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According to a gaggle of academics at the University of Calgary, all news reports and opinions contrary to the pretzel twisted narratives of the state on the situation in the Ukraine are nothing less than Russian propaganda and “foreign interference.”

“Our research team has been collecting more than 6.2 million Tweets globally since January 2022 to monitor and measure Russian influence operations on social media,” Jean-Christophe Boucher, Jack Edwards, Jenny Kim, Abbas Badami, and Henry Smith write collectively for the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy.

We find that pro-Russian narratives promoted in the Canadian social media ecosystem on twitter are divided into two large communities:

1) accounts influenced by sources from the United States and

2) those largely influenced by sources from international sources from Russia, Europe, and China.

In other words, any news, despite its country of origin, is “Russian propaganda” if it does not support US, European, and Canadian narratives on the war in the Ukraine.

“First, pro-Russian discourse on Canadian Twitter blames NATO for the conflict suggesting that Russia’s invasion was a result of NATO’s expansionism or aggressive intentions toward Russia,” the authors argue.

There can be no doubt, since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has pushed its armaments and soldiers, at the behest of the US, ever closer to the border of Russia. The US made a promise to not move further to the East. Of course, history demonstrates how such promises made by the US State Department are routinely broken.

James Goldgeier writes for War On the Rocks:

More than a quarter-century ago, in February 1990, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev discussed NATO’s future role in a unified Germany. Baker told Gorbachev that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east” and agreed with Gorbachev’s statement that “Any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” (Emphasis added.)

David K. Shipler, writing for Washington Monthly, explains how unclassified documents

tell the story of how American officials led the Russians to believe that no expansion would be undertaken by NATO, then later nearly doubled the size of the alliance. Russian and American transcripts and summaries of high-level meetings, posted in recent years by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, record multiple assurances in the early 1990s.

“Second, it is suggested that Western nations are propping up fascists in Ukraine, thus justifying Russia’s actions,” the authors write.

The fourth narrative justifies the invasion by framing it as a war waged against a state that is either fascist or heavily fascist-influenced. They point to the presence of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in the Ukrainian National Guard as proof. The Tweets spread the common Russian government talking point that Ukraine is run by a fascist regime.

Source: Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

One has to wonder if these esteemed academics bothered to delve into factual historical information about Ukrainian “fascism.” Following the US-orchestrated violent coup in 2014, these ultranationalist “fascists” (akin to Nazi ethnic cleansing racists) gained influence within the Ukrainian government and military.

Three members of the Nazi-saluting Svoboda were positioned as members of the first post-coup government. The co-founder of Svoboda, Andriy Paruby, was parliamentary speaker for five years. He founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine along with Oleh Tyahnybok (seen giving a Nazi salute in the above-linked photo). The party’s Wolfsangel logo (basically a rearranged Nazi swastika) and its ultranationalistic philosophy are not “Russian disinformation,” but indisputable historical facts.

According to the propaganda media in the West, Mr. Paruby has changed his ways and has become a respectable member of the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. He was a leader of the so-called (and laughably titled) “Revolution of Dignity” (the US-orchestrated Maidan Revolution) that violently overthrew the elected leader of the country, Viktor Yanukovych.

Paruby is an admirer of Stepan Bandera, a Nazi Germany collaborator responsible for mass murdering Jews, Russians, communists, Poles, and other minority groups during WWII.

Despite the counter-reality pronouncements of narrative pushing academics tenured at “prestigious” universities, the fact is the ultranationalist movement in Ukraine has grown in scope and influence.

The Times of Israel reported in January, a month before Russia’s special operation to eliminate the Ukraine’s genocidal and Bandera worshipping ultranationalists:

Expressions of admiration for Bandera and other collaborators have increased in scope and status following the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, which toppled the regime of Viktor Yanukovych amid claims that he is a Russian stooge, and triggered an armed conflict with Russia.

Although the corporate propaganda media in the West will not tell you about the influence of ultranationalism in a revival of “Ukrainian identity,” Risyad Sadzikri of the Indonesian Student Association For International Studies (ISAFIS), writes,

Since the Euromaidan protest toppled the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovich government in 2013–2014, many ultranationalist organisations founded or gained notoriety in Ukrainian politics. For example, the Svoboda Party is known for its radical stance in the parliament of Ukraine (the Verkhovna Rada) even before the Euromaidan incident. The Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) is also known for fighting the riot police and amassing assault weapons in the protest.

It should be noted that these “fascist” (racist) political parties are not uniformly supported by the people of the Ukraine. During the 2019 Ukraine Parliamentary Election, the Svoboda Party only achieved 2.15 per cent of votes. This dismal political outcome, however, is of little relevance in the most corrupt country in Europe.

According to ISAFIS,

…the ultranationalist already has a place in the politics of Ukraine, especially when it comes to street politics and violence. Ultranationalist organisations and militias often attack human rights activists, LGBTQ+, or even Jews and Romani people in the street. The tragedy has occurred repeatedly that such violence is deemed a usual routine in Ukrainian cities, damaging the image of Ukraine in the international community. Worse, the police act passively towards the ultranationalist violence and usually prefer to stop the counter-protest against the ultranationalist.

Canada, not unlike the US, claims to be a “democracy” (this would naturally include the right to free speech and lively debate without censorship), and yet its current leader, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has acted like a dictator as of late. Trudeau insists the Freedom Convoy opposed to vaccinating truckers crossing the US-Canada border are “extremists.”

From corporate media propaganda outlet MSN:

Trudeau’s Federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino blamed extremist groups for helping organize the protests, and repeated allegations that some involved wanted to overthrow the Liberal government.

This is the real “fake news” and “disinformation.” It is, as well, part of an overall objective in the West to silence any criticism of the state, its policies, no matter how lethal or detrimental, and characterize all opposition as extremism that must be dealt with harsh retribution.

This, contrary to what the egghead academics at the University of Calgary have written, is the real definition of fascism—authoritarian suppression of all criticism and the criminalization of free speech, a process now well underway.

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***

Scientific studies show huge numbers of bots are spreading pro-Western disinformation on social media, demonizing China, Russia, and Iran. 90% of bots posting about the proxy war in Ukraine push pro-NATO propaganda.

Two studies published this August expose how large numbers of fake accounts are spreading pro-Western and pro-NATO propaganda on social media, while demonizing US geopolitical adversaries like China, Russia, and Iran.

An investigation by scholars in Australia found that more than 90% of bots posting on Twitter about the proxy war in Ukraine were promoting pro-Ukraine propaganda, whereas just 7% were promoting pro-Russia propaganda.

A separate report co-authored by researchers at California’s Stanford University and a notorious US government contractor called Graphika revealed a large propaganda network on social media “that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia.”

The study detailed a “series of covert campaigns” on social media, which spread disinformation and fake news in a way that “consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran.”

These two investigations are part of a growing body of evidence showing how Western governments and their allies have weaponized social media platforms and turned them into weapons in a new cold war.

90% of bots posting about Ukraine proxy spread anti-Russian propaganda

A scientific study published by researchers from Australia’s University of Adelaide found that, of the bots on Twitter posting about the proxy war in Ukraine, 90.16% spread pro-Ukraine propaganda, while only 6.8% spread pro-Russia propaganda. (3.04% of the bots showed what they called “mixed behaviour,” publishing both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian messages.)

The scholars, from the university’s School of Mathematical Sciences, cannot in any way be considered pro-Russian. In fact, two of the co-authors disclosed that their work is funded by the Australian government through the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects.

But the academics set out to investigate how “Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict use the online information environment to influence geopolitical dynamics and sway public opinion,” and they let the facts speak for themselves.

The researchers analyzed more than 5.2 million tweets, retweets, quote tweets, and replies between February 23 and March 8 that used the hashtags #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy, #(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)SupportUkraine, or #(I)SupportRussia. (The scholars used both the versions #StandWithUkraine and #IStandWithUkraine, with and without the “I.”)

They found that the vast majority of bots tweeted pro-Ukraine propaganda, specifically the hashtag #StandWithUkraine.

Their study noted that the proxy war in Ukraine “emphasises the role social media plays in modern-day warfare, with conflict occurring in both the physical and information environments.”

“Social media is a critical tool in information warfare,” the academics wrote.

They cited another investigation that found that 19% of overall interactions on Twitter are directed from bots to real accounts, the vast majority in the form of retweets (74%) and mentions (25%).

Pro-Western propaganda network on social media exposed

A separate study also published in August offered further insight into how social media is weaponized to spread pro-Western propaganda.

Titled “Unheard Voice: Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations,” the report was co-authored by the Stanford Internet Observatory and an infamous intelligence company called Graphika.

Graphika is notorious for working closely with the US government, contracting with the Pentagon, DARPA, and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Given its links to US intelligence agencies, Graphika’s role in this study could be seen as an example of a “limited hangout” – it provides a small glimpse into US information warfare activities, while covering up the vast majority of its operations.

Although it is very limited in scope and has clear biases, the document does show how pro-Western propaganda networks on social media accuse China, Russia, and Iran of being “imperialist” while praising the US government.

The pro-Western disinformation operations primarily used Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp (which are owned by Meta), as well as YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram.

Some of the fake accounts involved in the coordinated propaganda campaign posed as “independent news outlets,” “political analysts,” or “teachers.”

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika succiently described the operation as “Fake News, Fake Faces, Fake Followers.”

They wrote in the executive summary of their report (emphasis added):

Our joint investigation found an interconnected web of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and five other social media platforms that used deceptive tactics to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and Central Asia. The platforms’ datasets appear to cover a series of covert campaigns over a period of almost five years rather than one homogeneous operation.

These campaigns consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China, and Iran. The accounts heavily criticized Russia in particular for the deaths of innocent civilians and other atrocities its soldiers committed in pursuit of the Kremlin’s “imperial ambitions” following its invasion of Ukraine in February this year. To promote this and other narratives, the accounts sometimes shared news articles from U.S. government-funded media outlets, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and links to websites sponsored by the U.S. military.

The document explained that the propaganda accounts “created fake personas with GAN-generated faces, posed as independent media outlets, leveraged memes and short-form videos, attempted to start hashtag campaigns, and launched online petitions.”

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika described their investigation as “the most extensive case of covert pro-Western IO [influence operations] on social media to be reviewed and analyzed by open-source researchers to date.”

The firms acknowledged that, “With few exceptions, the study of modern IO has overwhelmingly focused on activity linked to” Western adversaries “in countries such as Russia, China, and Iran.”

Some of the language used in the report reflects the blatant bias of the firms, which referred to China, Russia, and Iran disparagingly as “authoritarian regimes.”

Despite the many limitations of the study, however, the fact that it was co-published by an elite university and a notorious intelligence-linked US government contractor makes it impossible to deny that Western government are using social media platforms to spread disinformation and wage information warfare against their geopolitical adversaries.

Central Asia propaganda accuses China and Russia of ‘imperialism’ while praising the US

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika investigation analyzed the pro-Western disinformation campaign by dividing its work into three regions: Central Asia (primarily in the Russian language), Iran (in Persian), and the Middle East (in Arabic).

Although these pro-Western propaganda operations were conducted in different languages, many of their talking points and tactics overlapped.

The Central Asia-themed disinformation was mostly in Russian, although some accounts posted in regional languages like Kazakh and Kyrgyz.

In addition to using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, YouTube, Twitter, and Telegram, the Central Asia propaganda also employed the Russian social media apps VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki.

The report found that the disinformation operation involved creating a “sham media outlet” focused on Central Asia called Intergazeta. It “repeatedly copied news material with and without credit from reputable Western and pro-Western sources in Russian, such as Meduza.io and the BBC Russian Service.”

Other accounts in the propaganda network “copied or translated content from U.S.-funded entities, such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and the independent Kazakh news outlet informburo.kz.”

They also created petitions using the US-based website Avaaz. One demanded that Kazakhstan should leave the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) and Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a military alliance with Russia.

Another petition called on Kyrgyzstan to minimize Chinese influence. And two more insisted that Kazakhstan should ban Russian TV channels.

The Central Asia disinformation network accused Russia and China of “imperialism,” while constantly spreading pro-US propaganda.

The fake accounts demonized Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, its military intervention in Syria, and its security partnership with several African nations.

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika report noted that the disinformation operation also “concentrated on China and the treatment of Chinese Muslim minorities, particularly the Uighurs in Xinjiang province.”

The fake accounts accused China of “genocide” against its Uyghur minority, and spread fake news stories alleging that Beijing harvest the organs of Muslims.

Persian-language anti-Iran propaganda network

The report identified another network of propaganda focused on Afghanistan. These fake accounts attacked Iran and accused it of having too much influence in the neighboring country. To do so, they posted disinformation from websites supported by the US military.

This propaganda included outlandish fake news, alleging for instance that Iran is trafficking the organs of Afghan refugees, or claiming that Tehran is supposedly forcing Afghan refugees to fight in militias in Syria and Yemen.

Like the Central Asia-focused disinformation operation, this anti-Iran network included “accounts claiming to be independent media outlets, [which] shared U.S.-funded Persian-language media,” from US state propaganda outlets like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Radio Farda and VOA Farsi.

The fake accounts also shared “content from sources linked to the U.S. military,” such as websites sponsored by U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).

And they reposted material from Iran International, an anti-Iranian propaganda outlet based in Britain and funded by the Saudi monarchy.

The Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika wrote that this propaganda campaign was “critical of the Iranian government and often used a sarcastic tone to mock Iranian state media and other parts of the state apparatus.”

Some of the fake accounts engaged with actual Iranians on Twitter, trying to get real people involved in the operation.

They emphasized attacks on Tehran’s foreign policy. The report noted, “Anti-government accounts criticized Iran’s domestic and international policies and highlighted how the government’s costly international interventions undermined its ability to care for its citizens.”

The fake accounts excoriated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), demonized resistance groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas, and condemned Iran for its political alliance with Russia.

Arabic-language Middle East propaganda network

Another disinformation network identified in the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika report focused on spreading Arabic-language propaganda related to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

These fake accounts claimed Iran had too much influence in the region. They demonized Yemen’s revolutionary group Ansarallah (also known as the Houthi movement), and attacked Russia’s foreign policy.

The report noted that some “accounts on Twitter posed as Iraqi activists in order to accuse Iran of threatening Iraq’s water security and flooding the country with crystal meth.”

“Other assets highlighted Houthi-planted landmines killing civilians and promoted allegations that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to a global food crisis,” it added.

Some of the accounts falsely posed as Iraqis, and compared Iran to a “disease” destroying Iraq.

At the same time, they demonized Iraqi Shia militias and portrayed them as puppets of Tehran.

The propaganda campaign accused Iran of an “imperialist project in the Middle East.”

The report noted that this disinformation operation also “amplified the narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin planned to induce a global food crisis that would hit less economically developed countries the hardest.”

At the same time, the fake accounts praised the United States, and particularly its soft-power arm USAID.

Part of the disinformation network even spread propaganda heroizing the US soldiers who are illegally occupying Syrian territory.

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This article was first published September 26, 2022

***

Commemorating the September 11, 1973 Chile Coup d’Etat

On the morning of September 21, 1976, a car bomb took the lives of Orlando Letelier, Minister of Foreign Relations and Ambassador to the U.S. under Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), and Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a 25-year-old fundraiser for the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a left-wing think-tank in Washington, D.C.

The Chevrolet Malibu in which they were traveling exploded near Sheridan Circle in Washington, D.C., on Embassy Row. Ronni’s husband Michael survived the bombing with minor wounds, cursing the “fascists” who had killed Letelier and his young wife.

Two years after the bombing, the U.S. Justice Department prosecuted nine co-conspirators, including five Cuban-Americans associated with the right-wing anti-Castro movement, along with an American expatriate living in Chile, Michael Vernon Townley, an explosives expert and right-wing terrorist born in 1942 in Waterloo, Iowa who worked for the Chilean security services (DINA) and CIA

Townley wound up accepting a plea bargain that limited his sentence to ten years (he only served five before being freed in the Witness Protection program). He saw himself as a soldier in the fight against communism and Letelier as an enemy combatant who had been carrying on a battle against the Chilean government.^[2]

Townley claimed that DINA director Manuel Contreras, a CIA asset from 1974 to 1977, had ordered Letelier’s assassination through his chief of operations, Pedro Espinoza, and that a DINA operative named Armando Fernández, had helped him surveil Letelier.^[3]

According to historian Alan McPherson, Contreras—who in 1995 was sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in the Letelier and Moffitt murders—was “an archetypal Cold War psychopath.” He harbored “a murderous paranoia about “subversives” and was “responsible for the murder or ‘disappearance’ of about a third of the roughly 3,000 people killed by [Augusto] Pinochet’s [fascist] regime.”

Preventing the Threat of a Good Example

An admirer of Spanish fascist Francisco Franco, Pinochet came to power in a CIA-backed coup in 1973 that ousted Salvador Allende.

Allende was a medical doctor who had helped found Chile’s Socialist Party in 1933. He had become the Nixon administration’s public enemy number one because of what Noam Chomsky once termed the “threat of a good example”—namely the institution of socialist policies that would inspire other nations to develop their economies independently from Washington.

After his election as President, Allende emphasized that Chile was “not Cuba in 1959,” in that “the right has not been crushed here by popular uprising. It has only narrowly been beaten in elections. Its power remains intact. It still has its industries, banks, land, and its allies in the army.”

Allende as such outlined a six-year program of gradual social and economic change to lay the foundations for a legal revolution from capitalism to socialism. Its aim was to establish public ownership over the country’s mines and factories, whose profits would find their way into public investment and social services rather than into the pockets of the wealthy.^[4]

On December 21, 1970, a month and a half after his inauguration, President Allende proposed a constitutional amendment to nationalize Chilean copper because, as he explained, “the total value of all the capital accumulated in Chile over the last four hundred years has left its frontiers.”^[5]

At the time, two major U.S. copper corporations, Anaconda and Kennecott, controlled 80% of the Chilean copper industry, which accounted for about four-fifths of Chile’s export earnings.^[6] Allende was willing to pay compensation, though Anaconda and Kennecott wanted millions more than what the Chilean government felt was just.^[7]

Source: dsausa.org

Even before Allende’s inauguration, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon ordered a massive covert intervention in Chile code-named FUBELT, whose end goal was regime change.^[8]

In collaboration with Chile’s upper-middle and upper classes, the CIA was committed to sabotaging Chile’s economy by fomenting strikes and “creating a coup climate by propaganda, disinformation and terrorist activities to provide a stimulus and pretext for the military to move.”^[9]

President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his National Security Adviser and Secretary of State on October 1, 1973. [Source: forgingmemory.org]

When the coup was carried out on September 11, 1973, Allende was murdered. The Chilean military subsequently carried out hundreds of executions by firing squad and mass arrests.^[10]

The Swedish Ambassador to Chile at the time, Harald Edelstam, who helped hundreds escape persecution, estimated that 10,000-15,000 people were killed in the first three months after the coup as the Chilean military had orders to kill anyone who resisted.^[11]

Among those who were detained and narrowly escaped death at Dawson Island concentration camp was Letelier, a lawyer and economist who had first started his career working in Chile’s Department of Copper when he developed his support for Allende’s nationalization policy.^[12]

One of Many Victims of Operation Condor

According to Letelier, the day after the coup, he was taken out of his jail cell blindfolded before a firing squad, though one of the sergeants yelled “Halt!” and his life was spared—temporarily.^[13]

After his release to Venezuela, Letelier moved to Washington, D.C., to work for IPS, where he developed a study of U.S.-Chilean relations during the Allende years and began to plan for a resistance movement to General Pinochet with other exiled Chilean Socialist Party leaders.^[14]

DINA’s assassination campaign was part of Operation Condor—a CIA-driven effort modeled after the Phoenix Program in Vietnam in which Southern Cone intelligence services coordinated their efforts to hunt down left-wing dissidents, including civilian politicians.

Victims of Operation Condor. [Source: bennorton.com]

The U.S. government provided crucial support for Operation Condor through police training programs and the establishment of blacklists and a communications infrastructure based in the Panama Canal Zone, as well as the political backing of U.S. officials, chief among them former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Source: bennorton.com

In September 1974, in a prelude to the assassination of Letelier, Michael Townley built a car bomb to assassinate General Carlos Prats, Pinochet’s predecessor as chief of the Chilean Armed Forces and an Allende loyalist who had the potential for leading a progressive-military coalition to overthrow Pinochet.

Letelier was the next target because he had been a) effective in cultivating alliance with Democratic Party senators and in lobbying for the cut-off of U.S. military aid to Chile; b) had helped initiate a Dutch embargo of Chilean products; c) had denounced Pinochet’s atrocities at a large rally in Madison Square Garden; and d) was working to develop plans for a new world economy that would undercut the power of large corporations.

Just before his death, Letelier published an article in The Nation magazine arguing that the human rights abuses of the Pinochet regime were inextricably linked to the institution of free-market economic reforms promoted by “the Chicago Boys”—or conservative economists who followed the ideas of Milton Friedman.^[16]

Complicity of U.S. Government and CIA

The U.S. government was complicit in Letelier’s murder because of the Nixon and Ford administration’s strong support for General Pinochet’s regime and covert support for the deadly Operation Condor, of which Letelier’s murder was a part.

The same year that Letelier was assassinated, Pinochet had personally complained to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about Letelier’s activities, in a conversation in which Kissinger assured the dictator that “we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do.”

Michael Townley had learned explosives skills from Frank Sturgis and CIA experts in Miami, and worked in Chile under David Atlee Phillips in an effort to block Allende’s election in 1970.

The CIA not only trained the main culprits, but also aided in the cover-up.

During the FBI investigation, it withheld information that Deputy Director Vernon Walters, a few weeks before the assassination, had learned about a covert mission in Washington by two Chilean intelligence officers, Juan Williams and Alejandro Romeral.

The CIA, then under the directorship of George H.W. Bush, had received a phone call in August 1976 establishing the presence of agents Williams and Romeral in Washington.

After the killing, the CIA promoted disinformation that DINA was innocent and that Letelier and Moffitt had been killed by a leftist so Letelier could be transformed into a martyr.^[17]

A Death Not Entirely in Vain

Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt’s assassination at the hands of CIA-trained forces provides a chilling reminder of the blowback associated with U.S. foreign policies during the Cold War.

The U.S. support for fascist regimes abroad in that period resulted in a huge spike in international terrorism that extended to the U.S. itself.

Condor-type operations could easily re-emerge today with the advent of a new Cold War, and as part of a backlash against the ascendancy of the political left in South America.

Washington’s influence, however, and appeal of fascist ideas in Latin America are not as strong as they once were.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who is an heir of the Pinochet tradition, is more and more isolated in the region and poised to lose power in October elections, while socialist governments have survived recent CIA-backed coup attempts in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia.

Chile is currently governed, meanwhile, by a young left-leaning president, Gabriel Boric, who has repudiated not only Pinochet but also the Chicago Boys, saying that, “if Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave.”

This would have been music to the ears of Orlando Letelier, whose struggle for a more just economic order may yet be fulfilled.

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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. According to Spartacus Educational, Townley’s father Vernon had worked for the CIA in the Philippines and was appointed head of the Ford Motor Company in Chile. In 1958, he helped fund the campaign of conservative Jorge Alessandri who narrowly defeated Salvador Allende in Chile’s presidential election. 

2. John Dinges and Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 362. 
3. Alan McPherson, in Ghosts of Sheridan Circle: How a Washington Assassination Brought Pinochet’s Terror State to Justice (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), provides evidence that Pinochet himself gave the orders for the assassination. 
4. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 27. 
5. Idem. Allende also established a sweeping land-reform program designed to redistribute land to the poor and took measures to nationalize Chile’s banks. Economic productivity increased during his tenure and unemployment declined until the CIA joined forces with Chile’s upper-middle and upper classes to sabotage the successful socialist experiment. 
6. Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability(New York: The New Press, 2003), 84. 
7. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 47. 
8. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 1, 2. 
9. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 14. 
10. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File, 153. When Mississippi Senator James Eaatland told Pinochet on a visit to Washington that he wanted to “hang all the communists” and “put all rabble rousers in jail,” Pinochet replied to him: “that’s exactly what I’m doing.” In Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 302, 303. 
11. Harald Edelstam interview by Phil Ochs, July 31, 1974, Woody Guthrie Museum Archive, Tulsa, Oklahoma. Characterizing Allende as a “peaceful, cultivated and humane man,” Edelstam told Ochs that the Chilean military used tanks and bombs to destroy textile and other factories where workers tried to resist the coup. 
12. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 31, 32. 
13. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 66, 67. 
14. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 87. 
15. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 158, 161. Leighton survived the attack but his wife was left paralyzed and he retreated from politics afterwards and the Christian Democrat-Popular Unity Alliance withered. 
16. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 7, 11, 23, 171. 

17. Dinges and Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row, 243. 

Featured image: Source: americasquarterly.org

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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***

Declassified sits down with the former president of Ecuador who granted Julian Assange asylum in London. He talks about dealing with the British, how the US seeks to control his country and the lawfare campaign against him.

On a cloudy Saturday morning in the middle of June 2012, Australian journalist Julian Assange walked into the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, London.

He was a hunted man. Over the past two years, he’d been revealing the secrets, in alliance with the world’s largest newspapers, of the US’s so-called War on Terror, an extraordinary explosion of violence which had been raging for more than a decade.

Britain’s Supreme Court had days before approved his extradition to Sweden to be questioned over sexual assault allegations, for which he was never charged. The case was dropped in 2019 after a review of the evidence.

This obscure embassy in London had barely garnered a single line in the news media in its history. But over the next seven years it would become a global story involving assassination plots, industrial levels of surveillance, and finally the British police forcibly evicting Assange in April 2019.

When Assange walked into the embassy, the president of Ecuador was Rafael Correa, a US-trained economist who had assumed power five years before in 2007. He was a key figure in the “pink tide” of left-wing governments that took office across Latin America in the 2000s and would serve for a decade.

Correa is now living in Brussels, Belgium, after himself being granted political asylum to avoid persecution by Ecuador, the state he once headed.

In an ironic twist of fate, Correa and Assange, who has been in maximum-security Belmarsh prison for three and a half years, now share a lawyer as they both battle extradition. We are meeting at the offices of this lawyer. A giant Free Assange sign greets visitors at the entrance.

In a dark wood panelled room looking out onto the street, Correa tells me of that June day his foreign minister told him Assange had entered the embassy in London. “We started studying his case,” Correa says.

In August 2012 – “after two months of studying his dossier” – Correa’s government granted Assange asylum to protect him from persecution by the US government for his journalistic activities.

“There was not any possibility for him to have a fair process, that was not possible,” Correa says. “I refer to the United States, there was too much public pressure, government pressure, media pressure against him.”

British negotiations

Over the next five years, his government would enter protracted negotiations with the British authorities, who had enacted a secret campaign, codenamed Operation Pelican, to get Assange out of the embassy. Correa is withering about the UK’s attitude to these negotiations.

“They are historically an imperial power so they believe sometimes they continue with this power,” he says of the British. “Anyway, against us that doesn’t work. And, yes, they were very rude. They wanted to impose their laws, their criteria, and we didn’t accept that.”

He continues:

“We have, as a sovereign country, the right to grant asylum to anybody without giving any explanation. But we gave an explanation because we considered the British, the American government, the Swedish government, but we didn’t have to do that.”

Correa says British pressure escalated soon after Assange entered the embassy.

“There was a moment where the British authorities threatened us that they would enter our embassy,” Correa says. “But that was against international rights and absolutely illegal, but also silly…Why? Because they have many more embassies around the world than we do.”

He pauses.

“So if they gave to the world such a bad example, the worst consequences will be against them. Because later, without any pretext, any reason, anybody could enter, in any country, their embassies.”

Ironically, the British pressure was much more blunt than Correa was receiving from the Americans.

“Frankly, I don’t remember the American government threatening us like the British government when they said that they can enter our embassy,” Correa says. “We didn’t receive from the American government, as long as I remember, any threat like this.”

With Assange granted asylum by a friendly country like Ecuador, he should have been allowed safe passage out of the UK.

“Of course, the British are used to being obeyed, not to negotiate with a third-world country,” Correa says. “They tried to deal with us like a subordinate country.”

Then Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño with Julian Assange at the embassy in London, 16 June 2013. (Photo: Xavier Granja Cedeño / Ecuador foreign ministry)

‘No possibility of fair process’

Correa tells me he has only ever spoken to Assange once, when he was interviewed by him for The Julian Assange Show, a short-lived interview series mostly done before he went into the embassy.

“I don’t know Julian Assange,” Correa tells me. “I have never talked to him on the telephone or met him in person. You want my honest personal position? I don’t agree with all the things that Julian Assange did, but that is irrelevant.”

He adds:

“The main point here is that he didn’t have any possibility of having a fair legal process in the United States. So absolutely we had a sovereign right to grant Julian Assange political asylum.”

But Correa is not optimistic about the end goal of the Americans and British now they have their hands on him.

“They want to kill him,” he says. “They are destroying him. They already destroyed him. My lawyer, and we are having this interview in my lawyer’s office in Brussels, well, he’s also Julian Assange’s lawyer and he can tell you that he’s absolutely destroyed as a human being. So they already destroyed Julian Assange.”

Correa continues:

“What they want to do is make an example of Julian Assange: you can see what happened with someone who dared to reveal our secrets. But what secrets did Julian Assange reveal? War crimes. We have to thank him. Instead of that they are killing him.”

Will Assange ever be free again? I ask. “I am very pessimistic. I don’t think so. They want to make an example of Assange: you cannot pass these red lines, you cannot deal with us, you cannot reveal our crimes. That is the message.”

He continues:

“I realise very well, I was president for ten years, that countries must have confidential information. But there are limits. You cannot hide war crimes. And even more, you can find a double standard here. Why? Because strictly speaking, Julian Assange didn’t publish the information.

“The information was published by the New York Times, by Der Spiegel in Germany, by El Pais in Spain, the Guardian in the UK. Why are they not being punished, being persecuted? Because they are the strongest part of the chain. They selected the weakest part of the chain: Julian Assange.”

‘Captured by the CIA’

When Assange was in the Ecuadorian embassy it likely became the most surveilled premises in the world. In June, the British government admitted that Julian Assange’s long-time lawyer Jennifer Robinson was likely the subject of “covert surveillance which breached her human rights”. Ecuadorian officials inevitably received the same treatment.

“We knew that moment there – and we continue to know – that we were under surveillance,” Correa says. “Even more, we engaged a special security company in order to protect the embassy, to protect Julian Assange, it was called UC Global from Spain. And they betrayed us. They sold the information to the CIA. They were, if you want, captured by the CIA.”

It was later revealed that it was worse than surveillance. In September 2021, Yahoo News published a story based on the testimony of 30 ex-US officials showing the CIA had sketched plans to kidnap or kill Assange in London. Correa says he read the article. Did it shock him?

“Of course, but it didn’t surprise me because we are used to that. This is Latin America’s history.” He adds: “One thing is very clear: for the American government Julian Assange is an enemy” and they want to “destroy his freedoms, his reputation, and perhaps his life”.

It has been striking over recent years how Latin American leaders have led the fight for Assange’s freedom, from Cristina Kirchner in Argentina to Evo Morales in Bolivia.

Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador has even shown the infamous Collateral Murder video in his presidential press conference, offered Assange asylum and handed President Biden a letter when they met pleading for Assange’s release.

Why is it this continent leading this press freedom case of world-historical importance?

“I don’t have an answer for that,” Correa says. “I am surprised, shocked, because Julian Assange was betrayed by journalists around the world, by governments around the world, by his own government, the Australian government.”

He adds:

“If we had an Ecuadorian citizen suffering these kinds of pressures, persecution, illegal situation, our duty is to defend him, but the Australian government doesn’t care.”

Press freedom 

When Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador, much of the British press was looking for attack lines. One major one was that Correa was cracking down on press freedom in Ecuador.

The Financial Times, for example, wrote: “Assange was overlooking Correa’s worsening record when it comes to respecting freedom of the press”.

“That is propaganda,” Correa tells me. “Can you give me an example of an attack against press freedom? But because we always looked for the truth, because we used to respond to the lies of some journalists, we are against press freedom…It’s because we are against lies, against manipulation.”

Correa’s administration was trying to break up the oligarchal control of the media, which is particularly pronounced in Latin America.

In fact, one example of the attack on press freedom cited by the FT was an anti-monopoly law which proposed shareholders and directors of media companies with more than 6% of national media companies should divest to other non-media interests.

“You have to be absolutely aware that the instrument used to maintain the status quo in Latin America is the media,” Correa tells me. “You have to ask this question: to whom does this media belong? To the elites in order to continue with the control of our countries. And they are going to be against any government trying to change the really hard, tough Latin American situation. For instance, we continue to be one of the most unequal regions in the world.”

Regional strategy

When Correa stepped down in 2017, the candidate nominated to fight the next election for his Alianza País party was Lenín Moreno. Moreno had been Correa’s vice president for six years, but after he won the 2017 election, he flipped.

Correa’s relatively moderate social democratic programme saw extreme poverty in Ecuador nearly halve, inequality fall dramatically, and social spending as a percentage of GDP nearly double.

But Moreno began steadily undoing the progressive reforms of the Correa administration, reintegrating Ecuador into the Washington Consensus economic infrastructure—and getting close to the US.

A campaign of what has been termed “lawfare” was launched against officials from the Correa administration. Many had to flee the country.

Moreno’s successor as vice president, Jorge Glas, was arrested and sentenced to six years in prison on bribery charges. He was released in April this year, but was rearrested the following month. Correa himself was targeted.

“It’s a regional strategy, not just against me,” Correa says. “It’s against [former Brazilian president] Lula, against Evo Morales. Cristina Kirchner…So when you have this kind of real strategy, there is no coincidence. It’s a regional strategy and that can happen only if the American embassies in our countries are backing that.”

Correa believes his administration’s granting of asylum to Assange is partly to blame.

“Of course part of this political persecution that I have received is because of Julian Assange. Also I cancelled the agreement to have an American base in our country in 2009. I stopped that. These are things that the American authorities do not forgive.”

In 2009, Correa refused to renew the lease for the US military base at the coastal city of Manta in western Ecuador. “We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorian base,” he said. The Americans didn’t agree.

Any left-wing leader in Latin America knows that their biggest foe is the US, which has designated the Western Hemisphere as its area of influence since 1823. But during recent history, US methods of ridding the region of unwanted governments have diversified away from straight military coups like Guatemala in 1954 or Chile in 1973.

“It’s very difficult to have, especially in South America, a military invasion from the United States, that is not possible,” Correa says. “But there are more fine, if you want, ways in order to destabilise a government that they don’t like. For instance, financing the opposition groups, for instance, NGOs, and they receive this money, the financing, from the National Endowment for Democracy that everybody knows is the financial branch of the CIA.”

President Trump meets with Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, in the Oval Office of the White House, 12 February 2020. (Photo: Joyce N. Boghosian / White House)

Lawfare

But Correa says it’s not just the US that wants him and his legacy destroyed. “There is also the media hate, the elite hate…to try to conserve, to maintain the status quo. We are a danger for the status quo. We are a danger for their privileges.”

In April 2020, an Ecuadorian court sentenced Correa to eight years in prison after finding him guilty on corruption charges. Correa was accused over a $6,000 paymentto his private account, which he says was a loan.

“Eight years prison for a payment of $6,000,” he says. “One of the proofs is that I received from a common fund that we had at the presidency. They said that they were bribes. $6,000 put in my personal account in a public bank. But they have nothing. It’s just a set up against us.”

The sentence came hours before he was going to register himself as a candidate in the 2021 presidential election.

“In this way, they prevented me from returning to my country,” he says. “They prevented me from being a candidate and they made Lasso president.”

Guillermo Lasso, a rightwing banker who was embroiled in the Pandora Papers offshore tax leaks, narrowly won the 2021 election.

“They are not just stealing our reputation, our stability, they are stealing our democracies,” Correa says. “But because all these attacks are against left-wing leaders, nobody cares.”

The same thing happened in Brazil when Lula was put in prison in 2018 on corruption charges, which were eventually shown to be politically motivated. He was in prison for the elections the same year.

“They prevented Lula from being a candidate and they made Bolsonaro, a fascist, president of Brazil,” Correa adds.

The betrayal

Up until 2017, Moreno had been an ally and a key figure in the ‘Citizens’ Revolution’ that transformed Ecuador during Correa’s 10 years in charge. Why did he suddenly flip when he became president and try to destroy the whole movement he had been part of?

“One of the strongest hypotheses is that Lenín Moreno is corrupted,” Correa tells me. “We realise very well now. We didn’t know that moment there, but now we know that he had a secret account in Panama. We have the number, we have everything.

“So perhaps the American government knew that before us, and they put Moreno under control. Otherwise it’s very difficult to understand what was the switch of Moreno from our political programme, progressive programme, to the far right programme and to be absolutely subordinate to the United States.”

He continues:

“One proof is that just one week after Lenín Moreno took office, he received Paul Manafort, the campaign chief of Donald Trump, and Moreno offered to Manafort to give Assange to the American government.

“You have several testimonies of people who were in this meeting in Ecuador in the presidential palace one week after Lenín Moreno took office. So that moment there, he was negotiating with Julian Assange already.”

In April 2019, likely as part of this deal, Moreno rescinded Assange’s asylum and invited the British police into the Ecuadorian embassy to snatch the WikiLeaks founder. It was a watershed moment.

“The country was humiliated,” Correa says. “Nobody else will trust Latin American countries in order to look for a political asylum. The damage is huge. It’s huge and lasting. And, even more, it is against our constitution. You can see the Article 41 of our Constitution. This article explicitly prohibits giving to the persecutors someone persecuted. So he [Moreno] broke our constitution.

“But there is no problem as long as you are acting according to the United States government or according to the media, the elites, and against Correa, that is perhaps the most important point.”

It is clear that the pressure and stress of the extradition case and the turmoil in Ecuador has had a personal impact on Correa. He speaks quickly, rushing to express his defence against the constant attacks. He has a noticeable nervous energy, tapping his foot on the floor incessantly.

I ask Correa how he feels about it all.

“For me it’s very hard,” he says. “It’s very sad, very disappointing, that it happened. We have to continue fighting in order to recover the country.”

Charles and Camilla

Correa says that Britain had a particularly colonial way of dealing with his country.

“We tried to have a good relationship with any country in the world but in a framework of mutual respect,” he tells me. “But it’s clear that the UK disrespects a country like Ecuador, it was not just the case of Julian Assange.”

Recently, Evo Morales told Declassified that Britain still has a “totally colonial mindset”. I ask Correa if he agrees. “Unfortunately, yes,” he replies and then gives another example.

“In 2009, the British ambassador called me and told me that Prince Charles with Camilla will come to the country to visit our Galapagos Islands. We were very honoured to have Prince Charles and Camilla. But the British ambassador not just told me, but ordered me, to receive Prince Charles on Sunday. And I told him, ‘Come on, ambassador, Sunday is my family day. I work from Monday until Saturday and try to dedicate my Sundays to my family.’”

British ambassador Linda Cross insisted on Sunday. Correa then remonstrated “but he’s coming for vacation so we can receive him on Monday, we have a very nice ceremony at the Presidential Palace every Monday, the changing of the Presidential Guard. It was a very beautiful ceremony. We can invite Prince Charles with Camilla. There are a lot of people in the central park in front of the presidential palace. He can say hello to them.”

Ambassador Cross continued to insist it must be Sunday.

“Finally, I sent my vice president to receive Prince Charles and Camilla, and I realised very well that they didn’t forgive me because next year I had to go to London. I was invited by the London School of Economics and other universities to give some speeches. And nobody received me as president of Ecuador at the airport in London.”

This treatment is indicative of a continent that doesn’t exercise the British government, says Correa.

“We are not important for the UK government.”

*

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Matt Kennard is chief investigator at Declassified UK. He was a fellow and then director at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Follow him on Twitter @kennardmatt

Featured image: Former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa. (Photo: Phil Miller / Declassified UK)

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Australia has a mixed relationship with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.  Irritation, dismissal and even the occasional openly hostile comment, have registered.  But in 1994, the Toonen decision filtered through the Australian legal process, leading the federal government to remove archaically noxious provisions in the Tasmanian criminal code criminalising sodomy.

The UNHRC has since found Australia’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to be patchy.  In November 2017, the body released its observations in a five-year review of the Commonwealth’s record noting glaring problems of protection in such areas as refugees and asylum seekers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, gender-based violence, the rights of LGBTI people and racism and religious intolerance.

The then Australian Human Rights Commissioner Edward Santow was left red-faced in making his responding remarks.

“The core message from the UN Human Rights Committee was that we must work harder and smarter to protect the human rights of all people in Australia.”

Since that report, climate change activism, conducted through various legal systems and processes, has become increasingly influential.  The plight of specifically vulnerable populations, including First Nations Peoples and children before the impacts of such unaddressed change, has become an increasingly active area of litigation and contention.

The September 22 decision by the UNHRC regarding the human rights of Australia’s Torres Strait Islanders vis-à-vis climate change is yet another step in the journey of redress.  In their decision, the Committee, after examining a joint complaint filed by eight Australian nationals and six of their children, found that Australia had failed to adequately protect Indigenous Torres Strait Islanders against the adverse impacts of climate change, thereby violating their rights to enjoy their culture and be free from arbitrary interferences with their private life, family and home.

