Global Research

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The Indian government relaxed regulations around gene-edited crops on March 30 – despite scientists’ warnings about the ‘largely unknown’ environmental impact and health impacts. 

Only last year, hundreds of thousands of rural workers took to the streets by foot, horses, and tractors.  Three controversial farm bills implemented were successfully overturned.

But the fight for India’s food sovereignty is now up against multinational cooperations pushing advances in gene manipulating technology, such as CRISPR or ‘gene-silencing pesticides‘ – which could open a pandora’s box of unintended consequences to the health and the environment.

Conflict 

Dr. Pushpa M. Bhargava, is the founder of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Vice-Chairperson of the National Knowledge Commission says: 

“There are over 500 research publications by scientists of indisputable integrity, who have no conflict of interest, that establish harmful effects of GM crops on human, animal, and plant, health, and on the environment and biodiversity.”

A recent paper by Indian scientists showed that the Bt gene in both cotton and brinjal leads to inhibition of growth and development of the plant. On the other hand, virtually every paper supporting GM crops is by scientists who have a declared conflict of interest or whose credibility and integrity can be doubted.

Developers have previously been able to avoid regulations around gene-silencing crops by branding the products as “transient” or providing only “temporary genetic modification”, though this has been refuted by a number of scientific studies that have shown the RNAi pesticides can last up to 80 generations – warned a previous report by Friends of the Earth.  

Irreversible 

“The central government departments that have been acting as peddlers of GM technology-probably in collusion with MNCs marketing GM seeds—have shown little respect for the law.” his report says.

In a recent review called Food Without Choice published in the Tribune, Prof. Pushpa M. Bhargava warned:

“The ultimate goal of this attempt in India of which the leader is Monsanto is to obtain control over Indian agriculture and thus food production. With 60 percent of our population engaged in agriculture and living in villages, this would essentially mean not only control over our food security but also over our farmer security, agricultural security, and security of the rural sector.”

Dr. Bhargava’s strong stance against GM crops is supported by other eminent scientists in various parts of the world. A group of eminent scientists organized under the Independent Science Panel has stated in very clear terms:

“GM crops have not been proven safe. On the contrary, sufficient evidence has emerged to raise serious safety concerns. If ignored, could result in irreversible damage to health and the environment. GM crops should be firmly rejected now.”

Bioweapons 

The Independent Science Panel (ISP) is a panel of scientists from many disciplines and countries, committed to the promotion of science for the public good. In a document titled ‘The case for a GMO-free Sustainable World,’ the ISP has stated further:

“By far the most insidious dangers of genetic engineering are inherent to the process itself, which greatly enhances the scope and probability of horizontal gene transfer and recombination, the main route to creating viruses and bacteria that cause disease epidemics.”

This was highlighted in 2001 by the ‘accidental’ creation of a killer mouse virus in the course of an apparently innocent genetic engineering experiment.

New techniques such as DNA shuffling, are allowing geneticists to create in a matter of minutes in the laboratory. This opens up the possibility of releasing millions of recombinant viruses that have never existed in billions of years of evolution.

Rejected 

Disease-causing viruses and bacteria and their genetic material are the predominant materials and tools for genetic engineering, as much as for the intentional creation of bioweapons.

Several scientists involved in studying the implications and impacts of genetic engineering got together at the International Conference on ‘Redefining of Life Sciences’ organised in Penang, Malaysia, by the Third World Network. They issued a statement (the Penang Statement, or PS) that questioned the scientific basis of genetic engineering.

This statement said: “The new biotechnology-based upon genetic engineering makes the assumption that each specific feature of an organism is encoded in one or a few specific, stable genes so that the transfer of these genes results in the transfer of a discrete feature.

“This extreme form of genetic reductionism has already been rejected by the majority of biologists and many other members of the intellectual community. Largely because it fails to take into account the complex interactions between genes and their cellular extracellular, and external environments that are involved in the development of all traits.

Risks 

The report continued: “It has thus been impossible to predict the consequences of transferring a gene from one type of organism to another in a significant number of cases.

“The limited ability to transfer identifiable molecular characteristics between organisms through genetic engineering does not constitute the demonstration of any comprehensive or reliable system for predicting all the significant effects of transposing genes.”

The world is becoming increasingly concerned about the serious health risks and numerous other adverse impacts of genetically modified crops and genetically modified organisms. Yet billion-dollar GMO multinationals have tried once again to evoke confusion and uncertainty in order to avoid regulation.

Their claim that gene-edited crops should not be subject to the same restrictions as GM crops is an attempt to find a loophole in-laws that are put in place to protect against the risks and dangers related to GMOs.

Mutagenesis 

In July 2018, the highest court in Europe ruled that gene-edited crops using CRISPR should be subject to the same strict rules and restrictions as GMOs. 

The court ruled: “Considering that the risks linked to the use of these new mutagenesis techniques might prove to be similar to those that result from production and release of a GMO through trans-genesis, since the direct modification of the genetic material of an organism through mutagenesis.

“These new techniques make it possible to introduce genetically modified varieties at a rate out of all proportion to those resulting from the application of conventional methods of mutagenesis.

“The European Commission and the European governments must now ensure that all new GMOs are fully tested and labeled and that any field trials are brought under GMO rules.”

Illegal 

A review of the legal and scientific facts surrounding this debate by Dr. Janet Cotter and Dr. R. Steinbrecher had concluded:

“It is clear that gene-edited crops and animals need to be assumed as GMOs in the same way as current GM crops.”

With gene-editing, researchers can add, delete or modify bits of an organism’s genome. Welcoming the court verdict. Franziska Achterberg, Greenpeace EU’s food policy director stated:

“Releasing these new GMOs into the environment without proper safety measures is illegal and irresponsible, particularly given that gene-editing can lead to unintended side-effects.”

Despite this growing recognition of the risks of gene-edited crops, attempts have been speeded up in India by powerful lobbyists to gain backdoor entry for GM crops using gene-editing.

Their attempts appear to be succeeding as the central government and ministry of environment issued a notification on March 30 exempting some gene-edited crops and organisms from earlier rules framed for GM crops.

Future 

SND1 and SND2 genome-edited products, free from exogenous introduced DNA, are to be exempted from 1988-89 rules for GM organisms and will be taken out of the existing approval processes for these.

Those involved in protecting Indian agriculture from the onslaught of GM crops have already stated that these changes made recently are risky and unscientific and that these should be challenged legally.

Another view is that the existing 1988 rules should in fact be strengthened in such a way that such arbitrary changes are not possible in the future.

Without thorough regulations in place to assess and protect against the potential risks of gene-manipulating technologies, the government’s decision to relax laws around gene-editing will do little more than further entrench its role as a major driver of biodiversity loss and health problems.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Bharat Dogra is an Honorary Convener and Campaigner with Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine (Gandhian Ideas for Our Times) and India’s Quest for  Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food. 

Featured image is from Pixhive

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was first published on April 5, 2022

***

The United States government and its unofficial state media—Fox, ABC, CBS, NYT, The Washington Post, etc.—are pushing war propaganda to enflame the situation in Ukraine. The corporate media is megaphoning government lies, fake news, misinformation, and irrational fear-mongering of anything Russian.

Truth is squashed in the Empire of Lies and paved over with official narratives.

Russia is determined to destroy Ukraine, mass murder its civilians, assassinate its president, and gobble up the entire country like its communist predecessor.

We hear this every day.

Putin is Hitler and the Russians are barbarians looking to re-establish the Soviet Union’s hold over Eastern European territory.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jacques Baud isn’t an armchair warrior. He is a former colonel of the General Staff in Switzerland, an ex-member of Swiss strategic intelligence, and a specialist on Eastern countries. He served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations; in addition, he served with NATO and was assigned to work on stopping the proliferation of small arms in Africa. Baud was trained in the techniques of US and British intelligence services.

“He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine,” Baud’s bio posted on the Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement website states.

Baud’s account of the military situation in Ukraine and the political motivation of the Russian Duma, or parliament—and not specifically Vladimir Putin—in regard to Ukraine are at complete odds with the sensationalistic propaganda put out by corporate-state media.

Thanks to an English translation of the original French of Baud’s “La Situation Militaire en Ukraine,” we learn that the US, France, Canada, and the UK, are indeed interested in a new Cold War (and the massive profit such murderous ventures accumulate for the elite and stockholder without a conscience). The fulcrum of this new “cold” war is the ethnic conflict in Ukraine, the poorest country in Europe.

Screenshot from cf2r.org

The central issue of Ukraine in the wake of the US State Department’s engineered “color revolution” regime change in 2014 is the status of autonomy for the two proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (referred to “Luhansk” in the West). The corporate media narrative, a bald-face lie, states that these two republics are demanding separation from Ukraine.

“In fact,” writes Baud, “these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language—because the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the American-sponsored overthrow of [the democratically-elected] President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language in Ukraine.”

This decision caused a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result was fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk) which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarization of the situation and some horrific massacres of the Russian population (in Odessa and Mariupol, the most notable).

Another lie cooked up by the neolibs and their warmongering compatriots, the neocons (the Democrat version is rife within the Biden administration), was that Russia was arming the “terrorists” (as the Ukrainian government calls them).

The rebels were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continued, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the autonomists. This is what pushed the Ukrainians to commit to the Minsk Agreements.

Following the Minsk 1 Agreements to end the conflict in Donbas, then president, Petro Poroshenko, turned around and brazenly “launched a massive ‘anti-terrorist operation’ (ATO/Антитерористична операція) against the Donbass. Poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffered a crushing defeat in Debaltsevo, which forced them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements,” Baud writes.

Minsk 2 “did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very few who actually have) will note that it is written that the status of the Republics was to be “negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the Republics, for an internal solution within Ukraine.”

That is why since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded the implementation of the Minsk Agreements while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter of Ukraine.

On the other side, the West—led by France—systematically tried to replace Minsk Agreements with the “Normandy format,” which put Russians and Ukrainians face-to-face. However, let us remember that there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022. Moreover, OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass before then. For example, the U.S. intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.

If you scan the headlines in the US, you get the picture of brave Ukrainian soldiers and citizens fighting against the advancing Russians, led by the mad autocrat Putin determined to wipe Kyiv off the map. In fact, as Baud points out, the Ukrainian military has long been in shambles, “undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoy[ing] the support of the population.”

According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90 percent for the third, and 95 percent for the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the “Fall 2017” recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often over to the autonomists), which reached up to 30 percent of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refused to go and fight in the Donbass and preferred emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country. (See links to sources in original.)

Because of this situation, the government resorted to using its nationalist and racist militias to wage war against the people in Donbas and elsewhere in eastern and southern Ukraine. NATO attempted to clean up the violent and fascist nature of the nationalist militias—and presumably cover up their terror activities against ethnic Russians—but this was a mission impossible.

In 2020, the militias comprised around 40 percent of Ukraine’s military forces and numbered about 102,000 men, according to Reuters. “They were armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There were more than 19 nationalities.”

These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term “Nazi,” the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic…[and] are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in the Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the 1944 Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in France. [….]

The war propaganda media has avoided or played down the fact the nearly half of the forces fighting in the Donbas are avowed racist nationalists determined to ethnically cleanse all Russians from Ukraine. When Putin talked about the “de-nazification” of Ukraine, he was talking about these militias.

Minsk 1 and 2 were thrown in the dustbin of history. On March 24, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the current president, a former actor and comedian, “issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country,” Jacques Baud continues, mapping the outbreak of the war.

Both NATO and Russia conducted large military exercises. The war propaganda media in the West portrayed the Russian exercises as a preparation for an invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, in direct violation of the Minsk Agreements, “Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press noted this, but not the Europeans; and no one condemned these violations.”

During a February trip to Moscow, the French leader, Emmanuel Macron, said he would relay Russian concerns to Zelenskyy the following day.

But on February 11, in Berlin, after nine hours of work, the meeting of political advisors to the leaders of the “Normandy format” ended without any concrete result: the Ukrainians still refused to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin noted that Macron had made empty promises and that the West was not ready to enforce the agreements, the same opposition to a settlement it had exhibited for eight years.

A few days later, the enfeebled president of the United States, Joe Biden, declard Russia would most certainly invade Ukraine. “How did he know this?” Baud asks.

It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.

“On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs, who spoke Polish and were equipped with Western equipment and who were seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could have been CIA mercenaries, led or “advised” by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics,” Baud notes. (Emphasis mine.)

For many, the documented involvement of the CIA and its commandeered US Army special forces represents a red flag something is fishy about the narrative coming out of Washington and Langley. (See “Exclusive: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion.” Yahoo News, March 16, 2022.)

“As the battle lines hardened in Donbas, a small, select group of veteran CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines to meet with Ukrainian counterparts there, according to former U.S. officials,” Yahoo reported. In other words, the CIA had direct contact with ethnic cleansing nationalist fanatics, same as a previous administration had direct contact with the Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Soviet presence in that country.

“The Ukrainian military has [allegedly] claimed to have killed three Russian generals, including at least one reportedly eliminated by sniper fire. Yahoo News could not independently verify whether the Russian commanders were killed by CIA–trained troops. (Emphasis added.)

Prior to the “invasion,” during a period of escalated shelling of civilians, the Russian Duma recognized the independence of the two Donbas Oblast republics, and this resulted in the republics asking for assistance against the ethnic cleansing and terror operation by the Neo-Nazi militias and a reluctant, conscription evading regular army.

The Empire of Lies, guilty of unheard of murder and sabotage unleashed around the world after the end of WWII, has pushed its false narrative fast and hard, as it did with its offensive operations against Iraq, Syria, and Libya. The corporate propaganda media excels at the art of war propaganda, misinformation, and outright lies.

In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware…

In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.

Baud goes on to explain how the Russian military is going about demilitarizing the country—one of Russia’s main objectives, the second being “de-nazification,” that is to say military action against fanatical Ukrainian nationalists attempting to ethnically cleanse Ukraine of its ethnic Russian minority. Much of the Ukrainian army was deployed to the south in preparation for military action to retake the Crimea. Due to this, the Russians were able to encircle much of Ukraine’s military and its ideologically rabid nationalist militias.

Image on the right: The bombing of Maternity Hospital in Mariupol (Source: OneWorld)

The author explains in detail the de-nazification plan and the bombing of the Maternity Hospital in Mariupol. “According to CNN, 17 people were wounded, but the images do not show any casualties in the building and there is no evidence that the victims mentioned are related to this strike. There is talk of children, but in reality, there is nothing. This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing this as a war crime. And this allows Zelensky to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine.”

According to Baud’s report, the militias had occupied the building, ran off the staff at gunpoint, and used the hospital as an observation post and anti-tank firing position (likely using US-supplied Javelin missiles).

The problem is that the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the rules of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have replayed the scenario of the Kuwait City maternity hospital in 1990, which was totally staged by the firm Hill & Knowlton for $10.7 million in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm.

Western politicians have accepted civilian strikes in the Donbass for eight years without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long since entered a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law towards their goal of weakening Russia.

Baud is correct to conclude the US and its “partners” in Europe are deliberately distorting the picture for ideological reasons. The plan is very similar to what was used in the past.

Some Western politicians obviously wanted there to be a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the UN Security Council were only the product of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him—he did exactly as Donald Rumsfeld did in 2002, who “bypassed” the CIA and other intelligence services that were much less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons. (Emphasis in original.)

Saddam Hussein did have chemical and biological weapons—provided by US corporations, as I documented two decades ago. However, he had no intention of targeting the United States, and instead concentrated on restless Kurds. As for the fallaciously touted weapons of mass destruction, George W. Bush made a comedy routine out of the widely debunked claims that resulted in the extermination of more than a million Iraqis.

“What makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya?” Jacques Baud finally asks of complicit politicians and a tone-deaf and ignorant public.

What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars?… Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the “worst humanitarian disaster in the world?”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

At first, it was a simple question: what exactly did oil pollution do to grey seals off the coast of Norway?

It was the early 1980s, and a young Norwegian ecotoxocologist, Bjørn Munroe Jenssen, was asked by Conoco Philips to find the answer.

The oil company was just beginning to look for oil in an area of the North Sea called the Halten Bank, off the coast of mid-Norway.

Jenssen and his colleagues knew that oil spills could contaminate seal fur, especially the pups.

“And actually more than 50% of them were polluted by these small tar balls, when they lie and rest, their fur gets contaminated. But we don’t think there are any large effects of that because it’s external contamination,” Jenssen said in the newest episode of 63 Degrees North, NTNU’s English-language podcast.

But Jenssen and his colleagues wondered if there were other contaminants getting into the bodies of the animals. So they did some blood tests. And what they found shocked them.

The poison book

Humans have been making and using chemicals for millennia, but their production skyrocketed in the 20^th century. One chemical in particular, DDT, was discovered to be a potent insecticide by a Swiss chemist, Paul Herman Müller, in 1939. Its use during the Second World War saved many lives, by killing insects that carried malaria and typhus. Muller won the Nobel Prize in 1948 for his discovery.

But as the use of these and other chemicals increased, biologists began to see that they could have unintended and potentially Earth-shattering consequences.

In September, 1962, an American marine biologist and author Rachel Carson
Carson published a book documenting just how damaging pesticides were to the environment. She privately called it “the Poison Book.” This work would help spawn the environmental movement across the Western world. It was called Silent Spring.

In spite of Carson’s work, chemical use continued to grow. They were used for everything from controlling insects and weeds to making materials fire-resistant. DDT had been banned, but many other chemicals were in widespread use.

Rachel Carson’s book made national news. This clip is from The New York Times from 22 July 1962, page 86.

Blood and blubber

The blood and tissue tests that Jenssen and his colleagues did contained an alphabet soup of substances.

We found that there were associations between blood levels of contaminants and levels of thyroid hormones, which are hormones that are very important for growth, for thermal regulation, for producing energy, and so on.

“We started to look for other contaminants like the PCBs, polychlorinated biphenols, and pesticides, like the old DDT, which was used a lot, and they were regulated in Norway at that time, but not globally,” he said. “And we found actually quite high concentrations of these compounds in the seals…. in their blood or in their blubber we examined. We even found levels in the brains of these small newborn pups.”

Then it was just a question of determining if the chemicals were affecting the contaminated animals.

The answer turned out to be: Yes.

“We found that there were associations between blood levels of contaminants and levels of thyroid hormones, which are hormones that are very important for growth, for thermal regulation, for producing energy, and so on,” Jenssen said. “So we thought that that might be a very important effect that could affect the survival or the health of the pups.”

Riding the wind

Jenssen didn’t just find these chemicals in seal pups. When he subsequently did tests on animals in arctic Norway, he found a huge spectrum of chemicals in them too — in everything from polar bear milk to Greenland shark blood.

But were all these chemicals coming from? They weren’t being generated in the Arctic, because there’s almost no industrial activity there.

What researchers gradually came to understand was that many of these pollutants can ride the wind or travel in ocean currents. If they are spilled or released somehow, some can vaporize and get carried into the atmosphere, where they ride the prevailing winds north. They might condense on their journey, and get deposited on the ground again, only to be vaporized when it’s warm enough.

And once they arrive in the Arctic, they tend to stay there, trapped in the snow, or as we now know, contained in the fat or blubber of the animals that live there.

And as Jenssen and other researchers have found, they have significant effects on the hormones of the animals that are contaminated.

Native populations and health problems

Jon Øyvind Odland is a gynaecologist and global health researcher at NTNU and at UiT — the Arctic University of Norway.

As Bjørn Munroe Jenssen was documenting the kinds of chemicals that were accumulating in animals, particularly in the Arctic, Odland thought he would look at what was happening with native peoples in the far north.

Native people living in the far north who eat a traditional diet typically eat foods that are high in fat. And many of these substances concentrate in fats.

So when Odland studied native peoples in Chukotka, in eastern Russia, he found that they too, had high levels of contaminants in their blood. What’s more, they found a clear association between these high levels of contaminants and the effectiveness of childhood vaccines.

This posed a difficult challenge: Traditional diets are in many ways much healthier for people living in these most northerly areas. If native people switch to a more Western diet, they can develop other health problems, such as type II diabetes and heart disease.

“It’s the Arctic dilemma,” Odland said in the podcast. “The pollutants follow the food, the best nutrition you can get.”

Zooplankton on painkillers

Ida Beathe Øverjordet was one of Jenssen’s graduate students, studying mercury in the Arctic. Now she’s working at SINTEF, Scandinavia’s largest independent research institute, and continuing her work on pollutants in the Arctic.

Ida Beathe Øverjordet takes samples as part of her work studying where and how pharmaceuticals are found in the Arctic. Photo: Lacie Setsaas, SINTEF Ocean

Recently, she and her colleagues decided to see if they might pharmaceuticals in arctic creatures like tiny zooplankton in samples they took in Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago at 79 degrees North latitude.

It’s well known that pharmaceuticals find their into rivers, streams and lakes from treated wastewater in industrialized countries, but Øverjordet wondered if pharmaceuticals might somehow have also found a way to hitchhike to the north.

And they found them.

“We found quite high levels actually of painkillers, like ibuprofen and diclofenac. And also antibiotics and antidepressants we found in these tiny creatures living in the Arctic,” she said.

Listen to 63 Degrees North to learn more about the fate of these chemicals — and how science is helping policymakers do the right thing.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Sources

Bourgeon, Sophie; Riemer, Astrid Kolind; Tartu, Sabrina; Aars, Jon; Polder, Anuschka; Jenssen, Bjørn Munro; Routti, Heli Anna Irmeli. (2017) Potentiation of ecological factors on the disruption of thyroid hormones by organo-halogenated contaminants in female polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the Barents Sea. Environmental Research. vol. 15

Ciesielski, Tomasz Maciej; Hansen, Ingunn Tjelta; Bytingsvik, Jenny; Hansen, Martin; Lie, Elisabeth; Aars, Jon; Jenssen, Bjørn Munro; Styrishave, Bjarne. (2017) Relationships between POPs, biometrics and circulating steroids in male polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from Svalbard. Environmental Pollution (1987). vol. 230.

Nuijten, RJM; Hendriks, AJ; Jenssen, Bjørn Munro; Schipper, AM. (2016) Circumpolar contaminant concentrations in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) and potential population-level effects. Environmental Research. vol. 151.

Treskina, Natalia Albertovna; Postoev, Vitaly; Usynina, Anna A.; Grjibovski, Andrej; Odland, Jon Øyvind. (2021) Sociodemographic factors influencing the health of pregnant women: Changes in the arctic countries over the past decades. Akusherstvo i Ginekologiya. vol. 2021 (6).

Chashchin, Valery; Kovshov, Aleksandr A.; Thomassen, Yngvar; Sorokina, Tatiana; Gorbanev, Sergey A.; Morgunov, Boris; Gudkov, Andrey B.; Chashchin, Maxim; Sturlis, Natalia V.; Trofimova, Anna; Odland, Jon Øyvind; Nieboer, Evert. (2020) Health risk modifiers of exposure to persistent pollutants among indigenous peoples of Chukotka. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH). vol. 17 (1).

Featured image: Bjørn Munro Jenssen nets a grey seal pup. Photo: Private

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Joe Biden “sparked a global uproar” on March 26, declaring Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” He also said “this battle will not be won in days or months, either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead.”

This was public confirmation that the U.S. goal in Ukraine is “regime change” in Russia, no matter how long, or how many Ukrainian and Russian lives it may take—or how many people become refugees, or how the world economy will be damaged.

“The words of a president matter,” Biden said. “They can move markets. They can send our brave men and women to war. They can bring peace.” In this case Biden’s words helped move markets for the military-industrial complex and big U.S. energy companies. They were not intended to bring peace.

Biden’s remarks came after a triple summit in Brussels of NATO, the European Union and the G7 big capitalist countries. There he “coaxed a display of unity” among U.S. allies, but “limited practical outcomes… underlined the limited options,” according to Agence France Presse-AFP. European powers stopped short of sanctions against Russian gas supplies, the report said, “fearing the consequences for their own energy security.”

“Why I asked for this NATO meeting,” Biden said, “is to be sure that, after a month, we will sustain what we’re doing, not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year,” according to the AFP report. Speaking afterwards in Warsaw, Poland, Biden expressed the aggressive tone he hoped for in Brussels – to fire up his most militant NATO ally, and chat with members of the U.S. 82^nd Airborne Division stationed there.

PR War “Off Message”

Biden’s statement “went further than even U.S. presidents during the Cold War,” according to a Washington Post report: It “immediately reverberated around the world as world leaders, diplomats, and foreign policy experts sought to determine what Biden said, what it meant—and, if he didn’t mean it, why he said it.” White House aides “were adamant the remark was not a sign of a policy change.” But “they did concede it was… off message,” the report said.

Message control is a key weapon for U.S. war planners and their Ukrainian clients. CIA Director William Burns testified March 3 that “we have had a great deal of effect in… demonstrating to the entire world that this is premeditated and unprovoked aggression…” The effort involves a super-professional message management operation, described by Dan Cohen, that “has produced a steady stream of sophisticated propaganda aimed at stirring up public and official support.” The international effort is led by PR Network of the UK.

The PR campaign helped the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry produce a set of “key messages.” It ruled out use of the terms “civil war in Donbas,” “internal conflict,” “conflict in Ukraine” and “Ukrainian crisis” to describe the Ukrainian government’s war against the secessionist republics of the Donbas region. The UN Human Rights Office estimates that 14,200 people, including 3,404 civilians, have been killed in combat in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Ukrainian army shelling Donetsk (Source: Shutterstock)

Recent U.S. Regime Change Wars

U.S. message managers try to avoid comparison to recent U.S. regime change wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Yugoslavia. It was 23 years ago that NATO countries, without UN Security Council authorization, ordered attacks on Yugoslavia—NATO’s first target in Europe after the collapse of the USSR. The air strikes lasted 78 days, from March 24 to June 10, 1999.

About 1,000 NATO aircraft hit Serbia and Montenegro with thousands of cruise missiles and 80,000 tons of bombs, killing thousands and destroying countless buildings, hundreds of miles of roads, railroads and airfields, bridges, schools and hospitals. It also bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens.

The Chinese government protested vigorously without escalating the crisis, getting a U.S. apology and several million dollars of reparations.

The Yugoslav city of Novi Sad on fire after U.S.-NATO bombing in 1999. [Source: wikipedia.org]

“This war did not come out of nowhere,” commented Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica. “This is a continuation of something sown long before. You can see the continuity of Russophobia in the West.” He added that NATO’s military intervention was followed by a color revolution that led to the overthrow of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The same coup strategy was then used in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. NATO’s objective was the disintegration of the Yugoslav state. This is happening now against Russia, Kusturica said.

Biden’s message includes intense demonization of the Russian President, calling him a war criminal and a “butcher,” among other things—not likely to facilitate peace talks. That has not been the top priority for Washington, which has used Poland as a prime staging area for countless tons of military hardware, as well as mercenaries recruited from around the world.

Tanks and other weapons in Poland destined for Ukraine. [Source: defensenews.com]

New Round of Peace Talks

Russian and Ukrainian delegations will hold a new round of face-to-face negotiations between March 28 and 30, reported China’s Xinhua news agency. Since February 28, the two sides have held three rounds of face-to-face peace talks and a series of online discussions, failing to reach a major agreement.

The new round of talks will take place after the Russian military announced on March 26 that “the main tasks of the first stage of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine had been completed.” That stage focused on securing eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine as Russia’s priorities—not taking Kyiv or other cities outside eastern Ukraine. The U.S. has interpreted the Russian message as a “scaling back” of its original war objectives. It could also be interpreted as a new opportunity for peace.

Some observers have said China could play an effective mediator role in peace talks, since it has substantial trade with all parties—Russia and Ukraine, the EU countries and the U.S. China has “Belt and Road” projects in numerous European countries, including Ukraine, giving it an interest in an early resolution to the conflict. But U.S. pressure on China to “switch sides” against Russia complicates the issue.

The Chinese newspaper Global Times editorialized March 27 that “NATO, under the leadership of Washington, is the real initiator and driving force behind the conflict between Russia and Ukraine… What the U.S. really needs is tense and conflicting Russia-Europe relations,” the editorial said. “It is NATO’s eastward expansion that has triggered Ukraine’s desire to join NATO and greatly triggered Russia’s concerns over territorial security, which directly led to the current Russia-Ukraine conflict…”

Global Times raises the question: “do major European countries like Germany and France ‒ also NATO members—really hold a stance over the Russian-Ukrainian conflict that is in line with Washington’s interests? Unlike the past security crises in Europe, the EU will become the biggest victim of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It will have to bear the brunt of the conflict. Therefore, as the Ukraine crisis develops, the differences between the U.S. and Europe will become inevitable once the public opinion in major EU countries changes.”

NATO leaders at the Brussels summit called on all states, including China, to abstain from supporting Russia’s “war effort,” Global Times reported, “and to refrain from any action that helps Russia circumvent sanctions. They also said China is engaged in spreading lies and misinformation to support Russia.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said “We oppose groundless accusations and suspicion against China, and will not accept any pressure or coercion.”

A “Permanent State of Precarity”

Economist Michael Hudson agrees with the Chinese analysis, adding that U.S. policy is to control the world, and “to sort of repeat in Ukraine and Europe what it was doing in Syria and Libya.” John Mearsheimer, the noted exponent of the realist school of international relations, says “the West bears primary responsibility” for the disaster in eastern Europe, which “will cause a wrecked global economy.” In the global south, with much of the world’s population, many countries rely on grain imports from Ukraine and Russia, and worry about major shortages caused by supply chain disruptions.

South Africa’s ANC Youth League spokesperson, Sizophila Mkhize, told Breakthrough News on March 25 that “Our countries were invaded, led by the western countries, led by NATO itself; and we did not hear anyone say ‘pray for Libya,’ for instance… They could have avoided this war, like the president of South Africa said. But they’re arrogant, they’re self-serving and they’re selfish. And they don’t care about many of the lives that are going to be lost.” She added that “we have also realized the racism with which the people of Africa who were trapped in Ukraine were treated.” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has offered to help mediate the crisis.

Ajamu Baraka of Black Agenda Report says

“The war being waged against global humanity by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is a hybrid war that utilizes all the tools it has at its disposal—sanctions, mass incarceration, coups, drugs, disinformation, culture, subversion, murder, and direct military engagement to further white power.”

He adds that on the heels of the 2008 financial crash and the crisis of the Covid pandemic, today millions “are experiencing a permanent state of precarity with evictions, the continued loss of medical coverage, unaffordable housing and food costs, and a capitalist-initiated inflation.” He says U.S. rulers hope that “with the daily bombardment of war images, U.S. workers and the poor will embrace rising costs of gas and even more increases in the cost of food.”

The Brown University Costs of War Project estimates that the wars waged by the United States in this century have cost millions of lives, at least $8 trillion and counting, with another $8 trillion that will be spent over the next ten years on the military budget if costs remain constant from the $778 billion just allocated. The Costs of War Project also notes that “38 million people have been displaced by the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines.” Are the architects of NATO expansion ready to accept responsibility for more huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees?

Source: codepink.org

CodePink’s Open Letter

The anti-war group CodePink says “The U.S., which played a major role in exacerbating the conflict that led up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, must now play a major role in the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to achieve a ceasefire.” It adds that the United States must be ready to make compromises and support negotiations between Ukraine and Russia by committing to the following:

• Rejection of a no-fly zone over Ukraine;
• No NATO expansion;
• Recognition of Ukraine as a neutral country;
• Sanctions on Russia to be lifted;
• Support for an international security agreement to protect the interests of all people on the European continent to remain free from war and occupation;
• Support for Ukrainian demilitarization to the degree that missiles would be banned;
• Supply humanitarian aid to Ukraine and support Ukrainian refugees.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dee Knight is a member of the DSA International Committee’s Anti-War Subcommittee. He is the author of My Whirlwind Lives: Navigating Decades of Storms, soon to be published by Guernica World Editions. Dee can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image: A Ukrainian servicemen stands by a burned military vehicle near Sytniaky, Ukraine, March 3, 2022. Photo courtesy General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine/Facebook.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Dr. Theresa Long, a medical officer with the United States military, has testified in court that she was ordered by a superior to suppress Covid-19 vaccine injuries following the Biden regime’s mandate.

The DoD downplayed Dr. Long’s conclusions, saying the increase in vaccine injuries was caused by a “glitch in the database.”

On March 10, Liberty Counsel, the law firm representing thirty members of the military who are fighting the military vaccine mandate, returned to federal court to defend the preliminary injunction Judge Steven Merryday granted two military plaintiffs that allowed them to skirt the military vaccine mandate.

The Department of Defense (DoD) asked the judge to set aside the injunction while the case was on appeal.

Judge Merryday is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida.

Per DailyExpose: During the all-day hearing, Liberty Counsel presented compelling testimony from the Navy Commander of a surface warship and three military flight surgeons, Lt. Col. Peter Chambers, Lt. Col. Teresa Long and Col. (Ret.) Stewart Tankersley, M.D. In contrast, the DOD declined to present witnesses.

Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel Mat Staver said in an interview with the Blaze’s Daniel Horowitz on Monday that there have been three hearings now in this case, and the DoD has not yet offered a single witness. Instead of witnesses, the government “sends these declarations,” Staver explained. He said the judge has urged them to bring live witnesses to court so they can be cross examined, but they just refuse to do it. “So they send these declarations that some JAG attorney writes, and somebody in the military signs off on them.”

Staver said that the information the DoD has been presenting in court is “outdated, wrong, and would really be subject to dismantling under cross examination.” He added that cross examinations of his witnesses have only made their case stronger. “So they really don’t have anything to cross examine our witnesses with,” he said.

Staver told Horowitz that Judge Merryday has chastised the DoD lawyers during the hearings, telling them they have “a frail case,” and are “acting as though they are above the law.”

Dr. Theresa Long, a flight surgeon who holds a master’s degree in Public Health and is specially trained in the DMED, gave emotional testimony on March 10.

She and two other flight surgeons reviewed DMED last year and made some stunning discoveries about the high incidence of apparent vaccine injuries among members of the military.

According to the whistleblowers, certain disorders spiked after the vaccine mandate went into effect, including miscarriages and cancers, and neurological problems which increased by 1000 percent.

Dr. Long testified that she was contacted by high level officer the night before the hearing, and told not to discuss her findings regarding the explosive military medical data in court. The whistleblower reportedly said she felt threatened after she tried to get her superiors to address the findings, “fearing for her life and for the safety of her children.”

Since the whistleblowers came forward with the DMED data, the DoD has thrown cold water on their conclusions, saying the increase in vaccine injuries was caused by a “glitch in the database.”

Politifact contacted Peter Graves, spokesperson for the Defense Health Agency’s Armed Forces Surveillance Division, who said the data for 2021 is correct, but for some reason, the data for the five years prior was inaccurate. Graves told PolitiFact by email that the division reviewed data in the DMED “and found that the data was incorrect for the years 2016-2020.”

In other words, for five straight years, the data was seriously corrupted and none of the DoD’s data analysts figured this out, and then it fixed itself on its own in 2021. The DoD has since put out new numbers showing more illnesses among the troops for the years prior to 2021.

Staver asked Long a question about the DMED data during the hearing, and she answered: “I have been ordered not to answer that question.”

Judge Merryday reportedly asked Long: “Ordered by who?,” and the doctor explained what happened the night before the hearing.

Staver then asked Long if the information the military ordered her to withhold was relevant and helpful for the court and the public to know. She said, “yes,” and Staver asked her why.

Long reportedly paused and choked back tears as she told the judge: “I have so many soldiers being destroyed by this vaccine. Not a single member of my senior command has discussed my concerns with me … I have nothing to gain and everything to lose by talking about it. I’m OK with that because I am watching people get absolutely destroyed.”

Dr. Long also testified that the data shows that deaths of military members from the vaccines exceed deaths from COVID itself.

Staver later told Horowitz that the DoD’s order for her not to discuss DMED amounted to witness tampering, especially since Long has whistleblower protections.

“They not only violated the Whistleblower Act, they potentially intimidated a witness and tried to change that witness’ testimony,” he said during the Conservative Review podcast on Monday.

The doctor said she is constantly contacted by people who have been injured by the genetic vaccines, and that many of those injured are pilots, who are expected to meet high fitness standards. Long told Staver that in just one afternoon she heard from four pilots who had just gotten MRIs back showing that they had myocarditis.

Morale is tanking in the military, she testified, with soldiers are in despair over the pressure to get the vaccine, and some are even having suicidal thoughts.

Long said she was aware of at least two people who have committed suicide over the pressure, and the threat of punishment for refusal.

She said the current regime’s policies are undermining “good order and discipline.”

In addition to Dr. Long, an unnamed Navy commander testified about his commander’s attempts to punish him for refusing the experimental injections.

On February 2, Judge Merryday issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Navy from punishing the Commander because of his vaccination status. Judge Merryday ruled the Navy violated the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

When the court ordered the Commodore to comply with the law, he filed an affidavit saying he had “lost confidence” in the Commander because the Commander had not taken the COVID shots.

The judge then entered a preliminary injunction, and the DOD and the Navy filed a motion asking the court to set aside his injunction, arguing that due to their “lost confidence” in the commander, his ship could not deploy.

However, at the time the ship was allegedly unable to be deployed, the commander was actually far out to sea testing the ship and training the crew.

While many Commanders fail to complete these operations timely, the Commander completed the mission early and the ship deemed “safe and ready.”

In a dramatic moment, the Commander said he should not have to be there in court defending religious freedom. “Generals and admirals should be here saying what I am saying today to uphold religious freedom. Our religious freedoms are being attacked.”

Also testifying last week was Dr. Pete Chambers, a Purple Heart recipient who is in the Texas National Guard defending the southern border where 10,000-20,000 illegal immigrants are flooding through every week. “My job is to keep our soldiers safe,” Chambers said.

Chambers was hoping to retire from the military in 2023 after nearly 40 years of service, but his adverse reaction to the Moderna shot derailed his plans.

Trusting the military that the shots are “safe and effective,” and not knowing at the time that aborted fetal cells were used in the testing and/or development, he took the shot. He now suffers from demyelination, a condition affecting the central nervous system caused by the injection.

After his Moderna injury, Dr. Chambers met Lt. Col. Long. They reviewed the DOD’s Defense Medical Epidemiology Database (DMED), the military equivalent to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), where he discovered other military members also developed a demyelination disease after the COVID shots.

Chambers, a military flight surgeon and one of only six Green Beret surgeons, was told that his job was to get soldiers to vaccinated. His superiors told him that religious exemptions would be automatically denied. “Soldiers will try. Soldiers will fail,” this commanders said.

He pointed out that shots are not effective in preventing infection, and estimated that about 75-80% of soldiers getting infected are “double vaxxed” compared to only about 15% of soldiers who are not vaccinated.

Like Long, Chambers also testified that many soldiers are being injured by the COVID shots, and that “this is not normal.”

Dr. Stewart Tankersley, a flight surgeon who retired in September 2021 at the rank of Colonel, testified that the injections are neither safe nor effective.

Tankersley said he has personally treated over 200 COVID patients with no fatalities, and the group of doctors with whom he is associated has treated over 18,000 COVID patients with deaths only in the single digits.

“I’ve never seen anything like this in the military or civilian world, the lack of dialogue, the suppression of scientific dialogue.” Tankersley said on the stand.

Dr. Tankersley explained one of several reasons there are so many injuries from the COVID shots. The mRNA vaccines require a Lipid Nanoparticle (LNP) as a delivery mechanism because the RNA quickly degrades without being encased in the LNP. The combination bypasses the natural immune system and creates inflammation that can inhibit the body’s innate immunity.

Dr. Tankersley testified that the shots are neither safe nor effective. He also testified that there are safe and effective treatments for COVID, including nasal rinsing and ivermectin.

Liberty Counsel argued that the DOD’s position that the only one way to combat COVID and ensure military readiness is to force the injections and kick out the unvaccinated is “untenable,” and that the mandate is undermining military readiness and harming morale.

Staver said: “I am honored to serve the brave men and women of the military. I am dismayed by the abuse and propaganda forced upon them from the White House and the Department of Defense. The truth will prevail, and freedom will win.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from TEUT

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

When a principle of ancient jurisprudence, which is also a central procedural right in modern legal systems, is no longer valid, then a democratic state system – also referred to as a “silent dictatorship” by evil tongues – outs itself as an “open dictatorship”. Already in the past two years, only one opinion was valid, the so-called scientific and medical opinion about the worldwide threat of a newly created, supposedly deadly virus and its “eradication” by means of a gene-modifying treatment.

Now come the news coverage of a terrible war in the heart of Europe. And again the legal principle “Audiatur et altera pars – let the other part be heard” is disregarded: Oral and written reports from the other side are prevented or even banned. How long will a nation of free citizens, who already feel that something urgently needs to change in society, put up with this? The citizens want to live, work, sleep and look the youth in the eye in peace again.

Non-violent change of existing power relations seems inevitable

No one will use the word “revolution” because it is associated with individual and collective violence. But a change in the existing power relations seems inevitable. And the new social order to be shaped must be developed by the citizens themselves – in absolute freedom, without any coercion from outside. Free citizens are perfectly capable of negotiating together how they want to arrange their lives in order to live together in peace, tranquillity and equality.

Armed struggle in the form of individual terror or collective armed violence is out of the question! The world already has enough of that: Therefore, a “revolutionary process” must be non-violent!

However, history shows that in most cases it is not possible to directly set fellow citizens in motion for a humane, peaceful and free society. The instilled fear of harmless fellow citizens and the distrust of enlightened people is difficult to overcome. If existing power relations were overthrown somewhere, the “rebels” usually set up copies of the earlier forms of rule, only with other names and other ideological dressings.

Enlightenment and the problem of education

Consequently, one must continue to enlighten and convince people. The purpose of enlightenment efforts is to purify human consciousness of individual and collective prejudices. In addition, their acquired fears of harmless fellow human beings and supposed authorities must be removed. Psychology with a psychologically guided “people’s university” would be the appropriate tool to enable people to adequately assess themselves, the political situation and the necessary social- and culture-changing measures. This can also lead to collective actions of “civil disobedience” and strikes.

More important than enlightenment, however, is the problem of education. The insight of depth psychology made clear the immense significance of education for the emergence of a humane world.

The educational methods of the past created the type of human being that could cause the tragedy of history.

The authoritarian principle, for centuries regarded as the unquestionably valid basis of educational behaviour, throttled people’s sense of community already in their childhood years and endowed them with that readiness for aggression through which a violent world could remain in a state of violence.

