculture, the Netherlands — the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural products — began conservation measures over a decade ago. In 2013, the government launched the Bee Health Action Program, an initiative focused on honey bees. In 2016, along with 13 other countries, the Netherlands became one of the founding members of Promote Pollinators, a coalition of countries (now numbering 30) sharing knowledge about protecting and conserving pollinators.

But it was the country’s National Pollinator Strategy that set it apart from its peers. Launched in 2018 with some 70 initiatives, from creating more nesting sites to improving pollinators’ access to food, the Strategy set out to make the Netherlands a haven for pollinating insects. “We have destroyed a lot [of biodiversity] in the past,” says Nicky Kruizinga, the Strategy’s project leader. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

The National Pollinator Strategy currently consists of 120 initiatives, underway both in urban centers and agricultural regions. These programs are created and executed at the stakeholder-level, be it a nonprofit, a collective, or a city or province.  They follow the general guidelines necessary to create food and nesting opportunities for insect pollinators.

“There’s a lot of energy going into the Strategy, which is a big change from 10 years ago,” says David Kleijn, a professor of plant ecology and nature conservation at Wageningen University who was involved in formulating the Strategy’s objectives. “It has drawn attention to pollinators, it has gotten people to think about their decline, and motivated them to do something about it. Today, there are over a hundred initiatives. In that sense, it’s a big success.”

The broad aim of the Strategy is “to arrive at a number of bee species showing a stable or positive population trend by 2023 and 2030.” This objective has been further broken down into measurable targets for those years. The 2023 goal is to reduce the number of species showing a downward trend by 30 percent and increase the number of species with an upward trend by 30 percent, as compared to a 2012 baseline. In 2030, the broad goal remains the same as 2023, but the target increases to 50 percent as compared to the 2012 baseline.

According to Kleijn, who was involved in formulating the objectives of the Strategy,

“One of the most frustrating things in policy evaluation is that you can’t find clear objectives of what the policy aims to achieve. In this case, the objectives are measurable, so scientists can evaluate if the goals are reached.”

The Strategy’s nearly 90 signatories include seven of the Netherlands’ 12 provinces, as well as municipalities that have adopted a variety of measures: wildflower patches, insect hotels and green roofs, along with bans on the use of pesticides in public green spaces.

Other signatories are very local, like De Fruitmotor, a cooperative that makes cider from “ugly” apples that won’t sell because of blemishes or deformities. The cooperative’s earnings are invested in planting pollen- and nectar-producing plants to create a pollinator-friendly area around the Betuwe River. “These plants flower at different times of the year, from early spring to late autumn, thus ensuring a steady supply of food for bees and other insects,” says De Fruitmotor co-founder Henri Holster.

The Strategy even includes efforts propelled by private individuals, such as theHoney Highway, an entrepreneurial venture by bee enthusiast Deborah Postma that partners with municipalities to plant wildflowers along highways, railways, and waterways, turning stretches devoid of biodiversity into pollinator-rich zones.

“All stakeholders are working towards the same goal: more food and shelter for insect pollinators,” says Kruizinga, who monitors the Strategy. In 2018 and 2019, the Pollinator Strategy team organized a large meeting where stakeholders could meet and learn from each other. “What is really working well is that our partners have started to cooperate at different levels and there is a lot of knowledge sharing.” (Due to the pandemic, their annual meeting was not held in 2020 and 2021.)

The Dutch Pollinator Strategy aims to enroll as many signatories and pollinator-friendly initiatives as possible. Naturalis, where Schoonman works, is a knowledge partner of the Strategy and is involved with its roll-out. “Making people aware of the diversity and richness of pollinator species plays a key role in their conservation. That’s why the bee count is so important,” Schoonman says, referring to the annual bee count organized by Naturalis with the help of the public.

This year was the fifth edition of the Netherlands’ annual bee count. Nearly 4,000 volunteers from across the country spent 30 minutes in their gardens counting bees on a designated weekend in April. The honey bee topped the count once again. The horned mason bee continued to be one of the most common wild bees in gardens, a species that was quite rare across the Netherlands a decade ago. While the bee count is not an exhaustive activity, it helps keep a track on pollinator population trends.

The National Pollinator Strategy has its limitations. For instance, managing issues like pesticide use and industrial pollution are beyond its scope. “How are we going to get farmers to reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides so that pollinators are not affected?” Kruizinga asks. Changing mindsets and behavior takes time, especially when commercial interests are involved. “Farmers are used to doing things in a certain way that makes sense economically or time management-wise,” says Kleijn, adding that providing subsidies can steer farmers towards difficult but essential measures. “But then a sizable budget needs to be arranged,” he says.

Meanwhile, the EU is moving forward in tackling pesticides. In 2013, it banned the use of three neonicotinoid pesticides — known to be extremely harmful to insect pollinators — on flowering crops. In 2018, this ban was extended to all crops. And in June, the European Commission adopted proposals to reduce pesticide use EU-wide by 50 percent before 2030. But there is still a lot of work to be done to reach those targets.

Another inherent limitation of the Strategy is that it relies mainly on the stakeholders to create pollinator friendly landscapes. “One could question whether that is enough to really make a difference,” says Kleijn.

Kruizinga, however, remains optimistic about the impact of the Pollinator Strategy. “There’s definitely a shift towards pollinator-friendly landscapes and nature-inclusive farming,” she says.

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Anne Pinto Rodrigues is a Netherlands-based freelance journalist, writing on a broad range of topics under social and environmental justice. Her work has been published in The Guardian, The Telegraph, CS Monitor, Yes!, Ensia, and several other international publications.

Featured image: An insect hotel in the Dutch countryside. Credit: Shutterstock

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First published on August 24, 2022

***

Representatives of the civil-military administration of the Zaporozhie region denounced today that Ukrainian troops use artillery with NATO ammunition in attacks on the Energodar nuclear power plant.

“The latest attacks on Saturday were carried out with 155-millimeter shells of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with American M739 fuses,” the Ukrainian oblast authorities reported on their Telegram account.

In this regard, the member of the main council of the Zaporozhie oblast administration Vladimir Rogogov confirmed that long-range weapons were used in the aggression from the opposite side of the Dnieper River.

The Russian Defense Ministry warned last Thursday that Kiev troops would stage a provocation to generate a radiation leak, as well as to break the integrity of the nuclear waste repository and put the reactor in an abnormal operating state.

The portfolio specified that the aim of such action would be to create an exclusion zone of up to 30 kilometers and to blame Russia for nuclear terrorism, in order to justify a further escalation of the conflict. Several Western politicians stated that a radiation leak at the Zaporozhie nuclear power plant as a result of the shelling could be a pretext for the Atlantic Alliance to start participating in the fighting in Ukraine.

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First published on August 23, 2022

***

We are experiencing a very hot and dry summer. Some people quite like it and for our governments there is nothing wrong yet. But actually, we should sound a big alarm. According to experts, if we do not change course soon, we risk ending up in the ‘climate end game’. In the meantime, the orchestra on the Titanic is continuing to play.

Worrying facts are piling up

France is in the grip of a third heatwave this summer. Temperatures exceed 40°C. The country is experiencing the worst drought in its history. In two-thirds of the departments, the water supply is in crisis.

This year, 48.000 hectares of land have been burnt, which is seven times more than the usual amount. The output of the nuclear power plants on the Rhône and the Garonne has been temporarily reduced because there is not enough river water to cool the plants.

In Canada, temperatures also rose above 40C. That and the sustained drought and wildfires have had a detrimental effect on food production. There are crop failures and 80-per-cent mortality rates at some commercial shellfish operations. In the province of British Columbia, 400,000 chickens have died as a result of the extreme heat.

Italy is experiencing its worst drought since 2003, when a massive heatwave killed 30,000 people and destroyed agricultural produce. A third of agricultural produce is said to be at risk this year. In Switzerland, the army is deployed to prevent cow herds from dying of thirst.

At the beginning of August, the Netherlands declared a national water shortage. In Germany, the Rhine threatens to become unnavigable. In Poland, the authorities have already imposed restrictions on river transports because of the very low water level.

Due to exceptionally dry weather, many reservoirs in Norway have reached historically low water levels. As a result, the government has decided to limit the export of electricity to other countries until the reservoirs are replenished.

California is facing a chronic “mega-drought” in which dry years are becoming more frequent and wet years are becoming scarcer. The current drought, which started around 2000, is the second worst in the past 1200 years. This year alone, more than 140 square mile have burnt in more than 5,000 fires in California’s wine region.

Within three decades a quarter of the US land area and over 107 million people will be subjected to perceived temperatures of above 52C.

The unbearable heat of being

The droughts we have experienced in recent years on the European continent were “unprecedented in the last 250 years”, according to scientists. As the climate continues to warm, heat waves and droughts will become more frequent, they will last longer and temperature peaks will also become higher. Moreover, heat waves and droughts are mutually reinforcing phenomena.[i]

This will be the new normal. It is possible that within a decade every summer in Western Europe will be as hot and dry as this one. In addition to those heat waves, we will also have to deal with rain bombs much more frequently, as in Germany and Belgium last year.[ii]

Since the 1980s, exposure to deadly urban heat has tripled. It now affects nearly a quarter of the world’s population. Already five million people die each year from extreme weather, increasingly from heat-related causes.

According to the French Ministry of the Environment, the average air temperature will rise by 1.4 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2070. Precipitation will decline by 16 to 23 percent and river flows in the south of the country will fall by 30 to 50 percent. Similar numbers may be expected in neighbouring countries.

If the current evolution continues, agricultural yields could fall by 30 percent worldwide by 2050. About 5 billion people could face water shortages for at least one month a year.

Extreme heat – defined as an annual average temperature of over 29°C – would affect two billion people by 2070. By 2060, about 1.4 billion people could be climate refugees and by 2100, a fifth of the world’s population may be displaced as a result of rising sea levels.

Endgame?

And these are only conservative predictions. In recent years, climate scientists have found that extreme weather events are occurring faster than models had predicted. Initially it was assumed that temperatures and extreme weather events would increase gradually and linearly. It is possible that we have now entered a period where extremes will occur suddenly, more frequently and also more powerfully.

In a recent study, a group of scientists does no longer completely rule out a global societal collapse or human extinction. They call such a catastrophe the ‘climate endgame’. The probability of such a catastrophe may be small, but such scenarios cannot be ruled out, given the uncertainties in future emissions and the climate system.

A possible acceleration of warming is related to so-called tipping points[iii] and feedbacks.[iv] Certain tipping points could cause even an additional 8 °C global warming.[v]

According to those scientists “facing a future of accelerating climate change while remaining blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk management at best and fatally foolish at worst”.

It is worth remembering that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently approaching the level there was 15 million years ago. Back then, temperatures were 3 to 4 degrees Celsius higher and the sea level was 20 metres higher.

“There are warnings from history. Climate change (either regional or global) has played a role in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous societies and in each of the five mass extinction events in Phanerozoic[vi] Earth history” according to scientists.

Much will depend on global climate efforts. The current trajectory puts the world on track for a temperature rise between 2.1 °C and 3.9 °C by 2100. If the existing pledges by countries are fully implemented, this increase will be 1.9 to 3 degrees Celsius. Provided all long-term pledges and targets were met, the warming would be 1.7 to 2.6 degrees Celsius.

“Even these optimistic assumptions lead to dangerous Earth system trajectories. Temperatures of more than 2°C above preindustrial values have not been sustained on Earth’s surface since before the Pleistocene Epoch (or more than 2.6 million years ago).”

A warming of more than 2°C is particularly alarming. Human societies are adapted to specific climatic environments. Since the emergence of large-scale, urbanised agricultural societies around 12,000 years ago, civilisations have developed within a narrow climatic framework with an average annual temperature of around 13°C.

Even today, the most economically productive centres of human activity are concentrated in such areas. According to the scientists, “the cumulative impacts of warming may overwhelm societal adaptive capacity”.

We are faced with a choice

UN Secretary-General António Guterres presents us with a choice: “We are on a catastrophic path. “We can either save our world or condemn humanity to a hellish future.”

To save the world from climate degeneration, a complete energy transition is needed that is much bigger and faster than any previous one in world history. In the next 30 to 50 years, 90 per cent or more of the world’s energy that is currently produced from fossil fuels will have to be provided by renewable energy sources, nuclear power[vii] or fossil fuel plants that bury their waste rather than emitting it.

According to Energy Transitions Commission, a prestigious think tank on global warming, less than 1 per cent of the world’s GDP[viii] annually is needed to become carbon neutral by the middle of this century. This is an insignificant amount to save the world from catastrophic climate change. By comparison, it is estimated that by 2020 the entirety of the stimulus packages in the rich countries in the context of the covid crisis accounted for more than 30 per cent of GDP.[ix]

Avoiding a climate catastrophe is thus absolutely possible, but it will require a drastic change of course. To date, tackling global warming has largely been left to market forces: emissions trading, carbon taxes, market-based development of green technology, etc. Obviously, this is not a successful strategy.

Moreover, one hundred multinationals are responsible for 71 percent of greenhouse gas emissions between 1988 and 2015. Another reason why green and cheap energy must become a public service, just like the low-carbon infrastructure and technology needed to deliver that energy. In the past, governments created other public services such as those for defence, public health, education, scientific research, …

We do not have much time left. We have now used up 86% of the carbon budget[x] for a 50-50 chance of staying below 1.5°C, or 89% of the budget for a 2/3 chance. Or expressed in time, we still have 7 to 10 years to turn the tide. It is not without reason that Guterres warns of a ‘code red‘ for humanity.

 

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Translation by Dirk Nimmegeers

Marc Vandepitte is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Climate endgame: risk of human extinction ‘dangerously underexplored’, The Guardian

Imagining a “Half-Earth” Sustainable Economy, Counterpunch

Notes

[i] The energy of the sunlight is partly used to evaporate moisture from the soil and the leaves of the trees. When the Earth is bone dry there is nothing left to evaporate and all the sun’s energy goes into heating the atmosphere. This makes the Earth even drier and heats up the atmosphere even more. It is a vicious circle.

[ii] British climate experts predict that such rain storms will become 14 times more frequent by the end of the century if CO2 emissions remain high.

[iii] In climate science, a tipping point is a critical threshold at which a (relatively) small perturbation can dramatically change the state of major components of the Earth system. According to scientists, large-scale components of the Earth system may pass a tipping point in the near future, causing a change in the global climate. They have in mind, for example, the deterioration of the Amazon rainforest or the death of the boreal forests in Canada and Siberia, the melting of the polar caps or the Greenland icecap, the disruption of the monsoon on the Indian subcontinent, the degradation of coral reefs, the loss of permafrost and tundra.

[iv] A feedback means that the change in one variable has an effect on a second variable, which in turn has an effect on the first variable. This creates a chain effect.

A good example is the emission of methane from thawing permafrost in the frozen peat bogs of Siberia. Global warming melts the permafrost and releases methane. This is a very powerful greenhouse gas that accelerates warming, causing even more permafrost to melt and releasing even more methane.

[v] For example, the abrupt loss of stratocumulus cloud cover (clouds that are lower than 2.5 km in altitude).

[vi] The Phanerozoic geological era is a period of the Earth’s geological history lasting from about 540 million years to the present.

[vii] Nuclear power is not appropriate because it is too expensive, there is a risk of nuclear disasters and hazardous waste has to be stored for centuries.

[viii] GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product. That is what we all produce in terms of wealth every year.

[ix] It concerns both fiscal measures (direct state aid to companies, families, etc.) and monetary measures (central banks pumping money into the financial markets).

[x] The carbon budget is the amount of CO2 that may be added to the atmosphere in order to limit climate warming to 1.5°C.

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How Corrupt Is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky?

August 28th, 2022 by Jeremy Kuzmarov

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***

Before the Russian invasion, CIA reports linked him to an oligarch so dirty and so mired in “significant corruption” that the State Department banned him from entering the U.S.

But now CIA propaganda portrays Zelensky as nobler than Winston Churchill and saintlier than Mother Theresa.

Will the Real Volodymyr Zelensky Please Stand Up

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In 2019, the CIA-run Radio Free Europe reported on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s connection to Ihor Kholomoisky, a Ukrainian oligarch whom the State Department banned from entering the U.S. in March 2021 due to his “significant corruption.” See video report below.

(Click on image to link to video) [Source: realclearpolitics.com]

This report is ironic given that, since Ukraine’s war with Russia began over four months ago, Radio Free Europe along with the rest of the Western media has depicted Zelensky as something equivalent to a reincarnation of Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute during the 2022 Grammy awards.

2022 Grammys: Zelensky's video address and other Jewish moments - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Zelensky gives a video address at the 2022 Grammy awards in April. [Source: jta.org]

Steering One of the Biggest Ponzi Schemes in World History

Meanwhile in January 2022, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil forfeiture complaint—the fourth against him—which alleges that Kholomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov, who owned PrivatBank, one of the largest banks in Ukraine, embezzled and defrauded the bank of $5.5 billion which went missing.

The two allegedly obtained fraudulent loans and lines of credit from 2008 through 2016 and laundered portions of their criminal proceeds using an array of shell companies’ bank accounts, primarily at PrivatBank’s Cyprus branch, before they transferred the funds to the U.S. where they continued to launder them illegally through an associate operating out of offices in Miami.

Source: johnhelmer.org

Some of the stolen money was from IMF loans granted to the Ukrainian government after the 2014 Maidan coup, which was paid out by the National Bank of Ukraine into Privatbank.[1]

According to a profile in The American Spectator, Kholomoisky laundered millions in Cleveland, Ohio, and across the Midwest where, as “one of the [region’s] biggest real-estate landlords,” he “steered one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in world history.”

Making Even Other Oligarchs, No Strangers to Violent Crime, Blanch

Born in Soviet Ukraine in 1963, Kholomoisky was among those to benefit after the Soviet collapse in the early 1990s from the sale of formerly state-owned enterprises like steel plants and gas wells at fire-sale prices.

According to The American Spectator, Kholomoisky had two advantages over other nascent oligarchs. First, he had a background in metallurgy—in the science of making and molding metals and alloys in demand. Second, Kholomoisky “displayed a ruthlessness that made even other oligarchs, no strangers to violent crime, blanch.”

A writer for Forbes magazine reported that, in one instance, he saw “hundreds of hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber-bullet pistols and chainsaws forcibly [take] over” a steel plant that Kholomoisky eyed.

For the full Bond-villain effect, Kholomoisky put a shark tank in his office. Allegedly, he was not averse to shoving the head of a visitor in it as a reminder never to cross him.

Funding Neo-Nazis

According to Oleg Noginsky, the president of the Suppliers Customs Union, after Ukraine’s February 2014 Euro-Maidan Revolution, Kholomoisky “hired the guys who carried out the Odessa massacre”—the killing of several dozen supporters of deposed Russian-allied President Viktor Yanukovych who were holed up in a trade union building.

As Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast from 2014 until 2016, Kholomoisky bankrolled anti-Russian units operating with the Ukrainian army in Donetsk and Luhansk—which voted to secede after the post-Maidan government tried to impose the Ukrainian language on them.

These units included the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion which terrorized the people of eastern Ukraine, along with the Dnipro and Aidar battalions, which were sometimes deployed as personal thug squads to protect Kholomoisky’s financial interests.

Burisma and the CIA

The New York Post reported that Kholomoisky had a “controlling interest” in Burisma Holdings—the Ukrainian energy company which employed Hunter Biden as a board member for $50,000 per month. Russian media, quoted in State Department emails, referred to Burisma as “part of Kholomoisky’s financial empire.”

Six months after Hunter Biden departed, Burisma appointed Cofer Black to its board—a position that he maintains. Black was a career CIA officer who served as director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center following the September 11 attacks.

This appointment raises questions as to whether Burisma served as a CIA-front operation that was designed to help finance the anti-Russia militias in eastern Ukraine.

Trump's Biden-Ukraine natural gas conspiracy theory: False, but alive

Source: usatoday.com

Ihor and Volodymyr Sitting in a Tree…

Kholomoisky’s relationship with Zelensky goes back to around 2012, when Zelensky and his partners in a television production company, Kvartal 95, began making regular content for TV stations owned by Kholomoisky.

A comedian and actor who had been famous since the 2000s, Zelensky began his political rise a few years after taking on a starring role in the political satire “Servant of the People,” which began airing on Kholomoisky’s network in 2015.

The show starred Zelensky as a humble history teacher whose anti-corruption rant in class is filmed by a student, goes viral online, and wins him national office.

In a case of life imitating art, Zelensky ended up winning the real-world Ukrainian presidency just three-and-a-half years after the show’s launch, with more than 73% of the vote.

Zelensky capitalized on widespread public anger at corruption, but his 2019 campaign was dogged by doubts over his anti-graft bona fides given his connection to Kholomoisky.

In the heat of the campaign, an ally of incumbent Petro Poroshenko, Volodymyr Ariev, published a chart on Facebook purporting to show that Zelensky and his television production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms, which they had set up beginning in 2012, that allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kholomoisky’s Privatbank.

Ariev did not provide smoking-gun evidence, though the Pandora Papers—11.9 million leaked documents published by a consortium of investigative journalists in October 2021—show that at least some of the details in this alleged scheme correspond to reality.

In specific, the Pandora Papers reveal information on ten companies in the network that match structures detailed in Ariev’s chart, and show that Zelensky and his partners used companies based in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), Belize and Cyprus.

Forbes magazine currently places Zelensky’s net worth at between $20 and $30 million—a total he could not have earned simply as a TV performer and comedian.

Zelensky allegedly owns lavish properties in central London, Italy and Miami Beach—to which he could retire if he is forced to flee Ukraine.

Two of Zelensky’s associates in the offshore network, who were also part of his TV production company, have held powerful positions in his government. Serhiy Shefir is Zelensky’s top presidential aide, while Ivan Bakanov headed until very recently the feared Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), which is Europe’s largest security agency and nearly the same size as the FBI despite Ukraine being 16 times smaller than the U.S.

You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours

Besides providing financial support during Ukraine’s 2019 election, Kholomoisky supplied Zelensky with a car and lent his personal lawyer to him to be campaign adviser and promoted his candidacy on various media outlets that he owned.

The close ties between the two were apparent in 2018 when Zelensky traveled to Geneva Switzerland, for Kholomoisky’s birthday, and then afterwards back to Geneva another ten times.

When Kholomoisky moved to Tel Aviv, Israel, Zelensky traveled there to visit with him three times, according to Radio Free Europe.

Zelensky claimed that his relationship with Kholomoisky was not political; rather he had gone to visit him because of TV work.

However, Zelensky made sure to reward him when he became president. He removed Kholomoisky’s opponents, the Prosecutor General, the Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, and his own prime minister, who tried to regulate Kholomoisky’s control of a state-owned electricity company.

Ukraine’s parliament also passed a measure that prevented Kholomoisky from having topay higher taxes on his mining operations.

No Lion of a Leader

Zelensky’s long-standing ties to Kholomoisky belie the pristine public image of a man hailed by U.S. politicians as a “lion of a leader” (August Pfluger R-TX) and person of “incredible bravery” (Adam Schiff, D-CA).

A neoliberal who advanced a sweeping privatization initiative, Zelensky has banned eleven opposition parties and carried out a reign of terror against political opponents.

The victims include the former leader of the Ukrainian left forces, Vasily Volga, and the Kononovich brothers, leaders of Ukraine’s Young Communist League who were accused of being pro-Russian.

The Kononovich brothers, leaders of the Young Communist League in Ukraine, who have been detained since March 6. [Source: towardfreedom.org]

Despite campaigning on a peace platform, Zelensky provoked war with Russia by a) enacting a major troop buildup in eastern Ukraine in February; b) increasing shelling of eastern Ukraine in violation of ceasefire agreements; and c) calling for the retaking from Russia of Crimea and city of Sevastopol, which houses the Russian Navy’s Black Sea fleet.

Map showing Ukrainian troop concentrations on eastern Ukraine’s border on eve of the Russian invasion of February 24, 2022. According to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Ukraine had massed 122,000 troops on the border with Donbass. The Duma furthermore has claimed to have intelligence indicating that these troops were planning an offensive into Donbas, which the Russian invasion preempted. [Source: consortiumnews.com]

Since the fighting began, Zelensky has eschewed negotiations and instead begged the West for more and more weapons while inviting foreign mercenaries into Ukraine.

Swiss journalist Guy Mettan has written that Zelensky will ultimately be held responsible for Ukraine’s devastation in the war as he “preferred the ruin of his country to a timely compromise.”

This assessment is at odds with the current media hagiography of Zelensky, which also obscures his ties to Kholomoisky that the CIA itself has acknowledged.