The authors of the complaint hail from the four islands of Boigu, Masig, Warraber and Poruma.  As the decision notes, they “reside in low-lying islands [and] are among the most vulnerable populations to the impact of climate change.”  Citing observations by the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA), the effects of climate change are outlined, including impacts on the islands, marine and coastal ecosystems and resources, and, by virtue of that, “the life, livelihoods and unique culture of Torres Strait Islanders.”

Other climatic phenomena are also noted, including rises in sea level causing flooding and erosion, and rises in temperature producing instances of coral bleaching, reef death, a decline in seabeds and the reduction of “nutritionally and culturally important marine species.”

Each island has faced a number of specific challenges: the village on Boigu has become an annual recipient of heavy flooding.  A small area of the island has been detached by relentless erosion.  A cyclone in March 2019 caused severe flooding and erosion while destroying infrastructure on Masig. A metre of land is lost each year, while family graves have been destroyed by tidal surges.  Warraber has witnessed high tides and strong winds, inundating the village centre every two or three years.  Poruma has lost much of its sand over the past few decades.

The Committee noted that Australia had failed “to adopt timely adequate adaptation measures to protect the authors’ collective ability to maintain their traditional way of life, to transmit to their children and future generations their culture and traditions and use of land and sea resources”.  While seawall construction had, in some cases, been completed and was in others ongoing, the delays in initiating them constituted a violation of the “positive obligation to protect the authors’ right to enjoy their minority culture” under Article 27 of the ICCPR.

For those same reasons, the Committee also found that Article 17, which imposes positive obligations on the State party to take measures protecting home, private life and family, was breached.

While the Committee majority did not find that the Australian government had violated the right to life (Article 6 of the ICCPR), Committee Member Duncan Laki Muhumuza thought otherwise.  Despite Canberra’s mitigating measures, “there is an appalling outcry from the authors that has not been addressed and hence, the authors’ right to life will continue to be violated and their lives endangered.”  Australia was, just as the Netherlands was deemed in the Urgenda Foundation case of 2019, liable for preventing foreseeable loss of life from the impact of climate change.

In response to their findings, the Committee concluded that Australia, as a State party, had to provide adequate compensation to the complainants for harm suffered; engage them in meaningful consultations on necessary assessments; continue implementing necessary measures to continue a safe existence; review the effectiveness of such measures and resolve deficiencies as soon as practicable.

Yessie Mosby, one of the claimants from the Torres Strait Islander applicants, left few in doubt about the findings.  “I am over the moon.  I thank heavenly father, I thank my ancestors and I thank all the people who fought and helped us in this case.”

Mosby was prompted to make the application to the Committee after finding what he claims to have been his great-grandmother’s remains disturbed by rising seas.  “We were picking her up like shells off the beach,” he claimed.  “That drove me to stand and fight for our future generations.”

The significance of this decision lies in developing an alternative avenue for complainants in the field of environmental law and human rights.  According to Committee member Hélène Tigroudja, the finding “marks a significant development as the Committee has created a pathway for individuals to assert claims where national systems have failed to take appropriate measures to protect those most vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change on the enjoyment of their human rights.”  While such decisions are non-binding on governments, they do have a degree of persuasive heft.

The previous Coalition Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, made a point of ridiculing efforts to cap emissions and rein in the rapacity of the fossil fuel industry.  The man who will forever be associated with brandishing a lump of coal in parliament had little time for the plight of Pacific Island states or First Nations people facing the worst effects of climate catastrophe.  The residents from Boigu, Masig, Warraber and Poruma will be anticipating a rather different response from the Labor government of Anthony Albanese.

*

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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: Torres Strait Islands (Photo by Kelisi, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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“Lest we forget, the birth of modern physics and cosmology was achieved by Galileo, Kepler and Newton breaking free not from the close confining prison of faith (all three were believing Christians, of one sort or another) but from the enormous burden of the millennial authority of Aristotelian science. The scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not a revival of Hellenistic science but its final defeat.” (David Bentley Hart)

Introduction

We are all familiar with the Enlightenment (late 1600s to early 1800s), not least because we studied it in our history books in school. We also learned that before the Enlightenment – which brought about the gradual re-introduction of science into society – there were the medieval universities of philosophy, known as Scholasticism, that dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. What we don’t hear much about is the transition between the two, how science came to dominate thinking, who was involved, and what was there before.

The study of early science texts in the monastic schools contrasted with the superstitious and pantheistic thinking of ordinary people in the form of religious and political dissidents who also advocated early forms of communitarian ideology. The Scientific Revolution (1543-1687), carried out by people such as Nicolaus Copernicus(1473–1543), Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), Francis Bacon (1561–1626), René Descartes (1596–1650), Isaac Newton(1642–1727), etc., changed the way people thought about nature and created a profound crisis for the church, and the scientists themselves who had to figure out the role of god in this new way thinking, as well as deal with the dissidents who saw in the new science the basis for a democratic and socialist organisation of society itself. The legacy of the Enlightenment today, then, is the two traditions of liberal christianity and science on the one hand, and materialist pantheism, republicanism and socialism on the other. Both sides incorporated science as part of their ideology, but used it for very different ends.

Image: The only known image of Toland

“He was an assertor of Liberty
A lover of all sorts of Learning
A speaker of Truth
But no man’s follower, or dependant”

(John Toland’s self-composed epitaph emphasised his lifelong devotion to freedom,
knowledge, and individualism; a distinctly humanist approach to living.)

Scholasticism

From earliest times monasticism employed scientific learning to further the life of the monks and their understanding of the bible. Science was important for time-keeping and seasonal rites. Astronomy was particularly important for Christmas and the calculation of Easter dates each year. With the emergence of medieval universities in the 12th century much emphasis was laid on the rediscovered Aristotle and other scientific Greek thinkers. The monks even used the dialectical method in their discussions, a Greek method for establishing the truth through reasoned argumentation.

Dialectics were later on to become an important part of Marxist analysis of history in place of the determinism of the bible, whereby different opposing forces produce a revolutionary change after a long period of evolution, as opposed to the fixed aspect of god’s creation since the beginning of time, as described in the book of Genesis, for example. However, the dialectic was used in Scholasticism to reconcile Christian theology with scientific philosophy not to further the ends of science itself.

In a way it could be argued that the church was endeavouring to combat the rising new interest in science as it posed a threat to the basics of church thinking and teaching. The rise of Aristotelian ideas and their interpretation by the medieval Andalusian philosopher Averroes generated controversies in Christendom that led to the Catholic Church taking steps to deal with their implications, with Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) laying down an an acceptable interpretation of Aristotle, and the condemnation of Averroist doctrines in 1270 and 1277.

Thirteen propositions were listed as false and heretical, some related to Averroes’ doctrine of the soul and others directed against Aristotle’s theory of God as a passive unmoved mover. For example, the propositions “That human acts are not ruled by the providence of God”, “That the world is eternal”, and “That there was never a first human” had obvious signs of influence from scientific investigation and threatened basic tenets of Christian theology.

Moreover, Averroes argued that “scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy.”  The motive of Scholasticism then was to bring reason to the support of faith by using argumentation to silence all doubt and questioning while, at the same time, maintaining that faith was more important than reason.

On a political level Thomas Aquinas’ ideas reflected the hierarchical thinking of the church in that he considered “monarchy is the best form of government, because a monarch does not have to form compromises with other persons. Aquinas, however, held that monarchy in only a very specific sense was the best form of government – only when the king was virtuous is it the best form; otherwise if the monarch is vicious it is the worst kind.” Yet, “unless an agreement of all persons involved can be reached, a tyrant must be tolerated, as otherwise the political situation could deteriorate into anarchy, which would be even worse than tyranny.”

John Toland (1670–1722), the Irish rationalist philosopher, threw a spanner into the works when he suggested in his book, Christianity Not Mysterious (which was ordered to be burnt), that “the divine revelation of the Bible contains no true mysteries; rather, all the dogmas of the faith can be understood and demonstrated by properly trained reason from natural principles”, i.e., Natural Law – the “system of right or justice held to be common to all humans and derived from nature rather than from the rules of society.” In this case, the rules set by the Church.

From a political perspective Toland took a pantheistic approach to religion, the idea that god was ‘immanent’ or ‘in’ nature and not ruling over nature. Therefore, if nature had no need of hierarchy, then man had no need either. Toland believed that there was no need for hierarchy in the church or the state, “bishops and kings, in other words, were as bad as each other, and monarchy had no God-given sanction as a form of government.”

The Scientific Revolution

Image: Portrait of Newton at 46 by Godfrey Kneller, 1689

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” (Galileo Galilei)

By the early 18th century the new science and mechanical philosophy initiated by the Scientific Revolution had profoundly changed society as “developments in mathematics, physics, astronomy, biology (including human anatomy) and chemistry transformed the views of society about nature.” An ideological battle developed between Christian philosophers like Leibniz who tried “to locate the origin of force in a vast spiritual universe, and ultimately therefore in God” [1] and the Newtonians who believed in a “divine presence operated as an immaterial “aether” that offered no resistance to bodies, but could move them through the force of gravitation”, that is, an immanent or omnipresent god that was simply a part of nature.

Out of this influence of Newton there arose Enlightenment Deism, the idea that the universe is “a vast machine, created and set in motion by a creator being that continues to operate according to natural law without any divine intervention”. Deism would allow the scientists to continue doing science without the fear of excommunication from the Church, worried about the implications of mechanical philosophy on God’s role in the universe. Leibniz, critical of this theological sleight of hand, quipped: “God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion.”

Deism emphasized the concept of natural theology (that is, God’s existence is revealed through nature). Therefore, “Enlightenment Deism consisted of two philosophical assertions: (1) reason, along with features of the natural world, is a valid source of religious knowledge, and (2) revelation is not a valid source of religious knowledge.” In practice this meant the rejection of (1) all books (including the Bible) that claimed to contain divine revelation (2) the incomprehensible notion of the Trinity and other religious “mysteries”, and (3) reports of miracles, prophecies, etc. Thus, as Margaret C. Jacob writes:

“The new mechanical philosophy banished spiritual agencies, inherent tendencies, and anima from the universe. In their place were put explanations based upon those natural properties capable of mathematical calculation. Nature had to be observed and experienced, and wherever possible given mathematical expression. The physical universe became a place with spatial dimensions within which bodies moved at measurable speeds. Bodies moved one another by impulse, that is, my pushing one another and to explanations of the natural world based upon impulse we commonly ascribe the term ‘mechanical’.” [2]

For Leibniz though, this was political, as he perceived the new naturalistic and materialistic explanations of the universe were being used by ‘politically dangerous men’ to “disestablish churches and weaken the power of kings and courts.” [3]

The trial of Giordano Bruno by the Roman Inquisition. Bronze relief by Ettore Ferrari, Campo de’ Fiori, Rome.

Pantheism and Materialism

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?
(Lollard priest John Ball) 

Of course, Toland’s pantheism, Aquinas’s fear of anarchy, and Leibniz’s dread of politically dangerous men were all rooted in an awareness of “popular heresy and social protest coming from the lower orders of society.” [4] There were rumblings of dissent associated with radical groups steeped in centuries of paganism that had never been fully overcome by Christian theology. Pantheistic ideas could be found in animistic beliefs and tribal religions globally “as an expression of unity with the divine, specifically in beliefs that have no central polytheist or monotheist personas.” The idea of a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god was not recognised. The 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) popularised pantheism in the West through his book Ethics along with the earlier Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), an Italian friar who evangelized about a transcendent and infinite God, but was eventually burned at the stake in 1600 by the Roman Inquisition. As Jacob noted:

“The pantheistic materialism of seventeenth-century radicals owed its origin to the magical and naturalistic view of the universe which Christian churchmen and theologians had laboured for centuries to defeat. At the heart of this natural philosophy lay the notion that nature is a sufficient explanation or cause for the existence and workings of man and his physical environment. In other words, the separation of God from Creation, creature from creator, of matter from spirit, so basic to Christian orthodoxy and such a powerful justification for social hierarchy and even for absolute monarchy,  crumbles in the face of animistic and naturalistic explanations. God does not create ex nihilo; nature simply is and all people (and their environment) are part of this greater All.” [5]

Indeed, the earlier pagan religious practices had co-existed with Christianity, many of which the church had co-opted but the worship of saints (and Mary) almost seemed almost like the continuation of polytheism. As Christopher Scott Thompson writes:

“Paganism in this broader sense did not end with the Christian conversion, because it was never limited to “organized religion” in the first place. Regular people all over Europe continued to leave offerings for the fairies and the dead many centuries after the official conversion to Christianity. They didn’t think of themselves as “pagans” in any formal sense, but they still thought of the world around them as being filled with spirits and their daily spiritual practices reflected this worldview. They still believed in local fairy queens and fairy kings, entities that would have been understood as gods before the Christian conversion. They also retained a semi-polytheistic worldview in the veneration of saints, many of which were not recognized as saints officially by the church and a few of which were originally pre-Christian gods.”

Furthermore, the radical peasants used elements of paganism and and communitarian ideas in the bible to underpin their struggle against oppression by kings, queens, landowners and the aristocracy:

“Peasants resisting feudalism sometimes turned to this tradition of magic and spirit worship for aid against their oppressors. For instance, Emma Wilby’s The Visions of Isobel Gowdie documents how folk beliefs about fairy kings and the malevolent dead were used by magic practitioners in 17th century Scotland to curse feudal landowners. […] These practices existed alongside organized religion yet distinct from it, before the Christian conversion and after it. People cultivated relationships with the spirits of nature, the dead and other entities for help with their practical daily problems — including how to effectively resist oppression.”

In England, for example, the radicals organised in groups such as the Diggers, Ranters, Levellers, Muggletonians, Familists and Quakers, some of whom believed that the “Scripture foretold of a democratic order where property would be redistributed” [6], for example, in Acts 2:

“42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.”

Woodcut from a Levellers document by William Everard

Materialism reflected the pagan, pantheistic worldview, as it “holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions” (The idea that man created god, in stark contrast to the idealist view that god created man). This materialism was eventually combined with the aforementioned dialectics to form the basis of Marxian philosophy and change radical group ideology from pantheistic communitarianism to atheistic socialism. Thus, the non-hierarchical aspect of pantheism found its natural home in radical communitarian thought which was rejected by conservative forces, as Jacob states:

“At every turn they rejected mechanistic explanations that hinged upon the power of matter unassisted by spiritual forces separate from the natural order. To their mind, scientific materialism, whether mechanistic or pantheistic in its inclination, justified atheism, social levelling, political disorder, in short the turning of ‘the world upside down’.” [7]

The desire to turn ‘the world upside down’ was exhibited most famously by the religious and political dissidents known as the Diggers. They put their ideas into practice when they took over some common land in Surrey:

“The Council of State received a letter in April 1649 reporting that several individuals had begun to plant vegetables in common land on St George’s Hill, Weybridge near Cobham, Surrey at a time when harvests were bad and food prices high. Sanders reported that they had invited “all to come in and help them, and promise them meat, drink, and clothes.” They intended to pull down all enclosures and cause the local populace to come and work with them. They claimed that their number would be several thousand within ten days. “It is feared they have some design in hand.””

Their leader, Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist. The radical nature of the Diggers’ ideology is demonstrated in the difference between the Diggers and the Levellers, as, while the Levellers sought to “level the laws” (while maintaining the right to the ownership of real property), Winstanley sought “to level the ownership of real property itself, which is why he and his followers called themselves “True Levellers”.”

Winstanley underpinned this radical ideology in combined passages from the bible and pantheist thinking in his writings:

“In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things… And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him.”

Conclusion

While ultimately the Digger movement failed, the Enlightenment developed out of the Scientific Revolution as the 17th century bequeathed two contradictory traditions to the future. On the one hand there was the predominant “moderate and liberal Christianity wedded to the new science and supportive of strong monarchy within a constitutional framework” while, on the other hand, a republican tradition “in conformity with a pantheistic and materialistic understanding of nature.” [8] Two opposing traditions that are very much to the fore in politics today.

*

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

[1] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.27

[2] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.2

[3] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.31

[4] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.3

[5] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.3/4

[6] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.43

[7] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.45

[8] Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (A Cornerstone Book, 2006), p.36

Featured image: The French Academy of Sciences was established in 1666.

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***

On the first day of the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian President Gustavo Petro made his first address to the body. The speech sharply deviated from those of his conservative predecessors. Petro did not shy away from calling out global North countries for their role in the destruction of the environment and in the perpetuation of the War on Drugs, as a symptom of their capitalist greed. He accused

“You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing the jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison [the rainforest] is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.”

This is Petro’s first trip to the United States since he was inaugurated in August. He was received on Sunday night September 18 by hundreds of supporters in Queens, NY who manifested their support to his administration’s commitment to working for peace and ensuring the wellbeing of the Colombian people.

Así recibieron los colombianos y colombianas que residen en el sector neoyorquino de Queens al Presidente @petrogustavo. #ColombiaEnLaONU🇨🇴🇺🇳 pic.twitter.com/ccdqJQdD6F

— Presidencia Colombia 🇨🇴 (@infopresidencia) September 19, 2022

Below is a full transcription of his speech on September 20, 2022 to the United Nations General Assembly.

I come from one of the three most beautiful countries on Earth.

There is an explosion of life there. Thousands of multicolored species in the seas, in the skies, in the lands…I come from the land of yellow butterflies and magic. There in the mountains and valleys of all greens, not only do the abundant waters flow down, but also the torrents of blood. I come from a land of bloody beauty.

My country is not only beautiful, it is also violent.

How can beauty be conjugated with death, how can the biodiversity of life erupt with the dances of death and horror? Who is guilty of breaking the enchantment with terror? Who or what is responsible for drowning life in the routine decisions of wealth and interest? Who is leading us to destruction as a nation and as a people?

My country is beautiful because it has the Amazon jungle, the ChocóWar  jungle, the waters, the Andes mountain ranges, and the oceans. There, in those forests, planetary oxygen is emanated and atmospheric CO2 is absorbed. One of these CO2 absorbing plants, among millions of species, is one of the most persecuted on earth. At any cost, its destruction is sought: it is an Amazonian plant, the coca plant, sacred plant of the Incas. [It is in] a paradoxical crossroads.

The jungle that tries to save us, is at the same time, destroyed. To destroy the coca plant, they spray poisons, glyphosate in mass that runs through the waters, they arrest its growers and imprison them. For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, one million Latin Americans are killed and two million Afro-Americans are imprisoned in North America. Destroy the plant that kills, they shout from the North, but the plant is but one more of the millions that perish when they unleash the fire on the jungle. Destroying the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed by States and businessmen. The cry of scientists baptizing the rainforest as one of the great climatic pillars is unimportant.

For the world’s power relations, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that plagues them. The power relations are plagued by the addiction to money, to perpetuate themselves, to oil, to cocaine and to the hardest drugs to be able to anesthetize themselves more. Nothing is more hypocritical than the discourse to save the rainforest. The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you make war and play with it. The rainforest, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life.

The great sponge that absorbs planetary CO2 evaporates. The savior forest is seen in my country as the enemy to be defeated, as the weed to be extinguished.

Coca and the peasants who grow it, because they have nothing else to grow, are demonized. You are only interested in my country to spray poisons on our jungles, to take our men to jail and put our women in exclusion. You are not interested in the education of the child, but in killing its jungle and extracting coal and oil from its entrails. The sponge that absorbs the poison is useless, they prefer to throw more poisons into the atmosphere.

We serve them only to fill the emptiness and loneliness of their own society that leads them to live in the midst of drug bubbles. We hide from them their problems that they refuse to reform. It is better to declare war on the jungle, on its plants, on its people. While they let the forests burn, while hypocrites chase the plants with poisons to hide the disasters of their own society, they ask us for more and more coal, more and more oil, to calm the other addiction: that of consumption, of power, of money.

What is more poisonous for humanity, cocaine, coal or oil? The dictates of power have ordered that cocaine is the poison and must be pursued, even if it only causes minimal deaths by overdose, and even more by the mixtures necessitated by clandestinity, but coal and oil must be protected, even if their use could extinguish all of humanity.

These are the things of world power, things of injustice, things of irrationality, because world power has become irrational. They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its vitality, the lustful, the sinful; the guilty origin of the sadness of their societies, imbued with the unlimited compulsion to have and to consume. How to hide the loneliness of the heart, its dryness in the midst of societies without affection, competitive to the point of imprisoning the soul in solitude, if not by blaming the plant, the man who cultivates it, the libertarian secrets of the jungle.

According to the irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market that cuts back on existence, it is the fault of the jungle and those who inhabit it. The bank accounts have become unlimited, the money saved by the most powerful of the earth will not even be able to be spent in the time of the centuries. The sadness of existence produced by this artificial call to competition is filled with noise and drugs. The addiction to money and to having has another face: the addiction to drugs in people who lose the competition, in the losers of the artificial race in which they have transformed humanity.

The disease of loneliness will not be cured with glyphosate [sprayed] on the forests. It is not the rainforest that is to blame.

The culprit is their society educated in endless consumption, in the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness that allows the pockets of power to fill with money. The culprit of drug addiction is not the jungle, it is the irrationality of your world power. Try to give some reason to your power. Turn on the lights of the century again. The war on drugs has lasted 40 years, if we do not correct the course and it continues for another 40 years, the United States will see 2,800,000 young people die of overdose from fentanyl, which is not produced in our Latin America. It will see millions of Afro-Americans imprisoned in its private jails.

The Afro-prisoner will become a business of prison companies, a million more Latin Americans will die murdered, our waters and our green fields will be filled with blood, the dream of democracy will die in my America as well as in Anglo-Saxon America. Democracy will die where it was born, in the great western European Athens. By hiding the truth, they will see the jungle and democracies die. The war on drugs has failed.

The fight against the climate crisis has failed. There has been an increase in deadly consumption, from soft drugs to harder ones, genocide has taken place in my continent and in my country, millions of people have been condemned to prison, and to hide their own social guilt they have blamed the rainforest and its plants. They have filled speeches and policies with nonsense. I demand from here, from my wounded Latin America, to put an end to the irrational war on drugs. To reduce drug consumption we do not need wars, for this we need all of us to build a better society: a more caring society, more affectionate, where the intensity of life saves from addictions and new slavery. Do you want less drugs? Think of less profit and more love. Think about a rational exercise of power.

Do not touch with your poisons the beauty of my homeland, help us without hypocrisy to save the Amazon Rainforest to save the life of humanity on the planet. You gathered the scientists, and they spoke with reason. With mathematics and climatological models they said that the end of the human species was near, that its time is no longer of millennia, not even of centuries. Science set the alarm bells ringing and we stopped listening to it.

The war served as an excuse for not taking the necessary measures. When action was most needed, when speeches were no longer useful, when it was indispensable to deposit money in funds to save humanity, when it was necessary to move away from coal and oil as soon as possible, they invented war after war after war. They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, Libya and Syria.

They invaded in the name of oil and gas. They discovered in the 21st century the worst of their addictions: addiction to money and oil. Wars have served them as an excuse not to act against the climate crisis. Wars have shown them how dependent they are on what will kill the human species.

If you observe that the peoples are filling up with hunger and thirst and migrating by the millions towards the north, towards where the water is; then you enclose them, build walls, deploy machine guns, shoot at them. You expel them as if they were not human beings, you reproduce five times the mentality of those who politically created the gas chambers and the concentration camps, you reproduce on a planetary scale 1933.

The great triumph of the attack on reason. Do you not see that the solution to the great exodus unleashed on your countries is to return to water filling the rivers and the fields full of nutrients? The climate disaster fills us with viruses that swarm over us, but you do business with medicines and turn vaccines into commodities. You propose that the market will save us from what the market itself has created. The Frankenstein of humanity lies in letting the market and greed act without planning, surrendering the brain and reason. Kneeling human rationality to greed.

What is the use of war if what we need is to save the human species? What is the use of NATO and empires, if what is coming is the end of intelligence? The climate disaster will kill hundreds of millions of people and listen well, it is not produced by the planet, it is produced by capital.

The cause of the climate disaster is capital. The logic of coming together only to consume more and more, produce more and more, and for some to earn more and more produces the climate disaster. They applied the logic of extended accumulation to the energy engines of coal and oil and unleashed the hurricane: the ever deeper and deadlier chemical change of the atmosphere. Now in a parallel world, the expanded accumulation of capital is an expanded accumulation of death.

From the lands of jungle and beauty. There where they decided to make an Amazon rainforest plant an enemy, extradite and imprison its growers, I invite you to stop the war, and to stop the climate disaster. Here, in this Amazon Rainforest, there is a failure of humanity.

Behind the bonfires that burn it, behind its poisoning, there is an integral, civilizational failure of humanity. Behind the addiction to cocaine and drugs, behind the addiction to oil and coal, there is the real addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, to profit and money. This is the enormous deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity.

I propose to you as president of one of the most beautiful countries on earth, and one of the most bloodied and violated, to end the war on drugs and allow our people to live in peace. I call on all of Latin America for this purpose. I summon the voice of Latin America to unite to defeat the irrational that martyrs our bodies. I call upon you to save the Amazon Rainforest integrally with the resources that can be allocated worldwide to life.

If you do not have the capacity to finance the fund for the revitalization of the forests, if it weighs more to allocate money to weapons than to life, then reduce the foreign debt to free our own budgetary spaces and with them, carry out the task of saving humanity and life on the planet. We can do it if you don’t want to. Just exchange debt for life, for nature. I propose, and I call upon Latin America to do so, to dialogue in order to end the war. Do not pressure us to align ourselves in the fields of war.

It is time for PEACE.

Let the Slavic peoples talk to each other, let the peoples of the world talk to each other. War is only a trap that brings the end of time closer in the great orgy of irrationality.

From Latin America, we call on Ukraine and Russia to make peace. Only in peace can we save life in this land of ours. There is no total peace without social, economic and environmental justice. We are also at war with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace among nations. Without social justice, there is no social peace.

*

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Featured image: Gustavo Petro addressed the UN General Assembly on September 20, 2022. Photo: UN

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***

The Marshall Islands decide to halt talks with the US regarding the extension of the conditions of the Compact of Free Association over a 70-year-long dispute regarding nuclear testing.

The Marshall Islands suspended major discussions with the US on Friday over longstanding concerns, stretching back 70 years, pertaining to nuclear testing on the atolls in the middle of the Pacific.

Talks in Majuro to extend the conditions of the Compact of Free Association, an important international agreement between the United States, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau, were called off.

The Marshall Islands have refused to continue discussions unless Washington addresses the persistent health, environmental, and economic difficulties caused by US nuclear testing on the picturesque atolls from 1946 to 1958.

During the second round of negotiations in July, the Marshalls presented a potential settlement deal to US negotiators, but have received no response.

Marshall Islands’ parliament’s speaker, Kenneth Kedi, said “We submitted our proposal in writing, but there has been no answer or counter-proposal from the US,” adding that “We are negotiating in good faith.”

The Marshallese team renegotiating the deal is refusing to fly to Washington for additional talks.

Kedi said Friday that it was “not prudent to spend over $100,000 for our delegation to travel to Washington” unless their problems were addressed.

According to a statement issued by the US embassy in Majuro, Joseph Yun, the US special envoy for Compact negotiations, will meet with Islands’ President David Kabua next week in Washington “to continue to advance the discussions.”

Marshall Islands-US relations

In the midst of persistent tensions between Beijing and Washington, the Marshall Islands nation is one of the most important US allies in the Pacific.

The US’ attitude, however, delays the pace of the discussions, straining ties between the Marshall Islands and Washington on the eve of next week’s summit of Pacific Island leaders at the White House.

The previous 20-year financing arrangement ends at the end of September 2023, therefore US officials hoped for a quick resolution to the Compact talks.

However, the Marshall Islands’ grievances over nuclear testing continue to be ignored by the US administration.

The chairman of the country’s National Nuclear Commission, Alson Kelen, said

“The cancellation of the talks indicates the seriousness of this issue for the Marshall Islands,” adding that “This is the best time for us to stand up for our rights. We live with the problem (from the nuclear tests). We know the big picture: bombs tested, people relocated from their islands, and people exposed to nuclear fallout. We can’t change that.”

Kelen argued, instead, that

“What we can do now is work on the details for the funding needed to mitigate the problems from the nuclear legacy.”

*

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Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

US “Nuclear Primacy” and “Blitzkrieg Nuclear War”: Russia Responds to America’s Plan to Win World War III

By Eric Zuesse, September 24, 2022

The U.S. Government no longer designs nuclear weapons to prevent World War III, but instead to win World War III.

The Rise of Trussonomics

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, September 26, 2022

Kwasi Kwarteng, the newly minted Chancellor of the Exchequer, has given us a sense of what Trussonomics looks like in his “mini budget” announced on September 23.  In line with this new policy, undertaken at a time of stroppily rising inflation (currently 9.9%), more fiscal stimulus is promised: £30 billion per year (or 1.2% of GDP), and mammoth subsidies to soften energy bills with costs that could rise to £150 billion.

Video: Dr. Naomi Wolf and the Big Tech/Government Censorship Machine

By Dr. Naomi Wolf and Kristina Borjesson, September 25, 2022

After author and women’s health journalist Dr. Naomi Wolf was de-platformed and attacked on Twitter, discovery granted in two freedom of speech lawsuits revealed that the CDC had colluded with social media to censor her.

“The Woman King”: Traditional Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade

By Abayomi Azikiwe, September 25, 2022

An historical fictionalized account centered around the Agojie, the woman warriors of the Dahomey civilization in West Africa encompassing what is modern day Republic of Benin, comes at a time when Africa is continuing to exert its personality and viewpoints on continental and global issues.

What Was COVID-19?

By Emanuel Pastreich, September 25, 2022

As we survey the wreckage that was our civilization, as we are pushed and shoved by our fellow citizens now reduced to waves and waves of the zombie apocalypse, we are forced to ask ourselves the big question.

Ukrainian Army War Crimes Include Shelling of Ambulences, Firetrucks, and Rescue Workers in the Donbass Republics—Similar to Israelis and U.S. Backed Terrorists in Syria

By Eva Bartlett, September 25, 2022

In the more than eight years of bombing the civilians of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Ukraine has committed untold numbers of war crimes. These include bombing residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools, parks—including with prohibited heavy weapons and banned cluster munitions—and, since late July, raining banned “Petal” mines down on populated civilian areas, including the very center of Donetsk, including as recently as September 7.

Criticizing the British Monarchy Now a Criminal Offense

By Kurt Nimmo, September 25, 2022

It should probably not be a surprise average Britons protesting against the expensive relic known as the Crown were arrested during the ostentatious funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II.

Defending Palestinian Civil Society. Understanding Canada’s Role

By Michael Welch, Michael Lynk, and Bianca Mugyenyi, September 25, 2022

On August 18, in Ramallah, a massive Israeli army convoy proceeded to the offices of seven Palestinian civil society organizations, raided them, confiscated equipment, and sealed the entrances closed with an iron plate. The organizations were branded illegal on the suspicion (never proven) that these organizations were linked with terrorism.

Is It Time to Dissolve the British Commonwealth?

By Dr. Mathew Maavak, September 24, 2022

Commonwealth membership benefits for the most part are pretty much nonexistent. This begs the question of why an aspiring superpower like India would demean itself by remaining in a colonially-defined international compact. A quick glance at the Commonwealth map will reveal a scattered morass of mediocrity, inequality and/or poverty.

Criticism of the Pharma Cartel and Its ‘Business with Disease’ Is Becoming Mainstream

By Paul Anthony Taylor, September 24, 2022

Pointing out that research into medicines can be done separate from the pharma industry, at universities and other independent research institutes, Smiers argues that substantial research funds should be established, fed from public funds, with independent committees deciding which diseases and researchers funding should be directed towards.

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).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

In the official Chinese and Russian statements regarding Thursday’s meeting between Presidents XI Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Samarkand lies not a scintilla of evidence that China’s support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has weakened.

In my view, if Putin decides to up the ante in Ukraine, Xi would be likely to support him. Most analysts of China doubt that this would extend to China’s stirring up trouble in the South China Sea or opposite Taiwan, but most Chinese analysts did not expect China to tolerate, much less endorse, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. So your guess is as good as mine.

Underneath the ‘Dear Friend’ professions of solidarity lies a concrete-reinforced commitment, so to speak, indeed a China-Russia entente that bespeaks an intention to coordinate closely – including before any major military initiatives against the U.S. or its proxies.

Some of the mutual statements of solidarity may sound boilerplate, but it is important to remember that the boilerplate has acquired additional steel reinforcement, so to speak, in the crucible of this year 2022. Each country has pledged strong support for the other’s “core interests” – for Russia, re. Ukraine; for China, re. Taiwan.

The “core interest” mutual support was given prominence in the official Chinese readout of the Putin-Xi conversation:

“President XI emphasized that China will work with Russia to extend strong mutual support on issues concerning each other’s core interests….

“President Putin noted that the world is undergoing multiple changes, yet the only thing that remains unchanged is the friendship and mutual trust between Russia and China.

“The Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination is as stable as mountains. … The Russian side is firmly committed to the one-China principle and condemns provocative moves by individual countries on issues concerning China’s core interests. Russia will consolidate and deepen bilateral and multilateral communication and collaboration with China and expand cooperation in key areas such as trade and energy.”

In his remarks, Putin emphasized the “key role” played by “the foreign policy tandem of Moscow and Beijing” in ensuring global and regional stability and took another potshot at the undefined “rules-based” order promoted by Washington. He also expressed appreciation for “our Chinese friends’ balanced position in connection with the Ukraine crisis.”

Putin also fleshed out the progress in Russia’s trade with China:

“Last year, trade grew by 35 percent to over $140 billion. In the first seven months of this year, our trade increased by another 25 percent. I am convinced that by the end of the year we will reach new record high levels, and in the near term, as agreed, we will bring our annual trade to $200 billion or more.”

On a personal note, in the early 60s when I was responsible for analyzing Sino-Soviet relations, mutual trade amounted to $200 million. Granted: bilateral relations back then were in the pits. But still, $200 million to $200 billion is something we never imagined in our wildest dreams.

The Chinese and Russians can thank the reckless-feckless team of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, as well as their immediate predecessors for helping that increase to be as large as it it.

Finally, right after the Xi-Putin meeting yesterday, ABC’s Martha Raddatz read the following words of wisdom into the TV camera:

“Given what has happened in Ukraine, with Russia losing territory and its forces exposed as weak and hapless, even if Russia gets nothing [from XI], the meeting will signal an anti-Western bond which is significant – it IS significant.”

I believe Martha got that last part right. We shall have to wait and see how this all plays out regarding Ukraine and Taiwan.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

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***

It’s impossible to know whether the new British Prime Minister is genuinely serious about constructive policy or not.  She is certainly interested in greasing palms and calming the storms, if only to delay the inevitable.  Having proven herself the shallowest of candidates to succeed her disgraced, not wholly banished predecessor, Liz Truss has leapt into economic policy as her starting point.

Kwasi Kwarteng, the newly minted Chancellor of the Exchequer, has given us a sense of what Trussonomics looks like in his “mini budget” announced on September 23.  In line with this new policy, undertaken at a time of stroppily rising inflation (currently 9.9%), more fiscal stimulus is promised: £30 billion per year (or 1.2% of GDP), and mammoth subsidies to soften energy bills with costs that could rise to £150 billion.

Cuts have been promised across the board, from income tax to stamp duty on home purchases.  The 45% additional rate of income tax for those earning above £150,000 will be scrapped, leaving the rate of 40% for those having incomes above £50,271.  A cut in the basic rate of income tax from 20% to 19% will be brought forward to April 2023.  Corporation tax would remain at 19%, and not increased to 25% as had been initially planned.

High tax rates, the Chancellor claimed in a Commons statement, “damage Britain’s competitiveness”.  The focus, instead, should be on growth.  “For too long in this country, we have indulged in a fight over redistribution.  Now, we need to focus on growth, not just how we tax and spend.”  It was time to get away from the “vicious cycle of stagnation” and focus, instead on “a virtuous circle of growth”.

This is a curious statement, given that virtue here will only shine upon those on the wealthy scale, who will be receiving twice as much aid in softening their living costs as the poorest.  Companies, notably oil and gas entities, will also continue to rake in staggering profits without fear of windfall taxation.

While one should never treat the markets as omniscient, there was something ironic in how Kwarteng’s announcement was greeted in an environment of high natural gas prices, sluggish growth and labour shortages.  The sacred British pound received a terrible battering, falling to a 37-year low against the US dollar.  Government bonds were sold off at a rate unseen since 1989, when the Tory heroine, Margaret Thatcher, was still clinging to power.

Another feature of the new policy is that old neoliberal favourite, deregulation.  This is hardly surprising, given that two authors of the 2012 tribute to the free market, Britannia Unchained, now occupy the posts of prime minister and chancellor.

Having witnessed the vicious effects of an unregulated financial sector – think the Great Financial Crisis, subprime mortgages, vigilante banks – Truss is putting economic history to one side.  By way of example, the bankers’ bonus cap will be done away with.  Not even predatory businesses should be shackled in Truss’s Britain.  The credo of Gordon Gekko can be assured of a revival.

Despite this grand salute to the market, the Truss economic turn has not impressed conservative finance outlets.  The Economistpicked up on a parallel between Truss and US President Ronald Reagan, who gave us that unfortunate, deservedly maligned term Reaganomics.  On coming to power, Reagan promised to reduce federal taxation at a time of peaking inflation rates and high interest rates.

In his characteristically dim-witted way, the optimistic Gipper decided that tax cuts and deregulation was the way to go.  Storms were not so much to be calmed down as stirred.  In August 1981, the shock through the US economic system was registered with a tax cut heftier than any seen since the First World War.  In doing so, the concept of Reaganomics demonstrated that Conservatives were less keen on responsible thrift and balanced budgets than scale and populist disruption.

The Economist, however, choses to see Reaganomics as right for its time, though it even concedes that returns from the program were “mixed”.  Trussonomics is quite something else.  “Reaganomics was accompanied by a strengthening dollar.  So were Donald Trump’s tax cuts in 2018, which also happened alongside monetary tightening.”  While the US dollar appreciated, the British pound has slumped and rumpled.

Privateer outlets such as the Wall Street Journal are not with Truss on her bingeworthy enterprise either.  Note is made that the Britain of today is not held in the grip of powerful unions or governed by high corporate tax rates.  State owned businesses have, for the most part, been privatised.  Red tape has been slashed.  Their deluded point: Reaganomics or Thatcherite slash and burn did its work, leaving neoliberalism victorious.  Now was not the time to re-invent that wheel.

There is also the niggling issue of borrowing credentials.  Truss’s fiscally strapped Britain, unlike that of Thatcher’s (is that possible?), faces a current account deficit and debt beyond 100% GDP.  The figure will bulge with tax cuts and the energy package.  The WSJ is keen to lecture Truss on this, and typically anthropomorphises the market as an unruly pet in need of pacifying. “To mitigate all these problems the government should have taken care to prepare the markets, explain its position and project a confident future for the country’s finances.  Instead it has merely promised that its independent forecasting body will show the effects of all the extra borrowing by the end of the year.”

The nightmarish effect here is that the Bank of England is left to hold the reins on inflation using monetary policy while the fiscal buccaneers cut loose and raid the treasury.  Truss and Kwarteng add the catnip, thereby driving the economy to heated hysterics; the BOE will have to bring in the sedative, lower the temperature and detain the pleasure seekers.  The situation will not cure the structural defects in an ailing Britain, but by then Truss may well have vanished into the increasingly dense undergrowth of the country’s doomed and forgotten prime ministers.

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

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***

First published on GR in April 2022.

Fidel Castro’s secret service chief once estimated that 634 attempts were made against the Cuban leader’s life. 

From exploding cigars to poisoned pills, Washington’s campaign to assassinate Castro remains an infamous case of Cold War covert action.

The presence of a revolutionary government in Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, was intolerable for the US government.

What is less well known is that Britain collaborated with Washington’s anti-Castro operations in the early 1960s.

A Foreign Office document, classified for six decades and only recently released at the National Archives, reveals British diplomats discussed the “disappearance” of Castro with the CIA.

In November 1961, Thomas Brimelow, a high-flying British diplomat in Washington, went with his colleague Alan Clark to meet the CIA.

Clark, who was visiting America from his post at the British embassy in Havana, offered US intelligence a window into Cuba – a country the state department had pulled out from.

After opening statements, the CIA men cut to the chase, asking Clark “whether the disappearance of Fidel Castro himself would have serious repercussions” in Cuba.

Brimelow’s minutes of that meeting, marked “secret and personal”, show the British duo did not protest the unsubtle allusion to Castro’s assassination.

Clark responded that “Raoul Castro had been nominated as Fidel’s successor”, and “he might succeed in taking Fidel’s place if adequate time were allowed”.

More frankly, Clark added:

“If Fidel were to be assassinated, then it was less certain that there would be a smooth takeover. The [state] apparatus, which was apparently strong enough to cope with a gradual changeover, might not cope with a sudden crisis”.

The revelations raise fresh questions about how much Britain knew of Washington’s secret efforts to topple Castro.

The subversive discussion came months after the White House had cut off diplomatic relations with Havana and attempted a failed invasion at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.

Just days after the UK-CIA meeting, President John F. Kennedy authorised Operation Mongoose – a secret programme to remove Castro by any means necessary.

The following year, Clark became first secretary at the British embassy in Washington. Brimelow ultimately went on to run the Foreign Office and receive a life peerage.