If pedagogy in the parental home and school renounces the authoritarian principle and the use of violence, it will be able to educate people who do not have a “subject mentality” and will therefore not be a docile tool for those in power in our world.

The task set is difficult, but it can be solved!

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and a graduate psychologist (specialising in clinical, educational and media psychology). As a retiree, he worked for many years as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and educational-psychological articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral values education and an education for public spirit and peace.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

It’s reprehensible that the Trudeau government is failing to enforce its own laws on the recruitment of Canadians to fight in foreign wars. Here is the law.

1. 11(1) Foreign Enlistment Act:

Recruiting

• 11(1) Any person who, within Canada, recruits or otherwise induces any person or body of persons to enlist or to accept any commission or engagement in the armed forces of any foreign state or other armed forces operating in that state is guilty of an offence.

In Hamilton, a portal has been set up to “Fight For Ukraine.” Its creator, businessman Chris Ecklund, stated in an interview with the Hamilton Spectator, “This is not a recruiting tool.” However, the website contains a direct link to the International Legion of the Defence of Ukraine, a body set up by Ukrainian President Zelensky to recruit foreigners for combat in Ukraine. By his own admission in the article, Ecklund admits to aiding and counselling those who intend to fight for Ukraine and to help the wounded return to Canada.

In addition, Ecklund’s portal lists the Ukrainian Embassy and two consulates in Canada, in Toronto and Edmonton, for Canadians to contact who wish to join the Ukrainian International (Foreign) Legion. According to the Foreign Enlistment Act, embassies are limited as well to recruiting their own nationals for foreign wars.[1]

The conflict in Ukraine is a very serious crisis, that has the potential of spreading into a wider European and even world war. It’s important, therefore, that Canada play a useful role in de-escalating the conflict, rather than fuelling the fighting, as it is now, with funding, lethal arms, and mercenaries.

The Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War calls for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in Ukraine through de-escalation, dialogue, and international diplomacy.

We note that, in the wake of the war hysteria over Ukraine that is gripping this country, respect for the rule of law is being over-ridden by government officials and is escalating the conflict. Therefore, we call on the Government of Canada to enforce its own laws preventing the recruitment and enlisting of Canadians in the International Legion of the Defence of Ukraine.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Notes

[1] (2) Subsection (1) does not apply to the action of foreign consular or diplomatic officers or agents in enlisting persons who are nationals of the countries they represent and not Canadian nationals, in conformity with the regulations of the Governor in Council.

Featured image is from FAIR

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

A Wayne County judge on March 29 granted a motion by Treasurer Eric Sabree extending the ban on owner-occupied homes being placed in jeopardy of seizure and public auction.

This decision came in the aftermath of a campaign by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition (MNC) and other housing groups in the city of Detroit.

A resolution was passed on March 29 by the Detroit City Council in favor of an extension after numerous people spoke out at the municipal legislative meeting calling on people to participate in the demonstration the following day at the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office in the Greektown district of Downtown. Although this resolution was passed without opposition, the MNC is calling for a permanent solution to the housing crisis in Detroit and throughout the county.

Detroit Moratorium NOW! Coalition demonstration outside Wayne County Treasurer on March 30, 2022 (photo by Roslyn Ogburn)

Activists gathered outside at 400 Monroe, the Wayne County Treasurer, on March 30 welcoming the extension of the halt to foreclosures and auctions of owner-occupied homes, however, emphasizing that renters and those owing taxes prior to 2017, are also in dire need of protection from homelessness. Auctioning of owner-occupied homes among other properties in Detroit has not resulted in any revitalization of neighborhoods where people are still leaving in the thousands every year.

MNC has been waging a struggle against property tax foreclosures since 2015 when it was announced that tens of thousands of households were being threatened with home seizures. A citywide effort in 2015-2016 ushered in the current period where homeowners were allowed to make arrangements for paying property tax arrearages.

Later in 2016, a class action lawsuit was filed by the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Covington & Burling, a private law firm. Although an out-of-court settlement was agreed upon in 2018, the ruling did not provide any real relief for those who had lost their homes years before due to the role of the financial institutions, real estate firms, the failure of city, state and federal agencies to protect homeowners and the general population which suffered due to the lost of population and tax incomes. Homeowners were over assessed at least $600 million due to the actions of the banks and the municipal administration. The City of Detroit agreed to publicize existing housing assistance programs. Nonetheless, the fact that the residents of the overwhelming majority African American population in Detroit are facing once again a property tax foreclosure crisis indicates clearly that the legal agreement did not encompass any permanent solutions to the crisis. (See this)

In fact, the MNC demanded that the deadline for applying for assistance under the 2018 agreement be extended. This served to save the homes of over 1000 households. The offices of the MNC served as a base where over 100 people volunteered to knock on doors and publicize the fact that those eligible for housing relief receive the assistance they needed. Even though the corporate-imposed Mayor Mike Duggan and Wayne County took credit for the saving of these homes for working class and poor residents, there has not been any serious effort to genuinely address the housing crisis in Detroit and Wayne Country.

Next Steps in the Housing Crisis

Wayne County Treasurer Eric R. Sabree issued a statement on March 29 saying:

“Our number one priority remains keeping people in their homes and to many Wayne County taxpayers are still suffering significant economic hardship due to the COVID-19 crisis. We also know that while many have applied for property tax relief from certain programs, they needed more time to compile the appropriate paperwork. So, we continue to make some allowances considering the pandemic.”

This language could have easily been lifted from the MNC press release issued the previous week and years before. However, the point is to deal with the broader crisis of housing and economic underdevelopment across the U.S.

The so-called Great Recession of 2008-2010 can be viewed as the modern-day manifestation of the housing crisis, although the actual problems extend back many decades to the inherent racist character of the Federal Housing Act and the Federal Highway Act enacted from the 1930s to the 1960s. In Detroit, tens of thousands of African Americans, Latin Americans and Asian Americans had been dislocated from the areas now known as Downtown and Midtown.

Since the beginning of the 2000s, predatory lending, overinflated property values and consequent property tax assessment padding has exacerbated the institutional discrimination against nationally oppressed peoples. During the period after 2008, African Americans throughout the U.S. lost up to half or more of their household wealth which was derived from home ownership. The subsequent economic collapse in 2008-2009 impacting the banks, automotive companies, insurance firms and the demographic composition of urban areas, has never been adequately addressed by successive administrations in the White House. Therefore, the crisis remains and with the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic fallout, this question will remain for the unforeseeable future.

In the ruling issued by the Wayne County Third Judicial Circuit Court on March 29 notes:

“The parcels of property previously removed from foreclosure by Court Order of February 22, 2022 are no longer in forfeiture for the reason that the delinquent taxes, interest, penalties and fees have been paid, and the properties have been redeemed are owned by persons who qualify for and have been granted a hardship extension in which to pay the forfeited taxes, interest, penalties and fees…. Are subject to other considerations which in the judgment of the Treasurer are best not foreclosed at this time.”

These words from Wayne County Circuit Judge Timothy M. Kenny are important in the present period. However, residents of Detroit voted by an 81% margin in the 2021 municipal elections to establish a Reparations Commission to propose compensation for historical discrimination. The housing crisis and the dislocation of more than a million people over the last seven decades could serve as a beginning point in paying reparations to African Americans and other people of color communities.

A National Problem: Housing is a Human Right

The situation involving housing rights are acute in cities like Detroit where homeowners are being threatened with foreclosures and renters are subjected to higher rates and threats of evictions. The Eviction Lab at Princeton University, which tracks these issues on a national level, reveals that the crisis remains despite the statistics indicating that the problem has not accelerated to the anticipated levels of increase.

Princeton Eviction Lab graph on COVID-19 evictions

This is undoubtedly related to the anticipated worsening social crisis in municipalities if evictions are allowed to proceed at astronomical levels. Housing advocacy groups have not relented in their demands for moratoriums on evictions and promoting the notion that housing is indeed a human right.

According to Eviction Lab in a recent report:

“Eviction filings have increased since the end of the CDC moratorium but remain well below normal levels in nearly all jurisdictions we monitor. Why might this be? It is too soon to say definitively, but several plausible explanations bear investigation. First, emergency rental assistance (ERA) may be deterring filings. The scale and pace of ERA distribution increased markedly over the summer of 2021. The Treasury Department reported that state and local ERA programs delivered approximately $1.6 billion in June. By October, that was up to $2.86 billion, an increase of nearly 80%. The Department of the Treasury expects that $25–$30 billion of ERA funds will be spent or obligated by the end of 2021. Improvements in the distribution of these funds may have helped to encourage landlord participation in these programs and prevented eviction cases from being filed.”

In Detroit MNC intervened beginning on September 1, 2021 with press conferences and rallies along with direct pressure on those agencies designated to distribute housing assistance funding through the COVID Emergency Rental Assistance (CERA) and the American Rescue Plan (ARP). These funds belong to the poor and working people in need.

Moreover, housing within any modern industrialized society should be considered a fundamental right. Until this is accepted by the political institutions governing the U.S., there will continue to be a crisis in housing and other essential services for people across the country.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.  

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

Featured image: Detroit hunger striker over property tax foreclosure and lack of support, Tamira Kemet speaks out against housing crisis (Photo by Abayomi Azikiwe)

Reawakening of Consciences: “The threat of a Third World War is weighing on all of us”. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò

By His Excellency Carlo Maria Viganò, April 04, 2022

They have told us that President Putin invaded Ukraine to support his expansionist ambitions, but in reality the main purpose of Russia’s military operation is to prevent the aggression of the deep state and NATO. Putin is fighting against the same globalist elite that holds us all hostage.

New Study Finds Persistent Heart Abnormalities Among COVID-19 Vaccinated Children

By Guy Hatchard, April 04, 2022

A follow up study conducted at the Seattle Children’s Hospital of children suffering myocarditis following their second dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine was published in the Journal of Pediatrics on 25 March 2022. The study followed up 16 male children, with an average age of 15 years, 3 to 8 months after their initial diagnosis with myocarditis within a short time frame following mRNA vaccination.

Frontline Doctor Says Fetal Deaths Up Nearly 2,000 Percent Since COVID Jab Rollout

By Emily Mangiaracina, April 04, 2022

Dr. Peterson Pierre is warning expecting mothers to “look out” for their own kids, since the CDC is not changing their COVID shot recommendations, despite the spike in preborn deaths.

“The withdrawal from Kiev is Russian escalation. It’s the…transformation from a psychological operation to a textbook war”

By Marko Marjanović and Mike Whitney, April 04, 2022

It is undeniable that how the Russians were prosecuting the war at the start and how they are prosecuting it now is entirely different. Not just in the way they fight (small detachments vs combined arms) or advance (mad dash vs deliberate) but also on the map itself. Where before they were pouring forces into six different axes of advance they have now pulled back along many of them or even abandoned them entirely to focus on just the two Donbass axes.

Israeli Apartheid: It Is Time for the Canadian Government to Take Action

By Jim Miles, April 04, 2022

Michael Lynk is the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied after the 1967 nakba.  He is Associate Professor of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, where he teaches labour law, constitutional law and human rights law. His report, “Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert”, was published recently.

Gearing Up for the Big Reveal: HHS Releases FDA Gene Editing Guidance, May Soon Admit mRNA COVID Shots Are Actually Gene Therapy Products

By Kevin Hughes, April 04, 2022

Medical professional and veteran pharmaceutical drug development expert Dr. Jane Ruby told host Stew Peters during a recent episode of “The Stew Peters Show” that the FDA has been actually creating guidance documents since 2015 and that these documents tell pharmaceutical companies how they want them to run studies and look at safety and efficacy in gene editing or human genome editing.

Bucha Massacre and Genocide of Ethnic Russians in Ukraine

By Nauman Sadiq, April 04, 2022

The Russian defense ministry said earlier on Sunday that all Russian troops had left the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region as far back as March 30, while the “evidence of crimes” surfaced four days later, when Ukrainian security forces and allied ultra-nationalist militias arrived in the city.

When Is mRNA Not Really mRNA?

By Dr. Robert Malone, April 04, 2022

What is pseudouridine, why is it being injected into you, and why should you care.

Russia Would be ‘Blown Off the Face of the Earth’ if It Used WMDs Against Ukraine. Fox News Sean Hannity

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, April 04, 2022

War propaganda by the mainstream media whether by CNN, FOX news, the BBC or the New York Times all follow a narrative, a script produced by the Military-Industrial complex (MIC) for endless conflicts around the world.  A perfect example was recently demonstrated by long time FOX news TV host Sean Hannity who is clearly a propagandist for the MIC and Israel had recently threatened Russia with annihilation if it used any sort of weapons of mass destruction in its war on Ukraine, a war that was instigated by the US and its NATO allies.

Russiagate: The Smoking Gun

By Peter Van Buren, April 04, 2022

We are looking for two smoking guns now in connection with Russiagate. Today’s Part I will show Hillary Clinton herself sat atop a large-scale conspiracy to use the tools of modern espionage to create and disseminate false information about Trump.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Mike Whitney: You think that the Russian Army was spread-too-thin to achieve its strategic objectives in Ukraine, and you point to the (Russian) army’s withdrawal around Kiev to make your point. (“Russia’s effort was very clearly too diluted over too many axes and sectors.”) But, now, you think that things have changed and Russia has started to make the correct military decisions. How have Russia’s plans changed and how will it​ affect upcoming clashes with the Ukrainian Army?

Marko Marjanović: It is undeniable that how the Russians were prosecuting the war at the start and how they are prosecuting it now is entirely different. Not just in the way they fight (small detachments vs combined arms) or advance (mad dash vs deliberate) but also on the map itself. Where before they were pouring forces into six different axes of advance they have now pulled back along many of them or even abandoned them entirely to focus on just the two Donbass axes.

There are two possibilities why that is so. One is that they always intended to start by doing A and then shift to B. The other is that they tried A, saw that it wasn’t working, and came up with B that would solve the problems of A.

I think the second is the correct explanation. They are trying something else now because what they tried first didn’t succeed. Yes, they had spread themselves too thin along too many axes. You could see that in the south for example where the relatively small force breaking out from Crimea then spread itself between storming Mariupol, trying to envelop Donbass from the south, and advancing across the Dnieper into southwestern Ukraine. I am not singling out the south because of its significance but because it was such a blatant example of overstretch. You have a force that already represents just 20% of the Russian maneuver strength in the theater and this force then additionally splits itself between three competing objectives. That’s crazy. It is also here that you saw the very first adjustments with much of the territory across the Dnieper abandoned to free up more units for Donbass.

The reason Donbass was crying out for units so badly was that so many were headed to Kiev. Russia has five Military Districts but the Northern one is based around the Northern Fleet so only four have large land forces. All the units from two of these Districts, the Eastern and Central, were tied up in the Kiev operation as well as the premier 1st Guards Tank Army of the Western District covering their southern flank around Sumy. Fully 50% of the Russian strength was in the drive on Kiev. Now, it is true that these forces tied down Ukrainian units that could conceivably be used elsewhere, but I do not think so little of Russian generals that I think they would have sent 50% of their force on a mission no more ambitious than to “tie down” enemy forces. Especially after seeing how insanely ambitious goals were assigned to the depleted southern forces.Also, since the Russian withdrawal from Kiev is now in full swing before Donbass has even been encircled it doesn’t look like Russian generals value “tying down” enemy forces all that much.

What the outcome of concentrating everything against the large Ukrainian army in Donbass will be I can not say, but I can give you some parameters. If the Russians are able to encircle it and capture thousands that will be a big victory for them. But if the Ukrainians can only be pushed out gradually and slowly that will be a victory for their side. An inconclusive outcome would be if the Ukrainians are able to flee and reposition as it would mean they had preserved their force but had not won time or inflicted attrition.

What I can tell you is what the consolidation means for Twitter and the footage coming out of the war. There will be no more videos of burned Russian supply convoys or of Russians catastrophically defeated because they were sent too far ahead in a too-small package.

The key takeaway is that until now the Russian military was failing because the military-political leadership was having it prosecute a bad and poorly prepared plan. It is only now that its plan is actually a good one that we will get to see how good or bad this military is at the tactical level. It may still fail but it now won’t be because of bad generalship.

MW: You say Russia kicked-off the fighting under the misguided belief that they could minimize the amount of damage and death but still prevail in the conflict. I find this analysis very persuasive, especially when you say: “The initial plan was focused on testing if the Ukrainian state could be made to unravel without having to go after its military and killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian servicemen.” That plan seems to have failed illustrated by the fact that the war continues to drag on with no end in sight. Now that Russia has changed its military approach, do you think they need to change their overall objectives as well? (Demiliterisation and DeNazification) These goals seem more aspirational than realistic, or do you disagree?

MM: A month into this war Russian-Ukrainian bloodshed on a large scale now seems normal to us, inevitable even, but we mustn’t lose sight of what the world was like before February 24. Just a month before, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had declared the idea of a Russo-Ukrainian war “unacceptable” and a “medical diagnosis”. A war between these two intertwined peoples seemed unthinkable, including because Moscow kept insisting there was a taboo on fratricidal war between East Slavs.

We would err to dismiss this as entirely hypocritical and insincere. There are good reasons to believe this taboo was a real thing for Moscow and a real hang-up for the Russian leadership. In this context launching the “special military operation” as a full-on war with tens of thousands of dead Ukrainians already baked into the plan was something the Russian leadership couldn’t force itself to do. In such a context, to be able to make a move against Kiev at all you would almost have to talk yourself into believing there was at least a small chance that it could be done in a way that avoided any major fighting.

So, we can deem the initial plan misguided, but possibly for the Russian leadership it was the crutch they needed to embark on this enterprise at all. They could not justify full-on war to themselves from the get-go. To get over the hangup they needed to package the chance of war with the chance of success without major bloodshed. Incidentally, waging the kind of operation that might somehow shock the Ukrainian state into collapse demanded a totally different arrangement of forces than would a conventional military campaign. Whereas a by-the-books military campaign would have dictated focus on the enemy military, concentration of forces, and movement as a combined-arms mass, the needs of the psychological operation demanded prioritizing Kiev, a broad front, and lighting speed. So that is how the Russians started.

Now why they weren’t better prepared to more quickly and more skillfully switch from waging psychological shock to conducting a war if the need arose is a different question.

I don’t know what de-militarization or de-Nazification mean. I don’t know that Russia knows what they mean. I think these alleged demands are aired to give voice to Russian wrath. They are not practical demands for Ukraine to meet. They are slogans meant to ensure the war continues.

I see no evidence as of yet that Russia has given up on any war goals it entered into the war with. People do not understand that the withdrawal from Kiev is Russian escalation. It’s the final step in the transformation from waging a dreamy psychological operation to waging textbook war. So far when Russia has hit a wall in Ukraine it has always escalated to the next order of business. I don’t mean just in this war but looking at it holistically since 2014.

If the war stalls again Moscow will be at another crossroads. Whether to wind down the fighting or escalate again by placing the homefront on a war footing and issuing a call to arms.

I don’t know which of the two Putin would or will pick. I don’t know why he has been reluctant to mobilize the Russian society for the war so far. But I do think that if he does so the nature of his regime will have to change. There can be no more of this ‘enigmatic tsar’ business where he springs a massive “special military operation” as a surprise on the Russian public. It is a very monarchical, almost pre-modern way of doing things. A situation where the King’s wars are his own private affairs that he owes nobody an explanation for. But that also nobody not in his employ is called to sacrifice for. If the Russian volunteer and conscript will be asked to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, then the payback will have to be far greater transparency from now on.

Not having placed Russia on a war footing would seem to offer the option to Putin to trade away captured territory sans Donetsk and Lugansk for some weak assurances and declare victory. However, I think that would place his rule on rather shaky ground. The economic warfare that the Empire and its vassal swarm have unleashed has preempted that possibility. Putin has already lost the economics camp. Have so little to show for everything the war triggered or sped up, and he will have lost the patriotic camp as well.

I don’t think a peace treaty with Ukraine is possible. I think Putin made sure of that when he recognized Donetsk and Lugansk. At most there could be an armistice and a frozen conflict, which in practice would mean partition. Regime change would be preferable to Moscow as it would solve a lot of legal problems, but either outcome is acceptable to the patriot camp in Russia. Especially if the captured territory includes Odessa.

That leaves the problem of governing the captured territories. Where are the pro-Russians? Has the war soured them on Russia, or are they keeping their heads down because they don’t know if the Russian presence is permanent? However, I would caution against reading too much into the “pro-Russian” label. Just because you are a Ukrainian who finds that an Iron Curtain running between Ukraine and Russia is unnatural and a travesty does not mean that you favor an Iron Curtain running halfway across Ukraine splitting you off from your brethren on that side either. Put these “pro-Russian” Ukrainians under Moscow and they will be pro-Ukrainian Russians.

Ukrainians are also the reigning world champions in protest and unarmed insurrection. They are quite ungovernable. Even for Kiev. Additionally win or lose, this war will have provided them with a very useful national myth. In launching the “special military operation” Vladimir Putin has quite likely completed their national formation. Can Russia even run southern Ukraine without having its administrative buildings permanently besieged by unruly crowds?

After the American Civil War, the US successfully reintegrated the South after over 300,000 Southerners perished in a brutal war. However, the US was reintegrating the South into a project that was visibly on the up and up. Are we so sure that Russia is on the up and up? Economically it is not. I think many are naive about what Russia’s banishment from the global division of labor will mean for its living standards and productivity. Many are also too optimistic about how eager first-tier Chinese companies will be to cooperate with the Russians.How eager were Russian companies to work with sanctioned Iran? Quite possibly the Chinese will be no more eager to risk secondary sanctions than had been the Russians. Robbed of its economic prospects Russia could go back to being the austere militaristic Sparta it was from 1945 to 1991. That however is a project that Russians (of a more naive generation) already got fed up with once. Also, this time around there isn’t even the ideology of radical egalitarianism and the cult of the ordinary working man to tie it all together. What Southerners were being drafted into after 1865 is not similar to what the Ukrainians would be inducted to.

So then is everything already lost for Russia? No, I don’t think so. Not at all. If there is enough will, if there is enough endurance then anything is possible. The Empire has given Russia the green light to swallow Ukraine if it can, the rest is up to her. Perhaps Ukraine and Ukrainians can eventually be re-assimilated into an all-Russian nation after all. However, that is a project that is going to take decades. At 69 and probably without fully realizing it, Vladimir Putin on February 24 opened an entirely new chapter in Russian history. One that he is not going to be around to see how it ends.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This interview was originally published on The Unz Review.

Special thanks to Riley Waggaman at Edward Slavsquat, Substack and his excellent post; “I am in awe of the sheer ruthlessness of Russia’s withdrawals”, Edward Slavsquat, Substack

Marko Marjanović is the editor of Anti-Empire.com.

Mike Whitney, renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace. He is Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from TUR

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

A follow up study conducted at the Seattle Children’s Hospital of children suffering myocarditis following their second dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine was published in the Journal of Pediatrics on 25 March 2022.

The study followed up 16 male children, with an average age of 15 years, 3 to 8 months after their initial diagnosis with myocarditis within a short time frame following mRNA vaccination.

The authors used Electrocardiograms and Cardiac Magnetic Resonance (CMR) to examine abnormalities in the heart such as myocardial scarring, fibrosis, strain, and reduced ventricular muscle extension which can be associated with reduced capacity to pump blood and increased risk of heart attack.

The authors found that although there was some measure of resolution after 3 – 8 months most subjects still had some persistent abnormalities.

“Although (initial) symptoms (such as chest pain, and exercise intolerance) were transient and most patients appeared to respond to treatment (solely with NSAIDS such as ibuprofen), we demonstrated persistence of abnormal findings on CMR at (3-8 months) follow up in most patients, albeit with improvement in extent of LGE (a measure of the heart’s capacity to pump efficiently).”

The authors warned:

“The presence of LGE is an indicator of cardiac injury and fibrosis and has been strongly associated with worse prognosis in patients with classical acute myocarditis. A meta-analysis including 8 studies found that presence of LGE is a predictor of all cause death, cardiovascular death, cardiac transplant, rehospitalization, recurrent acute myocarditis and requirement for mechanical circulatory support.”

For those who wish to review a detailed evaluation of this study by a medical expert, you can watch this video –

Wider implications for New Zealand

The latest Medsafe Adverse Effects Report #41 lists 12,000 people who have experienced chest discomfort and 6,000 shortness of breath (all ages) following mRNA vaccination, both classic symptoms of myocarditis. The authors of the small study reported above concluded:

“In the cohort of adolescents with COVID-19 mRNA vaccine-related myopericarditis, a large portion have persistent LGE abnormalities, raising concerns for potential longer-term effects.”

It is clear that little has been done in New Zealand to follow up those affected by adverse effects. Many reporting to EDs or GPs with chest pain, tachycardia, or shortness of breath have been told that everything will be OK without clinical assessment. In many cases these symptoms were not even registered with CARM.

Even though the Seattle study had few participants, it red flags the possibility of subsequent cardiac events. It raises the possibility that sub clinical adverse effects of mRNA vaccination may have serious longer term impacts on health. Until now these have been classified as non-serious in NZ. Persistent reports of cardiac events in the weeks and months following mRNA vaccination among ostensibly fit and healthy people of all age groups and genders, but especially men, can no longer be ignored or dismissed as unrelated. They need to be investigated.

This underlines the fact that the Pfizer mRNA vaccination roll out has been undertaken in the absence of long term follow up testing which often requires the use of sophisticated equipment such as CMR and MRI. Moreover heart disease is not the only category of serious illness whose incidence may be increased by mRNA vaccination as other recent studies suggest. Possible long term adverse effects include cancer, kidney and liver disease, and neurological conditions. A recent court-ordered document release shows Pfizer and probably our government is aware of cases.

But our government is still persisting with advertising suggesting that mRNA vaccination is safe and effective. This is not supported by research. mRNA vaccination comes with some serious risks. Moreover the government was well aware of the risks from the start. In an internal document released under OIA dated 10th February 2021 and signed by Ashley Bloomfield, Director General of Health and Chris Hipkins, Covid Response Minister discussing provisions for the vaccination of border workers, point 57 says:

“current data suggests severe adverse reactions are less than 1.1%”

Following 10 million injections, as we have had in NZ, that would amount to more than 100,000 adverse reactions (a figure not inconsistent with the grossly under reported 55,000 adverse reactions registered with CARM). Did either Ashley Bloomfield, Jacinda Ardern, or Chris Hipkins ever hint to the public or the media that this was the expected outcome? No they did not. They told the public the vaccine was completely safe and effective. They hid facts. More than this, Jacinda Ardern deleted the 33,000 reports of adverse effects that were posted on her FB page. She gaslighted the public.

Shocking deficiencies in advice given to government

In the light of the study at Seattle Children’s Hospital and other recent findings of potential long term health issues associated with mRNA vaccination, we will now look at the very recent official advice given to the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

A letter dated 13 March 2022 (attached) has been sent by the Strategic COVID-19 Public Health Advisory Group (the David Skegg committee) to The Hon Dr. Ayesha Verrall Associate Minister of Public Health. The letter is entitled Vaccine Mandates and aims to review the government’s strategy for minimising harms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, to health, society and the economy. The Committee assured the Minister: “we have been able to take a completely fresh look at the evidence.”

The signatories to the letter are Dr David Skegg an epidemiologist, Dr Maia Brewerton a clinical immunologist, allergist, and immunopathologist, Professor Philip Hill an epidemiologist and public health expert, Dr. Ella Iosua a biostatistician, Professor David Murdoch a clinical microbiologist, Dr Nikki Turner an immunologist interested in preventive child health. All are vaccine advocates.

Point 29 calls for more measures to encourage children to be vaccinated.

Point 12 of their letter asserts: “As we now deal with a large Omicron outbreak, vaccination is undoubtedly reducing the numbers of people who are becoming seriously ill and require hospital treatment.”

However current NZ data discussed in articles at the Hatchard Report reveal that the rates of hospitalisation are equivalent for vaxxed and unvaxxed.

Not a single scientific reference is included in this letter. 

Not a single reference is made to adverse effects of vaccination (currently running at 30-50 times higher than that of any previous vaccine).

Not a single reference is made to any need for informed consent prior to vaccination. The theme running throughout the letter is a need to normalise the use of vaccination mandates when they are needed in New Zealand going into the future.

The right of employers to enforce vaccine mandates is described as common.

High vaccination rates are said to reduce absenteeism and the collapse of public services and commercial businesses.

The letter admits that the protection provided by the Covid-19 vaccines wanes after a few months and says the term booster should be avoided. It recommends the needed number of mRNA vaccinations should be described as a course, and raises the imminent desirability of a fourth vaccine dose for at least some people.

Point 28 says: “For some cases, it would be appropriate for vaccination to be a condition for new employment.” This clause recommends the broad use and normalisation of vaccine requirements in New Zealand for many illnesses and in many service sectors.

Unaccountably the letter says “Encouraging vaccination in the general population was not one of the specific objectives of vaccine mandates.” It also says that vaccine hesitancy has been much less in New Zealand than other countries and that people “have been prepared to accept redeployment and redundancy”. In essence denying the obvious coercion involved in mandates.

The letter recommends that mandates continue in use for health care workers, aged and disabled caregivers, corrections workers, and border staff. There will be a review in six months time.

The overall content of the letter appears to suggest that vaccines have been the key element ensuring low Covid-19 incidence. It completely fails to discuss the obvious point that this success has been achieved through border controls and contact tracing, NOT mRNA vaccination.

Conclusion

The long term health effects of mRNA vaccination are becoming more obvious through published research findings. Meanwhile the government advisors have their heads in the sand. Their careers have been built upon vaccination and now it seems they are prepared to ignore the obvious deficiencies of mRNA vaccination to save the government.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The United State’s top commander in Europe called for establishing a permanent land and air NATO presence on its eastern front and also stepping up the alliance’s air policing and its maritime presence in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, testifying Wednesday before the House Armed Services Committee, said the alliance’s rotational policy to deter the Kremlin has “got to change” to meet the challenges posed by Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine.

Poland, the Baltic nations and members bordering the Black Sea “are very willing” to accept permanent NATO ground and air forces “from Tallinn to Sofia” and an increased naval presence “from the Arctic to the Aegean,” Wolters said.

Speaking Tuesday at an Atlantic Council forum, the presidents of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia also called for an end to rotating “trip-wire” NATO forces to defend its eastern front. They too called for permanent stations from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

“This is a pivotal moment in Europe with generational implications,” Wolters said.

As he did before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, Wolters told the House committee he expected other allies and partners to follow Germany’s lead in meeting the NATO threshold of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on national security.

This is happening “from Turkey in the southeast to Norway and Finland in the north,” he said. Germany’s, Canada’s and Finland’s decision to buy the F-35 Lighting II Strike Fighters provides the alliance with a “tremendous improvement” in aircraft capability to defend Europe, he added.

Terming Russia’s attack on Ukraine as an “unconscionable and illegal use of force,” Celeste Wallander, the Pentagon’s assistant secretary for international security affairs, said the administration is committed to bolstering Ukraine’s security through “months of sustainment.”

She told the House panel “this fight is going to extend” and the Biden administration is drawing down weapons stocks to ship to Kyiv and working with Congress to buy more weapons.

When asked, Wolters said anti-armor, anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles were Ukraine’s most pressing needs to stop and roll back the invasion, but “conditions change constantly.” Wolters said so far necessary supplies are flowing “by, with and through” Poland and Romania, but there are challenges that are being dealt with.

“This is America’s effort,” he added.

Like the directors of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the top general of Cyber Command, Wolters called the sharing of intelligence with Ukrainian counterparts and NATO allies bordering it “revolutionary” in its breadth and speed. “I’m comfortable, and I will always say that, but I want it to speed up. …It needs to continue to get faster.

Quoting Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, head of Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, Wolters said, “a great cyber offense starts with a great cyber defense.” That sentiment is at the heart of apparent Russian failures to successfully use cyber against the Ukrainians before the invasion and after.

Wallander and Wolters praised Transportation Command for delivering U.S. forces and equipment rapidly to Europe. Wolters said the command was able to move an entire armored combat brigade from Georgia to Germany in a week.

“That speed is unmatched,” he said.

Wallander said there were now 100,000 American service members either stationed or deployed to Europe or its waters. Washington is committed “to defend every inch of allied territory,” she said.

She said in addition this was the first time NATO implemented its strategic defense plan, moving large number of forces on and to the continent in response to a crisis.

Wolters added aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean Sea have played a critical role in the air defense architecture of the continent.

“We have seen NATO, EU and global partners unite to collectively push back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and efforts to undermine the rules-based international order,” Wolters said in his opening statement.

Wallander said even on the information front Moscow is suffering setbacks. “This is in contrast to 2014” when the Kremlin annexed Crimea and sent men, equipment and other aid to separatists in eastern Ukraine.

“The Russian narrative is non-plausible to the international community,” she said.

“Everything we’re doing in the information sphere needs to continue” and be strengthened, Wolters added.

Wallander said the administration is continuing to work with Slovakia and other former Warsaw Pact countries now in NATO on sending Russian-built S-300 air defense systems to Kyiv and having spare parts and additional systems shipped to Bratislava as replacements.

On sending Polish-owned MiG-29s to Ukraine, Wolters aid, “nations still continue to look at the issue.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

John Grady, a former managing editor of Navy Times, retired as director of communications for the Association of the United States Army. His reporting on national defense and national security has appeared on Breaking Defense, GovExec.com, NextGov.com, DefenseOne.com, Government Executive and USNI News.

Featured image: U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod D. Wolters, U.S. Air Forces in Europe-Air Forces Africa commander, speaks during an all-call at Incirlik Air Base, Turkey on Dec. 6, 2018. US Air Force Photo

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Vladimir Putin’s repeatedly pre-announced goals for Ukraine, and for his invasion of Ukraine, consistently contained two main points:

(1) to permanently block Ukrainian membership for Ukraine in the anti-Russian military alliance NATO; and, (2) to “denazify” Ukraine.

On 21 March, AP reported that “Zelenskyy said that Kyiv will be ready to discuss the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees.”

This milestone was the very first time that Ukraine’s President Zelensky said that there might be circumstances under which “the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists” could even possibly be negotiated by Ukraine’s government.

All Ukrainian-government leaders, after U.S. President Barack Obama perpetrated in Ukraine a violent coup which overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected and neutralist President, and installed a U.S.-controlled rabidly anti-Russian government in Ukraine, in February 2014, have said that Ukraine will never consider the status of those two former regions of Ukraine to be negotiable — that they’re both parts of Ukraine, regardless of what the residents there want (which, clearly and overwhelmingly, after that coup, has been NOT to be ruled by that regime). (It definitely was a coup — NOT an authentic revolution — that installed it.)

So: Zelensky was now saying that “after a cease-fire and steps toward providing security guarantees,” Zelensky would negotiate “the status of Crimea and the eastern Donbas region held by Russian-backed separatists.”

This was the first major change-in-position by EITHER side in the present conflict; and the fact that it was being made by Ukraine was indisputable proof that militarily Russia was winning the war, up to that moment in time. (Subsequently, however, the war-situation is far less clear; Ukraine might be winning it.)

The deeper, and continuing, deadlock is (2) denazification of Ukraine.

In my news-report on March 21, “Why The Question Of Which Side Is ‘nazi’ Blocks Any Peace Settlement”, was explained WHY that issue is so extremely unlikely to be able to be agreed-upon between Zelensky and Putin — and, therefore, why Russia will either have to accept defeat in this war, or else defeat Ukraine 100% militarily before there will be any capitulation by Ukraine in this conflict.

However, even if  Russia defeats Ukraine in this war, Russia’s own national-security situation (which is the ultimate reason that can justify ANY nation’s participation in any war) will be substantially reduced by the war, for the following reasons:

On March 14th, Chris Hedges very realistically summed up the war-situation (both present and future) as follows:

The decision [by Biden) to destroy the Russian economy, to turn the Ukrainian war into a quagmire for Russia and topple the regime of Vladimir Putin will open a Pandora’s box of evils. Massive social engineering — look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya or Vietnam — has its own centrifugal force. It destroys those who play God.

The Ukrainian war has silenced the last vestiges of the Left. Nearly everyone has giddily signed on for the great crusade against the latest embodiment of evil, Vladimir Putin, who, like all our enemies, has become the new Hitler.

The United States will give $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, with the Biden administration authorizing an additional $200 million in military assistance. The 5,000-strong EU rapid deployment force, the recruitment of all Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, into NATO, the reconfiguration of former Soviet bloc militaries to NATO weapons and technology have all been fast tracked.

Germany, for the first time since World War II, is massively rearming. It has lifted its ban on exporting weapons. Its new military budget is twice the amount of the old budget, with promises to raise the budget to more than 2 percent of GDP, which would move its military from the seventh largest in the world to the third, behind China and the United States.

NATO battlegroups are being doubled in size in the Baltic states to more than 6,000 troops. Battlegroups will be sent to Romania and Slovakia. Washington will double the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland to 9,000. Sweden and Finland are considering dropping their neutral status to integrate with NATO.

This is a recipe for global war.

On April 2nd, Russia’s RT bannered “Finland can join NATO without referendum – president”, and reported:

The president of Finland, which borders Russia, has claimed that the widespread support for NATO membership expressed in recent opinion polls could pave the way for joining the US-led military bloc without a referendum. The attitude of the Finns towards NATO membership took a U-turn following Moscow’s attack on Ukraine. …

Support for NATO membership reached a record-high 62% in Finland this month, according to a poll by Yle. A poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat and released this week shows that 61% of Finns want their country to join the bloc.

This indicates a complete reversal of public opinion after Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine – according to Yle, previous polls showed that Finns were against NATO membership.

Putin’s goal to block Ukrainian membership for Ukraine was part of his broader goal to shrink NATO (its membership) by reversing NATO’s inclusion of the half of its member-countries that were added after 1991, which was when the Cold War ended on the Soviet Union’s side but secretly continued on the American side, and NATO therefore has expanded (even after the supposed end of the Cold War on — also —America’s side) to include in NATO virtually all European countries right up to Russia’s western border. (This produces a Cuban-Missile-Crisis-in-reverse crisis now, but one which will be far longer and more drawn-out.)

On April 3rd, NATO invited not only Finland but also Sweden (both being officially neutral during the Cold War till now) to become members.

Consequently: Russia’s precipitate invasion of Ukraine, which was intended by Putin to shrink NATO, might instead lead to further expansion of NATO — even if  Russia will win the war in Ukraine.

This is not, however, to say that Putin made the wrong decision to invade Ukraine, but that he did it at the wrong time. Biden had forced him to invade in order for Putin to prevent American nuclear missiles from ultimately becoming installed into Ukraine just a 5-minute flight-time away from nuking Moscow and thereby (in post-2006 U.S. strategic thinking) able to ‘win’ a U.S.-planned World War III by blitz-invading Russia so fast as to disable Russia’s entire retaliatory capability.

I had therefore expected Putin to invade Ukraine, but not before Zelensky would finally unleash the 60,000 Ukrainian troops on the Ukraine-Donbass contact-line (border) for them to race into its former Donbass region in order to slaughter its people (who had voted over 90% for the democratically elected and internationally neutralist Ukrainian President whom Obama had overthrown) and to retake its land — restore it to Ukraine. If Putin had done that (waited, in order NOT to have started this war), then though many of the residents in Donbass would have been killed, and the war there would have been devastating, Russia would have been able to respond immediately and send its troops in within no more than a week to conquer and destroy almost all of those 60,000 invading Ukrainian troops (plus their civilian hostages or “human shields” in Donbass), and the international “optics” of the situation would then have been vastly less bad for Russia than has resulted from Russia’s having invaded first — invaded “preemptively.” Perhaps, in that situation, NATO’s own future would be its shrinkage, instead of (as now seems to be not only possible but even likely) its accelerated expansion. (In addition, the international image then of Zelensky would now be vastly worse, because he would have been the first to invade.)

Consequently, Putin invaded at the wrong time.

He clearly was scared by what Biden and NATO were doing in this matter, by their backing Ukraine all the way, rushing weapons into Ukraine — continuing the Obama-installed coup-regime of Ukraine as being an American vassal-nation. On December 9th of 2021, Reuters headlined “Russia keeps tensions high over Ukraine” and (styled as a news-report no commentary) said “Moscow has an interest in keeping tensions high.” On December 15th they bannered “Russia hands proposals to U.S. on security guarantees”, which were demands (Putin’s “red lines”), not ‘proposals’.

On December 17th IBT bannered “EU threatens Russia sanctions as NATO backs Ukraine”, and reported that NATO and almost all of the EU rejected Russia’s demands. NATO’s chief emphasized Russia would have no say, whatsoever, on whether or not Ukraine becomes a NATO member. RT headlined December 20th, “Russia promises ‘military response’ to any further NATO expansion.” Then, on the 26th, it was a “‘life-and-death’ issue for Russia”. (It was — and is — an “existential” issue, as viewed by the Russian people, and has been referred-to as such by Putin.)

However, Biden himself has likewise vastly miscalculated in this matter, because of reasons that were well-described by Alasdaire Macleod in his March 31st article “Edging Towards A Gold Standard”. The response by Biden (and by the leaders of all of America’s vassal-nations) to impose upon Russia the sanctions that now have been imposed, will harm the entire world’s economy — not ONLY Russia’s — and could very well turn out to benefit greatly Russia’s economy; but, definitely, NOT the economies of the nations that are cooperating with those sanctions.

On the other hand, if the allegations that were published in CNN’s April 3rd “Bodies of ‘executed people’ strewn across street in Bucha as Ukraine accuses Russia of war crimes” turn out to be true, then Putin’s own reputation will be so negatively affected that he will lose this global conflict personally, even if Russia itself turns out to have won it. If that article is true, then he might even end up being prosecuted as an international war-criminal (as George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden — and Ukraine’s post-coup leaders Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko, and Zelensky — definitely ought to be, but never will be).

Read updates:

Update: How Both Putin and Biden Bungled in Ukraine. Analysis of the Bucha Tragedy

By Eric Zuesse, April 06, 2022

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

One of America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) is warning pregnant women that the COVID jab rollout has coincided with a nearly 2,000 percent increase in fetal deaths, as compared to the rate during previous vaccines.