*

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

  1. Journalist John Helmer points out that Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland and Christine LaGarde, the former IMF directors, ignored the evidence of Kholomoisky’s corruption and the squandering of IMF loan money in a ponzi scheme; probably because of the political imperative underlying the IMF’s policy towards Ukraine after the Maidan coup. John Helmer, “The Kolomoisky Pyramid Started with Hillary Clinton and Victoria Nuland of the State Department Plus Christine Lagarde of the IMF,” http://johnhelmer.org/the-kolomoisky-pyramid-started-with-hillary-clinton-and-victoria-nuland-of-the-state-department-plus-christine-lagarde-of-the-imf/ 

Featured image:  Zelensky in 2019, photo by President.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0  via Wikimedia Commons

An Apology to the Billionaires for My Irresponsible Comments

August 28th, 2022 by Emanuel Pastreich

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First published on August 19, 2022

***

I have been subject to tremendous criticism from all sides over the last week for my recent comments concerning billionaires, and specifically concerning the man who put the “bill” in “billionaire,” none other than the “workingman’s hero” Bill Gates, the inventor of just about everything he can get his hands on.

Let me first say, unambiguously, that when I suggested that we should hunt down the billionaires on their private islands, in their space-age bunkers, that I was just joking, just making a few glib remarks for close friends.

You can’t possibly believe I was serious. I mean who would listen to a poor little guy with no assets, no cash, and no job? I mean, by billionaire’s standards, I don’t even exist, I am but a useless eater.

And we all know that the politicians, the bureaucrats, the military, the police, the employees of the corporations who run the world, they would never listen to a worthless figure like me.

Why all of them already know that they are to follow the orders passed down from billionaires, not scraps of paper like the constitution.

Video

 

And let me tell you that some of my best friends are billionaires. Why we are practically on a first-name basis.

I have the ultimate respect for billionaires who have, through their wisdom and their benevolence, through their commitment to the future of mankind–using charitable organizations like the World Economic Forum, have transformed our world into a dream.

It is those billionaires, those entrepreneurs and innovators, those visionaries, those philanthropists and “creative destroyers” who worry, day and night, about how the common man is doing. Why they have practically planned out everything for the common man, the common women, far into the future.

They are truly geniuses. How could they amass billions, even hundreds of billions, of dollars when I can barely pay my rent?

I need to learn from them. We must all become like the billionaires, especially my favorite, the avuncular Warren Buffett, a humble man who lives in a humble home, who advocates that the rich should pay more taxes, even as he himself pays less than other billionaires. What a genius! What an angel!

I guess I did not know how sensitive billionaires are. I really did not mean to hurt their little feelings.

As a holy man of the ancient world once remarked, “why so serious?” Or the Chinese philosopher Laozi once commented, “my turn” –or was it “ideas are bulletproof.”

My heart goes out to them, those billionaires. I can imagine what is must be like to be trapped in a Fantasy Island compound of your own design. Why a palace like that, surrounded by guards, AI directed drones, can start to feel a bit like a prison at times.

I extend to all billionaires a warm greeting and a sincere offer to meet in person so we can discuss how we can build a better world together.

After all, with all those excess people on the Earth, we had better start planning quickly. We would not want people to figure what is going on before the armed drones and robots are in place, the 5G towers are up, the low orbit military satellites are deployed, the farm land is controlled, and the digital currencies and basic incomes are accepted.

Maybe my kind words might soften their hearts, might inspire them to consider taking me along to the island where the next stage of this game is being planned.

I assure you, dear billionaires, I would not turn down the opportunity if it cost me my life, or yours.

As Socrates wrote so long ago,

“Life is short: Play dead!”

*

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Socialist Network

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***

Since the proudly announced counteroffensive of the Ukrainian Army in the south has not happened, and more and more territories of the country are coming under the control of Russian forces, the Kiev regime which vitally needs to declare any victories has switched to a terrorist strategy of military operations.

Over the past week, the Russian ground forces have won several important victories on the front lines.

On August 19, the headquarters of the territorial defense of the DPR confirmed full control of the town of Zaitsevo and small village of Dacha located on the northern outskirts of Gorlovka. The Ukrainian units deployed in the area saved their own lives and surrendered. Fighting has been ongoing there since 2014. The Armed Forces of Ukraine held control in the north of the town, from where they constantly shelled civilians in the areas under DPR control.

In the Donetsk region, after the town of Peski came under control of the DPR, fighters of the 11th regiment of the DPR and famous Somalia battalion are moving towards Pervomaisky and Nevelsky.

Near Ugledar, the Ukrainian command was forced to transfer reserves in order to restrain the offensive of the allied forces. On August 21, Russian reconnaissance units reportedly entered the village of Pavlovka.

Instead of the counteroffensive in the south promised by Kiev, Russian forces claimed victories in the Nikolaev region.

Russian units advanced in the village of Blagodatnoye located 40 kilometers to the west of Nikolaev. According to preliminary reports, Russian servicemen managed to dislodge forces of the 63 separate mechanized brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and establish control over the village. This is the area from where Ukrainian troops have been trying to develop any offensive for the last two months.

Losing on the front lines, the Ukrainian military is busy carrying terrorist attacks against Russians in DPR, LPR as well as on the Russian territories. The Ukrainian military has already shelled civilians in Donetsk with PFM-1 mines. They continue attacks on the Zaporozhskaya Nuclear power plant and the Kakhovskaya power station, threatening the world with ecological catastrophes. Ukrainian saboteurs attempt to attack military and civilian facilities in Crimea and other Russian regions.

The Kiev regime does not stop and continues attacks on pro-Russian officials in the territories under Russian control.

On August 20, the mayor of Mariupol survived an assassination attempt. In early August, another assassination attempt targeted the deputy head of the Novokakhovskaya administration for Communal Services.

On August 20, a car explosion killed Darya Dugina. The young woman worked as a political comentator and she was included in the Western sanctions lists. She was the daughter of the famous Russian philosopher and political scientist Alexander Dugin. Being the founder of neo-Eurasianism he became one of the most influential thinkers in Russia.

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First published on July 27, 2022

***

“We’re now facing a situation where a huge number of very powerful organizations and elites at an international and at national levels are calling for policies that are basically a suicide pact.

Basically a death wish of some sort.”

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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Infographic: US Military Presence Around the World

August 28th, 2022 by Mohammed Hussein

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***

This article was originally published by Al Jazeera on September 10, 2021.

In the early morning hours of August 31, 2021 the last American soldiers lifted off from Kabul airport, officially ending the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the longest in US history.

At its peak in 2011, the US had approximately 100,000 troops across at least 10 military bases from Bagram to Kandahar. In total, more than 800,000 US soldiers served in the war according to the Pentagon.

While no US troops remain on the ground today, US President Joe Biden said that his military will continue to conduct air raids against enemy targets from “over-the-horizon” – air missions from a vast network of US bases around the region.

Upwards of 750 US bases around the world

According to David Vine, ​​professor of political anthropology at the American University in Washington, DC, the US had around 750 bases in at least 80 countries as of July 2021.

The actual number may be even higher as not all data is published by the Pentagon.

With 120 active bases, Japan has the highest number of US bases in the world followed by Germany with 119 and South Korea with 73.

US military presence around the world

Copyright Al Jazeera

US military base sites fall under two main categories:

Large bases or “Bases”: Defined as military installations larger than 4 hectares (10 acres) or worth more than $10 million. These bases typically have in excess of 200 US military personnel. 439 or 60 percent of the US’s foreign bases fall under this category.

Small bases or “Lily Pads”: These bases are smaller than 4 hectares(10 acres) or have a value of less than $10 million. These include cooperative security locations and forward operating sites. The remaining 40 percent of US foreign bases fall under this category.

According to global US military deployment data published in the Conflict Management and Peace Science Journal, the US had around 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries as of 2020.

Like the US bases, the countries with the most number of US troops include Japan with 53,700, Germany with 33,900 and South Korea with 26,400.

US military presence in the Middle East

According to the Watson Institute at Brown University, between 1.9 and three million US service members have served in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, with over half of them deployed more than once.

The largest US military installation in the Middle East is the Al Udeid Air Base, located west of Doha, Qatar. Established in 1996, it hosts around 11,000 American and coalition service members. Covering an area of 24 hectares (60 acres), the base accommodates almost 100 aircraft as well as drones.

INTERACTIVE- US military presence in the Middle East

Copyright Al Jazeera

On October 7, 2001, the US under President George W Bush invaded Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks. The coalition he led accused the ruling Taliban regime of harbouring Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who claimed responsibility for the attacks.

An estimated 241,000 people have died as a direct result of the war since 2001, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. In addition, hundreds of thousands more, mostly civilians, have died due to hunger, disease and injury caused by the devastating war.

In 2003, the US invaded Iraq after it accused long-time Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of having weapons of mass destruction – none was found. At its peak in 2007, the US had an estimated 170,000 troops in the country. Today, there are around 2,500 US troops in the country as part of a security agreement with the Iraqi government.

US military presence in Japan and South Korea

The US has been in Japan since the end of World War II (1939-1945) and in South Korea since the Korean War (1950-1953).

Nearly half of all US military deployed abroad, some 80,100 American personnel, are stationed in Japan with 53,700 and South Korea with 26,400.

South Korea hosts Camp Humphreys, the largest overseas US military base, located approximately 65km (40 miles) south of the capital Seoul.

INTERACTIVE- US military presence in Japan and South Korea

Copyright Al Jazeera

The 1,398 hectares (3,454 acres) base is one of 80 bases in the country and is less than 100km (60 miles) from the heavily fortified demilitarized zone that demarcates North Korea from South Korea.

US military presence in Europe

Europe is home to at least 60,000 US troops. At 33,900, Germany has the highest number of US troops in Europe – and the second highest in the world – followed by Italy at 12,300 and the UK at 9,300. However, the number of US troops stationed in Germany has more than halved between 2006 and 2020, dropping from 72,400 to 33,900.

INTERACTIVE- US military presence in Europe

Copyright Al Jazeera

The Ramstein Air Base in Germany is the largest hub for US troops and military supplies in Europe. Just outside the 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) base is the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the largest US military hospital outside the US. The facility was used extensively during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and treated thousands of wounded soldiers.

Like nearly all US bases, Ramstein is equipped with hospitals, schools, power stations, apartment complexes and a host of amenities often referred to as “Burger Kings and bowling alleys”.

US military presence in Latin America

Located on the eastern tip of Cuba, the Guantanamo Bay naval base is the US’s oldest overseas military base. The 116sq km (45 sq miles) facility has been under American control since the end of the 19th century.

The base is a hotly debated issue between the US and Cuba. For decades, Cuba has insisted that the US hand back the territory it took by force in 1898 and subsequently leased permanently in 1903.

INTERACTIVE- US military presence in Latin America

Copyright Al Jazeera

US troop deployment since 1950

Over the past 70 years, the US military has been deployed to more than 200 countries and territories.

The infographic below shows a brief history of where the US has deployed its troops since the end of World War II, along with the wars it has fought in.

INTERACTIVE- US troop deployment since 1950

Copyright Al Jazeera

1950-1953

Following the surrender of the Japanese to the Allies that ended World War II, the US and the Soviet Union divided Korea, which had been under Japanese rule, along the 38th parallel, roughly bisecting the Korean peninsula.

On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces, backed by China and the Soviet Union, invaded the South triggering the start of the Korean War. Allied with the South, the US deployed some 1.78 million troops over the three-year-long war.

It is estimated that between 2 to 3 million civilians died during the war. According to the US Department of Defense, the US suffered 33,739 deaths in battle. No formal peace treaty was ever signed.

1955-1975

Tensions between the US and the Soviet Union continued to brew in Southeast Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. The main conflict pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its ally, the US.

Over 3.4 million US troops were deployed to Southeast Asia; in excess of three million people, including over 58,000 Americans, were killed in the war.

On March 29, 1973, the last US combat troops left Vietnam. Two years later on April 30, 1975, communist forces seized control of South Vietnam and ended the war.

1990-1991

On August 2, 1990, the Iraqi army invaded Kuwait, a small oil-rich nation to the country’s south. One week later, on August 9, the US began Operation Desert Shield, and deployed thousands of troops to Saudi Arabia.

During the brief war, around 694,550 American troops were deployed to the region. On February 28, 1991, US President George HW Bush declared a ceasefire, and on April 3 of that same year, the UN passed a resolution formally ending the conflict.

2001-2021

The period following the 9/11 attacks, and the declaration of war on both Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, saw a large spike in troops abroad. At least 800,000 Americans served in Afghanistan and more than 1.5 million in Iraq over the past 20 years.

The human cost of the wars is estimated to have killed more than 900,000 people – mostly civilians.

US military spending since 1950

In 2020, the US spent $778bn on its military – the largest military spender in the world and more than the next 10 countries combined – according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

China ranked second at $252bn, followed by India at $73bn, Russia at $62bn and the UK at $59bn.

INTERACTIVE- US military spending since 1950

Copyright Al Jazeera

Over the past 20 years alone, the US has spent $8 trillion on its so-called “global war on terror” according to the Costs of War project at Brown University. The war in Afghanistan accounts for $2.3 trillion which, according to Brown University researchers, equals more than $300 million a day for 20 years.

$2.1 trillion was spent on the wars in Iraq and Syria, and $355bn was attributed to other wars. The rest of the money includes in excess of $1bn in interest payments for the huge amounts of money borrowed to fund the wars as well as more than $2.2bn in obligations for veterans’ care over the next 30 years. This means that, even after the US has left Afghanistan, it will continue to pay for the wars for years to come.

Thanks to Al Jazeera for bringing this article to our attention.

Link to the original article. Copyright Al Jazeera

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First published on July 15, 2022

***

“Production of the B61-12 nuclear bomb begins,” Sandia National Laboratories announced from the United States. The B61-12, which replaces the previous B61 deployed by the U.S. at Aviano and Ghedi and other European bases, is a new type of weapon. It has a nuclear warhead with four power options, selectable depending on the target to be destroyed. It is not dropped vertically, but at a distance from the target on which it is directed guided by a satellite system. It can penetrate underground, exploding deep to destroy command center bunkers in a nuclear first strike.

The B61-12s, classified as “non-strategic nuclear weapons,” are deployed in Europe — in Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain and probably other countries — at distances far enough to strike Russia. They thus have offensive capabilities similar to those of strategic weapons.

Another nuclear weapon system, which the United States is preparing to install in Europe against Russia, is ground-based intermediate-range missiles. They can also be launched from “anti-missile shield” installations, deployed by the U.S. at bases in Deveselu in Romania and Redzikowo in Poland, and aboard five warships cruising in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltic Sea close to Russia.

That such installations have offensive capabilities is confirmed by Lockheed Martin itself. Outlining the characteristics of the Mk 41 vertical launch system, used in both land and naval installations, it specifies that it is capable of launching “missiles for all missions, both defense and long-range attack, including Tomahawk cruise missiles.” These can be armed with nuclear warheads.

Europe is thus being turned by the U.S. into the front line of a nuclear confrontation with Russia, even more dangerous than that of the Cold War.

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

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The Russian and Iranian economies will mutually benefit by selling discounted resources on the global market while countries like India will accelerate their rise as multipolar Great Powers through the purchase of these exports. Their trilateral axis will continue becoming a force to be reckoned with, especially if the first two coordinate their natural gas activities seeing as how they account for the largest such reserves in the world.

The influential US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) outlet Politico expressed extreme frustration on Tuesday at America’s inability to stop a prospective Russian-Iranian oil swap arrangement pending the successful renegotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) that recent reports indicate might be on the brink of finally being reached. In their piece titled “Russia eyes Iran as sanctions-busting backdoor for oil sales”, they lament how easily “Iran could import Russian crude to its northern Caspian coast and then sell equivalent amounts of crude on Russia’s behalf in Iranian tankers leaving from the Persian Gulf.” This pact would be mutually beneficial and further strengthen the rapidly intensifying strategic partnership between these multipolar Great Powers.

The global systemic transition to multipolarity that unprecedentedly accelerated in light of the latest US-provoked phase of the Ukrainian Conflict that began half a year ago is fundamentally transforming Eurasia. President Putin recently declared that Russia restored its status as a world power, which is an accurate reflection of its role in contemporary International Relations. To explain, the US-led West’s unprecedented sanctions counterproductively crippled the economic-financial basis of America’s declining unipolar hegemony, which coincided with Russia teaming up with India and Iran to forge a third pole of influence in the present bi-multipolar intermediary phase of the above-mentioned systemic transition to more complex multipolarity (“multiplexity”).

These two factors irreversibly altered the course of the New Cold War: the US’ unipolar hegemonic decline became inevitable while India helped Russia preemptively avert any potentially disproportionate dependence on China that some observers speculated could have led to the People’s Republic replacing America’s sole superpower status in the coming future and thus replicating the systemic inequalities connected with that scenario. To be absolutely clear, the author doesn’t extend credence to that dire prediction about China replacing the US’ prior role in International Relations but is simply pointing out how India’s black swan intervention just made that scenario impossible in any case.

Having explained the game-changing structural significance of the Russian-Indian Strategic Partnership, readers can now better understand the complementary role that the Russian-Iranian one plays. While less directly influential in terms of immediately reshaping the trajectory of the global systemic transition, it’s no less significant with respect to its long-term implications due to the impact that it’s poised to have on the energy industry. These two multipolar powers are major players in that trade, especially the natural gas one. Their speculative plans for an oil swap deal that prompted such panic from Politico carry with them the potential to ensure reliable revenue generation for both while also helping their partners.

The Russian and Iranian economies will mutually benefit by selling discounted resources on the global market while countries like India will accelerate their rise as multipolar Great Powers through the purchase of these exports. Their trilateral axis will continue becoming a force to be reckoned with, especially if the first two coordinate their natural gas activities seeing as how they account for the largest such reserves in the world. It’s therefore not difficult to foresee that the global energy industry could eventually be revolutionized by the Russian-Iranian Strategic Partnership, which could in turn deal a deathblow to the so-called “petrodollar”, especially in the scenario of Saudi Arabia selling oil to China and others in yuan.

De-dollarizing the natural gas trade, whether in parallel with the aforesaid scenario of Saudi Arabia and China leading the de-dollarization of the oil one or instead of it in the event that this second scenario doesn’t transpire for whatever reason, will go down as a landmark event in the history of the global economy. Russia and Iran’s speculatively impending close cooperation in the oil trade will set the stage for what’s very likely to come, which will have outsized importance for everyone since natural gas consumption is expected to continue growing for the indefinite future. In practical terms, this means that those two will collectively exert disproportionate influence over the global economy in an indirect but nevertheless tangible way.

Nobody should doubt their intentions either since Iran has been a revolutionary state since 1979 while President Putin just unveiled his country’s global revolutionary manifesto late last month. Iran and Russia therefore see eye-to-eye on the need to do all that’s required in order to accelerate the systemic transition to multipolarity, which unquestionably includes jointly leveraging their roles in the energy trade so as to become superpowers in this industry. They’ll mutually benefit while also speeding up their shared Indian strategic partner’s rise as a Great Power, which will help break International Relations out of their present bi-multipolar intermediary phase and thus herald the emergence of complex multipolarity exactly as their leaderships envision, all to the detriment of the US’ declining hegemony.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is a screenshot from Politico via OneWorld

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As I read through the multitude of daily news articles about Russia, Ukraine, NATO and EU, it’s getting ever harder to escape the idea that there is a controlled demolition of the continent happening. And that neither its “leaders”, and certainly not its people, have any say in this. All we get from those “leaders” are NATO or World Economic Forum talking points. The only independent voice is Victor Orban. Who is either silenced in western media or painted as fully insane.

But Orban’s Hungarians won’t freeze this coming winter. He just signed a new gas deal with Russia. The main reason that is provided for all the others not doing that is of course Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. Which is as insane as Orban is, and “totally unprovoked”, say the western media. Noam Chomsky summarized that best: “Of course it was provoked. Otherwise they wouldn’t refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion.”

And no, it wasn’t just Russia/Ukraine, way before that Europe had already screwed up its economies beyond recognition -if you cared to look under the hood. But why make it worse? I get a very strong feeling that those EU “leaders” have alienated themselves far too much from the people they purport to serve, and they’ll regret it. For now it’s obvious among farmers, for instance, but when people start freezing, they will want to know why. And if no answer is forthcoming that is both honest and satisfactory, many “leaders” will have it coming for them.

The entire energy and food crisis is being sold as “inevitable”, but it is nothing of the kind. They are the result of choices being made in Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam etc., about which nobody has asked your opinion. Something I jotted down a few days ago:

Is the west using Ukraine as an excuse to commit mass economic suicide? And, you know, fulfill some WEF-related goals? Why else would they cut off all economic ties to Moscow, at a time when it’s obvious they have no alternative sources for much of what they import from Russia? Moreover, why does a country like Holland aim to close 10,000 of its farms when it’s crystal clear that that will exacerbate the coming global food crises?

If you don’t like Putin, that’s fine, but why should your own people suffer from what you like or not? And of course you can ask whether it’s a good idea that a country the size of a postage stamp is the world’s no. 2 food exporter. But it is. And if you try to change that by doing a 180º, also on a postage stamp, it is very obvious that is not going to go well. And all the so-called leaders know this. But they still do it.

Prices for heating, petrol, as well as food, are set to go much higher than they have already, mitigated only -perhaps- by the fact that ever fewer people will be able to afford the ever higher prices. But now it’s starting to look like this was all scripted. Because “we” could have kept communication channels with Russia open, “we” could have negotiated for peace for the past 6 months. Not doing that was a deliberate choice. A choice that you and me, another “we”- had no voice in whatsoever.

The Dutch could have negotiated with their farmers, and slowly addressed their perceived problems with nitrogen oxides, while keeping food production going. And we could have found a way to keep Russian and Ukrainian crops available on world markets too. But it doesn’t feel at all like “we” wanted that.

Someone made a list of what EU won’t get anymore with the Russia boycott.: “nat-gas, rare earths, inert gases, potash, sulfur, uranium, palladium, vanadium, cobalt, coke, titanium, nickel, lithium, plastics, glass, ceramics, pharmaceuticals, ships, inks, airplanes, polymers, medical and industrial gases, sealing rings & membranes, power transmission, transformer and lube oils, neon gas for microchip etching, etc., etc.”

And that’s not all. Fertilizer!! Why they do it, I don’t know. Do they WANT to kill their own economies? It makes no sense. And this will not be over soon.

Reuters of course seeks to blame Putin. But he’s not the one who introduced the sanctions. He’s offered to let the gas and oil exports continue.

Putin Bets Winter Gas Chokehold Will Yield Ukraine Peace – On His Terms

Cold winters helped Moscow defeat Napoleon and Hitler. President Vladimir Putin is now betting that sky-rocketing energy prices and possible shortages this winter will persuade Europe to strong arm Ukraine into a truce — on Russia’s terms. That, say two Russian sources familiar with Kremlin thinking, is the only path to peace that Moscow sees, given Kyiv says it will not negotiate until Russia leaves all of Ukraine

“We have time, we can wait,” said one source close to the Russian authorities, who declined to be named because they are not authorised to speak to the media. “It’s going to be a difficult winter for Europeans. We could see protests, unrest. Some European leaders might think twice about continuing to support Ukraine and think it’s time for a deal.”

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell wants Europeans to be obedient little critters, and take the punishment for the policies he and his ilk have carved out. Because “we” are destined to win. Mr. Borrell is planing to do just fine this winter, mind you. With the best steak your money can buy, real fine wine, to be consumed in comfortably heated homes, restaurants and offices. A picture of Marie Antoinette pops up in my brain.

‘Weary’ Europeans Must ‘Bear Consequences’ Of Ukraine War As Putin Will Eventually Blink: EU’s Borrell

EU high representative and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell gave a surprisingly blunt assessment of the Ukraine war and Europe’s precarious position in an AFP interview published Tuesday, admitting that Russian President Vladimir Putin is betting on fracturing a united EU response amid the current crisis situation of soaring prices and energy extreme uncertainty headed into a long winter. Borrell’s words seemed to come close to admitting that Putin’s tactic is working on some level, or at least will indeed chip away at European resolve in the short and long run, given he chose words like EU populations having to “endure” the deep economic pain and severe energy crunch. He cited the “weariness” of Europeans while calling on leadership as well as the common people to “bear the consequences” with continued resolve.