‘Most impressed’

While the UK was generally sympathetic to the White House’s goal of removing Castro, British officials were more critical of US strategy – most pointedly during the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.

Diplomatic relations between the US and Britain also soured over the issue of sanctioning Cuba throughout 1962.

Clark was not exclusively dismissive of the Castro government. At the CIA meeting, he argued that

“the revolution had brought some appreciable good to a large number of people”, adding that “the people who had thus benefited did not yet realise the price that they were paying and would have to pay”.

Nonetheless, declassified files show that the British embassy in Havana continued to share intelligence with Washington on the military, political and economic situation in Cuba.

In January 1962, Britain sent a report to the Pentagon on a military parade in Havana, replete with sketches of Cuba’s military apparatus.

It was “largely based on our own direct observations; we had the Ambassador and Head of Chancery on the stands, three members of the staff in the crowds lining the route and two more watching the proceeding on television”, one British cable noted.

The Americans were appreciative. “This is just to say how very grateful the Pentagon are for the excellent reports… about the military parade. They are most impressed by the effort put into it and the detailed results you all obtained”, another telegram shows.

In March 1962, the Pentagon insisted once again “how grateful they are for all the previous information on the military situation in Cuba”.

Months later, the US outlined “priority targets” for Britain in its gathering of military information in Cuba.

“Almost all of these ‘targets’ are in the Havana area, and they have been selected as they are almost all in areas which members of the Embassy might be able to visit”, wrote one British official following a top secret discussion with the Pentagon.

The Foreign Office declined to comment on the revelations.

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John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin and Brasil Wire.

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***

PayPal has gone on a rampage by blocking organizations they don’t like access to their services. 

The Free Speech Union (FSU) is one of several organizations that just lost access to the financial platform. 

“PayPal has demonetised the Free Speech Union. It is not uncommon for financial companies like PayPal to withdraw services from individuals or groups who express politically contentious views, but this is the first time an organisation that defends people’s right to express such views has been demonetised. This is a new low and takes us one step closer towards a Chinese-style social credit system in which those who do not toe the party line are shut out of the financial system,” states their press release.

The Free Speech Union has updated its home page to include a compilation of clips about PayPal’s attempt to cancel us and a press release about the same.https://t.co/GODLAHwLcV

— The Free Speech Union (@SpeechUnion) September 23, 2022

@PayPalUK has cancelled it’s services for:@laworfiction the lawyers who challenged vaccine mandates@LD_Sceptics (The Daily Sceptic)@freespeexh @UsforThemUK Challenging vaccines for kids@ukmfa1 UK Medical Freedom@FreeSpeechUnion @toadmeister Toby Young#BoycottPayPal pic.twitter.com/LfkNphacwW

— Stephen James (@drstevejames) September 22, 2022

FSU defines itself as “non-partisan, mass-membership public interest body that stands up for the speech rights of its members.” But according to PayPal, this platform doesn’t deserve access to its services.

PayPal is a financial platform that allows anyone to make a living or maintain a business by receiving financial transfers without requiring personal bank information for every transaction.

The MSM waking up.
Closing down the accounts of people who speak the truth is SINISTER @PayPal
Fix that NOW
We stand with @UsforThemUK @laworfiction @toadmeister pic.twitter.com/Qrb9nWg8aU

— Tonia Buxton (@ToniaBuxton) September 23, 2022

Another organization shut down by PayPal is Law-or-Fiction, which consists of lawyers fighting against the legality of vaccine restrictions.

JUST IN: While we’re not allowed to conduct business on PayPal, guess who is… an organization that offers a support group for “MAPs”@PayPal banned us for being against pedophilia, but allow actual pedophile groups to use their services unabated.#BoycottPayPal pic.twitter.com/b6csNR73cv

— Gays Against Gr██mers (@againstgrmrs) September 22, 2022

Additionally, PayPal shut down Gays Against Gr**mers, an organization that opposes teaching gender ideology in schools. Gays Against Gr**mers noted that PayPal is okay with providing its services to an organization called MAP (Minor Attracted Persons). MAP is a term used to normalize pedophilia.

And The Daily Sceptic (online media) was also banned by PayPal this week.

“PayPal has closed the accounts of the Daily Sceptic and the Free Speech Union, a new low in Big Tech’s war on free speech. Not only can you not express certain views, you can’t defend people’s right to express them,” the Daily Sceptic stated.

Many people have been cancelling their PayPal accounts in protest. The #CancelPayPal hashtag is actively gaining momentum on Twitter.

Some people and institutions have advocated for using cryptocurrencies to prevent third-party interference while transacting.

*

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***

During remarks on Wednesday, the civilian head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) slammed China as a “challenge” to the alliance. In an interview with Reuters, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Beijing’s support for the war in Ukraine, its opposition to NATO expansion, and its territorial claims justify the alliance assigning China this label. 

Largely in response to Washington’s increasing hostility, Moscow and Beijing have strengthened their ties for well over a decade. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia carried out several rounds of military exercises. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping have met several times since the war began, reaffirming the two Asian powers’ growing ties.

While Beijing has not given public support to Moscow’s war, China has refused several demands to condemn Russia’s invasion. Beijing has drastically increased its economic ties with Moscow as Russia has become more isolated from Western markets.

After Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, Washington leveled massive sanctions on Russia and many NATO member states agreed to scale back Russian energy purchases. The intention was to crush the Russian economy and disable the Kremlin’s war machine.

However, the Western economic war on Russia caused energy prices to spike, allowing Moscow to replace the shrinking European market with Asian customers. While Russian oil is selling below market rates, Moscow’s increased exports to China, India and Turkey pushed the ruble to seven-year highs this summer.

“The sum of all is this just increases the importance of NATO allies standing together and realizing that China is part of the security challenges we need to face today and in the future,” Stoltenberg said in the interview with Reuters.

Meanwhile, India and Turkey have followed Beijing in importing more Russian goods. Ankara is a NATO member state. The US and several other NATO members recently engaged in war games with India.

Stoltenberg also took issue with Beijing over its opposition to NATO expansion. At the fall of the USSR in 1990, the North Atlantic alliance only had 16 members. In the 30 years since, NATO has added 14, soon to be 16, new members. Many of the new additions to the alliance are former Warsaw Pact or USSR states.

Moscow has long protested NATO expansion. In 2008, the US Ambassador to Russia said expanding the alliance to Ukraine and Georgia violated all of Russia’s red lines. NATO has also expanded its global reach.

This week, NATO members, the US and Canada, conducted a joint transit through the Taiwan Strait. Last year – eyeing Beijing and following Washinton’s imperial lead – British, French and German warships sailed the South China Sea.

This year, NATO targeted China in its new Strategic Concept document. UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has even openly called for a “global NATO”  to defend Taiwan and confront China in the Asia Pacific. Under Truss, Beijing will be classified as a “threat” to England’s “national security for the first time… for a tougher approach to Beijing,” the Times reported last month.

In his first Congressional address, Biden boasted he “told President Xi that we will maintain a strong military presence in the Indo-Pacific just as we do with NATO in Europe.”

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Kyle Anzalone is news editor at the Libertarian Institute, assistant editor at Antiwar.com and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

Connor Freeman is a writer and assistant editor at the Libertarian Institute, and co-hosts Conflicts of Interest.

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***

After author and women’s health journalist Dr. Naomi Wolf was de-platformed and attacked on Twitter, discovery granted in two freedom of speech lawsuits revealed that the CDC had colluded with social media to censor her.

In this episode, Senator Josh Hawley exposes how the Big Tech/Government censorship machine works via grilling Facebook executive Christopher Cox, Dr. Wolf explains what happened to her, and Dr. Paul Alexander explains why Dr. Wolf is such a threat to the machine that shut her down.

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This video was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

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***

 

 

 

Film: The Woman King

Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood 

Writers: Dana Stevens and Maria Bello

Musical Score: Terrance Blanchard

Edited By: Terilyn A. Shropshire

Starring: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim and John Boyega

This blockbusting film has prompted tremendous interests and discussion on the history of European colonialism and the Atlantic Slave Trade.

After the first weekend of its commercial premiere in the United States from September 16-18, it was the highest revenue generating movie nationally.

An historical fictionalized account centered around the Agojie, the woman warriors of the Dahomey civilization in West Africa encompassing what is modern day Republic of Benin, comes at a time when Africa is continuing to exert its personality and viewpoints on continental and global issues. While at the same time debates and political struggles are raging in the U.S. over whether or not the actual history of African enslavement and its role in the ascendancy of western imperialism should be taught in the public schools.

These disputes over the teaching of African and African American history along with their social affairs have been instigated by those seeking to maintain institutional racism by denying the realities of the past and the contemporary period. Racial tensions are escalating in the U.S. as the demographic shifts in the ethnic composition of the country continue making inevitable its transitions to a majority people of color state.

Although this film is not a documentary in the sense that it refrains from referencing and replicating the actual historical occurrences of the early 19th century when the European trade in African people continued despite efforts by the British to outlaw the practice after 1806. The British prohibition of the slave trade was only a mechanism to usher in a more efficient form of national oppression and economic exploitation under colonialism.

However, the existence of the Dahomey Kingdom and the Agojie women warriors are well documented by historians concerned with African societal development and the rise of European imperialism. In addition, throughout ancient and pre-colonial African history there are warrior women who fought to unify their people and to resist outside domination.

The Atlantic Slave Trade as an economic system disrupted and underdeveloped traditional African societies and kingdoms. Greater consolidation of nations and states were well underway during the advent of the interventions by Spain and Portugal during the 15th century in West Africa.

This film focuses on the role of the Portuguese enslavers who kidnapped and exported many Africans to the South American state of Brazil. Slavery in Brazil lasted longer than in any other region of the Western hemisphere ending after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1888.

Accounts of the origins of this particular fictional representation says that Maria Bello came up with the idea of a feature film after a visit to Benin in 2015. The film was taken to several studios before it was finally accepted by TriStar Pictures in 2017.

Nonetheless, it was not given the go ahead until 2020, right at the time that the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown production on many films throughout the world. The production of the movie started in November 2021 in the Republic of South Africa. Soon afterwards the resurgence of the pandemic through the prevalence of the Omicron variant halted the project.

During the early months of 2022, the production began once again and was completed within a matter of months. The initial premiere was held at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 9.

The majority of reviews of The Woman King since its Toronto opening have been overwhelmingly positive. Viola Davis, who has appeared in dozens of films over the last few years has been praised for her depiction of the principal character General Nanisca of the Agojie warriors. She was loyal to King Ghezo in her training and orientation of the Agojie in their struggles against the neighboring dominant Oyo Kingdom.

Who Were the Agojie Warriors?

These women and their military roles within society can be traced back until the early 17th century. The units were said to have existed for nearly two centuries and played an essential part in the expansion of the Dahomey Kingdom between the 17th and late 19th centuries.

They were described by French colonialists as Amazon women. Their training was intense while they served directly under the direction of the Kings. The women enjoyed prominence and protection within Dahomey and were completely dedicated to security and defense of the Kingdom.

According to one account written by Veronica Mwanza on the character of the Agojie:

“By the mid-19th century, there were about 1,000 and 6,000 warrior women who were huntresses, riflewomen, reapers, archers and gunners. The Kingdom was always at war with its neighbors. The Agoji women fought in numerous slave raids as prisoners were required for the slave trade.

In the latter half of the 19th century, European intrusion into West Africa gained pace. King Behanzin who was considered the 11th and last king of the Dahomey began fighting the French forces in the first war, known as the Franco-Dahomean war. Many Agoji women took part in the battle and defended themselves using hand to hand combat. Despite the European praises, the Agoji warriors were defeated with many of them being gunned down. During the Second Franco-Dahomean war, Agoji were being assigned to mainly target French soldiers. The war lasted seven weeks and was fought even more ruthlessly than the first one. The French however prevailed after 23 separate battles, but only after bringing in the Foreign Legion, armed with machine guns. The defeat led to the end of the Dahomean Kingdom.”

Dahomey Agojie Women Warrior Agojie (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Dahomey became a French colony like many other territories throughout the continent between the 15th and 19th centuries. The resistance to slavery and colonialism transformed into the movements for national independence after the first and second imperialist world wars of the early and mid-20th century.

The Struggle for African Unity Continues

Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Spain, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the U.S. all maintained colonies and neo-colonies in Africa and in the Western hemisphere. Even in the 21st, the legacy of enslavement and colonialism remains on the African continent and in the Diaspora. It has been thoroughly documented by many historians that the profits, land and waterways attained by European imperialism are responsible for the present day international unequal division of labor and economic power.

Nanisca and King Ghezo state repeatedly during the film that the slave trade was designed to destroy Africa and its people. The film presents a depiction of the complexities of the slave system and how it was critical in the destruction of African civilizations.

Today, Africa is still under pressure to conform to the political and economic imperatives of imperialism. Sanctions are often imposed on those independent African states which refuse to follow the dictates of the ruling classes of Western Europe and North America.

An outright war was waged in 2011 to overthrow and destroy the government of the North African state of Libya which sought to foster unity and economic development. The destruction of Libya, then the most prosperous state on the continent, had ripple effects which spread throughout the entire regions of North and West Africa.

Until Africa unites, the continent and its people will not know peace and stability. African unity, as many leaders have said throughout modern history, cannot be achieved without the genuine independence and sovereignty of its people from imperialism.

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

Featured image: This is a poster for The Woman King. The poster art copyright is believed to belong to the distributor of the film, Sony Pictures Releasing, the publisher of the film or the graphic artist. (Licensed under Fair Use)

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***

As we survey the wreckage that was our civilization, as we are pushed and shoved by our fellow citizens now reduced to waves and waves of the zombie apocalypse, we are forced to ask ourselves the big question.

We see how friends and family remain in denial about this vaccine war, about World War V.

We see silent mothers walking with limping children through a fog of denial.

We forced to ask ourselves what exactly was this COVID-19?

The answer is as clear as it is damning. COVID-19 was like the fall of the Roman empire, but run at hyper-speed on a bank of supercomputers and broadcast over 5G.

Covid-19 was a pandemic of cowardice, a pandemic of hypocrisy, a pandemic of ignorance and decadence, a pandemic of collaboration, a pandemic of horrific betrayal; in a nutshell, COVID-19 was a pandemic of evil that makes the blood run cold.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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On Thursday, after Russian President Vladimir Putin called up 300,000 reservists and warned that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons in case of a NATO attack on Russia, European Union (EU) officials recklessly pledged to continue escalating the conflict. They announced new sanctions on Russia, which will further raise food and energy prices that are devastating workers’ budgets, and continued arms deliveries to Ukraine.

“We decided to bring forward as soon as possible additional restrictive measures against Russia in coordination with partners,” EU Foreign Policy chief Josep Borrell said after a meeting of EU foreign ministers at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York. The EU “will study, we will adopt new restrictive measures, both personal and sectoral” targeting Russian industries, he added.

Borrell admitted that Putin’s warnings that he would use “all weapons systems available to us” to defend Russian territory from NATO attack are genuine. The threat of nuclear war, Borrell said, “is a real danger to the whole world, and the international community must react.” However, Borrell made clear that the EU plans to accelerate delivery of billions of euros in weapons to the far-right Ukrainian regime, which has repeatedly attacked Russian-speaking areas of the country.

Putin’s “references to nuclear weapons do not shake our determination, resolve and unity to stand by Ukraine,” Borrell said.

The reckless and utterly irresponsible statements of Borrell, echoed by other EU officials, are leading Europe and the world straight to nuclear war.

Washington and the EU powers have delivered tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukrainian army units and far-right militias to hit targets deep inside Russian-claimed territory. On Wednesday, Putin said the Kremlin has concluded that the NATO powers aim to “weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country.” He added that his threat to use Russia’s full military arsenal, thus including nuclear weapons, was “no bluff.”

Top Russian officials have since repeated Putin’s threats that Russia would respond to attacks on territory, including Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine it currently holds, by using nuclear weapons. Yesterday, former President Dmitri Medvedev declared:

“The Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk) republics and other territories will be accepted into Russia. … Russia has announced that not only mobilization capabilities, but also any Russian weapons, including strategic nuclear weapons and weapons based on new principles, could be used for such protection.”

Already last week, Medvedev warned that NATO’s “unrestrained pumping of the Kiev regime with the most dangerous types of weapons” could provoke Russian military escalation.

The firing of strategic nuclear weapons by Russia and the NATO powers would lead to hundreds of millions of deaths at the very least and possibly the destruction of humanity. A Russian RS-28 strategic nuclear missile carries 15 independently-targetable warheads, each with an explosive yield of up to 25 megatons of TNT. That is over a thousand times the power of the US nuclear bombs that annihilated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

French media have cited Russian reports that a single RS-28 missile can destroy a territory the size of Texas or of France, which is the largest EU country by land area.

Other Russian officials also emphasized that they had nothing to propose besides military escalation, including Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov who briefly appeared at the UN Security Council meeting in New York to make a statement denouncing the NATO powers before leaving, without listening to any remarks from other diplomats present.

Accusing Kiev of “brazenly trampling” the rights of Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine, Lavrov said this “simply confirms the decision to conduct the special military operation was inevitable.” He added that “the intentional fomenting of this conflict by the collective West remained unpunished.”

Both the desperate and belligerent remarks of the representatives of Russia’s post-Soviet capitalist regime and the aggressive and reckless statements of the European imperialist powers must be taken as warnings: The deep crisis of the capitalist system is threatening to lead to all-out nuclear war between the major world powers.

The bankruptcy of the Kremlin and the disastrous consequences of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 are now apparent. The NATO imperialist powers not only waged war in the Middle East and the Balkans, freed from any concern about a military and political counterweight to imperialism. They also stirred up conflicts among the former Soviet Republics that now have exploded into all-out war. The Moscow regime, no longer able to make any social appeal to workers internationally and oscillating between attempts to reach a deal with imperialism and to threaten it with its military power, is left with the choice of capitulation or nuclear escalation.

The NATO powers for their part are pouring fuel on the fire. Having provoked the conflict in Ukraine by backing a far-right, anti-Russian coup in the Ukrainian capital Kiev in 2014, they are now using the war to justify a vast expansion of military-police forces, such as the German government’s drive to rearm and implement an aggressive military foreign policy.

Yesterday, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht and her French counterpart, Sebastien Lecornu, met in Berlin to stress that the EU powers would continue to arm Ukrainian army units and far-right militias even if this risks nuclear war.

“Our response is really consistent and, most importantly, resolute and joint: there will be no deviations, we will continue to support Ukraine in its courageous struggle in the future,” Lambrecht said. She boasted that “huge successes” of the Ukrainian army were in part due to military aid from Germany and France.

Lambrecht added that Berlin and Paris would continue to run roughshod over Russian warnings of nuclear escalation and support attacks on Russian-held territory.

“For us, these referenda [in Donetsk and Luhansk] will be of no significance as this is the territory of Ukraine and will remain so,” she said. “It’s good that we are sending a clear signal: This Putin reaction to Ukraine’s successes only encourages us to continue supporting Ukraine.”

The warmongers in the media are overflowing with calls for a rapid escalation. One should not be “blackmailed” by “Putin’s nuclear saber rattling,” demands the editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Berthold Kohler in a commentary. “In the tussle with Putin, the West will only remain a credible opponent if it actually continues to stand by Ukraine, at least to the extent it has done so far.” Anything else would be “appeasement” and “betrayal of its own values and interests.”

Clemens Wergins, chief foreign affairs correspondent, demands in Die Welt:

“Ukraine must now quickly get all the weapons it needs to quickly liberate the occupied territories, including, for example, modern Western tanks like the Leopard 2 or infantry fighting vehicles like the Marder.” He said it is “in Germany’s interest that the Russian front also collapses in other places in the coming months as it did recently in Kharkiv, when Ukraine succeeded in panic-striking Russian troops into flight and capturing vast swaths of territory in a lightning advance.”

Then he adds,

“Because the more clearly this war is lost for Russia when the new recruits come to the front, and the less Ukrainian land the invaders then still occupy, the sooner this war will come to an end.”

This cynical reasoning corresponds to the murderous logic of German militarism in the 20th century. The leading representatives of the Kaiserreich and the Nazis also argued that the rapid and maximum mobilization of the German war machine was necessary to achieve a quick “victorious peace” (Siegfrieden) or “final victory” (Endsieg). In reality, this strategy of escalation led to total war, with tens of millions of war dead and barbaric crimes.

Behind the current imperialist warmongering is a similar toxic mix of insane geopolitical ambitions and deep internal crisis. As in the 1930s, the ruling class is responding to the collapse of capitalism and explosive opposition in the working class by turning to militarism, fascism and world war. The working class must counter the capitalist madness that threatens the survival of all humanity with its own strategy of world socialist revolution.

*

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

Reviews

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

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

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
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Local residents describe the perpetrators of these crimes—who have received lavish U.S. funding—as “shameless,” “scumbags” and “terrorists.”

Heroic rescue workers in Donbas should be accorded rights under international law to help people without being targeted

*

In the more than eight years of bombing the civilians of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Ukraine has committed untold numbers of war crimes. These include bombing residential areas, markets, hospitals, schools, parks—including with prohibited heavy weapons and banned cluster munitions—and, since late July, raining banned “Petal” mines down on populated civilian areas, including the very center of Donetsk, including as recently as September 7.

A lesser-known war crime is Ukraine’s routine targeting of ambulances, fire trucks, medics and rescuers, and their headquarters and stations. Many of the times Ukraine bombs such heroic rescuers, it is when they are on the way, or already on site, to help civilians often themselves just bombed by Ukraine.

On August 21, Ukrainian shelling of the DPR’s Gorlovka wounded twelve, including five firefighters.

The day prior, Ukrainian shelling targeted an ambulance station in the LPR’s Lysychansk, wounding several and damaging some of the ambulances.

On June 23, the Kievskiy District of Donetsk came under repeated shelling over the course of the two hours I was visiting the Emergency Services headquarters there. On the grounds, I saw the remnants of a “Hurricane” missile from a previous Ukrainian attack.

Choose the item that does not belong on the premises of Emergency Services.

From the Kievskiy region of Donetsk today pic.twitter.com/LvjgsLRHVd

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) June 23, 2022

The previous day, Ukrainian forces targeted an Emergency Services fire truck on call, leaving the driver hospitalized in critical condition. According to his colleagues, they saw a drone above them just prior to Ukraine’s strike. The targeting was unquestionably deliberate.

On June 18, Ukraine targeted a central Donetsk district after Emergency Services had arrived, killing a firefighter and the driver, and injuring three more rescuers.

In early June, heavy Ukrainian shelling of Kuibyshevsky District, Donetsk, destroyed an ambulance and seriously injured the driver.

Donetsk ambulance destroyed by Ukrainian shelling while out on a call. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

Ukraine’s attacks on emergency workers is not new; Ukraine has been doing so for years.

In June 2021, during a humanitarian cease-fire, Ukrainian forces targeted an ambulance which had arrived to evacuate three injured DPR soldiers.

In October 2019, Ukrainian forces fired an anti-tank guided missile at a DPR military ambulance en route to help a child, wounding the driver and a paramedic.

In August 2018, Ukrainian forces fired a missile at a DPR ambulance, killing the driver and two female paramedics.

When I first visited the DPR in September 2019, going to hard-hit areas around Gorlovka, I was told by Zaitsevo administration that ambulances could not reach the villagers.

“The paramedics don’t go farther than this building; it’s too dangerous. If somebody needs medical care near the front lines, someone has to go in their own car and take them to a point where medics can then take them to Gorlovka. The soldiers also help civilians who are injured.”

This is something I was very familiar with in Gaza, occupied Palestine, where Israeli soldiers routinely fire at Palestinian farmers and other laborers on agricultural land, a policy of harassment to drive Palestinians off their land. In most cases, ambulances likewise could not reach the injured due to Israel’s policy of targeting ambulances. Consequently, seriously injured Palestinians bleed to death.

In Zaitsevo, I was told this had happened there, too. “A woman died due to huge blood loss because no one could reach her house to take her away in time. She was injured in the shelling and bled to death.”

Targeting medics and other rescuers ensures those in need of help are deprived of it, and increases the likelihood that people who might have lived instead die of their injuries.

The intentional targeting of ambulances and medics, as well as fire trucks and other emergency services vehicles and workers, is against international law.

Speaking to DPR Rescuers

During my last two visits to the DPR, in June and August 2022, I interviewed a number of Emergency Services workers and medics.

According to Konstantin Zhukov, the Chief Medical Officer of Donetsk Ambulance Services, the ambulance services workers face shelling daily, constantly, and many employees have been wounded while working. One of the ambulance stations was completely destroyed by Ukrainian shelling.

Outside, I spoke with Tatyana Golota, an emergency physician, and Alena Kondrasheva, a paramedic.

Both reiterated that it is normal coming under repeated Ukrainian fire. They spoke of Ukraine shelling after medics and emergency services workers had arrived to help civilians.

They showed me an ambulance completely destroyed by Ukrainian shelling. It was new and had only been operational a few months before being destroyed.

“That day we were at work and heard about the brigade coming under fire. The doctor had gone to help people, and the driver, by chance, walked away to try to get a mobile signal. At that moment, there was a direct hit on the vehicle.”

Also in Donetsk, I spoke with Sergei Neka, Director of the Department of Fire and Rescue Forces of the Ministry of Emergency Situations.

He likewise said rescuers increasingly come under fire when they go out on a call, sometimes making it impossible to reach the people in need.

According to him, from February 24, 2022, to when I spoke with him in August, four people were killed and 40 injured, as well as significant damage to equipment and buildings.

“Our units arrive at the scene of the accident and Ukraine begins to shell it. A lot of equipment has been damaged and destroyed.”

I asked about the impact of the “Petal” mines Ukraine has been dropping on the city, and was told a 21-year-old employee was injured by a PFM-1S mine after a region was cleared, the mine falling from the building and the unsuspecting rescuer stepping on it, losing his foot.

Petal mine on street in Donetsk. [Source: entopwar.ru]

In Makeevka, just east of Donetsk, I went to an orphanage that had been shelled with the mines. Most of the clean-up was completed by the time I arrived on the second day of de-mining, but one remained. I watched a sapper find and detonate it, and although I had previously seen a group of eight mines detonated, creating a massive blast, the force of the single mine was still quite powerful.

Watch this.

According to Dmitry Chamota, Head of Donetsk Emergency Services Deminers, they found 26 PFM-1 mines scattered around the grounds of the orphanage, including on the playground.

In June, I met Andrey Levchenko, Chief of Kievskiy District Emergency Ministry. Over the course of the two hours at his station, Ukraine was intensively shelling the district, leading us to take cover inside the building lest the property be targeted again.

We did venture outside between bouts of shelling, where Levchenko pointed out damage to the buildings and the shell of the Ukrainian-fired Hurricane MLRS which struck the premises.

The building has blown out windows, sandbagged windows to attempt to protect the workers; some days prior, the chief’s office had been damaged by shrapnel from the shelling. Thankfully, he had just stepped out a minute before the blast.

Watch this.

He showed me the fire truck damaged on June 22, pointing out the many shrapnel holes and noting one of the rear tires had been blown out.

Two of the employees who had been out on that call spoke to me about that day, saying that, after Ukrainian shelling of the district, they received a call that people were trapped inside a building with the door blocked after the shelling. A fire was spreading to the second and third floors, and that people were unable to escape. As the rescuers assessed the situation, a shell hit a wall near the truck and wounded the driver.

They said that, prior to the shelling, they saw a drone overhead. This, combined with the facts that they were uniformed and the fire truck was clearly marked and in a civilian area where people were calling for help, makes it credible to believe Ukraine deliberately targeted the rescuers.

Of Ukraine’s heightened shelling over the past many months, Levchenko said it was constant and daily. “Before, if we speak about 2014-2015, twenty minutes, one hour maximum. Now six-seven hours non-stop, every day.”

Excerpts from my report on Ukraine's targeting of Donbass rescuers, war crimes.
In August, the Donetsk Fire & Rescue Dpt Director told me 40 employees had been injured, 4 killed. In past few days, reports from the DPR note 14 more rescuers have been killed, 9 more injured. pic.twitter.com/fzhcRoOwLT

— Eva Karene Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) September 3, 2022

He said that the Ukrainian forces shell, wait until rescuers arrive and then shell again. “They wait for 30 minutes for us to arrive. We arrive there, start assisting people, and the shelling resumes.”

This is something I witnessed for myself when, on August 4, Ukraine bombed the hotel in which I was staying, the fourth and fifth shells landing 50 meters away and then directly beside the hotel, respectively. When the fifth struck, shattering inwards the lobby glass doors, I had fortunately just stepped out of the lobby where 30 seconds earlier I had been speaking to journalists who had run in from the street.

Ukraine’s bombing of central Donetsk on August 4 targeted a hotel the author was in, killing a woman outside and five others nearby. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

When it seemed the shelling had stopped, journalists went outside to document the damage. Sadly, a young woman outside the hotel had been killed by the shelling. Five others just two streets away were also torn apart by the bombs, including a promising 12-year-old ballerina, her grandmother, and her world famous former ballerina ballet teacher.

Galina Vasilyevna Volodina (left), and twelve-year-old Katya Kutubaeva, the ballerina killed by Ukraine. [Source: slippedisc.com]

Emergency Services arrived and, not long after, Ukraine resumed its shelling. Fortunately, they were able to get inside, but this is just one example of Ukraine’s double strikes.

According to Levchenko, Ukraine does not only shell two times, but that they sometimes shell three times: “They wait again, our guys hide in the shelters, as soon as we go out, put out the fire, help people, there could be people under the debris, doors stuck, people can’t get out and get to the basement…then shelling resumes.”

He described the people engaging in this sort of warfare against civilians and rescuers as “Shameless. Scumbags. Terrorists.”

He is not wrong.

Targeting Rescuers: A Terrorist Tactic Adopted by U.S. Allies in Ukraine, Israel and Syria

As the DPR Emergency Services chief pointed out damage to the fire truck, I was reminded of Israel’s attacks on Palestinian medics and fire brigades in Gaza, including during the December 27, 2008-January 18, 2009, Israeli war on Gaza, where I was living at the time.

During those three weeks, I rode in the medics’ ambulances, documenting the destructionand the victims of Israel’s war crimes, but also in a sense as a human shield, in the hope that Israel would not strike ambulances in which a handful of internationals and I were riding.

As it turned out, by the end of the Israeli massacre of Gaza, Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged, with at least nine completely destroyed.

One of the murdered was a 35-year-old paramedic, Arafa Abd al-Dayem, who I had accompanied the night prior to his murder. As I wrote of that evening,

“The dead, a 24-year-old night watchman, had no warning of the at least 2 missiles which leveled the school and tore him apart. The medics work to load the corpse, first having to replace the flat tire. Working frantically, still fearful of potential strikes, they crowd the ambulance, hoist the van, replace the flat. A missile hits 50 meters away. Surely, undoubtedly, those warplanes above us know—from the markings of the ambulance, the clothes of the medics, the crystal clear photos their drones can take—that we are civilians and medics below. Yet they fire.”

Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett

Arafa was killed later that day, when Israeli forces fired a flechette shell directly at his ambulance, shredding him with the dart-like flechettes, causing massive internal bleeding in his abdomen, blood in his lung, shock, and death.

A surgeon I interviewed later when writing about Israel’s widespread use of flechettes in Gaza told me that flechettes cause more injuries than other small munitions precisely because they spread in a larger area. And while the darts appear innocuously small, their velocity and design enable them to bore through cement and bones and “cut everything internal.” Accordingly, the prime cause of death is severe internal bleeding from slashed organs, particularly the heart, liver and brain.

Source: twitter.com

One of the injured, Hassan al-Attal, 35, was a medic whose ambulance I was in when he and another medic came under Israeli sniper fire while attempting to retrieve a corpse from the street just beyond the ambulance. The sniper fire reached the ambulance itself. Hassan was wounded in the leg. This was during a few hours of supposed cease-fire. But in any case, the medics never should have been targeted.

As I wrote,

“Although the Geneva Conventions explicitly state that ‘medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances,’ throughout Israel’s invasion this was not the case. Indeed, as the injured and emergency workers testify, Israeli forces targeted and prevented medical workers from reaching the wounded.

Without coordination, many ambulances did not dare risk Israeli gunfire and shelling, meaning hundreds of calls went unanswered, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Denied medical care, many victims succumbed to their wounds.”

Israeli forces killed 13 Civil Defense workers and injured 31, also destroyed six civil defense stations and damaging four.

From that same article,

“Civil Defense workers, like medics, are protected under international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention states not only that emergency workers must be respected and allowed to do their work, but that their buildings, equipment and vehicles must not be targeted.

Yousef al-Zahar, director-general of Civil Defense in Gaza, told me at the time, ‘Targeting the Civil Defense centers and teams is an obvious indicator that the Israeli forces intended to paralyze Civil Defense activities in the Gaza Strip to raise civilian victims’ numbers in the casualties.’”

According to statistics from the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Health and the PRCS, from the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000 to when I wrote the 2010 article, Israeli Forces have killed at least 56 medical rescuers, including paramedics, drivers, doctors and volunteers—an average of one rescuer every two months—and have injured at least another 500 medical rescuers.

Likewise, British journalist Vanessa Beeley has written at length about Syrian rescuers targeted by terrorist factions in Syria, their equipment stolen. In one of her articles, she cited a Commanding Officer of the Real Syria Civil Defense in an Aleppo district describing a scenario which Donbas and Palestinian rescuers would recognize:

“They (terrorists) targeted us deliberately in order to destroy our equipment & structures. They wanted to prevent us being able to work for our people. They would target our crew with sniper fire and explosive bullets. Their main mission was to kill the crew and destroy our base so we couldn’t care for the people of Aleppo.”

In that same article, she noted that “terrorist groups systematically carried out double-tap attacks” on the rescuers, just as Israel does to Palestinian rescuers and Ukraine to Donbas rescuers.

Thanks hun, the REAL Syria Civil Defence suffered horribly at the hands of #WhiteHelmets & co – many were murdered, kidnapped, equipment was stolen and these real volunteer heroes came under constant attack fm terrorist handlers of WH.

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) September 1, 2022

Ukraine Continues Killing Donbas Rescuers

On September 1, 13 DPR Emergency workers were killed and 9 injured from Ukrainian shelling. According to a representative of the Emergency Situations, the shelling was intentional.

“The missiles exactly hit residential buildings. The vehicle was outside and it was hit with shrapnel and pieces of the destroyed building. But again, you can see it’s an emergency vehicle—a fire vehicle. This is a war crime.”

The following day, two more Emergency Services workers were killed and two injured by Ukrainian shelling of their fire truck, in Makeevka. They were en route to put out a fire. Images accompanying the news show a mangled bright red fire truck, unmistakably a rescue services vehicle.

When in August I spoke with the Director of the Donetsk Department of Fire and Rescue of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, he told me that, at that time, four Emergency Services workers had been killed and 40 injured by Ukrainian shelling.

With Ukraine’s targeting of Emergency Services in September, the number of rescuers Ukraine has killed is now at least 19, with another 51 injured.

A funeral ceremony of farewell to two dead employees of the 14th fire and rescue unit of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the DPR was held in Makeevka” Photo courtesy DPR Ministry of Emergency Services. [Source: vk.com]

I had the chance to speak with the mother of a young firefighter, Pavel (“Pasha”) Legonkiy, killed by Ukrainian shelling on June 18, 2022. He and other Emergency Services personnel had gone to the site of a Ukrainian shelling, in central Donetsk. A Ukrainian double-tap strike killed Pasha and the driver, injuring three others.

Svetlana spoke proudly of her courageous, compassionate son.

“He loved his work very much. He lived for this work. It was his duty to help people. My son dreamed of starting a family, dreamed of having children, dreamed of working! And one shell that you sent here ended his life.”

These men and women know very well the threats they face when going out on a call, but go anyway, to help their citizens under Ukrainian attacks.

The two women I spoke to at Donetsk Ambulance Services replied to my question about whether they considered stopping their work.

“I’m really scared, everyone is scared. But what can we do? How about the patients? They are people like me, they hurt and are even more scared. They are waiting for our help. While you are driving you feel fear, but as soon as you get to the place of the tragedy, the fear goes away and you just start doing your job and forget about this fear.”

The Kievskiy Emergency Ministry Chief, Andrey Levchenko, said of the rescuers, “They are all heroes. If it were possible, I would give a medal to every one of them, to honor their work, to support them. But they don’t do that for the medals, no way. Nobody ever said, ‘we’re not going, we don’t want to,’” he said, referring to when rescuers go out on calls.

He is right. These rescuers are heroes, putting their lives on the line every time they go out to help a person in need, knowing full well Ukraine frequently strikes an area a second and a third time, specifically to target rescuers. While they might not receive or want medals, they should be afforded their right under international law to rescue people without fear of being shelled by Ukraine.

*

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Eva Karene Bartlett is a Canadian-American journalist who has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years). She was a recipient of the 2017 International Journalism Award for International Reporting, granted by the Mexican Journalists’ Press Club (founded in 1951), and was the first recipient of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism. See her extended bio on her blog In Gaza. She tweets from @EvaKBartlett and has the Telegram Channel, Reality Theories. Eva can also be reached at [email protected].

Featured image: Remnants of a Ukrainian-fired “Hurricane” MLRS missile on the grounds of a Donetsk Emergency Services station in a civilian area. [Source: Photo courtesy of Eva Bartlett]

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It should probably not be a surprise average Britons protesting against the expensive relic known as the Crown were arrested during the ostentatious funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II.

Several people were arrested in the UK for protesting King Charles, including a woman charged for "breach of the peace" for a sign saying: "Abolish monarchy."

The royals cost taxpayers $100M/year.

Charles inherits the Queen's $500M fortune, without paying inheritance tax. pic.twitter.com/iOIYAmkBgx

— AJ+ (@ajplus) September 12, 2022

The arrests, serious violations of the natural right to peaceful protest, are to be expected from a state that has upheld a corrupt, inbred, and brutal monarchy for centuries. Naturally, the arrests for nonviolent protest, at least here in the “West,” were lightly reported.

Apparently more newsworthy, a “man was arrested in Hong Kong on suspicion of sedition after playing the harmonica at a vigil for Queen Elizabeth II, under a colonial-era law that once outlawed insulting the Queen—and has now been revived by authorities amid an ongoing crackdown,” according to the corporate propaganda media, in this instance CNN. The man tooted “Glory to Hong Kong,” a protest song created during antigovernment protests in 2019.

A Hongkonger who played a harmonica to a crowd outside the British consulate during Elizabeth II’s funeral was arrested for sedition. He played British national anthem and Glory to Hong Kong, a pro-democracy protest songhttps://t.co/9JbOOPp74g

— Alfons López Tena 🦇 (@alfonslopeztena) September 20, 2022

Welcome to the 15th century! Is it possible this criminal will be hanged, drawn, and quartered (also emasculated, disemboweled, and beheaded), the offender’s parts displayed on the London Bridge for all the commoners to see, so they dare not complain about inflation, recession, poverty, and the prospect of freezing this winter.

Hong Kong island became a British “dependent territory… into perpetuity” after it was invaded in 1841 when the locals tried to put an end to the British “opium trade,” a deadly drug dealing operation established by the British East India Company,  a monopoly held in place by “royal charter.” In the early 19th century, America also began selling opium in China.

Arrests for daring to criticize the monarchy were not limited to England and Hong Kong. Arrests also occurred in Scotland:

Scottish police make three arrests over protests following queen's death https://t.co/LI3q5iptvw pic.twitter.com/r05RveCemy

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 12, 2022

The “Duke of York,” “Prince” Andrew, accused of allegedly having sex with at least one underage girl (Virginia Giuffre)—thanks to the services of the supposedly late Jeffrey Epstein and his procure (or pimp) of 14-year-old girls for the elite (allegedly including an ex-president), Ghislaine Maxwell—was “heckled” (called out as a sick pervert) by an onlooker as the funeral procession moved up “Royal Mile” in Edinburgh, Scotland. The man was wrestled to the ground and arrested for the crime of disgust over the pedophilia of a “noble of the peerage.”

In Scotland, it is a serious crime to offend the King. Yahoo News UK reports:

Symon Hill, an anti-monarchy demonstrator, was arrested after shouting at an accession proclamation for the King.

Hill, 45, said he was was walking home from church on Sunday when he came across a public formal reading of the proclamation of the accession for Charles in Carfax, Oxford.

He was arrested on suspicion of a public order offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act after shouting “Who elected him?” during the reading.

Irish protesters made their opinion of the monarchy known in a somewhat dramatic fashion:

Anti-monarchy movement in Dublin throws coffin marked "RIP British Empire" into river

The incident happened during a protest march against the monarchy, which took place in the Irish capital on the day of Queen Elizabeth's funeral.

"It was the recreation of an action by former pic.twitter.com/uN955Opxna

— Ioan Haboczki (@haboczki) September 21, 2022

Meanwhile, in the “Commonwealth,” outraged commoners also protested the monarchy.

“Hundreds of people protested at anti-monarchy rallies across Australia on Thursday, as the country observed a national day of mourning for the late Queen Elizabeth II. The government declared Thursday a nationwide public holiday,“ reports the Associated Press.

The crimes of the British Empire are numerous and excessively sordid. “Let’s not ignore the elephant in the room when it comes to ‘mourning’ the queen,” writes Genna Rivieccio for Culled Culture.