In a “Frontline Flash” segment entitled “Huge Preborn Death Spike” released Monday, Dr. Peterson Pierre presented statistics showing that the rate of fetal death per vaccine administered in the U.S. had, in fact, massively increased since the COVID shots were made available.

Pierre noted that according to the CDC, since the COVID shot rollout, there have been 550,000,000 shots administered, and 3,725 fetal deaths. This means, he pointed out, that for every 147,651 shots, there has been one fetal death.

He contrasted this with statistics from the period between 2006 and 2019. During this time, there were reportedly “4 billion shots administered,” and “1,369 fetal deaths, which equals to” one fetal death for about every 3 million shots.

“So if you do the math, you realize that since the COVID shots have been available, there’s been a 1,925 percent increase in fetal deaths,” he continued.

Pierre then urged expecting mothers to take heed of these numbers, for the sake of their children.

“Now, expecting moms, it doesn’t matter what the FDA or the CDC says. It doesn’t even matter what your doctor says,” he went on. “Because in spite of this data, the recommendation to get [COVID] shots has not changed.”

“You need to look out for your own kids. You are their protector. You have a lot to think about. That decision rests with you, not with anyone else.”

A stunning 23 of 32 pregnancies during which mothers received a Pfizer COVID shot resulted in “spontaneous abortions” (miscarriages), according to Pfizer and the FDA’s forced response to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request (32 is the number of pregnancies with known outcomes according to reports given to Pfizer), as was reported last year.

Regarding the effect of the COVID shots on “fertility problems,” the CDC has acknowledged that “results from ongoing long-term studies are not yet available.”

Medical experts have warned expecting mothers against receiving the mRNA shots, including vaccine expert Pamela Acker, and former Pfizer vice president Dr. Michael Yeadon, who told LifeSite that women of childbearing age, especially pregnant and nursing women, should entirely reject the COVID-19 gene therapy vaccines.

“You never ever give inadequately tested medicines, medicinal products, to a pregnant woman,” he stated.

Despite all this evidence of the danger the mRNA shot poses to the unborn, CDC guidelines currently recommend that “people aged 18-49 years with certain medical conditions, including pregnancy … may receive” an RNA COVID-19 shots, including a third booster dose, “based on their individual benefits and risks.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Michael Lynk is the UN Special Rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied after the 1967 nakba.  He is Associate Professor of Law at Western University in London, Ontario, where he teaches labour law, constitutional law and human rights law.[1]  His report, “Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert”, was published recently.[2] In the report he stated,

“a political regime which so intentionally and clearly prioritizes fundamental political, legal and social rights to one group over another within the same geographic unit on the basis of one’s racial-national-ethnic identity satisfies the international legal definition of apartheid.”

The report identifies the many facets of the apartheid system, ranging from the “wall”, checkpoints, an over riding military presence through to “to arbitrary and extra-judicial killings, torture, the denial of fundamental rights, an abysmal rate of child deaths, collective punishment, an abusive military court system, periods of intensive Israeli military violence in Gaza and home demolitions.” Gaza is identified appropriately as an “open air prison”.

The perspective of most Canadians supports this idea as seen through a series of polls conducted through Independent Jewish Voices (IJV – Canada) and Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.[3] In contrast to the opinions of ‘regular’ Canadians, the main political parties and their leaders do not acknowledge the apartheid status as indicated by their own native son, and by several international human rights groups.

All the mainstream political parties in Canada still support the defunct two state solution, the result of the secret negotiations of the Oslo Peace Process which ultimately resulted in the creation of a quisling Palestine Authority under Abbas and a ‘process’ leading towards more and more settlements on Palestinian land.  The socialist NDP come closest to recognizing Palestinian concerns as NDP Foreign Affairs critic Jack Harris said of Israel’s recent Sheikh Jarrah demolitions and the subsequent protests,

“Escalating violence in East Jerusalem as a result of the ongoing illegal occupation is deeply troubling. The demolitions, forced removal of Palestinians from their homes, and blocking access to popular gathering spots must end. Israel needs to put a stop to the illegal evictions and de-escalate, and Canada must increase efforts to seek a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict.” [4]

The only follow through was a call to limit arms sales to Israel, a small step in the right direction but still wholly insufficient to change the apartheid system.

The other political parties continue to use the language of the mainstream media, ranging from the mild verb ‘clash’ to describe the overwhelming force of the Israeli military, to the extreme use of the old reliable terrorist designation for a people defending not just their native land, but their very homes.   There are several reasons these stale views remain embedded in the Canadian political landscape at the top levels.

One of the simplest reasons is that when it comes to elections, most Canadians are concerned only with short term domestic items that have been sensationalized by one party against another, the most common being as usual the economy – and within that – jobs.  The main parties have their set lines for the few questions on foreign policy, most of which support the agenda of NATO, the Five Eyes, and all aspects of U.S. foreign policy.

The majority of debate concerns the economy, even having environmental concerns, social concerns, and foreign wars all subsumed under that category.   The average voter is led by the media to express their concerns about jobs and wages over any other category – although the recent “truck convoy” – that was not supported by a clear majority of Canadians – may bring false tirades about “freedom” to the next election.

Speaking of which, the NDP very recently signed an agreement with the minority Liberal government of Justin Trudeau to not allow a non-confidence motion  to succeed in parliament, nor to bring one forward for the next three years.  As they usually do the Liberals are copying some of the NDP’s easier social policies while the NDP support the government in order to engage those policies – but they do not extend to any benefits for foreign policy concerning the apartheid nature of Israel and the subjugation of the Palestinian people.

Other aspects, mostly unseen by the average voter, are issues relating to power and control.  Canada and Israel have economic and military/security agreements with Canada being on the receiving end of Israel’s field tested methodology and materials.  The domestic Jewish vote is not large on a percentage basis, but has power financially and more importantly emotionally with the familiar canard about calling out anti-semitism anytime anyone criticizes Israel.

The IHRA definition of anti-semitism, readily criticized, has been formally adopted by the Canadian federal government in a non-binding vote.  Many larger city centers and provinces have not adopted the definition (Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Toronto) along with many  universities.

While the majority of Canadians want to have stronger actions taken against Israel, including tasking them with war crimes (see note 3), the Canadian political hierarchy remains stuck in its decades old media wash about “terrorists” versus “civilization” while the real conflict is about a colonial settler society (of which Canada’s settlement is a prime example) militarily dominating an indigenous population within an apartheid regime.

Canada’s UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk has it right.  It is about time the Canadian government gets it right, on side with Lynk and the majority of Canadians.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Jim Miles is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] see: https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-palestine

[2]  https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/03/israels-55-year-occupation-palestinian-territory-apartheid-un-human-rights

[3] https://www.ijvcanada.org/survey2020-3/ and https://www.cjpme.org/survey2020

[4] https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/ndp-takes-major-turn-by-condemning-israeli-attacks-on-palestine

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) draft guidance for human gene therapy products.

Entitled “Human Gene Therapy Products Incorporating Human Genome Editing; Draft Guidance for Industry,” the document provides recommendations to sponsors developing human gene therapy products incorporating genome editing of human somatic cells.

Medical professional and veteran pharmaceutical drug development expert Dr. Jane Ruby told host Stew Peters during a recent episode of “The Stew Peters Show” that the FDA has been actually creating guidance documents since 2015 and that these documents tell pharmaceutical companies how they want them to run studies and look at safety and efficacy in gene editing or human genome editing.

Genome editing is an area of research seeking to modify genes of living organisms to improve the understanding of gene function and develop ways to use it to treat genetic or acquired diseases.

“And you know this is why I want to reiterate that it’s so incredibly important to stop calling it a vaccine. You’ve heard Dr. David Martin say you’re using the words of the criminals. By continuing to call it a vaccine, you’re really saying you don’t have to use as many safety studies, you don’t have to do as much follow up [when developing a vaccine]. You’re putting them off the hook,” said Ruby.

At least one Big Pharma executive has already admitted that the mRNA vaccines are actually a form of gene therapy. It may not be long before federal agencies like the HHS and the FDA do the same.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are really for gene editing

The host of “Live with Dr. Jane Ruby” and “The Dr. Jane Ruby Show” pointed out that the mRNA vaccines are really for gene editing and these were seen in the vials that had been analyzed. She added that Big Pharma companies like Moderna and Pfizer have also talked with the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is the equivalent of the FDA, to let them live with just 50 percent of the vials containing mRNA and the rest as a sort of leeway that they can do anything they want.

Peters noted that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) shots can’t be called vaccines because they don’t protect people or provide immunity from anything. He added that the COVID-19 shots have negative efficacy and that you are more likely to get sick after the injection.

“They are also not experimental shots. They’re not experimenting with anything. They experimented with this stuff way back when they develop this stuff. These are not experimental. This is a planned bioweapon,” Peters explained.

Peters added that the so called adverse events or side effects are actually intended and planned consequences.

“If you let them keep calling it a vaccine and you’re not calling it gene editing, human genome editing, they’re getting away with not looking at safety and efficacy,” stressed Ruby, who added that the FDA itself has laid out certain parameters in the new guidance document.

CRISPR snips out portion of human gene

Ruby said gene editing technology like CRISPR is chemically snipping out a portion of the God-given human genes in a line and a double strand of DNA to insert something else. She warned that a person has no idea what is going to happen to their body over the years when they undergo gene editing. (Related: Dr. David Martin tells Clay Clark: mRNA vaccines are gene therapy designed to harm and enslave humanity – Brighteon.TV)

She added that Moderna and Pfizer are now actively seeking the approval for emergency use authorization of mRNA jabs for six-month-old babies.

It’s all about control, according to Ruby.

“That’s why they want you to keep taking it. It’s a priming mission. The more graphene you get into your body, the more you are filled with what is going to potentially be self assembling circuitry for the ability to control functions in your body from an external source. And I’m not getting conspiracy theories. I’m actually basing this on a whole host of evidence documents. It’s more than just patents. This is known information,” Ruby explained.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

This story may read almost as a joke. But it’s the truth.

On March 20, Reuter reports that Washington has asked Turkey, one of the NATO Alliance’s most important member, mostly for her strategic location, to transfer to Ukraine their Russian top of the line and cutting edge S-400 Triumph Air Defense System (ADS).

The US and NATO wanted Ukraine be equipped with efficient anti-aircraft missiles, but were unwilling – or afraid? – to supply Ukraine with the US Patriot system. Maybe because they did not want to get directly “seriously” involved in the war, or more likely, they were afraid that their Patriot system could end up in the hand of the Russian military.

So what?

The Russian S-400 is categorized by experts as “superior to the American Patriot”.

The S-400 has a 4,800 km/h target speed and can reach enemy aircraft, ballistic missiles and AWACS planes at 400 km and 250 km; the medium-range 120 km, and the short-range 40 km. AWACS stands for Airborne Warning And Control System. It is a mobile, long-range radar surveillance and control center for air defense.

Compare this with the US-made Lockheed Martin Patriot system which has an operational range of 40 km and can intercept targets at altitudes of up to 24.2 km whereas interceptors from THAAD system have an operational range of more than 200 km and can hit the targets at altitudes of up to 150 km.

Due to its relatively short-range target reach, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has successfully demonstrated the interoperability of two key US ADS — Patriot and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

Even the combination of the two is considerably inferior to Russia’s S-400.

So, why would Washington offer Turkey an inferior system to give up its Russian S-400?

Turkey has already been “sanctioned” for having purchased a Russian ADS, being a NATO member. It’s the “sanctions game” all over again. Turkey, like most countries, is getting seriously tired of this desperate US sanctioning for every country that refuses to follow Washington’s tune. But Turkey said NO. Period.

Washington has repeatedly affirmed it won’t reverse any of these “sanctions” until Ankara completely removes all S-400s and their components from Turkish soil. But Turkey stands solid.

The following timeline presents the main developments on the issue over the past year and their impact on Turkey’s relations with the United States, its NATO ally.

July 25, 2017 – President Tayyip Erdogan says Turkey has made progress in plans to procure the [Russian] S-400 missile defense system and signatures have been signed.

Dec 12, 2017 – Russia has offered Turkey partial financing for Ankara’s purchase of their ADS, Interfax news agency reports, citing a Russian presidential aide.

Dec 27, 2017 – The head of Russia’s Rostec corporation, Sergei Chemzov, says the S-400 contract is worth $2.5 billion, according to Kommersant daily.

Dec 29, 2017 – Turkey and Russia have signed an accord regarding supply of the systems, CNN Turk and other media said.

June 19, 2018 – A U.S. Senate committee passes a spending bill including a provision to block Turkey’s purchase of Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter jets unless it drops the plan to buy the S-400s.

March 28, 2019 – U.S. Senators introduce a bipartisan bill to prohibit the transfer of F-35 fighter aircraft to Turkey until the U.S. government certifies that Ankara will not take delivery of the S-400s.

April 3, 2019 – Turkey proposes to the United States to form a working group to determine that the S-400s do not pose a threat to U.S. or NATO military equipment.

June 7, 2019 – The United States decides to stop accepting any additional Turkish pilots to train on F-35 fighter jets.

End of story?

Not quite, as the US, desperate to win this argument, keeps pushing Turkey in one way or another to get rid of the S-400 Air Defense System and purchase instead the considerably inferior Patriot system.

But Turkey keeps saying nyet.  See this Forbes report.

*

It is laughable how Washington cannot accept defeat, even if there is no chance to reverse Turkey’s opinion – and knowing that Turkey is a crucial, maybe the most crucial NATO member.

Already in 2017, in an action of mistrust, NATO has removed all nuclear power heads from Turkish soil and transferred most of them to Italy, making Italy thereby a de facto nuclear power. NATO countries may use their nuclear war heads on their soil in cases of self-defense.

Turkey is playing both cards: a crucial NATO member, and an ally of Russia. Erdogan has always an eye to the east and maybe the other one to the west, attempting to say “good-bye”- yet still not quite.

What is interesting and yes, laughable is that Washington even tries to convince Turkey to trade her way superior Russian S-400 system against the US Patriot, which would be deployed to Defend Ukraine against Russia:

In recent weeks several proposals have been made to arm Ukraine with Russian-built military hardware from the arsenals of NATO member states.

…

Now, American officials are proposing that NATO member Turkey could potentially arm Ukraine with the much more sophisticated Russian-built S-400 missiles it took delivery of in 2019.

“It is the very system, made by Russia, that American officials punished Turkey — a NATO ally — for buying from Moscow several years ago,” the New York Times noted. “Now American diplomats see a way to pull Turkey away from its dance with Russia — and give the Ukrainians one of the most powerful, long-range antiaircraft systems in existence.”

What the US media fails to address: How effective (from a strategic standpoint) would a Russian produced S-400 Air Defense system be in “defending Ukraine against Russia”??

Why on earth would Ukraine want a Russian air-defense system, which automatically communicates with its producer, so whatever move the Ukraine military would attempt to make with an S-400 system, Russia would immediately know about it?

India has also purchased the Russian S-400 in November 2021. They call it a “Game Changer.” They are excited about their acquisition, stationing it in the west of the country. Is it there that they need most air defense power? See this 5-min video.

Why would the US make a foregone futile attempt to convince Turkey to ship their S-400 system to Ukraine, and that in return for lifting US sanctions and for having to purchase the inferior US Patriot air defense system? It’s a mystery, other than the US desperation – one of a sinking ship – is getting so great, that the don’t know any more what they are doing.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

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

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Britain is the only country to have imposed sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank, through which payments for Russian natural gas are made. It is thus unable to pay for Russian gas after President Putin’s decree that this commodity must be paid for in rubles.

Foreign-currency accounts on the Moscow exchange for Gazprom customers were opened where currencies can be converted into rubles, but Britain has opted out of this arrangement. Europe has meanwhile not been able to present a united front regarding the US-imposed sanctions regime against Russia. Some countries will be hit harder than others. Hungary has already signalled its intention to ignore sanctions.

Slovakia, Bulgaria and Moldova have now agreed to pay in rubles while Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have rejected payments in Russian currency. Other countries are still trying to arrange deliveries.

Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, reminded the media of Britain’s hardline position:

“London wants to be the leader of everything anti-Russian. It even wants to be ahead of Washington! That’s the cost!”

On March 31, Putin signed a decree requiring gas buyers from “unfriendly countries” to open special ruble and foreign currency accounts with Gazprombank to pay for gas supplies.

Researchers at Goldman Sachs have calculated that US exports of LNG are already at capacity and therefore US energy supplies would not make up for the shortfall. Moreover, the EU does not yet have the infrastructure to receive larger volumes of LNG imports.

This weekend, the Russian gas giant officially halted all deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, critical to European energy supplies.

The cost of gas in the UK increased dramatically in just a month. It shot up by 81 percent at once, while electricity prices jumped by 36 percent. “Millions of Britons were plunged into poverty overnight,” according to Bloomberg as electricity prices hit a record on Friday.

The Governor of the Central Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, called it “a truly historic shock to the real income of the British, and more severe than it was in the 1970s” and the head of the National Energy Action (NEA) charitable organization, agreed with him, describing it “as the biggest price shock of our time”.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

In a  speech to a meeting on socioeconomic support for the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on March 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin succinctly elucidated the salient reasons for pre-emptively mounting a military intervention in Ukraine in order to forestall NATO’s encroachment upon Russia’s security interests, and cited the genocide of ethnic Russians by ultra-nationalists as a principal reason for invading Ukraine.

“We are meeting in a complicated period as our Armed Forces are conducting a special military operation in Ukraine and Donbass. I would like to remind you that at the beginning, on the morning of February 24, I publicly announced the reasons for and the main goal of Russia’s actions.

“It is to help our people in Donbass, who have been subjected to real genocide for nearly eight years in the most barbarous ways, that is, through blockade, large-scale punitive operations, terrorist attacks and constant artillery raids. Their only guilt was that they demanded basic human rights: to live according to their forefathers’ laws and traditions, to speak their native Russian language, and to bring up their children as they want.

“Kiev was not just preparing for war, for aggression against Russia – it was conducting it … Hostilities in Donbass and the shelling of peaceful residential areas have continued all these years. Almost 14,000 civilians, including children have been killed over this time … Clearly, Kiev’s Western patrons are just pushing them to continue the bloodshed. They incessantly supply Kiev with weapons and intelligence, as well as other types of assistance, including military advisers and mercenaries.”

In the 2001 census, nearly a third of Ukraine’s over 40 million population registered Russian as their first language. In fact, Russian speakers constitute a majority in urban areas of industrialized eastern Ukraine and socio-culturally identify with Russia. Ukrainian speakers are mainly found in sparsely populated western Ukraine and in rural areas of east Ukraine.

Ethnic Russians constituted the social and political elite of Ukraine in the heyday of the Soviet Empire, but were reduced to second-class citizens following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the nineties. The state-sponsored persecution of ethnic Russians intensified across Ukraine following the colored revolution in January 2005, dubbed the Orange Revolution, orchestrated by the Western powers and their Ukrainian collaborators, subversively toppling the democratically elected president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

But the real ethnic cleansing of Russians in Ukraine began after the 2014 Maidan coup, once again ousting pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and NATO powers initiated an eight-year war of attrition against Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region by nurturing the Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, officially part of the National Guard of Ukraine, that has been widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitary force connected with foreign white supremacist organizations.

Azov Battalion was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group. As a battalion, the group fought on the frontlines against pro-Russia separatists in Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine.

A few months after recapturing the strategic port city of Mariupol from the Russia-backed separatists, the unit was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014, and exacted high praise from then-President Petro Poroshenko. “These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”

The unit was led by Andriy Biletsky, who served as the leader of both the Patriot of Ukraine (founded in 2005) and the SNA (founded in 2008). In 2010, Biletsky said Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races].” Biletsky was elected to parliament in 2014. He left Azov as elected officials cannot be in the military or police force. He remained an MP until 2019.

These forces were privately funded by oligarchs – the most known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy magnate billionaire and then-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region. In addition to Azov, Kolomoisky funded other volunteer battalions such as the Dnipro 1 and 2, Aidar and Donbas units.

The Mint Press News recently reported:

“Zelensky’s presidential bid in 2019, which saw him win 73% of the vote, was successful on the basis that he was running in order to combat corruption and create peace in the country but, as the leaked documents known as the Pandora Papers revealed, he himself was storing funds in offshore bank accounts. Zelenskyy’s campaign was at the time boosted and bankrolled by Israeli-Ukrainian billionaire Igor Kolomoisky – who was himself accused of stealing $5.5 billion from his own bank.

“Muslims seem to be a major issue for the Azov Battalion. The Islamophobia present not only in Azov, but also in the National Guard of Ukraine, came through strongly on social media as the official National Guard site glorified the Azov Battalion as they dipped their bullets in pig fat. The video was directed at Muslim soldiers from Chechnya who are fighting on the side of Russia and were described as orcs by the National Guard on Twitter.”

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced they will not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections. The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon, and the CIA initiated the clandestine program to nurture ultra-nationalist militias in east Ukraine. In October 2019, 40 members of the US Congress signed a letter unsuccessfully calling for the US State Department to designate Azov as a “foreign terrorist organization” (FTO).

In Feb. 2019, the Nation Magazine published a detailed think piece: “Neo-Nazis and the Far Right are on the March in Ukraine,” elaborating Ukraine’s far-right militant groups’ xenophobic and white supremacist political ideology.

“Then-Speaker of Parliament Andriy Parubiy cofounded and led two neo-Nazi organizations: the Social-National Party of Ukraine (later renamed Svoboda), and Patriot of Ukraine, whose members would eventually form the core of Azov.

“Even more disturbing is the far right’s penetration of law enforcement. Shortly after the Maidan coup in 2014, the US equipped and trained the newly founded National Police, in what was intended to be a hallmark program buttressing Ukrainian democracy. The deputy minister of the Interior—which controls the National Police—is Vadim Troyan, a veteran of Azov and Patriot of Ukraine.

“In 2015, the Ukrainian parliament passed legislation making two WWII paramilitaries—the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)—heroes of Ukraine, and made it a criminal offense to deny their heroism. The OUN had collaborated with the Nazis and participated in the Holocaust, while the UPA slaughtered thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles on their own volition.”

Despite all the evidence of genocide and ethnic cleansing of Russians by the neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine to the contrary, the establishment media is abuzz with reports of alleged genocide of Ukrainians by the withdrawing Russian forces in the outskirts of the capital. Hundreds of dead bodies “buried in mass graves” were found in Bucha, a town 37 km (23 miles) northwest of Kyiv, allegedly massacred by the Chechen contingent of the Russian forces occupying the area.

Denying the spurious and unsubstantiated allegations of purported war crimes and genocide by Russian troops, Russia’s chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Russian Investigative Committee, ordered a probe be opened on the basis that Ukraine had insidiously spread “deliberately false information” in order to malign Russia’s month-long military campaign in Ukraine.

In addition, Russia has requested a United Nations Security Council meeting on April 4 over purported war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine’s Bucha, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Dmitry Polyanskiy said on Sunday.

“In light of the Ukrainian radicals’ provocation in Bucha, Russia has requested a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Monday, April 4,” he wrote on his Telegram channel. “We will unmask Ukrainian provocateurs and their Western patrons.”

The Russian defense ministry said earlier on Sunday that all Russian troops had left the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region as far back as March 30, while the “evidence of crimes” surfaced four days later, when Ukrainian security forces and allied ultra-nationalist militias arrived in the city.

Baselessly leveling spurious accusations of alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing without a shred of evidence in order to vilify regional and global adversaries has become a preferred tool in the psyops’ arsenal of the corporate media in the recent years.

Following the rise of China as a major economic power in the 21^st century, the mainstream media was similarly tasked by the security establishments to demonize the global rival by blowing out of proportions the sheer fabrication of alleged “genocide and ethnic cleansing” of Uyghur Muslim’s in China’s western Xinjiang province in order to drive a wedge between the rising industrial power and the energy-rich Islamic World.

Unlike several hapless Islamic countries in the Middle East, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, that went through US military occupation or interventions through regional proxies and where countless large-scale massacres have taken place creating millions of refugees, no such massacre or forced displacement of ethnic Uyghurs has ever been recorded in China’s Xinjiang, not even by the corporate media, the foremost purveyor of presumed Uyghur persecution in China.

After the deadly Urumqi riots in July 2009 between the Han and Uyghur ethnic groups in Xinjiang’s provincial capital in which scores of rioters on both sides were killed, China went through a series of violent terror attacks that rocked Xinjiang and the rest of China in the following years.

Dozens of civilians were hacked to death at a busy train station in China’s south. A Uyghur drove a car into crowds at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Forty-three died when militants threw bombs from two sports utility vehicles plowing through a busy market street in Urumqi. When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Xinjiang in 2014, bombs tore through an Urumqi train station, killing three and injuring 79.

After experiencing the spate of terror attacks, Chinese authorities initiated de-radicalization programs in Xinjiang in which Uyghurs were encouraged to participate, as in the Western countries where Muslim immigrants were kept under surveillance and suspects with history of violent crimes were asked to attend de-radicalization programs in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack when anti-Muslim paranoia was at the peak.

Most of the aforementioned terror attacks in China were claimed by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a fanatical transnational terrorist organization of Uyghurs that has taken part in jihadist insurgencies as far away as Afghanistan and Syria. The militant group has been declared a proscribed terrorist outfit by China, the United Nations and many regional countries, though the Trump administration removed its terrorist designation in 2020.

Much like the Uyghur diaspora in the Western countries being patronized by the security agencies and the corporate media to malign a global rival, there is another clandestine organization of Chinese dissidents based in the US that until the November 2020 presidential election enjoyed the protection of the US deep state and was used as a trump card to mount psychological warfare against the Chinese government.

Falun Gong was founded by its leader Li Hongzhi in China in the early 1990s. Today, Falun Gong maintains an informal headquarters, Dragon Springs, a 400-acre compound in upstate New York, located near the current residence of Li Hongzhi. Falun Gong’s performance arts extension, Shen Yun, and two closely connected schools, Fei Tian College and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, also operate in and around Dragon Springs.

Since 1998, Li Hongzhi has settled as a permanent resident in the United States and maintains high-level contacts not only in the governments of the US and China but also enjoys immense political clout among Chinese diaspora across the world, thanks to the deep pockets of several billionaire Chinese oligarchs that Falun Gong boasts in its ranks, who generously contribute to finance the clandestine organization’s anti-China propaganda operations.

Forget about criticizing the secretive society, up until the elections it wasn’t even permitted to mention the name of Falun Gong on mainstream news outlets. It was simply described as “a religious and spiritual movement” that teaches “meditation techniques” to its members in all the information available in the public domain about the objectives and activities of the religio-political cult.

But in an explosive article for the New York Times in October 2020 to dispel a flurry of reports about the “Chinagate scandal” implicating the Biden campaign in the run-up to the US presidential election, Kevin Roose blew the lid off on the subversive organization and its media outlet, the Epoch Times, widely followed by Trump supporters, and alleged:

“For years, The Epoch Times was a small, low-budget newspaper with an anti-China slant that was handed out free on New York street corners. But in 2016 and 2017, the paper made two changes that transformed it into one of the country’s most powerful digital publishers.

“The changes also paved the way for the publication, which is affiliated with the secretive and relatively obscure Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong, to become a leading purveyor of right-wing misinformation.

“First, it embraced President Trump, treating him as an ally in Falun Gong’s scorched-earth fight against China’s ruling Communist Party, which banned the group two decades ago and has persecuted its members ever since. Its relatively staid coverage of U.S. politics became more partisan, with more articles explicitly supporting Mr. Trump and criticizing his opponents.

“As the 2016 election neared, reporters noticed that the paper’s political coverage took on a more partisan tone. ‘They seemed to have this almost messianic way of viewing Trump as the anti-communist leader who would bring about the end of the Chinese Communist Party,’ Steve Klett, who covered the 2016 campaign for the paper, said.

“Where the paper’s money comes from is something of a mystery. Former employees said they had been told that The Epoch Times was financed by a combination of subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners.

“Steve Bannon, the former chief strategist of the White House, is among those who have noticed The Epoch Times’s deep pockets. Last year, he produced a documentary about China with NTD. When he talked with the outlet about other projects, he said, money never seemed to be an issue. ‘I’d give them a number,’ Mr. Bannon said. ‘And they’d come back and say, We’re good for that number.’”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

Featured image: Destroyed car in Bucha with a dead person inside, 2 April 2022 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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).

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The World Health Organization (WHO) has been pushing for a fourth dose of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine, but its reports have not been fully outright about the possible side effects that could affect people in the long term. Buried deep in its latest papers, the WHO said it is now looking into reports of hearing problems as an adverse effect of the shots.

The organization has reported 367 cases of tinnitus among those who have received at least one shot of the COVID-19 vaccine, and the condition is characterized by ringing in the ears, usually within days after the vaccine is administered to the patient.

Those who have experienced this side effect ranged in age from 19 to 91 and from 27 different countries, including Italy, the United States and the United Kingdom. Almost 75 percent of these reports came from women.

In addition to the tinnitus cases, the WHO also reported 164 individuals who have new hearing loss after receiving the vaccines as of February 22.

In a newsletter, the WHO said: “A recent signal detection activity at the Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) identified hearing loss (including sudden cases) and tinnitus following COVID-19 vaccination as a preliminary signal to be further assessed.” Other symptoms the patients experienced included headache, dizziness and nausea.

Some patients were able to recover quickly, but there are also others who had to undergo “steroid treatment” to address the side effects. Moreover, multiple patients described their tinnitus after vaccination as “unrelenting and life-altering” that could also last for months.

The WHO said it needs to continue monitoring reports of these side effects to make a final determination on the steps to address them further. In its newsletter, it mentioned that awareness of the possible link may help healthcare professionals and those vaccinated to monitor symptoms and seek care.

“As there is still only limited data in the literature providing evidence for this link, further monitoring is required,” the WHO stated, which came after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the fourth dose of Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. (Related: Fauci claims fourth COVID dose is “entirely conceivable.”)

FDA approves fourth vaccine dose

The FDA has already authorized a second booster shot for both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines for individuals over 50, bypassing its own advisory committee – the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee – on the matter. According to CNBC, the move came just two weeks after Pfizer and Moderna initially requested authorization for the fourth shot.

The vaccines are meant to go along with the original two doses and the first booster shot, which means that people who have had the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines will have to be inoculated for the fourth time.

Additionally, the FDA also authorized Pfizer boosters for those aged 12 and up and with compromised immune systems. A second Moderna booster is also required for those ages 18 and up with a compromised immune system.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also quickly signed off on the decision, allowing those that are eligible for a new round of boosters. Additionally, the CDC recommended that those who received two doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine get third shots using Pfizer or Moderna.

However, those who received the J&J vaccine with the second shot of Pfizer or Moderna are not yet eligible for a third dose unless they are over 50 or have compromised immune systems. All of the new boosters are also to be administered at least four months after their last shot.

Dr. Peter Marks, head of the FDA office responsible for vaccine safety and efficacy, said the drug regulator did not call for an advisory meeting due to the decision being “relatively straightforward.”

“This fourth booster dose is something that evidence that we have now from Israel suggests that by getting this, one can reduce the risk of hospitalization and death in this population of older individuals,” he said during a call with reporters after the decision was made. (Related: CDC sends notice after pharmacies RESIST order to give the immunocompromised a fourth COVID-19 vaccine dose.)

Dr. Paul Offit, a committee member, criticized the drug regulator for moving forward without holding an open meeting with the American public, who should hear how experts weigh the data and make recommendations to the FDA. While the vaccine advisory committee’s recommendations are non-binding, they do help provide transparency for the public.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from The Conservative Woman

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.” “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. – J. Robert Oppenheimer, Scientific director of the Manhattan Project (quoting from the Bhagavad Gita)

Last January, Stew Peters decided to roll out the thesis that I have personal responsibility for the morbidity and mortality associated with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines consequent to my pioneering work in developing the ideas and reduction to practice of using synthetic mRNA as a transient “gene therapy” method, with the entry level application being for vaccine purposes.  This has been echoed by many angry social media detractors seeking to find someone to blame for the lies and adverse events that have been associated with these mRNA vaccines.  Mindful of those critics, this Substack essay focuses on some of the differences between what was originally envisioned and the current molecules that are being injected into our bodies. The first section of the essay sets the stage by summarizing (for a general readership) how the whole idea of gene therapy was developed, and then describing how and why this lead to the idea of mRNA as a drug and as a method of generating a vaccine response. The second section gets quite technical, and provides detailed information intended for a scientific audience. The conclusion is written for a general audience.

Gene Therapy, Transhumanism, and the origins of mRNA as a drug or vaccine

The core idea captured in the original nine patents which stem from my work between 1987 and 1989 was that there are multiple key problems with the idea of permanent “gene therapy” as originally envisioned by Richard Roblin, PhD and academic Pediatrician Dr. Theodore Friedman in 1972.  The modern embodiment of this concept can be found in the many writings from the WEF and others concerning “Transhumanism” and use of CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing technology.  To really understand all of this requires a brief journey through the history and logic of “gene therapy”.

The January 2015 UC San Diego News center piece entitled “Friedman Recognized for Pioneering Gene Therapy Research: School of Medicine professor receives prestigious Japan Prize” nicely summarizes the underlying logic of “Gene Therapy” as envisioned by Friedman and Roblin.

“Though posed as a question, Friedmann and Roblin firmly believed the answer was yes, citing emergent thinking, new studies and growing data that suggested “good DNA” could be used to replace defective DNA in people with inherited conditions.

“In our view,” they wrote, “gene therapy may ameliorate some human genetic diseases in the future. For this reason, we believe that research directed at the development of techniques for gene therapy should continue.”

Though Friedmann said initial response to the paper was “not overwhelming,” it’s now commonly cited as a major milestone in the scientific beginnings of gene therapy research, though Friedmann said it was the Asilomar conference three years later (scientists set safety standards for recombinant DNA technology) where interest really “exploded.”

The idea of gene therapy, which quickly captured the public imagination, was fueled by its appealingly straightforward approach and what Friedmann has described as “obvious correctness”: Disarm a potentially pathogenic virus to make it benign. Stuff these viral particles with normal DNA. Then inject them into patients carrying abnormal genes, where they will deliver their therapeutic cargoes inside the defective target cells. In theory, the good DNA replaces or corrects the abnormal function of the defective genes, rendering previously impaired cells whole, normal and healthy. End of disease.”

Nice theory, what could possibly go wrong?  The article continues-

“In 1968, Friedmann, working at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland with the late Jay Seegmiller (a founding faculty member of the School of Medicine) and others, showed that by adding foreign DNA to cultured cells from patients with Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, they could correct genetic defects that caused the rare but devastating neurological disorder. The condition was first described by William Nyhan, MD, a UC San Diego professor of pediatrics, and medical student Michael Lesch in 1964.

The feat was a powerful proof-of-concept, but subsequent efforts to advance the work to human clinical trials stalled. “We began to realize that it would be very complicated to take this idea and make it work in people,” Friedmann said, who joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1969.

In 1990, a 4-year-old girl with a congenital disease called adenoside deaminase (ADA) deficiency, which severely affects immunity and the ability to fight infections, became the first patient treated by gene therapy. White blood cells were taken from her, the normal ADA gene was inserted into them using an engineered and disabled virus and the cells re-injected. Despite initial claims of success, Friedmann said the experiment was eventually deemed a failure. The girl’s condition was not cured, and the research was found wanting.

A report commissioned by National Institutes of Health director Harold Varmus, MD, was highly critical of the entire gene therapy field and the ADA effort in particular, chiding investigators for creating a “mistaken and widespread perception of success.” Friedmann says he took the Varmus report “personally. I felt awful. It almost made me feel like I had been deceiving myself and my colleagues for more than two decades about the promise of gene therapy.” But he also knew there were “many more good people doing gene therapy research than rogues” and continued diligently and conscientiously to pursue his own research.

Nonetheless, media attention and hype about gene therapy continued to be rampant, fueled in part by over-enthusiastic opinions by some scientists. Things crashed in 1999 when an 18-year-old patient named Jesse Gelsinger, who suffered from a genetic disease of the liver, died during a clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania. Gelsinger’s death was the first directly attributed to gene therapy. Subsequent investigations revealed numerous problems in the experimental design.”

The history of the Varmus report provides an early glimpse of the way things work at NIH and the US HHS.  The Scientist appointed to head up the commission to review the science of “Gene Therapy” was none other than my graduate mentor Dr. Inder Verma, who had long been one of the leading proponents of gene therapy, and was subsequently forced to resign from the Salk Institute over a decades long record of what might most gently be called ethical lapses. But this was the scientist appointed by the overall Director of the NIH to “independently” investigate the scientific rigor and merits of the field.  One hand washes the other.

What is awry with the original “gene therapy” concept?  There are multiple issues, and here are a few-

1) Can you efficiently get genetic material (“polynucleotides”) into the nucleus of the majority of cells in the human body so that any genetic defects (or transhuman genetic improvements) can be made?  In short, no.  Human cells (and the immune system) have evolved many, many different mechanisms to resist modification by external polynucleotides.  Otherwise we would already be overrun by various forms of parasitic DNA and RNA- viral and otherwise.  This remains a major technical barrier, one which the “transhumanists” continue to overlook in their enthusiastic but naïve rush to play god with the human species.  What are polynucleotides?  Basically, the long chain polymers composed of four nucleotide bases (ATGC in the case of DNA, AUGC in the case of RNA) which carry all genetic information (that we know of) across time.

2) What about the immune system? Well, this was one of my breakthroughs way back in the late 1980s.  What Ted (Friedman) originally envisioned was the simple idea that if a child had a genetic birth defect causing the body to produce a defective or not produce a critical protein (such as Lesch-Nyhan syndrome or Adenosine Deaminase Deficiency), this could be simply corrected by providing the “good gene” to complement the defect. What was not appreciated was that the immune systems of these children were “educated” during development to either recognize the “bad protein” as normal/self, or to not recognize the absent protein as normal/self.  So, introduction of the “go od gene” into a person’s body would cause production of what was essentially a “foreign protein”, resulting in immunologic attack and killing of the cells which now have the ‘good gene”.

3) What happens when things go wrong and the “good gene/protein” is toxic? Well, in the current vaccine situation this is essentially the “Spike protein” problem.  I get asked all the time “what can I do to eliminate the RNA vaccines from my body”, to which I have to answer – nothing.  There is no technology that I know of which can eliminate these synthetic “mRNA-like” molecules from your body.  The same is true for any of the many “gene therapy” methods currently being used.  You just have to hope that your immune system will attack the cells that have taken up the polynucleotides and degrade (chew up) the offending large molecule that causes your cells to manufacture the toxic protein.  Since virtually all current “gene therapy” methods are inefficient, and essentially deliver the genetic material randomly to a small subset of cells, there is no practical way to surgically remove the scattered, relatively rare transgenic cells.  Clearance of genetically modified cells by the cellular immune system (T cells) is the only currently viable method to remove cells that have taken up the foreign genetic information (“transfection” in the case of mRNA or DNA, or “transduction” in the case of a viral vectored gene).

4) What happens if the “good gene” lands in a “bad place” in your genome? It turns out that the structure of our genome is highly evolved, and we are still relative neophytes in our current level of understanding.  Despite having sequenced the human genome. The method of “insertional mutagenesis” (sticking genetic information in the form of viral DNA or other ways) has long been one of the leading methods to generate new insights into genetics – from fruit flies to frogs to fish to mice.  When new DNA is inserted into chromosomes it can cause many unexpected things to happen.  Like development of cancers, for example. This is why there is so much concern about the possibility that the mRNA-like polynucleotides used in the “RNA vaccines” may travel into the nucleus (where the DNA chromosomes reside) and insert or recombine with a cellular genome after reverse transcription (RNA-> DNA).  Normally, with DNA-based gene therapy technologies, the FDA requires genotoxicity studies for this reason, but the FDA did not treat the “mRNA vaccine” technology as a gene therapy product.

Based on these risk considerations, the original idea behind using mRNA as a drug (for genetic therapeutic or vaccine purposes) was that mRNA is typically degraded quite rapidly once manufactured or released into a cell.  mRNA stability is regulated by a number of genetic elements including the length of the “poly A tail”, but typically ranges from ½ to a couple of hours.  Therefore, if natural or synthetic mRNA which is degraded by the usual enzymes is introduced into your body, it should only last for a very short time.  And this has been the answer which Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna have provided to physicians when asked “how long does the injected mRNA last after injection”.

But now we know that the “mRNA” from the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines which incorporates the synthetic nucleotide pseudouridine can persist in lymph nodes for at least 60 days after injection.  This is not natural, and this is not really mRNA.  These molecules have genetic elements similar to those of natural mRNA, but they are clearly far more resistant to the enzymes which normally degrade natural mRNA, seem to be capable of producing high levels of protein for extended periods, and seem to evade normal immunologic mechanisms for eliminating cells which produce foreign proteins which are not normally observed in the body.

Key findings from this seminal work by Katharina Röltgen et al include the following:

Regarding pseudouridine and mRNA

What is pseudouridine (shorthand symbol Ψ)?  Pseudouridine is a modified nucleotide mRNA subunit that is prevalent in natural human mRNAs, and the biologic significance and regulation of the modification process is still being determined and understood.  This modification occurs naturally in the cells of our body, in a highly regulated manner. This is in sharp contrast to the random incorporation of synthetic pseudouridine which occurs with the manufacturing process used for producing the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech (but not CureVac) COVID-19 “mRNA” vaccines. The “state of the art” of understanding of the biology of natural pseudouridine modifications is summarized circa late 2020 in this excellent review published in the journal Annual Review of Genetics by Erin K Borchardt et al.  The open source version (not paywall protected) can be found here. Hang on, because we are about to dive into some serious immunology, molecular and cell biology.

Abstract as follows:

“Recent advances in pseudouridine detection reveal a complex pseudouridine landscape that includes messenger RNA and diverse classes of noncoding RNA in human cells. The known molecular functions of pseudouridine, which include stabilizing RNA conformations and destabilizing interactions with varied RNA-binding proteins, suggest that RNA pseudouridylation could have widespread effects on RNA metabolism and gene expression. Here, we emphasize how much remains to be learned about the RNA targets of human pseudouridine synthases, their basis for recognizing distinct RNA sequences, and the mechanisms responsible for regulated RNA pseudouridylation. We also examine the roles of noncoding RNA pseudouridylation in splicing and translation and point out the potential effects of mRNA pseudouridylation on protein production, including in the context of therapeutic mRNAs.”