Borrell explained to AFP that Putin sees “the weariness of the Europeans and the reluctance of their citizens to bear the consequences of support for Ukraine.” But Borrell suggested that Europe will not back down no matter the leverage Moscow might have, particularly when it comes to ‘weaponization of energy’ – and called on citizens to continue to shoulder the cost. Who will blink first? …appears to be the subtext here. He urged: “We will have to endure, spread the costs within the EU,” Borrell told AFP, warning that keeping the 27 member states together was a task to be carried out “day by day.”

And yet, as some like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán have consistently argued since near the start of the Feb.24 invasion, it is inevitable that some will be forced to bear the “costs” much more than others. Already this is being seen with initiatives out of Brussels like rationing gas consumption, which has further led to scenarios like German towns and even residences being mandated to switch off lights or resources for designated periods at night. “More cold showers” – many are also being told. As we round the corner of fall and enter the more frigid months, we are likely to only see more headlines like this: “German cities impose cold showers and turn off lights amid Russian gas crisis.”

Talking of Marie Antoinette. Emmanuel Macron is the little man of grand vision. He foresees the ‘End Of Abundance’, a veritable “tipping point” in history. And he’s just the man to lead you through it. I’ll give him this: he’s got good speech writers. But speech writers don’t keep the people warm and fed.

Macron Warns Of ‘End Of Abundance’

France is headed toward the “end of abundance” and “sacrifices” have to be made during what is a time of great upheaval, President Emmanuel Macron told his cabinet on Wednesday upon returning from summer break. The country has faced multiple challenges lately, ranging from the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine to the unprecedented drought that has battered the whole European continent this summer. Yet, Macron believes that the crisis is actually of a much bigger scale and that structural changes are imminent.“

Some could see our destiny as being to constantly manage crises or emergencies. I believe that we are living through a tipping point or great upheaval. Firstly, because we are living through… what could seem like the end of abundance,” he said. The country and its citizens must be ready to make “sacrifices” to meet and overcome the challenges they are facing, he continued. “Our system based on freedom in which we have become used to living, when we need to defend it sometimes that can entail making sacrifices,”Macron added.

“Faced with this, we have duties, the first of which is to speak frankly and very clearly without doom-mongering,” Macron stressed. The president called upon his cabinet to show unity, be “serious” and “credible” and urged ministers to avoid “demagogy.” “It’s easy to promise anything and everything, sometimes to say anything and everything. Do not give in to these temptations, it is demagoguery,” the president said, adding that such an approach “flourishes” today “in all democracies in a complex and frightening world.”

There is a pattern in the messages of today’s Marie Antoinettes. Borrell wants you to take it lying down, Macron wants you to do that for a long time (like the rest of your lives), and the Belgian PM makes it more concrete: you’ll be freezing for the next 10 years. After which, supposedly, renewables will have been built to keep your kids warm. Spoiler: they won’t be.

Belgian PM: “Next 5-10 Winters Will Be Difficult” As Energy Crisis Worsens

Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo might have spilled the beans about the duration of Europe’s energy crisis. He told reporters Monday, “the next 5 to 10 winters will be difficult.” “The development of the situation is very difficult throughout Europe,” De Croo told Belgium broadcaster VRT. “In a number of sectors, it is really difficult to deal with those high energy prices. We are monitoring this closely, but we must be transparent: the coming months will be difficult, the coming winters will be difficult,” he said. The prime minister’s comments suggest replacing Russian natural gas imports could take years, exerting further economic doom on the region’s economy in the form of energy hyperinflation.

From Greece, even more concrete: energy subsidies. €1.9 billion in one month. To keep the hordes out of the streets. Wait, that Belgian guy said this will last 5-10 years. How is the country going to pay for that? One thing that comes to mind is Greeks will vote for anyone in the next election who vows to talk to Putin ASAP, restore the countries’ good relationships and sign a gas deal.

The Electricity Subsidy Shock

A significant rise in the price of electricity announced by state-controlled Public Power Corporation (PPC) for September forced the government to raise its electricity subsidy for September to 1.9 billion euros, from €1.1 billion in August. The subsidy level inevitably follows the PPC’s pricing policy, since it is the dominant player in the market, with 63% of consumers choosing it. While PPC had the lowest price of all electricity providers in August (€0.48 per kilowatt-hour) it raised its September price to €0.788 for those consuming up to 500kWh per month and €0.80 for heavier consumers. In order to stick to its commitment for an actual charge to consumers between €0.14-0.17 per kWh the government had to adjust its subsidy level accordingly, raising it by over 72%.

How long will this last, you said? Well, according to AP, “Washington expects Ukrainian forces “to fight for years to come.” “Included in the package are advanced weapons that are still in the development phase..”

‘Months Or Years’ Before US Arms Reach Ukraine – Media

Years could pass before some of the weapons in the upcoming “largest ever” package of US military assistance to Kiev actually reach Ukraine, according to Western media reports. On Tuesday, a number of mainstream media outlets cited anonymous US officials as describing the impending announcement of a $3 billion package of military aid to Ukraine. If confirmed, it would be the largest of its kind so far. Washington is by far the biggest supplier of military hardware to Ukraine as it fights against Russia. However, some of the promised equipment “will not be in the hands of Ukrainian fighters for months or years,” according to NBC News, one of the outlets that reported the upcoming package. Included in the package are advanced weapons that are still in the development phase, it explained.

The same caveat was cited by the Associated Press, which said that it may take “a year or two” for the arms to reach the battlefield, according to its sources. Washington expects Ukrainian forces “to fight for years to come,” US officials told the AP. The AeroVironment Switchblade 600 drone is an example of a weapon system that was promised to Ukraine months ago but has yet to be delivered. Defense News said this week that the Pentagon plans to sign the contract necessary for sending 10 of the so-called “kamikaze drones” within a month. Last month, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov called on foreign suppliers of arms to use his country as a testing ground for new weapons. He pledged to provide detailed reports about the experiences of Ukrainian soldiers with the prototypes provided to them.

This is not going to go well. Not for the European “leaders”, not for the EU, not for Ukraine, and not for Europeans. We could start a little bet as to how many leaders will still be in place by spring, and I bet you Zelensky won’t be one of them. Putin will. As for the rest, Rutte, Macron, we’ll see. But don’t underestimate the wrath of people with hungry and cold children. It feels like almost an alien image for 99% of Europeans, but it no longer will be.

And there is no logical reason for this, there is only the ideology of a few handfuls of little men with grand visions. Hate of everything Russia has kept the west going for 100 years or more. And these little men feed off of that. They can only do that by refusing to talk. Because that’s exactly what Russia does not refuse. Only, they want to talk as equals.

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Censorship, Big Tech, and Psychological Warfare

August 27th, 2022 by Mark Taliano

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I am back on some social media platforms, but I know that I won’t be there long because the censorship is getting worse. It isn’t just me of course, it is widespread. Twitter suspended me permanently, Youtube amd Vimeo deleted all of my videos, Facebook suspends me regularly, and so it goes.  My website also has been largely demonetized. These are some ways that the anti-democratic governing polities control the messaging: censorship coupled with monopoly (Mockingbird) media and military grade psychological warfare. (1) 

Right now beneath the sunny blue skies and seeming normalcy, genocide is occurring globally. The experimental mRNA injections are bioweapons disguised as vaccines (2). They are neither safe nor effective. Some of the jabs may be placebos (3), some batches may be  worse than others and, fortunately, not all will be adversely affected to the same degree. Unfortunately, those receiving a placebo and/or those not apparently adversely impacted, will advertise the “safe and effective” lie, thus enabling the globalist totalitarianism masquerading as public health measures. (4)

The COVID Op is a military/intelligence operation, and the “Lion’s Den”, as per Reiner Fuelmich, is the U.S. deep state. (5)

Read Kennedy’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci,  and you will see the eerily predictive pre-COVID scenarios that are deeply embedded with intelligence agencies and military. DARPA is involved. An Italian judge noted that she could not get ingredients because it was a “military secret”. (6)

Canada is heading into a fall season of more unreasonable fear porn to push the dangerous, experimental jabs based on fabricated pretexts and fabricated pandemics. Early treatment protocols have always been available but largely denied (7) even as the COVID protocols and mandates are killing us and the economy, by design.

All COVID data has been manipulated for a disease that is similar to the flu. Nobody needed to die. PCR test results are invalid (8), and the data base is junk.

Our governments no longer represent us, a global coup is underway.

If enough of us say NO, we can end this. More and more are saying NO. That is the good news.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

(1)  INJECTIONS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE/ Grand Jury Day 4 – Mark Taliano Accessed 25 August, 2022

(2) Video: Italian Regional Court Identifies the mRNA Injections as “Experimental Substances” which do not Break the Chains of Infection. Reiner Fuelmich Interviews Renate Video: Italian Regional Court Identifies the mRNA Injections as “Experimental Substances” which not Break the Chains of Infection. Reiner Fuelmich Interviews Renate Holzeisen – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization (Accessed 25 August, 2022)

(3) Peter Koenig, “The Planned Fall 2022 “Epidemics Tyranny.” Global Research, 18 August, 2022. The Planned Fall 2022 “Epidemics Tyranny” – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization (Accessed 25 August, 2022)

(4) German Corona Investigative Committee,1 August, 2022 From The Hague. International Trials Day One -Crimes Against Humanity (rumble.com) (Accessed 25 August, 2022)

(5) Deborah Conrad and Reiner Fuellmich, Video: Public Health System Rigged to Make the COVID Vaccines Look “Safe and Effective”. Global Research, 24 August, 2022 Video: Public Health System Rigged to Make the Covid Vaccines Look “Safe and Effective”. Deborah Conrad Interviewed by Reiner Fuellmich – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization (Accessed 25 August, 2022)

(6)  Renate Holzeisen and Reiner Fuellmich, Video: Italian Regional Court Identifies the MRNA Injections as “Experimental Substances” which not Break the Chains of Infection. Reiner Fuelmch interviews Renate Holzeisen. Corona Investigative Committee Session 113: Mycelium. Global Research, 19 July, 2022. (Video: Italian Regional Court Identifies the mRNA Injections as “Experimental Substances” which not Break the Chains of Infection. Reiner Fuelmich Interviews Renate Holzeisen – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 25 August, 2022.

(7) Megan Redshaw, ” Groundbreaking: Nebraska AG Says Doctors Can Legally Prescribe Ivermectin, HCQ for COVID, Calls Out FDA, CDC, Fauci, Media for ‘Fueling Confusion and Misinformation’. the Defender, Children’s Health Defense, 18 October, 2021. (Groundbreaking: Nebraska AG Says Doctors Can Legally Prescribe Ivermectin, HCQ for COVID, Calls Out FDA, CDC, Fauci, Media for ‘Fueling Confusion and Misinformation’ • Children’s Health Defense (childrenshealthdefense.org)) Accessed 25 August, 2022.

(8) Mark Taliano, ” COVID Antigen Test Results Are Scientifically invalid.  Confirmed by the Pharmaceutical “Intended use” Advisory.” Global Research, 19 July, 2022. (COVID Antigen Test Results Are Scientifically Invalid. Confirmed by the Pharmaceutical “Intended Use” Advisory – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) (Accessed August 25, 2022)

Featured image is from marktaliano.net


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As if the US contribution of  “roughly” 75% of NATO’s budget was not enough of a gift, the American public and much of Congress have remained oblivious to collaborators within the US government who have relinquished the Norfolk Naval Station to NATO forces.   With its military forces led by a NATO Supreme Allied Commander at Norfolk’s Joint Warfare Centre and hundreds of new nation member resident-families, NATO has its roots firmly ensconced at the Norfolk facility since at least 2020.  

How this stunning transgression occurred with no public knowledge, deliberation, debate or approval by the Executive Branch or Congress and with no national media inquiry remains a puzzlement.   

The NATO presence is a strong signal that Neocon forces within the US will continue its leadership in maintaining the unipolar world that has plagued the planet since NATO’s existence in 1949.  Established to be a deterrent to the threat of Soviet expansion in Europe after World War II, the United States saw NATO as a tool to prevent the resurgence of nationalist tendencies in Europe and to foster political integration on the continent. 

It is fair to suggest that the world’s largest and most sophisticated naval facility was stealthily and deceitfully conveyed to NATO by more than just a sleight of hand.  The deed had to have been committed with the leadership of treasonous, embedded members of the government’s Senior Executive Service (SES); those  who had  access to the necessary military documentation, records, files and dossiers to unobtrusively pull off a monster accomplishment of this magnitude. 

 The SES are part of the Federal government’s Administrative State which ranks as those most senior public servants, those at the highest management of the bureaucracy with indisputable credentials, unquestioned authority and are largely unaccountable. 

How did this massive reorganization of the nation’s most prodigious Naval facility slip past the House and Senate Armed Services Committees which have legislative oversight and responsibility for naval affairs?  It is the Armed Services Committees which have produced the massive and controversial National Defense Authorization Act annually since 1962.  It is possible that buried deep within the bowels of a long-forgotten NDAA may contain an obscure reference granting NATO permission, at some future time, to relocate to the Norfolk Naval Base. 

Given NATO’s presence as a foreign military agent, it is critically important to understand how NATO’s Article 4 and Article 5 could potentially affect the United States as a constitutional republic given the current national turmoil as the Biden Administration tightens its tyrannical grip on the very dominion of the United States of America.   

Most prominent within the NATO Treaty is Article 5 which guarantees a collective defenseby all NATO members in the event of an attack on one member nation.  The only example of invoking Article 5 came in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  NATO collectively responded as its member nation allies were deployed to Afghanistan under the Resolute Support Mission.  Bringing the wrath of God down on one country which was not a participant to the 911 attack destroys the concept that the ‘collective defense” strategy is a valid vehicle for a peaceful world.  

The oft-neglected Article 4 has been invoked several times during NATO’s history and with its loose verbiage that states “The parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.”   In other words, any one NATO member nation can invoke Article 4 to trigger an organization-wide discussion if its “territorial integrity” is threatened as is currently occurring along the southern borders of the United States, or if its “political independence” defined as the freedom from external political influence which is open to interpretation or if the “security” of one NATO member is under threat.  At which point, activating Article 5 would be an easy slide. 

The question remains with NATO’s presence in Norfolk, what would it take to create a crisis for intervention and activate more of an Article 5 power grab on behalf of the international deep state order?  Will either Article provide the necessary incentive to respond to what may be perceived as an internal threat to US ‘territorial integrity” rather than an external attack or mass detention to quell a civil political disturbance or a domestic revolt if Donald Trump is arrested or trigger suspicious cyber threats? 

At what point might a Continuity of Government be implemented and by whom to restore civil order with NATO-Norfolk contributing its military to protect the Deep State structure.  While earlier such civil disturbances by Antifa and BLM in Portland, Seattle and elsewhere resulted in no significant penalty or punishment, a different standard as applied to those who may be arbitrarily labeled white supremacists.

And unbeknownst to most Americans, the US-NATO relationship established the US Army NATO Brigade by General Order #46 in December, 1950.   For the first time, NATO’s war in Ukraine has provided the cover for thousands of US Army troops to be deployed under the US Army NATO Brigade banner and to serve under NATO’s direct command.  As Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, head of the U.S. European Command and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe stated, “We are grateful to our allies Canada and the United States for their recent commitments to deploy an additional 7,460 troops, including an armored brigade combat team, artillery units, a naval frigate, and surveillance aircraft, to support this Alliance-wide effort.”   

Finally, is there any assurance that constitutional demands from Congress or the Executive Branch have more authority to supersede Articles 4 and 5 or will US laws and obligations be secondary to NATO’s Orders?  One way to eliminate NATO from Norfolk is for the United States to remove itself from NATO.

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This article was originally published on State of the Nation.

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

Featured image is by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ernest R. Scott, licensed under the Public Domain

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***

 

The possibility of US lockdowns – never attempted on this scale in the history of pandemics – was already in the air in early March 2020. The theory of lockdown had been floating around for 15 years but now China was first to try it, and claim enormous success, however fraudulently. 

Incredibly, the US was set to try it out too but getting Trump on board was going to take some doing. The federal government had the quarantine power since 1944. That much we knew. But just how expansive could its exercise be? Would they dare quarantine the well with the sick? How far would this go?

Thanks to several journalistic accounts, we have a better idea of what went on in the White House before the dreadful March 16, 2020, press conference of Donald Trump, Anthony Fauci, and Deborah Birx in which the lockdowns were announced. Along with that came a flier with tiny print about which the ever-trusting Trump apparently knew nothing: “bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

Read those words again. Has anything like this ever been issued by any government in the history of the world, before China did it? I cannot think of a case. It shuts not only the places where people do “congregate” but also everywhere where they might congregate. Churches. AA meetings. Civic clubs. Libraries. Museums. Homes! And this happened under Trump’s watch right here in the US! There ought to be a word to describe something more extreme than totalitarian.

There were a number of people in Trump’s circle in those days who proved panicked and confused enough to embrace the idea. But who precisely wrote those words in the sheet handed out to reporters?

We cannot say for sure but Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner played an important role. He had enlisted two close friends from college to help: Nat Turner and Adam Boehler. Both were graduates from the Wharton School, like Trump. Jared somehow believed that they knew something about pandemics because they worked in health-care delivery. So he called them.

Boehler headed the $60 billion US International Development Finance Corporation and still does. It’s one of those many agencies that throws contracts and cash to big shots within industry. Before that job, he was head of Landmark Health delivery services, which means that he knew business and finance, not public health. He is among those high-finance execs who were drawn to healthcare not for the science but for the money.

As for Turner, he is a serial entrepreneur who got his start selling snakes from his parents’ garage. Truly. He founded an ad agency that he eventually sold to Google 10 years ago, Invite Media, for more than $70 million. His company Flatiron – oncology-related electronic record software – sold to Roche in 2018 for $1.9 billion. His page at the Wharton School describes him as “Young, Entrepreneurial and Google-Owned.” He is now a billionaire investor at an implausibly young age.

And Google-owned! 

The book Nightmare Scenario (2021) explains what happened next. On March 13, 2020:

Boehler and Turner burrowed into a room in the basement of the West Wing and started calling people who grasped both the scale of the crisis but also the politics. Over that weekend, they put together recommendations and then circulated them with Birx and Fauci. The guidelines were refined further before being presented to Trump in the Oval Office. They wanted to recommend shutting down in-person education at schools. Closing indoor dining at restaurants and bars. Canceling travel.

Birx and Fauci saw the guidelines as a crucial pause that would buy them some time to better understand the pandemic. Shutting down flights was not enough, they said; more would have to be done. …. Boehler, Kushner, Birx, Fauci, and other aides presented Trump with the recommendations several days later, anxious over what he might say. Kushner had been preparing Trump for the possibility that they were going to need to take more “draconian” actions.

This account was not speculative. Kushner himself in his new book tells a very similar story:

On my way to the White House early the next morning, March 12, my [billionaire investor] brother Josh called from New York City. He described the worrisome signs: the city had canceled its annual Saint Patrick’s Day parade, thousands of people were self-quarantining, and millions more were leaving the city. When I told him that I was asked to jump into the response, he made a suggestion: “You should call Adam.”…

Call Adam!

Why not call, oh, for example, a public health scientist? Someone with some expertise in viruses? A medical doctor? Universities are packed with them. Someone, anyone, with actual knowledge and experience? Nope. It was entirely a crony operation, privileged fools about to take over the private lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Boehler was the perfect person to help us with the federal government’s COVID response, especially because he had the skills to overcome the fierce rivalries among the administration’s health-care team….After the meeting, Boehler and I huddled in my office and began sketching out how we could help with testing and supplies. To get additional support, we called our mutual friend and successful health-care entrepreneur Nat Turner. …

As we dealt with the shortage of cotton swabs and other supplies, we faced another problem: the need to develop public health guidelines.

Let’s just stop right there and consider this realization. Oh, they needed guidelines for the rest of us to follow, for reasons of politics and public relations. After all, they are surely the masters of the craft. Continuing:

Given that people across the country were confused and concerned, Birx and Fauci had been discussing the need for a unified set of federal standards to help Americans understand what they should do to keep themselves safe and slow the spread of the virus. They insisted that these guidelines would help prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. Despite all the talk over the past week, no one had taken steps to produce a document. When Nat Turner flagged the issue,

Again, let’s stop the tape there. Nat Turner pointed out that no one had yet issued any orders? Good call, dude. Someone needs to get right on that. Just open up a Google doc and get to work on writing a central plan for the whole country. You have a two-hour deadline.

I asked him to coordinate with Derek Lyons to produce a draft and encouraged him to call Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former head of the FDA and a renowned public health expert [and Pfizer board member]. I had been trying to persuade Gottlieb to come back into government for a short-term stint to help us better organize our response and support our effort to develop a vaccine.

When we called Gottlieb, he was grateful that we were preparing guidelines. “They should go a little bit further than you are comfortable with,” he said. “When you feel like you are doing more than you should, that is a sign that you are doing them right.”

Look, this whole scene truly just boggles the mind. Phone calls. Rushed documents. Friends of friends. Pharma executives. People in the know!

The result was a document that shut down the US and the world, all banged out by rank amateurs with ungodly privilege, with nary a thought of asking disinterested experts. Whatever they typed would affect the lives of 333 million people coast to coast. Did they think about that? Did they even care? Did the even once think about people not of their class and pedigree?

The result: Trump agreed to the “guidelines,” which led to the most momentous lockdown decision in the history of public health and even in the whole of human history. It locked down hospitals, nursing homes, and every commercial establishment in the country except those called essential. Homes too: the CDC said no more than ten can come to your house for dinner.

So let’s get this straight. This decision, which wrecked life in the US and all over the world, and eventually caused the loss of the presidency and the Congress, was made by a handful of well-connected tech entrepreneurs with ZERO experience in infectious disease, epidemiology, immunology, pandemic history, or anything other than management and business classes at the Wharton School. With close Google connections. And they did this in cooperation with one name board member of Big Pharma that ended up making billions in profits from mandated vaccines that were forced on the American people. Also, Google made a mint.

Apparently, the above is a true story, based on one first-hand account and one journalistic account. The world was wrecked by a literal snake salesman, the Google-funded inventor of DoorDash for medicine, a big pharma executive, some bureaucrat who lived off AIDS largess, an octogenarian media star who had been in government for 40 years, plus the son-in-law of an easily bamboozled name-brand purveyor who imagined from his years as a CEO that he could just shut down a country and turn it back on! They constitute a plethora of elites who scammed their way to the top and deployed their new-found power in grossly immoral ways that wrecked this country and many others.

Now, to be clear, there is surely much more to this story. For one thing, even as these birds were deliberating, the Department of Health and Human Services had already issued on March 13 a lockdown order marked as classified. So it was already in the cards. Maybe these bozos only believed they were in charge when the real power was higher up. I do not know. But I would like to. It’s like a kaleidoscope that never stops turning. What we know now is enough of a scandal.

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Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics at The Epoch Times, and speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Featured image: Kushner: On March 11, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence asked for my help with the COVID response. I called my friend Nat Turner (left) and Adam Boehler (far right), successful healthcare entrepreneurs who helped me procure lifesaving supplies and equipment from around the world. Avi Berkowitz (center) was a critical source of counsel throughout our government service. (Courtesy of the White House Photo Office)

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***

A month-long heatwave and record low rainfall have resulted in an unprecedented drought along the Yangtze, China’s longest river.

Lakes and tributaries have receded as a result of the drought, exposing riverbeds and even a 600-year-old Buddhist stone carving and rocks below the famous Guanyin Pavilion, in Wuhan, Hubei province.

Comparison of water around Guanyin Pavilion in flood and drought

Low river levels have reduced the ability of hydro-electric power stations in the area to generate energy.

Emergency measures imposed to save electricity include factories closing, shops reducing opening hours and office buildings switching off air conditioning – all in response to the double-whammy of high demand for electricity and low production.

In big cities sited along the river, Shanghai is switching off its famous waterfront lights and the city of Luzhou is turning off street lights at night, in an attempt to ease pressure on the power grid.

Poyang Lake dries out around farming areas

Summer rainfall in the Yangtze river basin is the lowest since records began in 1961, according to China’s Ministry of Water Resources.

Similarly, sustained regional heatwaves have also broken all established records, according to China’s National Climate Centre.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: Copyright Getty

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***

Following on from the work of Dr. Hughes this essay, by reference to 1930’s Germany, will outline certain historical parallels between that time and the world we currently inhabit. It will also present speculation as to how the Deep State may now proceed in its determination to implement The Great Reset.

After the Armistice in 1918 the German people were devastated in every way imaginable. In addition to having four years of death, destruction and hunger they had experienced an increasingly dictatorial State brought about in order to conduct the War. The future they looked towards was full of humiliation and a seemingly never-ending era of hunger, helplessness, civil disorder and general uncertainty. See this.