Because, for the better part of her reign, she was billed as something of a stoic parasite (see: the “Sovereign Grant”). Which is, in effect, what all royals can’t help but being (again, the “Sovereign Grant”). And since most of them are concentrated in England, all eyes are on that island more than ever as the world watches yet another monarch (arguably, one of the most clueless yet) ascend to the throne.

The UK is in the process of economic disintegration. “Too many people do not have reliable access to the resources they need to meet the day-to-day costs for a decent quality of life,” notes the New Economics Foundation.

New forecast modelling produced for this report [“The UK’s Living Standard Crisis”] shows that by the end of the year [2021], and without a change in government policy, 32% of the UK population – 21.4 million people – will be living below a socially acceptable living standard, as measured by the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). The MIS, the UK’s only needs-based approach to measuring living standards, identifies what needs must be met for an individual to thrive in the society in which they live.

The new UK Prime Minister, Liz Truss, is a dyed-in-the-wool Thatcherite wedded to the neoliberal policy of bleeding the middle class and poor dry for the benefit of a parasitical financial ruling class.

Truss’ chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, scrapped “the top rate of income tax in a boost to the highest earners, as well as delivering on cuts to corporate taxes, national insurance contributions and levies on home purchases that had been flagged in advance,” according to Bloomberg. “The final total didn’t even include the full cost of capping household energy bills for the next two years. That could add another £100 billion to taxpayers’ liabilities.”

As for King Charlie, there needs to be a sharper focus on the “Paradise Papers,” leaked documents that reveal the new King’s effort as prince to protect his ill-gotten millions in offshore tax havens, a standard practice for neoliberal and elite parasites.

For more on this, and other schemes and crimes of the financial elite, see “Paradise Papers: Secrets of the Global Elite.”

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,418,220 reports of adverse events following COVID-19 vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Sept. 16, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). That’s an increase of 10,811 adverse events over the previous week.

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 31,074 reports of deaths — an increase of 139 over the previous week — and 258,480 serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period —  up 1,253 compared with the previous week.

There were a total of 563 reports of adverse events following the new bivalent booster COVID-19 vaccine as of Sept. 16, 2022. The data included a total of 5 deaths and 31 serious injuries.

Of the 31,074 reported deaths, 19,934 cases are attributed to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, 8,385 cases to Moderna, 2,704 cases to Johnson & Johnson (J&J) and no cases yet reported for Novavax.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 868,175 adverse events, including 14,531 deaths and 90,422 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Sept. 16, 2022.

Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.

Of the 14,531 deaths reported as of Sept. 16, 7% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination and 15% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination.

In the U.S., 600 million COVID-19 vaccine doses had been administered as of Sept. 14, including 363 million doses of Pfizer, 231 million doses of Moderna and 19 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.

Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Sept. 16, 2022, for 6-month-olds to 5-year-olds show:

• 3,843 adverse events, including 169 cases rated as serious and 6 reported deaths.
• 5 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).
  • The CDC uses a narrowed case definition of “myocarditis,” which excludes cases of cardiac arrest, ischemic strokes and deaths due to heart problems that occur before one has the chance to go to the emergency department.
• 26 reports of blood clotting disorders.
• 43 reports of seizures.

VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Sept. 16, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:

• 14,115 adverse events, including 665 rated as serious and 28 reported deaths.
• 45 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis.
• 67 reports of blood clotting disorders.
• 180 reports of seizures.

VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Sept. 16, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

• 39,472 adverse events, including 4,277 rated as serious and 120 reported deaths.
  • According to the CDC, “VAERS data available to the public include only the initial report data to VAERS. Updated data which contains data from medical records and corrections reported during follow up are used by the government for analysis. However, for numerous reasons including data consistency, these amended data are not available to the public.”
• 269 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
• 1,310 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 1,158 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
• 300 reports of blood clotting disorders with 277 cases attributed to Pfizer.
• 26 cases of postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) with all cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.

VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Sept. 16, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:

• 16% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
• 53% of those who died were male, 42% were female and the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.
• The average age of death was 72.
• As of Sept. 16, 8,471 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID-19 vaccines, including 4,898 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
• Of the 16,353 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 73% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 22% to Moderna and 5% to J&J.
• 2,968 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome, with 64% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 19% to Moderna and 17% to J&J.
• 10,015 reports of anaphylaxis where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
• 4,756 reports of myocardial infarction.
• 43,030 reports of blood-clotting disorders. Of those, 29,522 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 9,659 reports to Moderna and 3,789 reports to J&J.
• 23,926 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 18,186 cases attributed to Pfizer, 5,304 casesto Moderna and 410 cases to J&J.
• 67 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease with 54 cases attributed to Pfizer, 12 cases to Moderna and 1 case to J&J.
• 534 cases of POTS with 395 cases attributed to Pfizer, 119 cases to Moderna and 21 cases to J&J.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

Canadian woman dies 7 minutes after booster shot, coroner rules ‘natural causes’

A Canadian woman on Sept. 14 died suddenly in a drug store within minutes of receiving the new bivalent COVID-19 booster shot, according to her daughter.

Carol Pearce texted her daughter, Stephanie Foster, at 12:31 p.m. to say she received her booster shot and was waiting the recommended 15 minutes at the drug store. At 12:38 p.m., Pearce was unconscious.

An eyewitness told SASKTODAY.ca she was in the store when she heard screaming and crying. “They were saying in the store that it was about seven minutes,” after Pearce got the booster shot that she collapsed on the floor, the witness said.

A spokesperson from Saskatchewan Health told SASKTODAY.ca on Thursday Pearce died from natural causes.

“The Saskatchewan coroner’s service has investigated this instance and determined that the person died from natural causes,” Dale Hunter, a communications consultant from the Saskatchewan Ministry of Health said in an email.

“I do not believe this was caused from natural causes,” Foster said. “My Mom had no health conditions. I believe had she not gotten that Covid shot then she would be here with us today!”

The family said when Pearce left for her appointment, she was happy and healthy.

Reportedly 15 minutes after getting a shot in Saskatoon @ Shoppers Drug Mart, Stephanie Foster's mother dies. https://t.co/iZoBTeikcl pic.twitter.com/ZwIwnVvjge

— wlctv.ca (@wlctv_ca) September 17, 2022

CDC predicts COVID boosters for kids by mid-October

The CDC expects new bivalent COVID-19 boosters to be ready for kids ages 5 to 11 by mid-October, Reuters reported.

The agency said in a document released Tuesday it will issue a recommendation in early- to mid-October if the FDA authorizes the modified booster for this age group.

The CDC said it expects Pfizer-BioNTech’s bivalent booster to be available for children ages 5 to 11 and Moderna’s bivalent booster to be available for children ages 6 to 17, pending authorization by the FDA.

The bivalent booster targets both the original Wuhan strain no longer in circulation and the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 subvariants. The CDC expects pre-orders of the Pfizer booster to begin next week even though the FDA has not yet signed off on the vaccine for this age group.

Moderna’s booster is the same formula used for children and adults and will not require a separate pre-order period, the agency said.

Woman’s brain inflammation caused by Moderna COVID vaccine, case study confirms

A healthy 35-year-old woman who experienced a seizure two days after her second dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine was diagnosed with limbic encephalitis, a rare form of brain inflammation.

The authors of the report said the vaccine caused the woman’s condition.

According to the case report, when the woman arrived at the hospital she had a fever, followed by generalized tonic-clonic seizures that lasted for approximately five minutes and a postictal (post-seizure) phase of confusion that lasted approximately 30 minutes.

While in the ER, she had two more generalized seizures and was stable. Upon admission to the hospital, a lumbar puncture was performed revealing significant lymphocytosis.

She then developed anisocoria, a condition in which the pupil of one eye differs in size from the pupil of the other eye. An urgent CT scan of the head showed possible temporal lobe hypodensities (darker areas on the CT scan). A head MRI showed features suggestive of limbic encephalitis. A subsequent electroencephalogram showed severe post-seizure encephalitic changes.

While hospitalized, the patient developed abnormal behavior associated with limbic encephalitis and was diagnosed with autoimmune limbic encephalitis.

Researchers concluded the patient’s limbic encephalitis — which occurred quickly after COVID-19 vaccination — is an uncommon side effect of the vaccine based on the timing of symptoms and absence of other identifiable causes.

U.S. Supreme Court to consider case against COVID vaccine mandate for New York City employees

The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 7 will consider a New York Police Department detective’s challenge to the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for municipal employees.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas granted the request by the detective, Anthony Marciano, after Justice Sonia Sotomayor initially rejected it. Marciano’s challenge seeks to strike down the mandate for all city workers — including firefighters, police and teachers.

According to data from the mayor’s office, as of Aug. 30, 1,761 city workers have been fired for not getting the vaccine. That number is likely higher after the New York City Department of Education this month fired another 850 teachers and other staff, bringing the total to nearly 2,000 school employees fired for failure to comply with the mandate, according to the New York Post.

The Supreme Court’s decision to consider Marciano’s request came one day after New York Mayor Eric Adams rescinded the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for private employers and student athletes — but not municipal employees.

Woman develops blood clots, hallucinations, mini-strokes after Pfizer shots

In April 2021, Cathy Nagy’s 84-year-old mother-in-law received her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

According to Nagy, “about a week-and-a-half later, Marilyn experienced an episode of hallucinations, seeing people outside who were not there.”

Nagy told The Defender:

“Marilyn’s family attributed [the episode] to her dementia, even though she had not had any prior episodes … [They] did not make a connection to the vaccination.”

But the family’s opinion changed a few weeks later, after Marilyn got her second Pfizer shot and “had a more dramatic reaction,” experiencing “another episode of hallucinations that same day, extreme weakness and pain in her leg,” Nagy said.

Marilyn seemed to recover, but over the coming weeks, she continued to experience occasional hallucinations, and an increased decline in her cognition, Nagy said, prompting a visit to a neurologist.

An MRI “revealed she was experiencing blood clots, bleeding and mini-strokes in her brain, and she was sent directly to the ER for observation and treatment,” Nagy said.

At the hospital, Marilyn was administered blood-thinning medications and appointments were scheduled “with several specialists.”

About a month later, she developed deep vein thrombosis in her left leg, which according to Nagy, was “the same leg that had been experiencing pain since her second vaccine.”

“Her right leg also became painfully swollen, although no blood clot was found,” Nagy said.

Biden says ‘pandemic is over’ but mandates, federal health emergency remain in effect

President Joe Biden’s Sept. 18 statement that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over” prompted questions about why his administration hasn’t ended the federal public health emergency and how the government or employers can continue to mandate Emergency Use Authorized vaccines.

In an interview aired Sunday on “60 Minutes,” President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 “pandemic is over,” in the first such statement by a prominent political figure in the U.S. Biden made the comment from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, which was held for the first time since 2019.

In his remarks, Biden, using the auto show as a point of reference, stated:

“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it … but the pandemic is over.

“If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”

Sarah Lovenheim, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said the federal public health emergency “remains in effect” and that a 60-day notice would be provided by the agency before it is rescinded.

The earliest possible date when the emergency declaration would be lifted is in late November — well past the current Oct. 15 expiration date.

HHS first declared the public health emergency on Jan. 31, 2020, and renewed it 10 times since, most recently on July 15. In order for COVID-19 vaccines to be authorized for emergency use, a “public health emergency” must remain in effect.

Woman with heart condition injured by Pfizer shot after being forced to choose between job and vaccine

When her employer in 2021 mandated all employees get the COVID-19 vaccine, Heather Elkins, who had a pre-existing heart condition, requested a medical exemption.

But the Oregon Department of Human Services turned down her application — even though Elkins had transitioned, in 2020, to a permanent work-from-home employee.

Elkins, 45, told The Defender she was reluctant to get the vaccine in part because of the lack of long-term safety data but also because she saw reports of people developing heart issues.

Elkins got the Pfizer vaccine on Sept. 12, 2021, and “within about an hour,” she said, began experiencing adverse reactions.

The reactions she experienced after the first shot didn’t qualify her for a medical exemption from the second shot, she said.

So despite continued efforts to secure a medical exemption, Elkins received her second Pfizer shot on Oct. 3, 2021, and experienced “the same severe reaction as with the first dose.”

A year later, Elkins continues to experience symptoms that affect her ability to work.

Elkins told The Defender:

“To date, I’m experiencing all the same issues in addition to other symptoms like brain fog, horrible joint pain, pins and needles sensations, painful nerve zaps, shakiness and tremors in my hands and feet, and vision issues.

“I’ve now been mostly confined to my bed for the last 11 months, unable to do minimal activities because of my debilitating symptoms.”

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Megan Redshaw is a staff attorney for Children’s Health Defense and a reporter for The Defender.

Featured image is from CHD

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Last month, it appears the Israeli military may have escalated its threats in the never-ending war on Palestinians.

On August 18, in Ramallah, a massive Israeli army convoy proceeded to the offices of seven Palestinian civil society organizations, raided them, confiscated equipment, and sealed the entrances closed with an iron plate. The organizations were branded illegal on the suspicion (never proven) that these organizations were linked with terrorism.[1]

The organizations were Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Al-Haq rights group, the Union of Palestinian Women Committees (UPWC), the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Palestine chapter of the Geneva-based Defence for Children International , and Union of Health Work Committees. These organizations  reportedly conducted human rights work in the occupied West Bank, such as providing legal aid to detainees, documenting the human rights abuses by Israel, conducting local and international advocacy and working with the International Criminal Court and the United Nations. [2]

The groups were a slender ray of hope to a community swamped on daily basis by human rights abuses conducted by the Israeli State. Now even that light is being snuffed out by the menace of the nation branded ‘a land without a people for a people without a land.’

In a recent press release, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing the appointment of Jennifer May to the role of Canada’s Ambassador to China said, “As Ambassador to China, Ms. May will lead Canada’s important work in standing up for democratic values, human rights, and the rule of law.” [3]

And yet, when it comes to advancing that work to Israel, Canada seems substantially less concerned. Interestingly, a recent statement put forward by the New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh denounced the governing Liberals for their failure to hold the Israeli government to account:

“By failing to call out Israel for breaching international law and violating the human rights of the Palestinian people, Canada is contributing to the problem.”[4]

This outrage compelled the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute to put together a special discussion focused on the meaning of Israel threatening to terminate and silence advocates for Palestinian human rights, the reasons Canada continues to enable these human rights abuses, and how Canadian civil society can respond.

Sitting in on this talk were Sahar Francis, Michael Lynk, and Yavar Hameed. The talk was moderated by Bianca Mugyenyi.

The Canadian Foreign Policy Institute (CFPI) informs people living in Canada about the country’s diplomatic, aid, intelligence, trade and military policies abroad. The CFPI opposes the racism embedded in foreign policy. The non-partisan organization also monitors corporate Canada’s international activities.

Michael Lynk is a legal academic, associate professor at the University of Western Ontario and former United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Yavar Hameed is a lawyer in Ontario with a focus on racial profiling, lawful expression, equality rights, prisoner rights and migrant protection.

Bianca Mugyenyi is a journalist, activist, author and the director of the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 363)

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Notes:

1. Zena Al Tahhan (August 18, 2022), ‘Israel shuts down NGOs, kills Palestinian in occupied West Bank’, Al Jazeera
2. ibid
3. https://pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2022/09/23/prime-minister-announces-canadas-ambassador-china
4. https://mailchi.mp/parl/canada-must-do-its-part-for-peace-between-israel-and-palestine-aug26th?e=0effe2614b

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The Storming of the Bastille occurred in Paris on the afternoon of July 14, 1789. The Bastille was a medieval armory, fortress, and political prison. It was the symbol of Royal Authority under the reign of King Louis XVI. 

The French monarchy was obliged to accept the authority of the newly proclaimed National Assembly as well as endorse the fundamental rights contained in the “Declaration des Droits de l’Homme et du Citoyen” (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen), formulated in early August 1789.¹

More than 230 years later, these fundamental rights (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité) are now being contravened by corrupt governments around the world on behalf of a totalitarian and illusive financial establishment.

Storming of the Bastille (By Bibliothèque nationale de France, licensed under the Public Domain)

Bastille 2022

Bastille 2022 pertains not only to the restoration of these fundamental rights. It seeks to reverse and disable the criminal COVID-19 agenda which in the course of more than two and a half years has triggered economic, social and political chaos worldwide in 193 member states of the United Nations, coupled with bankruptcies, unemployment, mass poverty and despair. Famines have been reported in more than 25 countries.

Starting in November 2020, an experimental mRNA vaccine launched by our governments (allegedly with a view to combating the spread of the virus) has resulted in an ascending worldwide trend of vaccine-related deaths and injuries. It’s a killer vaccine. It’s a crime against humanity.

Bastille 2022 is not a “protest” movement, narrowly defined.

We do not seek to negotiate with corrupt government officials. We question their legitimacy. They are liars.

Our intent is to confront the powerful actors behind this criminal endeavor which is literally destroying people’s lives worldwide, while creating divisions within society. The impacts on mental health on population groups worldwide are devastating.

The numerous lockdowns documented in previous chapters (stay at home of the workforce), fear campaigns, COVID-19 policy mandates imposed on approximately 193 member states of the United Nations have also contributed to undermining and destabilizing:

• the very fabric of civil society and its institutions including education, culture and the arts, social gatherings, sports, entertainment, etc.
• all public sector activities including physical and social infrastructure, social services, law enforcement, etc.
• all major private sector activities which characterize national, regional and local economies including small, medium and large corporate enterprises, family farms, industry, wholesale and retail trade, the urban services economy, transport companies, airlines, hotel chains, etc.
• the structures of the global economy including international commodity trade, investment, import and export relations between countries, etc. The entire landscape of the global economy has been shattered.

In turn, a process of enrichment by the elite billionaires together with widening social inequalities is unfolding (see Chapter V).

The massive debts incurred by the nation-states resulting from corruption as well fiscal collapse have skyrocketed. Increasingly national governments are in a straitjacket, under the brunt of powerful creditor institutions. Mounting debts at all levels of society are the driving force (see Chapter IV).

The Creation of a Mass Movement 

What is at stake is the creation of a mass movement (nationally and worldwide) which questions the legitimacy and authority of the architects of this insidious project which broadly speaking emanates from Big Money, Big Pharma, the Information Technology Conglomerates, the Security Apparatus, Intelligence, the Military Industrial Complex, Big Energy, and the Corporate Media.

Ironically, the architects of the COVID-19 “pandemic” are now actively involved in formulating the “solution”. The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset consists in installing a worldwide totalitarian regime. What is contemplated is a system of “Global Governance” predicated on depopulation (see Chapters XII and XIII).

Approximately 193 UN member states are slated to be weakened and undermined. They are under the grip of the most serious debt crisis in world history. Under the Great Reset, the institutions of parliamentary democracy and the welfare state are to be replaced by an unelected “public-private partnership” dominated by the upper echelons of the financial establishment.

Restoring Real Democracy

We will seek all avenues through peaceful means to disable and undermine this totalitarian project including dialogue with and within public and private institutions (students, teachers, law enforcement officials, members of the military and the judiciary, etc.)

What is required is to break down the structures of corruption, hierarchy and abusive authority, namely to pursue what might be described as:

“the democratization of decision-making within our institutions”.

The Art of Deception

We must nonetheless understand the limitations of conducting effective judicial procedures against national governments. The judges are often pressured, threatened and corrupt, aligned with both dominant financial interests and politicians.

Moreover, inasmuch as this insidious project is enforced by national governments worldwide, the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is officially “independent” in regards to the UN Security Council, has a longstanding record of side-stepping US-NATO war crimes. The ICC is controlled by the same financial elites which control the governments.

We must also understand the complexities of this carefully designed and coordinated totalitarian project, namely the role of various fraudulent financial institutions, corporate advisory and lobby groups, consultants, “scientific advisors”, etc. acting as intermediaries on behalf of Big Pharma and the financial elites.

There is a hierarchy in the structures of authority. This complex and intricate decision-making process is used to co-opt, bribe and manipulate government officials. Almost identical policy mandates (emanating from higher authority) are implemented simultaneously in numerous countries, requiring active coordination. The same powerful lobby firms are acting at one and the same time in different countries (e.g. in North America and the European Union).

Large scale street protests will not prevail unless they are focused on effectively disabling this corrupt decision-making process.

Protest against COVID measures in Berlin, Germany (Copyright Reuters)

Truckers Freedom Convoy in Canada, February 2022 (Source: Children’s Health Defense)

What Are Our Priorities? Counter-Propaganda 

More than 7 billion people worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis. Several billion people have already been vaccinated by an “unapproved” experimental mRNA “vaccine”, which has resulted in a worldwide wave of mortality and morbidity.

While this tendency is confirmed by official figures pertaining to vaccine-related deaths and adverse events, the mainstream media and the governments are in a state of denial.

The devastating health impacts of the COVID-19 vaccine are rarely acknowledged. It’s the same catchphrase (which is an outright lie) repeated ad nauseam: “the virus is far more dangerous than the vaccine”:

• “We actually have more safety data on the vaccine than the virus, and already see that the virus is far more dangerous than the vaccine. (Intercare)²
• Dr. Alan Schroeder thinks it’s very natural for parents to worry, but said for teens, the virus is more dangerous than the vaccine. (NBC)³
• Doctors are on the lookout for it in children, but the bottom line remains that the virus is far more dangerous than the vaccine.
• “The mutations in the omicron variant make it [the virus] more prolific, dangerous, and elusive“.
• etc.

This propaganda consensus must be broken. With regard to the vaccine, informing people across the land regarding the data on deaths and adverse events is the first step.

The COVID crisis initiated in January 2020 is unprecedented in world history. Propaganda under Nuremberg is a crime (see Chapter XI).

Dismantling the propaganda apparatus is crucial. Counter-propaganda plays a key role in revealing the lies used to justify the policy mandates.

Without persistent media disinformation, the official COVID narrative falls flat.

First and foremost, we must forcefully challenge the mainstream media, without specifically targeting mainstream journalists who have been instructed to abide by the official narrative. We should in this regard favor dialogue with individual (independent) journalists.

We must ensure that people worldwide achieve an understanding of the history and devastating impacts of the COVID crisis supported by scientific concepts, analysis, testimonies and data. This endeavor will require a parallel process at the grassroots level, of sensitizing fellow citizens and establishing dialogue on the nature of the alleged pandemic, the mRNA vaccine, the RT-PCR test, as well as the devastating economic and social impacts of the lockdowns.

While we must put an end to the fear campaign, we must nonetheless inform our fellow citizens regarding the dangers of the mRNA vaccine as well as the engineered chaos of this totalitarian agenda of “Global Governance” on the very structures of civil society.

The “fear campaign” is to be replaced by “information, concepts, analysis and data” as well as “strategies” to confront Big Pharma, corrupt officials in high office as well as their Big Money sponsors.

We must also ensure the conduct of dialogue and debate at the grassroots of society.

Putting an End to the “Killer Vaccine”

Our first task is to immediately halt and cancel the so-called COVID-19 “vaccine” which has triggered a wave of mortality and morbidity worldwide.

According to Dr. Thomas Binder:

“The gene injections are unsafe. They can cause anaphylactic reactions, thromboembolism, thrombocytopenia, disseminated intravascular coagulation, and myocarditis in the short term.⁴

There is possible immunosuppression and antibody-dependent enhancement, ADE, in the medium-term.

And in the long term there are possible autoimmune diseases, cancer and infertility, risks that have not been ruled out yet.”

According to Doctors for COVID Ethics, in the EU, UK and US, the data respectively tabulated by EudraVigilance, MHRA (UK) and VAERS (US):

“have now recorded many more deaths and injuries from the COVID-19 “vaccine” roll-out than from all previous vaccines combined since records began”

With regard to the mRNA “vaccine”, the catastrophic number of injection related deaths has NOT been reported by the mainstream media, despite the official figures being publicly available.

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

Continuation of the programme, in the full knowledge of ongoing serious harm and death to both adults and children, constitutes Crimes Against Humanity/Genocide, for which those found to be responsible or complicit will ultimately be held personally liable.”⁵

As outlined in Chapter VIII, Pfizer has a criminal record (2009) with the US Department of Justice on charges of “fraudulent marketing”.⁶

As part of the 2009 DoJ settlement, Pfizer was put on parole:

“Pfizer also has agreed to enter into an expansive corporate integrity agreement … [which] provides for procedures and reviews to be put in place to avoid and promptly detect conduct similar to that which gave rise to this matter.”⁷

But we are no longer dealing with “fraudulent marketing”:

“Killing is good for business”: The vaccine is a multi-billion dollar operation worldwide. It’s manslaughter.

Once the “vaccine” has been halted, the criminality of Big Pharma will be fully revealed and understood. In turn, the legitimacy of the official COVID narrative based on lies and fake science will inevitably be impaired. This is the first step towards breaking the “official” COVID narrative.

The truth is an important peaceful weapon. Without propaganda and media disinformation, the architects of this project do not have a leg to stand on.

Let us break the “official” COVID-19 consensus and the propaganda apparatus which provides “legitimacy” to a criminal agenda.

Once it collapses, it will open up the road towards reversing the broader process of economic, social and political chaos generated in the course of the last two and a half years.

The Geopolitical Dimensions

What is unfolding is a new and destructive phase of US imperialism. It’s a totalitarian project of economic and social engineering.

The Biden administration has endorsed the COVID agenda, which has been used to destabilize and weaken national economies (ironically, including the United States as well as its allies and its “enemies”).

We cannot divorce our understanding of the COVID crisis from that of US foreign policy and America’s hegemonic agenda, e.g. the war in Ukraine, US-Russia relations, the enlargement and extension of NATO, the militarization of the South China Sea directed against China, Iran and the geopolitics of the Middle East, the ongoing sanctions regimes against Venezuela and Cuba, etc.

Integrating All Sectors of Society

It should be noted that organized opposition in many Western countries is weak. Why? Because “progressive forces” including left intellectuals, NGO leaders, trade union and labor leaders both in Western Europe and North America have from the outset endorsed the official COVID narrative. Many of these progressive movements are supported by corporate foundations.

The same billionaire foundations which are the unspoken architects of the “Great Reset” and “Global Governance” are also involved in (generously) financing various social movements. “They control the opposition”.

What this means is that grassroots activists are often misled and betrayed by their leaders who are routinely co-opted by their billionaire sponsors.

It is essential that these grassroots activists be integrated into the mainstay of the movement against the COVID-19 consensus.

The Road Ahead

What is required is the development of a broad-based grassroots network which confronts both the architects of this crisis as  well as all levels of government (i.e. national, states, provinces, municipalities, etc.) involved in imposing the vaccine as well carrying out the lockdown and closure of economic activity.

This network would be established (nationally and internationally) at all levels of society, in towns and villages, workplaces, parishes, trade unions, farmers organizations, professional associations, business associations, student unions, and veterans associations. Church groups would be called upon to integrate this movement.

“Spreading the word” through social media and independent online media outlets will be undertaken bearing in mind that Google as well as Facebook are instruments of censorship.

Legal procedures and protests are unfolding in all major regions of the world. As part of a worldwide network of initiatives, it is important to establish mechanisms of communication, dialogue and exchange within and between countries.

The creation of such a movement, which forcefully challenges the legitimacy of the financial elites, Big Pharma, et al., as well as the structures of political authority at the national level, is no easy task. It will require a degree of solidarity, unity and commitment unparalleled in world history.

What is required is the breaking down of political and ideological barriers within society (e.g. between political parties) while acting with a single voice towards building a worldwide consensus against tyranny. 

Worldwide solidarity and human dignity is the driving force.

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Notes

1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, July 20, 1998. Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-Man-and-of-the-Citizen

2 Intercare, n.d. Part 10: COVID-19 vaccines and long-term side effects. https://healthhub.intercare.co.za/2021/09/15/part-10-covid-19-vaccines-and-long-term-side-effects/

3 Anoushah Rasta, May 5, 2021. FDA Expected to Approve Vaccinations for Kids, But Are Parents Ready to Move Forward? https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/coronavirus/fda-expected-to-approve-vaccinations-for-kids-but-are-parents-ready-to-move-forward/2537309/

4 Doctors for COVID Ethics, August 3, 2021. COVID Vaccine Necessity, Efficacy and Safety. https://doctors4covidethics.org/covid-vaccine-necessity-efficacy-and-safety-3/

5 Doctors for COVID Ethics, October 22, 2021. J’Accuse! The Gene-based “Vaccines” Are Killing People. Governments Worldwide Are Lying to You the People, to the Populations They Purportedly Serve. https://www.globalresearch.ca/jaccuse-governments-worldwide-lying-you-people-populations-they-purportedly-serve/5750650

6 US Department of Justice, September 2, 2009. Pfizer Inc. “Fraudulent Marketing”: “Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History” (2009). US Department of Justice. https://www.globalresearch.ca/justice-department-announces-largest-health-care-fraud-settlement/5738792

7 Ibid.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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About the Author

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research.

He has undertaken field research in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality. He has also undertaken research in Health Economics (UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC),  UNFPA, CIDA, WHO, Government of Venezuela, Johns Hopkins International Journal of Health Services (1979, 1983)).

He is the author of 13 books including The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003), America’s “War on Terrorism” (2005),  and The Globalization of War, America’s Long War Against Humanity (2015).

He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.  His writings have been published in more than 20 languages. In 2014, he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit of the Republic of Serbia for his writings on NATO’s war of aggression against Yugoslavia. He can be reached at [email protected].

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First published on September 12, 2022

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Introduction

The American military government left Japan in 1952 leaving behind the 1948 peace constitutions intended to prevent Japan from ever rising again as imperial military power. But, the irony of the political fate was such that the U.S. had to ask its hated former mega-enemy to give hand to fight communism.

Washington was looking for a leader to fight communism for the U.S. It chose Kishi Nobuske as the post-war leader for Japan. Kishi was known as the “Showa Monster” for his merciless racism, his cruelty, his inhuman way of exploiting Chinese and Koreans to promote the interest of Japan in Manchuria in the 1930s.

He was also right hand man of Tojo Hideki during WWII; he tried his best to kill Americans.

Kishi was A-Class war criminal, but he avoided hanging for his potential utility to promote American interests in Japan. He spent three years in prison and, in 1957, he became prime minister and built the foundation needed for the control of the post-war destiny of Japan.

Kishi and the surviving former leaders of the Japanese empire refused to admit Japanese unconditional surrender and had the dream of reviving the glory and power of Japan.

This dream was inherited by Kishi’s grandson, Shinzo Abe and his group which I qualify as the Neo-Meiji Restoration Group (NMRG).

The Japanese hegemonic war in East Asia in the period 1910-1945 is called the “holy war” driven by Shinto nationalism. And it is most likely that the NMRG has been preparing another holy war (holy war 2.0).

This paper is interested in examining the following issues. To begin with, in the first section, this paper examines how Japan is preparing the possible holy war 2.0. In the second section, the paper discusses the impact of holy war 2.0 on neighbouring countries. Then, in the third section, scenarios of holy war 2.0 are presented. There will be a short section of conclusion.

Preparation for Holy War 2.0

The following are the strategies for war readiness:

• Role of the Nippon Gaigi
• State Shinto
• Further militarization
• Lobbying Campaign
• Washington-Tokyo complicity
• Japanese people’s submissiveness

Role of the Nippon Gaigi

To prepare for holy war 2.0, Japan must justify holy war 1.0 which took place during the first half of the 20th century.

The justification of the first holy war was needed in order to persuade the Japanese people to accept and actively support the second holy war.

The justification of holy war 1.0 has been promoted by the most far-right and the most influential organization known as the Nippon Gaigi (Japan Conference).

Nippon Gaigi is a huge think tank for the NMRG. It was established in 1981 and it has as many as 40,000 members most of whom are parts of the elite group of the Japanese society; it has 47 prefecture chapters and 230 local chapters.

The following amazing figures attest to its power. For instance, no less than 90% of Shinzo Abe’s ministers were its members; as many as 50% of law makers are its members. Shinzo Abe was its advisor.

The Nippon Gaigi is claiming this.

• Japan has never surrendered to the allied armed forces; the Pacific War is still continuing.
• The Tokyo War Criminal Court was not legitimate
• The invasion of Japan into Korea, Manchukuo and Chine was intended to liberate Asians from the West’s imperialism and civilize the inferior people in Korea, Manchukuo and China.
• Nippon Gaigi denies the existence of the Nanking Rape and the crime of raping Comfort Women.

If there is any incidence which prevents Japan from justifying its holy war is the crime against the “comfort women”.

In particular, for Japan, it is not easy to admit its crime against the comfort women, because it was the most unholy event. Therefore, to justify and glorify the holy war 1.0, the crime against the comfort women should not have existed, at least in the mind of the Japanese people who should fight for the holy war 2.0.

That is why the story of the crime against the comfort women is taken out from Japanese school history text books. The media is also strictly watched to avoid any mention of the crime. In fact, some years, ago a college professor in a college in Hokkaido wrote an article about the comfort women. He was fired on the same day.

The campaign of cover-up of the crime against the comfort women is so effective that the great majority of Japanese people, especially, the young generations are unaware of the crime. This is the result of the cover-up job of the Nippon Gaigi and the NMRG led by Shinzo Abe.

The interesting question is why the war mongering Japanese leaders are so sensitive to and so fearful about the comfort women crime. The answer lies in the fact that the crime was extremely brutal hellish human right violation.

What the world saw was something which can happen in the most hellish hell. What the world saw makes you feel ashamed to share this earth with the people who committed such a crime. When you see the images of young girls buried alive in mass graves, you cry with anger, sorrow and despair.

This crime had the following terrible characteristics.

First, it was most beastly cruel sexual torturing of poor girls ever recorded. In average, the poor girls had to be raped as many as 20 times a day.

Second, the number of victims was beyond imagination; no less than 250,000 women were victims.

Third, the horrible crime lasted during the whole period of the Pacific War. It was the longest collective raping ever recorded in the history of collective raping.

Fourth, it demonstrated the ugly face of Japanese racism revealed by the absence of Japanese comfort women and statements of two Japanese soldiers made during court hearings on war crimes.

A Japanese soldier said: “I raped these girls, because I am a soldier of the emperor!”

Another Japanese soldier said: “These comfort women are just military equipment!”

It appears that the NMRG led by Shinzo Abe are the most concerned with the brutal revelation of Japanese racism through the crime against the comfort women. This crime compromises Japan’s pretense of being a racism-free country.

Image: Nanking woman photographed after being raped by Japanese soldiers. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The Nanking Rape was also surely one of the worst beastly crimes observed in the history of mankind. It was one of the most violent genocides ever committed in the annals of war.

Hundreds of thousands of Nanking residents were killed by canon, machine guns, rifles and Japanese swords. Countless girls, young women and old women were raped in open air in front of family members and neighbours. Most of buildings were destroyed.

Now coming back to the crime against the comfort women, Nippon Gaigi has a dilemma. It wants to deny the crime against the poor comfort women. But, to their disappointment, some of the prominent Japanese politicians admitted the crime.

In 1992, Koichi Kato, the, chief cabinet secretary, stated this.

“Government has been involved in the establishment of comfort stations, the control of those who recruited comfort women, the construction and enforcement of comfort facilities, the management of comfort stations… and that the government wanted to express its sincere apology and remorse to all those who have suffered indescribable hardship as so called wartime comfort women.”

In 1993, Yohei Kono, former chief secretary of the prime minster office, made the following statement.

• The Japanese military was directly or indirectly involved in the establishment and management of comfort women.
• The recruitment of comfort women was entrusted mainly by private recruiters of the comfort women.
• In many cases, they were recruited against their will.
• At times, administrative/military personnel took part in the recruitment.
• They lived in misery at comfort station under a coercive atmosphere.

Thus, Kato and Kono made it crystal clear that the sub-human treatment of 250,000 young girls mostly from Korea was carried out  not only by the military but also by the administration of Japan. What these two former chiefs of cabinet said was the proof of the beastly atrocity committed to the poor girls by Japan. Kato even offered an apology.

In 1995, Tomichi Murayama, former prime minister, said this:

“In the hope that no such mistakes be made in the future, I regret in spirit of humility, these un-refutable facts of history and here once again my feeling of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apologies.”

In 2005, Junichiro Koizumi, former prime minster, made an apology:

“Sincerely facing these facts of history, I once again express my feeling of deep remorse and heartfelt apology.”

Both Murayama and Koizumi were highly respected prime ministers. In fact, Koizumi was Shinzo Abe’s boss.

But, incredible thing happened. Despite the public statement of these politicians admitting the historical fact of comfort women, the Nippon Gaigi and Abe deny the historical fact.

Since 2015, in numerous occasions, Shinzo Abe flatly denied the existence of the crime. At another occasion, he said that the comfort women came to the comfort camp voluntarily. In other occasions, he claimed that there was no coercion. In other occasions, he said that these women were prostitutes.

Many have wondered and still wondering why Shinzo Abe cannot accept the historical fact. What he said amounts to saying that those politicians who made apology including his boss, Koizumi, were lying.

As pointed out above, for the NMRG led by Shinzo Abe, the admission of the crime against the comfort women means the recognition of un-holiness of the first holy war making it impossible to justify and glorify it. If the first holy war is not holy, it is difficult to conduct second holy war.

What is troublesome is the fact that most of the Japanese people are not aware of the crime against the comfort women due to the very effective campaign of the non-existence of the crime. The NMRG led Shinzo Abe has succeeded in hiding the historical fact from the Japanese people.

By hiding from the Japanese people the crime against the comfort women, Nippon Gaigi led by Shinzo Abe has made a good start in preparing holy war 2.0. 

State Shinto (Shintoism)

The preparation of Japan’s holy war 2.0 includes spiritual and religious war readiness. State-Shinto provides such readiness.

Shinto is a shamanic belief widely practiced for centuries in Japan. It has consisted in asking kami (god) to help for the solution of daily human life problems. There are tens of thousands of kamis in Japan. But, the most revered kami is Amaterus Omikami, the goddess who founded Japan.

Sinto was made national religion during the Meiji Era and it lasted until 1945. The most important Shinto policy was the 1890 Imperial Prescript of Education which made it compulsory to teach Shinto at schools.

I was myself educated in Shinto and I know about its devastatingly powerful impact on the mind and the soul of the people.

In Shinto (or Shintoism), the emperor is the linear descendent of goddess Amaterus Omikami. Hence, the emperor is divine.

And, the reason of being Japanese is to devote mind and body for the glory of the emperor and obey government which carries out the wish of the emperor.

The NMRG has been trying to restore the State Shinto. Already it is taught at schools.

Image: The torii gateway to the Itsukushima Shrine in Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan, one of the most famous examples of torii in the country.^[1] Torii mark the entrance to Shinto shrines and are recognizable symbols of the religion. (Photo by JordyMeow, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

The State Shinto is, perhaps, the most weaponized religion in the world. It is the religion which made the “kamikaze pilot” to throw away the young lives for the glory of “den-no-hei-ka” (the emperor).

Shinto has returned and the NMRG led by the Kishi Nobuske-Shinzo Abe line force will be soon able to transform Shinto into State-Shinto.

In 1969, the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership was established. It is the political arm of the Association of Shinto Shrines which has 80,000 members. There are Shinto shrines in every town and many households have family shrines.

The political weight of Shinto is reflected by the fact that 99% of 2016 cabinet ministers are members of the Association. In fact, Shinto has become de facto State Shinto. Moreover, the Shinto Association is closely tied to the Nippon Gaigi through the Society of Defence Japan.

The spread of State Shinto will end up with the mobilization of Japanese people who will fight for the glory of the emperor. So, Shinto is an important strategic weapon for holy war 2.0.

Further Militarization

Since the 2000s, various institutions and laws were established in order to make Japan a “normal country” capable of conducting war far from Japan. Most of these institutions and laws were initiated by Shinzo Abe and his fellow members of the NMRG.

Remember that Shinzo Abe was prime minister of Japan twice, 2006-2007 and 2012-2020

In 2007, the National Defence Agency was promoted to the status of Ministry of National Defence.

In 2013: the National Security Council was created in order to better plan and coordinate wars.

In 2013: the Secrecy Law was passed to control ant-war movement.

In 2014, Japan put the end to the self-imposed arms embargo.

In 2015, the National Diet passed a law allowing Japan to undertake “collective defence” by virtue of which Japan can send its armed forces abroad and participate in war undertaken by allies.

In 2022, both lower house and the upper house obtained two-third of seats needed to amend the peace constitution. There remains the popular referendum requiring two-third of popular votes allowing the process of undertaking the elimination of Article 9 of the peace constitution.

The media has been talking a lot about Japan’s remilitarization. But, what is happening now is not remilitarization; it is further militarization for war readiness.

Japan is already the third military power in Asia; it is highly militarized already. It did spend in 2020 as much as USD 50 billion compare to USD 40 billion in South Korea. In other words, Japan is more than remilitarized. Japan has been strengthening the striking capability of its armed forces.

Moreover, as we saw in the past, Japan can rapidly convert the civil industries into military industries. Japan can become, sooner than we think, a super military power threatening neighbouring countries including Korea and China.

Japan has two aircraft carriers. It has created the amphibious units to undertake amphibious attack against foreign country. It has developed long-range missile reaching even China. Japan has the capability to conduct anti-submarine warfare.  It has Boeing V-22 Osprey and Global hawk drones.

The striking capability of the Japanese armed forces (nominally SDF) is great enough to stir up the fear of another pan-Asian war.