A more recent (peer reviewed) publication in the journal Molecular Cell has shed light on some of the mechanisms of action associated with natural pseudouridine modification.  It appears that, in the natural context, various highly regulated cellular enzymes (for example PUS1, PUS7, and RPUSD4) act on specific mRNAs and specific locations within those mRNAs while they are being made in the cell to modify the normal uridine nucleotide subunit to form pseudouridine.  These modifications occur at locations associated with alternatively spliced RNA regions, are enriched near splice sites, and overlap with hundreds of binding sites for RNA-binding proteins.  Latest data indicate that pre-mRNA pseudouridylation is used by human cells to regulate human gene expression via alternative pre-mRNA processing.

Relevant to the “mRNA” vaccines, the Borchardt review makes the following surprising statement, which is consistent with the Cell paper cited above which demonstrates that the synthetic “mRNA” being used for these vaccines persists in patient lymph node tissue for 60 days or longer-

“An exciting possibility is that regulated mRNA pseudouridylation controls mRNA metabolism in response to changing cellular conditions.”

That is a technically precise way of saying that incorporation of pseudouridine is one factor that controls how long an mRNA stays around in your body.

The review proceeds with the following alarming (from the context of the unregulated incorporation of Ψ into the molecules used for vaccine purposes) statement:

“The biological effects of Ψ must originate in chemical differences between U and Ψ, which primarily affect RNA backbone conformation and the stability of base pairs. Because Ψ can form stable pairs with G, C and U in addition to A, it has been proposed as a “universal” base pairing partner. Despite intensive study of the structural effects of Ψ on short, synthetic RNA oligos, it is currently impossible to predict the structural outcome of site-specific RNA pseudouridylation in longer RNAs. The systematic investigation of sequence-context effects on the stability of Ψ-containing duplexes is an important step towards accurate predictions. It will be important to determine the structural consequences of RNA pseudouridylation in cells, which is possible using improved methods to probe RNA structure in vivo.”

Furthermore,

“The effect of Ψ on the yield of functional protein depends strongly on the specific codons used. The mechanisms underlying this sequence dependence are unknown, highlighting how much remains to be understood about the translational consequences of mRNA pseudouridylation in cells.”

Finally, relevant to the immunosuppression being observed after multiple mRNA vaccine boosters (which is increasingly referred to as an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome or AIDS disease), Borchardt et al teach the following:

“Innate Immunity

Cells are equipped with innate immune sensors, including various Toll-like receptors (TLRs), retinoic acid inducible protein (RIG-I), and protein kinase R (PKR), which detect foreign nucleic acid. RNA modifications have been thought to provide a mechanism for discerning “self” RNA from non-self RNA, and indeed, incorporating RNA modifications, including pseudouridine, in foreign RNA allows for escape from innate immune detection. This makes RNA modification a powerful tool in the field of RNA therapeutics where RNAs must make it into cells without triggering an immune response, and remain stable long enough to achieve therapeutic goals. In addition, the presence of modified nucleosides in viral genomic RNA could contribute to immune evasion during infection.

TLRs Toll-Like Receptors (TLRs) are membrane-associated proteins which detect various pathogen associated molecular patterns (PAMPS) and subsequently stimulate production of proinflammatory cytokines. The RNA-sensing TLRs, TLR3, TLR7 and TLR8 reside within endosomal membranes. TLR3 recognizes dsRNA, while TLR7 and TLR8 recognize ssRNA. Upon target recognition, TLRs activate a signaling cascade that results in the expression of proinflammatory cytokines and interferon. In vitro transcribed RNA is immunostimulatory when transfected into HEK293 cells engineered to express either TLRs and inclusion of Ψ in the RNA suppressed this response (most pronounced for TLR7 and TLR8).

RIG-I Retinoic Acid Inducible Protein (RIG-I) is a cytosolic innate immune sensor responsible for detecting short stretches of dsRNA or ssRNA with either a 5′-triphosphate or 5′-disphosphate group (a feature common to various RNA viruses). Activation of RIG-I relieves its autoinhibition, releasing its CARD domains to interact with MAVS and set off a signaling cascade that ultimately results in expression of immune factors. Inclusion of Ψ in a 5′-triphosphate capped RNA abolishes activation of RIG-I, providing another mechanism for pseudouridine-mediated suppression of innate immune activation. Further, the polyU/UC region of the HCV genome is also potent activator of RIG-I and complete replacement of U with Ψ in this RNA fully abrogates downstream IFN-beta induction, despite RIG-I still binding to the modified RNA, but with reduced affinity. Durbin et al present biochemical evidence that RIG-I bound to pseudouridylated polyU/UC RNA fails to undergo the conformational changes necessary to activate downstream signaling.

PKR RNA-dependent Protein Kinase (PKR) is a cytosolic resident innate immune sensor. Upon detection of foreign RNA, PKR represses translation through phosphorylation of translation initiation factor eIF-2alpha. Molecules which activate PKR are varied, but include dsRNA formed intra- or inter-molecularly, and 5′ triphosphate groups. Inclusion of Ψ in various PKR substrates reduces PKR activation and downstream translation repression relative to unmodified RNAs. For example, a short 47-nt ssRNA potently activates PKR when synthesized with U but not with Ψ (~30-fold reduction with Ψ). Ψ also modestly reduced PKR activity when this short RNA was annealed to a complementary unmodified RNA 170. Likewise, in vitro transcribed, unmodified tRNA acted as much more potent activator of PKR than tRNAs transcribed with pseudouridine. It should be noted that it is unclear whether a fully pseudouridylated tRNA adopts canonical folding and what impact this may have on PKR recognition of this substrate. Finally, transfection of an unmodified mRNA caused a greater reduction in overall cellular protein synthesis in cell culture compared to the same mRNA fully pseudouridylated. Consistent with this result, fully pseudouridylated mRNA reduced PKR activation and subsequent phosphorylation of eIF-2alpha.”

Regarding the consequences for the use of mRNA as a drug for therapeutic or vaccine purposes, Borchardt et al conclude that

“Pseudouridine likely affects multiple facets of mRNA function, including reduced immune stimulation by several mechanisms, prolonged half-life of pseudouridine-containing RNA, as well as potentially deleterious effects of Ψ on translation fidelity and efficiency.”

Conclusion

Based on this information, it appears to me that the extensive random incorporation of pseudouridine into the synthetic mRNA-like molecules used for the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna SARS-CoV-2 vaccines may well account for much or all of the observed immunosuppression, DNA virus reactivation, and remarkable persistence of the synthetic “mRNA” molecules observed in lymph node biopsy tissues by Katharina Röltgen et al.  Many of these adverse effects were reported by Kariko, Weissman et al in their 2008 paper “Incorporation of pseudouridine into mRNA yields superior nonimmunogenic vector with increased translational capacity and biological stability” and could have been anticipated by regulatory and toxicology professionals if they had bothered to consider these findings prior to allowing emergency use authorization and widespread (global) deployment of what is truly an immature and previously untested technology.  Therefore, neither the FDA, NIH, CDC, nor BioNTech (which employs Dr. Kariko as a Vice President) nor Moderna can claim true ignorance.  To my eyes, what we have seen is more appropriately classified as “willful ignorance”.

In conclusion, based on these data it is my opinion that the random and uncontrolled insertion of pseudouridine into the manufactured “mRNA”-like molecules administered to so many of us creates a population of polymers which may resemble natural mRNA, but which have a variety of properties which distinguish them in a variety of aspects which are clinically relevant.  These characteristics and activities may account for many of the unusual effects, unusual stability, and striking adverse events associated with this new class of vaccines. These molecules are not natural mRNA, and they do not behave like natural mRNA.

The question that most troubles and perplexes me at this point is why the biological consequences of these modifications and associated clinical adverse effects were not thoroughly investigated before widespread administration of random pseudouridine-incorporating “mRNA”-like molecules to a global population.  Biology, and particularly molecular biology, is highly complex and matrix-interrelated.  Change one thing over here, and it is really hard to predict what might happen over there. That is why one must do rigorously controlled non-clinical and clinical research. Once again, it appears to me that the hubris of “elite” high status scientists, physicians and governmental “public health” bureaucrats has overcome common sense, well established regulatory norms have been disregarded, and patients have unnecessarily suffered as a consequence.

When will we ever learn.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

All images in this article are from the author

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Ted Hilbert a permanent resident from Luxembourg and Fatoni Rahman, an Indonesian citizen,  are suing the Indonesian president Joko Widodo and the Ministry of Health to stop the Covid-19 vaccination mandates currently enforced.

They object to the government’s Covid-19 policy, particularly the vaccine mandate as a requirement to access government administration services/public transportation and be allowed entry to public spaces as well as facing fines for being unvaccinated.

To encourage vaccine uptake Jokowi “received” his first Sinovac dose at the  presidential palace on the 13th January 2021. Nobody saw whatever was in that vial actually being injected into the President (and, of course, nobody could verify if that was the Sinovac vaccine).

Still, despite the media stunt, uptake in the general population was not high –  even with incentives (see this).

So the population needed to be pushed a  little harder.

By mid-August 2021 malls in Jakarta announced that visitors had to be  vaccinated – see this (this also extended to domestic/international travel by sea/air).

Prior to this, Jakarta’s deputy governor requested financial penalties for vaccine refusers (see this).

Almost overnight the situation changes – vaccine clinics are everywhere with hundreds of people lining up to get jabbed. Now Jakarta is 99.98%  vaccinated and Bali, a popular travel destination, 83.13% vaccinated. See this.
But it’s halal right?

Indonesia is 87.2% muslim  so great emphasis has been placed on the vaccines being halal to resolve any hesitancy.

This is completely untrue as ALL of the vaccines contain and/or have been tested with HEK-293 (Human Embryonic Kidney cells – aborted foetal  tissue…amongst other questionable ingredients such as chimpanzee  adenovirus: see this.

All vaccine ingredient listings: https:// www.precisionvaccinations.com/vaccines/). All are haram (forbidden) under  Islamic law (see this) and can NEVER be halal with the “pandemic” 0.05%  Infection Fatality Rate (see this).

The Muslims have been sadly duped…..along with everyone else.

Many citizens are now fully conditioned by the fear-based propaganda and despite receiving up to three vaccine doses are STILL wearing masks (often  double masked) and practising social distancing.

You CANNOT wake them up – even with the needless and dangerous  vaccination of children (see this).

Light at the end?

Vaccination clinics have been destroyed in Aceh . There’s resistance to Jokowi’s vaccine agenda in Madura.  There are increasing reports of children dying from the Covid vaccines,  doctors becoming sick after the jab (see this), deaths from vaccination (see this) and those reporting adverse reactions.

The Government dismisses reports of vaccine injuries/deaths as fake news,  refuses to provide official health data to justify the vaccine program and  proclaims the vaccines are both safe and effective.

With high levels of government corruption, it’s important that news of the  lawsuit goes global – especially with the greater threat of  trans-humanist modification  and population culling.

The vaccines contain what appears to be nanotech/ parasitic organisms.

I pray that the Indonesian people will actively pursue action and justice  against their wicked leader and his accomplices.

*

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

War propaganda by the mainstream media whether by CNN, FOX news, the BBC or the New York Times all follow a narrative, a script produced by the Military-Industrial complex (MIC) for endless conflicts around the world.  A perfect example was recently demonstrated by long time FOX news TV host Sean Hannity who is clearly a propagandist for the MIC and Israel had recently threatened Russia with annihilation if it used any sort of weapons of mass destruction in its war on Ukraine, a war that was instigated by the US and its NATO allies.  However, it is fair to say that Tucker Carlson is the only one on FOX news who is against any form of aggression against Russia but Sean Hannity on the other hand, is more unhinged than ever before, even more so when he advocated for the war on Iraq. Hannity recently debated former congresswoman from Hawaii, Tulsi Gabbard on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as he started off by mentioning that he was a supporter of the Reagan and Trump doctrines of providing lethal weapons to the mujahidin (or Al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan or just bombing “the hell out of people” in the Middle East. Hannity is what you would call a classic propagandist:

So, I am a supporter, Tulsi, of the Reagan doctrine and the Trump doctrine. Reagan doctrine is providing Stinger missiles to the mujahidin when the Soviets invaded in the `80s. They were successful. They pushed the Soviets out. Supporting the Nicaraguan freedom-fighting Contras over the Sandinistas and Daniel Ortega.

I’m also a supporter of the Trump doctrine which is bomb the living hell out of people, don’t put an American boot on the ground, maybe some intel boots there, but that’s about it, and with pinpoint accuracy. Push buttons from all over the United States and we’ll hit any target we want, we’ll blow the caliphate out of existence.  Trump did it. Soleimani off a tarmac. Al Baghdadi and associates, and the al Qaeda leader in Yemen.  It sounds to me like you don’t believe in that. We’re not putting one American boot on the ground and my argument would be, if we don’t — if Putin is successful here, God only knows where his territorial ambitions will take him next

Gabbard’s response was an honest assessment of those policies:

Yeah, Sean, you know all the things that you just talked about and explained there frankly are tactics. Those are tactics to accomplish what. And the “what” is really the central question here that needs to be answered is, what is our objective? What is the objective of the United States? What actions and objective best serves the interest of the American people? That’s the question — that’s the thing that that President Biden and his administration has failed to detail, outline or even identify. And it’s frankly why we’re seeing how he’s at NATO right now trying to clean up the mess that he made with these food shortages and all these things coming around as a result of the sanctions policies that that he put in — that he put in place.

So, any time you look at so many of our foreign policy disasters in the past, we see they have come about because our leaders have failed to outline what is it exactly we are trying to achieve and how does it best serve the interest of the American people

Hannity’s closing statement on Gabbard’s opinion should be no surprise because this is the same person who advocates for war in every region of the world in order to protect US interests.  Hannity’s response is in typical jingoistic form as he concluded his debate with Gabbard by warning Russia that it will be attacked if they used biological, chemical or nuclear weapons on Ukraine, he said “that if Vladimir Putin wanted to negotiate, it would have done it a long time ago. He’s not willing to. And if — and if he wants to use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, he’s got to know that his entire country is going to be blown off the face of the earth.  I pray to God we never get to that point, but that’s always been a threat and it remains a threat here and we can’t cower in fear based on the fact that we’ve had mutually assured destruction, pretty much for all lifetime.”  

Hannity said that Ukraine needs weapons to fight Russia which Kiev can pay back later, but what is worst, in his opinion he believes that Iraq should “provide funding for every American soldier killed over there”or in other words, the Iraqi government should pay some sort of reparations for US soldiers who were killed in Iraq although the US was the aggressor:

I’m not even sure that Zelenskyy will survive this. I think it’s — I think we’re at a tipping point. Right now they need the weapons. We can negotiate them paying us back later, but we should pursue it. I still think we should pursue it with Iraq if you want my frank opinion, and I think they should provide funding for every American soldier killed over there”

Here is the debate between Tulsi Gabbard and Sean Hannity:

Hannity supported the war in Iraq from the start as he supports a war with Iran now.  In June 2019, Hannity called on former US President Donald Trump to “bomb the hell of out Iran” after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) shot down a US surveillance drone near the Hormozgan province.  Hannity went on to say that “a strong message needs to be sent that a huge price will be paid if you take on the United State of America,” he continued “simple peace through strength, and it works.”

On January 3^rd, 2020 One of Iran’s most respected and admired top generals, Qasem Soleimani, a commander of the Quds force which is part of the IRGC was assassinated by a US drone strike near Baghdad International Airport with help from Israelis.  Former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said in a tweet that “General Soleimani fought heroically against ISIS, Al Nusrah, Al Qaeda et al. If it weren’t for his war on terror, European capitals would be in great danger now. Our final answer to his assassination will be to kick all US forces out of the region.”  Soleimani did fight against terrorists, On January 6^th, 2020, CNBC reported that “the U.S. and Iran, though adversaries, are mutual enemies of ISIS and effectively fought against ISIS to crush the terrorist group’s de facto state in Iraq and Syria”, but regarding Soleimani, Hannity claimed that “tonight the world is safer as one of the most ruthless, evil war criminals on Earth has been brought to justice.”

Hannity even claimed that Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks was waging a war on the US and that American lives are in danger because of him exposing US war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere.  Hannity criticized former US president Barack Obama for his failure to arrest Assange, but that all changed in 2016 after Wikileaks published leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) involving Hillary Clinton where Hannity praised Julian Assange for showing the world “how corrupt, dishonest and phony our government is” then a month later, Hannity said that Wikileaks exposed “everything that conspiracy theorists have said over the years” about Hillary Clinton is true.”

Sean Hannity, one of the most highly paid television hosts in the US media is also a hypocrite. In a recent episode, Hannity claimed that censorship is not the answer which in all fairness is correct.  Hannity reported on the censorship taking place between Big Tech monopolies such as Twitter and YouTube and with what he calls “the media mob” including CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times.  He in on point about the rise of cancel culture especially in the US and Europe.  Here is the news segment:

However, Hannity does not follow the rules of journalistic principals as this video clearly shows him insulting and censuring a Palestinian-American writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas. Notice the ‘Sympathy for the Terrorists’ on the bottom right side of the screen.

I have to say that this is propaganda at its finest.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

 

For those not familiar with the vicissitudes of Northern Ireland, Kenneth Branagh’s 2021 film Belfast may not give one a full idea of the terrible things that happened there over a period of three decades- euphemistically known as ‘the Troubles’. Many died in a war of colonial origins involving Irish nationalists, Protestant loyalists and unionists, and the direct involvement of the British Army and Government.

However, that was then and this is now. A quieter, slowly changing, more peaceful air hangs over Northern Ireland since 2005 when the IRA announced the end of its armed campaign.

Despite some flare-ups, the peace is holding and hopefully creating the conditions for a more tempered mutual understanding of two communities that underwent so much division for so long. Branagh’s film sits neatly into that crevice arguing for a basic human understanding and empathy, to encourage unity and mutual acceptance and understanding.

Brannagh’s Oscar-winning screenplay (seven nominations at the 94th Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Screenplay) tells the story of nine-year-old Buddy from a working-class Ulster Protestant family. He lives on a terraced street of mixed Protestant and Catholic families who all know each other well and get on with each other well. A group of Protestant loyalists attack the homes and businesses of the Catholics, as well as putting pressure on Buddy’s father to participate in the violent sectarianism which he refuses to do. Buddy becomes very attracted to a fellow high-achieving Catholic classmate, Catherine, and they become friends. Buddy’s father works in England and comes home as regularly as he can while his wife struggles with their accrued debts.

Brannagh’s story avoids sectarian rhetoric and shows us that the Catholics and Protestants had much in common: their working class struggles with poverty and emigration.

Apart from historical differences of origin, and Unionist politics notwithstanding, the people had much in common culturally to unite them. Throughout Irish history since the 18th century Protestants have been leaders of movements that emphasised British heritage, as well as movements that asserted Irish identity.

These similarities have created confusion even amongst the people themselves as the visual differences between Catholic and Protestant are not obvious in Ireland.

Thus, Buddy tries to figure out the differences, through tutelage, about the sorts of names and spellings Catholics use as distinct from Protestants. One example of naming traditions stands out from recent history – the TV debate between Mr Ken Maginnis (the Ulster Unionist security spokesman) and Mr Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein’s senior negotiator), reported in the Irish Times in 1997.

The debate highlighted the similarities as much as the differences between two politicians who used different spelling versions of the same name (Mac Aonghusa). (The name, Aonghus (One Strength), resulted in not one, but two famous drinks, the other being Hennessy’s brandy (the O’hAonghusas). Both Maginnis and McGuinness are formed from the colonial phonetics of a coloniser who could not speak Gaelic, confronted with the colonised who could not read or write. They simply wrote down what they heard, often accurately recording the local accents. Over time the names became shibboleths for different sets of ideas, both names being determined by the coloniser.

Although descendants of colonists who arrived from Britain in the early 17th century, by the 18th century many had, in the words of Albert Memmi’s famous theory of the ‘coloniser who refuses’, formed the Irish Volunteers (local militias) in Ireland in 1778. The Volunteers were made up of Anglican Protestants, Presbyterians and a limited number of Catholics. Taking advantage of the British preoccupation with the American Revolutionary War, the Volunteers paraded fully armed and demanded an end to the tariffs that Irish goods had been subject to upon entering Britain (unlike British goods which could be imported freely into Ireland). Many of the Volunteers were concerned with “securing Irish free trade and opposing English governmental interference in Ireland. This resulted in them pledging support for resolutions advocating legislative independence for Ireland whilst proclaiming their loyalty to the British Crown.”

Orangemen marching in Bangor on the Twelfth of July 2010

In the pre-partioned Ireland of the 19th century many Protestants were nationalists. For example, Thomas Davis, the Irish nationalist, was well known for a doctrine of nationality that he propagated through the newspaper, The Nation, of which he was one of the founders. He described his tenets as “a nationality that would embrace all creeds, races and classes within the island […] which would establish internal union and external independence”. As a Protestant of mixed English and Anglo-Irish parentage, his nationalist views and writings put him into conflict with the colonial strategies of the empire. By proclaiming the slogan “gan teanga, gan tír” (no language, no nation) he tried to redress some of the worst effects of colonial policies.

Indeed, the six counties of Northern Ireland had communities of Irish speakers. The census figures of 1851 and 1891 demonstrated the presence of Irish-speakers respectively as follows: Antrim 3,033 (1.2%) and 885 (0.4%); Armagh 13,736 (7.0%) and 3,486 (2.4%); Derry 5,406 (2.8%) and 2,723 (1,8%); Down 1,153 (0.4%) and 590 (0.3%); Fermanagh 2,704 (2.3%) and 561 (0.8%) and Tyrone 12,892 (5.0%) 6,687 (3.9%). There were minor Gaeltachtaí (Irish-language communities) in Tyrone, the Sperrins (Derry), the Antrim Glens and Rathlin Island that had all but died out by the 1940s.

In the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising many of the revolutionaries were interned in a camp at Frongoch in Merionethshire, Wales. There were some Protestant internees, such as Arthur Shields, Harry Nichols and Ellett Elmes (Dublin); Sam Ruttle (Tralee and Kildare) and Alf Cotton (Tralee and Belfast) whose background in the Volunteers, Citizen Army and Conradh na Gaeilge demonstrated the non-sectarian outlook of the revolutionary movement.

The first president of Ireland, Douglas Hyde (1863-1949), was the son of a Church of Ireland (Anglican) minister and had been influenced by nationalist circles while studying for a Doctorate of Laws in Trinity College. However, it was his speech “The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland” in 1892 that heralded a qualitative change in the struggle to maintain and develop the popular basis of support for the Irish language. Hyde elaborated on his call for de-Anglicisation, which he emphasised, was not conceived out of Anglophobia:

“When we speak of ‘The Necessity for De-Anglicising the Irish Nation’ we mean it, not as a protest against imitating what is best in the English people, for that would be absurd, but rather to show the folly of neglecting what is Irish, and hastening to adopt, pell-mell, and indiscriminately, everything that is English, simply because it is English.”

Maybe because of his Church of Ireland background, Douglas Hyde stayed away from direct involvement in politics but had he been alive he would have most likely supported the Good Friday Agreement (GFA), signed on 10 April 1998 which established in law basic principles such as:

“The British government would uphold the right of the people of Northern Ireland to decide between the Union with Great Britain or a united Ireland.

The people of the island of Ireland, North and South, had the exclusive right to solve the issues between North and South by mutual consent.

The Irish government would try to address unionist fears of a united Ireland by amending the Irish Constitution according to the principle of consent.”

In other words, there would be no change to the status of Northern Ireland without the express consent of the people.

On 28 July 2005, the IRA announced the end of its campaign, and promised complete decommissioning of all its weapons, to be witnessed by clergymen from Catholic and Protestant churches.

A republican mural in Belfast during the mid-1990s bidding “safe home” (Slán Abhaile) to British troops. Security normalisation was one of the key points of the Good Friday Agreement. (Jimmy Harris – Flickr) Mural in Beechfield street, Short Strand, Belfast, with the Gaelic text Slan Abhaile, taken 1995.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory.

The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm.

A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term.

The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated.

It added that neither the campaign nor the party conceded to lying but won’t contest the finding. “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission’s finding of probable cause to proceed” with the probe, said the FEC.

The FEC, in a memo to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which filed its complaint over three years ago, said it fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000.

The memo, shared with Secrets, is to be made public in a month.

Dan Backer, who brought the complaint on behalf of the foundation, which focuses on free speech and the First Amendment, told Secrets,

“This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites.”

Clinton has in the past defended her campaign’s spending for the information and the work of her campaign lawyer, Marc Elias, with Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier and hired former British spy Christopher Steele to dig further on Trump.

Trump has assailed the dossier as full of lies, and the FBI has called it fake, but only after the damage settled in on the president.

Republicans have continued to press for charges against Clinton.

Backer, with Washington’s Chalmers & Adams law firm, held out hope for further action against the former first lady. He said, “Hillary Clinton and her cronies willfully engaged in the greatest political fraud in history — destroying our nation’s faith in the electoral process, and it’s high time they were held accountable. I hope this is only the beginning.”

Read the document here.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

We are looking for two smoking guns now in connection with Russiagate. Today’s Part I will show Hillary Clinton herself sat atop a large-scale conspiracy to use the tools of modern espionage to create and disseminate false information about Trump. Part II to follow will show the FBI was an active participant in that conspiracy.

In summer 2016 Hillary Clinton’s private email server and her improper handling of classified information was the political story. Consensus was the election was Hillary’s to lose, that her opponents in general and especially the Trump clown show, could not stop her. Despite the MSM’s heroic attempts to downplay the importance of the emails, the issue lingered in the public mind, often aided by Hillary’s own contradictory statements. The emails nagged at the Clinton campaign — her unsecured server lay exposed during her SecState trips to Russia and China, and the deepest fear was that her internal communications might appear one day on Wikileaks, ending her career.

Clinton fought back. The initial shot was fired on July 24, 2016 by campaign manager Robby Mook, who was the first to claim there was a quid pro quo between Trump and Russia. “It was very concerning last week that Donald Trump changed the Republican platform to become what some experts would regard as pro-Russian,” Mook said, referring to a false story from the GOP convention just a few days earlier. The New York Times sent up a warning flare to all MSM media the next day announcing Clinton was making the Trump-Russia allegation a “theme” of the campaign.  As if she knew just what was coming next, Hillary took that as her cue to claim the Russians were trying to destroy her campaign, a theme which soon morphed into the Russians were trying to help Trump. That soon became Trump and Putin were working in collusion to elect Trump as a Manchurian candidate.

Image on the right is from TruePublica

A prime driver behind all this was a mysterious “dossier.” The jewel in the crown was a “pee tape,” blackmail, kompromat, Moscow held to control Trump. Word was a former MI-6 intelligence officer named Christopher Steele compiled the dossier, giving the whole thing credibility. America media openly speculated on Trump’s imminent arrest for treason, with Twitter aflutter with phrases like tik-tok, walls closing in, and the like. The FBI’s James Comey and CIA’s John Brennan briefed the newly-elected Trump on the dossier simultaneously with the full contents spilling into the media. Talk shifted to impeachment, alongside claims Hillary might still deserve to be president.

We know now the dossier was fiction. Steele’s raw information was provided by the Clinton campaign, with his chief source working for the Brookings Institute. Steele worked as a double-agent, feeding Clinton-paid for fake info to the FBI pretending he was an FBI informant with sources deep inside Mother Russia. The dossier was a product of the Clinton campaign.

We also now know the Clinton campaign, via one of its lawyers, Michael Sussmann, gathered Internet DNS data on Trump and used that to create a fully fictional story about Trump using a secret server connected to the Alfa Bank to communicate with his Russian “handlers.” Sussmann also peddled a false story about Russian smartphones connecting into the Trump White House. We know Sussmann hid his relationship to Clinton from the FBI, pretending to be a “concerned citizen.” Sussmann is under indictment by Special Counsel John Durham, and in his own defense filing does not dispute the basic facts. He only claims his lying was immaterial.

Both the dossier op and the DNS op were funded by Clinton campaign money laundered through its lawyers at Perkins Coie and then contractors Fusion GPS and Orbis. In both instances the false information created was peddled to the FBI (and CIA) by a Clinton-paid stooge pretending not to be affiliated with the campaign, Steele as an FBI informant and Sussmann as a “concerned citizen.” Both ops used a sophisticated information sub-op, feeding the media as if Steele and Sussmann were not the source and then having Steel and Sussmann step in to serve as anonymous confirmers, an inside loop. In both instances the FBI took the bait and opened unprecedented full-spectrum investigations into first Candidate Trump, and then President of the United States Trump.

Four years after all that, on October 6, 2020, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified documents revealing then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed then-President Obama on or about July 28, 2016 on Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie Candidate Trump to Russia as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.

The highly-redacted document says “We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED]. Cite alleged approved by Hillary Clinton on July 26 a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Source: Fox News

Ratcliffe in 2020 also revealed in September 2016 the CIA forwarded to the FBI an investigative referral on Hillary Clinton approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections in order to distract the public from her email scandal.”

The MSM at the time dismissed these two important disclosures as unverified disinformation. The problem with simply waving away these documents is the very high threshold for information to actually reach the president. Every day a near-infinate amount of information is collected by the CIA. A tiny percentage of that is culled for the standing Agency briefings the president receives. An even tinier subset is seen as important and credible enough to be personally briefed by the CIA Director face-to-face with the president.

Rarely is there near-time “verification” with intelligence. There is however “confidence,” how sure the CIA is the information is true, and the Director would not waste his boss’ time with that of low or medium confidence (and neither would the Agency do the same in sending its referral on to the FBI.) Knowing what we know now about Clinton campaign funding of the ops and Clinton personnel involvement, Brennan’s confidence is better understood. And it is important to remember Brennan openly supported Hillary; he was not the guy to dish dirt on her. He was making sure his boss, Barack Obama, had a heads up if the whole thing was ever exposed.

There is also the matter of Ratcliffe, who hand-selected the documents to declassify, lending them more credibility. Why play high stakes with information Radcliffe knew to be false?

One last concern has been that the CIA source appears to be foreign, and therefore suspect. The CIA is legally prohibited from spying on Americans in America, particularly something as sensitive as a presidential campaign. Even if tipped off by an American, the CIA would need to go overseas and recreate the info with a foreign source. That the information was available through a foreign source also suggests strongly Moscow had eyes on inside the Hillary campaign. Perhaps through her email?

Both ops ran on Clinton’s money and Clinton’s people. The smoking gun of Brennan’s notes ties it all to Hillary herself.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Dear Readers,

As everyone faces difficult times, the company which deals with the fulfillment of book sales on behalf of Global Research is no longer able to provide its services. We are unfortunately suspending the sale of print books until further notice.

Meanwhile, PDF versions are still available for purchase.

Thank you for your valuable support.

***

Pakistan PM Imran Khan Saved from a US Planned Regime Change

By Steven Sahiounie, April 04, 2022

Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan will remain in office after the no-confidence motion to be voted on today was rejected. President Arif Alvi has dissolved the National Assembly after the Deputy Speaker suspended the session and rejected the no-confidence motion on grounds of it being part of a ‘foreign conspiracy, and Khan has asked his nation to prepare for elections.

When Did Hitler Realise that Nazi Germany Would Lose the War?

By Shane Quinn, April 04, 2022

It can be interesting to analyse when the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler began to doubt in a German victory during World War II – and when these uncertainties turned to a feeling that the Wehrmacht, with increasing probability, would lose the war.

Pakistan’s Imran Khan Takes on America

By Dr. Ejaz Akram, April 04, 2022

After a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and loss of credibility over Ukraine, the era of US unipolarity seems to be entering its terminal phase, marked by lashing out ferociously in all directions. The most recent of these offensives occurred last week when the government of Pakistan alleged that Washington was trying to engineer regime change in Islamabad.

Video: The CIA — 70 Years in Ukraine

By Douglas Valentine and Regis Tremblay, April 04, 2022

For 70 years the CIA has been working to undermine and occupy Ukraine to bring down Russia using such things as paramilitaries, right wing Nazi groups, corrupt politicians and businessmen, coups, and warfare in the eastern Ukraine region of the Donbass.

J’Accuse! The Gene-based “Vaccines” Are Killing People. Governments Worldwide Are Lying to You the People, to the Populations They Purportedly Serve

By Doctors for COVID Ethics, April 04, 2022

It is important to be aware that the official figures (reported to the health authorities) are but a small percentage (1 to 10%) of the actual figures. Furthermore, people continue to die (and suffer injury) from the injections with every day that passes.

“We are Human Guinea Pigs”: Alarming Casualty Rates for mRNA Vaccines Warrant Urgent Action

By F. William Engdahl, April 04, 2022

Far from the much-touted miracle substance proclaimed by WHO, Gates, Fauci and others, the Pfizer, Moderna and other possible mRNA vaccines clearly hold potentially tragic and even catastrophic unforeseen consequences. Little wonder some critics believe it is a disguised vehicle for human eugenics.

Propaganda 101: Ukraine 2022. “The Invasion of Ukraine by Russia did not Happen out of the Blue”

By Colin Todhunter, April 03, 2022

Back in 2014, the proposed (but never implemented) Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) was part of the broader geopolitical game plan to weaken Western Europe by making it even more dependent on the US and to divide the European continent by side-lining Russia.

Europe’s Suicide on the Altar of War: Increased Military Spending and Rising Energy Prices

By Manlio Dinucci, April 03, 2022

Prime Minister Draghi pulls straight on increasing military spending, with the full support of the President of the Republic. For Italy, this means going from the current 26 billion euros a year to at least 38 billion a year, or from 70 to over 100 million euros a day spent on public money.

Peeping Pigs and Propaganda by Omission

By Edward Curtin, April 03, 2022

While there is much talk these days about “fake news,” omitting important news is perhaps as widespread and egregiously harmful to an informed public.  The following report tries to remedy the way the mainstream media have for years ignored one of the oddest but more important news stories of the last sixty years.

Ukraine: Countering the Spin. “The Propaganda War”. Max Blumenthal

By Michael Welch, Yves Engler, Glenn Michalchuk, and Max Blumenthal, April 03, 2022

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we will feature major instances of the holes in journalistic coverage not addressed by those who want “to help inform Canadians so they can protect themselves from disinformation.”

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The Convention on Genocide may offer people some defense against mass murder. If a genocide is provably in progress the Convention requires intervention by its signatories to stop the crime. But the intervention may lead to war. Unscrupulous political forces try to use the pretext that a genocide is underway to invade a country or make war. So one country’s declaration that there is a genocide in another, carries a serious risk.

On February 3rd 2022, the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project served the Attorney General of Canada with “an application for judicial review for the Government of Canada’s acts and omissions in relation to the ongoing genocide against members of the Uyghur population, in the north west region of People’s Republic of China known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region…”⁽¹⁾ The application is asking a federal court in Montreal to investigate Canada for the government’s reluctance to label China’s treatment of its Uyghur population a genocide.

This attempt to control Canada’s foreign policy occurs within a context of American foreign policy ramping up its military stance against both Russia and China. U.S. President Biden has signed into law a 777.7 billion dollar military funding budget for 2022 (three times the military budget of China).⁽²⁾

Taking the Government of Canada to court, a minority lobbying group (according to the legal application there are only about 2000 Uyghurs in Canada).was basically ignored by the media excepting the financially oriented Forbes⁽³⁾ in the U.S., and Canada’s Toronto Star.⁽⁴⁾

Given difficulties in applying the Convention on Genocide to North American governments this is a rare and exceptional move. Where in Canada are cases challenging the Government for not declaring its historical treatment of First Peoples a genocide? Has no one challenged the Government in court for its complicity in the U.S. 1990 effort to bomb Iraq into the stone age? It caused the loss of 600,000 children. Or for participation in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and destruction of that country’s civilian infra-structure? Slobodan Miloševic charged Canada among other NATO countries with genocide. He was imprisoned at the international court and his life ended before he was found innocent.

The Convention is not being employed to prohibit the destruction of war and conquest. This legal application‘s attempt to control Canada’s policy facilitates an American policy which has declared China’s treatment of the Uyghurs a genocide. It risks the Canadian people to war so it bears some examination.

There is evidence which suggests extreme persecution by the Republic of China of its minority group Uyghurs as well as of attempts to assimilate it into the population as a whole.⁽⁵⁾

There is suppression of Uyghur peoples and a frightening degree of digital surveillance as a population control which make the more odious forms of population control we’re accustomed to in the West (one thinks of Pinochet’s Chile, the dirty war in Argentina etc.), unnecessary. Of current concern is the recognition of “Terror Capitalism” where a targeted group is data mined for its resources and behavior, then placed at the service of corporate or state corporate profit. “The People’s War on Terror,” in Uyghur Xinjiang China has provoked an extreme example.⁽⁶⁾

The reader may remember that this principle persecution of the Uyghurs in China began in 2014 as a result of the Uyghur independence movement which brought about state suppression of what were identified as terrorist actions. There is also evidence of the U.S. training Uyghur fighters for its uses both inside China and outside.⁽⁷⁾ U.S. policy is most easily encapsulated by the location of the East Turkestan National Awakening Movement (ETNAM), a Uyghur independence organization, based in Washington D.C.. In 2020 ETNAM filed a complaint against China at the International Criminal Court, for genocide.

Certainly oppression of the Uyghurs should be stopped. Still there is an absence of the mass murder, or an open intention to destroy the group, factors which often trigger the Convention’s application to crimes such as the Rwandan genocide of 1994 which NATO countries ignored at the time, or the death march of the Turkish Armenian genocide in a program which took decades for NATO countries to recognize, or the contemporary actions of Israeli Zionists toward Palestinians who were formerly their hosts.

Faced with mounting pressure from NATO media, and faced with U.S military escalations of anti-China policies, then faced with the report of China’s “genocide” against the Uyghurs from its own Subcommittee on International Human Rights, Canada’s House of Commons declared China involved in a genocide of its Uyghur people.⁽⁸⁾

The website, The Canada Files, was early to note that five of the eight Subcommittee members are members of Parliament’s Uyghur Friendship Committee.⁽⁹⁾ The Subcommittee took testimony almost exclusively from U.S. funded entities such as the aforementioned Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project which is paid by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED).⁽¹⁰⁾

To belabor this, the U.S. Uyghur Human Rights Project was formed and funded by the Uyghur American Association, which in turn is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which receives millions annually from the U.S. Congress. NED is a U.S. State Department funded entity. It’s paid to further U.S. government policy. For Canadian advocacy, the relatively recent Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project in Ottawa is also directly funded by the National Endowment for Democracy.

The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project legal brief of February 3rd 2022 summarizes the Parliamentary Subcommittee’s report at length, validating the application with its own testimony, among others.

The legal application makes a point of declaring that the U.S. has already decided China is committing genocide against its Uyghur population. But then many admirable luminaries of Canada’s human rights establishment have decided this as well, including former General Romeo Dallaire, and the Washington based NewLines Institute and Montreal based Raoul Wallenberg Center which teamed to issue a report assuring the world of China’s genocide against the Uyghurs.⁽¹¹⁾

Canada’s Government dealt with Parliament’s vote by not denying or affirming a recognition of a Uyghur genocide but by suggesting that the assignment of the term “genocide” and its investigation would be more appropriately handled by the United Nations.⁽¹²⁾

As a result of Canada’s commitment to treaties of international law, as opposed to U.S. Rule, the Government is being taken to court. Is it being forced to comply with U.S. policy? Is it being forced by an organization in the pay of the U.S. government? Declaration by a Canadian judge that the Uyghurs are undergoing genocide could force the Liberal government’s hand and the Convention on Genocide could require armed intervention.

In response to Parliament’s vote, China which doesn’t accept that it’s committing a genocide at all, has questioned Canada’s treatment of First Peoples. China has avoided questioning an historical American example of the U.S. Civil War which put an end to the South’s independence by armed force. It doesn’t mention modern U.S. treatment of Black resistance, the assassinations and murder of innocents, false imprisonments and extremes of racism not found in accounts of Uyghur persecution. There are no reports of Uyghurs being lynched or (to remember Fred Hampton) shot in their beds by state security forces.

In trying to find some perspective for considering the degree of persecution and injustice which demands use of the term “genocide,” we have for current reference the direct threats of extinction of all the Muslims in India by and from Hindu extremists. Then there are the millions of Muslim Rohingya in foreign refugee camps and the ongoing danger to those who remain in Myanmar. There is the ongoing tragedy of the people of Gaza and all Palestinians in Israel. Canada is not partaking in a military alliance threatening any of these countries. Preferring international law Canada was able to support The Gambia taking Myanmar to the International Court of Justice at the Hague.⁽¹³⁾

Economically NATO countries are competing with China which may be gradually assuming global financial supremacy. For example, Chinese neocolonialism in Africa is successfully reinvesting in African infra-structure while Euro-American interests are increasingly under the protection of the U.S. military.

On February 4th U.S. Democrats in the House passed a bill called “The America Competes Act”⁽¹⁴⁾ to fund semiconductor production among other technological enhancements of U.S. domestic industry in direct competition with China’s industry, and linked to it specific protections of China’s Uyghurs. The Act includes funding on a broad front to counter Chinese business/political interests on all continents, and it funds Taiwan. It is a manifesto of economic warfare. In it, the issue of Uyghur human rights is specifically used to justify the competitive advancement of U.S. business interests. The Act reveals U.S. policy intentions toward China in the near future.⁽¹⁵⁾

The persecution of the Uyghurs is used to the benefit of China as well. The Atlantic Council‘s report, “Finance & Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region”⁽¹⁶⁾ clarifies the developmental aspect of oppression against the Uyghurs, and the investment by the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, in Chinese companies which use slave labor and other practices against the peoples of the region.⁽¹⁷⁾

Apparently war crimes and enslavement even to the point of genocide, pay the victimizers.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, nightslantern.ca.

Notes

1. “Notice of Application, T-190-22: Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project vs. Attorney General of Canada,” Larochelle Avocats, Feb. 3, 2022, Federal Court of Canada, Montreal.

2. “Biden signs enormous US military budget into law,” Dec. 27, 2021, Al Jazeera.

3. “Canadian Government To Be Reviewed For Its Response To The Uyghur Genocide,” Dr. Ewelina U. Ochab, Feb. 13, 2022, Forbes.

4. “Court case aims to force Canada to acknowledge Uyghur genocide and act against China,” Jeremy Nuttall, Feb. 5, 2022, The Toronto Star.