The experience of people in Britain and the USA in the last two years mirrors, to a very limited extent, that of the Germans during World War 1.

It is, however, likely to get worse for millions of people. We have lost liberties, worn masks, socially distanced, followed rules. taken dangerous jabs we don’t need and, like prisoners, experienced Lockdowns. The power of the State reinforced by media speculation that there may be another Lockdown or that Christmas will be cancelled. There has been a hellish psychological strategy imposed on the people. See this. Rampaging inflation accompanied by mass unemployment, food and fuel shortages, increasingly invasive surveillance, limits to travel, strikes and outbreaks of civil unrest. The Russians and the conflict in Ukraine will be blamed.

The war on the people by the elite will not be mentioned by the mainstream media.

How did the Germans respond to their post-war privations? They desperately looked for a saviour. They therefore elected a proud nationalist who re-wrote history and promised easy solutions to their misery. See this.

Because of their collective despair they did not care to read the small print and therefore failed to realise the horrific nightmare which was to befall them and the rest of the world. Bear in mind that until the Second World War began the nation was largely grateful to Hitler. The newsreels suggest he was met by adoring crowds wherever he went. In the USA he was, in fact, “Time Magazine” “Man of the Year”.

The current President of the United States is, apparently, suffering severe cognitive decline and his Vice-President does not seem to have any competence or leadership qualities. It may be said that this does not matter as no President is really in charge of the nation. Be that as it may, millions of Americans still believe in the electoral process as a viable force for change and, as in post-WW1 Germany, will look for a hero to deliver them from their trauma. They will tolerate all manner of new rules and regulations if only the pain will stop. They have become a nation of waifs tossed in a sea of fear.

According to economists the inflation rate across the West will accelerate. The traditional response to this is to raise interest rates but if this happens then it may well lead to a total economic collapse. Given the gigantic debts accumulated by Governments across the world it is possible that they would be unable to service their debts. It is a cleft stick. If they do not raise interest rates then hyperinflation as per post World War 1 Germany may ensue. Either way, the ordinary man and woman will suffer.

Imagine, if you will, an American leader who promises to Make America Great Again. Can you think of a former Leader who was thwarted at every turn by the Deep State, the swamp? Was harassed by the FBI and suffered a stolen election? One who was hoodwinked by the scientists and the pharmaceutical industry? One who promises revenge?

Is this how America’s Hitler will be presented to the people? Does it seem likely that Trump would turn against “the science”? Perhaps. A move such as this could be seen as similar to Hitler’s war on the rational.

In Britain there is an election campaign ongoing for the Leadership of the Conservative Party and as a consequence Prime Minister. The Party membership are being forced to choose between Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer and Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary.

Both characters are flawed and lack charisma. Sunak presided over economic policies which were destined to bring about the difficulties Britain now experiences and Truss, amongst many other defects, has exposed the fact that she is a Foreign Secretary with a limited knowledge of geography. See this.

Truss is the frontrunner and in office as Prime Minister is likely to be as ineffectual as Theresa May.

Would this make the British people yearn for Boris Johnson to return? The media would point out that he got “Brexit Done”. He was removed “unjustly” and, like his hero Churchill, he will have had his wilderness years. Don’t bet against this scenario, the British always admire a lovable rogue. His “Hasta La Vista” statement in the House Of Commons perhaps indicates that he knows of a plan to bring him back. See this.

The ills that he returns to cure will have been caused, so he will say, by his successor’s incompetence, the Russians, the scientists and the computer modellers.

As we saw in 1930’s Germany the people will accept anything so long as their pain will stop.

Will Herr Trump and Herr Johnson say “I can make it stop. All your suffering will end. All you have to do is take this medicine.”

It might not be Trump. It might not be Johnson. Be sure, however, the Doctors are on their way. The medicine has been prepared.

You look at the Great Reset Medicine Bottle and written in bold letters are the ingredients: Digital ID, Central Bank Digital Currency, Social Credit System, Microchips, Mandatory Jabs, Travel Restrictions, Insect Food and Climate Change rules.

For all our sakes – don’t take it!

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Harry Hinson lives in England and has been a student of politics and history since 1964. He has a degree in Social & Political Studies from the University of Sheffield.

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***

Ravi Agrawal, Foreign Policy editor in chief, has interviewed historian Stephen Wertheim,  a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In this interview, Wertheim argues that the US is overextending its power and therefore should restrain itself in Taiwan and Ukraine, among other places.

Washington has of course been providing essential support to Kiev in its current conflict with Moscow. Meanwhile, it is engaged in a new cold war with Beijing.

The American scholar notes that, even though US President Joe Biden came into office proclaiming that “America is back” (after years of former President Donal Trump’s relative “isolationism”, if you may call it that, though only relatively), the current American president in fact withdrew from Afghanistan and seemed to reject the idea of a “forever war” there. Moreover, he also initially pursued a “stable and predictable relationship” with Moscow.

One should say it did not last much, though. Not too long after removing its troops from Afghanistan, Biden escalated the American forever war in Somalia, for example. And, one year after that withdrawal, the US now finds itself entrenched in two arenas simultaneously, while it tries to encircle and contain two superpowers at once.

An interesting point Stephen Wertheim makes is that by pushing the narrative that the conflict in Ukraine is all about “a defense of democracy”, albeit Ukraine could hardly be described as a democratic country from a Western or anyone’s perspective, the US and its global North allies in fact alienate and exclude much of the global south. The US “human rights” and “democracy” narrative that informs much of its foreign policy, in any case, is simply a weaponization of these very concepts, as anyone can easily tell just by paying any attention to the covering up of Ukraine’s own record on this, for instance.

Wertheim also argues that the American “engagement” strategy was really about regime change, in an attempt to make China look like a liberal democracy Western country. This has been replaced today by a “containment” strategy, but the truth is that neither approach has worked. What he proposes is a “mutual coexistence”, based on the premise that Beijing has “its own system” (albeit one which the US does not approve of). In this scenario, for the sake of avoiding the serious risks of a “great-power war” Washington would not try to “change the Chinese regime” and would acknowledge that “not all aspects of Chinese power run counter to U.S. interests in the world” – plus “some things are also not worth antagonizing China over.”

Thus, Stephen Wertheim reasons that the White House should go back to its own One China Policy, as it had been practiced for decades, though still maintaining some degree of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan, so as not to provoke and corner the Chinese into thinking they will need to act there. The academic goes beyond that and, in practice, argues that Washington “doesn’t have vital interests implicated in the Middle East” and therefore should “draw down” its security partnerships there. In the same way, it should pursue a “transition” in Europe so that Europeans themselves lead the defense of their own continent.

Wertheim’s defense of “restraint” (or so-called “offshore balancing”) echoes that of Stephen M. Walt, a Harvard University professor of international relations, who adopts a realist stance on foreign policy. Walt has been defending that there is not much need for the US to deploy significant forces neither in Europe nor in the Middle East, and that a more restrained foreign policy would free up resources for much needed long-term domestic investments in the nation’s future. Walt argues that realists were correct about the dangers of NATO enlargement, the Iraq war, about Afghanistan, and so on. Thus, they should be heard.

In a similar “pro-restraint” vein, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has been urging peace talks with Russia, necessarily involving some territorial compromise in Ukraine, so as to avoid a permanent break with Moscow. Realist scholar John J. Mearsheimer in turn has also warned that the US-led Western policy toward Ukraine would lead to trouble, as have many other realists.

These calls for restraint are not only feasible but are in fact quite urgent. Europe already seems to be slowly “abandoning” Ukraine, which, from the US perspective, overburdens Washington. The US is already overextending its power in its effort to contain two superpowers at once. If one stretches too far, one breaks, as the saying goes. It is about time Washington exercises some restraint – in Taiwan, Ukraine and beyond.

“Containment” has simply not worked and the unipolar moment has already passed – whether the American establishment likes it or not. Therefore, the United States needs to get out of the escalatory dynamic it has put itself into, for the sake of global peace; and it must surrender much of its military overcommitment.

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

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***

There has been a lot of buzz about Amnesty International’s recent report on the violations committed by the Ukrainian military in the war with Russia, although this was a balanced and cautious report indeed. The attacks against this human rights organization are far from innocent. Background and interpretation of this issue.

A remarkable report

On 4 August, Amnesty International released a report on how the Ukrainian army’s combat tactics are endangering civilians, as it involves building bases and using weapons systems in densely populated residential areas, schools and hospitals.

Amnesty has written dozens of reports on the violations committed by the Russian army in this war. This time it holds the Ukrainian accountable. A report by the UN and also Der Spiegel had previously resulted in similar findings as AI.

The report is cautious. Russia is also being blamed. “The Ukrainian military’s practice of locating military objectives within populated areas does not in any way justify indiscriminate Russian attacks.”

Image

A butterfly mine. Source: Twitter

In this report, Amnesty only talks about the use of civilians as human shields. It does not mention the use of cluster bombs[1] or butterfly mines,[2] the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant or the torture of captured Russian soldiers.

Anyway, the report was a remarkable first. It was the first time a major Western human rights organization denounced the behavior of the Ukrainian military. Until then, there had only been convictions of the crimes committed by the Russian army.

Storm of criticism

The report was met with a storm of criticism. Major media outlets such as The Washington Post, The Telegraph or Bloomberg accused Amnesty of “victim blaming ” and acting as “useful idiots” in Putin’s favor. They talked about Amnesty’s “moral bankruptcy” and “anti-Western obsession”.

The Ukrainian government reacted furiously. President Zelensky condemned the report in a speech to the nation, accusing Amnesty International of an “attempt to grant amnesty to the terrorist state and to shift the blame from the aggressor to the victim of aggression.”

Kuleba, the foreign minister, tweeted that the report “distorts reality, draws a false moral equivalence between the aggressor and the victim, and boosts Russia’s disinformation efforts. This is fake ‘neutrality’, not truthfulness.”

The Ukrainian branch of Amnesty also strongly opposed the publication of the report. The section’s director, Oksana Pokalchuk, stated: “we did everything we could to prevent this report from going public”.

As a result of the intense pressure, a few days after releasing the report, the human rights organization felt compelled to apologize for the “pain caused”. “Amnesty International deeply regrets the distress and anger that our press release on the Ukrainian military’s fighting tactics has caused.”

The organization did, however, remain fully supportive of its findings. Earlier, CBS, one of the three largest commercial television networks in the US, had partially removed a documentary on arms deliveries to Ukraine after pressure from the government in Kiev. Amnesty did not succumb to the pressure exerted on the publication of its report.

Three generations of human rights

In order to discredit Amnesty, some go so far as to label it an organization of the extreme left. But that is absolutely not the case. To make this clear, we will first briefly discuss the different types of human rights.

There are three types or generations of human rights. The first generation are the so-called civil rights which relate to freedom and participation in political life. They were introduced after the French Revolution in 1789 and served to protect the emerging bourgeoisie from the omnipotence of king and nobility.

These rights include freedom of speech, equality before the law, freedom of religion, right to private property, right to a fair trial, right to privacy.

The rights of the second generation are social, economic and cultural. They are related to equality. They came about under the impetus of the emerging labor movement and socialist countries. With these rights, governments guarantee equal conditions and treatment to the civilian population.

These are rights to food, housing, education, health care, work, leisure, social security, fair pay, etc.

The third generation may be described as collective or peoples’ rights. They became popular in the countries of the South during decolonization. These rights are about a just world order and must ensure that each country can pursue its own autonomous course.

These include the right to sovereignty, economic and social development, natural resources, cultural heritage, healthy environment and sustainability (for future generations).

Eurocentrism

Each of the three generations is important, but the elites in the West have managed to narrow the scope of thinking mainly to the first generation. If you want to maintain the gap between the rich and the poor, it is advantageous to disregard social and economic rights. In order to maintain the domination of the North over the South, it is also useful not to talk about peoples’ rights.

So, the focus is always on civil and political rights. Moreover, these are then applied à la carte. In the case of “friendly countries” such as Saudi Arabia or Israel, there is a great deal of turning a blind eye when these rights are flouted. “Non-friendly countries” such as Iran, Venezuela or China, on the other hand, are placed under a magnifying glass when it comes to those rights.

Once that dominant view of the West on human rights has become commonplace, it can be politically and ideologically weaponized. Through a human rights policy, the US and the West then try to give certain countries a negative image and isolate them diplomatically.

Especially since the advent of President Reagan in the 1980s, ”the human rights campaign” has intensified considerably. In a New York Times op-ed entitled ”Why We Must Support Human Rights”, John McCain, a prominent Republican senator, wrote:

“We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values. We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules. More of humanity than ever before lives in freedom and out of poverty because of those rules.” You cannot make it any clearer than that.

Where to situate Amnesty International?

Like most other Western human rights organizations, Amnesty focuses primarily on first-generation human rights. In doing so, it adopts the dominant narrative and therefore often plays into the hands of Western interests.

In the US, there has long been a revolving door between the staffs of prominent human rights groups and the government. In Europe, this may be less the case, but it is an undeniable factor. In addition, the pressure from large donors, who favor the dominant narrative, should not be underestimated.

Traditionally, Amnesty has ignored the power structures that maintain Western domination over the rest of humanity. Actions by leftist governments trying to stop violent counter-revolutions are put on a par with those of ruthless imperialist states persecuting minorities.

In Bolivia, after a military coup in 2019, Jeanine Anez was appointed president by the military. Her government was guilty of brutal repression against popular resistance. The decision of the newly elected government to prosecute her for a large number of massacres was considered by Amnesty International to be a “pattern of bias in in the system of justice”.

The Morning Star notes that this is not evidence of bias but is the result of an “individualist approach that ignores the power relations that define exploitation, oppression, resistance and revolt”.

That is why Amnesty could not accept Nelson Mandela as a “prisoner of conscience”. In the eyes of AI, armed revolutionary struggle is the same as armed state repression.

It is also why Amnesty gives more weight to the arrest of a media tycoon in Hong Kong than to the eradication of absolute poverty among hundreds of millions of people in China.

Same story regarding Cuba. The 2021 Amnesty report focuses on some dissidents and the fact that some hospitals were overwhelmed by the influx of Covid patients at one point. It does not say a word about the murderous blockade that keeps the country in an economic stranglehold.

After a breakdown at a Cuban company that produces oxygen, there was an acute shortage of oxygen to ventilate critically ill Covid patients. The US blockade prevented the urgent purchase of oxygen. As a result, hundreds of Cuban patients died unnecessarily. The report does not mention this at all.

Amnesty also cannot avoid playing out human rights à la carte with regard to friendly and unfriendly nations. For example, it considers Russian dissident Navalny a prisoner of conscience, but not the whistleblowers Assange, Snowden or Chelsea Manning.[3]

Beyond self-censorship

So, there is a lot to be said about Amnesty’s approach. Their politics cannot possibly be called leftist, but that does not prevent us from defending the organization against attacks from the right. Indeed, with their attacks, right-wing forces seek to silence any dissenting voice.

They also try to promote a Hollywood version of the world, in which the West are the good guys who can do no wrong and the opponents are the bad guys who act wrongly by definition.

Of course, under the governments of ‘our’ adversaries, whether Putin, Assad, Gaddafi or the Taliban, war crimes have been committed. “But the focus on those crimes is all too often an excuse to avoid addressing western war crimes, thereby enabling agendas that advance the interests of the West’s war industries”, as journalist and author Jonathan Cook said.

The coverage of the war in Ukraine and the human rights situation is viewed almost entirely through the lenses of Western political priorities. Even the author of the Amnesty report, which we have discussed here, admits that “the level of self-censorship on this issue [Ukrainian war crimes] has been pretty extraordinary”.

This Amnesty report breaks with the one-sidedness. The reason why a highly respected Western non-governmental organization is breaching the wall of self-censorship may be twofold.

First of all, doubts are growing both among a part of the establishment and among the population about the West’s bellicose approach to this war. With the upcoming energy crisis in the winter, this kind of doubt will increase significantly. By extension, the view is slowly growing that in addition to the criminal behavior of the Russian army, the criminal behavior of the Ukrainian army can no longer be tolerated either.

These doubts are undoubtedly also felt within the organization of AI itself. Some of its supporters, and perhaps its staff, will not have found it okay for the organization to focus unilaterally on Russia’s crimes.

Amnesty mainly uses the first type of human rights and does not usually distances itself from the Western approach. But that need not be a fatality. On the Palestinian issue, there has been a lot of grassroots pressure within the organization, with results. AI released a landmark report naming Israel as an Apartheid State. That would be worth repeating.

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Sources

Amnesty’s not on the left. So why the Ukraine backlash?

Consider Amnesty’s message, don’t shoot the messenger

Why is Amnesty apologising for telling the truth about Ukrainian war crimes?

Amnesty International report exposes Ukraine’s violations of international law, deliberate use of civilians as human shields

An unpleasant truth for Ukrainians is coming to light

Notes

[1] A cluster bomb is a bomb that contains a large number of smaller bombs, called submunitions. When a cluster bomb is used, the bomb opens in mid-air and then scatters dozens or even hundreds of submunitions over an area up to several soccer fields in size.

[2] A butterfly mine is a type of landmine dispersed from the air. The blast charge is small, intended to injure persons, not kill them. The name ‘butterfly’ refers to its wing-like shape. Its aerodynamic properties promote dispersal over a large area when butterfly bombs are dropped as cluster bombs. A butterfly mine mutilates the victim who comes into contact with it.

[3] Chelsea E. Manning was an American soldier in Iraq. On WikiLeaks, she leaked a video recording of a US helicopter attack in Baghdad. She was convicted but released early after being pardoned by Barack Obama. Yet from March 2019 to March 2020, she was detained again for refusing to testify in a case against WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

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***

Initiative of the No War No NATO Campaign:

We, the people of good will, of all walks of life, living on all continents and professing different creeds and religions, direct your attention to the threat of an all-out nuclear war that can erupt very easily either due to deliberate actions of any nuclear weapons state or because of unintentional, human, technical or other mistake.

We are witnessing that the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons in a limited or on large-scale attack recently has been dramatically lowered, bringing the entire world to the brink of a nuclear Armageddon.

F**k

The United States in fact has withdrawn from a number of rather well-known and useful nuclear arms control treaties and accords for dubious reasons and illogical explanations.

Nuclear arms delivery vehicles are becoming more sophisticated, faster and more precise. They have been combined into a dangerous combination of arms embracing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons with missile defense assets and conventional capabilities, and with a possibility to place strike weapons in space, including missile defense systems and anti-satellite weapons.

Many military exercises that earlier have been conducted with the use of conventional weapons, gradually are being transformed into drills using mock nuclear weapons.

Nuclear arms experts calculate that during an initial massive nuclear attack, at least 34 million people will immediately perish and 57 million people will receive multiple injuries and wounds that will cause horrible pain, suffering, radiation sickness and death. Additionally, various kinds of infrastructure, flora and fauna, nuclear power plants, water resources – including potable water and hydropower dams – will be heavily damaged or destroyed completely by huge firestorms, vast nuclear contamination, powerful explosions, and earthquakes.

But that is just the immediate impact. The nuclear winter that would be created by even a limited nuclear war would threaten all of humanity with starvation and other mortal threats.

We who have voluntarily signed this appeal urge you, as the leaders of all nine nuclear nations, to take the following actions in 2020:

First, as an initial step leading to comprehensive and irreversible nuclear disarmament on a global scale, you pledge not to use and denounce any kind of nuclear weapon use in a first strike against any nation at any time.

Secondsign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons with the subsequent commitment specified in the next item.

Third, commit to irreversibly dismantling all nuclear weapons by August 6, 2045 or earlier that date – by all nine nuclear weapon states, in carefully calibrated stages and through well-developed and mutually acceptable mechanisms of inspections, provided that all nuclear weapon states will follow this pattern simultaneously and honestly.

Signed personally as an expression of my good will by me

Signature ………..

resident of the Republic (State) of ……………

on (date) ………………………. 2020.

***

Please paste this document, sign and email it to [email protected]

Our deepest thanks.

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Nazi Atrocities at Odessa – 8 Years On

August 27th, 2022 by John Goss

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Today, 2 May, marks the eighth anniversary of the diabolical Nazi atrocities at Odessa. For those unfamiliar with how this war began I updated a News Junkie Post article about its aetiology for The Indicter in 2015. At least 46 people were killed and many more unaccounted for when pro-Russian sympathisers were locked in the trade-union building by Right Sector fascists before it was set on fire.

The fascists were chanting “Slava Ukraini”, that is “Glory to Ukraine”, as people burnt to death. The perpetrators walked free. These are the same Nazis fighting for Kiev.

A compiled video of what happened on 2 May 2014

Earlier this year, at the start of the Russian special operation, and in praise of the eight-year NATO-backed slaughter, Boris Johnson added his own cry of Slava Ukraini on behalf of the British People when he told the Zelensky regime that the UK stands with Ukraine and its people. This is not Johnson’s first cry of Glory to Ukraine.

On 24 August 2019 he saluted Ukraine’s “independence” together with John Whittingdale, Chair of the All-Parliamentary group on Ukraine, Robert Brinkley, British Ambassador to Ukraine (2002-2006), Michael Fallon, Member of the House of Commons, Baroness Alison Suttie, Member of the House of Lords, John Grogan, Member of the House of Commons, Julian Edward George Asquith, the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Jonathan Djanogly, member of the House of Commons, Orysia Lutsevych, manager of the Ukrainian Forum, Chatham House, Andrew Foxall, Director of Research for the Henry Jackson Society and Pauline Latham, member of the House of Commons.

Together they repeated the words, line by line, of what is claimed to be the Ukrainian National Anthem since the coup-d’etat which removed the legitimately-elected president Viktor Yanukovich to install the West’s puppet regime.

Details are starting to emerge that NATO was actually planning to take control of the Donbas region against the will of the people. Even more disturbing is the speculation that NATO has a unit hidden deep in the bowels of the Azovstal factory. That would certainly mean that Johnson knew the intent from the start.

If they knew what was happening today my parents would blow up a dust storm. Their generation spent five-years fighting off the evils of Nazism. Now my government is gung ho in support of it. It is almost unbelievable.

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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Wednesday, where he warned against negotiations with Russia.

“This is not the time to advance some flimsy plan for negotiation,” Johnson said at a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Johnson, who is due to step down as prime minister next month, has now visited Kyiv three times since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24. He has been one of the most hawkish NATO leaders in his rhetoric against Russia, frequently discouraging the idea of peace talks.

During one visit to Kyiv in April, Johnson said he “urged” against negotiations with Russia.

According to a report from Ukrainska Pravda, Johnson told Zelensky in April that even if Ukraine was ready to sign a deal with Russia, Kyiv’s Western backers were not.

During Wednesday’s visit, Johnson pledged a new weapons package for Ukraine worth about $64 million. All of the details of the package aren’t clear, but it includes 850 Black Hornet micro-drones, which are about the size of a human thumb and can be targeted for target-spotting.

Britain has been one of NATO’s biggest supporters of Ukraine, although its total military aid is dwarfed by what the US has pledged. So far, London has announced about $2.7 billion in military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine while the US has pledged about $13.6 billion in weapons packages alone.

Britain’s support for Ukraine is not expected to wane as the two leading candidates to replace Johnson — UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak — have pledged they will continue backing Kyiv in its war.

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

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In the video below, Judge Andrew Napolitano talks with former CIA official Philip Giraldi on the latest developments in the Ukraine-Russia war.

They also discuss the assassination of Darya Dugina,  journalist and daughter of philosopher Alexander Dugin and the involvement of CIA, MI6 and Mossad in the war.

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Liz Truss it not only ignorant with regard to nuclear weapons and their devastating impacts, she does not know the geography of the Russian Federation, claiming that Rostov on the Don as well as Voronezh belong to Ukraine; it’s like saying that Manchester belongs to Scotland:

Russia’s Kommersant newspaper quoted two diplomatic sources as saying that during their closed-door meeting on Thursday Lavrov had asked Truss if she recognised Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh – two regions in the south of the country where Russia has been building up its forces.

Kommersant said Truss replied that Britain would never recognise them as Russian, and had to be corrected by her ambassador. (Reuters report)

My message to the Conservative party, do not vote for an Ignoramus who could lead Britain and the World into the unthinkable, a nuclear war which threatens the future of humanity.

Michel Chossudovsky, August 26, 2022

 

 

Liz Truss confirmed she is “ready” to press the UK’s nuclear button if need be – and Twitter is not reassured.

Truss is the frontrunner in the race to be the next Conservative Party leader. If successfully elected by the membership, she would also become the next prime minister, giving her powers over Britain’s nuclear bombs.