What Japan is preparing now is something far beyond its militarization; Japan is suspected by many for its preparation of its holy war 2.0.

In reality, Japanese military power can soon become super military power capable of hitting China with support of the U.S. and even ROK armed forces.

Lobbying Campaign

Another strategy of Japan’s war preparation is the lobbying (bribe) campaign. Japan is one of the countries extremely sensitive to its image; it wants to show to the world that it is very democratic, peace loving, non-racist and big donor to international organizations.

Above all, Japan has been pouring out money to persuade the world that what it did during the Pacific War was good for Asian countries, that the Nanking Rape never happened and that the beastly raping of 250,000 poor Korea girls was a fiction.

What is surprising is that the media of the West seldom raise the issues of comfort women and the Nanking Rape. This is the results of the brilliant bribe diplomacy of Japan. In the U.S., some of the major think tanks, university research centers and NGOs are fatly funded by Japan.

In 2021, Harvard University law professor Mark J. Ramseyer wrote an article in the International Review of Laws and Economics claiming that the crime of comfort women did not happen. More than three thousand North American university professors of the Korean origin published a long statement asking the journal not to publish the article. Harvard University published it nonetheless.

Professor Ramseyer was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun for his contribution for the promotion of Japanese interests. It is suspected that lobbying by Japan might have led to the publication of the article.

The media praises Japan as most democratic country. But, Japan has been ruled every year by the same party, the LDP, since 1957 except five years. Is it possible, in a truly democratic country, for the same party to rule for so long?

The media of the West seldom report on racial discrimination in Japan. But, Japan is the most racist country among developed countries.

What is troubling is that, due to Japan’s aggressive bribe campaign, the world may overlook the danger of possible Japan’s holy war 2.0.

At any rate, Japan’s lobbying campaign can be a very effective tool for the preparation of holy war 2.0.

Washington-Tokyo Complicity

There is another factor which pushes Japan to contemplate another holy war. It is the relationship between warmongering Washington and Japan’s NMRG led by Kishi Nobuske – Shinzo Abe line political and economic force.

In fact, the Washington-Tokyo complicity can be a big factor for the return of pre-1945 Japan. The following is some aspects of such complicity.

First, Washington seems to encourage Japan’s remilitarization.

WSJ: Patrick McCabe wrote “Japanese remilitarization is nothing more than Beijing narrative.”

Kurt M Campbell Biden’s top advisor said “Japan’s constitutional reinterpretation and military modernization is Chinese propaganda.” (quoted here)

Second, Japan’s lobbying campaign looks very effective. The following statement attests to it:

“American strategists are taken in by a far-right charm offensive (of Japan) and fail to understand their danger of what they are toying with” (ibid).

“The US foreign policy staff have deep connection to Japanese hawk thin tanks including the Center for Strategies and International Studies (CSIS) and the Center for A New American Security (founded by Kurt Campbell).”

Third, However, there are voices warning Washington’s encouragement of Japan’s remilitarization.

“Any movement committed to preventing war and building transnational solidarity must consider the threat of Japan’s remilitarization and United States’ role in encouraging it, empowering and arming Japan’s far right could be worst mistake in the pivot to Asia yet.” (Gabriel Rodrigues)

Fourth, But, Washington needs Japan to share the burden of containing China.

“Washington wants Japan to ensure that the United States doesn’t shoulder the burden of policing the seas alone…and come to the United States aid in a possible military confrontation with China.” (foreignpolicy.com. August 15, 2015)

Ned Price,White House spokesman was quoted:

“We also value Prime Minster Abe’s assurance of Japan’s interest to expand its contribution to international peace and prosperity in years to come.” “But in East Asia where the memory of Japan’s behaviour during World War II still rings fresh, it is anything but.” (foreignpolicy.co: August 15, 2015)

As far as I am concerned, Washington’s reliance on Japan for its hegemonic battle against China is needed because of the failure of other existing measures. Since the Obama era, Washington has been trying to contain and bash China through Asia-Pivot, TPP, CPTPP, Quad, AUKUS and several bilateral trade or security alliances and partnerships, but none has worked to Biden’s satisfaction. This is one of the reasons for asking Japan to play more proactive role in the containment of China.

Thus, Washington’s invitation to Japan to play more roles in the Sino-American hegemonic war is an important factor for Japan’s preparation for war.

“It is important to know that the US-Japan alliance is for good of Asia.” (Shinzo Abe quoted by KBS Documentary, September 30, 2006)

This means that the joint hegemonic rule by Japan-U.S. is good for Asia. Is Abe sure that Asian countries share such imperialistic view of his?

“Without the aid of Japan, the US cannot assure security cooperation in Asia.” (High ranking official of the US Department of Defence, KBS Documentary, September 30, 2006)

To sum up, Washington encourages Japan to be ready for the proxy war, while Japan welcomes this opportunity for realization of its dream of restoring the power and glory of pre-1945 imperial and military Japan.

Japanese People’s Submissiveness

There is another factor which facilitates Japan’s war readiness. It is the relationship between the Japanese leaders and the Japanese people.

The relations between the elite leaders and the ordinary Japanese people are akin to what I call the “Samurai-Peasant relations”. We see often in movies and history books the absolute authority of Samurai over peasants. It is reported that, during the Tokugawa Era, the Samurai represented about 10% of the population.

But, 90% of the population were utterly powerless vis-à-vis mere 10% of the population of Samurai. In such situation, the Samurai looked down the peasant as inferior and sub-human. The current situation is not very different. The elite leaders are behaving like Samurai, while the ordinary Japanese people are acting like peasants.

Listen to what Professor Nakano had to say about the way the leaders think of the ordinary people.

“They (leaders) think that the kids and adults are being brainwashed by themselves blame and sense of shame in their history. They are romantic, they are irrational. They live their own world so they lack strategic thinking.” (Professor Koichi Nakano Sophia University)

If the people feel guilty for what Japan did during WWII, they are rational, not irrational; it should be rather the elite group who should feel guilty. Since they do not feel guilty, they are irrational.

It is certain that the people being rational would object another holy war. Unfortunately, their view will be totally ignored, because the leaders (Samurai) ignore the wish of people (peasant).

.An incidence which dramatically illustrated the Samurai-Peasant relations took place during the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2019. The world saw that 90% of the Japanese people were asking the government to abandon the Olympics or postpone it. But the government of Suga completely ignored the people’ wish.

Professor Kobayashi was urging the people to stop the remilitarization of Japan.

“We have to fight and not give up. Otherwise, we will live under dictatorship, freedom and democracy will not exist.” (Prof. Setsu Kobayashi, leading constitutional expert in Japan)

Only the ordinary Japanese can stop another holy war. But, I am afraid they cannot. This is another factor allowing further militarization of Japan.

Impact of Holy War 2.0 Readiness

The impact of the possible second holy war is the fear and the concern of those countries which were victims of the Japanese brutal aggression and those individuals who know the true face of Japanese leaders.

For example, the Journal, Foreign Policy, has made some pertinent observation regarding Abe’s ambition.

“The most rigorous accounts of Abe’s life make it plain that his political raison d’être was the restoration of Japan, its former glory: all else was but a means to that end.” (foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/14)

There is another interesting observation on Shinzo Abe.

“Fuelled by nostalgia for military glory, ultra-nationalism has sought to restore not only Japan’s armed forces, but its beautiful traditional national character.” (Lisa Torio: jacobin.com/2017/03)

These two statements show how much the Japanese conservative leaders led by Abe are yearning to restore the mighty and glorious Japan of yesterdays.

Unfortunately, Shinzo Abe’s ambition stirs malaise and fear of those who know the NMRG’s ambition. Here are some of statements showing such fear and malaise.

“Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is setting the country on course for remilitarization much to the exasperation of Japanese wartime enemies, China and Korea.” (See this)

“With the Abe administration reaching for empire, a movement without an anti-imperialist framework, it is ill equipped to challenge the far right remilitarization campaign.” (Lisa Torio: jacobin.com/2017/03) This statement makes allusion to the return of Japanese imperialism.

“They are thinking about Asia before the war when Japan was leader of Asia. They want to repeat that.” (Prof. Setsu Kobayashi)

“The world will not be fooled. It only conjures up the ghost of Japan once again. The last time the Japs talked about a Great East Asia co-prosperity Sphere, it turned into a horrible nightmare for many of its neighbours.” (soc.cu/ture.china narratives)

Gabriel Rodrigues has made some interesting comments.

“A twenty-first century Japanese fascism will take drastically different from what it did in the 1930s, but there is no doubt it constitutes a major threat to East Asia and Japan itself.”

“China should be more afraid of Japanese military than the American.” (Chi Wang, consultant of US-China Trade for H.W. Bush administration)

“South Korea nominally Japan’s alley views a resurgent Japan is a greater threat to its national security than China or even North Korea.” (Gabriel Rodrigues.auth.jacobinmag.com/2020/ 10/)

I made rather lengthy quotations to show how Japan’s remilitarization and war readiness could be the object of concern in China and Korea. The war readiness of Japan will end up necessarily with armament race which will eventually lead to shooing war with no winners. 

Scenario of Holy War 2.0

My scenario of the second holy war is focused on the troublesome relations between Washington and Tokyo. To put it in plain English, Washington needs Japan’s military muscle to destroy China, while Japan needs Washington to repeat the adventure of a new version of the East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.

So far, Washington has been handling well the Japanese NMRG so that Japan’s military power should not be strong enough to threaten America.

American has not forgotten the sneaky murderous attack against Pearl Harbour, nor have the Japanese forgotten holocaust of Hiroshima-Nagasaki.

The trouble is this. Joe Biden is pathologically obsessed to destroy China.  But, the dilemma for Biden is the fact that even with national defence budget of almost USD 800 billion, American military power is not good enough to hit China alone. Biden needs Japan’s military support.

Shinzo Abe and his NMRG friends know it. They are willing to go long way to destroy and rule China or Korea in complicity with Washington. Biden will support Japan’s further militarization despite the danger of Japan’s becoming American enemy, if conditions allow.

Now, the key factor in the Sino-American war is the role of Taiwan. Washington is facing difficult choice regarding Taiwan. It must be pointed out that Taiwan is Washington’s fixed aircraft carrier sitting in front door of China; it is the best defence line against China. If China attacks Taiwan, Washington will lose such strategic defence line.

However, the ultimate objective of anti-China policy is to destroy China. But, at the moment, Washington does not have the military capability to destroy China. Therefore, Washington waits until its two proxy military powers, Japanese armed forces and South Korean armed forces, especially the Japanese armed forces, become strong enough to destroy China for the U.S. It may take five years for Japan to become super military power.

Under such situation, I envisage the following scenario.

The first target of Japan’s holy war 2.0 will be China. If Japan come out of China war with military capability strong enough, then the second target will be North Korea.

There are two reasons for North Korea not being the first target of the holy war. One is the possibility of intervention of China and even Russia to help North Korea. The other is Washington’s priority is the destruction of China not the killing of North Korea which has little meaning to Washington.

The anti-China war may take the following process.

First, Washington or Tokyo would induce China to attack Taiwan. There are five conditions under which China is supposed to arrack Taiwan: declaration of Taiwan independence, internal turmoil within Taiwan, deployment of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Taiwan’s military alliance with a foreign country and 1992 intra-China consensus for “One-China policy.”

Of these five conditions, Taiwan’s independence declaration is not likely to happen, because President Tsai ing-wen herself says that Taiwan is de facto independent.

When Washington judges Japan’s readiness, Washington or Japan might provoke the violation of one of the three conditions, namely, internal turmoil, deployment of WMD or military alliance of Taiwan.

The Taiwan-China war will become a war between the Taiwan Alliance (U.S. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) and China; it will become TA-China war. The big question is whether the South Korean armed forces will join.

For the moment, the possibility of the ROK army’s participation in the Taiwan-China war is great, because the new South Korean government is run by the pro-Japan conservative South Koreans (PJCSK) led by Yoon Suk-yeol who regards himself as the obedient servant of Tokyo and Washington.

But, if the liberal government of the Democratic Party retakes the power in five years, the situation will be different.

It is not easy to predict the outcome of the TA-China war. But, it is likely that the economies of the three Asian countries and Taiwan will be so devastated that it will take long time to recover. It is possible that the Japanese economy will be so damaged that Japan might lose its status of super military power.

As for the Unites States, the destruction of China and Japan means the elimination of present enemy (China) as well as the potential enemy (Japan). So, the U.S. will be the winner.

There are reasons for the U.S. to come out of the TA-China war with little damage. To begin with, the U.S. territory is far away from the battle ground. It is likely that the role of the U.S. may be limited to the provision of weapons and air and sea battle support without sending GIs to the battle ground. The actual shooting and killing will be dome by the Japanese and Korean soldiers. Here we see the tragic scenario of the Ukraine-Russia War repeats itself.

As indicated above, it is likely that no one will come out winner except the U.S. However, if Japan survives the TA-China war and if it has some economic and military capability left, the next target of conquest will be North Korea. Here, Japan needs the support of South Korea and Washington.

As long as the pro-Japan conservative government rules South Korea, Japan can count on the participation of ROK armed forces to join the attack against North Korea.

Now, the American armed forces are likely to allow the Japanese invasion into North Korea, because Washington must reward Japan for its participation in the TA-China war.

The irony is that the history may repeat itself. We remember the Taft-Katsura Agreement of 1905 signed by Katsura Taro, prime minister of Japan and William Howard Taft, secretary of war of the U.S. By virtue of this agreement, Washington let Japan to swallow Korea, while Japan overlooked the American colonization of the Philippines.

However, if North Korea is attacked, it will fight back, even with nuclear weapons, if needed. The cost of Japan’s war against North Korea will be too high to continue its Holy War 2.0.

Conclusion

The Neo-Meiji Restoration Group (NMRG) led by the Kishi Nobuske-Shinzo Abe line political forces has been preparing the second holy war.

Several measures have been applied to prepare the holy war.. The Nippon Gaigi has been able to hide from the Japanese people Japan’s worst crimes committed during WWII so that they would support the second holy war. The return of Shinto provides radical nationalism needed for holy war 2.0.

The acceleration of remilitarization, global lobbying campaign for the justification of the first holy war, the Washington-Tokyo complicity for anti-China war and the traditional submissiveness of the Japanese people are the factors which will facilitate the Japan’s readiness for war.

The impact of Japan’s remilitarization and its readiness for the second holy war makes East Asian countries, especially China and Korea, nervous and uneasy and this will intensify armament race leading to regional security instability.

Japan’s readiness for war is likely to increase the probability of TA-China war. The TA-China is likely to destroy the military capability and the economies of Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea. These countries will be losers. Only the U.S. will be the winner.

Now, if Japan survives the TA-China war and if it still has military striking capability left, Japan will attack North Korea with the support of South Korea and the U.S.

If attacked, North Korea will hit back, even with nuclear weapons. Here, again, there is no guarantee that Japan will win.

In short, the dream of restoring the pre-1945 Japan and conduct the second holy war is likely to remain a dream, no more, no less.

The drive for the second holy war is indeed an adventure which is “Seppuk adventures.” This is the legacy of Sinzo Abe.

Soon, Japan will become a “normal country” with its regular armed forces and the right to conduct war. If the “normal Japan” has the ambition of conducting holy war 2.0, it is likely that Japan will be damaged so badly that it will be difficult to recover.

To conclude, it is sincerely hoped that “Normal Japan” would abandon the dream of ruling again Asia by force and, instead cooperate with China, Korea and other countries for the creation of “East Asia Co-Prosperity and Co-Security Sphere” which will respect the national sovereignty of countries of the region, promote the regional peace and assure the regional prosperity.

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

Featured image is from Oriental Review

First published in June 2015.

With tensions growing in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, a new generation of nuclear weapons technology is making nuclear warfare a very real prospect. And with very little fanfare, the US is embarking on the privatization of nuclear war under a first-strike doctrine.

“Nuclear war has become a multibillion dollar undertaking, which fills the pockets of US defense contractors. What is at stake is the outright “privatization of nuclear war”. 

Video: James Corbett and Michel Chossudovsky

US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Pre-emptive nuclear war is portrayed as a “humanitarian undertaking”. 

US nuclear doctrine is intimately related to “America’s War on Terrorism” and the alleged threat of Al Qaeda, which in a bitter irony is con- sidered as an upcoming nuclear power.

Click here to order Michel Chossudovsky’s book

Under the Obama administration, Islamic terrorists are said to be preparing to attack US cities. Proliferation is tacitly equated with “nuclear terrorism”. Obama’s nuclear doctrine puts particular emphasis on “nuclear terrorism” and on the alleged plans by Al Qaeda to develop and use nuclear weapons. 

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I partiti istituzionali conducono la campagna elettorale non solo in Italia ma negli Stati Uniti. Il segretario del PD Enrico Letta, in un’intervista a un giornale statunitense, dichiara: “Con la destra l’Italia vicina alla Russia, con noi agli USA”. Sullo stesso giornale il presidente del Copasir Adolfo Urso, in visita a Washington, assicura invece che “per gli USA Giorgia Meloni è pienamente affidabile”. I partiti dell’intero arco parlamentare gareggiano così per ottenere il consenso di Washington, indispensabile a qualsiasi governo esca dalle elezioni. Allo stesso tempo agiscono di comune accordo quando si tratta di attuare le direttive di Washington. Ad esempio, quella di boicottare il Trattato ONU sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari, ratificato da 66 Stati e firmato da 20, ma boicottato da USA e NATO. Alla riunione di giugno degli aderenti al Trattato l’Italia, pur essendo invitata, non ha partecipato neppure in veste di osservatore.

Sempre in giugno il 6° Stormo dell’Aeronautica italiana a Ghedi ha ricevuto il primo caccia USA F-35A da attacco nucleare che verrà presto armato con le nuove bombe nucleari USA B61-12, pronte ad essere impiegate dall’Aeronautica italiana sotto domando USA. L’Italia viola così il Trattato di non-proliferazione ratificato nel 1975, il quale stabilisce: “Ciascuno degli Stati militarmente non nucleari si impegna a non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari, né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente”.

A ulteriore prova della sudditanza dell’Italia agli USA, lo scorso 15 settembre la Commissione parlamentare d’inchiesta sulle cause del “disastro” della nave Moby Prince ha concluso i suoi lavori nascondendo ancora una volta le vere cause della strage avvenuta nella rada di Livorno oltre 31 anni fa per coprire un traffico di armi effettuato dalla limitrofa base USA di Camp Darby. La mistificante relazione conclusiva, presentata da Andrea Romano del PD, è stata approvata all’unanimità dai rappresentanti di tutti gli altri partiti. Quale invece sia stata la reale dinamica della strage viene mostrato in questa puntata di Grandangolo da una video-inchiesta di scottante attualità, trasmessa nel 2016  da Pandora TV di Giulietto Chiesa.

Manlio Dinucci

 

 

Video : https://www.byoblu.com/2022/09/23/il-partito-americano-in-italia-grandangolo-pangea/

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It’s a matter of the highest urgency that the Turkish government and the society that it represents realize that their civilization-state’s objective national interests are now deemed by their “allies” as “legitimate targets”.

The FSB announced on Thursday that it foiled an attempted terrorist attack by Russian nationals on Kiev’s payroll to blow up one of their country’s pipelines to Turkiye. No other details were revealed at the time of this article’s publication, but it’s still possible to extrapolate from what’s known thus far to better understand why this specific target was chosen. Not only did Kiev and its Western patrons want to disrupt Moscow’s energy revenue, but they also partially wanted to punish Ankara too.

I explained in late June why “Turkiye Should Be Praised For Reaffirming Its Geostrategic Pragmatism Towards Russia”, pointing to President Erdogan’s refusal to sanction Moscow and his continued desire to cooperate with President Putin in spite their countries’ trans-regional rivalry as proof of this. Not only did the Turkish leader help broker the grain deal between Moscow and Kiev for which his Russian counterpart praised him last week, but he’s also actively working to revive talks for ending their conflict.

The problem, however, is that President Putin revealed on Wednesday in his nationally televised address that “Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements” reached throughout the course of the prior Istanbul talks because its Western patrons didn’t want it making peace with his country. This means that President Erdogan’s peace push, which aligns with his country’s de facto principled neutrality towards the conflict despite voting against Russia at the UN, is contrary to Western interests.

In fact, his country’s continued refusal to unilaterally concede on its objective national interests by jumping on the West’s anti-Russian sanctions bandwagon has resulted in Turkish companies being put on Kiev’s “hit list”. This isn’t speculation either since Foreign Minister Cavusoglu confirmed that his government officially demanded an explanation about this hostile move. The preceding sequence of objectively existing and easily verifiable events proves that all isn’t well in Turkish-Ukrainian relations.

Not only that, but ties between Turkiye and the US-led West’s Golden Billion are also rocky and have been for quite a few years already. Considering that Washington controls Kiev, it can therefore be said that this Eastern European vassal state’s aggression against third countries can be interpreted as an indirect expression of its US patron’s own such aggressive intentions. For instance, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister’s condemnation of India’s purchase of Russian oil in mid-August was done at the US’ behest.

With this in mind and remembering how President Putin also revealed in his earlier cited address from Wednesday that “NATO is conducting reconnaissance through Russia’s southern regions in real time and with the use of modern systems, aircraft, vessels, satellites and strategic drones”, it’s almost certainly the case that Kiev was ordered by the US to try to blow up that Russian-Turkish pipeline after being provided actionable intelligence for carrying out this ultimately foiled terrorist attack.

Kiev wouldn’t have been able to refuse that demand even if wanted to, but the point being argued in this analysis is that it too has an interest in punishing Turkiye (apart from the more pressing interest in disrupting Russia’s energy revenue) for its principled neutrality towards the conflict. It’s thus a matter of the highest urgency that the Turkish government and the society that it represents realize that their civilization–state’s objective national interests are now deemed by their “allies” as “legitimate targets”.

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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 regular contributor to Global Research.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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***

Despite the existence of an extensive literature on weather modification techniques for military purposes, the subject is considered taboo. “The U.S. military states in its documents that it can influence the weather, and both the UN and the EU were concerned about this issue,” explains Canadian emeritus professor Michel Chossudovsky in an interview with De Andere Krant.

“Weather modification techniques should at least be part of the discussion on climate change.” The 1977 UN ‘ENMOD’ convention, on the prohibition of applying weather modification techniques for military purposes, provides a starting point for this.

Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, is the author of thirteen books, including “The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order,” “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War,” and “The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity. He is the founder of the Center for Research on Globalization, and editor-in-chief of the highly informative site www.globalresearch.ca. Over the years, he has published several articles that demonstrate, using documents from the US government, EU and UN, that the application of weather modification techniques is not an urban legend.

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Elze van Hamelen (Der Andere Krant). In several articles you point out the literature on ‘ENMOD’ – Environmal Modification Techniques for military purposes. Can you give an example?

M.C. One of the most important documents is titled ‘Weather as a Force Multiplier. Owning the Weather in 2025’. The document is significant because the U.S. Air Force here recognizes that owning the weather as a weapon is a military strategy.

Owning the weather was written in 1996, and they state very clearly, I’ll give a literal quote:

“Modification of the weather will most likely become part of national security policy, with national as well as international applications. Our government will pursue this policy at various levels, including unilateral action, participation in the framework of NATO, within the membership of the UN or through participation in another coalition. It can have offensive and defensive applications, as well as being used as a deterrent”.

Weather modification gives the possibility of generating precipitation, or fog or influencing ‘space weather’ (electromagnetic disturbances, ed.).

The paper distinguishes between suppression or intensification of existing weather patterns, and in extreme cases, the creation of totally new patterns, control of storms and even climate change.

Climate scientists make a distinction between weather patterns and the climate, and that changes in the latter are long-term processes. But the moment you start intervening directly in weather processes, of course that also has an effect on climate. They talk about a set of technologies that can create artificial weather. What’s important is that they indicate that the advantage of influencing the weather is that they can intervene in a hostile country without the enemy realizing it.

So, it’s a deliberate method of covert warfare.

Yes, they discuss very openly the characteristics of what weather warfare would look like. By the way, this history goes way back. For example, back during the Vietnam War, “Operation Popeye” was conducted, with the goal of prolonging the monsoon rains, which would have blocked the enemy’s supply routes.

That was over 50 years ago. Back then, chemicals were sprayed for cloud seeding, since then the technology has evolved, and again is probably mainly influenced by HAARP technology.

HAARP, the “High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program,” was developed in Alaska in the 1990s. It is a set of antennas that can influence the ionosphere. HAARP is well documented through patents and military documents. So, there is technology that is capable of influencing the ionosphere, and very specifically adapting weather conditions. It is capable of destabilizing agricultural and ecological systems and can cause droughts. This is detailed in the description of the HAARP program. And the climate scientists only focus on carbon and nitrogen emissions in their research!

What kind of weather effects can HAARP cause?

If we go by the literature, almost any kind of weather change – storms, droughts, hurricanes, floods, and even earthquakes are mentioned. In addition, HAARP can also cripple electrical systems and networks, and communications networks. The Airforce report roughly coincided with the publications on the HAARP project. From the documents I have seen, it is clear that HAARP was fully operational in Alaska in the mid-1990s. That particular project was discontinued several years ago, perhaps that technology had become obsolete by now? In the meantime, the installation has most probably been moved other locations.

The researcher Rosalie Bertell wrote that several such installations exist worldwide.

I am not aware of any of these. At the moment, all information about these kinds of technologies is kept secret. This is why I think the 1977 UN Convention is so important. In the “Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques,” or for short, the ENMOD Convention, many countries, including the U.S. and the then Soviet Union, agreed at the time not to use such technologies for military purposes. The existence of this convention implies recognition of the existence of these technologies in the public domain, and this should be the basis for demanding research into artificial influence on weather and climate. Then we can also better assess to what extent ENMOD is applied in practice.

I read that it is even claimed that the jet-stream can be influenced.

Yes, that was already known in the 1970s. The ENMOD convention also has a very broad definition of weather modification: “any technique for altering – by deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the Earth, its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere or space.”

Do Russia or China possess such weapons?

Yes, Russia has these weapons as well. I think that is what the UN documents say. Whether China has disposal of these weapons I do not know. But suppose they were to use such weapons against each other, it would be devastating. In many ways, these weather weapons are more damaging than military operations because it can literally flatten agriculture or the electricity grid.

What is ironic, in 1996 the Canadian Broadcasting Organization, CBC, aired a special TV program on HAARP, but in this day and age neither the CBC nor any other mainstream channel would seriously discuss this issue.  (See CBC video below).

Questions about HAARP were also raised in the European Parliament at the time, a committee related to security and defense held a public hearing on the subject in 1998. As a result, a resolution was passed. What I mean to say is, the subject of weather and climate influence for military purposes is a subject that people were concerned about, and that was taken seriously at the UN and in the EU. But in the present context, there is no initiative to discuss or investigate this issue, not even by the IPCC. I suspect that one of the reasons for the IPCC’s silence is the so-called climate consensus, because anyone who dares to go against it is immediately blacklisted.

 

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CBC News documentary: HAARP – US military weather weapon

 

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This article was previously published in the reader-funded Dutch newspaper De Andere Krant.

Sources

http://www.un-documents.net/enmod.htm

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a333462.pdf

https://www.globalresearch.ca/climate-of-fear-global-warming-alarmists-intimidate-dissenting-scientists-into-silence/5294

https://www.globalresearch.ca/weather-warfare-beware-the-us-military-s-experiments-with-climatic-warfare/7561

https://www.globalresearch.ca/environmental-modification-techniques-enmod-and-climate-change/16413

https://www.globalresearch.ca/does-the-us-military-own-the-weather-weaponizing-the-weather-as-an-instrument-of-modern-warfare/5608728

https://www.globalresearch.ca/indian-ocean-tsunami-why-did-the-information-not-get-out/207

 

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***

Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg has been in the environmental news again, this time throwing a large judicial spanner in the works of Santos and its drilling efforts in the Timor Sea.

On this occasion, the Federal Court found that the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority should never have approved the Barossa Gas Project off the Tiwi Islands, which would entail drilling at a site 140 kilometres from the Tiwi Islands.  NOPSEMA’s primary role is to regulate offshore petroleum activities in Australian waters and is tasked with examining environmental plans under the Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage (Environment) Regulations 2009 (Cth).

The project has something of a sketchy history.  Santos, Australia’s second-largest independent gas producer, purchased it in 2020 from the US oil and gas giant ConocoPhillips, a company which showed a distinct lack of interest in consulting the Tiwi Land Council over its drilling plan.  Allegations have been made that a mere two emails were involved, including a phone call to the Tiwi Land Council that went answered.

Drilling commenced in July, taking place in waters between 204 and 376 metres deep, some 33 kilometres from the Oceanic Shoals Australian Marine Park.  In terms of the value, the natural gas project is predicted to be worth $US3.6 billion and produce up to 600 jobs.

Such figures did not faze Justice Bromberg, who turned his forensic eye both to the conduct of Santos and the statutory body responsible for the approvals.  It also helped that a portion of the proceedings were held in on-country hearings at Pitjamirra featuring traditional song and dance ceremonies.

It was found that Santos had not, for instance, identified relevant persons to consult as required under the Regulations (a “relevant person” being one “whose functions, interests or activities may be affected by the activities to be carried out under the environment plan.”).  NOPSEMA accordingly missed relevant pieces of “probative information” important to performing its assessment, notably on the relevance of the sea country material.  It even seemed to misconceive what its task was.

The legal action was launched by Dennis Tipakalippa, who claimed after the legal victory that, “The most important thing for us is to protect our sea country.”  The Munupi elder insisted that he and other elders were not consulted over the environmental plan developed by the company and feared that the project could cause damage.  Last month, he called the conduct by Santos “a big backstab.”

Santos, for its part, was convinced that it acted in accordance with “previous practice”, never reassuring given the often brash conduct of Australian companies in the field of drilling and mining.  It had, for instance, engaged the Tiwi Land Council, a body vested with statutory authority under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976.  It had also endeavoured to consult the Northern Land Council, the Native Title body representing the Tiwi Islands.  It was precisely such approaches vis-à-vis these two bodies that led NOPSEMA to accept the Environment Plan.

Santos is a company that flirts and carouses with different versions of environmental reality.  Its glossy image is that of an ecologically conscious energy giant.  Its behaviour is far closer to that of an emitting buccaneer.  In 2019-2020, it was responsible for emitting 7.74 million tonnes of CO2 from direct operations, with its end use of natural gas emitting 28.6 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent.  Hardly a glittering record for a clean energy provider.

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR) took issue with this streaky record, smelling a greenwashing enterprise in the making.  In 2021, the ACCR commenced proceedings in the Federal Court alleging that the company had breached the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and the Australian Consumer Law in engaging in misleading or deceptive conduct over its “clean energy” claims and Net Zero plan announced in its 2020 Annual Report.

The legal action was singular in being one of the first to directly confront the veracity of a company’s net zero emissions project, with a sceptical focus on carbon capture and storage (CCS) and the role of blue hydrogen in the energy transition.  (The Barossa Gas Project is central to such claims.)

Additional information supplied by Santos since has led to an expansion of the ACCR case, incorporating Santos’ 2020 Investor Day Briefing and 2021 Climate Change Report.  Amended pleadings were filed last month by lawyers from the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) acting on behalf of the ACCR.

Tipakalippa is confident that the legacy of this decision will linger as a warning.  “We want Santos and all mining companies to remember – we are powerful, we will fight for our land and sea country, for our future generations no matter how hard and how long.” Special Counsel of the Environment Defenders Office Alina Leikin also sees the case as a model for future litigation.  “It will have national and global implications for consultation with First Nations people on mining projects.”

This shows admirable confidence, but Santos, and their fraternal band of earth plunderers, are clear they will leave no stone unturned or money yielding sea-bed unviolated.  “Given the significance of this decision to us, our international joint venture partners and customers, and the industry more broadly,” the company noted in a statement, “we consider it should be reviewed by the Federal Court on appeal.”

In a separate statement, the company promises to suspend drilling activities “pending a favourable appeal outcome or the approval of a fresh Environment Plan.  Santos is seeking to expedite these processes.”  In a menacing note, the company also warns that “uncertainty” in the approval of such projects “is a public policy issue that should be urgently addressed by Australian governments to reduce risk for trade and investment in projects around the country.”

The same could be said about environmental health and consulting First Nations peoples, something that was conspicuously lacking here.  Most tellingly, and troublingly, was that the gatekeeper in the affair, NOPSEMA, was less than diligent in performing its duties.  In doing so, the regulator, as Greens spokesperson for resources Senator Dorinda Cox stated, “clearly failed the Munupi people.”

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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: Santos’ Port Bonython facility and hydrocarbon export jetty, South Australia (Photo by Dan Monceaux, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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***

Some analysts have been claiming that Beijing is “breaking” with Moscow over the issue of Ukraine. In June this year the Chinese government conducted military drills in its northeastern border with Russia, while Moscow was mostly preoccupied with its own military operations in Ukraine. This event led some Western observers to speculate, albeit there is no evidence, that this could be a sign China has unfinished business in that border area.

The 1858 Treaty of Aigun established much of the modern border between Manchuria (Northeast China) and the Russian Far East. From a Chinese Perspective, especially since the rise of Chinese nationalism in the 1920, it was an “unequal treaty”, having been signed, as it was, when the Chinese Empire was a weakened state: it gave the neighboring Russian Empire over 600,000 square km from Manchuria.

As a legacy of the 19th and the 20th century, the Eurasian great powers often have border disagreements. Japan historically has variances with Russia over the Kuril islands, for example, as it has with its other “neighbors” China and South Korea as well. India and China notoriously have theirs too, which, by the way, has not stopped both of them from cooperating with one another, as is exemplified by the fact that they have recently withdrawn their troops from the disputed Ladakh region’s border area, thus moving one step towards the Asian century.

Indian-Chinese cooperation in fact is particularly remarkable, considering the former’s position within the QUAD, which is seen by many as Western anti-Chinese “new NATO”. Yet even amid serious bilateral disagreements, Eurasian states have shown that there is plenty of room for cooperation on a number of levels, and, in the same way, New Delhi has also maintained close ties with Moscow, while getting closer to Washington. The same logic must apply to Sino-Russian cooperation, notwithstanding their differences over the Northeast China-Russian Far East border region.

In 1969, in this very region, near the Amur river, there was a seven-month undeclared military conflict between China and the Soviet Union, shortly after the so-called Sino-Soviet split. After the conflict, the United States sought to strengthen ties with Beijing by secretly sending Henry Kissinger to China for his now famous 1971 meeting with Zhou Enlai, which in turn paved the way for then US President Richard Nixon visiting China and meeting with Mao Zedong the next year. And yet even with the Sino-Soviet split, the two states managed to stabilize their relations in the late seventies.

In the more recent past, on 21 July 2008, then Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, signed in Beijing an additional Sino-Russian Border Line Agreement, thus marking the acceptance of the eastern portion of the Chinese-Russian border’s demarcation.

On February 4, in Beijing, a joint statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping famously declared that the friendship between the two states “has no limits”. Such a statement, somewhat hyperbolic as it may be, in any case, from an American perspective, is quite terrifying as it poses a direct challenge to Washington’s ambitions of maintaining unipolarity.

No friendship is really absolute, but the truth is that Chinese-Russian relations have entered a new era, and Beiing’s trade and investment in the Russian Far East, such as in the Vladivostok Port – Trans-Siberian Railway, must also be seen in this context, as the Belt and Road Initiative investments into the Russian Federation go on. Chris Devonshire-Ellis, publisher of Asia Briefing, writes that both powers view the Heihe-Blagoveshchensk border cities (which sit opposite each other on the Amur River opposing banks) as key strategic development hubs in an access point to the Trans-Siberian railway. That being so, maintaining peace at the border is in the best interests of both Moscow and Beijing, contrary to the wishful thinking of some Western analysts.

In any case, much has been done, in the US-led West, in terms of PR and diplomacy to try to “counter” the “no-limits” friendship concept, and to promote and explore Russian-Chinese points of contention. Thus, in the same way Washington inflates India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s comments to Putin on Ukraine, it tries to do the same pertaining to Moscow and Beijing and it will certainly try to explore the issue of Manchuria.

Although, under American influence, Japan has changed its stance on Russia partly over the aforementioned Kuril islands, this of course does not in any way mean that China would behave similarly. Chinese-Russian Eurasian strategic interests converge very deeply and both states have sophisticated diplomacy apparatuses to bilaterally pursue collaboration, bilateral disputes apart, while also employing the framework of forums such as the SCO and the BRICS group to coordinate their perspectives together so as to maximize benefits for all.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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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The substance of  this Daily Mail article raises the broader issue of the cancelling of the paypal accounts of numerous independent media (largely funded by readers) as a contiguous act of online censorship.

The payment system is destabilized.

It’s a despicable act directed against online Freedom of Expression, which Global Research experienced more than 5 years ago when paypal decided to suspend our account.  (M.Ch.)

***

MPs have hit back at PayPal after it cancelled the account of a parents group which fought hard to keep schools open during Covid just days after doing the same to the Free Speech Union.

UsForThem was ‘shocked’ to discover that it could not access thousands of pounds of donated money after PayPal suspended its account ‘in accordance with’ the company’s user agreement.

Just last week, PayPal, co-founded by Elon Musk, had controversially shut the accounts of Toby Young’s Free Speech Union as well as his news website, the Daily Sceptic.

Musk, who made around $175.8 million after PayPal was sold to eBay, has since been trying to buy social media giant Twitter as he looks to promote ‘free speech’.

But in the latest backlash that PayPal has faced, MPs have hit back insisting that financial technology firms should not lock people out of accounts based on ‘perfectly legal political views’.

At Business Questions, Conservative MP for Devizes Danny Kruger asked: ‘Does she share my deep concern about the decision of PayPal, the online payments company, to cancel the accounts of certain organisations including Us for Them, who campaigned against the Covid lockdowns, and perhaps most ironically the Free Speech Union, who appear to have been targeted because of their views on sex and gender.

Mr Kruger added that as society is moving towards a cashless economy, financial technology firms will form part of the ‘essential infrastructure of ordinary life.’

He added: ‘Will the Government take steps to ensure they cannot discriminate against individuals or organisations on the basis of perfectly legal political views?’

Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt replied: ‘He may have further information than I do about why PayPal have cancelled the account and that facility from the organisations that he mentions, but from what I understand the Free Speech Union and other organisations are also still in the dark about exactly why they have had those services removed from them despite making great efforts to find out.’

Ms Mordaunt described the unexplained withdrawal of services by companies as a ‘common theme amongst our casework’ for many MPs.

Arabella Skinner, director of UsForThem told MailOnline the group was ‘really shocked to receive the email from Paypal’.

‘And given that it has taken the same penal action against a number of prominent non-profit advocacy, campaigning and journalistic groups in the UK it gives the distinct impression that this was a politically motivated coup against campaigning groups who had taken a particular view on controversial topics,’ she said.

‘Reasoned, two-sided debate is essential to a functioning democracy, and there should be no room for censorship by way of denial of services.’

Read the full article here. Our thanks to the Daily Mail for having brought this article to our attention

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In his speech to the international community at the 77th session of the UN General Assembly, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky demands for punishment for Russia for “trying to steal the Ukrainian territory” and for the “catastrophic turbulence that Russia provoked with its illegal war and not only for the Ukrainians, but for the whole world”.

While ruling out neutrality in times of aggression by saying “those who speak of neutrality, when human values and peace are under attack, mean something else. They talk about indifference – everyone for themselves,” Zelensky enumerated five items in his alleged  ‘peace formula’:

• punishment for aggression;
• protection of life;
• restoration of security and territorial integrity;
• security guarantees;
• and determination to defend oneself.

Below is a transcript of his speech taken from president.gov.ua

Greetings to all people of the world who value peace and unity between different and equal nations!

I wish you all peace!

I thank you that we are united in our striving to restore peace and to guarantee peace for any nation that has become a victim of the armed aggression.

A crime has been committed against Ukraine, and we demand just punishment.

The crime was committed against our state borders. The crime was committed against the lives of our people. The crime was committed against the dignity of our women and men.

The crime was committed against the values that make you and me a community of the united nations.

And Ukraine demands punishment for trying to steal our territory. Punishment for the murders of thousands of people. Punishment for tortures and humiliations of women and men.

Punishment for the catastrophic turbulence that Russia provoked with its illegal war and not only for us, Ukrainians, but for the whole world. For every nation that is represented in this Hall of the UN General Assembly.

I am speaking on behalf of the state, which is forced to defend itself, but has the formula for peace. I am speaking to everyone who wants to hear how to achieve peace.

I will present a formula that can work not only for us, but for anyone who may find themselves in similar circumstances as we did. It is a formula that punishes crime, protects life, restores security and territorial integrity, guarantees security, and provides determination.

There are five preconditions for peace.

Dear Mr. President of the General Assembly!

Dear Secretary-General of the United Nations!

Dear heads of states and governments!

Dear journalists! 

Nations of the world!

Ukraine wants peace. Europe wants peace. The world wants peace. And we have seen who is the only one who wants war.

There is only one Entity among all UN Member States who would say now, if he could interrupt my speech, that he is happy with this war – with his war. But we will not let this Entity prevail over us, even though it is the largest state in the world.

Ukraine showed strength on the battlefield, using its right to self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. And no one will reproach us now or in the future with weakness or inability to fight for ourselves, for our independence.

We are achieving a result in this fight and we see what the end of this war will be, and what will be the guarantees of a stable peace.