5. “Xinjiang China,” J.B. Gerald, Nov. 10, 2019, 2019 suppressed new nightslantern.ca [ access: < https://www.nightslantern.ca/2019bulletin.htm#nov10>].

6. “China’s high-tech repressing of Uyghurs is more sinister – and lucrative than it seems, anthropologist says,” Nahlah Ayed, Feb. 17, 2022, CBC radio.

7. “The real truth on Uyghurs which is used to taint China,” Andre Vitchek, Oct. 11, 2019, Newsbred.

8. “Parliament declares China is conducting genocide against its Muslim minorities,” Robert Fife , Steven Chase, Feb. 22, 2021, The Globe and Mail.

9. “Subcommittee report declaring “Uighur Genocide” dominated by researchers and groups funded by CIA cut-out, National Endowment for Democracy,” Aidan Jonah, Feb. 22, 2021, The Canada Files.

10. “Globe & Mail fearmongers about foreign influence while ignoring US government funding to Uighur Rights groups in Canada,” Yves Engler, March 14, 2021, Yves Engler.

11.“China / Canada,” J.B.Gerald, July 5, 2021, 2021 Suppressed News / nightslantern.ca [ access: < https://nightslantern.ca/2021bulletin.htm#jul5ca> ].

12. “Parliament declares China is conducting genocide against its Muslim minorities,” Robert Fife , Steven Chase, Feb. 22, 2021, The Globe and Mail.

13.The Gambia with the support of 42 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation who are signatories of the Convention on Genocide, as well as with intervenor status of the Maldives, the Netherlands and Canada, is trying to find out if Myanmar has committed genocide against Burma’s Rohingya. The trial is currently complicated by the military junta’s takeover of Myanmar’s government which jeopardizes the validity of the court action.

14.‘‘America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology, and Economic Strength Act of 2022,’’ or the 5 ‘‘America COMPETES Act of 2022,’’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, January 25, 2022, U.S. House of Representatives.

15.“Bill to boost US businesses includes new protections for China’s Uyghurs,” Alim Seytoff ( Roseanne Gerin), Jan. 26, 2022, Radio Free Asia.

16.“Finance & Genocide: Development Finance and the Crisis in the Uyghur Region,” Laura T. Murphy, Kendyl Salcito, Nyrola Elimä, February 2020, Atlantic Council.

17. “World Bank investment arm complicit in China’s repression of Uyghurs, report says,” Jalil Kashgary & Alim Seytoff, Feb. 17, 2022, Radio Free Asia.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Throughout the pandemic, a large contingency of doctors, researchers, and non-mainstream media outlets have been pounding the table over natural immunity as an alternative to vaccination to protect against Covid-19, with the obvious conclusion that vaccine passports are moot if a large percentage of the population has a higher degree of protection than even the vaccinated because they’ve already had the disease.

And as time has gone on, ‘the science’ has validated this theory – with even Bill Gates admitting recently that “the virus itself, particularly the variant called Omicron, is a type of vaccine.”

As the Epoch Times notes, On March 1, the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases published a peer-reviewed article titled “Risk of reinfection after seroconversion to SARS-CoV-2: A population-based propensity-score matched cohort study.” This Swiss study “observed a 94% reduction in the hazard of being infected among SARS-CoV-2 seropositive participants, when compared to seronegative controls, >8 months after serology assessment.”

This level of protection (natural immunity) from SARS-CoV-2 infection (94 percent) is comparable to that of the Pfizer vaccine but lasts longer (eight months and counting).

Yet, the official US government response – led by Dr. Anthony Fauci and echoed worldwide – has excluded virtually all mention of natural immunity as a relevant mitigation against Covid-19, which would of course render vaccination, booster shots, and vaccine passports moot for tens of millions of Americans.

And so, with Fauci pretending like he’s never heard of natural immunity for the past two years, here’s a flashback to the ‘good doctor’ discussing explaining that “The most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself.”

“The most potent vaccination is getting infected yourself” – Dr. Fauci (pre C19) pic.twitter.com/a6qiDa0Ubt

— ELIJAH (@ElijahSchaffer) March 31, 2022

Fast forward years later, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) says that when he directly asked Fauci about natural immunity, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert did not “have a real firm answer.”

Almost 20 months into the pandemic, it is shocking that the chief medical advisor to the president does not have a firm grasp on the effectiveness of natural immunity, but still promotes freedom-robbing vaccine mandates.  This administration clearly does not want the public to question whether natural immunity is more effective than vaccines. As President Biden revealingly declared, the vaccine mandate ‘is not about freedom or personal choice.’ This administration’s decision to disregard the effectiveness of natural immunity and demand vaccination ignores current data and is an assault on all Americans’ civil liberties.” -Sen. Ron Johnson

Tell me you’re a big pharma / WEF shill without telling me you’re a big pharma / WEF shill…

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from ZH

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

It can be interesting to analyse when the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler began to doubt in a German victory during World War II – and when these uncertainties turned to a feeling that the Wehrmacht, with increasing probability, would lose the war.

On 16 July 1941, three and a half weeks into Operation Barbarossa, German Army Group Centre reached the western Russian city of Smolensk, less than 250 miles from Moscow.

German troops in Smolensk, 1941 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

To many outside observers at this moment, it looked as if a German success was an inevitability. Army Group Centre’s pincers closed around Smolensk but, instead of collapsing, the trapped Russian divisions fought on valiantly for 3 weeks until 7 August.

German historian Volker Ullrich, in the second volume (Downfall: 1939-45) of his biography of Hitler, wrote, “From mid-July [1941], the resistance of the Red Army stiffened and the Wehrmacht’s forward progress was halted for the first time”. It was now becoming clear to the German high command (OKH) that the lightning victory against the USSR, which they had previously expected, was not going to materialise.

At this time in July 1941 the Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a close associate of Hitler, believed that the German public should “no longer be promised so much”; but they needed to be “informed about the harshness of the battle taking place in the east”; Goebbels continued “the Bolsheviks are putting up fiercer resistance than we imagined, and above all the matériel at their disposal is greater than we assumed”.

Goebbels the poison dwarf had, moreover, no military experience and such views on the Soviet performance should be treated with some caution. There were examples of staunch Russian resistance from June 1941 but, in all, the Red Army was weak and vulnerable in the early 1940s, largely because it had endured great injury as a result of Joseph Stalin’s purges. To compound matters Stalin had refused to believe the intelligence reports, warning him of Hitler’s coming invasion, which ensured that the Red Army was also unprepared when the blow came. Robert Service, in his biography of the Soviet ruler, wrote of Stalin, “The German armies had had no more compliant victim”. (Service, p. 410)

Three weeks into the Nazi-Soviet War, Victor Klemperer, a prominent German scholar, wrote in his diary on 13 July 1941 after speaking to a compatriot who was located near to the front, “We were suffering tremendous losses, had underestimated the Russians’ power of resistance” and “That seemed plausible to me for a while”. Though the Russians had been underestimated, the Wehrmacht was not suffering tremendous losses by 13 July.

At the end of the month, after nearly 6 weeks of fighting, by 31 July 1941 the Germans had suffered 213,301 casualties on the Eastern front, including wounded and missing (Bellamy, Absolute War, p. 245). It should be highlighted that in many cases these were not irrecoverable losses. A considerable proportion of the 213,301, having recovered from injuries or found their way back to German lines, then returned to the fighting. Furthermore, up to 31 July 1941 the Germans received 47,000 fresh troops who joined the fighting in the east. These figures have been provided by military historian Chris Bellamy in his analysis of the Nazi-Soviet War.

At the end of September 1941, the Germans had suffered 185,000 irrecoverable losses, which translates to deaths, severe injuries like decapitations and those permanently missing, etc. The damage was far worse on the Soviet side. Russian specialist Evan Mawdsley explained, “The paradox was that although the Red Army had not been destroyed in the initial onslaught, it had suffered near mortal damage”. (Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 86)

The Army Group Centre commander, Fedor von Bock, wrote in late July 1941, “The Russians are unbelievably tough”. Von Bock’s views are supported by another high-level commander, Gotthard Heinrici, leading the German 43rd Army Corps. Heinrici stated, “The enemy facing us is an astonishingly active and tenacious fellow”.

Von Bock and Heinrici may well have been influenced by memories of the French Army’s display the summer before – and that any concerted resistance would seem strong, by comparison to the dismal French performance in the 1940 Battle of France. About 1.5 million Red Army troops were in Nazi captivity by mid-August 1941, rising to more than 3 million by the middle of October. (Bellamy, p. 23)

Hitler himself started to become unsure about the German victory over the Soviet Union, or more accurately at this stage the speed of it, by late July/early August 1941; that is, when the invasion was 5 or 6 weeks old. Hitler suddenly became thoughtful and uncommunicative during daily lunches with guests, at the Wolf’s Lair military headquarters in East Prussia.

Before the Nazi-Soviet War had commenced, Hitler told Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt of the USSR, “You have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down”. The door had been kicked in alright, but the structure was still standing.

Ullrich wrote,

“It is perhaps no accident that the first time Hitler fell ill during the war was in early August 1941, when he realised that his plans for a Blitzkrieg campaign in the east had failed. The dictator told his personal physician [Theodor Morell] that he had never felt worse in his life, complaining of dizziness and nausea and declaring himself unable for several days to take part in situation meetings”.

Hitler’s diminishing confidence in the quick triumph is reflected in comments he made; which with his prior agreement were recorded by stenographers, as part of his broader views for posterity purposes, and 6 years after the war were published in the book ‘Hitler’s Table Talk’. On 10 August 1941, with Barbarossa now 7 weeks old Hitler said, “As regards the campaign in Russia, there were two conflicting views: one was that Stalin would choose the tactics of retreat, as in 1812; the other, that we must expect a desperate resistance. I was practically alone in believing this second eventuality”.

These were self-serving remarks, which do not reflect his pre-war predictions. The comments are revealing in Hitler’s admission of what he perceived to be the Red Army’s “desperate resistance”. The German high command had estimated in mid-December 1940 that “the Soviet Union would be defeated in a campaign not exceeding 8-10 weeks”, reflecting Hitler’s pre-conflict views.

Unknown to the German population, feelings of a rapid success among the Nazi hierarchy were disappearing by July and August 1941. On 27 August – 9 and a half weeks into Barbarossa – a German high command memorandum, approved by Hitler, outlined that “if it proves impossible to realize this objective completely during 1941, the continuation of the eastern campaign has top priority for 1942”. By late summer, it seems German thoughts were drifting somewhat to 1942.

On 27 September 1941, with the invasion almost 14 weeks old, Hitler said, “We must pursue two aims: 1 – To hold our positions on the Eastern front at all costs. 2 – To keep the war as far as possible from our frontiers”. (Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 36)

It is telling that Hitler made no mention here of final victory, not in 1941 at any rate. The German progress in particular was slow in the Ukraine, a country larger than France which it would take the Wehrmacht, the world’s strongest military machine, 4 months of bitter fighting to subdue. Kharkov was the last major Ukrainian city to fall, when it was captured by the German 6th Army on 24 October 1941.

Regarding the Russian weather, Hitler said in August 1941 that the “autumn rain season of the Moscow region begins about mid-October” (quote appears in the Flohn-Neumann study, p. 5). Therefore the impassable mud, which crucially stalled the German advance for successive days at the latter end of October 1941, would have come as little surprise. The severity of the mud conditions could not have bolstered Hitler’s confidence, nor would the coming Russian winter, which struck hard from around 11 November 1941. It would be one of the worst winters on record in one of the world’s coldest countries, the climatologists Hermann Flohn and Jehuda Neumann have highlighted.

As autumn turned to winter, did Hitler despair of the ultimate German victory in early December 1941?; when the Soviet Army conducted its surprise counteroffensive, against the static Wehrmacht divisions near Moscow. At this point, 5 and a half months into the conflict, Hitler would certainly have started to doubt in victory; but it is surely not a normal human reaction, when the German armies had advanced so far and destroyed so much of the enemy’s forces, that when the first big setback comes to feel that everything is lost.

However, Hitler’s uncertainties are evident towards the end of January 1942, when Army Group Centre was in danger of being encircled by the Russians. Mawdsley wrote, “Hitler told his intimates that Germany might fail”. The threat to Army Group Centre was averted, when the Soviet pincers were beaten back by counterstrokes launched from the German 9th Army.

The Wehrmacht’s stoic performance in the winter of 1941-42, would have given Hitler and the German generals cause for renewed hope. At the end of February 1942 Hitler boasted, “Now that January and February are past, our enemies can give up the hope of our suffering the fate of Napoleon. They’ve lost nothing by waiting. Now we’re about to switch over to squaring the account. What a relief!”

German confidence levels increased further during the spring. In the 3 months between April to June 1942, the Red Army suffered 780,000 irrecoverable losses, as opposed to just 52,000 such losses for the invaders in the same period (Mawdsley, p. 147). Mawdsley acknowledged, “After the crisis in front of Moscow during the winter of 1941-42, it was extraordinary that Hitler and the Wehrmacht were able to grasp the initiative again”. (P. 149)

In summer fighting especially, the Germans were simply operating at a much higher level than the Red Army. It was chiefly for this reason that Hitler and the Wehrmacht hierarchy, though not as optimistic as in June 1941, still felt in early 1942 they could inflict a hammer blow on the Soviets in the summer to come; thereby placing themselves in a dominant position in the war, or so that is what they hoped.

During the 4 month period from May to August 1942 – in what the Russian-born author Alexander Werth described as the “Black Summer of 1942” – the Germans inflicted further heavy damage on the Red Army, and made vast territorial gains across the south-western USSR. In the late summer of 1942, Nazi Germany’s territory was equal to the size of land captured by the Macedonian military ruler, Alexander the Great, in the 4th Century BC.

Waffen-SS infantry and armour advancing, Summer 1942 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

By August 1942, Hitler believed that victory was at hand. On 9 August he said, “We shall become the most self-supporting State, in every respect, including cotton, in the world… Timber we shall have in abundance, iron in limitless quantity, the greatest manganese-ore mines in the world, oil – we shall swim in it!” (Table Talk, p. 471)

The following month, September 1942, Hitler insisted, “The Russians are finished. In four weeks they will collapse”. These ebullient claims were misplaced and, two months later, belief in the war’s successful conclusion was ebbing away, and a feeling was replacing it that Germany would probably lose the war. This was in the second half of November 1942, when Hitler was receiving news that German-Axis forces in Stalingrad were being surrounded and squeezed by the Soviet Army; while his offensive in the Caucasus had by then failed, and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s panzers in North Africa were facing impossible odds.

The Nazi Minister of Armaments, Albert Speer, recalled visiting Hitler at Obersalzberg in southern Bavaria, during the latter stages of November 1942. Writing from his Spandau prison cell on 20 November 1952, Speer remembered going for a walk 10 years before with Hitler and his Alsatian dog along a mountain pathway.

As they trudged together through the snow Speer wrote of Hitler, “An old man, a man who was really already defeated, stood there in the snow impotently squeezing out his stored-up bitterness, his toxic resentments”. Speer discerned Hitler’s “dawning recognition that the war was already lost”. (Spandau, The Secret Diaries, pp. 230-231)

This would appear accurate. In the early summer of 1942 Hitler forecast, “If we do not capture the oil supplies of the Caucasus by the autumn, then I shall have to face the fact that we cannot win this war”.

Hitler suffered apparently irreversible defeats in the past, but he had survived and come back, gaining supreme success by grabbing power in Germany in January 1933. It had looked like his political career was over with the fiasco of the November 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, and his subsequent imprisonment in March 1924. It seemed he was destined to remain a political joke, with the results of the May 1928 German federal election – when the Nazi Party posted a miserable 2.6% of the national vote, whereas the Social Democratic Party recorded 29.6% of the national vote and the Communist Party 10.6%.

Within 5 years Hitler had somehow become chancellor of Germany. Maybe it was memories of his rise to power against the odds, which meant that he did not fully give up hope of victory after the Stalingrad defeat. Following the German success of arms at Kharkov, in eastern Ukraine in mid-March 1943, Hitler called it “a turning point in the fortunes of battle”. Whether he believed it is unlikely.

Yet historian Geoffrey Roberts pointed out, “Once again, the Red Army’s capabilities had not matched Stavka’s ambitions, and the Germans had proved surprisingly resilient in the wake of the devastating defeat at Stalingrad”.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007)

Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 21 Aug. 2009)

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years (Modern Library Inc; New edition, 1 Nov. 1999)

Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Pan; Reprints edition, 16 April 2010)

Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Volume II: Downfall 1939-45 (Vintage, 1st edition, 4 Feb. 2021)

Adolf Hitler, Hitler’s Table Talk, New Foreword by Gerhard L. Weinberg (Enigma Books, 30 April 2008)

Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (Collins/Fontana, 1 June 1977)

Neumann and H. Flohn, Great Historical Events That Were Significantly Affected by the Weather: Part 8, Germany’s War on the Soviet Union, 1941–45. Long-range Weather Forecasts for 1941–42 and Climatological Studies, American Meteorological Society, June 1987, Jstor

Robert M. Citino, “Kharkov 1943: The Wehrmacht’s Last Victory”, 8 May 2013, Historynet.com

Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (Yale University Press; 1st Edition, 14 Nov. 2006)

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

After a humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and loss of credibility over Ukraine, the era of US unipolarity seems to be entering its terminal phase, marked by lashing out ferociously in all directions. The most recent of these offensives occurred last week when the government of Pakistan alleged that Washington was trying to engineer regime change in Islamabad.

This time the US was caught red handed. The claim was not made via a leak or a fringe observer, but by the prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, himself. While the US State Department has denied any involvement, the political drama has only just begun.

Emerging from a crucial meeting of Afghanistan’s neighbors, China’s top diplomat took a public whack at Washington’s behavior. Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that China will not allow the US to drag smaller nations into conflict and sharply rebuked the ‘US Cold War mentality.’ Beijing is determined not to allow the US to steal Pakistan from its inner circle of vital Asian partners that today include Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and others.

On Wednesday, when a coalition partner of the governing Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) announced its seven members would switch to the opposition, Khan essentially lost his majority in the National Assembly, consisting of 342 parliamentarians. More than a dozen of his party members also threatened to cross the political aisle.

But the Pakistani opposition had mistakenly believed that as soon as they showed their required numerical majority in the parliament, the prime minister would either step down or resign. But that is not what appears to be happening.

Instead, in the next 24 hours, the voting will begin in parliament to count the actual numbers. Many analysts see this as the end of the Khan government in Pakistan; others believe the prime minister’s hold on power will be consolidated and the opposition and their foreign underwriters will suffer a permanent blow.

If the courts entertain the government’s petition to look into the foreign meddling and bribery cases, then Khan may have more time to develop a full court reaction. In just a few days, Khan has already displayed a modest demonstration of his street power. The mood and sentiment across the social media spectrum, as of now, is lopsidedly in favor of the prime minister. Large segments of the public has loudly rallied around him as the spokesman of their aspirations, while opposition party leaders are being characterized as corrupt individuals who want to topple an elected government.

The country’s main opposition parties are the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), both dynastic groups that ruled for decades until Khan came along with his campaign promises to root out the rampant corruption and cronyism that has plagued Pakistani politics for years.

The letter

Millions of Pakistanis poured out to see PM Khan speak on 27 March, when he alleged that “foreign powers are engineering a regime change in Pakistan.” Waving a letter drawn from his coat pocket, Khan threatened to reveal direct, written threats to Pakistan and himself.

Top cabinet members [Minister for Planning, Development, Reforms and Special Initiatives] Asad Umar and [Minister of Information] Fawad Chaudhry held a joint press conference where they revealed further details of this controversial letter. Khan then invited several members of his cabinet, media and the Pakistani security community to view the document first hand.

Government opponents dismissed Khan’s allegations outright, amidst an enormous amount of hubris and posturing soon to follow. Pakistani opposition leader Shahbaz Sharif (an aspirant for the prime minister position) proclaimed that he will jump ship and join Imran Khan if the letter is real and the PM was speaking truthfully. Similarly, prominent anti-establishment TV anchor Saleem Safi said that if the letter were real, he would retire from his position and drop out of media altogether.

But within hours, a mysterious petition was filed in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) with the Chief Justice Islamabad Athar Minallah issuing a legal opinion that Imran Khan may not share this letter in public because of his secrecy oath. Such a swift ruling could not have come from Pakistan’s highest judicial authority about a fake letter, surely?

The next day, the country’s National Security Committee (NSC) convened for a meeting. In attendance were Pakistan’s prime minister, the army chief, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) and naval chiefs, the National Security Advisor (NSA), and several other important officials.

Opposition members boycotted the meeting, but participants took a unanimous decision to reprimand the United States for its actions and ensure that Pakistan would not allow US authorities off the hook so easily. Subsequently, the Foreign Office called the acting US ambassador and reprimanded him – none of which could have conceivably been done on the pretext of a false letter.

What’s in the letter?

According to statements made by Khan during the NSC meeting, senior officials from the US State Department (believed to be an Undersecretary of State) sent the letter on 7 March via Asad Majeed Khan, the Pakistani ambassador in Washington.

The document reportedly states that there will be a no-confidence motion (NCM) against the prime minister soon, that Khan should know that it is coming and that he should not resist the NCM but go down with it. If he tries to resist it, the letter allegedly continues, Khan and Pakistan will face horrible consequences.

The letter mentions the NCM about eight times. The next day, on 8 March, a no-confidence vote was indeed announced. According to Khan, he has security agency information on how the illegal buying and selling of votes took place among Pakistan’s parliamentarians during this time. Then, on 9 March, the nation’s military leadership declared itself ‘neutral’ between the opposition parties and the prime minister.

Khan criticized the military for taking a neutral stance, saying a vital institution of the state should not show “neutrality” to those openly and willfully being used as tools of regime change, orchestrated by the adversaries of Pakistan. But after Foreign Minister Shah Qureshi’s return from Beijing, the military now appears to be favoring Khan’s position. It seems that either a phone call or a message must have come directly from Beijing.

Consequences of US involvement

If the foreign meddling case is a priori to the no-confidence motion, then it is possible that Khan will have legal relief and those accused of collaborating, aiding and assisting an external regime-change conspiracy will be indicted. This would include opposition political party members and Pakistani media personalities who have purportedly been traipsing to and from the US embassy in the days, weeks and months preceding the motion – now set for a seat-gripping vote on Sunday. If this can be proven in a court of law, many opposition leaders may end up behind bars.

According to Pakistan’s highest national security office and judging from the IHC notice, it appears clear that the letter was legitimate and the US is guilty of meddling in Pakistan’s internal affairs. But this is not 2001 when former Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, capitulated to the Americans upon receiving a single phone call. Today’s Pakistan has a stronger self-identity after two decades of grueling and unrecognized sacrifices for Washington’s unsuccessful war on terror. Equally, they now also understand that the US is a declining power.

Most Pakistanis do not care about US sanctions any longer, especially as they watch other nations circumvent them with new allies. The public mood and sentiment is to dismiss sanctions threats, recognizing that there will be consequences from the Pakistani side which could lead to the expulsion of American diktats from the Af-Pak-Iran region.

During his 1 April interview on national television (PTV), Imran Khan exhorted the Pakistani nation to reject the alliance of corrupt parties and western-backed media. He believed that the west’s next step will be to take his life. Pakistan’s information minister had said the same only a day earlier.

If Khan didn’t have the ability to rally the street, they could have spared him, but his current popularity and obstinate resistance to US bullying tactics make him a prime target for assassination. Most Pakistanis have long considered the killing of leaders such as Liaquat Ali Khan, Z.A. Bhutto, Zia al Haq and Benazir Bhutto to be the work of US intelligence. To those citizens, any perceived threat to PM Imran Khan’s life is a real and imminent danger. Very rapidly, the security around him has been reshuffled and new measures have been taken to provide him with extra protection.

Khan’s narrative about US interference has gained heavy momentum in the past week. The storyline is one of two sides butting heads at a critical juncture in the country’s history: on one side, an Indo-US alliance, corrupt Pakistani opposition parties, the country’s corporate media, and a handful of western-styled liberals. On the other side, a legally elected, popular and feisty prime minister, supported by the Russo-China alliance and an overwhelming majority of Pakistanis.

With those odds, it may be politically and legally impossible for Pakistan’s military to maintain its ostensible posture of neutrality no matter how much US pressure comes at it. Time may be on Khan’s side.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan will remain in office after the no-confidence motion to be voted on today was rejected. President Arif Alvi has dissolved the National Assembly after the Deputy Speaker suspended the session and rejected the no-confidence motion on grounds of it being part of a ‘foreign conspiracy, and Khan has asked his nation to prepare for elections.

It had appeared that Khan might have been voted out of office after he lost his majority in the National Assembly on Wednesday when a key ally quit his coalition, which could give the opposition the 172 votes in the 342-seat house needed to force him out.

The letter from the US may be what saved his political life.

“We know which are the places from where the pressure is being exerted on us. We will not compromise on the interest of the country. I am not leveling allegations, I have the letter which is the proof,” Khan said waving the letter in his hand.

“We will not leave parliament until both decisions [rejection of no-confidence motion and dissolution of assemblies] are reversed,” said Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader Maryam Aurangzeb. The Supreme Court has been asked by the opposition to examine the National Assembly’s moves.

“I will fight until the last ball,” the former cricket star turned politician said. Khan had said in his address to the nation, “I never wanted to be a slave to any country. When I came to power I decided we will have an independent foreign policy.” He added that times have changed and his government “wouldn’t accept the slavery of others. We will forge friendships with everyone. We won’t become slaves.”

Khan accuses the US of wanting regime change

Khan has claimed that the US “threatened” him and is seeking to oust him from office as he faced a no-confidence vote in the Pakistan National Assembly. On Sunday, he told the crowd at a rally in his support that a foreign country was conspiring against him and his political opponents working at its behest. He claimed foreign funds in the hands of his political enemies were trying to topple his government to take control of the foreign policy of Pakistan.

In a live televised address to the nation on Thursday Khan said,

“Today, I have to talk about something important about the country’s future. I decided to do this address live because Pakistan is at a defining moment and we have two paths ahead of us.”

The letter was an official diplomatic cable from the US to Pakistan which stated,

“If the vote of no confidence succeeds, we will forgive you. If it does not succeed, and Imran Khan remains the prime minister, then Pakistan will be in a difficult situation.”

“I will never let this conspiracy succeed, come what may,” Khan said.

Reasons why the US would like to oust Khan

The US wants Khan out because he had been pursuing an independent foreign policy and was visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin on the day he launched the attack on Ukraine. Pakistan afterward refrained from participating in a UN Security Council vote on a resolution denouncing Russian aggression toward Ukraine. Khan chastised the 22 UN envoys for urging Pakistan to denounce Russia, and was quoted as asking the envoys, “Are we slaves and act according to your wishes?”

Khan attended the Feb. 4 opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, while the US boycotted the ceremony.  China is Pakistan’s largest investor, with over $60 billion in projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. Following a meeting of the two countries foreign ministers in Islamabad, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated that both countries expressed concern about the spillover effects of unilateral sanctions imposed on Russia because it invaded Ukraine.

In October of 2021, the Biden administration delivered a cold message to Pakistan when US deputy secretary of state, Wendy Sherman, met Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in Islamabad. She made it clear to Pakistan that the Biden administration had downgraded the bilateral relationship. Sherman said,

“We don’t see ourselves building a broad relationship with Pakistan, and we have no interest in returning to the days of hyphenated India-Pakistan,” she added. “That’s not where we are. That’s not where we’re going to be.”

Senior Pakistan government officials said after the Sherman visit that there was diplomatic tension between the two countries that needed to be resolved and that Khan was angry that he had still not received a phone call from Joe Biden. In Biden’s speech marking the completion of the military withdrawal from Afghanistan on 31 August, he said the new emphasis would be on regional diplomacy. The decision not to call Khan was a signal of Washington’s displeasure with Khan’s attitude to Afghanistan.

Khan has described the Taliban takeover as “breaking the chains of slavery”. The US wants Pakistan to maintain international solidarity in withholding recognition of the Taliban while pressing for women’s rights and other democratic principles. Since 9/11, the US has seen Pakistan as part of the Afghan problem.

Zahid Hussain, the author of “No-Win War: the Paradox of US-Pakistan Relations in Afghanistan’s Shadow”, said that relations were at their lowest ebb. “There is a lack of hope that the relations will get better, as the things are not moving towards rapprochement between both countries. Today, we don’t see the strategic relations between the US-Pakistan – it is only a transactional relation now,” he said.

History of US regime change

In “America Invades: How We’ve Invaded Or Been Militarily Involved With Almost Every Country on Earth,” authors Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock define “invasion” as “an armed attack or intervention in a country by American forces.” According to their book, the United States has invaded or fought in 84 of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations and has been militarily involved with 191 of 193 – a staggering98 percent.

Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, and Yemen are all examples of the US-NATO regime change schemes.

The Ukraine side-effects in India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been pushing back against pressure from the US. India has not condemned Moscow’s attack on Ukraine, saying only that Russia and Ukraine should end hostilities and seek a diplomatic solution through dialog.

Russia will decrease its use of the US dollar for trade with countries such as India and hailed New Delhi as a friend that was not taking a “one-sided view” on the Ukraine war.

The US, the EU, the UK, and Canada have banned certain Russian banks from SWIFT, the high-security network that facilitates payments among 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries. Russia is offering a SWIFT alternative to India involving rupee-rouble-denominated payments using Russia’s messaging system SPFS, a system developed by the Russian central bank for bilateral payments.

India will allow Moscow to invest and borrow in the domestic market, which is a return gesture for the Russian offer of selling India oil at a whopping 25 to 30 percent discount.  The decision is to allow Russia to pay for these investments through a Reserve Bank of India account that has existed for three decades, with funds having accumulated pending payments for defense purchases made from Moscow. India may later be a target for the US-sponsored regime change plans.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All 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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

A nine-minute segment from Part 2 of Doug Valentine’s The CIA As Organized Crime. For 70 years the CIA has been working to undermine and occupy Ukraine to bring down Russia using such things as paramilitaries, right wing Nazi groups, corrupt politicians and businessmen, coups, and warfare in the eastern Ukraine region of the Donbass.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Our thanks to Mark Taliano (CRG Research Associate) for bringing this to our attention.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

Of relevance to the current crisis in Ukraine, first published by Global Research on April 26, 2019

***

[In 2017], the Ukraine’s parliament (Verkhovna Rada) voted to outlaw the St George’s Ribbon, an emblem often worn to commemorate those who liberated the Soviet Union from Hitler’s rule. Up to seven million Ukrainian infantrymen comprised part of the Red Army during their struggle against Nazi Germany, as Hitler was finally broken in the east.

By winter 1943, the once apparently indestructible Wehrmacht was spinning on its tail, their officers with their heads turning about westward, as they gradually retreated towards the German frontiers. Come the spring of 1945, about 2.5 million dead Ukrainian soldiers lay strewn across central and eastern Europe, many of their bodies never to be recovered.

The decision by an increasingly far-right Ukrainian parliament to ban remembrance symbols which commemorate those who fought against the Third Reich is, therefore, a desecration of their memory. It is an attempt to wash over that awful suffering the Ukrainian state endured during the Nazi occupation, with Hitler outlining plans to turn the country into a servile colony of Germanic dominion.

Over elapsing time from the February 2014 US-instituted “pro-democracy revolution”, an ever expanding group of neo-Nazis has been elected to office. Notable amid these menacing figures is the far-right military commander Yuriy Bereza (image on the right), an MP since November 2014 who was elected under the title “People’s Deputy of Ukraine”.

Bereza is a member of fascist-infiltrated party, People’s Front, which counts among its prominent MPs the neo-Nazi Andriy Parubiy, Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament since April 2016. In the early 1990s, Parubiy co-founded the far-right Social-National Party of Ukraine with fellow extremist Oleh Tyahnybok, that later became known as the Svoboda (Freedom) party.

When, in May 2017, a few of the Ukraine’s conscientious MPs objected to moves in banning the St George’s Ribbon, Bereza roared down from his parliamentary seat that he would like to “grab a machine gun and shoot those bast*rds”. Bereza cuts an intimidating figure. He is a tall man routinely clad in full army fatigues, with tightly-cropped hair, broad shoulders and stern expression.

In December 2018, Bereza punched in the face Nestor Shufrych, an MP with the centre-left party For Life, after the latter removed a poster from the parliamentary podium which accused wealthy Ukrainian politician, Viktor Medvedchuk (image on the left), of being a Kremlin “agent”. Medvedchuk is said to be an associate of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Bereza is familiar with the use of arms. Since April 2014, he has held the position of Dnipro Battalion leader: A fascist-linked unit which has fought Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukrainian regions such as the Donetsk Oblast, an area which rests directly upon Russia’s south-western border, and is a mere 400 miles from Volgograd (Stalingrad). The Dnipro Battalion is subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, which among other things implements state policy.

Bereza and his regiment were involved in fighting during the autumn 2014 Battle of Ilovaisk, ending in decisive victory for the Moscow-supported Donetsk People’s Republic.

Bereza’s cause has drawn sympathy and backing from commercial media outlets like the Los Angeles Times, which wrote how his unit “survived on grass and rainwater as they braved five days of incessant sniper fire”. The LA Times also quotes Bereza and, despite a heightened risk of nuclear war, the newspaper calls for increased funding to be granted to the far-right battalions.

Over Christmas 2014, Bereza’s regiment was accused of war crimes by human rights groups, such as the deliberate starvation of Ukrainian civilians. His battalion has received more than $10 million of financial support from billionaire businessman Ihor Kolomoyskyi. There are photographs of the oligarch shaking hands amiably with Bereza in spring 2014.

Kolomoyskyi has provided critical support too for Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukraine’s president-elect, by guaranteeing him widespread exposure on television networks that the tycoon owns. Kolomoyskyi is one of the most powerful and affluent Ukrainians in the world. His corporate influence extends from the Caucasus of Eurasia to the Appalachian mountains of North America.

In a plot befitting a Hollywood film noir, Kolomoyskyi is presently under investigation by the FBI regarding claims of “ordering contract killings” and “financial crimes”, including money laundering and embezzlement. In 2016, Kolomoyskyi was accused of defrauding the Ukraine’s largest bank (PrivatBank) of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Also that year a criminal case was opened in Russia against Kolomoyskyi, purporting that he had organized the killings of civilians. He has been compelled to deny other allegations in the past relating to bribery and abduction.

Kolomoyskyi, who lived in the US for a period and retains vast business interests in states like Ohio and West Virginia, moved to Israel last September – which may well complicate a potential extradition to America, as he also possesses part Israeli citizenship.

Kolomoyskyi has bankrolled other far-right regiments fighting in eastern Ukraine, such as the Azov, Aidar and Donbas battalions. These armed groups have been cited by human rights activists for committing an array of offences, including war crimes – which have gone unpunished – like torture, abductions, possible executions, unlawful detention, sexual assault, etc.

An alarming number of neo-Nazis have indeed been elected to office in the Ukrainian parliament. Over the past five years of what the Washington Post calls “fledgling democracy”, the following fascist figures have all enjoyed work as Ukrainian MPs, and they each comprise past and current members of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party: Oleh Tyahnybok, Ihor Mosiychuk, Oleh Osukhovskyi, Yuriy Bublyk, Oleksandr Marchenko, Oleh Makhnitskyi, Andriy Ilyenko, Ruslan Koshulynskyi, Mykhailo Holovko, Yuriy Levchenko, Igor Miroshnychenko, Pavlo Kyrylenko and Eduard Leonov.

The above’s presence in the corridors of power has been almost undocumented in mass media reporting. There are other fascists receiving continued employment in the Ukrainian parliament – like Andriy Biletsky, co-founder of the now defunct white supremacist Social-National Assembly. Since late 2016, MP Biletsky has held the leadership of National Corps, a far-right party. This organization is reported to be expanding steadily with Biletsky saying last month that,

“we see how successful our movement is… Ukraine is tired of the chaos, it needs new people who will protect the country”.

Source: Euronews

For over two years from May 2014 Biletsky commanded the Azov Battalion, which enjoyed tacit Western support whilst fighting Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. Azov Battalion soldiers can be seen in photographs giving Nazi salutes, while flanked with swastikas and other symbols based on SS insignia.

More far-right individuals are holding seats like Andrey Artemenko, a Canadian citizen and MP since November 2014, who claims to be a “neo-conservative” and has membership of the fascist-led Radical Party. The Radical Party leader and MP is far-right extremist Oleh Lyashko, whose militant activities in the east of Ukraine were condemned by human rights organizations, in which he was described as “one particularly errant MP”. Lyashko has been accused in preceding months of corruption relating to “illicit enrichment”, which he denies.

Among the Radical Party MPs is the briefly above-mentioned Ihor Mosiychuk, a neo-Nazi who is a past member of both the Svoboda party and Social-National Assembly. Mosiychuk, sworn to office in November 2014, is also a journalist and editor-in-chief of the hardline newspaper Vechirnaya Vasilkov.

Serhiy Melnychuk, former leader of the Aidar Battalion, is likewise a Radical Party MP, as he has been since November 2014. Melnychuk is currently under investigation over allegations regarding a false assets declaration, while he has previously been the subject of multiple legal cases and accused of abduction. Melnychuk was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in June 2015.

There are further far-right Ukrainian MPs embedded in seemingly respectable parties like the People’s Front. Among them is Ihor Lapin, a multi-decorated militant commander who comprised part of the Aidar Battalion, which draped Nazi-style insignia over its armoured vehicles.

Holding membership of the People’s Front too is the aforementioned Parubiy, who has enjoyed trips to America and Canada, and is acquainted with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. The far-right military figure, Mykhailo Havryliuk, is himself a People’s Front member and MP, with Yuriy Bereza as stated also claiming a position in that party.

There are in addition fascists posing as “independents” in parliament such as Volodymyr Parasyuk, a former soldier in the Dnipro Battalion, commanded by Bereza. Parasyuk is a past member of the neo-Nazi party, Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists. He was elected in November 2014, and still enjoys a place as MP more than four years on. Parasyuk has a reputation for physically assaulting people he does not like, including cowardly attacks on statesman Oleksandr Vilkul and security chief Vasyl Hrytsak, kicking the latter in the head while he was seated.

Boryslav Bereza is a separate extreme right-wing independent MP, and was elected in November 2014; he is a former spokesperson for Right Sector, a fascist party, and despite his surname he is no relation to Yuriy Bereza.

Boryslav Bereza is an open admirer of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, speaking warmly of his “three classic principles” in interviews. Moreover, in December 2014 Boryslav Bereza acknowledged that during the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Right Sector provided important assistance for Biletsky’s notorious Azov Battalion.

MP Dmytro Yarosh, the one-time head of Right Sector, is yet another neo-Nazi who in the past was placed on Interpol’s international wanted list, acceding to the Kremlin’s request. Since late 2014, Yarosh constitutes a Ukrainian MP, and for many years he has been leader of the Tryzub (Trident) paramilitary group, whose full title is the Stepan Bandera All-Ukrainian Organization.

In Western establishment dialogue – pertaining to regimes they support – the terms “neo-Nazi” and “fascist” have been virtually erased from official records and reporting. These unequivocal labels are instead replaced with descriptions like “ultra-conservative”, “nationalist” and “maverick”. The latter ambiguous words blur the lines of neo-Nazism and fascism, sowing seeds of doubt and confusion in the reader’s mind. A fascist now becomes an ultra-conservative or nationalist.

There are other post “revolution” MPs who have been part of fascist regiments, like Nadiya Savchenko, an Iraq War veteran and former instructor in the Aidar Battalion. Savchenko is a far-right extremist, and had been held in a Ukrainian jail for over a year until her unexpected release last week – after being suspected of planning a terrorist attack on the Ukrainian parliament building, and intending to overthrow the government. Savchenko still faces trial regarding these claims, and prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko said her departure from prison suggests that the country’s court apparatus is “gravely ill”.

In June 2014, Savchenko was arrested by Russian authorities, placed on trial, and after long deliberation was charged in March 2016 with complicity in the killing of two state journalists. President Petro Poroshenko championed Savchenko’s cause, describing her as “a symbol of the struggle for Ukraine”; and in March 2015 he awarded her the title “Hero of Ukraine”, the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a Ukrainian citizen.

Semen Semenchenko, the far-right Donbas Battalion commander, was sworn in as a Ukrainian MP in November 2014. Semenchenko’s election to parliament came weeks after his regiment was accused by a UN monitoring mission of executing war crimes on Ukrainian civilians, such as torture, beatings and sexual assault.

In September 2014, Semenchenko had arrived in Washington where he met Congress and Pentagon representatives. That same month he publicly called for US military backing, and enjoyed further visits to America later that year, while he is himself an admirer of Israel. In June 2017, an appeal was expounded against Semenchenko by former Donbas Battalion soldiers, who wanted an investigation conducted after accusing him of criminal acts.

In December 2018, Semenchenko was detained in Tbilisi, Georgia and suspected of “illegal possession and acquisition of arms”. He was not arrested due to having a diplomatic passport, and thereafter travelled by airplane to an unknown destination.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Crisis Group

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

First published by Global Research on March 8, 2022

 

 

 

 

---

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

---

Well, the genie is well and truly out of the bottle and there is no easy way to encourage it to return. Thanks to a relentless flow of propaganda, the American public has become increasingly convinced that the United States “looks weak” and must stand up against Vladimir Putin. Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations is now calling for “regime change” in Russia while Senator Robert Wicker and Congressman Adam Kinzinger as well as several former Joint Chiefs of Staff generals are demanding that the United States establish a “no fly zone” over Ukraine, which would require US destruction of Russia’s air defense capabilities and shooting down of Russian planes among other measures. If that were to occur the war could quickly turn nuclear. Other media and government “experts” are speculating that Russian President Vladimir Putin is insane with much of the other disinformation coming from Russia haters like Bill Browder and former Ambassador Michael McFaul. But FOX news commentator Sean Hannity possibly wins the hate race, calling for the assassination of Putin because has he has “forfeited his right to live,” a view also shared by Senator Lindsey Graham.

Former GOP Vice President Mike Pence has called for anyone supporting Russia to be kicked out of the party which will no doubt produce a purge of members who are reluctant to go to war on behalf of foreign country and no ally Ukraine. Meanwhile a completely deranged Senator Mitt Romney has described anyone speaking up for Russia as “almost treasonous,” suggesting that Romney would benefit from looking up the definition of “treason” in the US Constitution. And the completely looney-tunes televangelist Pat Robertson is warning that Russia attacked Ukraine but the real target is Israel, which will result in a great war and Armageddon leading to the “End Times” when the world will end and all true believers will be raptured up to heaven.