They are considered the most dangerous weapons in the world.

Truss was speaking at a hustings event in Birmingham, when host John Pienaar asked her if she would give the order “to unleash nuclear weapons” from Trident.

He added: “It would mean global annihilation. I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick.

“How does that thought make you feel?”

Truss replied: “I think it’s an important duty of the prime minister and I’m ready to do it. I’m ready to do that.”

She has previously indicated that she would renew the nuclear deterrent, which aims to “deter the most extreme threats to our national security and way of life”, during her leadership campaign.

But her words last night were particularly chilling considering the ongoing war between nuclear power Russia and its European neighbour Ukraine, which is closely allied with the UK.

Truss is also the current foreign secretary and was already singled out by the Kremlin back in February for making “absolutely unacceptable statements” about clashes between Nato and Russia.

Moscow then used Truss’ words to put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert.

Rishi Sunak, Truss’ competitor, was reportedly not asked the same question during Tuesday’s hustings.

It’s fair to say that the leadership hopeful’s comments did not land among Twitter users, as people were torn between fearing for the UK’s future and being exasperated that Truss is not focusing on the cost of living crisis at hand.

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The United States Government is pressing Japan’s Government to revise its 1947 U.S.-created Constitution so as to eliminate its clause (Article 9) that prevents Japan from invading any country. The clause asserts that:

the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The reason for this change is that Japan could play a decisive role assisting America’s unofficial war against America’s World War II ally China, which country America’s Government wants to turn into a vassal-nation like Japan long has been (ever since 1945).

America especially wants Japan to invade China when and if China invades (so as to retake control over) the “Republic of China”, which is China’s province of Taiwan, which province Japan had conquered from China in 1895, and which province the United States Government in 1945 forced Japan to return to China, as part of Japan’s WW II surrender, which today’s U.S. Government now wants to reverse, so that China can now become captured by America as Japan was captured in 1945.

Only if Taiwan becomes separated from China can America defeat China, which would greatly advance America toward its goal of being the world’s hegemon, the first-ever all-encompassing global empire.

So: America has now 100% reversed its position during WW II, of opposing Japan and supporting China, to instead opposing China and supporting Japan. Removal of the peaceful-nation clause in the U.S.-written Japanese Constitution will be necessary for this purpose.

If America succeeds in restoring Japan’s “right of belligerency,” then here is why Japan would provide crucial assistance to the U.S. regime’s effort to grab Taiwan for the U.S. empire and so to conquer China:

On 9 June 2022, Salman Rafi Sheikh was the first person to make note of the fact that the U.S. imperial regime has instructed both of its two former WW II enemies, Germany and Japan, to re-arm, but, this time for America’s empire, instead of for their own.

(In other words: the U.S. regime’s view is that imperialistic fascism is okay if the empire is America, but NOT if the empire is Germany, or Japan.) He headlined “How Washington is Turning the Pacific into a New Theatre of NATO’s Conflict”, and noted that,

“Japan’s drive to arm itself has an interesting parallel in Europe, where Germany, too, has decided to massively increase its total defence spending to 100 billion euros. With Washington actively supporting these critical changes to establish powerful militaries around its core rival states – Russia and China [respectively] in Europe and Asia – new forms of conflict are likely to emerge, with prospects of major counter alliances on the horizon too.”

He went on to say:

Japan’s increasing defence budget comes on top of the full possibility of “interoperability” between the US and Japanese units, allowing the latter to “practice its forward-deployed attack capabilities.” What is extremely important to note here is that the core purpose of the “interoperability” is not defensive; it is offensive, which means that Japan’s so-called “pacifism” is nothing more than a rhetoric that Tokyo uses – and will continue to use – to mask its rapidly growing military preparedness against Russia and China.

That this process is being actively supported by the US is evident from the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement, on the sidelines of Biden’s Tokyo visit, to “drastically strengthen” its military capabilities.

According to a new economic policy draft released by the Kishida administration, the decision is a response to “attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by forces in East Asia, making regional security increasingly severe.” If this assessment sounds vague, it is by design to camouflage Japan’s rise as a new military power that can rival Russia and China as a US ally.

In fact, it is already acting as a US ally against Russia in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In April, Japanese officials announced that they will send defence equipment – drones and protective gear – to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian military fight the Russian forces. While Japan’s Self-Defence Forces rules prohibit the transfer of defence products to other countries, Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi justified this transfer as “commercial” and “disused items.” More self-serving justifications will be invented to mask Japan’s so-called “pacifist militarization.”

Further tensions with Russia are likely to follow. In April, around the same time Tokyo announced increasing its budget, the Japanese government also shifted its stance on the Kuril islands.

In its 2022 Diplomatic Bluebook, Japan said that “The Northern Territories are a group of islands Japan has sovereignty over and an integral part of Japan’s territory, but currently they are illegally occupied by Russia.”

This description is a major diplomatic shift insofar as it raises the level of tensions surrounding what was previously disputed territory. Calling Russia an “illegal” occupier shows Japan just subscribing to the western narrative about the Russian “occupation” of Crimea.

In practical terms, by raising the temperature against Russia (and China as well), Japan is transforming itself into a front-line military ally of the US and NATO in this part of the world.

Japan’s militarization under the shadow of US support is also tied to how the US/West is increasingly projecting NATO not as a regional alliance; in fact, recent developments have shown how NATO is arrogating to itself a “global” role. In April, the UK’s foreign minister Liz Truss called for a “global NATO.” She added that NATO must have a “global outlook” to be able “ to pre-empt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with our allies like Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”

Japan is, thus, by default a logical extension of NATO’s global i.e., anti-Russia and anti-China, geo-politics. Tokyo’s decision to re-arm itself to acquire offensive capability is, thus, not tied to its own needs but to the ways the US is manufacturing a global anti-Russia and anti-China coalition to defeat them and sustain its own global hegemony.

On Sunday, 21 August 2022, Japan Times bannered “Japan weighs deploying over 1,000 longer-range missiles amid China tensions”, and reported that,

With an eye toward narrowing a cavernous “missile gap” with China, Japan is considering stockpiling more than 1,000 long-range cruise missiles, a report said Sunday, as tensions over Taiwan grow.

The Defense Ministry is looking to deploy its ground-launched Type-12 standoff missiles — and extend their range from around 200 kilometers (124 miles) to more than 1,000 km — mainly to its far-flung southwestern islands and the Kyushu region, the Yomiuri daily reported, citing unidentified government sources.

The envisioned weapons, which would also be ship- and air-launch capable, would put the Chinese and North Korean coasts within striking distance, the report added.

In order to acquire the weapons at an early date, the Defense Ministry could include requests for them when it unveils its initial budget proposal for fiscal 2023, which is expected to be released at the end of this month.

On August 24th, Russia’s RT headlined “Drawing the sword: Is Japan getting ready to move against China? Relations with Beijing are crucial for regional trade, but is Tokyo ready to put it all on the line over Taiwan and Washington’s favor?”, and opined that,

“Japan now makes it publicly known that the continued autonomy of Taiwan is critical to its own survival. Why? Because a reunification of the island with mainland China would result in Beijing gaining maritime dominance around all of Japan’s southwest periphery.”

Furthermore:

“Taiwan, once under the colonial rule of Japan, which annexed it from China, has also increased its pro-Japan sentiment significantly. Taiwan, once under the colonial rule of Japan, which annexed it from China, has also increased its pro-Japan sentiment significantly.”

Wikipedia’s article “China-Japan relations” makes quite clear that the national economies of China and Japan are highly dependent upon each other. Furthermore, if a reader understands that historically the winners of wars have received reparations payments from the war’s losers (who usually were the victim not the aggressor) the article makes quite clear that Japan has consistently been the aggressor and imperialist against China, which suffered enormously from Japan’s aggressions against China, and ended up losing not only those wars but those reparations-payments to the victor, each time (namely, these were China’s payments to Japan):

Japan’s compensation [edit]

From late 19th century to early 20th century, one of the many factors contributing to the bankruptcy of the Qing government was Japan’s requirement for large amount of war reparations. China paid huge amounts of silver to Japan under various treaties, including the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty (1871), Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), the Triple Intervention (1895) and the Boxer Protocol (1901). After the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95, the Qing government paid a total of 200,000,000 taels of silver to Japan for reparations.[76]

The Second Sino-Japanese War 1936-1945 also caused huge economic losses to China. However, Chiang Kai-shek waived reparations claims for the war when the ROC concluded the Treaty of Taipei with Japan in 1952. Similarly, when Japan normalized its relations with the PRC in 1972, Mao Zedong waived the claim of war reparations from Japan.[77]

So: because the post-FDR U.S. Government, which has dominated the world since 1945, opposed China and supported Japan, WW II’s victor in that War was the new Truman-created (FDR-rejecting) U.S. imperial regime, which didn’t want its Japanese possession to become subjected to having to pay war-debts for Japan’s barbarisms (such as the Rape of Nanking against Chinese), Japan, yet again, got away with murder — mass-murder, of course — when WW II ended. Japan lucked-out, to become now a vassal-nation in the world’s new imperialistic fascist empire, of America, the U.S. empire; so, China, yet again, ate all its losses, instead of being compensated for any of them. Under the new Truman policy, China was being treated as an enemy, no longer as an ally (as it had been under FDR). This has been the U.S. regime’s policy ever since, and especially recently as that regime now tries to complete its all-inclusive global empire, or “hegemony,” by taking both China and Russia.

However, even Japan will suffer if it joins in America’s war against China. Here is why:

Japan is faced now with choosing between being a possession of Americans, and the U.S. regime’s main enforcer against Asians, in that win-lose global-imperialistic game; or, else, becoming, for the first time, an ally, actually, in an authentic win-win game, along with all other Asian countries, including and led by the largest of them all, China, which already is Japan’s top trading-partner, doing 23.47% of its combined imports and exports, as compared with its #2 trading-partner, America, which is 11.27%, less than half as much as with China. With America, the game would be worse (even IF Japan would win, which is doubtful), and the economic damage to the Japanese people would be immense (especially if China wins in that win-lose game, which outcome would not be unlikely; and, this time, the Japanese people WOULD be paying reparations in addition to their war-losses; so, it would be the most damaging defeat ever for Japan, far worse than WW II).

CONSEQUENTLY, FOR THE WELFARE OF BOTH THE CHINESE AND THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: Negotiators from both countries, plus from each of the region’s OTHER countries, must meet together at a comprehensive East-Asian Conference, to draw up a regional strategy for the coming Asia-dominated Century, repudiating and renouncing ALL empires, and ALL needless win-lose international games.

If this fails to happen (and reasonably soon), then a WW III will likely occur, and it will destroy the entire planet. The U.S. regime is set upon a course of world-conquest, which will end either now peacefully, or else soon with WW III. Japan will make the key decision. (I am expecting it to be for war, because Japan has been an obedient vassal-nation ever since 1945.)

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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: Japan is moving to remilitarize despite its pacifist constitution. Image: Shutterstock via The Conversation

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On 24 August, Ukraine celebrated her Independence Day. It also marked the dubious anniversary of six months of war; a war that could have been drastically shortened, tens of thousands of lives saved and peace installed – hadn’t it been for the relentless western / NATO provocations, and billions worth of Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The West pretends these killer weapons are destined to create peace – and would you believe the media are able to make most of the western world population believe in this nonsense. 

The Meaning of: “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” | by Hugo | Medium

It is literally George Orwell’s 1984: Peace is War and War is Peace;” Orwell’s classical Doublespeak, a language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the truth.

On that very day, the NYT brazenly reports, without any evidence whatsoever, that on Ukraine’s Independence Day, a Russian attack killed at least 22 people and wounded 50, at a train station in eastern Ukraine, near Dnipro.”

The NYT continues, “But despite the missile strike, one of the deadliest on Ukraine’s railways in recent months, Ukraine stood defiant as the country celebrated its separation from the Soviet Union.” In a slickly produced address earlier in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Ukraine “reborn” six months after Russia invaded.

Such are the flagrant lies dished out to not only the American people. The European media are equally corrupted. At times even more so.

It gradually emerges that public support for Western interference – Western support of Ukraine – is fading by the day.

According to a Reuters / Ipsos poll released on 23 August, still 53% of US adults agree that Washington should support Kiev, “until Russian forces are withdrawn from territory claimed by Ukraine”. Those with doubts to continue pumping weapons into Ukraine, amount to 37%, and 18% oppose such “aid” altogether. Some 28% are undecided.

Forty percent of Americans now agree with the statement that “the problems of Ukraine are none of our business, and we should not interfere,” comparing with 31% when the same question was asked in April 2022.

The awakening might indicate that fewer and ever fewer people believe the mainstream propaganda – and especially the Zelenskyy statements. The truth of who is killing whom, and the truth about the corrupt and shamefully criminal Ukraine President, is slowly but surely seeping through the veil of deception.

In the case of the attack on the railway station, there is no doubt that the assault was launched by Ukraine’s forces on her own people, killing 22 of them and injuring at least 50. The figures are not verified. They are the ones reported by the “distinguished” NYT (25 August 2022).

Similarly, The Guardian reports (29 July 2022) that according to the Russian Defense Ministry, 40 prisoners were killed and 75 wounded in the attack on the prison in the frontline town of Olenivka. The prison was struck by Ukrainian forces with US-made Himars rockets. Yet, Ukraine was blaming Russia with the attack on its own people and with US-made weapons.

It would be hard to make believe more ludicrous statements. Yet, by telling half-truth or full-lies relentlessly and repeatedly the Western media (still) gets away with murder among most of its listeners. But – the Times are a-changing.

Russia from the beginning has followed – and keeps following – a strict policy of avoiding civilian casualties as best as possible.

These attacks on Ukraine’s own people are certainly not carried out by Russian forces, but rather by Ukrainian military, and / or their associated Nazi Azov Battalions.

They also killed without scruples tens of thousands of pro-Russian Ukrainians in the Donbas and northeastern Ukraine areas, since the US / Western-instigated 2014 Maidan Coup.

No doubt, the attacks were sanctioned by Zelenskyy. He follows clear instructions from NATO and the – unelected – European Council. That the EC under Ursula von der Leyen is an unelected and tyrannical executing branch of the Deep State or the “Dark elitist Cult”, is no longer a secret. Madame von der Leyen is a member of the WEF’s (World Economic Forum) Managing Council. Similarly, the relentless attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe, is constantly blamed on Russia, or even on President Putin personally by the Western media.

Again, the contrary is true. In order to prevent another Chernobyl-type nuclear disaster (26 April 1986), or worse, Russian troops have been occupying the Zaporozhye Plant since March 2022. They were worried, and rightly so, about a nuclear annihilation of much of Western Europe and Russia. Finally, on 19 August, Russia has shut down the plant to limit the worst of a potential disaster.

Moscow has warned that the continuing attacks could ultimately render the power plant inoperable and might even result in a major disaster, similar to Chernobyl. Kiev and some Western officials, however, have accused Russia of shelling the plant, despite the fact that it is controlled by Russia’s own troops.

As unquestioned Western support is waning, Western media ever so often report the Zelenskyy government’s accusations of Russia, but finish with the paraphrased observation that “it is difficult to verify the facts” – an own skin-saving-statement.

The next Biden Administration promised shipment of war material is of the order of an estimated US$ 3 billion. Is it part of the roughly US$ 50 billion already approved US war support to Ukraine – or is it apart?

Nobody keeps track. In any case, even Western media report that about 70% of the war material sent to Ukraine ends up on the black market. Only about 30% reaches the frontline – and Ukrainian soldiers who are totally unprepared to handle the sophisticated Western weaponry.

It is high time that the truth comes out – and the majority of the people see beyond the propaganda, see the most flagrant war crimes committed by Zelenskyy’s Ukraine – and stop supporting this war.

The sooner the West stops sending weaponry and tanks and most sophisticated war materials to Ukraine, the sooner peace may return.

If only PEACE were part of the Great Reset Agenda – and part of the UN Agenda 2030 and part of Klaus Schwab’s “4th Industrial Revolution” – meaning the digitization, robotization, and absolute control of everything and every surviving human being. But PEACE, as we are still thinking humans conceive of it, is not part of the Reset Agenda.

But we are many and they are few. We may replace the Reset with the Peace agenda.

*

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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).

Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also is a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.

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***

Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar confidently boasted recently that the world has accepted India’s energy policy and bilateral relations with Russia. Jaishankar’s statement prompted US State Department spokesperson Ned Price to say that it is going to be a long-term proposition for New Delhi to reorient foreign policy away from Moscow – but despite the QUAD alliance, India is unlikely to abandon its relations with Russia.

When asked about India increasing its imports of Russian oil and fertilisers and potentially buying the Russian S-400 air defence systems, Ned Price said on August 24:

“It is not for me to speak about another country’s foreign policy. But what I can do is point out what we have heard from India. We have seen countries around the world speak clearly, including with their votes in the UN General Assembly against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

“But we also recognise, as I was saying just a moment ago, that this is not flipping a light switch. This is something that, especially for countries that have historical relationships with Russia. Relationships that, as is the case with India, extend back decades, it is going to be a long-term proposition to re-orient foreign policy away from Russia,” he added.

Although the US and European Union have imposed heavy sanctions on Russia since the military operation in Ukraine began on February 24, India took the opportunity to instead raise oil imports from Russia, ignoring criticism from the West and refusing to go down the path of European self-sabotage.

Berlin recently approved a set of energy-saving measures for the winter which will limit the use of lighting and heating. Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters that his country wanted to free itself “as quickly as possible from the grip of Russian energy imports.” Instead, Germany finds itself in a position of needing to lower energy use instead of behaving as the EU’s leading country.

Starting from September, public buildings, apart from hospitals and the like, will have heating at a maximum of 19C; public monuments and buildings will also not be lit up for aesthetic reasons; businesses could be banned from keeping their shops illuminated at night; private swimming pool heating could also be banned; and, coal and oil cargo will be given priority over passenger travel on railways.

“We have a shortage situation on the rails right now,” German Transport Minister Volker Wissing said. “That means that if additional fuel transports are temporarily necessary, we would have to prioritize them.”

This European self-sabotage, all for the sake of pretending to defend liberalism in the form of Kiev’s authoritarian regime and on instructions from Washington, is a situation that India wants to completely avoid as it continues to progress and develop into a major power.

In May, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become India’s second-biggest supplier of oil, behind Iraq, as refiners snapped up Russian crude available at major discounts. Indian refiners bought about 25 million barrels of Russian oil in May, ignoring all condemnation from the West and refusing to abandon its decades-old relationship with Moscow, especially as Indians do not forget the West’s endless support and backing of Pakistan.

Jaishankar stressed on August 23 that India had not been defensive about its purchases of Russian oil but made the US and others realize instead that the government had the “moral duty” to ensure that the people got the “best deal” – something that European governments do not concern themselves with.

Rather than capitulating to the endless pressures from the West, India has unapologetically steamed ahead with its bilateral relations with Russia. Cards based on Russia’s Mir payment system will soon be accepted at ATMs and Point-of-Sale terminals in India as discussions to construct a new financial system independent of the West, that can bypass sanctions on Russia, continue.

Russia also announced its intentions to build the next generation armoured vehicles and submarines in joint collaboration with India. This comes as the delivery of the second regiment of the S-400 missile defence system is already underway.

With India pushing ahead in strengthening relations with Russia in the energy, financial and military sector, the West is forced to exaggerate minor events as if it were a major shift in New Delhi’s foreign policy. Western media exaggerated the significance of India voting for the first time against Russia during a “procedural vote” at the United Nations Security Council on Ukraine. The 15-member UN body invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address a meeting through a video tele-conference on August 24, something that was only opposed by Moscow and abstained by Beijing.

So far, New Delhi has abstained at the UNSC on Ukraine, with the recent vote being the only exception. This has annoyed the Western powers, led by the US, but this has not stopped them from making a big deal out of India voting to allow Zelensky to speak at the UNSC meeting. This of course does not reflect or signify any Indian foreign policy shift, but is rather a desperate attempt to portray non-existent cracks in New Delhi-Moscow ties. Instead, New Delhi will continue its decades-long cooperation with Moscow, one that has been long and fruitful.

It is recalled that Jaishankar said in June that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” Soon Europe will realize, especially Germany, that its energy and financial crisis, spurred on by an ill-thought out Russophobic policy, will certainly not be India’s problem, especially with winter just around the corner.

*

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

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***

In America these days, almost any information about North Korea, be it rumor, fake news, or just plain silly, becomes fodder for the mainstream media. From TMZ to The Guardian, reporters know there is an insatiable appetite for anything that puts Kim and his regime in a bad or crazy light.

But when it comes to South Korea, which hosts 28,500 American ground troops and the Pentagon’s largest military base outside of North America, U.S. media coverage is, shall we say, highly selective. That was made resoundingly clear on August 14, when Seoul was the scene for the largest public demonstration in decades against the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

Amazingly, not a word about the protest appeared in the U.S. media.

That Saturday, thousands of people chanting “this land is not a U.S. war base” demonstrated against Ulchi Freedom Shield, the first large-scale military exercises between U.S. and South Korean forces since 2017. The protests were organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), South Korea’s second-largest labor federation. They were joined by a range of progressive allies, including People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), an influential citizen’s group founded in 1994.

Anti-US military protest, Seoul, South Korea, August 13, 2022. Screen grab via Chinese state supported media outlet CGTN/YouTube.com

“At a time when military tensions on the Korean Peninsula are escalating and there is no clue for inter-Korean dialogue, we are concerned that an aggressive large-scale military exercise will exacerbate the situation,” PSPD declared. “We once again urge the US and ROK governments to suspend the ROK-US joint military exercise and make efforts to create conditions for dialogue.” At the demonstration, protesters took direct aim at the heart of U.S. policy in Korea, with signs that read “No war rehearsal, No U.S.” and “No Korea-U.S.-Japan military cooperation.”

Outside of the Korean press, the only outlets to cover this massive showing against militarism were Iran’s Press TV and China’s CGTN, which provided extensive video of the mobilization. The single print story on the march appeared in Xinhua, China’s daily wire service. Neither the New York Times or the Washington Post, which often set the pace for U.S. press coverage of Asia, deemed the demonstration newsworthy.

Hypocrisy? Yes. As I put it in a sardonic tweet, “Every rumor, fake news, intelligence leak or eyebrow twitch about Kim Jong Un and North Korea gets star treatment in the US media.” Yet, when “thousands of SOUTH KOREANS” march in Seoul against US-ROK war games, “NOT ONE PEEP.” The contrast seemed to hit a nerve: by the weekend, nearly 6,000 Twitter users had “liked” my post and over 2,000 had retweeted it.

The contradictions were evident on Twitter itself. As it often does with countries we’re not supposed to like, it slapped a label on one of my posts about the demonstration, urging users to “stay informed” because “this Tweet links to a Iran state-affiliated media website.” With that warning, Twitter was effectively delegitimizing my own coverage of the demonstration.

To be fair, political rallies on the left and right are a common occurrence in South Korea; obviously, editors and reporters must make choices about what to cover. But in a country where a majority of its citizens support the presence of U.S. forces and a U.S. general has operational control over their army in times of war, a rally of several thousand citizens openly calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal is certainly newsworthy.

At the same time, the drills have been a hot topic for years. In 2018, with much of Washington opposed, they were downgraded to computerized simulations as a way to build trust during the denuclearization talks between President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un. Those talks collapsed in 2019, primarily over Trump’s refusal to lift U.S. sanctions in return for a partial shut down of the North’s nuclear infrastructure.

This year, with North Korea regularly testing its long-range missiles, the new presidents in Washington and Seoul, Joe Biden and Yoon Suk Yeol, decided to resume the real-life exercises. The air, land, and sea drills, which in the past have mobilized around 50,000 South Korean and 17,500 U.S. soldiers, began on August 22 and wind up on September 1.

Sadly, the discrepancies in coverage reflect old patterns going back to the early days of the Cold War.

Editorial staffs of major U.S. newspapers and cable news shows (and now, Twitter’s upstart crew) are steeped in Cold War mythologies about the Korean War and largely reflect the viewpoint of Washington’s national security community. Currently, both parties see in the North a determined and dangerous long-term foe, and in the South a reluctant ally torn between loyalty to the United States and its expansive economic ties with China, America’s new nemesis. In this world, there is little room for coverage of South Korean trade unionists, leftists, and progressives who stand against the American consensus.