The UN Charter proclaims the equality of nations – and we proved that Ukraine is equal among the equals.

The UN Charter protects the inviolability of borders – and we confirm our state borderline by expelling the occupiers outside.

The UN Charter stipulates the value of human rights, dignity and life, and we also stipulate them – with every Ukrainian city freed from Russian occupation.

We did not provoke this war. We held 88 rounds of talks in various formats to prevent this war, just from the beginning of my presidency until February 24 this year.

But Russia – instead of stopping the crime of aggression, which it started back in 2014 – turned it into a full-scale invasion. And we have no choice but to defend ourselves. We do it. We push the aggressor beyond the internationally recognized border of the Ukrainian state.

And this is the first item of our peace formula. Comprehensive item. Punishment.

Punishment for the crime of aggression. Punishment for violation of borders and territorial integrity. Punishment that must be in place until the internationally recognized border is restored. Until the aggression stops. And until the damages and losses for the war are fully compensated.

Therefore, sanctions against the aggressor are part of the peace formula. Blocking the trade and relations with the aggressor is part of the peace formula. All this is a punishment.

So long as the aggressor is a party to decision-making in the international organizations, he must be isolated from them – at least until aggression lasts. Reject the right to vote. Deprive delegation rights. Remove the right of veto – if it is a Member of the UN Security Council. In order to punish the aggressor within the institutions.

We should not turn a blind eye to propagandists who justify aggression, but apply a full package of personal restrictions against them. That is a punishment for lying.

Citizens of the aggressor state should not be allowed to enjoy tourism or shopping in the territory of those who value peace, but should be encouraged through visa restrictions to fight against the aggression of their own state. Punish for abetting the evil.

A Special Tribunal should be created to punish Russia for the crime of aggression against our state. This will become signal to all “would-be” aggressors, that they must value peace or be brought to responsibility by the world.

We have prepared precise steps to establish such Tribunal. They will be presented to all states.

Ukraine will appeal to the UN General Assembly to support an international compensation mechanism.

We count on your support.

Russia should pay for this war with its assets. It is also a punishment. This is one of the most terrible punishments for Russian officials, who value money above everything else.

The second item of the peace formula is the protection of life. The most concrete item.

Now, while the sessions of the General Assembly continue, in the Ukrainian town of Izyum, Kharkiv region, the exhumation is under way… of bodies from a mass burial, which happened when the territory was controlled by Russian troops. The bodies of women and men, children and adults, civilians and soldiers were found there. 445 graves.

There is a family that died under the rubble of a house after a Russian airstrike – father, mother, 6- and 8-year-old girls, grandparents. There is a man who was strangled with a rope. There is a woman with broken ribs and wounds on her body. There is a man who was castrated before the murder, and this is not the first case.

Ask, please, the representatives of Russia why the Russian military are so obsessed with castration. What was done to them so that they want to do this to others?

The only thing that differs the mass burial in Izyum from what the world saw in Bucha is, in fact, the burial. The Russian army was in Izyum for a longer time, and therefore the bodies of the killed people were buried, and not scattered on the streets.

So, how can we allow the Russian army somewhere on Ukrainian soil, knowing that they are committing such mass murders everywhere? We cannot.

We must protect life. The world must protect life. Every state suffering the armed aggression needs the opportunity to protect its citizens and liberate its territory.

If it requires help with weapons or shells – they should be provided. If you need financial help for this, it should be given. If for this, it is necessary to help with the intelligence data – just do it. But what is not needed is lies.

We can return the Ukrainian flag to our entire territory. We can do it with the force of arms.

But we need time.

We tried to speed it up. We tried to implement the basic provisions of the UN Charter for Ukraine through negotiations.

But Russia is afraid of real negotiations and does not want to fulfill any fair international obligations. It lies to everyone. As it is typical for aggressors, for terrorists.

Even now, when Russia talks about negotiations, it only wants to slow down its retreat. Russia wants to spend the winter on the occupied territory of Ukraine and prepare forces to attempt a new offensive. New Buchas, new Izyums… Or at least it wants to prepare fortifications on occupied land and carry out military mobilization at home.

We cannot agree to a delayed war. Because it will be even hotter than the war now.

For us, this is a war for life. That is why we need defense support – weapons, military equipment and shells. Offensive weapons, a long-range one is enough to liberate our land, and defensive systems, above all, air defense. And we need financial support – to keep internal stability and fulfill social obligations to our people.

Physical and social protection are two elements of any nation’s life. So, the second item of our peace formula is the protection of life. By all available means – allowed by the UN Charter.

The third item of our peace formula is restoring security and territorial integrity.

Look at how many elements of global security Russia has undermined with its war – maritime safety, food safety, radiation safety, energy safety and safety from weapons of mass destruction.

We are already restoring maritime safety and food security. And I thank Mr. António Guterres for his personal involvement. Algeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Israel, India, Iran, Yemen, Cyprus, China, Korea, Lebanon, Türkiye, Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Romania and France have already received Ukrainian agricultural products.

And we have to increase the supply by sea. Both under market conditions and within the UN Food Program, for which Ukraine is always a reliable partner.

By the way, despite all the difficulties caused by the war, we decided to provide humanitarian aid to Ethiopia and Somalia, so we will send them an additional amount of our wheat.

But it is more difficult with other security elements.

On the eve of the General Assembly meeting, Russia fired missiles at the South Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant. The explosion hit the station buildings – windows were broken, walls were damaged. The rockets exploded only three hundred meters from the walls of the reactors!

And this is after the IAEA’s clear appeal to Russia to stop any hostile activity against any nuclear facilities of Ukraine and, in particular, against the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station – the largest one in Europe, which Russia has turned into a target.

And that makes all of you a target.

Russian radiation blackmailing is something that should concern each and every one of you, because none of you will find a vaccine against radiation sickness.

The cost of living crisis continues in dozens of countries, it roots in the destabilization of the energy market. It is necessary to remove the main factor of global price turbulence, namely: Russian energy blackmailing.

It is necessary to cap the prices at which Russia exports its energy resources. It is necessary to make Russian oil and gas – just ordinary goods again. Currently, oil and gas are Russia’s energy weapons. And that is why it manipulates the markets so that electricity, gas, petrol and diesel become the privilege of few instead of being a common good available to all.

Limiting prices is safeguarding the world. This is the way to restore energy and price security.

But will the world go for it? Or will it be scared? Will it be scared of Russian threats?

It is necessary to take only one strong step, after which everything will become clear. The time has come for this.

This step will put everything in place. After the Russian missile terror. After the massacres. After Mariupol. After the burning of Ukrainian prisoners in Olenivka by the Russian military. After blocking the ports. After the strikes of Russian tanks and missiles on nuclear power plants. And after threats to use nuclear weapons, which have become the rule, not the exception, for Russian propagandists…

We must finally recognize Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. At all levels. In all countries that confess the values of peace and protection of human life. Legally. Politically.

If you don’t have a legal mechanism, you can make a political decision – in the parliaments. This is the foundation for restoring global security. If this strong step is taken, doubts will disappear – whether to take other important steps.

And what is very sensitive – is the border, the territorial integrity.

When one country tries to steal the territory of another state, it puts all world nations under attack.

Global security cannot be restored without restoring the territorial integrity of the nation which suffered the armed aggression.

So, the third item of the Ukrainian peace formula is the restoration of security and territorial integrity. The fourth item is security guarantees.

Every nation has the right to security guarantees. Not only the largest nations. Not only the most fortunate ones.

We have proposals to upgrade the security architecture for Ukraine, and for Europe and the world, which will not allow any more aggression against us. We are already presenting them to partners.

Proposals for legally binding multilateral and bilateral treaties. These are the conditions for the guarantors to act, and the timeline for their actions to bring results – results on land, at sea and in the air; in diplomacy and politics, in economy and finance, in providing weapons and intelligence. Each of you, who will receive the text of our peace formula will also see the details of what we offer as security guarantees.

I do not want to compare our offers with the guarantees of any alliances that exist on the planet now. I want to stress that it is always much better to guarantee the security of a nation, preventively, rather than to stop a war after it has already begun.

And the fifth item of the Ukrainian peace formula is determination. Something without which the other four items will not work.

This is our determination to fight. This is the determination of the partners to help us, and also themselves. And this is the determination of the world to unite around the one who fights against armed aggression and to call to order the one who threatens all.

So, all five items of our formula: 

• punishment for aggression;
• protection of life;
• restoration of security and territorial integrity;
• security guarantees;
• and determination to defend oneself.

This is the formula of crime and punishment, which is already well known to Russia. And this is the formula of justice and law and order that Russia has yet to learn. As well as any other potential aggressors.

What is not in our formula? Neutrality.

Those who speak of neutrality, when human values and peace are under attack, mean something else. They talk about indifference – everyone for themselves. Here’s what they say. They pretend to be interested in each other’s problems. They take care of each other formally. They sympathize only for protocol. And that is why they pretend to protect someone, but in reality they protect only their vested interests. This is what creates the conditions for war. This is what needs to be corrected in order to create conditions for peace.

All you need is determination.

There was a lot of talking about reforming the UN. How did it all end? No result.

If you look carefully at our peace formula, you will see that its implementation is already becoming a de-facto reform of the United Nations. Our formula is universal, and unites the North and the South of the world. It calls for the world’s majority, and encourages to expand the representation of those who remained unheard.

This is an imbalance when Africa, Latin America, most of Asia, Central and Eastern Europe comply with the right of veto, that they themselves never had.

And this is what Ukraine is talking about. And have you ever heard such words from Russia? But it is a permanent member of the Security Council. For some reason. For what reason, not Japan or Brazil, not Türkiye or India, not Germany or Ukraine. The day will come when this will be resolved.

As for the talks between Ukraine and Russia.

Probably you have happened to hear different words from Russia about the talks – as if they were ready for them. But. They talk about the talks but announce military mobilization. They talk about the talks but announce pseudo referendums in the occupied territories of Ukraine.

What is true then? The military mobilization in Russia is true. Sham referendums are also true. Russia wants war. It’s true. But Russia will not be able to stop the course of history. Mankind and the international law are stronger than one terrorist state. Russia will be forced to end this war. The war it has started.

I rule out that the settlement can happen on a different basis than the Ukrainian peace formula. The further the Russian terror reaches, the less likely it is that anyone in the world will agree to sit at one table with them.

And if my words will be followed by new Russian missiles and acts of terrorism it will only prove the weakness. Russia’s weakness. Its inability to prevail over us, its inability to prevail over the world.

It will only prove that 5 items of the Ukrainian peace formula must be implemented as soon as possible.

We are ready for peace. But true, honest and fair peace. That’s why the world is on our side.

And finally.

I want to thank one hundred and one countries that voted for my video address to take place. It was a vote not only about the format. It was the vote about principles.

Only seven countries voted against: Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, Eritrea, Nicaragua, Russia and Syria.

Seven. Seven who are afraid of the video address. Seven who respond to principles with a red button. Only seven.

One hundred and one – and seven.

Friends! If this coalition is against our determination, then I congratulate you all. Because this means that peace will prevail over any aggression, and that there is no obstacle for us to implement the peace formula.

I thank you for your attention!

Once again, I wish you all peace!

Glory to Ukraine!

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Upon the accession of Charles III as King of the United Kingdom and 14 other realms, questions have emerged over the continued relevance of the wider Commonwealth of Nations headed by the British monarch. The Commonwealth is a grouping of 56 nations with a total combined population of 2.2 billion people. Among these nations, only Australia, New Zealand and Canada enjoy a special relationship with the UK through the Five Eyes (FVEY) intelligence alliance (which also includes the United States).

Commonwealth membership benefits for the most part are pretty much nonexistent. This begs the question of why an aspiring superpower like India would demean itself by remaining in a colonially-defined international compact. A quick glance at the Commonwealth map will reveal a scattered morass of mediocrity, inequality and/or poverty.

The members of the Commonwealth shaded according to their political status. Commonwealth realms are shown in blue, while republics are shaded pink, and members with their own monarchies are displayed in green. (Photo is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Some may rebut this observation by citing Singapore as a stellar example of a successful ex-British colony. In that case, name one (1) world-class product, scientist, intellectual, chess grandmaster, musician or writer from that nation? Or a comedian for that matter?

Now, compare Singapore to Israel with whom the former is often linked. There is absolutely no comparison in any field. Israel is light years ahead in terms of science, technology, music, arts and even urban agriculture. If one needs other comparative examples, repeat this juxtaposition with other small nations such as the Netherlands and Denmark.

Singapore thrives as Southeast Asia’s hub – and nothing more – and its wheels are constantly greased by a perennial supply of foreign talent and capital. Ironically, this infusion has led to a yearly brain drain from among its native-born population. But no one denies that Singapore is a well-run city-state known for its efficient government machinery; one that also keeps the public discourse and dissent in permanent check.

The colonial criteria for Commonwealth membership also provokes the neutral observer to wonder whether “national independence” was nothing more than a shambolic passing of batons from foreign overlords to a pliant local management. If there is any merit to this line of thinking, then the local management will predictably ensure that their nation may never emerge as another Japan, South Korea or Taiwan. Industries from these nations have obliterated once-dominant British brands. Surely, it is also coincidental that these technological powerhouses were never colonized by Britain. South Korea and Taiwan had incidentally suffered under Japanese yolk but their rebound from colonial oppression was simply spectacular.

Tawdry Colonial Legacy

There are several sociopolitical malaises bedeviling the British Commonwealth today. These include intellectual timidity due to mass censorship; suppression of native talent; lack of national cohesion; a corrupt judicial system; and politics of mass distraction. High-value developmental initiatives in these nations have historically been nipped in the bud by Commonwealth agencies and pseudo-nationalist political parties that were planted by the British deep state. The net result has been gross national underperformance.

When Britain granted “independence” to these colonies, they made sure that only British assets were placed in positions of authority. Anti-British hissy fits were occasionally engineered to allay suspicions whenever and wherever they emerged. Despite the apparent vitriol, the children of such politicians often ended up in British universities and enjoyed London’s patronage. This neocolonial cycle would repeat itself at the expense of national development.

To borrow elements from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, why should an orangutan – who, contrary to the natural order, and upon whom millions of pounds were spent on its Oxbridge credentials and political ascendancy – be willing to nurture a formidable intelligentsia in its domain? If it ever does so, it may be challenged over the validity of eternal white elephant projects and an unending stream of worthless policy papers which often benefit British geoeconomic interests.

And since 2020, the orangutan would have predictably resorted to the Covid hysteria to keep its domain locked down or more precisely locked out of critical productive endeavors. This is where the “politics of mass distraction” come into play, leading naturally to the other Commonwealth malaise, “lack of social cohesion”. Many Commonwealth states are hopelessly mired in deep ethnoreligious clefts, thanks to Britain’s divide and conquer policy. Another colonial legacy, namely a corrupt judicial system binds the whole racket together. The never-ending child sex trafficking scandals, involving those in positions of authority in Britain, Canada and Australia, epitomize the wider Commonwealth malaise.

As for membership benefits, consider the billions in British scholarship funds that were spent on tens of thousands of Commonwealth students since 1945. How many Nobel Prize laureates in the sciences has this magnanimity produced? How many game-changing patents, innovations, platinum records or best-selling texts? One would be hard-pressed to find even one (1) impressive Op-Ed from these cultivated scholars.

Britain’s “human capital policy” in its domains arguably took a turn for the worse after the formation of the Indian National Congress (aka Congress Party) in 1885 by a colonial administrator named Allan Octavian Hume. The Congress was originally envisioned to be a consultative platform for gentlemanly colonial authorities of “good breeding” and gentlemanly Indians of “good breeding” and education. To the horror of the British establishment however, the unruly Indians rapidly discarded their colonial trappings to demand outright independence.

The British responded swiftly and with trademark brutality, entailing decades of mass incarcerations, enforced famines, and mass murders like the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre. After all, this was the era of British racial supremacists such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain and Rudyard Kipling. Chamberlain was once described as “Hitler’s John the Baptist” while Kipling’s swastika-stamped Jungle Book was much-beloved by the Nazi party. Here is where the colonial orangutan analogy comes into play once again.

Colonial hostility towards the Indian independence movement was accompanied by a skillfully-executed divide and conquer strategy which pitted Muslims against Hindus, ultimately leading to the partition of India.

The ongoing Hindu-Muslim riots in Leceister, UK, is a legacy of that strategy. A similar game was played out in the Levant, pitting Arabs against their Jewish neighbors. Historians rarely investigate the underlying denominator between the 1921 Mappila Rebellion in India and the 1929 Hebron Massacre. But then again, the mainstream narrative was hijacked long before any of us were born.

London would never repeat the same mistake it made with the Indian National Congress. There would be no more cultivation of the best and brightest in its realms. A new generation of Indian leaders would be cultivated; ones hooked on the giddy fantasies of Fabian socialism, sleazy nepotism, and the wonders of petty bureaucracy. When India gained independence in 1947, a vacant chair was reserved at cabinet meetings for the ghost of Harold Laski – the father of Fabian socialism. The other chairs were occupied by his proteges and sympathizers. Louis Mountbatten, a notorious pedophile and Britain’s last viceroy to India, was appointed as the newly-independent nation’s first Governor-General.

But one should not fall into the trap of singling out India as an example of colonial masochism. It continues to have its fair share of genuine nationalists, the freest press in the Commonwealth (freer than even Britain), a commitment to geopolitical multipolarity and publicly-available records and debates on the path to independence. Records of this sort do not exist elsewhere in the British Commonwealth. Furthermore, the Bombay High Court is the only entity of its kind to have served legal notice to Bill Gates over alleged vaccine deaths caused by his “philanthropic” activities in India.

Cui Bono?

Commonwealth leaders never, ever publicly spell out the benefits of remaining in an anachronistic grouping that reeks of neocolonial subservience. Do citizens from the wider Commonwealth enjoy fee discounts in British universities or preferential job visas in the UK? Is there even a Commonwealth university for students from its 56-member states? Are there preferential trade tariffs for Commonwealth goods and services? There is however a British government-funded program for Commonwealth journalists – a reason why I have only had success with the US, Russian and Chinese media.

Of course, if the Commonwealth shows any sign of breaking up prematurely, a few symbolic shadow plays can be arranged. The Koh-i-Noor diamond, for example, could be returned to India as a magisterial gesture from Charles III. Imagine the euphoria in New Delhi? But if Indians need some real inspiration for the VUCA period ahead, they only need to look southwards to Sri Lanka. When its economy crumpled, Sri Lankans banded together to tar and feather politicians who had sold out their nation. This show of unity was simply remarkable, especially when one considers the 25-year-long Sri Lankan civil war that only ended as recently as 2009. Contrast this to the ongoing, dehumanizing food fights in Pakistan even as its citizens rally around British-linked politicians who have given them nothing but porkie pies. The mayhem witnessed in Pakistan will likely be repeated across the Commonwealth in the months and years to come.

The misnomer called the Commonwealth was built on enslavement, exploitation and bloodshed. Divisions festered by colonial rule have yet to heal. Yet, power structures in the Commonwealth need their British deep state lifelines now more than ever. But how will Charles III treat the increasing irrelevance of this fossil construct? Being a proponent of population control and centralized world government, he may use his position as head of the Commonwealth to integrate his floundering subject nations into the Great Reset agenda of the World Economic Forum. After all, the internal pre-conditions for this transition were established decades ago…

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This article was originally published in RT.com.

Dr. Mathew Maavak is a Malaysian expert on risk foresight and governance. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Commonwealth House, the headquarters of the Royal Commonwealth Society (Photo by Steve Evans from Citizen of the World, licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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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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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In his classic nineteenth century novel ‘War and Peace’ Russian writer Leo Tolstoy observed that “the strongest of all warriors are…time and patience.”

I was reminded of these words recently when coming across an article in the Dutch newspaper NRC which called for the drug industry to be abolished.

The article echoed words from a quarter of a century ago, contained in a speech given in the city hall of Chemnitz in Germany, in which physician and scientist Dr. Matthias Rath called for the pharma business to be outlawed.

Explaining how its profits depend upon the maintaining and expanding of health problems on a global scale, Dr. Rath accused the ‘business with disease’ of being incompatible with the fundamental principles of human rights.

Back in 1997, this type of open criticism of the drug industry and its unscrupulous business model was almost unheard of. Today, however, with the passage of time, the publication of the NRC article illustrates that it is becoming mainstream.

Authored by Dutch political scientist Joost Smiers, the NRC article describes how society is now at the mercy of the pharma business and its shareholders. “As far as I am concerned,” Smiers writes, “it is high time to break the societal feeling of powerless towards Big Pharma.”

Asking whether we still need drug companies, Smiers says that in his opinion the answer is “no.” Clearly, when such thoughts are published in a mainstream European daily newspaper, there can be no doubt that we are living in changing times.

Making pharma obsolete

Pointing out that research into medicines can be done separate from the pharma industry, at universities and other independent research institutes, Smiers argues that substantial research funds should be established, fed from public funds, with independent committees deciding which diseases and researchers funding should be directed towards. Smiers stresses the importance of these committees functioning at arm’s length from governments. Crucially, he also proposes that alternative health therapies such as vitamins could benefit from this approach.

Just as importantly, Smiers stresses that all knowledge resulting from medicines research should be publicly and freely available. Mirroring the long-time position held by Dr. Rath and our Foundation, he adds that there should be no more patents involved – thus avoiding the present situation whereby patent owners have a monopoly on the use, or non-use, of scientific knowledge.

Smiers further addresses another key barrier to the ethical functioning of healthcare systems, namely, the sale price of medicines. Here, he proposes that companies paid to manufacture medicines resulting from independently funded research should provide them at cost. A levy could then be added on top of this low price to help fund future research projects. In this way, Smiers explains, the commercial weight of pharma industry shareholders and marketing can be eliminated. Ultimately, he sees the pharma industry being bought out or expropriated, and essentially being made obsolete.

Smiers readily acknowledges that drug firms based in the major pharmaceutical manufacturing countries will not let any of these things happen silently. He points out however that today’s pharmaceutical companies are “horrifyingly powerful monopolists,” adding that “they are not loved, to put it mildly,” and that this creates opportunities.

“If we make Big Pharma obsolete,” writes Smiers, “we kill several birds with one stone. Healthcare becomes more affordable. All the knowledge needed to develop medicines will no longer be surrounded by patents but will return from private to public ownership. Moreover, access to medicine will once again become a human right, and no longer the plaything of Big Pharma shareholders. They have no business in our health care system. They should stay far away from it.”

A new era in medicine

Smiers’ article clearly echoes some of the key ideas and concepts contained in Dr. Rath’s 1997 Chemnitz speech. Prior to Dr. Rath giving this speech, it was practically unheard of for anyone to publicly accuse the drug industry of being the main obstacle to medical breakthroughs in the control of diseases. As a result, the fact that pharmaceutical companies have a direct financial interest in the continued existence of diseases was simply not widely appreciated at that time.

Not only did Dr. Rath’s Chemnitz speech open the floodgates to more widespread criticism of the drug industry and its business model, however, it also introduced people to the possibility that, by taking advantage of new discoveries in the field of cardiovascular disease, heart attacks and strokes were now preventable through natural health approaches based on the use of vitamins and other micronutrients.

In doing so, this laid the foundations for a new system of healthcare in which, as a first step, the preservation and improvement of health should be declared an inalienable human right. Towards achieving this goal, Dr. Rath stressed the importance of subjecting medical research and the licensing of drugs to a comprehensive system of public control.

Following the publication of Joost Smiers’ article in the Dutch newspaper NRC it is now clear that, a quarter of a century after Dr. Rath gave his historic Chemnitz speech, we stand on the verge of a new era in medicine. Abolishing the pharmaceutical industry is a prerequisite for transforming healthcare and making access to it a human right. The sooner we can reach this worthy goal, the better it will be for all of humankind.

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Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Just a coincidence, right?

Under Public Law 117-128, the U.S. Congress is funding an organization called Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), whose professed purpose, according to its website, is to “counter Russian disinformation.” But its real purpose may be to create the equivalent of a “fatwah list” of alleged traitors whom patriotic Americans and/or Ukrainians will feel they have a green light to assassinate.

The fatwah list includes such “traitors” as writers Chris Hedges and Glenn Greenwald, political scientist John Mearsheimer, Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, conservative military analyst Edward Luttwak who was placed on the list for suggesting that referendums should be held in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions concerning their relations to Ukraine, and Henry Kissinger, who is worried about the prospects of a war between the U.S. and Russia.

Source: unherd.com

The profiles of many people targeted under the “hit list” has been posted on a website, Myrotvorets (meaning “peacemaker” in Ukrainian), whose domain name is listed as being in Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the CIA.

Kissinger’s Myrotvorets profile. [Source: mronline.org]

Source: mronline.org

Established in 2014 following the Maidan coup with assistance from a U.S. army intelligence officer, Joel Harding, Myrotvorets aims to out Russian intelligence service (FSB) agents and Wagner mercenaries alongside pro-Russian propagandists and features gruesome photos of dead Russians. Its welcome message advertises itself as a “CIA project.”

Image of dead Russians on CIA-linked website, Myrotvorets. Above the photos, the website proclaims: “Death to the Russian Fascist Invaders and Occupiers.” [Source: myrotvorets.center]

Sadly, many on the Myrotvorets enemies list have already been assassinated. When this occurs, the Ukrainian word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН (“LIQUIDATED”) is stamped across their picture in big red letters—as happened when Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was murdered.

Source: twitter.com

In an indication of its foul character, Myrotvorets has listed the names of more than 300 children, among them 13-year-old Faina Savenkova who has written on social media about the terror meted out by the Ukrainian Army in eastern Ukraine.

Faina Savenkova: An Enemy of the Ukrainian State. [Source: mronline.org]

Craven Acts of Terrorism

The expansion of the Ukrainian government’s assassination campaign—modeled after the CIA-run Phoenix operation in Vietnam—was exemplified with the killing of Sergey Gorenko, the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) Prosecutor General, and his deputy, Yekaterina Steglenko, after a Kyiv bomb rocked the headquarters of the Prosecutor General’s office in Luhansk on September 16.

Source: tvpworld.com

The New York Times earlier reported on Ukrainian commando teams who admitted to planting car bombs targeting pro-Russian police officers and politicians behind Russian lines.

Also on September 16, at least five U.S.-made HIMARS missiles hit the civil administration building in Kherson city in an assassination attempt on Kirill Stremousov, the deputy chair of the military-civilian administration. Ekaterina Gubareva, a government employee who was wounded, (a driver was killed), called the strike a “craven act of terrorism.”^[1]

Scott Ritter Speaks Out

Scott Ritter, the former Marine Intelligence Officer who exposed the fraud surrounding the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq, is among those on the CCD’s list of traitors who has been listed as an “enemy of Ukraine” on the Myrotvorets website.

Scott Ritter on death list. [Source: consortiumnews.com]

On September 7, Ritter participated in a press conference hosted by the Schiller Institute, a German-based economic think tank, where he criticized New York’s congressional delegation for supporting House Resolution 7691, the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, which became Public Law 117-128 on May 21, 2022.

In a July letter to Democrats Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand and Paul Tonko, Ritter wrote that Public Law 117-128 violated the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which asserts that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Public Law 177-128 abridges freedom of speech and a free press by supporting the Government of Ukraine’s publication of the “blacklist,” which singles out U.S. citizens as “Russian propagandists” for exercising their constitutional rights pertaining to free speech and a free press.

At the press conference on September 7, Ritter reiterated his disdain for the fact that U.S. taxpayer funds that are subsidizing the Ukrainian government are “being used to target and intimidate American citizens voicing their constitutional rights to freedom of speech.”

Particularly dangerous, Ritter said, is the use of the label “information terrorist” by the CCD, which “basically gives a green light for critics of government policy to be adjudicated as terrorists,” and could “mean sanctioning the murder of Americans abroad or at home.”

According to Ritter, the threat of Ukrainian state terrorism extending into the U.S. is very real.

There are many Ukrainians living near him in upstate New York, he said, who worship Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist and Nazi collaborator in World War II.

According to historian Norman J.W. Goda, Bandera’s lieutenants launched a pogrom that killed 4,000 Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons ranging from guns to metal poles.

What kind of message does it send, Ritter asked, for the U.S. government to be supporting these groups and to label critics of its policies as “information terrorists”?

“If you think the website is a joke, ask Alexander Dugin who had to attend the funeral of his daughter [Darya Dugina who was killed in a car bomb by terrorists in Moscow on August 23].”

Darya Dugina is labeled as “liquidated” on the Myrotvorets website. [Source: mronline.org]

Ritter considers himself an American patriot who served his country for years in the military and as a weapons inspector in Iraq.

He recalled being called “Saddam’s shill” and all kinds of other names for reporting the truth about the mythic WMD, and said that if people had absorbed what he said, the war in Iraq could have been avoided and millions of lives saved.

With regard to Ukraine, Ritter said he is again being denounced, this time for making factual statements, such as that a) NATO has bases on Ukrainian soil; b) the war is a proxy conflict between the U.S. and Russia; and c) sanctions have harmed the U.S. and EU countries more than Russia.

Ritter said that he is further being attacked because he undertook a careful forensic analysis of the atrocity in Bucha in March/April, which concluded that it “seemed to have been carried out by forces subordinate to the Ukrainian government.”^[2]

Source: theparadise.ng

Ritter says that he invites debate and disagreement about his assessments—including from people working at the CCD.

“If people disagree with my facts and conclusions, then debate me—but don’t seek to silence me through intimidation or label me an information terrorist which could potentially mark me for death.”

Geoff Young, Democratic Party Nominee from Kentucky, Also on Hit List

Geoff Young, the Democratic Party nominee in Kentucky’s 6^th Congressional District, is also on the Ukrainian government hit list—though few in his party have stood up for him.

Young says that he is on the list because he has adopted the position that, since 2014, Ukraine has not been a functional democracy.

Rather, it has been largely controlled by the U.S. State Department and CIA and has been shelling innocent civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk, killing more than 10,000 civilians—three times more than were killed in the U.S. on 9/11.

Geoff Young [Source: multipolarista.com]

Ukraine has further sent well-armed Nazi groups to attack ethnic Russians in acts of ethnic cleansing that have been unreported in U.S. media.

Young says that his inclusion on the hit list is a form of election meddling—they are trying to discredit his name and ruin his chances of unseating Republican Party incumbent Andy Barr, against whom Young is running.

LaRouche Candidate for New York Senate Diane Sare Attacked

Another person on the hit list is Diane Sare, a Burlington, Vermont, native who is challenging Chuck Schumer for his Senate seat in New York in the November midterms.

A former classical musician and choral conductor, Sare is a founder of the Schiller Institute and worked for 32 years with Lyndon LaRouche until his death in 2019.

LaRouche was a controversial figure in U.S. politics who is regarded by some as a cult leader, CIA creation or even fascist.

Many of his ideas were visionary nevertheless, including in his support for U.S.-Russia cooperation and the development of a new world security architecture and economic system that would be more democratic, equitable and prevent future wars.

Sare said at the September 7 press conference that the death list and demonization campaign has been successful in silencing debate over the U.S. arming of a fascist regime in Ukraine—a regime that has banned 13 opposition parties, shut down Russian media, outlawed collective bargaining and threatened anyone who plans to vote to rejoin Russia in referenda being set up in eastern Ukraine.

Sare also said that Payton Gendron, the Buffalo, New York, shooter who shot up Black people in a grocery store earlier this summer, wore logos on his jacket that were similar to ones worn by members of the Azov Battalion.

Mass murderer Payton Gendron with black sun insignia used by the Azov Battalion. [Source: mronline.org]

Every American in her view should demand that their elected representatives take a stand and dissociate the U.S. from the Ukrainian government and its neo-Nazi army regiments.

Colonel Black:

The first speaker at the September 7 press conference was Colonel Richard Black, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former State Senator from Virginia, who emphasized like Ritter how the U.S. Congress was attempting to control freedom of speech in the U.S. in violation of the U.S. Constitution by having a foreign entity—the CCD—do it.

According to Black, the Department of Homeland Security tried earlier in the year to establish a disinformation governance board headed by Nina Jankowicz, a Ukrainian linguist and adviser to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Her presentation to the public was so extreme and off-putting that the center’s formation was paused—at least for the time being.

Black said that, among those targeted by the CCD, are patriotic Americans with well-informed views on foreign policy like Senator Paul and former Congresswoman Gabbard.

Black said that U.S. policy in Ukraine is disastrously courting the risk of all-out nuclear war. The labeling of dissenters as “information terrorists” potentially exposes them to the death penalty, with many people on the Myrotvorets website having been assassinated.

Though the facts remain speculative, a Rio de Janeiro newspaper reported that the assassination attempt on September 1, 2022 directed against Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner may have even resulted from her refusal to condemn Russia’s special military operation and her calls for peace talks to end the war.

Was Cristina Fernández de Kirchner targeted for assassination because of her support for peace in Ukraine and refusal to condemn Russia? [Source: nypost.com]

The Problem When People Know What Ain’t So

The final speaker at the September 7 press conference, CIA veteran Ray McGovern, a founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), quoted from humorist Will Rogers who said “it isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.”

Among the things Americans claim to know that ain’t so is that Russia is the aggressor in the conflict with Ukraine, and that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was “unprovoked”—which is patently untrue.

Crimeans in fact voted to rejoin Russia right after the U.S.-backed Maidan coup in 2014—which academics like Timothy Snyder of Yale along with mainstream media analysts, McGovern said, continue to deny.

In 2013, McGovern said, Russian President Vladimir Putin wrote an op-ed in The New York Times after he had backed a deal that prevented U.S. military intervention in Syria in which he expressed his happiness at the increasing trust between the U.S. and Russia.

Putin also wrote that he did not agree with Obama’s speeches about American exceptionalism—which is what made him a target of U.S. regime-change and destabilization efforts in which Ukraine has been used as a proxy.

Earlier this year, former president George W. Bush gave a speech in which he said that one man had “decided to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq—I mean of Ukraine”—and his audience in Texas laughed.

Source: youtube.com

The propaganda in the U.S. has generally become so thick, McGovern said, that people are convinced “they know what ain’t so.” In turn, they end up supporting the deadliest policies—like they did with Iraq and are now doing with Ukraine.

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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. Leaked audio records show Ilya Bondarchuk, a Ukrainian intelligence official who coordinated the assassination program in Crimea and Kherson, trying to pay an assassin who was told to carry out the dirty deed “before everyone’s eyes, so that they see it.” 
2. Ritter has also recently helped expose, through careful investigation, that Ukraine and not Russia was responsible for the attacks around the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant—Europe’s largest nuclear power plant—using the cover of an international inspection mission in violation of international law. 

Featured image is from schillerinstitute.com

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In today’s world a clear understanding of the relationship between the U.S. and Israel is important – this is not the work to clear it up.  Walter Mead’s hypothesis is that Israel does not control U.S. governance, but that many other forces have shaped the relationship.  With that he is correct and in an overly long convoluted manner he is able to make that sort of clear.   “The Arc of the Covenant,” for the arguments presented could have been well worked in half of its almost six hundred pages.

Instead the book is a mix of theology, sociology, geopolitics, domestic politics, history, and biographical analysis of – mostly – various presidents of the U.S.  It really succeeds with none of them.  It contains far too much theorizing and conjecture, discusses at length beliefs and morals, and has far too many unanswered rhetorical questions (okay, rhetorical questions really seek no answer, but there are far too many of them).  The reader will not come away with a good understanding of Israel as the vast majority of the discussion is centered on U.S. political maneuvering.

To his credit Mead is quite critical of many U.S. failures around the world but mostly  in the Middle East.  Unfortunately that comes from a perspective, unstated but implied, that the U.S. is the indispensable nation and acts with good intentions because of its moral strength and liberal beliefs.  He does use “exceptionalism” frequently, implied or directly, giving support to the thought that Mead, without stating it directly, is a firm believer in the U.S. being the world’s global policeman, “by the courageous use of necessary force.”

Omissions

There are far too many problems with the arguments presented in this work to counter them here, but it is what is missing that makes the arguments so weak.

While he discusses “national interests”  and the ability of the U.S. to use force to maintain peace (a lot of an oxymoron) he never discusses the U.S. as an empire.  Certainly the evil Russians and Chinese, and before World War I the Germans, Russians, and Ottomans were all the cause of that war as contending empires.  British, French, Dutch, and other European empires are mentioned in passing, but he does not accept, or will not articulate, that the U.S. is the largest empire the world has seen – militarily and economically, the two going hand in glove. The massive 750 military bases around the world, mostly surrounding Russia and China, and that ability to use the global reserve currency, the petro-dollar (never mentioned in the book although oil is continually mentioned as a strategic value) and its associated institutions (WTO, BIS, World Bank, SWIFT et al) to impose destructive sanctions on countries that do not abide by its wishes is the modern form of imperialism.

He reiterates several times the U.S. role in decolonization without recognition that it was the U.S. that denied Vietnam its fair and democratic elections, denied Korea the right to vote for its post war government, created the CIA with its initial successes overthrowing governments in Iran and Guatemala in 1953.  He admits U.S. errors in Iraq, Libya, and – well not quite Syria, it was the “brutal” Russians that destroyed Syria, even while U.S. forces remain in large parts of the country to this day.  There is no mention of Operation Gladio, the occupation of Japan and Germany that continues today, nor the seemingly endless list of interventions to overthrow unfriendly regimes either through economic or military power.

Israel

When it comes to discussing Israel there are equally large omissions.  A reasonable essay on Herzl’s machinations is given, but after that, he generally uses only passing mention of Israel’s settlements and the wall as the main components of Palestinian strife.  He accepts that some people think of Israel as a “colonial-settler” enterprise but dismisses that thought as being on the radical left and of little importance.

He dismisses the idea that Israel is a racist (actually he never mentions that with Israel) and an apartheid state.  The book is recent enough that the author is surely aware of the major institutional labels of Israel as apartheid, including Israel’s own B’etselem.

Nor does he get into the details of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people as an ongoing process.  The many discriminatory laws and policies, house destructions, the imprisonment, and the torture as an everyday occurrence of Palestinian life are never considered.

At the same time, Mead does not create a coherent history of Israel.  In his concluding remarks Mead states, “….for both Israelis and Palestinians, two peoples whose fates have become intertwined in ways that neither side wanted or foresaw.”   This is absolutely not true, as Jabotinsky, Herzl, Weismann, Ben Gurion and others – including most of the British political establishment – knew that depositing Jewish immigrants on land owned by Palestinians was a source of major problems as obviously the Palestinians recognized it as well.  He continues with “their private quarrel must be fought out in the glare of global publicity.”  That at least is good news, as the balance of power, out of sight of global publicity, hugely puts Israel in a dominating position.

Finally he concludes “I have tried to shine a useful light on the relationship between the ways Americans think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it.”  Mission not accomplished as per the errors and omissions mentioned above among many others.

Current events

“The Arc of a Covenant” was published shortly before the Russian invasion in Ukraine to prevent the ongoing shelling of the Donbas people by Ukrainian forces. Since then, it is clearly demonstrated that the “prime directive” (p. 13) of the U.S. empire is the destruction of the Russian state and the containment of the power of China. We are entering a new era where “the ways American think about the world and the approaches they develop to act in it” are clearly global dominance through financial and military means.  All the purported values and morals are worthless when the true history of U.S. imperial adventures are understood.

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Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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This year, parents and guardians stood together in opposition to the COVID-19 shot being required for their children to attend school. As a result of their coming together, the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) decided to rescind the mandate for Louisiana students. As of yesterday, it has officially been repealed.

In light of this victory for parents and their children, Attorney General Jeff Landry has filed a motion to dismiss the Crews v. Edwards case, wherein he sought to have the vaccine mandate enjoined and issued the following statement:

“Today is the culmination of hard work by so many concerned parents throughout Louisiana. This is the direct result of moms, dads, grandparents, and guardians fighting for what is right. I thank Representative Raymond Crews, Health Freedom Louisiana, the Bayou Mama Bears, Town Hall Baton Rouge, Children’s Health Defense, and all those from across Louisiana that stood with us for parental choice.

Child medical decisions should be made by their guardians, not the government. I hope this health freedom victory reminds everyone what can happen when we all work together. When citizens are engaged and get involved, their government will listen.” -Attorney General, Jeff Landry, Sept 21, 2022

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Some history on this historic event:

December, 2021 – I went down to Baton Rouge Louisiana with the Children’s Health Defense team on short notice to help Health Freedom Louisiana, the physician and nurses’ advocacy group Louisiana for Medical Freedom, Representative Kathy Edmonston, and Attorney General Jeff Landry by supporting testimony opposing the Louisiana Department of Health move to mandate the unlicensed and still experimental Pfizer vaccine be taken by Louisiana school children. I wrote about that trip here.

Then last April, Health Freedom Louisiana wrote about their continuing fight to stop the mandates, with a pleas for everyone to reach out to state legislators.

I went back down to Baton Rouge in early May, 2022. to testify in front of a Senate Committee hearing about vaccine mandates for children, in support of HCR 3, which would stop the governor’s mandated COVID vaccination – the only one left in the country. At that time, the bill did pass.

But the Governor that state continued pushing the mandates through the Louisiana Department of Health … until finally they didn’t.

I think we can all take this as a win. A BIG WIN!

It took a huge effort on the part of AG Jeff Landry, who never gave up. Louisiana for Medical Freedom and Representative Kathy Edmonston who has continued in this fight to stop the mandates and frankly, so many of us. Children’s Health Defense and Robert F Kennedy, Jr. who has also been there working behind the scenes to make this happen.