But other more stable folks are making two basic arguments to justify the increasing engagement of Washington in the fighting. The first is the vague claim that what Ukraine versus Russia is all about is the maintenance of “freedom and democracy” in Europe. That is generally how President Joe Biden and other politicians describe it since it does not require any further explanation or discussion. The other argument is rather an elaboration of that, claiming that there was some kind of post-Second World War consensus that aggressive war to acquire someone else’s land should be condemned by all nations and steps should be taken to contain and repress any such activity. This led to the creation of the United Nations.

The problem is that neither justification for involving the US in a conflict where it is not actually threatened requires something more substantial given the danger of escalation of the fighting to the point where the world’s two leading nuclear powers would find themselves going head-to-head. And there is the little matter of history to reckon with, which tells us that not everything taking place can be reduced to such simplistic terms to justify taking action. The status quo in eastern Europe is a consequence of the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991-2 and, beyond that, of the configuration of the Russian Empire of the Tsars that preceded communism. Ukraine itself has had its borders adjusted numerous times.

Currently, the Ukrainian government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is seeking to broaden the conflict with Russia by attempting to join the European Union while also calling for weapons as well as direct military intervention from NATO. He has called for volunteers to join the fight as a “foreign legion” and has also contacted Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and suggested that Bennett persuade Putin to participate in peace talks in Jerusalem. There has also been a less conciliatory appeal to world Jewry to join in on the attack directed against Moscow’s economy. In a video circulated among Jewish international organizations Zelenskyy said “Don’t you see what is happening? That is why it is very important that millions of Jews around the world not remain silent right now. Nazism is born in silence.”

There is also more than a measure of hypocrisy in the Biden Administration taking the lead on punishing Russia for aggression. The United States has gone to war with a non-threatening Vietnam and has destroyed governments and engaged in completely illegal military occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Syria. It has assassinated senior officials from Iran. It has not been punished for any of those actions. Its ally Israel bombs Syria on nearly a daily basis, engages in assassinations, kills Palestinian children, and annexes Arab land that it has obtained by force on the Golan Heights and West Bank, dispossessing the original inhabitants. When that happens, the US Congress and White House look the other way. All the Israeli war crimes as well as those being carried out by the Saudis against Yemen’s Houthis have been endorsed by the successive Bush, Obama, Trump and now the Biden administrations.

Beyond that, Ukraine is no democracy. The nation’s current government came into power after the 2014 coup engineered by President Barack Obama’s State Department at an estimated cost of $5 billion. The regime change was driven by State Department Russophobe Victoria Nuland with a little help from international globalist George Soros. It removed the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych who was unfortunately for him a friend of Russia. Ukraine is reputedly both the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, witness the Hunter Biden saga. Zelenskyy who is Jewish and claims to have holocaust victims in his family tree is a former comedian who won election in 2019. He replaced another Jewish president Petro Poroshenko, after being heavily funded and promoted by yet another fellow Jew and Ukraine’s richest oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is also an Israeli citizen and lives in Israel. As an entertainer, one of Zelenskyy’s musical acts consisted of his playing a piano with his penis, suggesting that Ukrainian humor has some unique characteristics.

After the election of the post-coup new model Ukrainian government in 2014, opposition parties were declared illegal and some leaders were arrested for “treason,” the media was censored and the parliament outlawed Russian, the language of a third of the population, as an official language. Then the government declared war on the predominantly Russian Eastern provinces and, for past eight years, has killed 14,000 people.

I keep asking myself, why do Washington policymakers and the media who should know better give so much of a damn about Ukraine? It is of no strategic value to the United States and Russian demands were both reasonable and negotiable. So the claims that Ukraine’s defense is intended to keep Europe democratic and free is just so much window dressing to justify waging economic war on Russia. And, in any event, American hypocrisy is clearly visible regarding the Kremlin’s possible intention to annex a couple of heavily Russian Ukrainian regions. It is not in any way worse than what Israel has been doing in Jerusalem, on the West Bank and on the Golan Heights, all endorsed by successive US administrations. So what’s it all really about?

After considering the parallels with Israel, it then occurred to me that maybe there was the usual angle, meaning that it was all about “protecting” Jews, the argument that succeeds in Washington where all else fails and makes the Bidens, Blinkens, Pelosis and Schumers stand up and salute. Even a befuddled Donald Trump has seen the light and is now calling the Russian intervention a “holocaust” and is joking about false-flagging US F-22 fighter bombers as Chinese and “bombing the shit out of Russia.” The Jewish media is also showering Zelenskyy with praise, referring to him as a genuine “Jewish hero,” a modern Maccabee resisting oppression, a David versus Goliath. T-shirts bearing his image are being sold that read “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh” while the Jewish community in New York City is raising millions of dollars for Ukrainian aid.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that a “2020 demographic survey estimated that besides a ‘core’ population of 43,000 Jews, around 200,000 Ukrainians are technically eligible for Israeli citizenship, meaning that they have identifiable Jewish ancestry. The European Jewish Congress says that number could be as high as 400,000.” If that is true, it is one of the largest Jewish communities in the world and it includes at least 8,000 Israelis, many of whom are trying to return to Israel. Other Ukrainian Jews are also fleeing the country.

Israel, with close ties to both nations through the Jewish diaspora, has been attempting to play both sides, offering support to Ukraine while also not condemning Russia. Its Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is increasingly playing the role of mediator between the two adversaries, having met with Putin and spoken several times with Zelenskyy. Jews, some of whom have Israeli citizenship, are, in fact, disproportionately represented among the so-called oligarchs in both countries, controlling key sectors of the respective economies. Several Russian Jewish oligarchs have already fled on their superyachts to ports providing non-extradition in an attempt to preserve their assets from US and European sanctions directed against Moscow’s economy.

So there appears to be a Jewish/Israeli story that is part and parcel of what is going on in Ukraine. It has long been recognized by many that a particular antipathy directed against Russia permeates the neocon world view. Most neocons are Jewish and a number of them are running the State Department while also holding high level positions elsewhere in the Biden Administration as well as in the foreign policy think tanks, including Haass at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. Likewise, the intensely Russophobic US and Western media and social networking sites are disproportionately Jewish in their ownership and staffing. As US-Russian negotiations leading up the current fighting were clearly designed to fail by the Biden Administration, one has to wonder if this war is largely a product of a long enduring ethno-religious hatred. I am speculating of course, but there is even some historical evidence to support such a view in the Iraq invasion and the hostility towards Iran, both of which have been and continue to be driven by Israeli interests, not those of the United States. Is Russia the enemy a similar contrivance? It has to be considered…

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums, etc.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Prime Minister Draghi pulls straight on increasing military spending, with the full support of the President of the Republic. For Italy, this means going from the current 26 billion euros a year to at least 38 billion a year, or from 70 to over 100 million euros a day spent on public money. 

The decision was actually taken not in Rome but in Brussels, at the NATO Summit of Heads of State and Government. The increase in NATO military expenditure is driven by the United States: the Pentagon budget is increased by 10% to 773 billion dollars, to which other military expenditures  are added, bringing the total to over 1.000 billion dollars annually.

NATO under US command is intensifying its military escalation in Europe, following the same strategy that provoked the Russian response with the military operation in Ukraine. To the four battle groups already deployed in Poland and the three Baltic republics, NATO is adding four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Their function is not only against Russia, however.

In Bulgaria, the defense minister, deemed untrustworthy, was deposed by NATO order and replaced by Bulgaria’s ambassador to NATO. In Hungary, where general elections are held on April 3rd, Prime Minister Orbán opposes the country’s involvement in the escalation of war against Russia, refusing to supply arms to Ukraine, and declares that Hungary wants to increase imports of Russian gas. Conversely, the left declares that, if it goes to government, it will adopt sanctions on Russian gas supplies and send arms to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the U.S. and the European Union have formed a joint task force to reduce Russian gas supplies to Europe and replace it with U.S.-supplied liquefied natural gas. However, this is much more expensive than Russian gas and has very volatile prices. Hence the colossal increase in energy expenditure in Italy and Europe, which prepares for a disastrous economic crisis.

 

*

Grandangolo can also be seen on live TV on cell phones or computers on the site.

From the Tuesday following the first broadcast, the episode of Grandangolo is visible, together with the previous ones, on the site.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”   George Orwell, Animal Farm

While there is much talk these days about “fake news,” omitting important news is perhaps as widespread and egregiously harmful to an informed public.  The following report tries to remedy the way the mainstream media have for years ignored one of the oddest but more important news stories of the last sixty years.  Its implications are momentous, especially in the light of the exponential growth of spying and the loss of privacy. There are eyes everywhere these days. That we are being watched is beyond dispute; but by whom and why?  This is the real story that the mainstream media have failed to address.  Their failure to do so is truly laughable.

Extensive scientific research over fifty years has concluded that pigs that stink and grow larger as they age have small eyes and tend to stare at people. I have previously reported on these startling studies, but they have been met with a blind eye. Researchers across the world continue to replicate and confirm the findings of the original research done in 1953 in Kansas by Dr. Wilfred Jeffrey Eftie. Yet the mainstream media, as is their wont, keep failing to report these extraordinary studies or slight them as worse than fake news.  Averting one’s gaze from their import won’t make them disappear.  Surveilling pigs may not be obvious, but the fact that they’re not makes them triply dangerous.

While seemingly insignificant on the face of it, these replicated studies in abnormal autology have led to new insights into our osmological understanding of the place of egoism in political life. The epistemology of egoism has long perplexed scientists, but Eftie’s brilliant counterintuitive insights have led to some major breakthroughs. However, the story of Eftie’s original discovery, ignored for years, deserves renewed attention.  But I will get to that in due course. It is best to proceed backwards.  Looking back will allow us to see if we have learned anything from the past and if something is gaining on us.

So let’s first take a look at a few of the significant follow-up studies that have added so much to our understanding of human animal behavior. It’s surely an understatement to say that in the world of science we stand on the shoulders of giants such as Eftie. It allows us to see so far.  One study that was replicated 789 times found that small eyes in humans tended to result in marked elevations of dopamine and diminished activity in the frontal cortex, the same results that were found in pigs. When translated into the political arena, researchers found that politicians with small eyes tend to stare at people as a power tactic, and such body language is correlated with a tendency for them to grow larger as they age – i.e. get fat.  Their small-eyed stares seem to intensify the power differential between them and those stared at, but this was not conclusively proven. Not yet, at least.

Unlike the pig studies from which this research emanated, no correlation was found to body odor.  However, one eminent New York City based researcher, Dr. Wilbur Shoat, made the startling discovery that smell is very subjective, and therefore in the human samples an intervening variable, such as the number and consistency of nose hairs, may be a factor. Shoat did find a possible link that demands further study: In the politicians and celebrities that comprised his sample – seemingly different from the original pigs – there was a significant probability that the sulfuric whiff they gave off came from their mouths when they talked, unlike the small-eyed fat pigs that stank all over; that, at least, was what some researchers felt they smelled when working with pigs.  Ironically, pigs have an acute sense of smell far superior to that of humans, which may explain why non-scientists might think otherwise. Then again, it may not.

But Dr. Shoat, coming from a long line of swine scientists, had presciently hypothesized that finding, though common sense would have us expect the exact opposite. But then again, common sense often over-exaggerates its ability to grasp the nuances of science and understand its processes.  Perhaps this is because so much science reporting is written in jargon-filled prose and not clear, non-redundant language understandable to the average normal person.  Unlike today, reporters and doctors once wrote clearly, as the following quote from Dr. Eftie exemplifies.

In one of his follow-up studies, Dr. Eftie put it this way: “Without resorting to value judgements, it is the intent of this research project to substantiate an empirical relationship between the small size of the medium swine eye (as intensified through the pig smell/eyelid blink factor) on the one hand, and resulting intrafamily behavioral oddness on the other…. Animals in the control group progressed, without exception, from small to large size as they matured, thus creating the impression that they could both see more and take increasingly decisive action in response to visual stimuli.”

An ingenious researcher, Dr. Edward Edwards, an amphigorologist known for his determinist determining twin studies, took the small-eyed pig studies and applied their methodology to self-promotion among well-known people – i.e. celebrities. He reviewed thirty-five books they had written, including autobiographies and political memoirs, and concluded that those with the smallest eyes (based on optical scans of book jacket photos) tended to have the largest egos.  While his sample size was admittedly small, so were their eyes, and he thought intensity of gaze was more important than size.  He reported that in a eureka moment he realized that they all seemed to be looking intensely at him. What his subjects had in common – aside from money and having been mentioned in the gossip columns – was that they considered themselves to be “somebodies” (his term, based on their notorious egocentricity).  As a good researcher does, he operationalized the term “somebody” to mean “not nobody,” making sure to be precise.  What else, if anything, a “somebody” is he left hanging until his follow-up study when he plans to interview the thirty-five and ask them.  He expects they will gladly answer, and that those answers will buttress his empirical findings.

Sadly, the first pigs observed by Dr. Eftie are long deceased.  They stare no more.  Absurd as it may sound, we owe them a great debt.  Since a pig’s life is a brief prologue to bacon in a country devoted to devouring the evidence of its crimes, most researchers have had to study the children and grandchildren of Eftie’s pigs.  But their offspring have flourished – thank God for that. Pigs seem to reproduce rapidly and in great numbers, and researchers today have a wide assortment to choose from – across species.

One of the most intriguing aspects of all this ground-breaking research is how it sheds light on the need to replicate studies and repeat inconvenient truths that people wish to avoid. Repetition, repetition, repetition – that’s the key – a sine qua non of the scientific method and the best news fit to print, as Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and mentor to a certain German leader, instructed our finest opinion leaders.

Of course the news of Dr. Eftie’s important work can’t be repeated by the mainstream media since they have never reported it. Their focus on fake news reporting has diverted our attention from this censorship by omission. One might reasonably conclude they have no interest in autology or pig gazing, and that is a god-damned shame.  You can see I’m getting emotional, but the findings about pigs reported here need wide and ceaseless publicity, and we depend on our mainstream media to do that. Keep hammering the same point; that way truth will emerge. People need to hear things repeated before they sink in.

Not just the research into political pigs with small eyes and big egos, but what they say, and what we say about what they say, and what the media repeats about what they think about what they say.

We need the straight truth, and I think that if we compulsively repeat ourselves, we will be marching toward the light.  I am sure of that.  But it takes perseverance.  If we stick to our guns, remain humble, and keep repeating ourselves, this writer believes we will perhaps discover that even pigs with large eyes stare at people. That may be shocking, but it should wake people up.

After all, Dr. Eftie’s dazzling insights had humble beginnings, but he kept after it.  The roots of his genius lie in his childhood, as his first observational study makes clear.  He was a brilliant and precocious child.  When he was seven years old and just starting the second grade, his teacher, Mrs. Schmidt, had the original idea of having her students write about what they did on their summer vacation.  Wilfred’s scholarly career began with that essay.  Here it is:

“Wilfred E       2A     My Sumer Vacation

I spent too to weeks all sumer at my Granpa Efties on a farm in Conzu CanzCanzus. i saw many pigs their. Sum of the pigs saw me too two. With there tiny eeis eyes. The Big pigs were very big.”

While this childish writing is humorous, it became the inspiration for Dr. Eftie’s scientific breakthrough years later.  In 1973, the writer Tom Koch wrote a fascinating article describing his step-by-step maturation on his way to his Ph.D. It reads like a case study of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development or Dr. Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief – Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance (DABDA); I forget which.  Scholars from across the disciplines should study it since they tend to like stages.

But little news since has been devoted to the advances made by Doctors Shoat and Edwards in their follow-up studies.  After all, studies replicated 789 times demand attention, especially considering their findings.  It is hoped that this update will convince the skeptical that there is more truth in a pig’s eye than seems to be the case.

News like this is often overlooked by the mainstream media that prefer what they call “real news.”  It behooves us to stand with Dr. Eftie and the importance of his insights into pigs, especially those with small eyes, since they are looking at us.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image is from Behind the Curtain

---

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

To order his book click the cover page.

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

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

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

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

This will be background and analysis that will help a viewer to understand and evaluate the reliability and truthfulness of the following video from the independent American journalist Patrick Lancaster in Ukraine:

This video presents evidence which some viewers might find extremely puzzling, if they don’t already know the relevant background, the history, which has led up to it, and which will here be documented via direct links to the evidence.

In fact, anyone who clicks onto the links in this article will see the evidence for themselves, which explains what is currently happening in Ukraine.

It’s written ONLY for individuals who want to do that. (Anyone who is already satisfied with what they think or believe to be the explanation behind the war in Ukraine will likely not find this article to be of interest — especially because taking the added time to click onto and consider the evidence that’s supplied in any of the links here would likely not be something they’d want to do.)

Patrick Lancaster is a purely crowdfunded American independent war-reporter who is now in Mariupol, Ukraine, a major city that had rebelled against the 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, who had been democratically elected in 2010, and who pursued a neutralist international policy despite America’s President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton both telling him, in person, later that very same year: Ukraine should instead join NATO, America’s military alliance against Russia, which had always (prior to the coup) been considered to be “the enemy” by more Ukrainians than who considered it “friendly.”

The new Ukrainian government succeeded in 2014 to conquer Mariupol, but not the areas in adjoining Donbass. Consequently, whereas in Donbass, the defenders are the local residents, against the invading Ukrainian government’s forces; in Mariupol, the defenders are instead the Ukrainian government’s forces, against the invading forces from Russia and from Donbass.

Yanukovych said no to the U.S. demand, on both occasions; and, so, by no later than 23 June 2011, a coup was already being planned by Hillary Clinton’s U.S. State Department and Google (a major financial backer of hers) to overthrow Yanukovych and replace him and all of Ukraine’s top national-security officials, by members, supporters, and allies, of Ukraine’s two most-far-right political Parties, the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine (renamed, upon advice from the CIA, to become the “Freedom” Party or “Svoboda”), and the Right Sector Party.

The Freedom Party was founded (as the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine) and led by Andrei Parubiy; and the Right Sector Party was founded and led by Dmitriy Yarosh, as, originally, Ukraine’s largest paramilitary organization. Both groups were intensely, and racistly, anti-Russian, and derived their chief support from the far-western Lviv area of Ukraine, where pro-Hitler sentiment during World War II had been the highest in all of Ukraine.

That was the strongest pro-Nazi part of Ukraine, and Ukraine’s collaborators with Germany’s Nazis subsequently became memorialized as heroes in that region. Their racism is more anti-Russian than anti-Jew, but it is both. The CIA has instructed all of Ukraine’s nazis (or racist-fascists) to suppress their anti-Semitism and White Supremacy until after Ukraine has become admitted into NATO. (The U.S. goals in this matter have been to replace Russia’s biggest naval base, which is on Crimea, with a U.S. naval base there, and — above all — ultimately to become able to place its missiles on Ukraine’s border with Russia so as to become enabled to blitz nuclear-attack the Kremlin within a mere 7 minutes or less, and thereby maybe destroy Russia’s ability to counter-attack — ‘WIN’ (instead of prevent) a nuclear war against Russia.)

A third leading Ukrainian racist fascist, or ideological nazi, whom the U.S. Government hired into the new Ukraine’s national-security leadership, was Andrei Biletsky, who had founded the far-right “Patriot of Ukraine” group and its Azov Battalion of openly Hitler-admiring fighters. That Battalion started in 2015 to receive support from America’s CIA and to be integrated into the new Ukraine’s army as its most elite fighting force. They are (or were) centered in Mariupol and along the Ukrainian border just outside the breakaway far-eastern Donbass region, where the Battalion were constantly shelling into that region in order to kill and/or compell to flee anybody who lived in that region, which had voted over 90% for Yanukovych (“Janukovych”).

It was an ethnic cleansing in order to get rid of enough of those residents so that, if ever that area would again become integrated into Ukraine and its remaining residents would therefore be voting again in Ukrainian national elections, the U.S.-installed nazi Ukrainian regime will ‘democratically’ be able to continue to rule in Ukraine.

This is the background behind Lancaster’s video.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

 

For more terrestrially grounded people, writing about cricket can be seen as an exercise in distant planetary speculation.  The Nobel laureate Harold Pinter did not think so, calling this old English game “the greatest thing that God ever created on earth.”  Others might disagree with mild disgust, finding it archaic, jargon heavy and slow.

In the early 1990s, one figure broke through the stuffiness of willow bats, pads, leather balls and white flannel.  When life left the overly worked body of Australia’s Shane Warne, who expired in Thailand at 52, the reaction was global.  In India and Pakistan, hundreds of millions mourned.  This most celebrated of error-prone buffoons was, as the emperor Vespasian might have said, becoming a god.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground, on March 30, became the venue for one such occasion: a state memorial service held in honour of the cricketer.  For a brief spell, a sporting stadium had become a cathedral, the occasion heavy with solemnity.  In it, Warne’s followers and admirers communed.

When Sir Elton John appears to commemorate you, the celebrity value is bound to inflate and discombobulate.  There were others from the Hollywood set with recorded speeches (fittingly, Warne, with his peroxide hair, ear adornments and lifestyle had been given the name of “Hollywood”).  The more cynical observer might wonder whether these people would necessarily know what a cricket pitch looked like, let alone what Warne’s expertise entailed.  But sport in this era can enable a figure to move beyond fringes, catapulted to permanent, social media dissemination. Even prior to the advent of the tech giant platform, Warney had already broken the mould.

Nothing can be taken away from his expertise, in so far as it was practised on the cricket ground.  The smell of leather whirring and whizzing upon flattened grass.  Deception and guile, packed into the movement of the delivery.  A mastery of tactics, field placements, with a sublime ability that enabled him to execute the “ball of the century” in 1993 against England’s bemused Mike Gatting.

Memorials, however, always risk going too far, slipping into soppy hagiography.  Malcolm Knox tearily glistens by claiming that the cricketer was “a force of nature and an everyman”.  Writing like a starstruck admirer, Knox is dewey.  “If you ever walked behind Shane Warne through a crowded place, you might get an idea of what it was like.  Some deferred by looking away again.  Others grappled with their phones to take a quick shot.”

Another admirer of Warne’s, sports commentator Sam Newman, was aghast about Warne’s other, lesser-known activities.  It came out during the memorial service itself.  Warne, Andrea Egan of the UN Development Programme revealed, had joined its wildlife fund, Lion’s Share, in 2021.  Her address seemed to transform the late sports figure into a modern incarnation of St. Francis of Assisi.  She explained how his legacy lived on “in the people of Sri Lanka promoting sea turtle conservation, in an all-female anti-poaching unit in South Africa and the team of the Byron Bay hospital, who were supported in the wake of the bushfires.”

Egan’s appearance stunned Newman. “They had a representative from the United Nations!  I tell you what, if that man has not taken all before him, I’d like to see someone who can top that.”  It’s not often you hear a good word about the UN in these circles – Newman is as parochially soaked as they come – but he had to concede that Warne’s involvement, and the acknowledgment, “nearly blew me out of the water”.

Memorial services also serve to iron out wrinkles and add cosmetic touch-ups.  Brilliance, or genius, can be mistaken as being broad rather than confined, somehow seeping into other areas of life.  Unless you have a particular affection for laddish and occasionally loutish behaviour, for acts of spectacular stupidity in public life, cricket remains the throne upon which Warne sat most comfortably.  But when he got off it and wandered around without orb and sceptre, the messiness began.

Warne made no secret of this tendency, though he proved unapologetic about it.  In one of his three ghost written autobiographies, No Spin, he conceded to having “made a number of mistakes in my life and I will continue to make them. This is what it means to be human.”

With that standard in mind, Warne proved particularly human in accepting $5,000 in 1994 during a one-day tournament in Sri Lanka from a shady Indian bookmaker by the name of “John”.  This was a stroke of good luck – Warne had frittered away about that same amount at the hotel’s casino in Colombo.  This “gift” with “no strings attached” transpired because Warne’s own Australian teammate, Mark Waugh, had received $4000 from “John” for supplying weather and pitch reports.

In reflecting upon this incident, Warne gave one of his famously baffling reasons.  He did not wish to insult John, who was offering the money to a figure he described as “a great player”.  He would recall that this was “the sort of conversation I might have had with my dad and brother.”  This dubious family analogy did not extend to the Pakistani cricketer Saleem Malik, who, fortunately for the slow bowler, failed in an attempt to make Warne throw a match for $200,000.

Family, however, makes an appearance again in 2003.  The occasion was the injudicious taking of tablets, which pushed Warne, and Australia, into the less than flattering light of sports doping.  That year, Warne was found to have taken a banned diuretic.  Like many an idiot son in the lurch, he blamed his unwitting mother, who wished him to look “nice” when facing the media.

At the time, Dick Pound, former vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, found that explanation incorrigible, “laughable” and on par with the excuse, “I got it from the toilet seat”.  In February 2003, the Australian Cricket Board drugs panel imposed a twelve-month ban.

An unrelenting Pound would continue to find Warne’s account dubious.  In his 2006 book Inside Dope, the former sporting administrator is withering to the cricketer.  Pointing the finger at his mother for wishing to see a more streamlined version of her son before the cameras concealed the fact that Warne was nursing a shoulder injury.  “The diuretic was a masking agent that could have hidden the possible use of steroids that would help the injury cure faster.  He had returned to play almost twice as quickly as the experts had predicted.”

With Warne’s entry into the pantheon of cricket’s immortals, ethicists and philosophers will have no reason to lose sleep.  Dick Pound will remain unconvinced.  The most profitable exercise will be to regard the player’s talent on the field with admiration, and his ability to command loyalty as remarkable.  Keep him on cricket’s throne.  He looks best there.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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: Warne bowling at Lord’s for the Rajasthan Royals in a Twenty20 match against Middlesex in 2009 (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).

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

This article was originally published on The Forward in January 2021.

There are hundreds of statues and monuments in the United States and around the world to people who abetted or took part in the murder of Jews and other minorities during the Holocaust. As part of an ongoing investigation, the Forward has, for the first time, documented them in this collection of articles. For an initial guide to each country’s memorials click here. For a 2022 update to the investigation, click here.

Note: beginning in 2014, when the Maidan uprising brought a new government to Ukraine, the country has been erecting monuments to Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators at an astounding pace — there’s been a new plaque or street renaming nearly every week. Because of this, the Ukraine section represents an extremely partial listing of the several hundred monuments, statues, and streets named after Nazi collaborators in Ukraine.

L’viv and Ivano-Frankivsk — 1.5 million Jews, a quarter of all Jews murdered in the Holocaust, came from Ukraine. Over the past six years, the country has been institutionalizing worship of the paramilitary Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which collaborated with the Nazis and aided in the slaughter of Jews, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), which massacred thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles. A major figure venerated in today’s Ukraine is Stepan Bandera (1909–1959), the Nazi collaborator who led a faction of OUN (called OUN-B); above are his statues in L’viv (left) and Ivano-Frankivsk (right). Many thanks to Per Anders Rudling, Tarik Cyril Amar and Jared McBride for their guidance on Ukrainian collaborators.

Left, Nazi propaganda photo; Bandera statue in Ternopil, Ukraine. Photo by Mykola Vasylechko

Ternopil and numerous other cities — another statue of Bandera in Ternopil. Above left is a photo from Zhovkva 1941, when OUN members welcomed the Nazis, assisting with their murder of Jews. The banners include “Heil Hitler!” and “Glory to Bandera!”

Ukraine has several dozen monuments and scores of street names glorifying this Nazi collaborator, enough to require two separate Wikipedia pages. Prominent honors include a joint monument to him and Roman Shukhevych in Cherkasy, Horishniy, Pochaiv, Rudky and Zaviy; a monument to him, Shukhevych and other OUN leaders in Morshyn; a monument to him and his father in Pidpechery; a plaque and monument in Lutsk; a bas-relief, monument and museum in Dubliany; a plaque, monument and museum (with bust) in Stryi; a plaque, street and monument in Zdolbuniv; monuments in Berezhany, Boryslav, Buchach, Chervonohrad, Chortkiv, Drohobych, Dubno, Hordynya, Horodenka, Hrabivka, Kalush, Kamianka-Buzka, Kolomiya, Kozivka, Kremenets, Krushel’nytsya, Kyiv, L’viv, (and a plaque), Mlyniv,Mostyska, Mykolaiv (L’viv oblast), Mykytyntsi, Nyzhnye (Sambir raion), Pidvolochysk, Romanivka, Sambir, Skole, Sniatyn, Staryi Sambir, Seredniy Bereziv, Sokal, Sosnivka, Strusiv, Terebovlia, Truskavets, Turka, Uzyn, Velyki Mosty, Verbiv, Zahirochka and Zalishchyky; a plaque and street in Sniatyn and Zhytomyr; plaques in Ivano-Frankivsk, Khmelnytskyi and Rivne; museums in Staryi Uhryniv (with a statue and memorial plaque) and Volya-Zaderevatska (with a bust and bas-relief); a park in Kamianka-Buzka; and a school in Dobromyl.

Kyiv — In 2016, a major Kyiv boulevard was renamed after Bandera. The renaming is particularly obscene since the street leads to Babi Yar, the ravine where Nazis, aided by Ukrainian collaborators, exterminated 33,771 Jews in two days, in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust. Both the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the World Jewish Congress condemned the move.

Roman Shukhevych memorials in Ukraine. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

Krakovets, L’viv and numerous other towns — Monuments to Roman Shukhevych (1907–1950), another OUN figure and Nazi collaborator who was a leader in Nazi Germany’s Nachtigall auxiliary battalion, which later became the 201st Schutzmannschaft auxiliary police unit. Shukhevych later commanded the brutal Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), responsible for butchering thousands of Jews and 70,000-100,000 Poles.

The monument in Krakovets (above left) and plaque in L’viv (above right) are two of many Shukhevych statues in Ukraine. This includes joint monuments to him and other nationalists in several cities (see Bandera entry above) a monument to him and other nationalists in Sprynya; a monument, two plaques and a bas-relief in L’viv Polytechnic National University in L’viv; and monuments in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kalush, Khmelnytskyi, Khust, Kniahynychi, (and a plaque), Kolochava, Oglyadiv,Shman’kivtski, Staryi Uhryniv(at the Stepan Bandera museum), Tyshkivtsyah, Tyudiv, and Zabolotivka; plaques in Buchach, Kamianka-Buzka,Kolomyia, Pukiv, Radomyshl’, Rivne and Volya-Zaderevatska; a museum in Hrimne; a stadium in Ternopil; and a school in Ivano-Frankivsk. The Algemeiner on Israel slamming naming the Ternopil stadium for Shukhevych.

Even more shocking are the Shukhevych monuments in Canada and the U.S.

Additionally, Shukhevych is honored with several dozen streets in Ukraine. Most of the Bandera and Shukhevych statues are in western Ukraine, in towns where the Jewish population was exterminated by paramilitaries loyal to these men. A major boulevard has been named for Shukhevych in Kyiv as well. The World Jewish Congress condemned the glorification of Shukhevych and the statue in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Yaroslav Stetsko, Stetsko bust in Ukraine. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

Ternopil — A bust of the genocidal Yaroslav Stetsko (1912–1986), who led Ukraine’s 1941 Nazi-collaborationist government which welcomed the Germans and declared allegiance to Hitler. A rabid antisemite, Stetsko had written “I insist on the extermination of the Jews and the need to adapt German methods of exterminating Jews in Ukraine.” Five days prior to the Nazi invasion, Stetsko assured OUN-B leader Stepan Bandera: “We will organize a Ukrainian militia that will help us to remove the Jews.”

He kept his word — the German invasion of Ukraine was accompanied by horrific pogroms with the incitement and eager participation of OUN nationalists. The initial L’viv pogrom alone had 4,000 victims. By the war’s end, Ukrainian nationalist groups massacred tens of thousands of Jews, both in cooperation with Nazi death squads and on their own volition.

Stetsko memorials in Ukraine

Stryi and thirteen other locations — Additional Stetsko monuments are found in Stryi (above left), which also has a Stetsko street, Velykyi Hlybochok (above right), which also has a Stetsko museum (with plaque) and school, Kam’yanky and Volya Zaderevatska. Stetsko also has a joint monument to him and other OUN leaders in Morshyn and streets in Dubno, Khmelnytskyi, Lutsk, L’viv, Monastyrys’ka, Rivne, Rudne, Sambir and Ternopil. After the war, Stetsko — the man who formally pledged his government’s loyalty to Hitler — moved to the U.S., where he quickly rose into the highest circles of Washington. He was lauded as leader of freedom fighters by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Below left, Stetsko meeting with then-Vice President Bush, 1983. Below right, Stetsko’s signature on the Proclamation of Ukrainian Statehood with a pledge to “work closely with National-Socialist Greater Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.”

Stetsko with George H.W. Bush; Stetsko’s signature. By Wikimedia Commons

Dmytro Paliiv; Paliiv plaque in Ukraine. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

L’viv — A memorial plaque to Dmytro Paliiv (1896–1944), co-founder and SS-Hauptsturmführer of the SS Galichina 14th Division of the Waffen-SS (1st Ukrainian), unveiled 2007. SS Galichina was formed as a division in the Waffen-SS in 1943; among the formation’s war crimes is the Huta Pieniacka massacre, when an SS Galichina subunit slaughtered 500–1,200 Polish villagers, including burning people alive.

Above left, Paliiv (holding paper) at an SS ceremony, 1943–1944. This Waffen-SS officer has a plaque and bas-relief in his birthplace of Perevozets’ (unveiled 2001) as well as a plaque and street in Kalush. The JTA reported on death threats to a man who opposed naming the street.

Below left, a march in Stanislaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk), western Ukraine, 1941; below right, march celebrating the 71st anniversary of SS Galichina’s founding, L’viv, western Ukraine, 2014. L’viv’s 2018 march consisted of hundreds giving coordinated Nazi salutes. JTA report.

March in Ukraine, historical; SS-Volunteer Division “Galician” memorial march in Lviv, Ukraine, 2014. Photo by Wikimeda Commons

For monuments to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators outside of Ukraine, see the U.S., Canada and Australia sections.

Ukraine is erecting new plaques and monuments to Nazi collaborators on a nearly weekly basis. Eduard Dolinsky of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee chronicles this explosion of Nazi collaborator whitewashing on Twitter, and wrote about it in The New York Times. For more on Ukraine’s state-sponsored Holocaust revisionism see the Nation, Foreign Policy, Open Democracy, a press release from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Defending History’s Ukraine page.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Lev Golinkin is the author of A Backpack, a Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka, Amazon’s Debut of the Month, a Barnes & Noble’s Discover Great New Writers program selection, and winner of the Premio Salerno Libro d’Europa. Mr. Golinkin, a graduate of Boston College, came to the US as a child refugee from the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov (now called Kharkiv) in 1990. His writing on the Ukraine crisis, Russia, the far right, and immigrant and refugee identity has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, NBC, The Boston Globe, Politico Europe, and Time.com, among others; he has been interviewed by MSNBC, NPR, ABC Radio, WSJ Live and HuffPost Live.

Featured image: Bandera memorials in Ukraine. Photo by Wikimedia Commons

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

On Friday, April 1st, an extremely deceptive news-report from Britain’s Reuters news agency headlined innocuously “Exclusive: U.S. cancels ICBM test due to Russia nuclear tensions”, but a more honest and attention-grabbing headline would have been “We’ve now reached the precipice of WW III.” Here is why:

Their report stated that:

The nuclear-capable Minuteman III is key part of the U.S. military’s strategic arsenal and has a range of 6,000-plus miles (9,660-plus km) and can travel at a speed of approximately 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph) [Wikipedia reports the “terminal speed” to be 17,647 m.p.h.].

Missiles are dispersed in hardened underground silos operated by launch crews.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in February [on February 27th, as America’s AP reported it and blamed it on Putin] that his nation’s nuclear forces should be [ACTUALLY WERE BEING] put on high alert, raising fears that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [actually before that, AMERICA’S FEBRUARY 2014 COUP IN UKRAINE, to which, Putin has since been responding] could lead [ultimately] to nuclear war.

But U.S. officials have said they have seen no reason so far to change Washington’s nuclear alert levels. [In other words: Biden is cancelling that test so as NOT to be endangering Russia enormously enough to provoke an immediate blitz nuclear attack by Russia against America.]

If America were (ultimately) to place a nuclear Minuteman III missile in Sumy, Ukraine, that would be only 353 miles from Moscow, and so its flight-time to nuke Moscow would be 353/15,000 of an hour or .0235 hour, or 1.41 minutes, which OBVIOUSLY would be far too short a time for Putin or anyone else to be able to verify that the missile was launched and to release Russia’s counter-weapons including ABM systems and retaliatory missiles.

However, the missile doesn’t actually have that same (terminal) speed throughout its flight. Reaching its “terminal (or ‘coasting’)” velocity requires about 3 minutes, when

“The third-stage engine fires and falls away at about 180 seconds [into its trajectory]. Only the vessel carrying the reentry vehicle remains [and completes the journey].”

So, Russia would instead actually have around five minutes, in order to recognize, and react to, America’s blitz nuclear invasion.

This is the reason why Biden cancelled that test: he doesn’t want to indicate, quite so conclusively, that America is yet ready to use its nuclear weapons in order to ‘win’ a nuclear war instead of (as BOTH sides USED TO BE) in order to PREVENT a nuclear war. America isn’t YET ready to do that.

It doesn’t YET have “Nuclear Primacy”. And, now, Putin is doing everything he can in order to PREVENT that from happening. Biden knows this, and doesn’t want to precipitate such an action from him.

In any military conflict, the invader has the surprise-factor weighing heavily on its side.

However, the defender has the passion-factor heavily on his — and, as Putin has repeatedly said, this is an “existential” issue for the Russian people.

He is treating it as such. He did not grab Ukraine — Obama did (though not by a military invasion; instead by a brutal coup and constant U.S. lies that it was a ‘democratic revolution’ which had occurred in Ukraine during February 2014). Putin (and Russia) have been responding to that, ever since. Not all the lies in the world can change that historical fact.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s next book (soon to be published) will be AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change. It’s about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

---

“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  

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

A report into the potential effects of implementing a ‘cashless society’ has found that millions of people would be left struggling, with many vulnerable people being heavily reliant on physical tender.

A report published on Wednesday has found that a shift to cashless society would considerably disadvantage and disenfranchise millions of people, and would also risk harming many vulnerable people reliant on physical notes and coins.

In particular, the study found that 15 million people in the UK are heavily reliant on physical currency for budgeting purposes, with ATM use also remaining high in some of the country’s most economically vulnerable areas compared to pre-pandemic levels.

According to research conducted by the Royal Society of Arts, a number of demographics are extremely reliant on the use of physical cash, including older people, as well as many young people who use tangible currency to help with budgeting.

The research also found that, while ATM use overall went down during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic and has not since returned to pre-2020 levels, one in seven people found themselves using cash more because of the crisis.

Ultimately, one in five people reportedly said that they would struggle in a cashless society, with the researchers also saying that there is an urgent need for legislation ensuring people’s access to physical cash in the future.

“For millions of people, their relationship with cash is critical to the way they manage their weekly budget,” Mark Hall, who penned the paper, reportedly said. “Despite online banking and shopping becoming more common, our research shows the percentage of the population wholly reliant on cash is unchanged in the past three years.”

“It’s vital that the dash to digital doesn’t disenfranchise anyone, especially with the cost-of-living crisis putting such significant strain on family finances right now,” he also said.

“People are increasingly using less cash and embracing contactless and digital payments,” noted John Howells — the CEO of ATM network LINK — regarding the study. “However, it’s clear that digital does not currently work for everyone and for those living on tight budgets, where every penny counts, there is no better alternative to notes and coins, and they are in no rush to turn to money management tools.”

Hold the Private Jet! Davos Goes Virtual as World Economic Forum Lays Out Great Reset Agendahttps://t.co/zZWW4sgKo4

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 17, 2022

The notion of a cashless society has been floating around for quite a while now, with nations such as Sweden becoming heavily reliant on digital transactions.

A number of benefits have been linked with the move, including lower infrastructure costs and making it easier to hamper criminal enterprises.

Australia at one stage even considered implementing a so-called “cash ban” law, which would put a legal limit of $10,000 on any physical payments, with any transaction amounting to more than that being rendered an offence.

While the law has since been put on ice, it is clear that many parties in the modern world — including banks and regulators — are greatly in favour of a complete switch to digital.

Others are more sceptical, however, with the city of Philadelphia even going so far as to ban cashless stores and restaurants so as to be more “inclusive” of those without bank accounts.

“We are not asking them to do something they don’t know how to do,” said local politician Bill Greenlee upon the implementation of the ban. “They accepted cash before.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Advancing Time

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

After little debate or public consultation, Brazil’s House of Representatives passed the draft law “Pacote do Veneno”(“Poison Package”) Pesticides Act (PL 6299/2002). The Act would make the use of pesticides in Brazil even more flexible. In violation of the rights to food and to a healthy environment enshrined in Brazil’s Constitution, the Act would allow the release of carcinogenic pesticides, according greater power to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAPA) to open an “industry” of temporary registrations of pesticides, while distancing health and environmental authorities.

Brazil’s Senate has not yet approved the Bill and Brazilian civil society are mobilised to make sure this does not happen.

The Poison Package moves forward in the context of record increases in the use of pesticides, some of them extremely toxic and many banned in the EU. More than 1,500 new pesticides have been released since the beginning of Bolsonaro’s administration – 641 in 2021 alone.

The House of Representatives’ position disregards the dozens of public scientific institutions, technical bodies, entities representing the Public Health System and civil society organisations that have spoken out against the Poison Package over the past two years.

In parallel to this new development, Jair Bolsonaro declared in the wake of the War in Ukraine that sanctions against Russia could affect Brazil’s import of potassium, which is a key ingredient for making pesticides. He reaffirmed his call to pass Bill 191/2020, which would allow the exploitation of mineral and water resources in Indigenous lands.

The EU is playing a game of double standards on pesticides: it prohibits some of them within its borders but it exports on a grand scale. In 2018 – 19, the EU exported 7,000 tonnes of deadly pesticides, banned in the EU, to Mercosur countries (mainly Brazil). These dangerous substances later come back to the EU in food imports.