That mindset was recently on display at the Post when it praised South Koreans for electing Yoon, an inexperienced conservative hawk who said during his campaign that he might consider a pre-emptive strike on North Korea “to protect peace” on the peninsula. “South Korea makes a welcome turn toward the U.S. — just when it is really needed,” the headline crowed. The Post editorial also took a nasty swipe at former President Moon Jae-in, parroting right-wing talking points that he had “consciously” played down North Korea’s human rights record and “balked” at adding new batteries to the American THAAD missile deployment that has drawn Beijing’s ire.

For America’s papers of record, the failure to cover South Korea’s progressive left also reflects a failure of nerve. The KCTU and People’s Solidarity that organized this month’s antiwar demonstration have deep roots in the democratic movement of the late 1980s, when years of struggle culminated in the massive demonstrations of 1987 that forced the pro-U.S. generals who had ruled the South for 26 years to step aside. During that tumultuous era, both the Times and the Post offered extensive (and often outstanding) coverage of dissidents and government repression. But in recent years, they have been far more interested in covering North Korean defectors and warning the public (repeatedly) about a possible underground nuclear test than exploring the complex internal politics of South Korea.

Ironically, these papers are better prepared now to cover Korea than any time in the past 40 years. Since 2020, they have built large bureaus in South Korea and relocated their Asian news hubs from Hong Kong to Seoul, giving them an opportunity for first-class coverage of perhaps the most dynamic country in Asia. “Looking at a five, 10, 20 year horizon, [Seoul] just feels like it’s right in the middle of the action,” Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, the Times’sinternational president, recently told the Korea Joongang Daily.

But in this coverage, the opinions and views of all Koreans need to be heard. That is particularly true when dealing with an issue as critical as the U.S.-Korean alliance, which President Biden has called “a linchpin of peace, stability, and prosperity” but many Koreans now view as a barrier to their country’s future.

*

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***

If you want to prove that statement wrong, I think you’ll want to start by proving wrong one or more of these five points:

  1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.
  2. Not one single member has done so.
  3. Ending U.S. participation would effectively end the war.
  4. Despite the temporary truce, millions of lives depend on ending the war.
  5. The passionate speeches in 2018 and 2019 by Senators and Representatives demanding an end to the war when they knew they could count on a veto from Trump have vanished during the Biden years chiefly because Party is more important than human lives.

Let’s fill these five points out a little:

  1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.

Here’s an explanation from the Friends Committee on National Legislation:

“Any member of the House or Senate, regardless of committee assignment, can invoke section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution and get a full floor vote on whether to require the president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities. Under the procedural rules written into the War Powers Act, these bills receive a special expedited status that requires Congress to make a full floor vote within 15 legislative days of their introduction. This provision is especially useful because it allows members of Congress to force important debates and votes on the president’s use of military force and Congressional war authority.”

Here’s a link to the actual wording of the law (as the resolution was passed in 1973), and another (as part of existing law in 2022). At the first one, see section 7. At the other one, see section 1546. Both say this: when a resolution is thus introduced, the foreign affairs committee of the relevant house gets no more than 15 days, then the full house gets no more than 3 days. In 18 days or less you get a debate and a vote.

Now, it is true that the Republican House passed a law violating and effectively blocking this law in December of 2018 preventing any forcing of votes on ending the war on Yemen for the remainder of 2018. The Hill reported:

“‘Speaker [Paul] Ryan [(R-Wis.)] is preventing Congress from conducting our constitutional duty and once again, breaking the rules of the House,’ [Rep. Ro Khanna] said in a statement. [Rep. Tom] Massie added on the House floor that the move ‘violates both the Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973. Just when you thought Congress couldn’t get any swampier,’ he said, ‘we continue to exceed even the lowest expectation.’”

According to the Washington Examiner:

“‘It’s kind of a chicken move, but you know, sadly it’s kind of a characteristic move on the way out the door,’ Virginia Democrat [and Senator] Tim Kaine told reporters of the House rule on Wednesday. ‘[Ryan is] trying to play Saudi Arabia’s defense lawyer, and that’s stupid.’”

As far as I can tell, either no such trick has been played since the dawning of 2019, or every single member of the U.S. Congress, and every single media outlet, is either in favor of it or deems it unworthy of reporting or both. So, no law has undone the War Powers Resolution. So, it stands, and a single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.

  1. Not one single member has done so.

We’d have heard. Despite campaign promises, the Biden Administration and Congress keep the weapons flowing to Saudi Arabia, and keep the U.S. military participating in the war. Despite both houses of Congress voting to end U.S. participation in the war when Trump had promised a veto, neither house has held a debate or a vote in the year-and-a-half since Trump left town. A House resolution, HJRes87, has 113 cosponsors — more than were ever obtained by the resolution passed and vetoed by Trump — while SJRes56 in the Senate has 7 cosponsors. Yet no votes are held, because the Congressional “leadership” chooses not to, and because NOT ONE SINGLE MEMBER of the House or Senate can be found who’s willing to compel them to. So, we go on asking.

  1. Ending U.S. participation would effectively end the war.

It’s never been a secret, that the Saudi-“led” war is so dependent on the U.S. military (not to mention U.S. weapons) that were the U.S. to either stop providing the weapons or compel its military to cease violating all of the laws against war, never mind the U.S. Constitution, or both, the war would end.

  1. Despite the temporary truce, millions of lives depend on ending the war.

The Saudi-U.S. war on Yemen has killed many more people than the war in Ukraine thus far, and the death and suffering continue despite a temporary truce. If Yemen is no longer the very worst place in the world, that’s principally because of how bad Afghanistan — its funds stolen — has become.

Meanwhile the truce in Yemen has failed to open roads or ports; famine (potentially aggravated by the war in Ukraine) still threatens millions; and historic buildings are collapsing from rain and war damage.

CNN reports that, “While many in the international community celebrate [the truce], some families in Yemen are left watching their children slowly die. There are around 30,000 people with life-threatening diseases requiring treatment abroad, according to the Houthi-controlled government in the capital Sanaa. Some 5,000 of them are children.”

Experts discuss the situation in Yemen here and here.

If the war has been paused, yet the peace needs to be made more stable, why in the world would Congress not vote to permanently end U.S. participation immediately? The urgent moral need to do so that Congress members spoke about three years ago was and still is all too real. Why not act before more children die?

  1. The passionate speeches by Senators and Representatives demanding an end to the war when they knew they could count on a veto from Trump have vanished during the Biden years chiefly because Party is more important than human lives.

I would like to refer Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to the following text and video from 2019 by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

Congressman Pocan commented: “As the Saudi-led coalition continues to use famine as a weapon of war, starving millions of innocent Yemenis to near death, the United States is actively participating in the regime’s military campaign, providing targeting and logistical assistance for Saudi airstrikes. For far too long, Congress has refused to carry out its constitutional responsibility to make decisions regarding military engagement—we can longer stay silent on matters of war and peace.”

Frankly, Congressman, they can smell the BS from beyond Yemen. You all can stay silent for years and years. Not a single one of you can pretend the votes aren’t there — they were there when Trump was in the White House. Yet not a single one of you has the decency to even demand a vote. If this is not because the royal rear-end on the throne in the White House had a “D” tattooed on it, give us another explanation.

There is no pro-peace Congress Member. The species is extinct.

*

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Daria Platonova: Chi e perché l’ha assassinata

August 26th, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

Quale sia la catena di comando che ha pianificato e attuato l’attentato contro Dughin e sua figlia Daria, lo rivela indirettamente il giornale statunitense Los Angeles Times: “Dal 2015 la CIA addestra gli agenti dei servizi segreti ucraini in una struttura segreta negli Stati Uniti”.  Già nel dicembre 2021, su Grandangolo, la giornalista Daria Platonova riferiva: “I servizi di sicurezza hanno comunicato di aver individuato 106 agenti ucraini che stavano preparando attentati e stragi in 37 regioni della Russia. Oltre alla costante tensione sul piano politico e mediatico, dobbiamo oggi confrontarci anche con azioni di gruppi terroristici nel nostro paese, fortunatamente neutralizzati per tempo.” Su questo sfondo resta senza risposta la domanda di come sia stato possibile che l’auto di Daria, su cui è stata installata la bomba telecomandata, sia rimasta fino alla sera in un parcheggio incustodito con le telecamere non funzionanti. 

Maya Nogradi (regista, editor di Grandangolo) ci parla, in una emozionante testimonianza, della sua amica Daria. Ne emerge la figura di una giovane giornalista e analista geopolitica che svolgeva un ruolo sempre più significativo sia in Russia che a livello internazionale. Da questi e altri elementi si deduce che Daria sia stata non semplicemente vittima di un attentato diretto contro suo padre, ma anch’essa bersaglio primario dell’attentato.  Su Grandangolo del giugno di quest’anno, in un resoconto sul Forum economico internazionale di San Pietroburgo, ne riassumeva così il significato: “Il processo di de-dollarizzazione coinvolge tutto il mondo. Gli Stati Uniti e i loro satelliti europei perderanno inevitabilmente la guerra ibrida globale da loro scatenata”. Per questo il mainstream italiano e internazionale la accusava di “odio per l’Occidente”. 

Daria era una delle principali voci di quel mondo multipolare che l’Occidente considera una minaccia al suo predomimio e che combatte con ogni mezzo. È questa la causa di fondo della disastrosa crisi che si sta abbattendo sull’Europa in seguito all’aumento senza precedenti del prezzo del gas dovuto ai meccanismi speculativi della grande finanza. 

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***

August 11, 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby vindicating every “misinformation spreader” out there

The CDC is now advocating for taking personal responsibility and for everyone to decide for themselves “which prevention behaviors to use and when (at all times or at specific times), based on their own risk for severe illness and that of members of their household, their risk tolerance, and setting-specific factors”

The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status, stating, its “COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.” They also admit natural immunity exists and works

Testing is now reserved for those who “are symptomatic, or have a known or suspected exposure to someone with COVID-19,” isolation is only for those who are symptomatic and have tested positive, and contact tracing is now restricted to health care settings and select “high-risk congregate settings”

The CDC’s about-face appears to be politically motivated, to give the Biden administration a “win” before the midterm elections. Post-election plans include “the biggest vaccination campaign in history,” so tyrannical overreaches may later resume, even as mounting data show the COVID shots are causing depopulation

*

Without fanfare, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 11, 2022, reversed all its COVID-19 guidelines. In fact, many have noted it appears the CDC wanted to bring as little attention to it as possible.1 This is understandable, considering the new guidelines more or less admit the original rules were in error, without actually stating as much.

The new guidance is listed in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) under the title, “Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August 2022.”2 As noted by Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute:3

“It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall in the brainstorming sessions that led to this little treatise. The wording was chosen very carefully, not to say anything false outright, much less admit any errors of the past, but to imply that it was only possible to say these things now.”

The CDC insists that while COVID-19 infection continues to be a reality around the world, “high levels of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity and the availability of effective treatments and prevention tools have substantially reduced the risk for medically significant COVID-19 illness … and associated hospitalization and death.”

Consequently, COVID countermeasures that create “barriers to social, educational, and economic activity” can be ditched and everything can go back to normal.

CDC Introduces Personal Responsibility

Considering how hard health officials have fought to segregate, bully, demonize and dehumanize people who didn’t agree with their tyrannical and irrational COVID measures over the past 19 months, the new guidelines are refreshing, but they’re still like a slap in the face. First and foremost, the CDC is now suddenly advocating for taking personal responsibility — for everything:4

“Persons can use information about the current level of COVID-19 impact on their community to decide which prevention behaviors to use and when (at all times or at specific times), based on their own risk for severe illness and that of members of their household, their risk tolerance, and setting-specific factors …

Education and messaging to help individual persons understand their risk for medically significant illness complements recommendations for prevention strategies based on risk.”

Individual risk assessment and risk-based countermeasures are both something we “misinformation spreaders” have called for from the beginning. The risk is not identical for all; hence, risk reduction strategies should not be uniformly applied. Finally, 19 months late, the CDC agrees.

Under the subhead, “Protecting Persons Most at Risk for Severe Illness,” the CDC now takes a page straight out of The Great Barrington Declaration and recommends focused protection, meaning protecting those “at particularly high risk … because of older age, disability, moderate or severe immunocompromise, or other underlying medical conditions.”

Need anyone be reminded that doctors and scientists have been defamed and dragged through the mud for saying this? And Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, were the masterminds behind the effort to discredit and take down the authors of the Barrington declaration.5

CDC Reneges on Discrimination

The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status:6 “CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur …”

They even admit that “persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection,” and therefore are not to be treated any differently than someone who has received the COVID jab. As noted by Tucker:7

“Remember when 40% of the members of the black community in New York City who refused the jab were not allowed into restaurants, bars, libraries, museums, or theaters? Now, no one wants to talk about that.

Also, universities, colleges, the military, and so on — which still have mandates in place — do you hear this? Everything you have done to hate on people, dehumanize people, segregate people, humiliate others as unclean, fire people and destroy lives, now stands in disrepute.

Meanwhile, as of this writing, the blasted US government still will not allow unvaccinated travelers across its borders! Not one word of the CDC’s turgid treatise was untrue back in the Spring of 2020. There was always ‘infection-induced immunity,’ though Fauci and Co. constantly pretended otherwise.

It was always a terrible idea to introduce ‘barriers to social, educational, and economic activity.’ The vaccines never promised in their authorization to stop infection and spread, even though all official statements of the CDC claimed otherwise, repeatedly and often.”

Testing, Isolation and Contact Tracing Rules Reversed

And what about rules relating to testing, self-isolation during illness and the whole tracking and tracing business? Out the window!

  • Testing is now reserved for those who “are symptomatic, or have a known or suspected exposure to someone with COVID-19.” Testing of asymptomatic individuals is only suggested in “congregate settings” where medical care is limited, such as homeless shelters and correctional facilities, and in such instances, testing “should include all persons, irrespective of vaccination status.”
  • Isolation is only for those who are symptomatic and have tested positive. Infected individuals can end their isolation after as little as five days, if they’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-lowering medication, but should continue wearing a mask or respirator when around others through day 10.
  • Contact tracing is now restricted to health care settings and select “high-risk congregate settings.”

Is It a Political Ploy?

While I’m glad the CDC has reversed its tyrannical COVID measures to something sensible and more aligned with reality, the problem, as I see it, is threefold.

First, there’s the lateness of the hour. Any public health agency worthy of such a designation would have reached these conclusions two years ago. Instead, they spent more than two years engaged in an active search and destroy mission against those advocating for the same sensible guidelines the CDC is now suddenly adopting.

Secondly, the timing of these reversals smacks of political bias. Mid-term elections are fast approaching, and the most disliked White House administration in American history needs a “win.”

With the CDC backtracking on COVID measures, they now have certain bragging rights. “See, we brought life back to normal” — which brings us to problem No. 3, which is that this reversal may be nothing more than a malicious ploy to get us to let our guard down, only to be hit with another, even more draconian fear campaign after the elections.

Biggest Vaccination Drive in History Is Coming This Fall

While that might sound paranoid, it’s straight out of the handbooks of tyranny. The way you drive people crazy is not through consistent high-pressure tyranny, but through waves of it. The ups and downs, with each wave being more intensely repressive than the last, create confusion and foster fear and anxiety, which breeds an infantile kind of reliance on authority to just fix it.

Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University, appears to agree. In an August 13, 2022, Substack article, he writes:8

“Just as the CDC pretends to have backed off, the NHS [the British National Health Service] reveals (to just a few) what’s really coming at us in the fall: ‘The biggest vaccination drive in history.’ Those who think the worst is over better think again — because it really won’t be over til [sic] WE end it …

[The] NHS alone is obviously not equipped, and certainly does not intend, to undertake the biggest vaccination drive in history — a drive that must, and will, be global, just like the orchestration of the entire COVID crisis, of which this coming drive will be the culmination (or, to quote Bill Gates, the ‘final solution’).

Nor … is it likely that this biggest vaccination drive in history will be mounted on the now-exhausted pretext of protecting all humanity from COVID-19 (or the flu). What’s it going to be, then? Monkeypox? HIV? COVID-20? Cancer? All of the above?

Whatever new threat(s) may be used to justify this final drive could never be as lethal as the psychopaths who planned it, and those entities that will not stop promoting it (even as the CDC pretends to have backed off).”

Prepare for Another Round of Gaslighting

Thacker also wonders whether the CDC’s revised guidelines may be nothing more than a political backstop to prevent Democrats from sliding into the abyss:9

“… with a majority of Americans unhappy with the President’s pandemic policies, perhaps the CDC is relying on ‘midterm science’ to guide their new appreciation for natural immunity?”

One reason for suspecting the CDC’s sudden turn-about is political in nature is the fact that it makes an absolute mess out of the carefully scripted COVID narrative, which is supposed to be in lockstep with governments and media around the world. As a result of the CDC trying to give Biden’s White House a “win,” media and Big Tech now face a massive conundrum.

Everything the CDC is now recommending was blasphemy punishable by public shaming, deplatforming and delicensing, all the way up to the day the CDC posted the new guidelines. Every COVID article and fact check ever written is now completely off-script, as are countless public statements made by public health officials.

There’s no answer to this dilemma, so they’re going to pretend it never happened and hope no one remembers what they said all those days, weeks or months ago. If you remind them, be prepared to be gaslighted with denials. Thacker writes:10

“The media’s forgetfulness of what they reported just last year on vaccines and prior infection is part of the pandemic’s Great Misremembering, a collective amnesia where we march in step to government messaging, while failing to recall prior statements and moments of glaring contradiction.

For example, when the media reported that the NIH’s Anthony Fauci was fully vaccinated and still got COVID-19, and then they misremembered to report his prior statement, ‘When people are vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected’ … To help everyone join the Great Misremembering, here are some incidents you must fail to recall.

Alex Gutentag tweet

… Late in the pandemic’s first year, a group of researchers released a statement called the ‘John Snow Memorandum’11 that helped to shape American policy … Among the signatories was Rochelle Walensky, then a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and now the Director of the CDC.

‘Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed,’ reads the statement signed by the current CDC Director.

Yes, the very same person who runs the CDC that now tells us to not differentiate between vaccine and natural infection warned us early in the pandemic that any pandemic policy that relies on natural infection is flawed. As you read the CDC’s new guidance, please remember to misremember the memorandum previously signed by the current CDC Director.”

Which Vaccines Will Be Pushed Next?

While we don’t yet know how they’re going to scare the population into getting more experimental shots — now that COVID jab uptake has tanked and more than 112 million doses have had to be discarded for lack of demand12,13 — we at least have an idea of what those shots are going to be.

August 15, 2022, the U.K. became the first country to approve Moderna’s new bivalent COVID booster, which contains both the original concoction and mRNA to target an already out-of-date Omicron variant.14 The rest of the world will undoubtedly follow suit.

The British NHS will start rolling out the new bivalent COVID jab September 5, 2022, starting with care home residents and other housebound individuals.15 The wider rollout will begin September 12, just one day shy of the end of primary elections in the U.S.16

Of course, the monkeypox vaccine is also being pushed on certain groups,17 and there’s the seasonal flu vaccine, so there are options when it comes to “picking your poison.”

So, while the good news is that the CDC is now on the hook for having vindicated all us “misinformation spreaders,” the bad news is that there’s more insanity coming, and there’s no telling exactly what form that will take as of yet.

It looks like we’ll have a short reprieve during the U.S. election period, to put a positive spin on the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic, and whatever the new agenda is, it’ll be rolled out afterward. We do know it’ll involve “the biggest vaccine campaign in history,” though, which could get interesting, seeing how people have woken up in droves to the fact that the COVID shots are maiming and killing without providing any benefit.

The More COVID Shots, the Higher the Reinfection Rate

Evidence that COVID reinfection rates go up in tandem with the number of COVID shots administered is also mounting, which is turning former believers into skeptics. As reported by Icelander Thorsteinn Siglaugsson in a Daily Sceptic article published in mid-August 2022:18

“Does anyone still recall the excitement in late 2020 when the vaccines against COVID-19 were finally in sight? The trial results were excellent, promising an end to the pandemic in 2021 … I believed in the narrative myself … I even took part in an attempt to have one of the manufacturers arrange a population-wide trial in Iceland, similar to what Pfizer did in Israel. Today I’m very glad we didn’t succeed.

Soon it will be two years since the trial results were out … Data on infection, hospitalization and mortality already show vaccination not only failing to prevent those, but in some cases being counterproductive. In short, the vaccines have failed to deliver what we were promised.

And even worse, the skyrocketing rate of side effects may mean that for most people vaccination makes no or little sense. Still, it is for the most part forbidden to discuss this fact … As an example, it is forbidden to say COVID-19 vaccines may cause death, even if a quick search on the internet shows confirmed cases where there is no doubt about the causality.

It is forbidden also to share evidence showing higher infection rates among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. It will therefore be interesting to see how those platforms will react to those who share the results of a new research letter published on August 3rd in Jama Network Open.19

The letter describes the result of a study which monitored for reinfection all Icelanders previously infected, during the Omicron wave, between December 1st 2021 and February 22nd 2022. The study shows a probability of reinfection of up to 15.1% among 18-29 year-olds, declining with age …

But the most interesting part is the comparison by vaccination status. It shows that for most age groups, those who have received two doses or more are more likely to become reinfected than those who have received no vaccination or one dose.”

Once the broad masses begin to accept the reality that more shots equal higher risk of COVID infection, how easy do you think it will be for government to convince them to take a bivalent COVID jab? And if resistance ends up being as high as I suspect it might be, come this fall, what measures might they take to, again, try to force people into compliance? Your guess is as good as mine.

COVID Shots Are Causing Depopulation

Another major hurdle in the plan to launch the biggest vaccination campaign in history is the evidence showing the COVID shots are already causing mass depopulation. As reported by The Exposé, August 7, 2022:20

“COVID-19 vaccination is causing mass depopulation. This is an extremely bold claim to make. But unfortunately, this bold claim is backed up by a mountain of evidence contained in the confidential Pfizer documents and official Government data from around the world.”

Indeed, excess deaths have skyrocketed since the release of the COVID jabs, and the timing is so exact, it can’t be explained away. In the U.K., they’re now massaging data to try to hide it. As explained by The Exposé,21 the five-year average that deaths are now compared to are made up of mortality data from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Excess deaths started climbing in 2021, after the rollout of the shots, and by including 2021 (rather than calculating a five-year average from 2015 to 2019, for accurate prepandemic figures), the excess mortality in 2022 appears closer to the five-year norm than it actually is. Excess deaths are also up in most of Europe, as illustrated in the graph22 below:

monthly excess mortality in May 2022

Eliminating confusion about the cause of these excess deaths are data comparing the mortality rates among those jabbed and the unjabbed. July 6, 2022, the British Office for National Statistics issued a report23,24 showing the mortality rates per 100,000 are consistently lowest among the unvaccinated, in all age groups.

In the 18 to 39 age group, unvaccinated had a mortality rate of 14.1 per 100,000 during the month of May 2022, whereas those who got their first dose at least 21 days ago had a mortality rate of 42.6 per 100,000. The mortality rate for double-jabbed was 17.3 per 100,000 and triple-dosed had a mortality rate of 21.4 per 100,000.

As shown in the graph below, created by The Exposé,25 the identical pattern repeats for every month, January through May 2022.

monthly age standardised mortality rates

Infant Mortality Has Skyrocketed

The Exposé26 also highlights data showing infant mortality is now far above the norm. In Scotland, official data show neonatal deaths were 119% higher in March 2022 than the annual norm. Live birth rates are also plummeting around the world.

In Germany, the birth rate for January through April 2022 was 11% lower than the seven-year prepandemic average. And the FDA, CDC and Pfizer can hardly be surprised, as Pfizer’s own documents show nearly all pregnant women who participated in its trial — for whom birth outcomes were available — lost their babies. Only one of 29 known birth outcomes were classified as “normal.” The remaining 28 miscarried.

The U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database also listed 4,113 fetal deaths following COVID injection as of April 2022.27 Compare that to the fetal death reports for all other vaccines reported to VAERS in the last 30 years. That number is 2,239.28

Animal research29 published in August 2021, in which female rats were given the Pfizer jab (BNT162b2), also found it increased certain birth defects (extra ribs) by 295% compared to controls, and doubled preimplantation loss (i.e., fertilized ova that fail to implant). In other words, it doubled the risk of infertility. As noted by The Exposé:30

“With this being the case, how on earth have medicine regulators around the world managed to state in their official guidance that ‘Animal studies do not indicate direct or indirect harmful effects with respect to pregnancy’? And how have they managed to state’It is unknown whether the Pfizer vaccine has an impact on fertility’?

The truth of the matter is that they actively chose to cover it up. We know this thanks to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request31 made to the Australian Government Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).”