Thank you everyone.

One step, one state, one nation – medical freedom. Medical Freedom is just part of being free. Freedom for all was what this great nation was founded on. Never forget.

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Titled “Defending peace and freedom in Europe — Supporting Ukraine resolutely with heavy weapons now,” the German Bundestag is set to approve the resolution to deliver weapons to Ukraine. Debate around this topic has also exposed cracks in the governing coalition, and many deputies from the Greens and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP) are in favour of providing more military assistance to Ukraine.

Berlin will likely supply Ukraine with tanks and heavy armored vehicles. This is despite the fact that the supply of these weapons will not change the course of the war and will instead lead to an even greater shortage of weapons in European warehouses and the German military.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called on the government and NATO members to provide Kiev with tanks and heavy armored vehicles. According to her, the delivery of weapons cannot be delayed since “Ukraine is at the turning point of the military campaign.”

As the German tabloid Bild writes, a large part of the government is in favour of supplying Ukraine with additional weapons, including Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 tanks, Marder armored vehicles, and Fuchs armored personnel carriers. With the delivery of this military equipment, it is evident that Berlin plans to supply Kiev with old weapons.

Leopard 1 are extremely old tanks, which were produced in the 1960s. As for Leopard 2, these are slightly better and more modern tanks, which is not only in service in Germany, but also in Austria, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden and Turkey.

The Marder is a light armored vehicle that has been in service with the German army since the 1970s, with its high speed being its main feature. However, Marder cannot withstand the impact of shells and is used exclusively for transporting infantry as it only has a 20 mm automatic cannon, two 7.62 mm machine guns and a Milan anti-armor system.

For the transport of infantry, Berlin plans to deliver the Fuchs armored personnel carriers, which have been in use since 1979. The German military has about 360 vehicles of this type in various modifications. They were actively used in Afghanistan to transport soldiers and equipment on the battlefield, reconnaissance and electronic interception.

The problem is that Germany does not have enough of these weapons to deliver to Ukraine without affecting its own stock and European security. All arms deliveries are made from European warehouses. Previously, weapons were taken from warehouses for use in various armed conflicts, in which many countries participated under the auspices of the US, such as in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

The Germans are under intense US pressure, which has led to their capitulation to deliver tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine. These tanks though, as well as self-propelled artillery carriers, have yet to be produced in large quantities as it takes a lot of time. It takes 65 months to produce 100 tanks, meaning that the Germans could only start supplying Ukraine with modern heavy weapons in a serious or game changing manner in about three years, when the war is likely to be long over.

It is recalled that in an interview with Bild am Sontag newspaper, Baerbock stated that Germany intends to help Ukraine as much as necessary, but for now it cannot deliver everything that Kiev wants. Baerbock added that she understands that Ukrainians want faster and larger deliveries.

“But our inventory does not have the large quantities of currently needed functional, modern systems ready to ship. We also promised our partners in the Baltics that we will protect every corner of NATO territory,” the minister stressed.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, publicly shamed Berlin, asking why it was backtracking on a pledge made to send these weapons to Ukraine.

“Disappointing signals from Germany while Ukraine needs Leopards and Marders now — to liberate people and save them from genocide,” Kuleba said on Twitter on September 13, adding that there was “not a single rational argument on why these weapons can not be supplied, only abstract fears and excuses.”

“What is Berlin afraid of that Kyiv is not?” he added.

It is recalled that in April, Berlin promised to give Leopard tanks and Marders to Ukraine. This evolved into a swap scheme that would see NATO members, such as Poland and Slovakia, send Ukraine their old Soviet-era tanks so Germany could replace their stocks with modern equivalent weapons. The logic behind this is that the Ukrainian military were used to operating Soviet-era weapons.

The plan has largely failed to materialise and Berlin is now being criticised domestically and externally, particularly from a Ukraine acting in an entitled manner. It now seems like Berlin has capitulated to the pressure and the humiliation and will deliver the weapons, but this comes at the price of risking its own security.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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See highlighted passage & numbers and you can see why this study was hidden by Fauci & NIH cabal for with the flawed NIH study, it showed that Remdesivir FAILED in cutting deaths & it increased harms.

My take:

There is evidence that Fauci and NIH et al. tampered with the study protocol so that they could claim some benefit as the drug was showing ineffectiveness and safety failures. So if you look at the protocol adjustment below, they made a non patient important outcome (time to recovery), the primary outcome. These are real crooks!

Remdesivir has emerged as liver and kidney toxic and a failed EBOLA drug, failed! It was a drug in search of a disease and found one here due to Fauci and his ‘standard of care’!

Remdesivir emerged as one of these ineffective and potentially harmful drugs yet was championed by the NIH/NIAID/US government as a prominent treatment. The LANCET’s Wang et al. clinical trial results (below) were released on the very same morning that the US government’s NIH trial results (Beigel et al., https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2007764) on remdesivir were released, and showed a failure of remdesivir and even skewed heavily towards harms.

The key Wang et al.’s findings was that in adult patients admitted to hospital for severe COVID-19, “remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits.” Furthermore, and very alarmingly, adverse events were reported in “102 (66%) of 155 remdesivir recipients versus 50 (64%) of 78 placebo recipients. Remdesivir was stopped early because of adverse events in 18 (12%) patients versus four (5%) patients who stopped placebo early.” In addition, the Kaplan-Meier hazard ratio was not statistically significant, reported as HR 0.73; 95% CI, 0.52 to 1.03 (final report).3

Yet the NIH highly touted and flaunted study that did not report or focus on patient-important objective outcomes and only on reduced time to recovery, was deeply flawed methodologically. The reported primary outcome was time to recovery (discharge from the hospital or hospitalization for infection-control purposes). Why was the reported primary outcome in the NIH study not mortality? Did researchers at NIH (including Dr. Anthony Fauci) use a secondary outcome such as time to recovery as the primary outcome because they were looking at the data and saw no benefit for patient-important outcomes such as mortality?

This is very serious if the NIH researchers tampered with the trial’s protocol so that they could declare efficacy yet for a secondary ‘less important’ outcome. Moreover, the legacy media and the NIH/NIAID officials completely disregarded the key findings (including strong signals of harms) from the LANCET Wang et al. trial released on the very same day.  Why? When the glorified NIH study’s outcome was not patient-important and there was indication of harms: “serious adverse events were reported in 131 of the 532 patients who received remdesivir (24.6%) and in 163 of the 516 patients who received placebo (31.6%).”

SOURCE: Wang et al.

NIH tampered with the protocol:

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Amid all of its virtue signaling and moralizing over the alleged actions of its perceived enemies around the world, the American Deep State is ever vigilant to cover-up its own litany war crimes.

This week we learned that a US federal judge has ruled that a massive congressional report on the CIA’s illegal ‘War on Terror’ torture program will remain classified, claiming American citizens have no right to see the controversial document, portions of which have already been leaked to the public by a Democratic senator in 2014.

“The Report contains highly classified information about the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies and procedures that would compromise national security if released, far outweighing the public’s interest in disclosure.”

Another incredible miscarriage of justice…

The US government used cruel and unusual methods to torture innocent detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan (Image: Wikicommons)

LA Times reports…

The U.S. Senate does not have to release its full report detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation and detention program following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

Journalist Shawn Musgrave sought the 6,700-page document, citing a “common law right of access” to public records. The legal argument is conceptually similar to the Freedom of Information Act. Congress is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in 2016 that the report was a congressional record. Musgrave’s legal argument was made in an attempt to get around that limitation.

Common law right of access is decided in the District of Columbia Circuit based on a two-part test that requires a determination that the document is a public record and then balancing the government’s interest in keeping the document secret against the public’s interest in disclosure.

District of Columbia District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the report “does not qualify as a public record subject to the common law right of public access” because although it was part of the committee’s investigation, it was aimed at gathering information and did not make recommendations or propose legislation. Therefore, she said, it falls under the protections of the 1st Amendment‘s speech and debate clause protecting legislators’ speech while crafting legislation.

The government interest in keeping the information secret outweighs public interest, Howell wrote.

“The Report contains highly classified information about the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies and procedures that would compromise national security if released, far outweighing the public’s interest in disclosure,” Howell said in her opinion dismissing the case…

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Featured image: By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. (Photo: US torture Image by Witness Against Torture)

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The World Economic Forum (WEF) is boasting that mass compliance with draconian COVID-19 mandates “demonstrated the core of individual social responsibility” and helped pave the way for upcoming “climate”-related restrictions.

Headed by German engineer, economist, and “COVID-19: The Great Reset” author Klaus Schwab, the WEF made the connection in a September 14 report associated with its ongoing 2022 Sustainable Development Impact Meetings.

BREAKING: Davos launching new push for permanent "climate change" lockdowns: "The lockdowns aren't for them, the lockdowns are for YOU."

pic.twitter.com/nweQNmVqqN

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) September 20, 2022

The WEF report suggested moves to track and restrict personal carbon usage has had “limited success due to a lack of social acceptance, political resistance, and a lack of awareness and fair mechanism for tracking ‘My Carbon’ emissions.”

However, the document noted that the unprecedented response to COVID-19 has created an environment in which that “lack of social acceptance and political resistance” may be overcome.

“A huge number of unimaginable restrictions for public health were adopted by billions of citizens across the world,” the report read. “There were numerous examples globally of maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, mass vaccinations and acceptance of contact-tracing applications for public health, which demonstrated the core of individual social responsibility.”

According to the report, that compliance “could help realise ‘My Carbon’ initiatives for shaping the future towards smart and sustainable cities.”

The authors of the paper pointed out that the ascendency of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and “Smart” technology emerging from the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution have provided platforms whereby personal consumption of energy can be monitored and limited.

The document cited “major advances in smart home technologies, transport choices with carbon implications,” and “the roll-out of smart meters” that the WEF said helps people choose “to reduce their energy-related emissions.”

The WEF also touted “the development of new personalized apps to account for personal emissions, and better personal choices for food and consumption-related emissions.”

While the language used in the WEF’s report suggests that individuals will be able to voluntarily opt into programs limiting their alleged carbon emissions, the notion has generated concern that consumers might not always have the choice.

Earlier this month, roughly 22,000 Colorado residents were prevented from adjusting their thermostats after their opt-in “smart” thermostat company locked the devices at 78 degrees F° during a heat wave, citing a local “energy emergency.”

While the “smart” thermostat company, Xcel, emphasized to the media that the program was voluntary and incentive-based, residents said they were surprised and upset to find they couldn’t control their home temperature.

“To me, an emergency means there is, you know, life, limb, or, you know, some other danger out there — some, you know, massive wildfires,” a customer told ABC 7 Denver. “Even if it’s a once-in-a-blue-moon situation, it just doesn’t sit right with us to not be able to control our own thermostat in our house.”

22,000 people in Colorado had their thermostats locked by their utility company in 90 degree weather due to an 'energy emergency.'

People will read stories like this, still want a refrigerator that connects to the internet, and somehow believe our grid is ready for 100% EVs.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) September 5, 2022

This week, The Great Reset: Global Elites and the Permanent Lockdown author Marc Morano told LifeSite’s John-Henry Westen that lockdowns, restrictions, and even planned economic collapse are all part of the “climate” agenda.

“The COVID lockdowns were literally a version of what they’ve called for for decades in the climate movement,” Morano said. “I attend every United Nations climate summit, and I’m going to the one in Egypt this year … and what these summits call for … is the ‘degrowth movement,’ or ‘planned recessions’ … to fight global warming. And what that means is the government imposes slower economic growth or forces a recession to lower emissions.”

Over the summer, the WEF argued that pushing forward an “clean energy transition,” partly by hiking up already record-breaking gas prices, would be necessary for both saving democracy and staving off environmental catastrophe.

U.S. President Joe Biden, who has presided over skyrocketing inflation and historically high gas prices, drew backlash in May when he suggested that the high cost of fuel was part of an “incredible transition.”

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Featured image is from The Libertarian Institute

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When political commentator Kim Iversen read, “Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better” — an article published in 2016 on the World Economic Forum (WEF) website — she waited for the punchline, assuming the article was satire.

But there wasn’t a punchline. The author of the article was serious.

Iversen devoted a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show” to dissecting the WEF article, whose “You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy” message resurfaced amid growing interest in the WEF’s Great Reset.

Iversen highlighted some of the article’s key statements, which she labeled “absurd” and “insane”:

• “I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”
• “It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes.”
• “In our city we don’t pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.”
• “Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods.”
• “Shopping? I can’t really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.”
• “Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.”

The article, published Nov. 10, 2016, was written by Ida Auken, a member of the Danish Parliament (2007-present) and formerly Denmark’s minister for the environment.

Auken wrote the article in preparation for the WEF’s Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils which took place November 13-14, 2016, in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The WEF in early 2017 nominated Auken as a Young Global Leader and promoted her article in a tweet:

Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better @IdaAuken https://t.co/SJjAQkYeYH pic.twitter.com/eujshuqRJo

— World Economic Forum (@wef) January 16, 2017

“They [WEF leaders] were not joking around,” Iversen said. “This is the future that they envisioned. Everything will move to robotics, everything will be monitored in the name of saving climate.”

Iversen said although she historically called herself an environmentalist — “That’s really where my first foray into politics was, in the environmental movement” — she’s now “questioning the motivation of all of this.”

She added:

“I’ve seen them [WEF global leaders] claim a lot of things are really bad and they’re not. They were exaggerated greatly in order to use those [things] to make us afraid and control us.”

According to Iversen, the WEF is “marching us toward” a life of passive obedience to a centralized system of authorities who control and own everything.

Their message, she said, is “‘just be a good citizen and you have nothing to worry about so long as you don’t speak out against the government, so as long as you follow all the rules … Yes, you won’t have any privacy … You won’t own anything but you will be very, very happy. You just need to do as you’re told.’”

Iversen added:

“Thank goodness more and more people are reporting on this and waking up to this saying, ‘No. We are not going to go along with this agenda.’”

Watch the video here:

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

Featured image is from CHD

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The United States has asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to dismiss a case by Iran which claims that Washington breached a treaty and allowed courts to freeze assets of Iranian companies.

“Iran’s case should be dismissed in its entirety because of the principle of ‘unclean hands’,” Richard Visek, acting legal adviser at the US State Department, said on Wednesday, as the US set out its opening arguments in the case at The Hague.

In using the legal term “unclean hands”, Visek argued that Tehran cannot complain about US courts confiscating assets because the actions that led to the asset freeze were the result of Iran’s own illegal conduct.

Iran first brought the case against Washington in 2016, accusing it of breaching a 1955 friendship treaty by allowing American courts to freeze assets of Iranian companies, including $1.75bn from Iran’s central bank which is now held in a Citibank account in New York.

The friendship treaty was signed decades before Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, which toppled US-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The revolution led to the severing of US-Iranian relations and Washington eventually withdrew from the treaty in 2018.

In October 1983, a suicide bomber in a truck loaded with military-grade explosives attacked US Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 American troops and 58 French soldiers. Iran has long denied being involved. However, in 2003 a US judge found Tehran responsible and a 2012 US law ordered Iran’s central bank to hand over the frozen Iranian assets to the families of those killed in the Beirut bombing.

In 2019, the International Court of Justice ruled it had jurisdiction to hear the case, rejecting an argument from the US that its national security interests superseded the 1955 treaty.

“The freedom of navigation and commerce guaranteed by the treaty have been gravely breached,” Tavakol Habibzadeh, head of international legal affairs for Iran, told the ICJ on Monday, as reported by the Associated Press.

Iran’s case against the UK

The ICJ, also known as the World Court, is the UN’s highest court dealing with disputes between countries.

While its rulings are binding, the court has no power to enforce them, and Washington and Tehran are among a number of countries to have disregarded its decisions in the past.

Iran had previously brought up another case with the ICJ when it called on the United Kingdom to pay more than $500m in debt to Tehran from before the Iranian revolution.

Shortly before the 1979 overthrow of the shah, the British government struck an arms deal to sell more than 1,500 Chieftain tanks and 250 repair vehicles to Iran.

Iran paid £600m ($795m) for the tanks in advance, but having delivered only 185 tanks, Britain refused to deliver the remaining equipment when the shah was deposed.

The international court of arbitration in The Hague ordered Britain to pay the debt in 2001, a ruling upheld in 2009. However, the two countries have been locked in a prolonged legal battle in the British courts over the exact sum owed, and whether or not the UK should pay interest on it.

In 2017, Iran also filed a lawsuit at the ICJ demanding the court order the suspension of renewed US sanctions, which it says are devastating its economy.

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Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, has warned of the serious threat spyware programmes like Pegasus pose to the UN’s work on human rights in a damning report set to be debated next week.

Expanding digital surveillance by states and non-state actors has impacted the ability of civil society actors to submit information to the UN and has made them more vulnerable to intimidation and reprisal, Guterres cautions.

“United Nations actors have pointed to growing and concerning evidence of online surveillance, privacy intrusion, and cyberattacks by state and non-state actors of victims and civil society communications and activities,” the UN chief writes.

“The lack of trust in the digital sphere among those sharing information and testimony with the United Nations on sensitive issues can discourage future cooperation.”

His findings are part of an annual report that monitors the challenges faced by those seeking to cooperate with the organisation and focuses on April 2021 to May 2022.

During this period, much of the UN’s work was conducted digitally in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, making threats of surveillance and spyware especially concerning.

In particular, he singles out the potential repercussions that Pegasus, the military-grade spyware made by the Israel-based NSO Group, has had for Palestinian, Bahraini, and Moroccan organisations and human rights defenders who have cooperated with the UN.

He notes that staff at three prominent Palestinian NGOs – Addameer, Al-Haq, and Bisan Center for Research and Development – were surveilled and had their phones hacked with Pegasus in 2021. The hacking came two weeks after the Israeli government had designated the organisations and three others as “terrorist associations”.

Israel did not respond to the allegations highlighted in the report.

Repercussions for cooperating with UN

In Bahrain, the report highlights two human rights defenders, Ebtisam al-Saegh and Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, in relation to spyware.

This January, investigators found that al-Saegh’s mobile phone had been hacked at least eight times between August and November 2019 with Pegasus. Alwadaei’s mobile number was discovered on a leaked list of numbers identified as targets by NSO Group’s government clients between 2017 and 2019.

Both have allegedly experienced earlier repercussions for their cooperation with the UN, Guterres notes.

As Middle East Eye has previously reported, al-Saegh, who is based in Bahrain, was detained in March 2017 for seven hours at Bahrain International Airport on her return from the UN Human Rights Council, where she spoke out about violations in the kingdom.

She was interrogated for five hours and had her passport and mobile phone confiscated.

A couple of months later, interrogators from Bahrain’s National Security Agency abused her physically and verbally, and sexually assaulted her at Muharraq police station. She was told that if she did not cease her activism she would be raped.

“As someone who has been unable to heal from the torture and sexual assault experienced by Bahraini security due to the culture of impunity that allows my abusers to walk free, I feel deep pain in knowing that malicious spyware has now been used against me,” al-Saegh told MEE.

Alwadaei, director of advocacy for the UK-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), who lives in exile in London, and several of his relatives have faced reprisal, including arbitrary arrest and removal of citizenship, as a result of his continuous engagement with the UN, Guterres notes.

The Bahraini government, in response to the report, said that neither al-Saegh, nor Alwadaei and his family had been targeted because of their human rights activity or cooperation with the UN, but did not respond to the spyware allegations.

In Morocco, Guterres reports on the case of veteran Sahrawi human rights defender Aminatou Haidar, who has allegedly faced threats, physical attacks, constant police monitoring, legal action, and online surveillance for her ongoing cooperation with the UN.

In March 2022, forensic evidence from an investigation reportedly showed that Haidar’s mobile phones were targeted and intercepted by Pegasus in October and November 2021.

“I also blame the NSO Group, which I consider to be a company that profits from human rights violations with espionage technology provided to authoritarian countries such as Morocco,” Haidar told MEE in March.

Guterres also writes that the UN received information that Claude Mangin-Asfari, the wife of imprisoned Sahrawi human rights defender Ennaama Asfari, and her husband’s lawyer were targeted with Pegasus in 2021.

‘The price human rights defenders pay’

In a response to the report’s allegations, Moroccan authorities categorically denied that Haidar, Mangin-Asfari, or her husband’s lawyer were hacked with Pegasus, and also said that they categorically rejected that Haidar had been subject to constant police surveillance or physical violence during the reporting period.

Alwadaei said the report reveals “the price human rights defenders pay for cooperating with the UN” and the extent to which repressive goverments will go to intimidate activists.

“This important recognition by the UN secretary-general on governments’ misuse of Pegasus spyware is an important step. The UN should follow up by calling for greater scrutiny of surveillance technology and its misuse by states, coupled with improved regulation,” he said.

“As someone named in this report who has been targeted by the Bahraini government, the state’s response fails to even acknowledge their use of surveillance technology against human rights activists. This should not go unchallenged by the UN.”

The report is scheduled to be debated on 29 September at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

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What in the hell were those bloody-minded Washington/NATO neocons thinking? At any time in the last nine months they could have had a diplomatic settlement with Russia that would have:

• Avoided/ended the war in Ukraine, thereby saving tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives and hundreds of billion of economic cost and destruction;
• Allowed the Russian speaking population of the Donbas a substantial degree of self-governance and autonomy from the hostile government in Kiev;
• Permitted the historic Russian territory of Crimea to remain under Russian control per the wishes of the overwhelming share of its Russian-speaking population;
• Kept NATO out of Ukraine and its missiles away from Russia’s doorstep;
• Removed NATO missile bases from the the old Warsaw Pact countries, where NATO had expanded in breach of Washington’s solemn promise made at the time of the German reunification to not extend NATO “one inch to the east” .

Would this have furthered the national security of the US and Europe, permitted Europe’s then flourishing peaceful commerce with Russia to continue and avoided the current global plague of soaring energy and food prices caused by the Sanctions War?

Yes, it would have. In spades!

So the question recurs. What alternative path did Washington/NATO envision and how could the likely consequences have improved upon either the above summarized settlement, which has been possible all along or, far worse still, the disastrous end game which is now unfolding?

The fact is, after Putin’s speech of yesterday the phrase “disastrous end game” is barely adequate to describe the scenario ahead. That’s because it signaled that the relative restraint of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” (SMO) is now over, and what lies ahead is full scale political and military warfare that can only end in calamity for Ukraine, NATO and indeed the world:

The heart of the matter is that Putin is now :

• Mobilizing Russia’s entire GDP, which is at least 15X greater than what’s left of Ukraine’s;
• Mustering 300,000 fresh reserves or double the number of Russian forces now deployed in the SMO;
• Abandoning the policy of not attacking Ukraine’s civilian electric power grid and railroad system, which has been crucial to Ukraine’s survival to date and the West’s massive supply of weapons across the western border and through the interior rail network;
• Preparing to annex the two breakaway Donbas republics in the east and the Kherson and  Zaporizhzhia regions in the south after hurriedly called referendums, which will transform the war into an explicit NATO-enabled attack on Russia proper.

To be sure, Kiev and Washington are screaming loudly that these referendums are “shams”, and it’s probably the case that the ballot counting will be no better than what occurred in the state of Georgia in 2020.

But the fact is, these regions are populated by Russian-speakers who have no love for or loyalty to the anti-Russian government in Kiev; who have already lined-up for Russian citizenship in large numbers; and who, in any case, fear the retribution of the Ukrainian military and secret service far more than they fear the Russians.

Stated differently, the populations of the Donetsk (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republics (LPR) and those of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions are not begging to be “liberated” by Ukrainian armies, which are every bit as brutal and vindictive as the Russian military has been alleged to be, and surely don’t give a whit about Washington/NATO’s hypocritical malarkey about the rule of law and the sanctity of borders.

In fact, the overwhelming share of the populations (75-90%) of these regions have voted for the pro-Russian candidate in every presidential election held in the Ukraine since the Soviet Union’s mailed fist was lifted from their governance in 1991.

That is to say, they have implicitly voted for partition of a country that never existed until it was nailed together by the tyrannical rule of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev after 1922. So doing, they effected an arbitrary rearrangement of borders that plopped what had been “New Russia” for upwards of 200 years into the commie designed Soviet Socialist Republic of Ukraine for no better reason than it suited their whims and convenience of rule.

But now, within a matter of weeks, Ukraine’s borders will be restored to the pre-WWI status quo ante. Whether fair and square or not, the vote will be overwhelmingly in favor of separation and upon the request of the peoples of “Novorussiya”, Putin has indicated that these regions will once again become formal Russian territories.

What that means, in turn, of course, is that NATO’s war in support of the Kiev regime will become an explicit war on the territory of Russia. And that surely portends a bloody and disastrous end game because the only way it does not end up in an armistice after untold more deaths and destruction, followed by secession of the new “Russian” territories , anyway, is if Ukraine wins the war.

That’s not going to happen. Not in a blue moon.

Once Moscow takes the gloves off and savages Ukraine’s electric power grid and railway system it will be all over except the shouting. The massive flow of western armaments, which has kept Kiev in the game to date, will be drastically curtailed; and the civilian population in the Kiev-controlled areas will be left high and dry, preparing to shiver in the dark as the severe Ukrainian winter approaches.

Nor does the alleged surprise victory of Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv area in recent weeks change the scenario. What that actually accomplished was the sacrifice of thousands of Ukrainian troops in the apparent faint attack on Kherson in the south in order to regain a few thousand square miles of lightly populated open steppe around Kharkiv.

Even then, the alleged hastily retreating Russian army was not that at all. The area had been mostly occupied and defended by the lightly trained volunteers of the Republic of Luhansk, not the trained professionals of the Russian armed forces.

Now that the Ukrainian army has driven out the Luhansk volunteers and occupied the open steppe lands, it remains for Russian dominance of the air and artillery war to encircle the alleged victors and pulverize them from the air and via long-range artillery that is even now being brought into position.

That is to say, in a few weeks the Ukrainian “victory “will disappear from the MSM, just as have so many other alleged setbacks to the Russian cause.

Instead, the news will be about the brutality of the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy and transport infrastructure; the roadblocks it will put in front of what has been the demolition derby of US/NATO supplied weaponry to the battle front; and the fact that without massive new aid from Washington beyond the $50 billion already authorized, civilian life in the Kiev-controlled portions of the country will be on the verge of collapse and the regime in Kiev will be on virtual life-support from Washington.

In short, the end game in lieu of the diplomatic settlement which could have been had long ago will be either a more unfavorable partition of Ukraine, leaving Kiev and the western regions as a bankrupt landlocked rump state and ward of the west, or an escalation that involves direct military engagement by NATO and leaves the world teetering on the edge of nuclear war.

So much for using Ukraine as cannon fodder to drastically “weaken Russia” and to force the demonized Vlad Putin from power. To the contrary, by the time Europe’s cold and dark winter is underway, it will be European governments, which slavishly did Washington’s bidding, that will be falling like dominoes.

More importantly, it will also be the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill asking our opening question of Biden’s infinitely foolish national security team: Indeed, what in the hell were you thinking?!

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David Stockman was a two-term Congressman from Michigan. He was also the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. After leaving the White House, Stockman had a 20-year career on Wall Street. He’s the author of three books, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America and TRUMPED! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back. He also is founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner and David Stockman’s Bubble Finance Trader.

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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***

SGS developed a new simulation for a plausible escalating war between the United States and Russia using realistic nuclear force postures, targets and fatality estimates. It is estimated that there would be more than 90 million people dead and injured within the first few hours of the conflict.

This project is motivated by the need to highlight the potentially catastrophic consequences of current US and Russian nuclear war plans. The risk of nuclear war has increased dramatically in the past two years as the United States and Russia have abandoned long-standing nuclear arms control treaties, started to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons and expanded the circumstances in which they might use nuclear weapons.

This four-minute audio-visual piece is based on independent assessments of current U.S. and Russian force postures, nuclear war plans, and nuclear weapons targets. It uses extensive data sets of the nuclear weapons currently deployed, weapon yields, and possible targets for particular weapons, as well as the order of battle estimating which weapons go to which targets in which order in which phase of the war to show the evolution of the nuclear conflict from tactical, to strategic to city-targeting phases.

The resulting immediate fatalities and casualties that would occur in each phase of the conflict are determined using data from NUKEMAP. All fatality estimates are limited to acute deaths from nuclear explosions and would be significantly increased by deaths occurring from nuclear fallout and other long-term effects. The simulation was developed by Alex Wellerstein, Tamara Patton, Moritz Kütt, and Alex Glaser with assistance from Bruce Blair, Sharon Weiner, and Zia Mian. The sound is by Jeff Snyder.

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Featured image is from Princeton Science and Global Security

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

The televised speech yesterday morning by Vladimir Putin and the follow-up remarks by his Minister of Defense Shoigu announcing the partial mobilization of Russia’s army reserves to add a total of 300,000 men to the military campaign in Ukraine have been widely reported in the Western press.  Plans to hold referendums on accession to the Russian Federation in the Donbas republics this weekend and also in the Kherson and Zaporozhie oblasts in the very near future also were reported by the Western press.  However, as is very commonly the case, the interrelationship of these two developments has not been seen, or, if seen, has not been shared with the general public. Since precisely this interrelationship has been highlighted on Russian state television talk shows these past two days, I use this opportunity to bring to my readership the key facts on what turn the ongoing conflict in Ukraine will now take and an updated view of when it will end and with what results.

The very idea of referendums in the Donbas has been ridiculed by mainstream media in the United States and Europe. They are denounced as ‘sham’ and we are told that the results will not be recognized.  In fact, the Kremlin does not at all care whether the results are recognized as valid in the West.  Their logic lies elsewhere. As for the Russian public, the only critical remark about the referendums has been about the timing, with even some patriotic folks saying openly that it is too early to hold the vote given that the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Zaporozhie and Kherson oblasts have not yet been fully ‘liberated.’ Here too, the logic of these votes lies elsewhere.

It is a foregone conclusion that the Donbas republics and other territories of Ukraine now under Russian occupation will vote to join the Russian Federation. In the case of Donetsk and Lugansk, it was only under pressure from Moscow that their 2014 referendums were about declaring sovereignty and not about becoming part of Russia. Such annexation or merger was not welcomed by the Kremlin back then because Russia was not ready to face the expected massive economic, political and military attack from the West which would have followed.  Today, Moscow is more than ready: indeed it has survived very well all the economic sanctions imposed by the West from even before 24 February as well as the ever growing supply to Ukraine of military materiel and ‘advisers’ from the NATO countries.

The vote over joining Russia will likely hit 90% or more in favor.  What will immediately follow on the Russian side is also perfectly clear:  within hours of the declaration of referendum results, the Russian State Duma will pass a bill on ‘reunification’ of these territories with Russia and within a day or so, it will be approved by the upper chamber of parliament and immediately thereafter the bill will be signed into law by President Putin.

Looking past his service as a KGB intelligence operative, which is all that Western “Russia specialists” go on about endlessly in their articles and books, let us also remember Vladimir Putin’s law degree. As President, he has systematically stayed within domestic and international law. He will do so now.  Unlike his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin has not ruled by presidential decree; he has ruled by laws promulgated by a bicameral parliament constituted from several parties.  He has ruled in keeping with international law promulgated by the United Nations. UN law speaks for the sanctity of territorial integrity of Member States; but UN law also speaks of the sanctity of self-determination of peoples.

What follows from the formal merger of these territories with Russia?  That is also perfectly clear. As integral parts of Russia, any attack on them, and there certainly will be such attacks coming from the Ukrainian armed forces, is a casus belli. But even before that, the referendums have been preceded by the announcement of mobilization, which points directly to what Russia will do further if developments on the field of battle so requires. Progressive phases of mobilization will be justified to the Russian public as necessary to defend the borders of the Russian Federation from attack by NATO.

The merger of the Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories with the Russian Federation will mark the end of the ‘special military operation.’ An SMO is not something you conduct on your own territory, as panelists on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show remarked a couple of days ago.  It marks the beginning of open war on Ukraine with the objective of the enemy’s unconditional capitulation. This will likely entail the removal of the civil and military leadership and, very likely, the dismemberment of Ukraine.  After all, the Kremlin warned more than a year ago that the US-dictated course of NATO membership for Ukraine will result in its loss of statehood. However, these particular objectives were not declared up to now; the SMO was about defending the Donbas against genocide and about de-nazification of Ukraine, itself a rather vague concept.

Adding another 300,000 men at arms to the force deployed by Russia in Ukraine represents a near doubling and surely will address the shortages of infantry numbers that has limited Russia’s ability to ‘conquer’ Ukraine. It was precisely lack of boots on the ground that explains Russia’s painful and embarrassing withdrawal from the Kharkov region in the past two weeks. They could not resist the massive concentration of Ukrainian forces against their own thinly guarded hold on the region. The strategic value of the Ukrainian win is questionable, but it greatly enhanced their morale, which is a major factor in the outcome of any war. The Kremlin could not ignore this.

At the press conference in Samarkand last week following the end of the annual gathering of heads of state of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Vladimir Putin was asked why he has shown so much restraint in the face of the Ukrainian counter offensive. He replied that the Russian attacks on Ukrainian electricity generating plants which followed the loss of the Kharkov territory were just ‘warning shots’ and there would be much more ‘impactful’ action to come.  Accordingly, as Russia moves from SMO to open war, we may expect massive destruction of Ukrainian civil as well as military infrastructure to fully block all movement of Western supplied arms from points of delivery in the Lvov region and other borders to the front lines. We may eventually expect bombing and destruction of Ukraine’s centers of decision-making in Kiev.

As for further Western intervention, Western media have picked up on President Putin’s thinly veiled nuclear threat to potential co-belligerents. Russia has explicitly stated that any aggression against its own security and territorial integrity, such as has been raised by generals in retirement in the USA speaking to national television in the past several weeks about Russia’s break-up, will be met by a nuclear response. When Russia’s nuclear threat is directed at Washington, as is now the case, rather than at Kiev or Brussels, the supposition till now, it is unlikely that policy makers on Capitol Hill will long remain cavalier about Russian military capabilities and pursue further escalation.

In light of all these developments, I am compelled to revise my appreciation of what transpired at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting.  Western media have focused full attention on only one issue: the supposed friction between Russia and its main global friends, India and China, over its war in Ukraine.  That seemed to me to be grossly exaggerated. Now it appears to be utter nonsense. It is inconceivable that Putin did not discuss with Xi and Modi what he is about to do in Ukraine. If Russia indeed now supplies to its war effort a far greater part of its military potential, then it is entirely reasonable to expect the war to end with Russian victory by 31 December of this year as the Kremlin appears to have pledged to its loyal supporters.

Looking beyond Ukraine’s possible loss of statehood, a Russian victory will mean more than an Afghanistan-like bloody nose for Washington. It will expose the low value of the U.S. military umbrella for EU member states and will necessarily lead to re-evaluation of Europe’s security architecture, which is what the Russians were demanding before their incursion into Ukraine was launched in February.

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***

Three months after the Russian invasion, Ukraine is no longer talking specifically about NATO, but rather a series of “binding” security guarantees now being sought from its Western partners. 

Last week, former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak, the co-chairs of the Working Group On International Security Guarantees for Ukraine, published the Kyiv Security Compact. The elaborate document includes a “multi-decade effort of sustained investment in Ukraine’s defence industrial base, scalable weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies” through “binding” bilateral agreements between Ukraine and a “core group of allied countries” including the U.S., UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, and Turkey, as well as Nordic, Baltic, Central and Eastern European countries.

So far the response in the West to the proposed compact has been muted, but it triggered a belligerent retort from Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs of the Russian Federation. He charged that “this is not a security guarantee, it is a draft pact on the involvement of NATO countries and their allies in the conflict. The proposal is against Russia, against a nuclear state. I hope that all of Kyiv’s Western partners are well aware of what they are being asked to sign up for.”

The laundry list of security guarantees envisioned by Rasmussen and Yermak comes at a time when support for the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy of sending arms, financing, and intelligence sharing has found strong support in both houses in Congress, in the U.S. media, and among the public at large.

Yet worryingly, the relation between unanimity of opinion and sound judgment tends toward the inverse. The Rasmussen-Yermak report would require a boost in U.S. resources beyond the billions that it is already sending to the Ukraine war effort, as well as a commitment that falls just short of the kind of NATO guarantees that played into Russia’s break up with the West in the first place.

While not taking on the proposal for new security guarantees directly, a new report from Brown University’s Cost of War project, published on September 15, takes aim at the current escalation dynamics, and makes the critical  case for a far more cautious approach than envisioned by either the Rasmussen-Yermak report or the U.S. bipartisan foreign policy consensus (aka ‘the Blob’).

The report,

“Threat Inflation, Russian Military Weakness, and the Resulting Nuclear Paradox: Implications of the War in Ukraine for U.S. Military Spending,” counsels against an increase in U.S. and NATO defense spending as a response to Vladimir Putin’s illegal war on Ukraine.

“It is important that the U.S. not succumb to threat inflation in regards to public and official perceptions of Russia,” because “historically, threat inflation has led to disastrous and unnecessarily costly U.S. foreign policy decisions,” writes the report’s author, Lyle Goldstein, visiting professor of International and Public Affairs at the Watson Institute at Brown University.

Goldstein ably and succinctly takes the reader through the long history of threat inflation by the U.S. foreign policy establishment with regard to Russia, including the fictitious “missile gap” coined by then-Sen. John F. Kennedy during the late Eisenhower years.

The reason Goldstein, who for 20 years served on the faculty at the U.S. Naval War College, counsels restraint is due to what he calls the “nuclear paradox.” Namely, “if the U.S. and NATO increase their military spending and conventional forces in Europe, the weakness of Russian conventional military forces could prompt Moscow to rely more heavily on its nuclear forces.” After all, on the conventional weapons front, the Russians are far outspent by their rivals in the West. As he points out:

…the Russian defense budget amounts to less than 1/10 of the U.S. defense budget, just 1/5 of NATO (non-US) spending and a measly 6% of the NATO defense spending on aggregate.

Given Russia’s poor performance on the battlefield and its clear inability to militarily threaten NATO territory, Goldstein says “the Russian invasion of Ukraine, however tragic from a humanitarian point of view, does not justify the massive increase in U.S. defense spending that is currently being contemplated.”

Indeed, the report shows how Russia’s inferiority in conventional weapons has incentivized it to focus on its nuclear deterrent. And here Goldstein cites an unclassified report from the Naval War College on “nuclear use”:

“Moscow is unlikely to use nuclear weapons … unless the Putin regime judged that an impending defeat during conflict would undercut the government’s legitimacy and create an existential threat via domestic upheaval (through loss of territorial integrity or other pivotal wartime event).”

“Thus,” writes Goldstein, “the paradox of Russia’s conventional weakness is fully revealed in the above prediction.”

To get off the current escalatory ladder on which the Biden administration has set us (and which the Rasmussen-Yermak report wants to institutionalize as a decades-long project), Goldstein sensibly recommends “direct talks, reviving the arms control agenda, and pursuing military confidence building measures between NATO countries and Russia.”

Senators, members of Congress, their staffs, and policymakers at the highest levels of the Biden administration ought to treat the new Cost of War report with the seriousness it deserves.

*

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Featured image: Photobank.kiev.ua/shutterstock

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***

The President of Serbia has warned that the planet is entering into a “great world conflict” that could take place within the next two months.

Aleksandar Vucic made the alarming comments during the first day of the UN General Assembly session in New York.

“You see a crisis in every part of the world,” Vucic told the Serbian state broadcaster RTS.

“I think realistic predictions ought to be even darker,” he added. “Our position is even worse, since the UN has been weakened and the great powers have taken over and practically destroyed the UN order over the past several decades.”

The Serbian leader cautioned that the war between Russia and Ukraine had moved on to a far deadlier phase.

“I assume that we’re leaving the phase of the special military operation and approaching a major armed conflict, and now the question becomes where is the line, and whether after a certain time – maybe a month or two, even – we will enter a great world conflict not seen since the Second World War,” he said.

Aleksandar Vucic, President of Serbia:

Within a month or two, the world may enter into a military conflict not seen since World War II. pic.twitter.com/Ma0mIS1bkv

— Спринтер (@Sprinter88000) September 21, 2022

Vucic’s remarks were made on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an immediate “partial mobilization” of troops amounting to 300,000 soldiers.

In a public address to the nation, Putin warned that he wasn’t bluffing and that he was prepared to use “all the means at our disposal” to protect Moscow’s territorial integrity.

“Now they (the West) are talking about nuclear blackmail,” said Putin.

“The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant was shelled and also some high positions – representatives of NATO states – who are saying there might be possibility and permissibility to use nuclear weapons against Russia,” he added.

Putin ominously asserted that western powers should “be reminded that our country also has various weapons of destruction, and with regard to certain components they’re even more modern than NATO ones.”

As we highlighted last month, a study conducted by Rutgers University found that nuclear war between the United States and Russia would cause two-thirds of the planet to starve to death within two years.

5 billion people would perish, primarily as a result of nuclear detonations causing huge infernos that inject soot into the atmosphere which blocks out the sun and devastates crops.

One wonders how a generation that thinks words are “violence” and misgendering someone is stochastic terrorism will react to an intercontinental nuclear war.

The mind truly boggles.