According to a 2020 IATP study, the EU-Mercosur Free Trade Agreement in its current form would expand both the cultivation of crops reliant on pesticide use and the trade in pesticide products, locking in a commercial cycle of dependency. A 2020 UN Report states that “the overuse of pesticides is resulting in grave impacts on human rights in Brazil […]. Victims rightly allege deaths, health problems, as well as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment resulting from pesticide exposure.”

EU Member States and the European Parliament are still to ratify the agreement, and are unlikely to do so before Brazil’s general election in October 2022. Following Brazilian Representatives’ approval of the law, European Commission officials have declared to Brazilian media that the Poison Package “will not facilitate” the bloc’s work to convince European leaders to accept the Mercosur agreement.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Fern

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

On 2 April 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, an archipelago in the South Atlantic. The Falklands were (as they still are) a British dependency. In response, the British state sent a Royal Navy task force to engage the Argentinian forces.

Looking back 40 years on, what was striking was the near unanimous support in Britain for the Falklands War. There was none of the dissent that later accompanied Tony Blair’s Iraq War in 2003. Quite the opposite. Then prime minister Margaret Thatcher was able to rally aggressive national chauvinism in favour of this particular conflict. And in doing so, she was able to attack the apparent disloyalty of a still militant working class at home. Famously, victorious Royal Marines sailed back into Southampton with an anti-trade-union banner emblazoned with the legend ‘call off the rail strike or we’ll call an airstrike’.

The Falklands certainly seemed to come along at the right time for Thatcher, who was unpopular with the public and her own cabinet at the time. But why did the war happen? And what might its legacy be?

The nature of the war

The decision to invade the Falklands was taken by the leader of the Argentinian junta, General Leopoldo Galtieri. It was an unprovoked act which was hated by the 1,800 islanders.

But war is never simply a matter of who started it. We must assess the nature of the combatants and the specifics of their dispute.

Let’s start with the Falkland Islands themselves. They did not comprise a nation deserving or wanting self-determination, in the way, say, that Ukraine clearly does today. They were a distant British outpost.

As for Britain, it was, if anything, still the imperial power in this conflict. It had built the railways that stretched throughout Argentina during the 19th century, and it had connived with its reactionary regimes until it was supplanted by Washington during the Second World War. More broadly, Britain was still an imperial presence in South America as a whole. UK-owned Lloyds Bank and Midland Bank alone were each owed a then-colossal £3 billion by Latin American countries in 1983.

Moreover, geographically and historically, Argentina had a proper claim to the islands. After all, it was imperial Britain that originally seized the Malvinas from a then fledgling, newly independent Argentina back in 1833.

So Argentina’s rulers may have thought they had right on their side. But they didn’t have much else. Argentina, with a population of just under 30million in 1982, was a weak nation. Unlike Britain, it had no role outside its immediate region, no nuclear weapons and no seat on the United Nations Security Council. And it had no powerful allies.

The Falklands War, then, was a thoroughly unequal contest, and not just in military terms – although things did get quite dicey for the British forces at times.

Moreover, as stated, British society was mobilised in support of the war. Opposition to it was distinctly muted. Liberals tended to content themselves with dismissing it all as unnecessary and disproportionate. Whereas the left, especially the Labour Party, seemed confused by the war’s outbreak and ill-prepared. Labour leader Michael Foot, confronted by what looked like a fascist banana republic, led by Galtieri in all his military regalia, even portrayed the war as a just struggle against fascism. Foot’s response was a sign of just how perplexed the left was by the Falklands War.

The war in context

The real, strategic reason for the war lay in plain sight, if only the British left had cared to look. As defence minister John Nott declared on 20 April 1982: ‘If you don’t stop an aggressor, albeit one that attacked a small group of islands 8,000 miles away, then someone else will have a go somewhere else in the world.’

In other words, in the midst of the Cold War, Britain’s rule and its martial reputation had to be defended at home and abroad, lest any sign of weakness be exploited – especially given the continuing ache of the debacle at Suez in 1956. The British state felt it had to stand tall in the Falklands, and demonstrate its strength once again as an independent nation.

After all, Britain’s US allies were not exactly rallying to its side, with US secretary of state Alexander Haig initially offering only limp support. Moreover, if we are to accept the conclusions of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, US satellites could have potentially provided intelligence about the invasion. As SIPRI, looking at two US satellite tracks, put it in 1983, ‘it can be seen that, during orbits 12205 and 12221, satellite 1980-10A flew over several Argentine military bases on 27 March and over the Falkland / Malvinas Islands on 28 March and 2 April, the day of the invasion’ (1).

In other words, it is very probable that Washington knew about the invasion five or more days beforehand. But did it tell London? That seems unlikely. Latin America, and especially Argentina, was Uncle Sam’s sphere of influence, not Britain’s (2). So, given the initial lukewarm backing from Washington, London had little choice but to show steel not just to Argentina, but to America, too.

While the Cold War still had seven years to run, the Falklands War set the pattern for plenty of wars after it. Instead of a nuclear-missile exchange between European tank armies, it underlined to the ruling class the importance of conventional weapons and sea power, especially when dealing with developing countries.

Today much has changed, of course. But, with Britain having recently sent an aircraft carrier to fly the flag near Taiwan, the Falklands War is a reminder that Britain has long used the sea to project its power.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

James Woudhuysen is visiting professor of forecasting and innovation at London South Bank University.

Notes

(1) ‘The military use of outer space’, by Bhupendra Jasani, in World armaments and disarmament SIPRI Yearbook 1983, p429

(2) Sir Nicholas Henderson, Britain’s ambassador to the US and the man credited with persuading Washington eventually to back Britain, was asked in 2002 if he thought the US was surprised by the invasion. He replied that, ‘Yes, I think, so: because America was very close, politically and diplomatically, at that stage (we are talking about March 1982) Argentina. They were using Argentina and depending upon them a great deal for support with the problems they were having in Central America.’

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). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

 

***

“The propaganda war that we’ve seen waged by the Ukrainian government is a U.S. propaganda war. It is a British propaganda war. And in Kiev and across the country there are just highly educated young tech-savvy people ready to wage that war. And they have invented so many false stories.” – Max Blumenthal, from this week’s interview

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
Right now, in Ukraine it is said by multiple media sources in the West that Russia is behind a campaign to fabricate illusions about what President Vladimir Putin’s troops are and are not doing in the battlefield in order to bend sympathies of the public inside and outside of Russia. [1][2][3]

The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), a Canadian signals intelligence agency, has observed the Russian war messaging online and says via twitter:

“We are sharing this information as part of the government of Canada’s efforts to help inform Canadians so they can protect themselves from disinformation.” [4]

Fair enough, in principle. But the point MUST be emphasized that the United States is DEFINITELY shaping coverage of war to their strategic advantage.

In 1964, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which North Vietnamese boats attacked two US destroyers resulting in the Vietnam War, never actually happened.

In 1990, news of Iraqis taking babies out of incubators and throwing them on the floor sparking a surge in support for the Persian Gulf War the following year never actually happened. Same scenario with the claim of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which served the purpose of instigating massive bloodshed during the lengthy Iraq War.

And more recently: In Venezuela, after widespread accusations of President Nicolás Maduro’s troops torching a humanitarian convoy coming over the border from Colombia, it was established first by independent media that hooligans from Columbia threw molotov cocktails on the truck and then looting the trucks!

And as we have covered elsewhere on this site, including this program, accusations of chemical weapons attacks waged by the president of Syria in recent years were more likely waged by the opposition. Humanitarian corridors for civilians subjected to attacks by Syrian and Russian forces were actually struck by the opposition forces.

Given their record of distorting the truth, it would seem extremely out of character for the U.S. – NATO corporate media press to suddenly be addicted to the TRUTH!

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, we will feature major instances of the holes in journalistic coverage not addressed by those who want “to help inform Canadians so they can protect themselves from disinformation.”

Our first guest, journalist Max Blumenthal of The Gray Zone, takes us through his site’s multiple examples of how the stories pointing to Russian nastiness is not verified and even corrupted by the make-up of their press corps.

My next guest, author and activist Yves Engler explains the unacknowledged work of Canadians in the set-up for the war, and the building up of NATO to the outrage of Russia. Finally, Glenn Michalchuk finishes expressing his continued opposition to this war since February 24, and what listeners can do who wish to stop increased military funding in the upcoming Federal Budget of 2022.

Max Blumenthal is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Gray Zone. He is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery.

Yves Engler is a Montreal based activist and author of twelve books including House of mirrors: Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy and his latest Stand on Guard for Whom? A People’s History of the Canadian Military.

Glenn Michalchuk is chair of Peace Alliance Winnipeg and president of the Winnipeg branch of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 350)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript – Interview with Max Blumenthal, March 28, 2022

Global Research: We’re going to touch base on the topic of disinformation, but not from the Russian side, from the US-NATO side. For this, I got hold of Max Blumenthal. He’s an award-winning journalist, author of several books, and editor-in-chief of thegrayzone.com, which he describes as shining a spotlight on America’s state of perpetual wars and its dangerous domestic repercussions. I started our conversation by asking Max to provide some examples of fake news manufactured in opposition to the Russians.

Max Blumenthal: It’s really obvious that there are so many fake stories that you can’t even count them. And it’s hard to understand why they’re so necessary when there is real civilian suffering in a city like Mariupol which Russia is taking street by street back from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which has been incorporated into the Ukrainian military. There are civilians being killed in the fire or suffering enormously, but what the Ukrainian side has done, they’ve been, I mean, if you look at Syria or Venezuela, and how much the US intelligence cut-outs have invested there in training and cultivating their, not just their armed proxies but their information warriors. So much more has gone into Ukraine, and Ukraine has been controlled by this pro-US pro-NATO regime since 2014.

So it’s just open season for funding PR operatives and tech startups to do the kind of information warfare that is the dream of the US. The propaganda war that we’ve seen waged by the Ukrainian government, it is a US propaganda war, it is a British propaganda war. And in Kiev and across the country there are just highly educated young tech-savvy people ready to wage that war and they have invented so many false stories, for instance the ghost of Kiev, or ​Keev as we’re supposed to call it [laughter], a fighter pilot who has taken down 40 Russian jets like representative Adam Kinzinger, this wannabe n McCain tweeted about, the ghost of Kiev. And it turns out it’s a completely fake story, no such fighter pilot exists. The Ukrainian Air Force doesn’t even exist.

Then you got the Snake Island story of 13 soldiers, Ukrainian border guards, who stood up to a Russian battleship and said, you know, to screw off, I mean, they used harsher language than that, and then they all died fighting. It turned out there were way more than 13 border guards. All of them were captured, none of them defied the Russian warship at all, and they were then safe and sound as POWs. There was no brave standoff, but this incident, you know, was reported in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Military Times as something real.

Then you’ve got something I’ve been looking at, using kind of open-source intelligence, otherwise known as reporting [laughter], and it’s the bombing of the Mariupol theatre, which is said to be the deadliest incident of the war. CNN and BBC are reporting that 300 were killed in this theatre that women and children sheltered in, and that the theatre was marked with signs reading “children,” to ward off Russian bombers, but they bombed it anyway. And it appears pretty clear that no one was inside the theatre when it was bombed, there are no images of rescuers of dead of survivors that can be found, and that the only source of this claim is an assistant to the exiled mayor of Mariupol, who has run away days ago, and who was working hand-in-glove with the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, who is pro-Azov.

This is the only source for the BBC and CNN. It’s just pure hearsay. They have not been able to independently verify anything, and just looking at the, you know, the photographic evidence, I found that there were cars parked all around this theatre the day before the bombing, and that the day of the bombing there were no vehicles. No vehicles damage, no vehicles present, and no people present.

GR: Wait a second, I mean, the press, aren’t they supposed to verify before they go to print? I mean they’re just taking the message from this one mayor as the basis for everything that’s going on?

MB: Exactly. And so this is one of the worst performances, or maybe you could call it one of the best performances by US corporate media, because essentially, what we’re seeing, is that they are an arm of the information war being waged by US intelligence through its Ukrainian proxies. And the assistant to the Ukrainian mayor, I was reading in Ukrainian media, just using translation tools, he said we had to abandon Mariupol in order to preserve our intelligence network. That was the language he used. So this is just an intelligence game.

And what is the agenda of the Azov Battalion in Mariupol–aside from establishing a fascist bastion, which they’ve sort of effectively done for years. They have been calling for a no-fly zone because they’re desperate, they’re losing the fight there against a much larger military force, just like the armed opposition in Syria was. So we’ve seen their commanders issued pleas in English on YouTube for NATO to intervene militarily. But NATO doesn’t want to do it. Biden doesn’t want to do it. They don’t want a direct confrontation with a nuclear power. And so they’re trying to generate emotionally potent incidents that will cause the Western public to demand that their leaders intervene.

And that was the point of the theatre story I think. Where Azov had controlled the theatre, they’ve controlled everything around it, and as they were retreating, it appears that an explosive charge was detonated with no one inside the theatre, or no one near the charge, that’s what it looks like to me, I could be completely wrong, it’s been 12 days since this tip took place and there’s still no footage of dead people or rescue crews or anything.

So maybe that will turn up, and I’ll be proven completely wrong, but it looks like they were trying to stage something to generate the emotional impact needed to get the West on board with getting in there, just like the Syrian rebels did, the so-called rebels in Douma, April 2018, when Jaish al-Islam, this extremist faction backed by Saudi Arabia was losing in a Damascus suburb, was retreating, had everyone, all the other battalions around it had been defeated by the Syrian Army, they were closing in. And suddenly they allege a chemical attack, a chlorine attack and produced video through all of these networks that have been set up through Turkish and US intelligence so they have like pretty powerful communication networks still even though their military capacity had collapsed. They produce, just video and a photograph of dead civilians in a basement. No evidence of any chlorine attack.

And then they gather a bunch of civilians together including children and start hosing them off through their auxiliary so-called rescue crews like the White Helmets and then, and then corporate media and the West broadcast all of it. “Allegations of a chemical attack,” and they show children being hosed off. And then the leaders have to respond, and so they do pinprick missile strikes on Damascus.

That’s the model that the Ukrainian forces are operating under.

GR: Well, they used to talk about the White Helmets was also providing a lot of disinformation and today they actually have Azov Battalion showing some of the theatre footage of the attacks in Mariupol. Is it the same tactic or there might be a little bit of a difference this time?

MB: What’s different is that they didn’t, what they could have done, which is what appears to have been done in Douma, was that these civilians had actually been killed. They may have been killed in a conventional, by a conventional weapon by the Syrian Army, or they could have been executed by these vicious forces. And I can tell you, like I’ve been in the ruins, in Ghouta, which is just west of Douma, and talked to civilians there about the conditions. They lived under just, a miniature Saudi Arabia but more tyrannical, for several years. They said that women were trafficked, people were used as slave labour, all the aid that came in was pillaged, and that people were used as human shields towards the end and held in a stable, and that the Syrian government was told that they will kill everyone in the stable if they enter the area.

So that was, and that’s what sort of been going on Mariupol these past days, except the Azov Battalion apparently didn’t kill anyone or take any dead bodies that had been killed by the Russian army and attempt to claim that they were killed inside the theatre. And that’s what makes this incident so strange. I mean, they haven’t really backed up any of their claims with the kind of photographic and video evidence that was so potent in Syria, and I’m waiting for that to come, but it just hasn’t come, so it really looks like the Azov people let everyone just go the day before. We do hear a lot of talk about people leaving the day before, around the theatre.

GR: Yeah. Well you mentioned just a few days ago, there was a press article about an incident involving how some press agencies had biased their reporting by setting up an individual as a reporter and fixer for press agency BBC. And this reporter was working formally as the head of the PR firm linked to boosterism for Ukraine in as late as October 2021. So she brings the stories of this theatre in Mariupol, completely consistent with what the architects wanted people to see. Orysia Khimiak is her name. Could you describe a little bit about what you could see as some of the holes running through their news narratives?

MB: Well, the most obvious hole is that they did not have any evidence, photographic or video evidence, of even a rescue taking place or being attempted. The descriptions, they have two eyewitnesses, and these reporters are in Lviv or Lvov. which is in the west of Ukraine, very far from Mariupol, and so they’re interviewing two people who said they were eyewitnesses delivering a very cinematic account, who themselves were not able to see who was responsible for the blast, they just said they felt a blast and that they had gone there to get lunch. I think what Azov appeared to be doing was just gathering people there with a field kitchen they said they had.

But beyond that, I mean, you have a co-author of these BBC articles, you look at who they are, they’re a public relations operative from Lviv, and who also worked in Kiev on a app produced by a start-up that the Washington Post called one of the top Ukrainian war information messaging apps. And it’s called Reface. It gives users the ability to put their face on celebrities’ bodies in like famous film scenes…what they do is they’ve gathered millions of people into this network, and now they’re pumping out messages urging them to stand with Ukraine, to send aid, to support the war effort, to support the Ukrainian military to everyone who participates in this app. And it seems like it was all done by design.

GR: Yeah. I mean, all my time in journalism, whenever you had any kind of potential conflict, you have to state it outright, you have to be transparent, and here it’s presented as if it’s totally fair, and I just don’t get it.

MB: Well, it just shows what the BBC is. It’s just another information weapon. And they just cast aside any pretense of objectivity.

Like, on their site, one of the first things you see is that they’re the most trusted network. And that you could trust them more than other outlets, and that they’re against disinformation. And then you have them, you know their correspondent in Ukraine sharing a byline with someone who is a nationalist Ukrainian PR operative. I went on her Twitter account, and she’s openly saying that she hates all Russians. She’s saying, like, I cannot, I can no longer suspend my impulse to hate all Russians because of what they’re doing.

So it’s just like, it’s right out there in the open. Her Twitter header is a meme referring to the phony incident of Snake Island, which she treats as real. This is the BBC.  I mean, it’s everything they say about RT… It just shows what a projection all of the denunciations of RT are.

GR: Yeah, now I know that the press keeps insisting that the idea that neo-Nazis are in Ukraine, that’s Russian disinformation. I can’t even hear any news about the Nazi Azov faction on the show like Democracy Now, which is held up as a high beacon of independent news reporting. And I don’t think you can get a sense of what the war is unless you have acknowledgement of their existence. But it is only mentioned as Russian disinformation. And they say that there is a Jewish president, so how could the Nazis be taking over. That sort of thing. Give us a few short descriptions of how you, I guess, bulk up your insistence of the Nazis in Ukraine, and indeed how they are a major presence versus the Russian fairy tale.

MB: Well right now you could just look at who’s doing the fighting in the key theatre of battle. It is Mariupol. And it is the Azov Battalion. That’s their base. They captured it in 2014 and they maintained it on behalf of the Ukrainian State. The Azov Battalion emerged from the so-called black-shirts of the Maidan revolution of dignity which I would consider a US backed coup. They were the street muscle.

 

They themselves emerged out of the Patriot of Ukraine which was a gang of Fascist hooligans who assaulted migrants and Roma people, homosexuals, you know, the usual suspects, they were just literal, they were a literal neo-Nazi street gang that turned into one of the most ferocious and important battalions of the Ukrainian National Guard. The Azov Battalion which wears neo-Nazi insignia on its uniforms, has a civilian wing called a National Corps which operates openly intimidating citizens and political opponents in Kiev and cities across Ukraine under the auspices of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry.

They are sponsored officially by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry to keep order and they are armed by the state, their uniforms are provided by the state, and they go around intimidating city councils and mayors that will not do their bidding. And they’ve stolen elections by just going to the polls and telling people, we want.

They have another gang, C14, its name was inspired by the famous 14 words by the dead American Neo-Nazi leader David Lane, which has been funded and sponsored by the Ukrainian minister of culture. One of their leaders gave a talk at the America house in Kiev, which is an NGO sponsored by the US government, and the Kiev city council sponsored this group, C14, it’s a literal neo-Nazi terrorist organization, to attack Roma people who are sleeping near a train station. It was considered part of a public clean-up campaign.

They filmed themselves pepper spraying women and elderly Roma people and beating them with clubs. These are leaders that have participated in negotiations with Zelensky and held veto power over the Minsk agreement because they have their forces in the east. And when Zelensky attempted to get them to pull back they just told him to go to hell and he left.

And Zelensky himself, while Jewish, has not only downplayed his Jewish background, he has said that it is cool and normal for a part of the Ukrainian population to revere Stepan Bandera, who is the hero of all Ukrainian nationalists and was the leader of the organization of Ukrainian nationalists during World War II who collaborated with Nazi Germany and participated in the Holocaust of Bullets, in which hundreds of thousands of Jews, ethnic Poles, and other minorities were exterminated across Ukraine.

That is just a small slice of the kind of collaboration between the Ukrainian state and literal neo-Nazis that we’ve witnessed since the birth of the Maidan regime in 2014, and what sets Ukraine apart from a country like the United States or Russia, which both have neo-Nazis and white supremacists, is that their neo-Nazis and white supremacists are part of the military, and part of the state, and they’re officially recognized as such and celebrated.

GR: You know, your coverage has been quite refreshingly at odds with what we see in media. Have you been subjected to attacks of any origin? I mean, putting out Russian disinformation, or are they just, ignore you all together?

MB: Well, you can look at my Wikipedia page. It says that I’m like a regular free contributor to RT and Sputnik, and that is one of the first things you’ll read. And while I value RT and Sputnik as news sources that provide a different point of view for Americans, we need to follow all sorts of media, I’ve been on RT I think twice in the past two or three months, and I have been on Sputnik maybe once.

I’ve been on other networks much more, but it doesn’t list me that way, pretty much that you just follow, just look down through my Wikipedia page, and it basically makes me look like a psychotic holocaust-denying self-hating Jew who is an Assadist genocide denier, and it’s just pure propaganda. None of the facts are engaged, and in fact, The Grayzone, the site that I run, while we’ve never had to really issue a factual correction, we’ve never had anyone debunk any of our articles, we are listed as a deprecated source on The Grayzone, sorry on Wikipedia, so the denigrations start there.

And then you have mainstream journalists just drawing on that to create and cobble together a phony narrative about us in order to discredit our work. What they want to do is frighten people away from our factual journalism because it’s doing so much damage to their disinformation narrative. And I’m waiting for some mainstream…

I was attacked in the Times of London last week, which is like the MI5’s favorite paper in the UK, because an academic in the UK retweeted one of my articles. They want to get him fired. I was sort of peripherally attacked.  But I got a Newsweek reporter reached out to me and I was just, like, it was a strange request, so I assume there’ll be some more attacks incoming.

No one in mainstream media can be treated as a good-faith operator or someone who will honestly quote you and present your side because if you just look at the whole spectrum of US media right now, there is only one side, and that is the Ukrainian nationalist narrative and the State Department side.

GR: I really congratulate you on your work, you and your colleagues out there at The Grayzone. Sounds like you’re doing the kind of work that you should be doing if you’re getting attacked to the extent you are. So I want to thank you for coming on the show, and maybe we can have you back at a later date.

MB: Thanks a lot Michael. Absolutely I would love to come back.

---

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

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. Ismail Shakil (April 1, 2022),”Russia using disinformation to back Ukraine invasion, Canadian agency says”, Reuters; https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-agency-finds-russia-backed-disinformation-campaigns-support-ukraine-2022-04-01/
2. David Klepper And Amanda Seitz (April 1, 2022), “Russia aims Ukraine disinformation at Spanish speakers”, Associated Press; https://www.thestar.com/news/world/us/2022/04/01/russia-aims-ukraine-disinformation-at-spanish-speakers.html?rf
3. Caroline Vakil (April 1, 2022) “​​Canadian agency says it’s observed ‘numerous Russia-backed disinformation campaigns’”, The Hill; ​​Canadian agency says it’s observed ‘numerous Russia-backed disinformation campaigns’
4. Ismail Shakil, op cit

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

In 2012, Argo won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film starred Ben Affleck as a CIA agent named Tony Mendez who poses as a Hollywood producer scouting locations in Iran.

He helps to rescue six Americans who slipped away from the U.S. embassy during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis—when Islamic revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy and took 66 Americans hostage.

With the CIA reviewing the script, Argo “took many liberties with the truth,” according to The Atlantic magazine, “all geared to make Langley more heroic.”

Ben Affleck, left, and Bryan Cranston, right, in Argo, play CIA agents plotting risky operation to save Americans from Islamic revolutionary terrorists. [Source: keranews.org]

Left out was any hint that the CIA had created the crisis in Iran by backing a coup in 1953 that overthrew Iran’s democracy.

A decade earlier, Affleck had starred in The Sum of All Fears, a film adaptation of a Tom Clancy novel written largely by the CIA’s entertainment liaison, whose main protagonist, Deputy CIA Director Jack Ryan, stops nuclear war from breaking out.

During Argo’s filming, the CIA brought the filmmakers to Langley for a tour and offered Affleck access to Agency analysts. Former CIA Agent John Kiriakou recalled bumping into Affleck in Langley along with other Hollywood stars such as Harrison Ford.

Affleck admitted that “probably Hollywood is full of CIA agents…we just don’t know it.”

Theaters of War

Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA Took Hollywood is a new documentary produced by the Media Education Foundation exposing the link between the CIA, Pentagon and Hollywood.

The film follows the journey of media professor Roger Stahl across America as he interviews people—including industry insiders—who detail how the military and CIA have tried to valorize their activities in hundreds of Hollywood films and television shows, scrubbing scripts of war crimes, corruption, racism, sexual assault, coups, assassinations and torture.

The propaganda is extremely effective because it is carried out under the guise of entertainment. Only very subtly are viewers conditioned.

Fetishizing the U.S. Military

One of the most poignant scenes of Theaters of War has Stahl bringing Oliver Stone a framed copy of a 1984 rejection letter he received by the Pentagon’s entertainment office for Platoon, a film about the disintegration of the armed forces in Vietnam. In 1987, Platoon won the Academy award.

Donald E. Baruch, the head of the Pentagon’s Office on Entertainment, wrote to Stone in the rejection letter: ”In our opinion, the script basically creates an unbalanced portrayal by stereotyping black soldiers, showing rampant drug abuse, illiteracy and concentrating action on brutality.”

Stone told Stahl that for years he had to shelve Platoon, whose script was written in 1975, along with Born on the Fourth of July, another anti-war film based on the biography of paralyzed veteran Ron Kovic.

According to Stone, the Pentagon’s entertainment office was “set up to provide accuracy to film-making about the military, but instead they do the opposite; they promote inaccuracies and lies.”

“They only want movies that glorify the American soldier, glorify our patriotism, the homeland and nationalism, this nonsense. They fetishize the military,” he said. “Nobody can say a bad word about [the military], which is wrong. You have to point out evil when it happens.”

Whitewashing Military Corruption

Stone told Stahl that, while he was having trouble getting Platoon made, he was offered the script for Top Gun, a major hit of 1986 which romanticized the life of Navy pilots and had military recruiting stations set up outside theaters where it was being screened.

The Pentagon had donated F-14s for making Top Gun, which it praised for helping to “completely rehabilitate the military’s image [after it] had been savaged by the Vietnam War.”

In 2018, the Pentagon signed a contract with the producers of a Top Gun remake scheduled for release this year that allowed it to “weave in key talking points, oversee the script and require an official screening before its release.”

The original Top Gun was directed by the late Tony Scott and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who went on to produce Black Hawk Down (2001), a re-creation of the ambush of U.S. soldiers in Somalia.

Oliver Stone called Black Hawk Down, a “nonsense movie” and typical “whitewash of military corruption.”

After days of negotiation with Bruckheimer, Secretary of Defense William Cohen donated equipment for the film and the script was changed from the original to create heroes of the U.S. soldiers, even though the intervention was widely considered, as Stone put it, “a mess.”

The Godfather

According to Stahl, the Pentagon and CIA are equivalent to the Godfather: They decide what films get made and what films get shelved, and buy off film-makers by promising them access to the Pentagon’s toys.

In the 1980s, films that did not get made included a dramatization of the Iran-Contra affair and film about the reduction of Cold War tensions, which was substituted with Red Dawn, in which a group of high school students led by Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen organize themselves to fight a Soviet invasion of the U.S. (a 2012 sequel had students organizing against a North Korean invasion).

From 1989 to 2018, the Pentagon’s Office on Entertainment was directed by Phil Strub, who worked closely with favored directors such as Bruckheimer and Michael Bay, producer of Transformers (2007), and helped promote sci-fi films where superheroes saved civilization with military weapons in alliance with the U.S. military.

Strub had a scene removed from The Windtalkers (2002), where U.S. Marines took out the gold teeth of Japanese soldiers they had killed as trophies—something described in E.B. Sledge’s classic memoir, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (1981).

Strub also made sure that Tuskegee Airmen (1995), about Black fighters in World War II, presented the Army’s top generals as non-racists (the only racists in the film were depicted as bad apples).

The U.S. army subsidized TV series The Long Road Home (2017), meanwhile, depicted Tomas Young, a paralyzed Iraq veteran and peace activist, as a “pussy” and douchebag,” when, according to members of his platoon, he was “well liked,” and considered “cool.”

Young’s portrayal was consistent with the denigration of antiwar veterans and activists in popular culture, which the Pentagon’s Office on Entertainment was in part behind.

No Guts or Glory

Strub and his predecessor Don Baruch cultivated an academic hack, Lawrence Suid, to cover up the truth about what the Pentagon’s entertainment office did.

Suid wrote the book Guts & Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film(Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2002) which for years stood as the definitive work on the Pentagon and Hollywood.

When more independent scholars came along to challenge Suid’s interpretations, Suid savagely attacked them in academic journals and tried to ruin their careers.

Wagging the Dog

Chase Brandon, the CIA’s entertainment industry liaison from 1996 to 2007 and first cousin of actor Tommy Lee Jones, was thought to be the prototype for Robert DeNiro’s character, Conrad Breen, in Wag the Dog (1997). Breen was a CIA spin doctor who manufactures a fictional war in Albania to displace attention from a presidential sex scandal.

A forty-year CIA veteran with experience in special operations and psychological warfare, Brandon wrote most of the script for the 2003 film The Recruit, and helped set up a permanent CIA network in Hollywood that Ben Affleck hinted at.

Source: spyculture.com

The network included Affleck’s ex-wife, Jennifer Garner, who played CIA Agent Sydney Bristow in the hit TV series Alias (2001-2006), and filmed a recruitment video for the CIA. See video here. Alias’s writers worked with Brandon who helped “educate them on fundamental tradecraft.”

Brandon’s office also altered the script of the 2000 comedy Meet the Parents, which featured Robert DeNiro as a CIA agent whose daughter has decided to marry a goofball played by Ben Stiller.

When Stiller’s character enters DeNiro’s workspace, in the original script, he finds CIA torture manuals. However, the script was changed to show Stiller finding only pictures of DeNiro’s character meeting famous people like Bill Clinton.

Another film that Brandon helped shape was Charlie Wilson’s War (2007) which heroized the CIA for defeating the evil commies in Afghanistan. CIA agent MIlt Beardon served as one of the film’s consultants.

Source: amazon.com

Brandon further worked as a technical adviser and consultant for action movies that made the CIA seem exciting and noble: Mission Impossible 3 (2006), Enemy of the State (1998), The Bourne Identity (2002) and The Sum of All Fears (2002) starring Ben Affleck.

He additionally provided true to life storylines for the TV series The Agency (2001-2003), including ones focused on the drone assassinations of a rogue Pakistani General and another one about an anthrax attack in Washington D.C. which was originally scheduled to air the very day of the actual anthrax attacks in Washington that were likely part of a CIA false-flag operation.^[1]

The Good Shepherd—More Historical Distortions

Yet another film Brandon helped influence was The Good Shepherd (2006), directed by Robert DeNiro and starring Matt Damon, which while portraying CIA misdeeds, focuses largely on their impact on the personal lives of CIA agents—rather than the people of the countries affected.^[2]

The Good Shepherd further distorted history by a) making it seem like the Agency supported De-Nazification when it recruited Nazis for the Cold War under the Operation Paperclip; b) depicting the head of the CIA being forced to resign because his personal business interests in Guatemala prompted the 1954 coup (CIA Director Allen Dulles whose law firm had represented the United Fruit Company, never had to resign for this reason); and c) depicting the CIA’s failure to overthrow the Castro government as the result of the Cubans being tipped off by Soviet intelligence, when there had been broad popular mobilization for Fidel Castro.

Source: moviefanatic.com

Promoting the CIA’s Favored Techniques

After the 9/11 attacks, the CIA supported Fox’s 24, which advanced the idea that torture in interrogation worked.^[3]

Torture depicted in Fox’s show 24. [Source: motherjones.com]

The CIA subsequently supported the 2012 film Zero Dark Thirty dramatizing the hunt for Osama bin Laden, which went too far for even a rabid war hawk like John McCain (R-AZ), who repudiated torture following his own alleged experience being tortured in the Vietnam War.

The CIA additionally supported the Emmy-award winning Showtime series Homeland (2011-present), Barack Obama’s favorite show. It depicted Muslims as “overwhelmingly sadistic, barbaric, and morally bankrupt,”according to The New Yorker, and drone strikes and targeted killings as morally just.^[4]

Most recently, the CIA collaborated in the production of the Jack Ryan series—a spinoff on military enthusiast Tom Clancy’s novels—on Amazon Prime.

In one episode, Ryan (played by John Krasinski from The Office) plots the overthrow of a tyrannical leader in Venezuela, who Ryan helps replace with an enlightened, pro-democratic reformer.

The latter is a stand-in for America’s boy, Juan Guaidó, who actually has extreme right-wing leanings and led violent protests against a legally elected government that is socialist.

Evasion of U.S. Law

Theaters of War ends by pointing out that the U.S. has well-established laws against propaganda which the CIA and Pentagon have clearly violated.

The consequences for society are greater than most people realize. The manipulation of Hollywood drives support for U.S. military and CIA interventions that have caused humanitarian catastrophes, and reinforces a nativist, imperialist and often racist worldview that lies at the root of repeated foreign policy disasters.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.  

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. Brandon was a consultant for at least 11 TV series including:The Path to 9/11, Alias, JAG, Air America, Covert Action, Top Secret Missions of the CIA, Stories of the CIA, Spies Above Us and Greatest Intelligence Agency. 

2. CIA agent Milt Beardon served as a consultant to the film. 
3. Chase Brandon was a technical adviser to the show. 

4. Homeland’s cast visited Langley where the show held its premiere. Some scenes were also shot at Langley and CIA agents served as consultants to the show. 

Featured image is from mronline.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).

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The New York Times continues to selectively promote news that fits the Establishment narrative. The NYT portrays the nine-year sentence of the Russian “opposition leader” Aleksei Navalny to a high-security prison as a travesty of justice. Was it unjust? If so, justice must be demanded. What I can comment on is a factual inaccuracy by the NYT: Navalny is not the opposition leader.

His party has zero seats in the State Duma. The opposition party is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with 57 seats. Navalny’s party, Russia of the Future, has zero seats. Russia of the Future remains unregistered as a political party. This is an unassailable point for the NYT given that democracy in the US is such that the Communist Party and Communism has been outlawed since the days of president Dwight Eisenhower.

A clearcut travesty of justice is the case of the political prisoner Julian Assange. He is imprisoned for having carried out his job as a publisher at WikiLeaks: informing the public by publishing facts. WikiLeaks has a publication record which under normal circumstances would make the NYT green with envy: WikiLeaks is “perfect in document authentication and resistance to all censorship attempts.” But the NYT is not about accuracy in publication.

WikiLeak’s perfect publication record includes revealing the war crimes of the United States; for this, the US Establishment placed a target on Assange’s back.

NYT, which once collaborated with WikiLeaks to publish stories, notes that Navalny — who was tried and convicted — has been held in captivity for more than a year.

Assange — who has been tried and convicted of breach of bail stemming from fraudulent Swedish charges; since Sweden refused to guarantee non-extradition to the US, Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, subsequent events have borne out Assange’s fear — has been under one form of incarceration or another since January 2011.

In 2017, Navalny was found guilty at a retrial for embezzlement and given a five-year suspended prison sentence. He was later imprisoned for breaching the terms of his probation. In his latest trial, he was again found guilty of having embezzled people’s money. The NYT, however, paints the verdict as a move to extend Navalny’s time in prison.

Assange has only been found guilty of the relatively minor violation of breaching bail. Nonetheless, the period of his detention began with bogus charges of rape and sexual molestation cooked up by Swedish authorities. It is not difficult to join the dots and arrive at the logical conclusion that were it not for the initial fraudulent allegations against him, Assange would never have been placed into detention in the first place, and he would not be facing extradition to the US where he could sit in prison for as much as 175 years — for doing something for which he should be saluted by humanity: exposing war crimes.

Collateral Murder: U.S. Apache helicopters killing journalists in Iraq from Jesse Taylor on Vimeo.

Assange represents another nail in the coffin of the worthlessness of the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that has previously been conferred upon war criminals and other miscreants.

NYT is not focused on the miscarriage of justice against Assange even though the abuse of justice in Assange’s case puts its own “journalists” at risk of persecution should they reveal grave crimes of state.

Russia, the US-designated ennemi du jour, is an easy target for the NYT. Therefore, even though Navalny is a convicted criminal, he is deemed worthy of support by the NYT. Navalny is an enemy of an enemy, that plus his animus against Russian president Vladimir Putin makes him a friend for the US Establishment. Given this cozy arrangement, the NYT is free to cast aspersions on the Russian judge, Margarita Kotova, insinuating that her recent promotion is linked with the judicial finding against Navalny.

Emma Arbuthnot, who presided over Assange’s extradition case from late 2017 until mid-2019 was accused of a conflict of interest since her husband is “a former Conservative defense minister with extensive links to the British military and intelligence community exposed by WikiLeaks.” She did not recuse herself, and the legal Establishment in Britain did not have her removed from the case. In one ruling, Arbuthnot showed her true colors by dismissing a United Nations working group’s assessment that Assange was being arbitrarily detained.

Arbuthnot’s subordinate, judge Vanessa Baraitser, took over the Assange case and ruled that he should not be extradited for reasons of mental harm. However, she also stated that she believed Assange to be guilty, providing an opening for an American appeal, which the US won.

Assange’s appeal of that appeal was rejected. It seems that the appellate court accepted the Biden administration’s pledge not to confine Assange under the austerest conditions reserved for high-security prisoners and, should he be convicted, to allow him to serve his sentence in his native Australia.

Returning to Navalny, the NYT asserts there is “substantial evidence” that the Russian government was responsible for poisoning him in August 2020. And if one follows the link embedded for the “substantial evidence,” one comes to another NYT article wherein it is stated “Navalny’s revelations about his poisoning — not all of which have been independently verified.” The source of the “substantial evidence” is Navalny. In fact, there appears nothing at all that is compelling or substantial. But an investigation to determine the authenticity of Navalny’s claims would be in order.

On the other hand, there is verifiable evidence that the assassination and kidnapping of Assange was discussed at the highest levels of the CIA.

The NYT does not point out the discrediting of the rape allegations against Assange. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, destroyed the rape allegations against Assange and accused the authorities of psychological torture against the WikiLeaks publisher.

Expressing sympathy for Navalny, the NYT rued that he might be “moved to a higher-security prison farther from Moscow, making it harder for his lawyers and family to visit him.”

Meanwhile Assange, unaccused of any violent offense, is being held in the maximum security Belmarsh prison in England — about 15,000 km away from his birthplace in Australia.

The NYT mentions concerns for the life of Navalny. This concern is ostensibly missing for Assange’s incarceration in Belmarsh. Given that the British judge found imprisonment a mental health danger for Assange, it is a stark contradiction to keep him in prison where his mental health would remain at risk while awaiting the justice system’s outcome. It speaks clearly to the travesty of justice Assange has endured.

The Ripple Effect

The NYT’s shoddy journalism emerges again and again. Only recently it had to admit it had suppressed the story of what’s on the laptop of president Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. What was initially dismissed as Russian disinformation turned out to be Russiagate disinformation.

It shines a spotlight on who overwhelmingly provoked the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Grotesquely, the mother of all rogue nations, the US, led/cajoled its subservient Canadian, European, Japanese, South Korean, among other accomplices to sanction Russia (unilateral sanctions have been denounced by independent UN human rights experts who declared the right to development “an inalienable human right”) while the instigator goes unsanctioned.

Navalny deserves justice as much as any other person on the planet. If an injustice has been meted out to Navalny, then that must be corrected. The present thesis examines who the NYT deems worthy or unworthy of propping up. NYT’s “opposition leader” in Russia is without any party members in the Russian State Duma. Navalny compares in many respects to the hapless Juan Guaidó, a wannabe president of Venezuela, who the US backs and recognizes as president of Venezuela. To bring about a government amenable to American dictates in Venezuela, president Obama declared Venezuela a national security threat and sanctioned seven Venezuelan officials in 2015. Human rights expert Alfred de Zayas, who is highly critical of NYT coverage of Venezuela, estimated that at least 100,000 Venezuelans having died because of US sanctions. Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs contend that the US sanctions “fit the definition of collective punishment of the civilian population as described in both the Geneva and Hague international conventions, to which the US is a signatory.”

One victim who has not been found worthy of mention in the NYT is 16-year-old Palestinian Nader Rayan who was gunned down by Israeli border police troops. Israel’s Haaretz had the gumption to publish a piece describing the corpse of Nader Rayan:

strewn with deep, bleeding bullet wounds, his flesh is bare, his brain is spilling out, his head and face are perforated. Border Police troops shot him with pathological madness, in a rage, savagely, without restraint. His father counted 12 bullet wounds in his son’s body, all of them deep, large, oozing blood. Head, chest, stomach, back, legs and arms: There’s not a part of his son’s body without a large, gaping hole in it.

Nothing can justify this repeated shooting of a teenager who was running for his life, certainly not once he was hit and lay wounded on the road. Not even if the initial Border Police account, which for some reason was magically altered the following week – that the youth or his friend shot at the troops – is correct. Nothing can justify such unhinged shooting at a youth.

One can glean an understanding for NYT’s concern or lack of concern for humanity by comparing how it feted and eulogized genocidaire and former US secretary-of-state Madeleine Albright who blithely agreed with half a million Iraqi kids serving as sacrificial lambs for US policy objectives.

Russians, according to the NYT, have responded with insouciance to Navalny’s predicament.

Conversely, Julian Assange has garnered worldwide attention and support. Despite this, he is being subjected to a slow-motion assassination. As long as Assange draws air, there is still time for a tidal wave of humanity to drown out the injustice. It may seem unfair that one political prisoner, Julian Assange, has so much of progressivists’ attention focused on his release, but Assange is crucial in making known the crimes of state and revealing the plight of other people wrongfully imprisoned or unjustly targeted by the state.