You can read more about that in The Exposé’s July 19, 2022, article, “FOIA Reveals Pfizer & Medicine Regulators Hid Dangers of COVID Vaccination During Pregnancy After Study Found It Increases Risk of Birth Defects & Infertility.”32

Final Thoughts

So, to wrap this up — yes, the CDC has vindicated truth tellers by reversing its COVID guidelines and basically adopting The Great Barrington declaration, but we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet. A major vaccination campaign is being planned for the fall, even as evidence mounts showing the shots are causing depopulation at a rate we’ve never seen before, outside of world war.

The shots are killing otherwise healthy working-age adults, they’re killing babies in the womb, and they’re causing infertility. They are, without a doubt, the most dangerous drugs ever made. So, enjoy this reprieve, but firm up your resolve to stand against another round of tyranny this fall.

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Notes

1, 3, 7 Brownstone Institute August 14, 2022

2, 4, 6 MMWR August 11, 2022; 71

5 STAT News December 23, 2021

8 Mark Crispin Miller Substack August 13, 2022

9, 10 The Disinformation Chronicle August 16, 2022

11 The John Snow Memorandum

12 Washington Examiner May 26, 2022

13 NBC News June 6, 2022

14 Sky News August 15, 2022

15 Guernsey Press August 18, 2022

16 Election Calendar 2022

17 The Guardian July 24, 2022

18 Daily Sceptic August 15, 2022

19 JAMA Network Open 2022; 5(8): e2225320

20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30 The Expose August 7, 2022

24 ONS.gov.uk Deaths By Vaccination Status, England July 6, 2022

29 Reproductive Toxicology August 2021; 103: 28-35

31, 32 The Expose July 19, 2022

Featured image is from OffGuardian


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’État Against Humanity

Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression

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The Washington Post reports that Xi Jinping personally asked President Biden to find a way to put off House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. According to the Post’s account, Biden explained to Xi that the independent role of Congress made it impossible for him to stop her, even though US intelligence officials were (correctly) convinced that China would follow through on its warnings and make a forceful response.

China’s ambassador to the US said:

“We had warned that if Pelosi made the visit, there would be very serious consequences. China would firmly and forcefully respond. To our regret, the United States chose not to listen.”

Pelosi’s trip was not written in stone: She said she would not go if Biden explicitly asked her not to.

So Biden had an out, but:

“In the end, Biden never spoke to Pelosi about her trip despite Xi’s request . . . In an offhand comment, Biden told reporters shortly before Pelosi’s expected visit that military officials believed the trip was not a good idea.”

Now just imagine a different scenario:

Biden, concerned about China’s reaction to the visit, says to Xi:

“I will do my best to persuade her, out of respect for China’s sensitivity regarding Taiwan. But in return for her postponing her trip, I want your assurance that China’s military will stop air naval maneuvers that threaten Taiwan. And let’s plan on holding high-level military-to-military and diplomatic discussions to promote mutual security in the Taiwan Strait area.”

It was an engagement moment, prompted by the US national interest in competitive coexistence with China.

Would Biden “look weak” if he succeeded in stopping the trip? That’s the usual retort, but Biden could have responded to such a charge by pointing out that Taiwan’s security would not be undermined by the postponement, whereas Pelosi’s trip would force China to make a show of strength. Biden could readily point to the many ways his administration is supporting Taiwan: three recent military aid packages, Biden’s public comments upholding strong ties with Taiwan, and the array of security arrangements, such as the Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India), that are focused on any Chinese threat in the Asia Pacific.

A positive response to Xi was an opportunity to put US-PRC relations onto a more positive track at a time when those relations are rapidly deteriorating. At the least, Biden’s proposal would have tested Xi’s frequent assertions in support of improved relations.

One Chinese foreign policy expert recently wrote a lengthy defense of China’s Taiwan policy and a sharp critique of how the US is eroding the One China policy. Yet the expert ended not with a warning but with a suggestion that the two countries find common ground:

“On the Taiwan Strait issue, China and the United States need to further negotiate more practical and in-depth cooperation on confidence-building measures and crisis management at the strategic and technical levels, based on the two countries’ current crisis management mechanisms. The existing crisis management mechanisms of China and the United States mainly have three types of institutional arrangements: high-level interaction, dialogue and communication channels, and military rules of behavior.”

The article suggests that there are voices inside the policymaking apparatus in China that are open to dialogue even on Taiwan, the most important of Beijing’s core interests and ordinarily a subject closed to “external interference.”

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait will probably cool down in coming weeks. But the Pelosi trip has created new circumstances that do not bode well for moderating Taiwan’s role in US-China relations. More official US visits to Taiwan are in the offing, and in Congress the mood favors bipartisan efforts to upgrade Taiwan’s status.

Meantime, the Chinese military will continue testing Taiwan’s defenses, breaking with previous patterns that had avoided directly challenging Taiwan’s territorial waters and air space. As a Chinese military adviser said the other day, the strategy is to “close the door and beat the dog.”

Spiraling confrontations will end in open conflict unless Washington and Beijing seize diminishing opportunities for engagement.

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Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University and blogs at In the Human Interest.

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The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman said that the reported killing of the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is an allegation and that the investigation has yet to be finalized.

Speaking at a press conference in Kabul today, Zabiullah Mujahid criticized the US, saying that drones flying in Afghan airspace belong to the US and have been discussed with the American side.

He said the Islamic Emirate considers this an aggression and the US should share its concerns with the Islamic Emirate.

Speaking of the US strike on Kabul, Mujahid said:

“It is still at the level of allegation. The results have yet to be clarified. The body has not been found there because of the rockets that targeted the area—the area is destroyed and nothing is left of it,” he said.

Mujahid said that the investigation has yet to be finalized.

“The results might never be finalized. Whenever negotiations between countries take place, this issue might be forgotten,” said Torek Farhadi, an international relations analyst.

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India Today’s latest nation-wide public opinion survey has three messages for the Narendra Modi government, and for the opposition: economy, economy and economy. For the ruling party, it rings an alarm bell much louder than the orchestrated noise around amrit kaal. For the opposition, this is both an opportunity and a responsibility.

This is not how everyone would read this survey. We read opinion polls for election forecast. As an ex-pollster, this troubles me. Any seats projection made in-between two elections must not be taken literally. The real stuff of a survey like the present one is what it tells us about trends in public opinion.

For the record, therefore, I must report that the latest round of India Today’s Mood of the Nation Survey (MOTNS), one of the longest standing barometers of public mood in our country, projects that if Lok Sabha elections were held between 15 to 31 July of 2022, the BJP would secure 283 seats (a little short of the 303 seats it won in 2019) and the NDA would bag 307 (much lower than its tally of 353 last time).

A methodological disquiet

But there are many reasons not to spend too much time on these numbers. One, because we must not take any seats forecast 20 months before elections too seriously. Two, because the survey was held before the Bihar turmoil. Although the pollsters make a valiant attempt to take this factor into account with a quick snap poll in the state. (They estimate a loss of 8 seats to the BJP and of 21 seats to the NDA as a result of Nitish Kumar’s switch-over).

I must record another reason for my discomfort. Beginning January this year, MOTNS has stopped doing face-to-face interviews at peoples’ homes. For the last six decades, this has been the time-tested gold standard methodology of survey research, and is still followed by credible institutions like the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). Instead, C-Voter, the new agency that has taken over MOTNS, has shifted entirely to telephonic interviews. Now, it is well known that telephonic interviews are much cheaper and hence preferred all over the world. It is also true that mobile density is now quite high in India. Still, it is far from universal. And no matter how much you massage it with sophisticated statistical techniques, a telephonic survey is bound to leave out the citizens at the lowest rung and thus skew the responses.

It is particularly disappointing to note that India Today, a magazine that pioneered quality opinion polling in India, chose to be economic with transparency requirements and brush this methodological shift under the carpet in a coded language. (“This survey is based on CATI interviews of adult respondents across all segments”. Did you guess that CATI meant Computer Assisted Telephonic Interviews? Did you realise that researchers doing MOTNS had stopped visiting the homes of the respondents?). We get no information of the gender, caste or class profile of the sampled respondents who responded to telephone calls. Nor is there any break-up of key responses by different categories, even when you desperately need it (economic distress by economic class and gender or communal situation by religion, for example).

It’s economy, stupid

Notwithstanding these limitations, the survey offers a wealth of information, especially on broad trends of public opinion. The headline finding is unmistakable: “it’s economy, stupid”. The top three responses to the question, “What is the biggest problem India currently faces?” are: price rise (27 per cent), unemployment (25 per cent) and poverty (7 per cent). Economic problems are on top of everyone’s mind. And with good reasons, if you follow the official and unofficial data on the state of the economy. Price rise tops the chart, as it often does even if the recorded inflation is low, though the level is not unprecedented. Given the gloomy figures on employment, it should not come as a surprise that 56 per cent think the unemployment situation is “very serious” against just 9 per cent who say it is not.

Yet, I was surprised that people project their assessment of the present economic condition into the future as well. Survey research over decades has shown that Indians are optimists about future economic prospects, no matter how bad their current state of affairs. So, it came as a shock to me that as many as 34 per cent expect the country’s economy to get worse over the next six months, compared to 31 per cent who expect it to get better, a near reversal of the balance six months ago. I don’t recall any other recorded phase of economic pessimism in India, except just after the second phase of Covid.

As a survey researcher, I trust peoples’ responses on their household economic condition much more than their assessment of the country’s economy. You can be fooled into believing a rosy or dark picture about the nation’s economy, but not about your own or your family’s economic condition. India Today has been asking this direct question for the last six years: “how has your economic condition changed since Narendra Modi took charge as PM in 2014?” Note that the question names Modi and, given his continuing popularity, should load the answers in the positive direction. However, 36 per cent respondents report that their condition has deteriorated, compared to 28 per cent who report an improvement since 2014. The same is extended to the future: more respondents expect their own economic condition to worsen in the near future than those who expect betterment. These are terrible figures for any government, bad enough to get the government kicked out at the hustings.

From economy to politics

It all depends on whether people blame the government for their poor economic conditions or not. Here too, the news is not good for the Modi government. Positive rating of the government’s economic policies is now at 48 per cent, the lowest recorded in the last six years. Negative assessment is now at 29 per cent, the highest ever. When asked to name “biggest failure” of the NDA government, the top three mentions are economy related: price rise, unemployment, economic growth. To be sure, negative assessment of economic policy has not yet overtaken the positive evaluation. And the overall assessment of the government is still quite positive, thanks to public support for its handling of other issues like Kashmir, Ram Temple, corruption, and, surprisingly, Covid.  But with inflation and unemployment showing no signs of slowing down, the government has a lot to worry about.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Modi government? That would be a hasty and lazy conclusion. The PM’s personal popularity is still fairly high, even though the proportion of those who rate his work as poor or very poor has touched a new high. As yet no opposition leader comes anywhere close to him in the popularity rating. While there is a marked unease about the state of democracy – those who say democracy is in danger clearly outnumber those who don’t – there is no perceptible popular anger on the destruction of democratic institutions or curbs on freedom of speech. Indians get more worked up about hubris and vindictiveness of the government than about the niceties of liberal democracy.

As this column argued last week, there is little to support the idea that 2024 is a “done deal” for the ruling party. Such boasts and the media circus around it are nothing but mind-games that the BJP is adept at playing. Nor should we assume that the BJP is headed for a defeat. The changed electoral baseline after Bihar upheaval, and economic distress reported in this survey, clearly indicate that the electoral race is still open. The onus is now on the opposition to take up this historic responsibility.

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Yogendra Yadav is among the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. Views are personal.

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COVID-19 Mortality: Life Insurance Survey Report

August 26th, 2022 by Thomas J. Britt

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***

Section 1: Purpose of the Survey

The purpose of this survey was to gather a high-level view of U.S. Group Term Life Insurance mortality results during the COVID-19 pandemic, as compared to prior period baseline mortality results. This report is an update to the previous Group Life COVID-19 Mortality Survey published in January 2022, which included pandemic data from April 2020 through September 2021. This update includes Group Life mortality results from April 2020 through March 2022 (referred to in this report as the “pandemic period”), representing 24 months of Group Life mortality experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID-19 is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which was identified in 2019. As of the writing of this document, complications from COVID-19 have resulted in more than 1.0 million deaths in the U.S. alone, and more than 6.4 million worldwide.

The survey was conducted by the Group Life Experience Committee (the Committee) of the Society of Actuaries and has been structured as a recurring monthly data collection and compilation process from U.S. Group Term Life insurers. The datasets for this report encompass all Group Term Life claims for the calendar years 2017–2022 reported to participating carriers as of March 31, 2022, and include more than 2.3 million claims and more than $103 billion in earned premium. The Committee is grateful that 20 of the top 21 U.S. Group Term Life insurers focused on employer groups are participating in this survey, with market share representing roughly 90% of the employer-based Group Term Life industry. Thus, the Committee believes the findings herein are representative of the COVID-19 mortality impact on the U.S. Group Term Life industry as a whole.

Guiding principles for the survey include the following:

  • Providing timely information on total high-level Group Life mortality results versus baseline expectations during the pandemic is the most important goal. Thus, the survey is not a seriatim mortality study. Rather, it is a synopsis of monthly Group Life exposures, death counts and amounts.
  • It is critical for this survey to compare current Group Life mortality from all causes of death to the baseline expected all-cause mortality levels. The Committee recognizes that there are limitations in the ability to code deaths as COVID-19 related, within both the general population and Group Life exposures. Also, the survey seeks to analyze whether the pandemic has had indirect impacts on population mortality, beyond deaths associated directly with the COVID-19 virus. Thus, tracking just Group Life deaths coded with a cause of COVID-19 may not accurately measure the total impact of the pandemic.
  • The Committee asked carriers to provide segmentation data when feasible. However, the Committee did not want the additional detailed data request to become so onerous that it materially delayed the survey reporting process or shrank the number of carriers willing and able to participate. Thus, the survey includes high-level exposure and claims data for all 20 carriers, but much of the segmentation data are based on results for just subsets of carriers.

Section 2: Overview

2.1 Background

Carriers provided a complete set of monthly Group Life exposures dating back to January 2017, along with all Group Life death claims reported in January 2017 or later. The reported death claims also identified the months of death, i.e., incurred months.

Exposures and deaths during the three-year period of 2017–2019 were used to set baseline mortality expectations. The dataset for this report encompasses all Group Life claims reported to participating carriers as of March 31, 2022. Reported claims are easier to measure than incurred claims, but they do not tell the full story about Group Life mortality through March 2022 because the reported claims in a given month include deaths from prior periods. Therefore, claim reporting patterns from prior periods have been analyzed to develop completion factors, which are used to estimate incurred but not yet reported (IBNR) claims for each month. This enabled the Committee to estimate incurred claims for each month up through March 2022.

As in prior reports, the most recent one-to-two incurral months should not be fully relied upon because of the maturity of the completion of reported claims, with the completion factors for the most recent two months falling in the 30%–35% and 70%–75% ranges, respectively. The Committee has observed significant reporting lag volatility over the course of the study, resulting in volatility of incurred incidence development over time, especially in the most recent incurred months.

2.2 Scope

The following specifications were used to define claims and exposures within the survey:

  • Include Group Term Life only. Exclude Group Whole Life, Group Universal Life, Company-Owned Life Insurance, 10- or 20-year Group Term, etc.
  • Include both list billed and self-administered business.
  • Include employee, spouse and child exposures and deaths.
  • Include both active and retired lives and claims.
  • Include death benefits only; exclude riders, interest payments and claims expenses.
  • Include only the life insurance benefit for accidental deaths; exclude any additional Accidental Death and Dismemberment rider amounts.
  • Exclude Waiver of Premium disabilities but include deaths from persons on Waiver of Premium status.
  • Portability and Conversion exposures and claims may be either included or excluded based on each company’s internal reporting procedures.

2.3 Survey Highlights

Tables 2.1 through 2.41 display high-level incidence results for the second quarter of 2020 through the first quarter of 2022 compared to the 2017-2019 baseline period for each combination of (a) incurred/reported basis and (b) count/amount basis as of March 31, 2022. In these tables, the number of COVID-19 claims has not been adjusted for seasonality, but the ratios to baseline have been adjusted for seasonality.

Note that additional data reported in April and May 2022 indicated that the 1Q 2022 excess mortality would likely complete downward from the 19.9% shown below using March data. The fully complete 1Q 2022 excess mortality is expected to remain above 15%.

Group Life carriers generally started receiving a small number of COVID-19 death claims during March 2020, but April 2020 was the first month in which the Group Life industry saw a material number of reported COVID-19 death claims. This drove April 2020 Group Life reported incidence to be measurably larger than baseline expected reported incidence. Reported incidence has remained materially higher than baseline in almost all months during the pandemic period. The lone exception was May 2021, during which reported incidence was approximately 1% lower than baseline.

It is important to note that incurred estimates for the most recent months lack credibility because of the low level of completion of the data used at the time of this analysis. Group Life claim completion has been especially volatile during the pandemic waves, driven both by the ultimate incurred levels fluctuating from month to month and by company-specific claim processing speeds fluctuating up and down because of increases or decreases in staffing levels and build-up or build-down of claim backlogs.

From an incurred mortality viewpoint, all 24 months from April 2020 through March 2022 showed excess mortality2 versus baseline expectations. December 2020, August 2021, and September 2021 each had very high incurred mortality spikes of 40% or more, whereas the other 21 months ranged from a low of 5% excess incurred mortality to a high of 29% excess incurred mortality above baseline.

The 24-month period of April 2020 through March 2022 showed the following Group Life mortality results:

  • Estimated reported Group Life claim incidence rates were up 20.0% on a seasonally-adjusted basiscompared to 2017–2019 reported claims.
  • Estimated incurred Group Life incidence rates were 20.9% higher than baseline on a seasonally-adjusted basis. As noted above, the incurred incidence rates in February and March 2022 are based on fairly incomplete data, so they are subject to change and should not be fully relied upon at this point.Additional highlights include the following:
  • Approximately 13% of all reported Group Life claims with death dates in the pandemic period were determined to have a cause of death of COVID-19.
  • The Grey-collar group had the lowest actual-to-expected ratios (A/Es) relative to baseline over the pandemic period at around 17%, followed by the Blue-collar group at 19%. The White-collar group continues to have the highest mortality A/E relative to baseline at 23% during the pandemic period.
  • Group Life mortality patterns by region have changed over time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Midwest region had the highest excess mortality for the two most recent quarters included in this update. The following regions had the highest excess mortality in each quarter shown:
  1. Q2 2020: Northeast (48%)
  2. Q3 2020: Southeast (33%)
  3. Q4 2020: Midwest (38%)
  4. Q1 2021: Southeast (39%)
  5. Q2 2021: Southeast (16%)
  6. Q3 2021: Southeast (70%)
  7. Q4 2021: Midwest (38%)
  8. Q1 2022: Midwest (34%)
  • Relative to prior years, the Group Life insured population studied within this survey experienced a greater percentage increase in deaths than the U.S. population as a whole. The percentage of excess deaths in the Group Life survey data was observed to be 105% – 125% of the percentage of excess deaths in the U.S. population.
  • Early quarters of the pandemic period (Q2 and Q3 2020) showed the Group Life insured population studied within this survey experienced a lower percentage of excess deaths than the U.S. population. Beginning in the fourth quarter of 2020, this relationship flipped, with subsequent quarters indicating higher excess mortality for the Group Life insured population by a percentage difference ranging from 2% to 10% (additive) by quarter. The Q1 2022 relationship appears to be reverting back toward the pattern from 2020, as shown in Table 2.5.
  1. Note that additional data reported in April and May 2022 indicated the Q1 2022 Group Life excess mortality would likely complete downward from the 20% shown below using March data. It is expected that the fully complete Group Life excess mortality will be lower than U.S. population excess mortality for Q1 2022.

  • In the third quarter of 2021, a moderate negative correlation was seen between vaccination rate and excess mortality by state. However, this correlation weakened during the fourth quarter of 2021 and the first quarter of 2022. Other factors potentially influencing this relationship are climate, seasonality, preventative measures (e.g., social distancing and masking), deaths from causes other than COVID-19, varying degrees of vaccine effectiveness against different variants of the virus, and a higher degree of natural immunity due to past infections in the later period. This is explained in further detail in subsection 8.3.

Section 3: Group Life Mortality Results—Reported Death Claims

3.1 Reported Claim Incidence by Count — All Causes

Excess reported-basis mortality was observed in almost every month of the pandemic period, with May 2021 being the lone month where reported incidence was consistent with or less than the corresponding baseline months.

Reported overall Group Life claim incidence rates during the pandemic period, as shown in Figure 3.1, are up roughly 20% compared to 2017–2019 reported claims. Reported claims are easier to measure than incurred, as no estimation of completeness is required. However, reported claims do not tell the true economic impact of what is happening in the claim experience of a particular reported period, because those reported claims include deaths associated with prior periods, which may or may not have been accurately expected and accrued in prior period claim liabilities.

Note that incidence rates shown here are higher than in the January 2022 report. This is due to data corrections from participating companies that lowered the exposure by approximately 8% versus the previous report. It is not due to claim runout versus previous expectations. The corrections applied to both the baseline period and the pandemic period, so excess mortality calculations were not materially affected.

3.2 Reported Claim Incidence by Count — COVID-19 versus All Other Causes

A total of 135,567 COVID-19 death claims were reported during the pandemic period. Roughly 75% of the COVID-19 claims were for Basic Group Life coverage and roughly 25% for Supplemental/Voluntary coverage, with both figures including active employees and retirees. Note that the exposures and claim counts for insureds with both Basic and Supplemental/Voluntary coverage were included in both product lines. Thus, some deaths were counted as both Basic and Supplemental/Voluntary deaths, so the total number of Group Life insureds with COVID-19 deaths is less than 135,567.

Table 3.1 shows the total death claim incidence level (mortality rate) for each quarter during the pandemic relative to the baseline period metric. The table also shows a relativity for COVID-19 claims and non-COVID claims. As the table illustrates, COVID-19 claims do not fully explain the increase in reported claim incidence over the baseline period.

Reported claim details by month are shown in Table 3.2, along with calculated monthly reported incidence rates. Note that a small number of COVID-19 claims have reported dates of death in 2019 or prior, which are likely due to data errors.

3.3. Reported Claim Incidence by Amount — All Causes

Reported overall Group Life claim incidence rates by amount during the pandemic period were up roughly 33% compared to 2017–2019 reported amounts. This increase in incidence rates by amount is notably higher than the corresponding incidence rate increase by count. The Committee estimates that roughly half the difference is due to changes in age and gender mix, and the remainder is likely due to salary and face amount inflation over the four- year period.

3.4 Reported Claim Incidence by Amount — COVID-19 versus All Other Causes

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UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has declared that she is ready and willing to kick off thermonuclear warfare should she take over as prime minister, stressing her hawkish bonafides as she seeks to replace Boris Johnson.

Appearing at a town hall event in Birmingham on Tuesday, Truss was asked how she would feel about ordering “global annihilation” in the event of a nuclear standoff with a foreign adversary.

“I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick,” said host John Pienaar, who went on to ask: “How does that thought make you feel?”

“I think it’s an important duty of the prime minister and I’m ready to do that,” Truss replied, drawing applause from the audience. When Pienaar asked again how that decision would make her “feel,” she simply stated “I’m ready to do it.”

While no foreign state was mentioned by name during the exchange, Truss has been among the most bellicose British officials in her comments about the war in Ukraine, issuing a steady stream of hostile rhetoric toward Moscow while encouraging escalation at virtually every turn.

Despite serving as her country’s top diplomat, the foreign secretary has made little effort to seek out a diplomatic solution to the conflict, instead calling for Russia’s “defeat” on the battlefield regardless of the cost in Ukrainian blood.

With Prime Minister Boris Johnson preparing to leave office after announcing his resignation in July, Truss is now vying against former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak for the PM spot. While Johnson’s hawkish stance toward Russia may be hard to outdo – having visited Kiev multiple times in recent months to discourage a negotiated settlement to the war – his replacement appears set to continue London’s policies on the conflict regardless of who wins.

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Will Porter is assistant news editor at the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer at RT. Find more of his work at Antiwar.com and Consortium News.

Featured image: The ‘Baker’ nuclear weapon test is seen at Bikini Atoll, July 25, 1946; UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. (Credit: Pentagon; UK Prime Minister’s Office)


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

Reviews

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“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.
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Sanctions Against Russia Damage Western Business

August 26th, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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The West itself appears to be the party most harmed by the sanctions it has chosen to impose against Russia. As well known, the US, UK and EU are facing a wave of inflation with all-time highs. And in the same sense, the business world is collapsing in Western countries. The business losses with the end of participation of some Western companies in the Russian market are extremely significant and are causing serious problems for the economy of many countries, with losses accumulating exorbitant amounts.