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Vaccine Narrative Collapses as Harvard Study Shows Jab More Dangerous than COVID

Jonas Vesterberg, September 16, 2022

1350 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 919 of Them Dead, Since COVID Injection

Real Science, September 21, 2022

History: Hitler was Financed by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England

Yuri Rubtsov, September 18, 2022

Biden Signs Executive Order Designed to Unleash “Transhumanist Hell” on America and the World

Leo Hohmann, September 19, 2022

Dr. Paul Offit, One of the World’s Most Respected Vaccine Experts, Is Now Officially an Anti-vaxxer!

Steve Kirsch, September 20, 2022

PfizerGate: Official Government Reports prove Hundreds of Thousands of People Are Dying Every Single Week Due to COVID-19 Vaccination

The Expose, September 17, 2022

Climate Instability Worldwide: Does the US Military “Own the Weather”? “Weaponizing the Weather” as an Instrument of Modern Warfare?

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, September 17, 2022

The COVID-19 Power Grab: “Our Governments are Working to Harm Us”

Prof. Anthony J. Hall, September 16, 2022

Corona Sleepwalkers Swallow Whatever the Authorities Tell Them

Dr. Emanuel Garcia, September 19, 2022

COVID as a “Political Gift”? Stillborn from COVID-injected Mothers, Heart Attacks in Children…

Prof. Anthony J. Hall, September 17, 2022

Trilogy of Disaster – The Global Reset on Display

Peter Koenig, September 16, 2022

COVID Measures: Biggest “Social Conformity Event” in History. Corona Policy Was Aimed at “Changing Behavior”, Not at Improving Health.

Elze van Hamelen, September 21, 2022

Video: A Final Warning to Humanity from Former Pfizer Chief Scientist Michael Yeadon

Dr. Mike Yeadon, September 17, 2022

Ukraine: US Launches a Fascist Government, and World War Three?

Felicity Arbuthnot, September 18, 2022

Europe’s Energy Armageddon from Berlin and Brussels, Not Moscow

F. William Engdahl, September 21, 2022

An Engineered Food and Poverty Crisis to Secure Continued U.S. Dominance

Colin Todhunter, September 17, 2022

Dutch Farmers Resisting the Toxic Transition

Colin Todhunter, September 20, 2022

Global Planned Financial Tsunami Has Just Begun

F. William Engdahl, September 10, 2022

The Money Economy Is Not the Real Economy: “The Global Banking and Financial System is Fatally Flawed”

Thomas H. Greco, Jr., September 19, 2022

Ukraine, It Was All Written in the Rand Corp Plan. “the U.S. Plan against Russia was Formulated 3 Years Ago”

Manlio Dinucci, September 18, 2022

What Would a Nuclear War Look Like?

By Jeff Thomas, September 22, 2022

For eight years, NATO has backed puppet rulers in Ukraine, funded attacks on Donbass, repeatedly violated the Minsk Treaties, outlawed the speaking of Russian in the Luhansk and Donetsk Republics, and has destroyed democratic opposition and free media in Ukraine, leaving it a one-party government, essentially owned and financed by the US and administrated by US operatives.

Will the United States and NATO Wake Up to What Happened at the Meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization?

By Larry Johnson, September 22, 2022

The speeches by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are especially noteworthy. Both countries put the United States on notice that the United States and NATO will be treated as a sponsor of terrorism because they supply weapons to Ukraine that are being used to attack civilian targets.

Could Forthcoming Donbass Referenda be Russia’s “Defense-Oriented” Response to Kharkov?

By Andrew Korybko, September 22, 2022

There are arguments for and against each of the primary participants in the conflict agreeing to the scenario of Donbass referenda ending the military phase of the conflict before the coming winter.

Greek Coast Guard Drowns Entire Syrian Family

By Steven Sahiounie, September 22, 2022

Mohammed Burgess of Latakia, Syria is the sole survivor of the deliberate murder of his entire family by the Greek Coast Guard on Tuesday, September 13.  Burgess and his wife and two children boarded a migrant ship in Lebanon and were headed toward Italy when the ship began having problems and finally ran out of diesel fuel.

Masters of Deceit: The U.S. Government’s Propaganda of Fear, Mind Control and Brain Warfare

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, September 22, 2022

Psychological warfare, as the U.S. Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group explained in a recruiting video released earlier this year, enables the government to pull the strings, turn everything they touch into a weapon, be everywhere, deceive, persuade, change, influence, and inspire.

The Real US Agenda in Africa Is Hegemony

By Pepe Escobar, September 22, 2022

Africa has 54 nations as UN members. Any truly representative UNGA meeting should place Africa’s problems at the forefront. Once again, that’s not the case. So it is left to African leaders to offer that much-needed context outside of the UN building in New York.

With Mounting Evidence of Israeli Responsibility, Canada Must Support an ICC Investigation Into the Killing of Shireen Abu Akleh

By Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, September 23, 2022

In May, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had called for a “thorough investigation” into the incident, but Israel’s recent military probe has failed to find any responsibility, despite admitting that Israeli forces most likely killed her. CJPME argues that Canadian support for an ICC investigation is necessary due to the inability and unwillingness of Israel to hold itself accountable.

Twilight of the Tigris: Iraq’s Mighty River Drying Up

By Aymen Henna, September 22, 2022

It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself. But today the Tigris is dying. Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where—with its twin river the Euphrates—it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.

Lebanon Not ‘Normal’ Since Second Civil War Ended

By Michael Jansen, September 22, 2022

This week’s Lebanese bank strike can only deepen the country’s multiple crises, causing the currency to hit an all time low in value against the US dollar as the state-owned electricity company shut down its plants and fuel subsidies were cancelled.

Western Sanctions Against Russia Spark Mayhem in Shipping as New Threat Emerges

By Zero Hedge, September 21, 2022

Bloomberg reported that Europe is importing liquefied natural gas, diesel, and crude from far away regions that keep tankers in transit for extended periods and delay return to service for other critical shipping lanes. Shipping experts warn this is sparking the latest surge in global tanker freight rates.

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).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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***

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is reiterating its call for Canada to support an investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the killing of veteran Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, amid growing and overwhelming evidence of Israeli responsibility. In May, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly had called for a “thorough investigation” into the incident, but Israel’s recent military probe has failed to find any responsibility, despite admitting that Israeli forces most likely killed her. CJPME argues that Canadian support for an ICC investigation is necessary due to the inability and unwillingness of Israel to hold itself accountable.

“The evidence that Shireen Abu Akleh was deliberately killed by Israeli forces is overwhelming and undeniable. This was an assassination,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME.

“If Canada’s words are to mean anything, it must give its full support to the efforts by Abu Akleh’s family and others to seek justice at the ICC,” added Bueckert.

Earlier this month, an Israeli military probe admitted that there was a “high probability” that Israeli soldiers killed Abu Akleh, but declined to open a criminal investigation. In response, Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid reaffirmed that he would “not allow” any soldier to be prosecuted. Meanwhile this week, Forensic Architecture and Al-Haq published the results of a forensic investigation which concluded that Israeli soldiers had targeted Abu Akleh “deliberately and explicitly,” and found that there were no Palestinian gunmen or crossfire in the area – completely debunking Israel’s claims that the incident could have been an accident. These findings reinforce the conclusions of previous investigations by Bellingcat, CNN, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press, which indicated that Abu Akleh was targeted by Israeli forces on purpose.

In another development this week, an official complaint over Shireen Abu Akleh’s killing was submitted to the International Criminal Court by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), and Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), on behalf of Abu Akleh’s family. Similar initiatives have previously been announced by the Palestinian foreign ministry and Al Jazeera. CJPME notes that while Canada has formerly opposed the ICC investigation into alleged war crimes in Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), it has offered enthusiastic support to the ICC’s investigation in Ukraine, including by sending a team of RCMP officers. CJPME urges Canada to drop this double standard and accept the jurisdiction of the ICC over the OPT, and to give its full support to an ICC investigation into Abu Akleh’s death.

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Featured image: Shireen Abu Akleh was an icon in Palestine and throughout much of the Arabic speaking world for her reporting from the occupied territories (Illustration/MEE)

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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***

Read Part I, II and III:

The Netherlands: Government Sponsored Behavioral Control and Social Engineering Experiments

By Elze van Hamelen, September 20, 2022

Mindspace – A Guide to Behavioral Manipulation

By Elze van Hamelen, September 19, 2022

COVID Measures: Biggest “Social Conformity Event” in History. Corona Policy Was Aimed at “Changing Behavior”, Not at Improving Health.

By Elze van Hamelen, September 21, 2022

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NATO has added to the traditional domains of warfare – land, sea, air, space and cyberspace – a new one: “the cognitive domain.” This is not just about imposing certain ideas or behaviors, as in traditional propaganda and psy-ops, but about modifying cognition – influencing the process by which we ourselves arrive at ideas, insights, beliefs, choices and behaviors. The target is not primarily an enemy army, but the citizen. Winning the war is no longer determined by moving a border on a map, but by ideological conversion of the target.

“Cognitive warfare is one of the most debated topics within Nato,” researcher François du Cluzel told a panel discussion on Oct. 5, 2021. He wrote a foundational paper “Cognitive Warfare” for the Nato-affiliated think tank Innovation Hub in 2020. Although cognitive warfare overlaps with information warfare, classical propaganda and psychological operations, du Cluzel points out that cognitive warfare goes much further. In information warfare, one “only” tries to control the supply of information. Psychological operations involve influencing perceptions, beliefs and behavior. The goal of cognitive warfare is “to turn everyone into a weapon,” and “the goal is not to attack what individuals think, but how they think.”  Du Cluzel: “It is a war against our cognition – the way our brains process information and turn it into knowledge. It directly targets the brain”. Cognitive warfare is about “hacking the individual,” allowing the brain to be “programmed.”

To achieve this, almost every domain of knowledge imaginable is applied: psychology, linguistics, neurobiology, logic, sociology, anthropology, behavioral sciences, “and more.” “Social engineering always begins with an understanding of the environment and the target; the goal is to understand the psychology of the target population,” du Cluzel writes. The basis remains traditional propaganda and disinformation techniques, enhanced by current technology and advances in knowledge. “Behavior, meanwhile, can be predicted and calculated to such an extent,” according to du Cluzel, “that AI-driven behavioral science ‘behavioral economics’ should be classified as a hard science rather than soft science.”

Because almost everyone is active on the Internet and social media, individuals are no longer passive recipients of propaganda; with today’s technology, they actively participate in its creation and dissemination. Knowledge of how to manipulate these processes “is easily turned into a weapon.” Du Cluzel cites the Cambridge Analytica scandal as an example. Through voluntarily submitted personal data to Facebook, detailed individual psychological profiles had been created of a large population. Normally such information is used for personalized advertising, but in the case of Cambridge Analytica it was used to bombard doubting voters with personalized propaganda. Cognitive warfare “exploits the weaknesses of the human brain,” recognizing the importance of the role of emotions in driving cognition. Cyberpsychology, which seeks to understand the interaction between humans, machines and AI (artificial intelligence) will be increasingly important here.

Other promising technologies that could be used are neuroscience and technologies, or “NeuroS/T,” and “NBIC” – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, cognitive science, “including developments in genetic engineering. NeuroS/T can be pharmacological agents, brain-machine couplings, as well as psychologically disturbing information. Influencing the nervous system with knowledge or technology can produce changes in memory, learning ability, sleep cycles, self-control, mood, self-perception, decisiveness, confidence and empathy, and fitness and vigor. Du Cluzel writes, “The potential of NeuroS/T’ to create insight and the capacity to influence cognition, emotions and behavior of individuals is of particular interest to security and intelligence agencies, and military and war initiatives.”

Waging war on individuals’ cognitive processes represents a radical shift from traditional forms of warfare, where one tries, at least in principle, to keep civilians out of harm’s way. In cognitive war, the citizen is the target and his or her brain is the battlefield. It changes the nature of warfare, the players, the duration and how the war is won.

According to du Cluzel, “cognitive warfare has universal reach, from the individual to states and multinational corporations.”

A conflict is no longer won by occupying a territory, or by adjusting borders on a map, because “the experience of warfare teaches us that although war in the physical realm can weaken an enemy army, it does not result in achieving all the goals of war.” With cognitive war, the end goal shifts: “whatever the nature and purpose of war itself, it ultimately comes down to a clash of between groups that want something different, and therefore victory means the ability to be able to impose desired behavior on a chosen audience.” In effect, then, it is about bringing about an ideological conversion in the target population.

The enemy is not only civilians in occupied or enemy territory – but also their own civilians, who, according to NATO’s estimates, are easy targets for cognitive operations by enemy parties. “Man is the weak link this must be recognized in order to protect the human capital of NATO.”

This “protection” goes a long way: “The goal of cognitive warfare is not merely to harm militaries, but societies. The method of warfare resembles a ‘shadow war,’ and requires the involvement of the entire government in fighting it.”  War can thus be waged with and without the military, and du Cluzel continues: “Cognitive warfare is potentially endless, what for this type of conflict you cannot make a peace treaty, or sign a surrender.”

Dutch citizens are also targeted

According to the Cognitive Warfare report, China, Russia and non-state actors (non-state actors) also value cognitive war. Therefore, NATO sees it as an important task to be able to face this form of warfare. According to correspondence that emerged from FOIA requests, the doctrine of cognitive warfare is allready strongly entrenched in the Dutch military. The independent news site Indepen. nl reports, “The Lieutenant General of the Land Forces Command writes on August 4, 2020 in a memo to then Minister of Defense Ank Bijleveld that ‘information-driven action’ (IGO) takes place in 3 dimensions: the physical, the virtual and the cognitive. Acting in the land domain involves operating within these three dimensions to achieve desired effects achieve within a political-strategic objective. Because country action takes place, by definition, among human actors and groups, effectiveness is in the cognitive dimension is crucial.

At its core is taking away the will to fight at or impose our will to opponents. By the way with this, we are following the NATO doctrine for the land domain’.” This modus operandi, in which the entire government is involved in information and cognitive war, and seeing the citizen as a possible enemy, who must be manipulated toward correct behavior must be manipulated, we see strongly in the corona period. Not for nothing did the Netherlands organize in the spring of 2020 organized a Navo Innovation Challenge, focused on Covid-19. “We are looking for innovative solutions to identify, assess and identify, assess and manage biological threats, so that NATO forces, allies and civilian units are protected are protected,” the announcement reads read. It specifically seeks for “surveillance, inclusive measures to monitor health monitoring” and “collaborative opportunities between military, civilian health and research institutions, officials at the local and national level and surveillance analysts.”

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported in November 2020 that, without legal basis, the Land Information Maneuver Centre (LIMC) had been established – a department that is under the land forces that surveilled Dutch civilians during the corona period, using Behavioral Dynamics Modeling. BDM is an approach developed by the British SCL group, the parent company of the aforementioned Cambridge Analytica, and with which the military gained experience during missions in Afghanistan, civilians were not only monitored but also actively influenced. FOIA documents released in early 2022 revealed that the LIMC worked closely with police and the NCTV (Unit combatting terrorism, similar to Homeland security).

The invisible war

How is it possible that for some it is very clear that we are facing a coup, revolution or even Third World War, while for others everything is seeming ‘normal’?

“My father prepared me for the previous war,” Sebastian Haffner writes shortly before his escape from Nazi Germany in 1938. In the book ‘Defying Hitler’, he describes how he experienced World War I as a boy of seven, growing up during the interwar period and how he experienced the rise of Nazism. He imagined by war a trench warfare, and was not prepared for terror, mass hysteria and demagoguery.

We imagine war as a demagogue. For example, look at all the unwanted leaders that are demonized- Trump, Putin, Assad, etc. – who are branded “a new Hitler” by the mass media. War is an army invading, soldiers in the streets, cities being bombed.

We are now in the midst of a revolution – in the classic sense – a radical upheaval of the organization of the state system and power relations. Kees van der Pijl clearly explains in his book “States of Emergency” how this revolution, unlike, for example, the French and American revolutions, has not been initiated from below, but from above, by the oligarchy.  They implement policy through co-opted governments and organizations such as the U.S. government, the EU, WHO and WEF, supported by Big Tech companies. The system being worked toward is totalitarian, technocratic and centralized. Relatively few people realize how radical the upheaval we are living through, probably because this war has not been initiated by direct physical force, but by cognitive war, directed at civilians. The doctrine of cognitive warfare shows that modern war is waged primarily as an advanced psyop. It does not conform to the classical image of warfare. That is why it is not visible to most.

Do they remember what freedom is?

None of the documents on cognitive warfare shows any sign of awareness of how far this methodology diverges from the basic values that are the foundations of a free society: centering on the rights and freedoms of the individual to do, think, organize his or her own life, without external interference.

Cognitive warfare is sold as a way to “win war without fighting,” so that there will be fewer (civilian) casualties. This seems positive at first, but, this approach, especially when applied on a large scale AND to its own citizens, does not give any space to the individual to gather information for himself, assess it and act accordingly. The citizen is no longer an independently thinking human being, but a vulnerable subject with “limited rationality.” Behavior that deviates from what the NATO, the LIMC or the government identifies as problematic should be “corrected.” Is the government or the military rational? Is rationality a prerequisite for making choices, decisions or beliefs? Why is a citizen not allowed to have a dissenting opinion without being labeled as “potentially state dangerous”? Wanting to correct “state dangerous” citizens with “wrong” beliefs are reminiscent of the literature on Soviet Russia, Mao-China, Pol-Pot. It has no place in a free society.

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This article was previously published in the reader-funded Dutch newspaper De Andere Krant.

Sources

https://www.innovationhub-act.org/sites/default/files/2021-01/20210122_CW%20Final.pdf

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/08/nato-cognitive-warfare-brain/

Cognitive Warfare Project – Reference Documents https://www.innovationhub-act.org/cw-documents-0

https://hcss.nl/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Behavior-Oriented-Operations-March-8th.pdf

NRC – Soft maar gevaarlijk wapen https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/06/26/een-soft-maar-gevaarlijk-wapen-moderne-oorlogsvoering-richt-zich-op-beinvloeding-van-de-bevolking-a4004227

NATO Innovation Challenge focuses on COVID-19 crisis (in NL) https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/news_175199.htm

https://indepen.nl/ontluisterend-de-landmacht-beschouwt-haar-eigen-volk-als-vijand/

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2020/11/15/hoe-het-leger-zijn-eigen-bevolking-in-de-gaten-houdt-a4020169

https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/25/books/chapters/defying-hitler.html

https://vanhamelen.eu/uncategorized/pandemie-van-de-angst-als-reactie-op-een-wereldwijde-revolutionaire-crisis/

Featured image is from Graphene Flagship

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***

I am certain that most Americans do not have a clue what transpired this week at the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (aka SCO). It is a clarion call, a defiant declaration, that the countries, which account for over half of the world’s population, are no longer going to defer to the United States. The attendees included Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The speeches by Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping are especially noteworthy. Both countries put the United States on notice that the United States and NATO will be treated as a sponsor of terrorism because they supply weapons to Ukraine that are being used to attack civilian targets. You may accuse me of exaggerating because neither Putin nor Xi mention the United States or NATO by name. But the actions of the NATO allies in Ukraine are seen by both Russia and China as acts of terrorism. I am reprinting the salient portions of each speech below.

Russia and China also put the west on notice that Iran is no longer going to be treated as a pariah state. Iran is welcomed emphatically by both Putin and Xi as a member of the SCO. Going forward, this means that Iran will do business with all members of the SCO under the rubric of a new financial order being organized by Russia, China, India and Brazil.

I am sure this is jarring news to the western allies. They have enjoyed the luxury of the dominance of the U.S. Dollar as the international reserve currency. It was the Golden Rule at work–those with the gold make the rules. The United States faces a dilemma because it insists on levying international sanctions on any nation or leader who refuses to toe Washington’s line, but the blow back effects of those sanctions are savaging the European economies and will hurt America as well.

China and Russia now realize and affirm that the United States is no longer a reliable, trustworthy partner. They see the United States as a petulant child that, in the past, coerced others by throwing temper tantrums and launching ill-conceived, foolish foreign military operations.

Most important, but not said, the leaders of the SCO realize that Washington is leaderless. Biden is a demented buffoon. Putin demonstrated this in his press conference. He did not have a podium to lean on. He did not have a cheat sheet of journalists that instructed him who to call on. And he spoke intelligently off the cuff. Pay attention to what he says:

President Xi’s speech lays out in detail the future of the SCO:

Under these new conditions, the SCO, as an important constructive force in international and regional affairs, should keep itself well-positioned in the face of changing international dynamics, ride on the trend of the times, strengthen solidarity and cooperation and build a closer SCO community with a shared future.

First, we need to enhance mutual support. We should strengthen high-level exchanges and strategic communication, deepen mutual understanding and political trust, and support each other in our efforts to uphold security and development interests. We should guard against attempts by external forces to instigate “color revolution,” jointly oppose interference in other countries’ internal affairs under any pretext, and hold our future firmly in our own hands.

Second, we need to expand security cooperation. A proverb in Uzbekistan goes to the effect that “With peace, a country enjoys prosperity, just as with rain, the land can flourish.” The Global Security Initiative put forward by China is to address the peace deficit and global security challenges. It calls on all countries to stay true to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture. We welcome all stakeholders to get involved in implementing this initiative.

We should continue to carry out joint anti-terrorism exercises, crack down hard on terrorism, separatism and extremism, drug trafficking as well as cyber and transnational organized crimes; and we should effectively meet the challenges in data security, biosecurity, outer space security and other non-traditional security domains. China is ready to train 2,000 law enforcement personnel for SCO member states in the next five years, and establish a China-SCO base for training counter-terrorism personnel, so as to enhance capacity-building for law enforcement of SCO member states.

Third, we need to deepen practical cooperation. To deliver a better life for people of all countries in the region is our shared goal. The Global Development Initiative launched by China aims to focus global attention on development, foster global development partnership, and achieve more robust, greener and more balanced global development. China is ready to work with all other stakeholders to pursue this initiative in our region to support the sustainable development of regional countries.

Fourth, we need to enhance people-to-people and cultural exchanges. Exchanges promote integration among civilizations, which, in turn, enables civilizations to advance. We should deepen cooperation in such areas as education, science and technology, culture, health, media, radio and television, ensure the continued success of signature programs such as the youth exchange camp, the women’s forum, the forum on people-to-people friendship and the forum on traditional medicine, and support the SCO Committee on Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation and other non-official organizations in playing their due roles. China will build a China-SCO ice and snow sports demonstration zone and host the SCO forums on poverty reduction and sustainable development and on sister cities next year. In the next three years, China will carry out 2,000 free cataract operations for SCO member states and provide 5,000 human resources training opportunities for them.

Fifth, we need to uphold multilateralism. Obsession with forming a small circle can only push the world toward division and confrontation. We should remain firm in safeguarding the UN-centered international system and the international order based on international law, practice the common values of humanity and reject zero-sum game and bloc politics. We should expand SCO’s exchanges with other international and regional organizations such as the UN, so as to jointly uphold true multilateralism, improve global governance, and ensure that the international order is more just and equitable. . . .

China supports advancing SCO expansion in an active yet prudent manner, and this includes going through the procedure to admit Iran as a member state, launching the procedure for Belarus’ accession, admitting Bahrain, the Maldives, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Myanmar as dialogue partners, and granting the relevant applying countries the legal status due to them. We need to seize the opportunity to build consensus, deepen cooperation and jointly create a bright future for the Eurasian continent.

Here I wish to express China’s congratulations to India on assuming the next SCO presidency. We will, together with other member states, support India during its presidency.

Putin’s speech is short and to the point:

I fully share the statements made by my colleagues and their positive assessments of the work of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and its growing prestige in international affairs. Indeed, the SCO has become the largest regional organisation in the world.

However, I would like to repeat that global politics and economy are about to undergo fundamental and irreversible changes. The growing role of new centres of power is coming into sharp focus, and interaction among these new centres is not based on some rules, which are being forced on them by external forces and which nobody has seen, but on the universally recognised principles of the rule of international law and the UN Charter, namely, equal and indivisible security and respect for each other’s sovereignty, national values and interests.

It is on these principles, which are devoid of all elements of egoism, that the joint efforts of SCO member states are based in politics and the economy. This opens up broad prospects for continued mutually beneficial cooperation in politics, the economy, culture, humanitarian and other spheres.

Fighting terrorism and extremism, drug trafficking, organised crime and illegal armed formations remains a priority of our cooperation. Other key areas include providing assistance in the political and diplomatic settlement of conflicts along our external borders, including in Afghanistan. . . .

In this context, Russia, no doubt, favours the earliest possible accession of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the SCO, which is what the documents and the memorandum that will be signed today are designed to accomplish. We are convinced that Iran’s full-fledged participation will be beneficial for the association, as that country plays an important role in the Eurasian region and the world at large.

We also fully stand behind the decision submitted for approval by the Heads of State Council to start the process of admitting the Republic of Belarus as an SCO member. Let me be clear that we have always advocated that Belarus, which is Russia’s strategic partner and closest ally, should participate fully in the SCO. This will undoubtedly improve our ability to advance unity in politics, the economy, security and humanitarian matters.

In the past, the United States controlled the ball and set the rules for the game. The countries of the SCO are no longer going to let the United States dictate where, when and how the game is played. They are bringing their own ball and setting up their own rules. I apologize for the poor metaphor in advance, but this is bit like the PGA Tour being shocked and outraged by the emergence of an alternative professional golf tour, LIV. There is a new and potentially more powerful player on the world stage and the United States may be relegated to the peanut gallery and forced to watch.

*

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***

It was the river that is said to have watered the biblical Garden of Eden and helped give birth to civilisation itself.

But today the Tigris is dying.

Human activity and climate change have choked its once mighty flow through Iraq, where—with its twin river the Euphrates—it made Mesopotamia a cradle of civilisation thousands of years ago.

Iraq may be oil-rich but the country is plagued by poverty after decades of war and by droughts and desertification.

Battered by one natural disaster after another, it is one of the five countries most exposed to climate change, according to the UN.

From April on, temperatures exceed 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and intense sandstorms often turn the sky orange, covering the country in a film of dust.

Hellish summers see the mercury top a blistering 50 degrees Celsius—near the limit of human endurance—with frequent power cuts shutting down air-conditioning for millions.

The Tigris, the lifeline connecting the storied cities of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra, has been choked by dams, most of them upstream in Turkey, and falling rainfall.

An AFP video journalist travelled along the river’s 1,500-kilometre (900-mile) course through Iraq, from the rugged Kurdish north to the Gulf in the south, to document the ecological disaster that is forcing people to change their ancient way of life.

Kurdish north: ‘Less water every day’

The Tigris’ journey through Iraq begins in the mountains of autonomous Kurdistan, near the borders of Turkey and Syria, where local people raise sheep and grow potatoes.

“Our life depends on the Tigris,” said farmer Pibo Hassan Dolmassa, 41, wearing a dusty coat, in the town of Faysh Khabur. “All our work, our agriculture, depends on it.

“Before, the water was pouring in torrents,” he said, but over the last two or three years “there is less water every day”.

Iraq’s government and Kurdish farmers accuse Turkey, where the Tigris has its source, of withholding water in its dams, dramatically reducing the flow into Iraq.

According to Iraqi official statistics, the level of the Tigris entering Iraq has dropped to just 35 percent of its average over the past century.

Baghdad regularly asks Ankara to release more water.

But Turkey’s ambassador to Iraq, Ali Riza Guney, urged Iraq to “use the available water more efficiently”, tweeting in July that “water is largely wasted in Iraq”.

He may have a point, say experts. Iraqi farmers tend to flood their fields, as they have done since ancient Sumerian times, rather than irrigate them, resulting in huge water losses.

Central plains: ‘We sold everything’

All that is left of the River Diyala, a tributary that meets the Tigris near the capital Baghdad in the central plains, are puddles of stagnant water dotting its parched bed.

Drought has dried up the watercourse that is crucial to the region’s agriculture.

This year authorities have been forced to reduce Iraq’s cultivated areas by half, meaning no crops will be grown in the badly-hit Diyala Governorate.

“We will be forced to give up farming and sell our animals,” said Abu Mehdi, 42, who wears a white djellaba robe.

“We were displaced by the war” against Iran in the 1980s, he said, “and now we are going to be displaced because of water. Without water, we can’t live in these areas at all.”

The farmer went into debt to dig a 30-metre (100-foot) well to try to get water. “We sold everything,” Abu Mehdi said, but “it was a failure”.

The World Bank warned last year that much of Iraq is likely to face a similar fate.

“By 2050 a temperature increase of one degree Celsius and a precipitation decrease of 10 percent would cause a 20 percent reduction of available freshwater,” it said.

“Under these circumstances, nearly one third of the irrigated land in Iraq will have no water.”

Water scarcity hitting farming and food security are already among the “main drivers of rural-to-urban migration” in Iraq, the UN and several non-government groups said in June.

Map of Iraq showing the Tigris River and density of population. (By AFP via phys.org)

And the International Organization for Migration said last month that “climate factors” had displaced more than 3,300 families in Iraq’s central and southern areas in the first three months of this year.

“Climate migration is already a reality in Iraq,” the IOM said.

Baghdad: sandbanks and pollution

This summer in Baghdad, the level of the Tigris dropped so low that people played volleyball in the middle of the river, splashing barely waist-deep through its waters.

Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources blame silt because of the river’s reduced flow, with sand and soil once washed downstream now settling to form sandbanks.

Until recently the Baghdad authorities used heavy machinery to dredge the silt, but with cash tight, work has slowed.

Years of war have destroyed much of Iraq’s water infrastructure, with many cities, factories, farms and even hospitals left to dump their waste straight into the river.

As sewage and rubbish from Greater Baghdad pour into the shrinking Tigris, the pollution creates a concentrated toxic soup that threatens marine life and human health.

Environmental policies have not been a high priority for Iraqi governments struggling with political, security and economic crises.

Ecological awareness also remains low among the general public, said activist Hajer Hadi of the Green Climate group, even if “every Iraqi feels climate change through rising temperatures, lower rainfall, falling water levels and dust storms,” she said.

South: salt water, dead palms

“You see these palm trees? They are thirsty,” said Molla al-Rached, a 65-year-old farmer, pointing to the brown skeletons of what was once a verdant palm grove.

“They need water! Should I try to irrigate them with a glass of water?” he asked bitterly. “Or with a bottle?”

“There is no fresh water, there is no more life,” said the farmer, a beige keffiyeh scarf wrapped around his head.

He lives at Ras al-Bisha where the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates river, the Shatt al-Arab, empties into the Gulf, near the borders with Iran and Kuwait.

In nearby Basra—once dubbed the Venice of the Middle East—many of the depleted waterways are choked with rubbish.

To the north, much of the once famed Mesopotamian Marshes—the vast wetland home to the “Marsh Arabs” and their unique culture—have been reduced to desert since Saddam Hussein drained them in the 1980s to punish its population.

But another threat is impacting the Shatt al-Arab: salt water from the Gulf is pushing ever further upstream as the river flow declines.

The UN and local farmers say rising salination is already hitting farm yields, in a trend set to worsen as global warming raises sea levels.

Al-Rached said he has to buy water from tankers for his livestock, and wildlife is now encroaching into settled areas in search of water.

“My government doesn’t provide me with water,” he said. “I want water, I want to live. I want to plant, like my ancestors.”

River delta: a fisherman’s plight

Standing barefoot in his boat like a Venetian gondolier, fisherman Naim Haddad steers it home as the sun sets on the waters of the Shatt al-Arab.

“From father to son, we have dedicated our lives to fishing,” said the 40-year-old holding up the day’s catch.

In a country where grilled carp is the national dish, the father-of-eight is proud that he receives “no government salary, no allowances”.

But salination is taking its toll as it pushes out the most prized freshwater species which are replaced by ocean fish.

“In the summer, we have salt water,” said Haddad. “The sea water rises and comes here.”

Last month local authorities reported that salt levels in the river north of Basra reached 6,800 parts per million—nearly seven times that of fresh water.

Haddad can’t switch to fishing at sea because his small boat is unsuitable for the choppier Gulf waters, where he would also risk run-ins with the Iranian and Kuwaiti coastguards.

And so the fisherman is left at the mercy of Iraq’s shrinking rivers, his fate tied to theirs.

“If the water goes,” he said, “the fishing goes. And so does our livelihood.”

*

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Featured image: Sun setting on the Tigris: Iraqi fisherman Naim Haddad plys the Shatt al-Arab near Basra. (Source: phys.org)

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***

This week’s Lebanese bank strike can only deepen the country’s multiple crises, causing the currency to hit an all time low in value against the US dollar as the state-owned electricity company shut down its plants and fuel subsidies were cancelled.

Meanwhile, caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati, in business-as-usual mode, attended the funeral of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in London before heading to New York for the opening of the UN General Assembly. He excused his absence by promising to return home immediately if there was any chance of forming a cabinet. As French and Saudi diplomats met in Paris to discuss Lebanon,  Army chief General Joseph Aoun was said to be the leading candidate to replace President Michel Aoun (no relation) who is set to step down at the end of next month. He has vowed to stay on in the presidential palace if the situation is not “normal” when his term ends. No one knows what he means by “normal”. Lebanon has not been “normal” since the second civil war (1975-1990) ended.

The banks are certain to compound the misery of the population by imposing fresh security measures when entering premises.  Bankers have been alarmed by of last week’s raids by depositors demanding dollars from their accounts.  The raids began mid-week with black-clad Sali Hafez, armed with a toy gun, who held up a Beirut bank to secure $13,000 for cancer treatment for her seriously ill sister. Hafez became an instant hero when video of the raid was broadcast on social media by accompanying activists from Depositors Outcry. The group also helped organise a second nearly simultaneous raid by a man armed with an unloaded shotgun on a bank in the mountain town of Aley. Depositors Outcry spokesman Ibrahim Abdullah warned that these heists are part of a “revolution is against all banks”. Lebanese blame both the Central Bank and private banks for the financial collapse of the country which has precipitated total economic melt-down.

On Friday, there were five raids on banks in Beirut, the south, and Mount Lebanon. The first man extracted $19,000 from his savings before being detained. The second, an indebted businessman was arrested before accessing accounts containing $300,000. Holding another toy gun, a third raider recovered a combined total of $70,000 from two Beirut banks before surrendering to police. The final heist involved an army lieutenant whose attempt was foiled when shots were fired. What is significant about these raids is that they were mounted by depositors from different backgrounds and with different motives two days after Sali Hafez was celebrated for her daring action.

The latest raids were “copy cat” operations modelled on the first heist in January mounted by a man, armed with a gun and a jerry can of petrol to burn down the bank.  He withdrew $50,000. This incident was followed in August, as the financial collapse deepened, when a food delivery truck driver held staff hostage for seven hours before getting $35,000 from his deposit of $210,000 to pay for his father’s medical treatment. He was cheered by anti-bank protesters who assembled outside the bank while the raid went on. Both these men were arrested and released without being charged due to popular outrage over their detention.

In the wake of last week’s raids, the Bankers Association has demanded both protection and accountability for raiders and their enablers and cheerleaders. Protests erupted outside the Justice Ministry after members of Depositors Outcry were detained.

Lebanon’s 2019 financial crash compelled banks to block $100 billion in deposits and impose impossible limits on withdrawals in both dollars and Lebanese pounds. Unfortunately, Lebanese are reminded every time they want to pay for anything, including fruit and vegetables, as prices are fixed in dollars and payment in Lebanese pounds fluctuates with latest exchange rates. Before the crisis, the dollar was valued at 1,500 Lebanese pounds. The black dollar rate has now hit an unprecedented 39.500 to the dollar and 40.000 is predicted.

Due to Lebanon’s lack of foreign currency to pay for fuel, the country’s thermal power plants have shut down. Therefore, there is no electricity from the state-run company which awaits a late delivery from Iraq under a barter arrangement. A US-endorsed deal to import electricity from Egypt and Jordan via Syria has not been implemented for more than a year. The power cut coincides with the end of fuel subsidies although consumers are dependent on generators compelled buy fuel priced at the black-market rate. Since 80 per cent of Lebanese are living below the poverty line, many if not most will not be able to pay for electricity even if Electricite du Liban resumes supplies.

The financial/economic/power/fuel crisis has ballooned since Mikati’s government resigned in March before securing reforms needed to secure international aid amounting to $21 billion from foreign sources and the International Monetary Fund. Although he has been designated to form a new technocratic Cabinet since June, president Aoun has refused to accept prospective ministers.

He has recently put forward a demand for the appointment of six political ministers whose presence would prevent the injection of foreign funds which depends on the appointment of expert ministers charged with effecting reform, combatting corruption, and fixing broken services. Parliament is meant to choose a candidate to replace President Aoun when his term ends on October 31. Although Gen. Joseph Aoun is mentioned as a replacement, no one can predict anything with any certainty in chaotic Lebanon.

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There are arguments for and against each of the primary participants in the conflict agreeing to the scenario of Donbass referenda ending the military phase of the conflict before the coming winter.

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Mohammed Burgess of Latakia, Syria is the sole survivor of the deliberate murder of his entire family by the Greek Coast Guard on Tuesday, September 13.  Burgess and his wife and two children boarded a migrant ship in Lebanon and were headed toward Italy when the ship began having problems and finally ran out of diesel fuel.  As they were drifting on the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek Coast Guard approached the ship, came alongside, and tied their ship to the Greek ship.  The Greek sailors ordered the passengers to disembark and board the Greek ship.  After coming on board, the Greek sailors took all the passengers’ cell phones, money, gold jewelry the women were wearing, and luggage.  They also beat several of the men without cause.

The Greek ship then began sailing for about five hours, but Burgess did not know the exact direction they were headed because the Greeks refused to have any communication with the passengers.  During the five hours, no water was offered to any passenger, including children.

When they finally stopped sailing, the Greek soldiers began taking out and blowing up small plastic dinghies, the type used by vacationers, not military grade.  They threw the dinghies into the sea and then pushed four to five passengers into the sea after each dinghy. The passengers were to climb into the dinghy from the sea after leaving everything they had with the Greeks.

Burgess was on the last dinghy, and as he jumped off the Greek ship they accelerated at high speed, which immediately sent up a huge wave in the wake of the Coast Guard vessel, which engulfed the last dinghy which held all of Burgess’ family.

As he jumped toward his family, he saw his wife, their two small children, his wife’s sister, her child, Burgess’ cousin, his wife, and their child floundering in the dinghy as the air valve was not shut properly by the Greeks, and in moments the dinghy was deflating and his family was in the sea.

Burgess began a frantic struggle in the sea trying to hold up his son, while his wife’s heroic actions were to try to keep their other child above water.  In her desperate attempt to get her child above the waves, her head was pushed under water and she began to drown.  Once she was lost to the sea, her child was helpless and disappeared beneath the waves. Burgess was torn between trying to keep his son alive or trying to turn toward diving beneath the waves to try and rescue his wife or child.  He was in an impossible position of not being able to do anything other than concentrate on survival.

He remained swimming until the next morning, but in the night very high waves pulled his son away from him.  Burgess had then lost his entire family because of the deliberate and planned actions of the Greek Coast Guard.  The Turkish Coast Guard rescued him from the sea later in the morning, and they also retrieved bodies from the sea. The Italian Coast Guard also retrieved some bodies from the sea.

Burgess gave his eyewitness testimony in a video interview to online media.  Further details were given by the mother-in-law of Burgess, who had lost two of her daughters and three grandchildren in the tragedy. In other YouTube videos dating from 2020 and 2021, the Greek Coast Guard is documented leaving migrants adrift in the sea without help, and also one video shows the Greek sailors beating the migrants and shooting at them.

The Greek Coast Guard has a long history of human rights abuses and breaking international maritime laws. On July 7, the European Court of Human Rights issued a ruling against Greece’s illegal and deadly practice of pushing back boasts of asylum seekers.

Eleven women and children, including infants, died off the Greek island of Farmakonisi on January 20, 2014, in what survivors describe as a pushback operation after the Greek Coast Guard was towing their boat, which resulted in death.

At least 32 more cases of alleged pushbacks by Greece are pending before the Court, and the charges include violating the right to life of the applicants and their relatives and subjecting survivors to degrading treatment when they strip-searched them in public.

Human Rights Watch and other groups have repeatedly documented how the Greek Coast Guard has abandoned migrants at sea by violently transferring individuals from Greek islands, or from the dinghy upon which they were traveling, to motor-less inflatable rafts, and leaving them adrift near Turkish territorial waters. They have also intercepted and disabled boats carrying migrants by damaging or removing the engines or fuel and towing them back to Turkey, or puncturing inflatable boats.

The Turkish Defense Minister stated on July 17, that the Greek Coast Guard is confirmed to have pushed two dinghies with migrants to Turkish waters on the western side of the Aegean Sea.

“One of our drones has recorded LS-930, a Greek Coast Guard vessel, pushing back irregular migrants’ boats to Turkish waters,” it said.

The migrants were saved by the Turkish Coast Guard responding to the information sent back by the drones.  The ministry stressed that the practice of pushing migrants in dinghies was a violation of territorial waters.

The report “Pushbacks and Drowning Human Rights in the Aegean Sea,” exposes the violation of international immigration law by Greece, documenting that Greek forces pushed back a total of 41,523 asylum seekers between 2020 and May 31, 2022, according to Turkey’s Ombudsman Institution.

“Some 98 percent of the pushbacks involved torture and ill-treatment, and 88 percent of the 8,000 asylum seekers who came to the Greek border were beaten,” the report said.

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Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Steven Sahiounie