It is estimated that American, European, British, and Japanese companies have already lost more than 70 billion dollars since February. The losses are a consequence of the packages of sanctions imposed by Western countries on Moscow in response to the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. Many corporations withdrew from Russia or had their activities frozen, losing insertion in the powerful market of consumption, work and raw materials offered by Russia.

As expected, the most affected sector is the energy one, whose losses are estimated at almost 55 billion dollars, generating a series of problems for Western societies. Relations between Russia and Western Europe in the energy sector have always been a central strategic point in the international economic balance and now seem more threatened than ever. However, other sectors are also in similar situations.

Agricultural commodity, food and tobacco markets achieve losses of almost 8 billion dollars. In the same sense, in the technology and IT sector, 5 billion dollars of losses have already been accumulated. And there is also the vital banking sector, whose side effects of anti-Russian financial coercive measures have already led to a loss of 3,7 billion dollars – most of this amount belonging to Société Générale, the only banking group to have left Russia completely so far.

With regard specifically to the energy sector, the European and British companies most affected were BP, Linde, Uniper and Total Energies, whose billions of dollars in assets were harmed as a result of the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and other Russian-European projects of cooperation. The process of disintegration of the Russian and European energy markets will not be so easily completed, as it is necessary to reverse a scenario of decades of cooperation, which will undoubtedly take time.

For example, BP, which announced its unconditional withdrawal from the Russian market in February, still remains one of Rosneft’s main partners, owning 19.75% of its shares. However, the process of disintegration has progressively advanced. BP itself revealed a loss of more than 25 billion dollars due to the freezing of its activities in Russia, pointing to a scenario that indicates a path towards the end of the cooperation in the near future.

American and Japanese energy companies are heading in the same direction. ExxonMobil, Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi Corporation were some of the companies that had the most losses in recent months, mainly as a result of the effects that the coercive measures had on the Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin-II projects. Obviously, other energy companies were also affected by the packages of sanctions, albeit on a smaller scale, showing a scenario of generalized losses for this sector’s businesses.

For Russia, however, the deficits are much smaller and almost never imply real losses, but market restructurings. In energy, Russian oil and gas production remains strong and active, unaffected by the departure of some Western companies. The withdrawal of these companies makes room for other markets, such as the Chinese and Indian, which are the ones that have stood out in the search for Russian oil and gas in recent months. Meanwhile, Western companies lose important sources of supply that will not be easily resolved.

As for market sectors in which Russian consumption was of interest to Western companies, there are even fewer losses. The corporations that withdrew from Russia left their physical production structures there, which could be used by Moscow, generating employment for the Russian population, internal circulation of capital and economic progress.

For example, McDonald’s lost more than one billion dollars with its adherence to anti-Russian measures, but its withdrawal from the local market made room for the nationalization of the company’s production structures, and a Russian national company was created to sell fast food for Russian citizens. The same is currently happening with other Western companies that have left the Russian market. In short, the West lost a rich consumer market and handed over to Moscow all the necessary means for Russians themselves to supply their population with such goods and services.

In practice, all these facts simply mean damage to Western business. Entrepreneurs do not appear to have been consulted by heads of state on whether or not sanctions were in their best interest. The measures were simply imposed unilaterally to meet NATO’s geopolitical plans, without considering the opinion of companies that generate jobs for Western citizens. Currently, there are still plans to completely ban the entry of Russian citizens into Europe, which according to estimates will generate losses of more than 20 billion euros, harming the entire European market.

In fact, western sanctions, if not reversed, will lead the world into a global recession in which the most affected will be the western countries themselves. To avoid this, the business sector must mobilize to demand an end to sanctions.

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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.

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Guest is Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder & ex-President of Greenpeace and author. He has a BSc Biology and a PhD Ecology. Also director of co2coalition.org, a coalition that seeks to engage in an informed and dispassionate discussion of climate change, humans’ role in the climate system, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions.

He strongly opposes the idea that there are too many people on earth since humanity is way better off today, than in the past centuries, thanks to science and innovations. He voices serious doubts on the CO2-caused climate change narrative dominating academia, politics and news & criticizes K. Schwab’s “Own nothing and be happy” doctrine.

This session also talks about what happened when Greenpeace grew: became a business with shifted priorities (money over ideals). Greenpeace also started to describe humanity as “enemies of the earth”.

Dr. Moore argues for a balance between taking from nature (which feeds us) and taking care of nature.

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During his fifty years as a painter, Canadian American artist Philip Guston created a body of work that stands out as among the most significant and daring of the twentieth century. His development as an artist involved several phases, and culminated with images notable for their dark, biting humor, distinct palette, unmistakable lexicon of objects, and concern with themes when taken together seem designed to heighten our uneasiness and have us question everything we thought we knew about painting. Perhaps the most important feature of these works, however, is their uncompromising interrogation of racism and white culpability, signaled by the persistent and discomfiting image of hooded Klansmen, or simply “hoods” as Guston referred to them. 

The Museum of Fine Art in Boston is presently hosting “Philip Guston Now,” a much-anticipated retrospective of Guston’s work. Comprised of seventy-three paintings and twenty-seven drawings, the exhibition reexamines an artist who began as a representational painter, but by the late 1950s was highly acclaimed as an abstract expressionist. Yet, notwithstanding the adoring critics, Guston ultimately declined to settle into his role as one of the country’s preeminent abstract artists.  His return to figuration was disparaged and ridiculed when the paintings first came before the public in his now infamous 1970 solo exhibition at New York City’s Marlborough Gallery. Despite fierce criticism, Guston insisted on confronting some of the most difficult and pressing questions our society continues to face. These paintings, preoccupied as they are with the nature of the self and its relationship to evil, violence, and bigotry are destabilizing, disruptive, and precisely for that reason they cannot afford to be overlooked.

Born in 1913, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who fled extermination in the pogroms of 1905, Guston was no stranger to racial hatred which he would encounter firsthand growing up in Los Angeles. Ku Kluxers first appeared in Guston’s work of the early 1930s, including a 1932 mural based on accounts he had read of the trial of the Scottsboro boys, nine Black youths falsely accused of rape in Alabama in the spring of 1931. A terrifying and brutal depiction of a Klansman whipping a roped black man, Guston’s mural was desecrated, along with several others, by a group “led by the chief of the Red Squad [a unit of the Los Angeles Police Department that went after Communists and strikers].”

Neither was Guston a stranger to tragedy: despondent and reduced to rag picking, his father hanged himself from the porch, and was likely discovered by Philip who had his tenth birthday only three days earlier. Ropes and porches will emerge in paintings such as If This Be Not I (1945) and Porch II (1947), both included in the current exhibition. The figures in these paintings are compressed, and flattened against each other, accentuating the overall sense of claustrophobia. They are also evocative of the Holocaust: in the lower left of If This Be Not I, a figure wearing the striped pajamas of the concentration camp is laying on his back, his head turned so that he looks vacantly at us from over his right shoulder, while his right hand slumps lifelessly beside a discarded light bulb (one of his favorite motifs).  In the figure’s left hand, he clutches a tin horn against his chest, perhaps suggesting an angel. The dangling rope of Porch II may refer to his father’s suicide; while a man hanging upside down, exposing the soles of his shoes, is an image that Guston will use in alluding to the Holocaust.

If This Be Not I (1945)

The early work demonstrates Guston’s mastery of a style informed by the great Mexican muralists (‘Los Tres Grandes’), the stylized forms of Giorgio de Chirico and Pablo Picasso, as well as the Italian Renaissance frescoes of Piero della Francesca, who painted “like a visitor to the earth… as though opening his eyes for the first time… without manner.” Guston in fact displayed Piero’s Flagellation of Christ (c. 1456-60) for much of his life: “I want to look at [it] when I have eggs and coffee in the morning or my drinks at night.” Something of Piero’s depiction of the violent flogging of Jesus is recognizable in a painting such as Martial Memory (1941), a scene of children fighting in costume (a theme to which Guston returned more than once): in this case, the children have paused momentarily, holding their weapons in the air, echoing Christ’s tormentors in the Flagellation.

Figurative painting was unequivocally set aside with the lush hues of Red Painting (1950), generally regarded as Guston’s first foray into pure abstraction, to which he would be wholly devoted for the next sixteen years. Unlike colleagues including Jackson Pollok (with whom Guston attended high school in Los Angeles), Guston painted with short rapid brushstrokes, working extremely close to the canvas. The results were rich, and visually enticing tapestries of color with touches reminiscent of Turner and especially Monet.

“Decisions to settle anywhere are intolerable,” Guston would write, “[U]nless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no right to exist at all – or is not even possible.” Having achieved international recognition for his abstract paintings, Guston forsook critical acclaim by returning to figuration, but in an entirely new, almost cartoon-like style informed by the aesthetic sensibilities he developed as an abstract artist. Although derided when they first appeared, it is the work from this third phase – characterized by the extensive use of his signature pinks and recurring objects, such as light bulbs, nails, shoes, clocks, and paintbrushes – for which Guston would be chiefly remembered.

The Studio (1969), a meta-self-portrait (that is, a painting of the artist painting a self-portrait) unabashedly announced Guston’s move away from abstraction and his return to figuration and representationalism. The uneasiness that this painting generates arises from Guston’s decision to present himself in a Klansman’s hood, working at his easel, holding a cigar with his left hand and a paintbrush in his right, as he creates a self-portrait of his hooded persona. Guston would say of the many hooded figures to follow, “They are self-portraits. I perceive myself as being behind the hood. … I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil?”

Guston’s Web (1975) is as disturbing as any of the Klan paintings – and, in fact, the over-sized eye of the bean-shaped head (standing in for the artist himself) is itself shaped like the hoods of his Klansmen. The red rim of the eye and three-day stubble is suggestive of sleeplessness, which can be understood here not only in terms of insomnia as a medical condition, but also as a crucial metaphor for modern subjectivity under conditions of late capitalism. Guston’s cyclops is vigilant without seeing anything – it is like the vigilance of one who is chained to being, contracted to exist and unable to escape the anonymous il y a (or ‘there is’) as the philosopher Emanuel Levinas would put it.

Web (1975)

At the top of the painting, two black spiders spin their webs which partially ensnare Guston’s head if not his brain-shaped companion, a stand in for his wife Musa McKim, characteristically represented as a kind of sun rising or setting on the horizon. The spiders are weavers of time and fate – like the two women who busily knit their black wool, spinning the thread of each man’s life, at the entrance to the Company’s offices in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899).

Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973) is among Guston’s most recognizable works – and it is replete with the objects that variously inhabit the paintings from this period: cigarettes, light bulbs, the soles of shoes; and once again the single massive and vigilant eye of the artist’s oval-shaped head. In this case, the painter is lying in bed, smoking a cigarette, covered up to his chin by a blanket, with a plate of french fries propped on his chest. Behind him is a disordered and motley collection of shoes, a can of brushes, and a disembodied hand with its index finger pointing to the wall on which it has drawn a vertical red line. This image touches on the inevitable question, who precisely is painting in this picture? Is the artist painting in his imagination as he lays in bed? The disembodied hand marking the wall in blood invariably recalls the mystic hand which appeared before Belshazzar as he feasted in his palace, as related in the Book of Daniel, and famously depicted by Rembrandt in Belshazzar’s Feast (1635).

Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973)

The prophet Daniel informs the Babylonian ruler that he was ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting’ – a stern judgement, and for Guston a kind of self-reproach with which he was not unfamiliar and that helps us to understand his departure from pure abstraction. As Guston would recall: “When the 1960s came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything-and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?”

A great deal of controversy preceded this exhibition, which will travel from Boston’s MFA to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, followed by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and finally Tate Modern in London. In response to the “the racial justice movement that started in the US,” following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, all four institutions intended to postpone the exhibition until 2024, according to their joint statement – a testament to Guston’s ability to unsettle and even shock audiences over forty years after his death.

Thankfully, the museums reversed their decision when a fierce backlash ensued. Guston’s daughter, Musa Mayer, pointedly observed: “My father dared to unveil white culpability… our shared role in allowing the racist terror that he had witnessed since boyhood, when the Klan marched openly by the thousands in the streets of Los Angeles… He understood what hatred was. It was the subject of his earliest works.” Indeed, one can hardly conceive of a more appropriate time to present the work of an artist whose paintings are not only a condemnation of evil, its banality and proximity, but a critical reflection on our collective responsibility for bigotry, antisemitism, and violence.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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China’s Growing Military Might

August 26th, 2022 by Brian Berletic

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Erdogan Repairs Syria Ties with Eye on Eurasianism

August 26th, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev regarding the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand on September 15-16. This must be the fourth or fifth time the two leaders confabulated over the upcoming event. One lost count! 

Putin and Mirziyoyev conceivably exchanged notes on a major event likely on the sidelines of the SCO summit — a meeting between Turkish President Recep Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad signalling a breakthrough in the conflict in Syria. 

As I wrote recently — Russia-Turkey reset eases regional tensions— one major outcome of the meeting between Putin and Erdogan in Sochi on August 5 was that a reconciliation between Ankara and Damascus may be happening. On his return journey, Erdogan said he was going to contact Assad. Hardly anyone noticed, though, that Putin also invited Erdogan and Assad to participate in the upcoming SCO summit. 

Indeed, Mirziyoyev, who will be hosting the summit in Samarkand, has been in the know of it all through. Putin and Mirziyoyev have forged a close working relationship suffused with warmth and mutual respect that puts Tashkent back as the key capital in Russia’s Central Asian strategies, as has been the case historically dating back to the Tsarist era. 

Moscow has outclassed and outmanoeuvred the recent US attempts to stir up unrest in Central Asian region, whilst the Kremlin has one eye riveted on Ukraine. (The secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, a longtime associate of Putin, lashed out last week at a meeting of SCO security tsars at US attempts to stage colour revolutions in Central Asia.) 

Coming back to Syria, western media missed the wood for the trees while assessing the Putin-Erdogan summit in Sochi. The leitmotif in Sochi was regional security in the Greater Middle East — the vast swathe stretching from Levant to the steppes of Central Asia and the Pamirs bordering Xinjiang. 

The Guardian came tantalisingly close to smelling the real story behind the 4-hour long “secretive meeting” at one-to-one level in Sochi, but lost the scent somehow after hearing that “Before the meeting began, Russian journalists noted that Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who has sent forces under his command to both Syria and Ukraine, was in attendance.”

The Putin-Erdogan axis is riveted on a balancing of interests to ensure differences (which are aplenty) do not turn into disputes. Thus, Putin is unfailingly attuned to Erdogan’s concerns today which devolve upon the state of the Turkish economy and the upcoming presidential and parliamentary polls (the two are inter-related.)  

Erdogan has his finger on many pies — from the Balkans to North Africa and Persian Gulf to the Caucasus — but what concerns him most is the situation in Syria, which has serious implications as he prepares to seek a renewed mandate.  For Erdogan, Syria is like a Matryoshka doll — a set of problems of decreasing size placed one inside another. Who else but Putin could understand a Matryoshka doll better? 

For the Russian mind, the Matryoshka doll symbolises above all other values the search for truth and meaning. That is how Syria figures prominently in Putin’s cogitations with Erdogan. Packed inside the doll, one inside another, are: PKK and Kurdish separatism; US-Kurdish unholy alliance; Israeli footprints; Turkish-American discord (following the failed US-backed coup d’état in 2016) — all of which impact Turkey’s vital concerns. 

At Sochi, Putin could persuade Erdogan that the best way to address his concerns will be by engaging with Assad. Of course, Erdogan and Assad are no strangers to each other. The two families used to vacation together — until 2011 when Barack Obama and Joe Biden weaned Erdogan away. 

Fundamentally, there is a Turkish-Russian understanding that the strengthening of Syrian government’s sovereignty will strengthen regional security and that Ankara and Damascus have a common interest in fighting separatism and terrorism. Indeed, the natural corollary is that the longer the US occupation continues, the greater the danger of a “Kurdistan” consolidating in northern Syria. 

But the US is in no hurry to end its occupation, since the troops aren’t taking casualty; large scale smuggling of oil makes the occupation rather “self-financing” (like the ancient Roman legions); and the region also happens to be Syria’s most fertile river valleys. 

Erdogan’s security concerns in Syria are best addressed in cooperation with Damascus. As the first step in this direction, he publicly stated last week that destabilising the Assad government is not Turkish policy (anymore.)

Meanwhile, reports have appeared that a Turkish delegation of former ministers and diplomats led by the leader of the Patriotic Party (Vatan Partisi) Dogu Perincek plans to visit Damascus to hold talks with Assad for the restoration of Turkish-Syrian relations. Interestingly, Tehran has since called for the rebuilding of relations between Turkey and Syria.

Now, Perincek’s appearance makes this a demi-official Track 1.5 mission. Perincek is a seasoned politician with a Marxist pedigree, who was associated with both “Kemalists” and Kurdish PKK, had spent something like 15 years in jail during various periods until an intriguing prison release in 2014, and a makeover as fellow traveller of the Erdogan regime. 

However, one consistent trait in Perincek’s ideological make-up has been his advocacy of “Eurasianism”, namely, that Turkey should turn its back on  the Atlantic system, pursue an independent foreign policy and head toward Eurasia to work with the Russia-China axis. 

Without doubt, Perincek worked on receptive minds, as a belief was gaining ground within the Erdogan government that Western powers — the US, in particular — are trying to weaken and divide Turkey through their support of Kurdish separatism, whereas Russia and China scrupulously refrain from interference in Turkey’s internal affairs. 

Curiously, Perincek and Russian philosopher and ideologue Aleksandr Dugin have enjoyed a warm personal friendship over many years, cemented by their conviction that Russian nationalism and Turkish nationalism have a meeting point in the ideology of “Eurasianism”. They have met more than once. And, like Dugin, Perincek is also credited today with influence among the power circles surrounding Erdogan. 

A presentation of the “Eurasianist” perspective on the Syrian question is available in a most recent  interview by retired Lt. Gen. Ismail Hakki Pekinformer head of the Turkish Armed Forces’ Military Intelligence (2007-2011) who used to be the deputy chairman of Perincek’s party.  

It is possible to see Perincek’s influence in the Turkish foreign policy in the so-called Asia Anew initiative, which was unveiled at the annual Turkish Ambassadors’ Meeting in Ankara three years ago. 

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Last week’s Israeli army raids and closures of seven Palestinian civil society organisations based in the occupied West Bank cities of Ramallah and Al Bireh are the latest manifestation of a decades old Israeli campaign to remove influential Palestinian leaders, undermine Palestinian institutions and disrupt Palestinian unity.

Before dawn a week ago, Israeli forces broke into their offices, searched them, confiscated computers and files, and sealed their premises. Israel branded them “terrorist” and “unlawful”, alleging ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist resistance group outlawed by Israel.

Israel’s latest victims cover a broad range of activities essential for the wellbeing of Palestinians struggling for existence under Israeli occupation. These are human rights defender Al Haq, prisoner support group Addameer, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Bisan Centre for Research and Development, Defence for Children International, Palestine branch and the Union of Health Workers Committees which operates hospitals and clinics across the West Bank. The first six were banned as unlawful “terrorist” organisation last October and the seventh in 2020.

Adding insult to injury, Israel’s domestic security agency Shinbet followed up by summoning for questioning Khaled Quzmar, director of Defence for Children, who endured two hours of interrogation at Ofer military base, and  Shawan Jabari of Al Haq who refused to present  himself. The Al Haq caller made “threats of imprisonment and other measures if Al Haq continues its work,” which it has, by reopening its office and recalling staff.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned the raids as an “assault” on these organisations and warned that such closures are part of the Israeli army’s “systematic policy” of eliminating Palestinian civil society due to the role it plays in “supporting the Palestinian resistance under occupation”. The PCHR argues that Israel has [tightened] “the screws” on such organisations since the Durban Conference against Racism held in 2001 in South Africa and Israel has escalated its efforts since Palestine “acceded to the International Criminal Court in 2015”. The PCHR demanded the international community intervene to reopen these civil society bodies, which the Palestinian Authority regards as “state institutions”.

The UN, European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticised the move and nine European countries, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden have expressed “deep concern” over the closures while even Israel’s best friend, the US, voiced “concern.” All said Israel had offered no evidence to justify its “terrorist” designation. None has proposed to exert pressure on Israel to reverse its bans and return the property of the raided organisations or punish Israel if it refuses. This means, once again, Israel will get away with a major assault on Palestinian civil society just as it escapes serious censure for its nightly arrest raids on West Bank Palestinian cities, towns and villages and military offensives against Gaza.

However, if Israel provides firm evidence to justify the closure of these organisations, action would be taken making it all too clear once again that double standards will apply on the case of the banned organisations while Israel will continue to enjoy impunity.

By raiding the organisations in Ramallah, the Israeli army also violated the terms of the 1995 Oslo II agreement, signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yizak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organisation Chairman Yasser Arafat. Ramallah is located in Area A, the 18 per cent of the West Bank under full Palestinian Authority control. Israeli citizens, colonists, and forces are banned from entering Area A. However, since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s full scale invasion of the West Bank in 2002, its forces have conducted routine raids into Ramallah and environs Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Jericho, Nablus, 80 per cent of Hebron, and the 40 per cent of Al Bireh which is classified as Area A. Five per cent of this town is Area B, and 55 per cent as Area C.

In Area B, 22 per cent of the West Bank, the authority administers Palestinian enclaves while Israel has full security control.  Israel is meant to exercise total control over Area C, 60 per cent of the West Bank but in violation of Oslo II, Israel has extended the reach of its military to Area A, in defiance of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel does not confine its military raids to civil society organisations but also targets cultural centres and research organisations.  In July 2020, Israeli forces raided the Yabous Cultural Centre and Edward Said National Conservatory  of Music in occupied East Jerusalem and confiscated thousands of documents, files, computers and surveillance cameras. The military also entered the Beit Hanina home of Rania Elias and Suhail Khouri, the directors of the centres, seized files and arrested the couple.

Israel conducts drone and air strikes against cultural facilities in Gaza. In May 2021, Israel flattened two of the strip’s main bookshops and in 2018 Israel bombed the Said Al Meshal Cultural Centre in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza where musicians and artists practised and performed.

The most destructive raid conducted by Israel took place at the Arab Studies Society located in occupied East Jerusalem’s 1897 Husseini mansion, a graceful stone building of great historic importance and a symbol of the Palestinian presence in the city. The raid took place shortly after the death of Faisal Husseini, East Jerusalem’s leading Palestinian figure, who founded the Society in 1980 and moved it into Orient House in 1983. The Israelis carried away the library’s 17,000 books in English and Arabic as well as its collection of documents on Palestinian land ownership during the Ottoman era and British mandate period.  Israel’s aim was to deprive the Palestinians of proofs of their existence and ownership of the land Israel claims and colonises.

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The Biden administration has urged the Palestinian Authority not to pursue a vote at the UN Security Council on gaining full UN membership, stressing it will likely veto any such move, U.S. and Palestinian sources said.

Driving the news: The Palestinian Authority announced several weeks ago it will renew its push to gain full UN membership during the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

  • Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants to use this move to try to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back at the center of the international community’s attention and to break the current deadlock in the peace process.
  • The possible UN bid is also a way for the PA and Abbas to try to win points domestically and get deliverables from the U.S. and the EU.

Behind the scenes: Several weeks ago, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour started quiet consultations in New York with Security Council members over a possible full membership bid, according to Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. sources.

  • The Palestinians also discussed the issue with Biden administration officials, who raised strong reservations and said such a move won’t lead anywhere because of the veto, U.S. sources said.

Flashback: In November 2012, the Palestinians’ UN status was upgraded to non-member observer state, but this was done through a vote at the UN General Assembly where no country has veto power.

  • Since then, Palestinian leaders tried several times to get a vote at the UN Security Council but never garnered enough support — nine of 15 members — to even hold a vote.

What they’re saying: PLO official and Palestinian Minister Hussein al-Sheikh confirmed there were talks with the Biden administration on the issue, but stressed that it is an ongoing discussion and the PA is still trying to convince countries to support it.

  • A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is committed to a two-state solution and is focused on trying to bring the Palestinians and Israelis closer together and create conditions for direct talks.
  • “The only realistic path to a comprehensive and lasting peace is through direct negotiations between the parties. There are no shortcuts to Palestinian statehood outside direct negotiations with Israel,” the State Department spokesperson added.

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