How to stop the extradition of Assange? For instance, shutting down any airport that would seek to fly Assange to the US. Protestors in Hong Kong managed to shut down their airport, so it can be done. If enough people would surround Belmarsh prison preventing entry or exit, such a mass movement signal would be a signal. The trucker convoy with its supporters disrupted Ottawa and borders in Canada for weeks, and it had an effect because soon afterwards many provincial governments relented on the mandates. So it can be done. The protests caused the Canadian government to resort to an extremely draconian Emergencies Act and siphon people’s bank accounts. Forcing the state to turn to repressive measures is contradictorily a victory for protestors. The battle for justice will not and must not be over until Assange and all others falsely imprisoned are released. Conscience demands it.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.  

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Earlier this year, the French Prime Minister, Mr. Jean Castex, warned that French elections planned for April 2022 may have to be postponed as there may be an outbreak of Marburg disease.

How does he know?

One dark evening late in February 2022, the Covid narrative left the world arena – mostly in the global west – quietly through the back door. There are some stubborn “hang-ons”, like Canada and Australia, but they may follow suit in time – when the masters tell them so.

In comes through the front door, the devastating Ukraine-Russia war. It takes over the media in storm, from one day to the next – and people’s attention is focused on the atrocities of war. It’s like an overnight switch from health, alias disease, to war. Both are deadly.

That’s almost too much. That’s not what “deep state” wants. They want a moderate switch. The media must dampen their Ukraine war reporting. They want people to enjoy life now, an illusion of “back to normal”; a personal diversion.

A clever socio-psychological game. Pretty much what Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and a pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda, did to help Woodrow Wilson convince the American people to breaking America’s then “neutrality”, and that entering WWI was necessary for “national security”.

If anybody thinks that Covid is now over and we can go back to normal, or as the Swiss Health Minister recently told an interviewer, “Go and enjoy life”, they are dead wrong.

What is planned makes the Covid plandemic look like a benign training exercise.

But what is planned doesn’t necessarily have to become true. We, the People, when we are aware of the plan and awake, we have the moral, ethical and spiritual capacity to stop it. We don’t just want to enjoy life; we want a spiritual life in a long-lasting Peace. For that we have to know the plan and we have to be awake. We have to connect in binding-solidarity with each other.

Here is the plan.

Earlier this year, the French Prime Minister, Mr. Jean Castex, warned that France’s elections planned for April 2022 may have to be postponed as there may be an outbreak of Marburg disease.

Marburg disease is similar to Ebola, it causes internal bleeding and death. From 2014 to 2016, there was an unusually strong Ebola outbreak, concentrated on the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Over two years, 28,616 cases of Ebola and 11,310 deaths were reported. This is a death to case rate of about 40%; as compared to the average covid death rate of less than 0.1%.

Was the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak a trial for what was to come in the 2020s?

If there is indeed a dark sinister cult behind the UN Agenda 2030, then as part of the cult’s rules, individual steps of their disaster agenda must be revealed to the people in one way or another. This has happened in the past on many occasions with regard to the disastrous events planned for UN Agenda 2030. Mr. Castex’s warning about a “horrible virus” [Marburg], may have been just that. See video below.

We are now in the third year of Agenda 2030, alias The Great Reset. There may be many sinister occurrences to follow covid and the war. But we the People, will not allow implementation of Agenda 2030. We shall overcome!

The goal at the end of 2030, foresees depopulation; a monumental shift of properties and assets worldwide from the lower and middle echelon, private and public assets to the top – and full digitization of everything, including the human brain, making of the surviving humans “transhumans”, who “will own nothing but be happy” (Klaus Schwab, WEF).

Again, this is their plan. We can and must resist it.

Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, German / US international lawyer and leader of the German Corona Committee, interviewed US Attorney Todd Callender, a US international lawyer, specialized in disabled-rights. He has worked in the disability health and life insurance industry for more than 20 years.

Todd is also a leading figure in the movement to defeat the US Federal government’s covid campaign, its medical establishment, and Big Pharma. The interview, part of Reiner Fuellmich’s Grand Jury, a Public Trial, often dubbed “Nuremberg 2.0”, against the criminal perpetrators of the devastating covid plandemic, was first published on 28 March 2022.

In his crucial testimony, Attorney Todd Callender provides evidence on how the wireless 5G technology can kill and produce “Marburg”. He describes in mind-blowing details, how the wireless technology in combination with the graphene oxide spiked mRNA vaxxes causes genocide.

See this full video interview (1:11:51 h); revealing and shocking to the bones – what is planned and what has already taken place in hospitals in terms of organized genocide. People, beware from hospitals. See video below.

Attorney Todd Callender also discloses how “after they modify you, they will own you”, meaning by DNA modifying mRNA-vaxxes. He is referring to a US Supreme Court Decision – No. 12–398. Argued April 15, 2013—Decided June 13, 2013. See this.

This sounds terrifying. But you must not let yourself be plunged into fear, by reading this story. Fear lowers people’s immune response, and fear makes people vulnerable – and obedient.

To resist – and we, who are not only informed but also “spiritually awaken” – we must not be fearful – and

WE SHALL OVERCOME.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

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

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

The global distribution of Russian gas was hampered after sanctions were imposed on the “belligerent” state. Since then, the global gas supply chain has been in shambles. It should be clear by now that the West is heavily dependent on Russian gas and that the more they attempt to isolate one of the major gas exporters, the more their actions backfire on them.

The Kremlin has recently announced that henceforth it will only accept gas payments in Ruble. Other countries have already commenced trading in local currencies, bypassing the dollar hegemony. Are we witnessing waves of de-dollarization, precipitating into the overthrow of the dollar as a global currency? 

Read our selection below and share our articles far and wide.

***

New Global Economic Order Built Around China?

By Steven Sahiounie, April 01, 2022

There are now countries rushing to find ways of transacting and storing money that circumvent the US currencies and financial markets, as well as those of their allies.  Some countries are renegotiating the currency in which they get paid for trade.

Russia Demands Ruble Payments for Gas Instead Western Currencies

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, March 31, 2022

According to reports, Putin claimed that Western currencies are “compromised”, which is why it would be necessary to change the payment method to the Russian ruble. “Compromised” would be all currencies active in western countries considered hostile by the Russian government, which includes the US, UK and the entire European Union.

UAE Energy Chief Reaffirms Commitment to Opec+ Alliance with Russia

By Umar A Farooq, March 29, 2022

The United Arab Emirates‘ energy minister on Monday reaffirmed an oil alliance with Russia, as governments across the globe shun Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine. Suhail al-Mazrouei, a former president of the oil alliance, said that Russia, which exports roughly 10 million barrels of oil a day, is an important member of the global Opec+ energy alliance and no producer could substitute its production.

Strategic Miscalculation? Financial Sanctions Directed against Russia Could “Topple the West”?

By Thomas Fazi, March 29, 2022

The Russian central bank reacted to the sanctions by stopping capital flows out of Russia and nationalising the foreign exchange earnings of major exporters, requiring Russian firms to convert 80% of their dollar and euro earnings into rubles. It also raised interest rates to 20% in an effort to attract foreign capital.

Putin’s Rubles for Gas Demand Ensures “Unfriendly Countries” Prop Up Russian Economy

By Paul Antonopoulos, March 25, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on March 23 that natural gas payments from so-called unfriendly countries will be made in rubles from now on. He stressed however that Russia will continue to supply gas to other countries according to the volume and price specified in previously signed contracts.

Say Hello to Russian Gold and Chinese Petroyuan

By Pepe Escobar, March 16, 2022

The Eurasian system is bound to become a serious alternative to the US dollar, as the EAEU may attract not only nations that have joined BRI (Kazakhstan, for instance, is a member of both) but also the leading players in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as well as ASEAN. West Asian actors – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon – will be inevitably interested.

The Coming World War for US Dollar Supremacy? US-Backed NATO Expansion to Russia’s Borders

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, February 25, 2022

The US uses its reserve currency status to control the world’s economy and its politics in its favor, for example it uses economic sanctions as a tool against countries who don’t do what Uncle Sam wants them to do.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

The doctors, scientists and journalists featured in THE VIRAL DELUSION examine in detail the scientific papers that were used to justify the pandemic, and what they find is shattering. In this shocking, five-part, seven hour documentary series, they explode every single major claim, from the “isolation” of the virus to its so-called genetic sequencing, from the discovery of how to “test” for SARS-CoV2 to the emergence of “variants” that in reality, they explain, exist only on a computer. Their point: that the so-called SARS-CoV-2 virus exists only as a mental construct whose existence in the real world has been disproven by the science itself.

They then go back through history to reveal how the birth and growth of virology has led to massive misunderstanding and misdiagnosis of disease: from Smallpox to the Spanish Flu, Polio to AIDS, to COVID itself – putting the pandemic in a whole new context better understood not as settled science, but the tragic culmination of misunderstood biology by the growing cult of virology, built on pseudo-science, to which much of the rest of the medical profession defers without understanding or examination, and the tragic consequences that have been wrought in its name.

In 2019, the virologists took center stage, and for the first time on film, their methods, miscues and tragedy they have wrought are put under the spotlight, revealing the extraordinary leaps of fantasy buried in their methodology, the contradictions quietly acknowledged in their papers, their desperate effort to change language to justify their findings, the obvious incongruence of their conclusions and the extraordinary stakes for our entire society in whether we continue to blindly follow their lead into a full-scale war against nature itself.

Featuring:

Andrew Kaufman, MD; Tom Cowan, MD; Stefan Lanka, Virologist; Torsten Engelbrecht, journalist; Claus Kohnlein, MD; Kevin Corbett, PhD RN; David Rasnick, Biochemist PhD; Mark Bailey, MD; Dawn Lester and David Parker, Authors; Stefano Scoglio, Biochemist PhD; Saeed Qureeshi, Chemist PhD; Celia Farber, Journalist; Harold Wallach, PhD; Pam Popper, PhD, ND; Charles Geshekter, PhD; Amandha Vollmer ND, Jim West, Author; Larry Palevsky MD; and more.

The opening episode, which is two hours and twenty minutes, will be available for free from March 21st until May 21st. The full package of episodes is available for only $11.99. CLICK HERE. 

Watch the trailer below.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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). 

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

First published on May 21, 2021

***

Twenty-three years ago the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was subjected to the 55th straight day of bombardment from the then 19-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization, with 23 days more to go. Many families in Belgrade, Novi Sad and Niš daily fled to bomb shelters during the aerial onslaught. The permanent trauma inflicted on millions of civilians, especially children, is perhaps impossible to calculate. And it has been denied or ignored by Europe and the world. As forgotten as the cluster bomb fragments and depleted uranium left behind by NATO’s “humanitarian intervention.”

The air war was justified by U.S. President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana as a noble crusade to stop, to employ an expression not uncommon at the time, the “worst genocide since Hitler” in the Serbian province of Kosovo. The operation, Operation Allied Force for NATO, Operation Noble Anvil for the U.S., began with a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships and submarines in the Adriatic Sea. In all over 1,000 NATO military aircraft flew 30,000 combat sorties over a nation of slightly more than 10 million people, two million of those in Kosovo; a military bloc whose combined population at the time was some 850 million and which included three of the world’s nuclear powers.

During the war, arguably the most lopsided since the U.S.’s invasion of Grenada in 1983, American and other Western officials maintained a steady drumbeat of increasingly hyperbolic, and criminally unconscionable, claims of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo killed by Yugoslav forces. On May 16 Defense Secretary William Cohen appeared on Face the Nation and said: “We’ve now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing….They may have been murdered.” Almost immediately afterward another American official raised that number to 200,000.

The scare tactics worked, as NATO’s top military commander, General Wesley Clark, was able to continue daily bombing missions over the small nation months after all targets of military value had been hit and hit repeatedly. A passenger train, a religious procession, a refugee column, Radio Television of Serbia headquarters. a vacuum cleaner factory, bridges, marketplaces, apartment courtyards, the Swiss embassy in Belgrade and the Chinese embassy as well, with three journalists killed and 27 other Chinese injured. Cluster bombs, graphite bombs and depleted uranium ordnance were used widely. No one, not a single individual, has been held accountable for those war crimes. Nor for what should be a war crime and one of the most grave at that: intentionally fabricating and exaggerating atrocity stories to agitate for and escalate a war. Few Western politicians and journalists would have escaped that charge over their roles in 1999.

When the Yugoslav government of President Slobodan Milosevic was compelled to accede to NATO diktat on June 10, over 200,000 ethnic Serbs, Roma and other minorities left Kosovo with Yugoslav troops, and NATO and its so-called Kosovo Liberation Army cutthroats – for whom and with whom it waged the war – marched into Kosovo. After the latter arrived even more, perhaps a hundred thousand or more, Serbs, Roma, Turks, Jews, Egyptians, Ashkali and members of other ethnic minority communities, along with no few Albanians, fled the province. Numerous Serbs, Roma and Albanian “collaborators” were murdered in what the Western press invariably described as revenge killings. (During the air war Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported 100,000 ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo to other parts of Serbia.)

The permanent displacement of hundreds of thousands of non-ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and the expulsion of over a quarter of a million Serbs from Croatia in the early 1990s are the two largest cases of irreversible ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II. Decades later no one has been held accountable for those crimes either.

Most all of the above has been forgotten if it was ever known. That’s how it was planned. While NATO was celebrating its fiftieth-anniversary jubilee in Washington, D.C. and inducting the first new members since Spain in 1986, and former members of the Warsaw Pact at that – the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland – a high-profile, low-risk war was just the thing to launch new global NATO on the world.

The victim, Yugoslavia, had been mortally wounded; four years later it no longer existed, even on the map. The corpse was expected to rest silently.

But its ghost refuses to disappear. On May 14 Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, responding to a comment by his Slovenian counterpart, Borut Pahor, to the effect that there should be no redrawing of borders in Europe, said:

“We have a differing view on Kosovo’s independence. When I hear that, as Pahor says, there are no border changes without conflict, I agree, and that should be clear to all who have been generating conflicts and wanted to change Serbia’s borders.” That is a reference to the West – the U.S., European Union and NATO – successfully wrenching Kosovo from Serbia in 2008, in violation of the 1999 Kumanovo Agreement. Vucic backed up his contention that national borders should not be arbitrarily or unilaterally changed by stating that only borders recognized by the United Nations are legitimate. However, he said that a contrary practice had been at work since 1999, the result of “the brutal hypocrisy of Western powers that have no principles, or have principles as needed.”

President Vucic was in Prague, the Czech Republic on May 18 and met there with President Miloš Zeman. Zeman was prime minister of the Czech Republic in 1999 when his country joined NATO and the war against Yugoslavia was launched.

The Czech leader’s spokesman, Jiri Ovcacec, confirmed that “President Miloš Zeman presented public apologies to President Aleksandar Vucic for the [NATO] bombardments of Yugoslavia in 1999,” and that he “personally asked the Serbian people for forgiveness.”

During the war Prague refused NATO’s warplanes the right to land in Czech territory. Today Zeman himself told the press after his meeting with Serbia’s president:

“We were hopelessly looking for at least one more [NATO] country that would join us and come out against [the bombardments of Yugoslavia]. We remained all alone.” Displaying that rarest of virtues for a politician, penitence, he also said his government should have exercised more resolve in demanding the end of the bombing once it had commenced.

When the Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 it was accompanied by Hungary and Poland, fellow members of the Visegrad Four group in Central Europe. The fourth member, Slovakia, was not invited because the party of three-time prime minister Vladimír Mečiar was not to the liking of the U.S., NATO and the EU. The following year Mečiar dropped out of politics, with his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia party colleague Augustín Marián Húska disclosing: “The NATO war against Yugoslavia in 1999 was also a signal to us, to not pursue any vision of political independence anymore. We have seen what will happen to forces that want to be independent.”

On May 7 the governments of Serbia and China commemorated the NATO bombing of China’s embassy in Serbia in 1999. Serbian Minister of Labor, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs Dr. Darija Kisic Tepavcevic, head of the Association of Journalists of Serbia Vladimir Radomirovic, Chinese ambassador to Serbia Chen Bo and others laid wreaths in honor of three Chinese journalists killed in the attack.

The Chinese ambassador thanked the Serbian people for keeping alive the memory of the victims who, she said, “paid the price of truth, justice, and righteousness with their lives.

“We will never forget the crime conducted by the aggressor, who most brutally violated human rights, in the name of the so-called protection of human rights.”

If most of the rest of the world has forgotten NATO’s first war and its bloody emergence on the world stage, China and Serbia have not.

On March 26, to mark the beginning of NATO’s air war against Yugoslavia and Serbia’s Remembrance Day for the Victims of the NATO Aggression, Hua Chunying, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, stated:

“China would like to remind NATO that they still owe a debt of blood to the Chinese people….The dead have passed away, but the living need more vigilance and reflection.”

It’s worth quoting him further as a reminder that the crime of 1999 has indeed haunted not only Europe but the world ever since it was perpetrated; that what is seemingly past is really both prologue and precedent.

“Whether in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Syria, we should never forget the lives of ordinary people lost to repeated bombardment, the crumbling walls under the shells, the glorious historical sites consumed by the flames.

“The US and some Western countries have kept their mouths open about human rights and kept their mouths shut about their responsibilities….When they blatantly launched a war against a sovereign country without the Security Council’s authorization, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and the dispersal of millions of people, did they ever care about the human rights of the people in those countries? Is this what they mean by international rules? Shouldn’t they be held accountable for their war actions?”

Those questions, which had they been asked twenty-two years ago might have spared millions of lives in the nations the Chinese diplomat enumerated and others, need to be asked now and with a passion and insistence hitherto absent.

*

Rick Rozoff, renowned author and geopolitical analyst, actively involved in opposing war, militarism and interventionism for over fifty years. He manages the Anti-Bellum and For peace, against war website.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

***

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The West continues to work against peace in Ukraine. According to recent reports, the British government is “concerned” about the progress of the peace talks, mainly due to Kiev’s alleged initiative to propose significant concessions. The news was published by The Times website, which mentions anonymous British government sources in its text. If the veracity of the information contained in the article is confirmed, this will be further evidence of the destabilizing role played by the UK in the conflict.

According to The Times, Britain is “concerned” that the US, France, and Germany will pressure Ukraine to “settle” quickly and make significant concessions during the recent peace talks with Russia. An anonymous senior British government source reportedly said there were concerns that other Western countries were “eager” to secure a peace deal as soon as possible, encouraging Kiev to accept all Russian-imposed conditions.

This “fear” was allegedly the reason British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky the last weekend. During the conversation, Johnson described Vladimir Putin as a “liar and a bully” and “alerted” that the Russian leader would try to wear down the Ukrainian government and force it to make concessions during the Ankara peace talks, which ended without any relevant results.

The source also stated that the hegemonic thought among British government officials is that Ukraine should reinforce its military measures before seeking a diplomatic solution, using full power against Russian troops. For London, what seems to be the worst-case scenario for Western interests is a retreat by Kiev on territorial issues. In this sense, there should be a maximum effort to bring the military resistance to the last consequences, so that, in addition to international sanctions (which he said that must be increased further), Russia will then be forced to leave Ukraine including from Donbass and Crimea, which Kiev continues to claim.

An interesting point to mention is that Liz Truss, the UK Foreign Minister, said in an interview on Sunday 27 March that Western sanctions on Moscow should only be lifted in the event of a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the Ukrainian territory. In other words, Truss believes it is necessary to maintain a policy of absolute coercion throughout the entire Russian Special Operation, not admitting the possibility of easing sanctions in advance to initiate a diplomatic dialogue. In fact, it is a position somewhat similar to that pointed out by the anonymous interviewee of The Times, which makes the situation really worrying.

Considering that goodwill and mutual trust are elementary diplomatic principles, it is difficult for any peace talks to be fruitful if one of the parties starts the debate by ruling out withdrawing its troops. Russia has so far reduced the intensity of operations during talks on all occasions that there has been a diplomatic meeting between Russian and Ukrainian relations. So, it would also be diplomatic kindness for the West to at least ease some sanctions during the negotiations, showing willingness to really reach a peaceful end.

However, returning to the topic reported by The Times, it is curious to note the destabilizing role that London is adopting. It is known by any experts that the Ukrainian armed forces do not have the material conditions necessary to carry out the resistance for a long time, which is one of the main reasons why a peaceful diplomatic agreement is considered a good option. The Russian military superiority is absolute and, in other words, there is simply no possibility for the Ukrainians to effectively counter Russian troops.

Of course, this fact is well known to British government officials, who apparently still insist on advocating that military resistance be promoted. In practice, what London simply wants is for the West to increase its participation, sending more money, weapons and fighters. Some recent UK actions corroborate this narrative. It is necessary to remember, for example, that many western mercenaries who are fighting on the side of Kiev are actually British veterans and even members of elite divisions. Indeed, for the UK, peace seems to be the least important thing.

It seems wrong, however, to believe that other countries really have any interest in making Ukraine consider concessions. On the contrary, so far Kiev has shown no interest in surrendering on practically any relevant point, making bilateral dialogue virtually impossible. It simply appears that London is adopting such a radical stance that even some more realistic positions on the part of its allies sound like “eager” to achieve peace.

The UK is interested in projecting itself internationally with the ongoing conflict, leading a global pro-sanctions and pro-military aid campaign to Kiev. The US historically occupies this type of position, but there is strong popular pressure on Biden to avoid a new war, which leads Washington to take a more realistic stance. Only in the EU there is a more genuine interest in peace, as the conflict directly affects the European continent and impacts trade and energy supply, leading Europeans to also act realistically when advising Zelensky. The UK, on the other hand, as not a member of the EU and being free from US social pressures, remains able to occupy this position of “global anti-Russian leader”, which is why it has acted in such a destabilizing way.

It is questionable, however, how much force the UK will have to actually encourage Kiev to carry out military resistance. With the undeniable Russian victory and global demand for peace, the most likely scenario for the short-medium future is that Boris Johnson himself will soon be increasingly questioned by the British public opinion, losing legitimacy due to his pro-war positions.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

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).

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

On Thursday, President Joe Biden ordered the largest release ever from the US emergency oil reserve in a futile attempt to bring down gasoline prices that have soared to record levels following the Russo-Ukraine War. Starting in May, the United States will release 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil for six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), amounting to 180 million barrels in total, which is equivalent to only two days of the global demand.

Invoking the fabled trope of American patriotism, Biden urged the consumers not to hesitate from paying twice the amount while filling gas tanks in order for the military-industrial complex to reap billions of dollars windfalls by providing anti-aircraft and anti-armor munitions to NATO’s proxies in Ukraine.

“This is a moment of consequence and peril for the world, and pain at the pump for American families. It’s also a moment of patriotism,” Biden said at an event at the White House.

The US announcement came a day before the International Energy Agency member countries were set to meet on Friday to discuss a further emergency oil release that would follow their March 1 agreement to release about 60 million barrels that would cover only two-third of a single day’s oil demand, as the global net oil consumption per day is over 90 million barrels. With over 10 million barrels daily oil production capacity, Russia, alongside Saudi Arabia, is the world’s largest oil producer accounting for providing over 10% of the world’s crude oil demand.

As far as military power is concerned, Russia with its enormous arsenal of conventional as well as nuclear weapons more or less equals the military power of the United States. But it’s the much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare for which Russia seems to have no answer following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the nineties and consequent dismantling of the once-thriving communist bloc, spanning Eastern Europe, Latin America and many socialist states in Asia and Africa in the sixties.

The current global neocolonial order is being led by the United States and its West European clients since the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 following the Second World War. Historically, any state, particularly those inclined to pursue socialist policies, that dared to challenge the Western monopoly over global trade and economic policies was internationally isolated and its national economy went bankrupt over a period of time. But for once, it appears Washington might shoot itself in the foot by going overboard in its relentless efforts to punish Russia for invading Ukraine.

On March 17, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, two British-Iranian nationals held in Iran since 2016 and 2017, respectively, were unexpectedly set free and were permitted to travel to the United Kingdom. In return, the British government, in what gave the impression of a ransom payment, triumphantly announced it had settled a £400m debt owed to Iran from the seventies.

The thaw in the frosty relations between the Western powers and Iran signaled that a tentative understanding on reviving the Iran nuclear deal was also reached behind the scenes, particularly in the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis and the Western efforts to internationally isolate Russia. After sanctioning Russia’s 10 million barrels daily crude oil output, the industrialized world is desperately in need of Iran’s 5 million barrels oil production capacity to keep the already inflated oil price from causing further pain to consumers.

Last month, Venezuela similarly released two incarcerated US citizens in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the Biden administration following a visit to Caracas by a high-level US delegation, despite the fact that Washington still officially recognizes Nicolas Maduro’s detractor Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s “legitimate president.” Nonetheless, Venezuela is one of Latin America’s largest oil producers and opening the international market to its heavy crude might provide a welcome relief in the time of global oil crunch.

Niftily forestalling the likelihood of strengthening of mutually beneficial bonds between China and Russia when the latter is badly in need for economic relief, the United States pre-emptively accused China of pledging to sell military hardware to Russia, when the latter, itself one of the world’s leading arms exporters, didn’t even make any such request to China.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held an intense seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on March 15, and warned China of “grave consequences” of evading Western sanctions on Russia. Besides wielding the stick of economic sanctions, he must also have dangled the carrot of ending trade war against China initiated by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration until Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

Despite vowing to treat the Saudi kingdom as a “pariah” in the run-up to Nov. 2020 presidential elections, the Wall Street Journal reported last month the White House unsuccessfully tried to arrange calls between President Biden and the de facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the US was working to build international support for Ukraine and contain a surge in oil prices.

“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the U.A.E.’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan both declined U.S. requests to speak to Mr. Biden in recent weeks, the officials said, as Saudi and Emirati officials have become more vocal in recent weeks in their criticism of American policy in the Gulf.

“‘There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,’ said a U.S. official of the planned discussion between the Saudi Prince Mohammed and Mr. Biden. ‘It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].’

“But the Saudis and Emiratis have declined to pump more oil, saying they are sticking to a production plan approved by OPEC. Both Prince Mohammed and Sheikh Mohammed took phone calls from Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, after declining to speak with Mr. Biden.”

To add insult to the injury, Saudi Arabia has reportedly invited Chinese President Xi Jinping for an official visit to the kingdom that could happen as soon as May, and is also considering pegging its vast oil reserves in yuan, a move that could spell end to the petrodollar hegemony.

The United States and Britain were ramping up pressure on Saudi Arabia to pump more oil and join efforts to isolate Russia, while Riyadh had shown little readiness to respond and had revived a threat to ditch dollars in its oil sales to China, Reuters reported last month.

“If Saudi Arabia does that, it will change the dynamics of the forex market,” said a source with knowledge of the matter, adding that such a move—which the source said Beijing had long requested and which Riyadh threatened as far back as 2018—might prompt other buyers to follow.

Trump aptly observed: “Now Biden is crawling around the globe on his knees begging and pleading for mercy from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela.” It appears quite plausible that in its relentless efforts to internationally isolate Russia, the Biden administration is likely to unravel the whole neocolonial economic order imposed on the world after the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord following the Second World War in 1945.

In order to bring home the significance of the Persian Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few stats from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 266 billion barrels and its daily oil production is 10 million barrels; Iran and Iraq each has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day each; while UAE and Kuwait each has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold 788 billion barrels, over half of world’s 1477 billion barrels proven oil reserves.

In many ways, the current oil crunch caused by Washington’s unilateral decision to impose economic sanctions on Russia’s vital energy sector is similar to the oil crisis of 1973. The 1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West following the Arab-Israel War lasted only for a short span of six months during which the price of oil quadrupled, but Washington became so paranoid after the embargo that it put in place a ban on the export of crude oil outside the US borders, and began keeping sixty-day stock of reserve fuel for strategic and military needs dubbed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Regarding the reciprocal relationship between Washington and the Gulf’s autocrats, it bears mentioning that in April 2016, the Saudi foreign minister threatened that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow Americans to sue the Saudi government in the United States courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack – though the bill was eventually passed, Saudi authorities have not been held accountable for nurturing terrorism.

It’s noteworthy that $750 billion was only the Saudi investment in the United States, if we add its investment in the Western Europe and the investments of the oil-rich UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investments in the economies of North America and Western Europe.

Additionally, regarding the Western defense production industry’s sales of arms to the Gulf Arab States, a report authored by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy found that the Obama administration had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training during its eight-year tenure.

Similarly, the top items in Trump’s agenda for his maiden visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 were: firstly, he threw his weight behind the idea of the Saudi-led “Arab NATO” to counter Iran’s influence in the region; and secondly, he announced an unprecedented arms package for Saudi Arabia.

The package included between $98 billion and $128 billion in arms sales and, over a period of 10 years, total sales could reach $400 billion, as Donald Trump himself alluded to in his conversations with American journalist Bob Woodward described in the book “Rage.”

President Donald Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

“I saved his ass,” Trump said in 2018, according to the book. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.” When Woodward pressed Trump if he believed the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination himself, Trump responded: “He says very strongly that he didn’t do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time,” Trump said.

“And you know, they’re in the Middle East. You know, they’re big. Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have the real power. They have the oil, but they also have the great monuments for religion. You know that, right? For that religion,” Trump noted. “They wouldn’t last a week if we’re not there, and they know it,” he added.

In this reciprocal relationship, the US provides security to the ruling families of the Gulf Arab States by providing weapons and troops; and in return, the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs contribute substantial investments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to the Western economies.

All the recent wars and conflicts aside, the unholy alliance between the Western powers and the Gulf’s petro-monarchies is much older. The British Empire stirred uprising in Arabia by instigating the Sharifs of Mecca to rebel against the Ottoman rule during the First World War, as the Ottoman Empire had sided with Germany during the war.

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed following the war, the British Empire backed King Abdul Aziz (Ibn-e-Saud) in his violent insurgency against Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali, because the latter was demanding too much of a price for his loyalty, the unification of the whole of Arabian peninsula, including the Levant, Iraq and the Gulf Emirates, under his suzerainty as a bribe for stabbing the Ottoman Empire in the back during the First World War.

Consequently, the Western powers abandoned the Sharifs of Mecca, though the scions of the family were rewarded with kingdoms in Iraq and Jordan, imposed the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing Arabs into small states at loggerheads with each other, and lent their support to the nomadic Sauds of Najd.

King Abdul Aziz defeated the Sharifs and united his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 with the financial and military support of the British Empire. However, by then the tide of the British Imperialism was subsiding and the Americans inherited the former territorial possessions of the British Empire.

At the end of the Second World War on 14 February 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a historic meeting with King Abdul Aziz at Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal onboard USS Quincy, and laid the foundations of an enduring alliance which persists to this day. During the course of that momentous meeting, among other things, it was decided to set up the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) to Saudi Arabia to “train, advise and assist” the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces.

Aside from USMTM, the US-based Vinnell Corporation, which is a private military company based in the US and a subsidiary of the Northrop Grumman, used over a thousand Vietnam War veterans to train and equip 125,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guards (SANG) which is not under the authority of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and acts as the Praetorian Guards of the House of Saud.

In addition, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Force, whose strength is numbered in tens of thousands, is also being trained and equipped by the US to guard the critical Saudi oil infrastructure along its eastern Persian Gulf coast where 90% of 266 billion barrels Saudi oil reserves are located.

Currently, the US has deployed tens of thousands of American troops in aircraft carriers and numerous military bases in the Persian Gulf that include sprawling al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi, al-Udeid airbase in Qatar and a naval base in Bahrain where the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy is based.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Just as everything you were told about Covid by the media and health and government officials was false, so is everything you have been told by the same propagandistic liars about Ukraine. Americans have had nothing but lies since the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, of his brother, US Senator Robert Kennedy President-in-Waiting, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam war, 9/11, Saddam Hussian’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” Iranian nukes, the extraordinary lies about Kaddafi, Covid pandemic, Russian invasions. The entire Western World lives in The Mattrix, a world created by propaganda. The vast majority of people in the West have no idea of the reality in which they live. This makes them impotent and completely unable to protect their freedom. They are sitting ducks for tyranny which is fast enclosing around them.

Take the Ukraine narrative, for example. The story as presented to the public by the Western media has no relationship to reality.  The Ukraine narrative has collapsed as completely as the Covid narrative.  There will be no going back to it.  The narrative will simply be dropped as the next crisis–inflation perhaps or a newly released pathogen–takes the front page.

There was never a “Russian invasion” of Ukraine comparable to Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.  Russian military focus was on the Donbass region in east and south Ukraine.  Inhabited by Russians and part of Russia herself until Soviet leaders transferred it, like Crimea, into Ukraine for their reasons.  When the US overthrew the democratically elected Ukrainian government in 2014 and took control over Ukraine, the Crimean and Donbass Russians voted overwhelmingly to be reunited with Russia.  The Kremlin accepted Crimea but not Donbass.

This was a strategic blunder demonstrating a lack of awareness on the part of the Russian government.  Immediately the neo-Nazi remnants in west Ukraine, whose forebears had fought for Hitler against Russia in WW II, began abusing the Russian population in the Donbass region in the east. The American puppet government in Kiev followed up by banning the use of the Russian language. 

To protect themselves, the Donbass Russians declared their independence in the form of two republics, the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics.  Ukrainian troops and neo-Nazi militias began attacking these “breakaway republics.”  They have been shelling with artillery Donbass villages, towns, and cities for 8 years, killing thousands of civilians, and the Ukrainian forces, although twice defeated  by hastily assembled forces in the Donbass, managed to gain control over large areas of the breakaway republics.

It was the deployment of a 100,000 or more Ukrainian force on the shrunken borders of Donbass for an invasion to reconquer the territory that provoked the Russian intervention. Washington’s refusal to give the Kremlin a security guarantee was a second reason for the Russian military intervention.  Russia told Washington in completely clear language that Russia would not permit Ukraine to be a member of NATO.  Nevertheless, Washington persisted in its provocation.

Most of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine is focused on clearing Ukrainian and neo-Nazi forces out of Donbass.  This is the reason for Putin’s go-slow war that rules out heavy weapons use on civilian areas.

The civilians are Russians, and, as Putin said, “we went in to liberate these people, not to kill them.”

The West’s media whores and government officials misrepresent the Russians’ intention of avoiding the death of Russian civilians as a sign of a “stalled Russian invasion,” as CNN and the NPR whores proclaim.  Some of the Western media whores go even further and say it is a “Russian defeat.”

If there is a Russian defeat, it will happen in negotiations, not on the battlefield.  Russians are too trusting to be negotiators and never do well.

The battle field has a higher standard of performance.  Before any Russian troops entered Donbass, the Ukrainian military infrastructure, air force, and navy were completely destroyed.  The Ukrainian army is incapable of action. It has no communication, no air cover, and is cut off from supplies.

Russia’s reason for the peace negotiations is to avoid destroying the Ukrainian troops that the neo-Nazi commissars require to fight to the last man.  Russia doesn’t seem to understand that they are negotiating with a “government” that is not in control of anything.

The Russians have deployed 200,000 troops against Ukraine’s 600,000 soldiers trained and armed by the US and UK.  The Ukrainian army, which outnumbered the Russians 3 to 1, was destroyed as a fighting force even quicker than the Russians destroyed the US and Israeli armed and trained Georgian army that invaded South Ossetia in August, 2008. 

The only reason that any building, any Ukrainian exists in Ukraine is Russian restraint.

The Kremlin is confident that Russia can achieve its objectives without destroying Ukraine.  This is true militarily, but I do believe that the Russian government is too gullible to be successful in negotiation.  Russia still has a moral fiber and mistakenly inputs one to the West. The West does not have any moral fiber.  Russians do not know how to negotiate with “The Devil”.   Remember Hugo Chavez’s speech at the UN.  Remember U.S. Secretary Albright saying on national TV that America’s murder of 500,000 Iraqi children “was worth it.” Yes, worth it for Israel’s dominance of the Middle East.

Americans, British, French, Germans, Japan, all of the US empire do not understand how they have been betrayed, how they have been implicated in monstrous crimes, how they have been brainwashed by lies from a media that they stupidly trusted, how Washington has destroyed the reputation of the United States, or why most of the world hates America.

Neither do they understand that the American Empire is at its end. What the sanctions have done is to destroy the dollar-based world that allowed the Americans to impose the financing of their huge trade deficit, due largely to US corporations offshoring their production for the US market, on the rest of the world.

Russia, China, central and east Asia will now create their own methods of payment separate from the West. This will destroy dollar hegemony and American power.

We come full circle. The American hubris created an arrogance that could not prevail over Russian, Chinese, and  Indian determination to exist as sovereign nations.  American globalism, Washington’s method of exercising hegemony, is collapsing.  The idiots in Washington have themselves collapsed their ruling system by mindless sanctions that are driving the East out of the dollar system.  

Russia has only one problem.  Russia’s problem is internal.  The problem consists of  elements of the intellectual and upper class and financial system who see their interests allied with the West. These traitors, tolerated by the Kremlin, are de facto Western agents created during the Yeltsin regime by the American overlords.

In the Russian government their most powerful person is the head of the Russian central bank whose policies serve the West and not Russia.  Putin, despite the warnings from Russia’s only economist, Sergey Glazyev, trusts the pro-American head of the Russian central bank with Russia’s future. The Russian central bank, which has never served Russia, is Washington’s greatest asset in its hopes to defeat Russia.  It is Putin’s blindness to this threat that is the dagger at Russia’s heart.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Middle East Eye

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Pakistan’s opposition is trying to overthrow Prime Minister Imran Khan with a no-confidence motion. Khan says the US sent him a threatening letter and he has proof of foreign funding for a regime-change operation, aimed at reversing his independent foreign policy – like his alliance with China and Russia and support for Palestine.

While the world’s attention is understandably focused on the crisis in Ukraine, equally grave developments are taking place elsewhere. Perhaps the most consequential – and underreported – is a regime-change operation underway in Pakistan.

This March, opposition lawmakers in Pakistan’s parliament launched a “no-confidence” motion aimed at overthrowing Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Khan, who was democratically elected in 2018, has warned that an “effort is being made to topple the government with the help of foreign funds in our country.”

“Our people are being used. Mostly unknowingly, but some knowingly are using this money against us,” Khan said at a rally on March 27. He added that the government had proof of these payments.

Khan argued that these external interests seek to reverse his independent foreign policy. He recalled his predecessor Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, a Pakistani prime minister who was overthrown in a US-backed coup in 1977, then executed following a show trial.

Bhutto was punished “when he tried to bring in a free foreign policy to the country,” Khan declared.

Khan specifically singled out the United States for meddling to try to remove him from power. He said he received a letter from Washington that threatened him for refusing to allow it to establish US military bases in Pakistan.

He cautioned that the opposition is collaborating with the United States and other foreign countries in its no-confidence motion against him.

These warnings came just over a month after Khan publicly criticized the US government for cynically using Pakistan to advance Washington’s interests. He also simultaneously praised China for always acting as a “friend” of Islamabad.

“Whenever the US needed us, they established relations, and Pakistan became a frontline state [against the Soviet Union], and then abandoned it and slapped sanctions on us,” Khan complained.

On the other hand, “China is a friend which has always stood by Pakistan,” he contrasted.

The idea that a regime-change plot could even be conceived of, let alone attempted, in a nuclear-armed country of more than 220 million may seem shocking and preposterous. On the surface, it strikes as incredulous considering that Islamabad is a major power, arguably the most powerful within the Muslim-majority world.

Nevertheless, it is precisely these characteristics that make Pakistan so geopolitically important.

The following is an analysis of the principal reasons for why hostile foreign elites have decided that Prime Minister Imran Khan must go:

1. Imran Khan opposes US foreign policy

Imran Khan was always dubbed a “fanatic” – i.e., overly critical of US foreign policy.

Khan strongly opposed Washington’s so-called “war on terror,” and especially the war in Afghanistan, arguing that military solutions were both immoral and counterproductive. For this he was long disparagingly referred to as “Taliban Khan.”

What bruised Washington’s ego even more was that Khan turned out to be right. The American debacle in Afghanistan that ended with Kabul falling to the Taliban was perceived by the US as a victory for Pakistan, and for Khan in particular.

The US is unwilling to forgive Khan for its own humiliation in Afghanistan, even though he had little to do with it.

2. Khan’s anti-colonial voice on the international stage

Imran Khan’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019 was condemned as overly audacious. A Pakistani leader speaking so strongly on issues of global injustice made Western elites feel that he had become way too big for his shoes.

At least three of the points that he emphasized in his remarks rubbed Western supremacists in the wrong way.

First, Khan condemned powerful Western countries for enabling elites of the Global South to plunder their own societies.

Second, he highlighted Islamophobia as not a marginal affair, but as a dangerous phenomenon structuring our global order – and one that the world must take seriously.

Relatedly, Khan scathingly criticized the insidious characterization of some Muslims as “moderate” and others as “radical.” These maliciously constructed distinctions have been essential to the political lexicon of the “war on terror.”

Third, Khan spoke passionately about the Kashmiri struggle against Indian occupation in a way that few Pakistani (or any other) leaders have.

His rhetorical performance seemed to be a page out of the anti-colonial playbook of the 1960s.

3. Khan deepened Pakistan’s friendship with China

Xi Jinping Meets with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (Source: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC)

Perhaps most concerning to Western elites is how Imran Khan has strengthened Pakistan’s decades-old relationship with China.

Islamabad and Beijing are key partners in infrastructure projects aimed at connecting the region. They work together in the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Pakistan is also a member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)

 

 

Khan received a very warm reception at the Beijing Olympics this February. It was a clear affirmation that Islamabad remains Beijing’s close ally.

In addition, President Xi Jinping and the Chinese leadership deem Khan to be a Pakistani leader genuinely interested in cooperation for Pakistan’s development, free from the enormous corruption and incompetence that characterize other political forces in the country.

Whether this is true or not, Beijing believes it. And Xi has built a very close relationship with Khan personally.

Furthermore, the fact that China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi attended the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit in Islamabad this March spoke volumes to China’s embrace of Pakistan’s leadership within the Muslim world.

4. Khan improved Pakistan’s ties with Russia

The recent breakthrough in the relationship between Pakistan and Russia seems to have been the straw that ultimately broke the camel’s back.

Islamabad never had a close relationship with Moscow. On the contrary, Pakistan and the Soviet Union had been adversaries during the first cold war, and retained a level of bitterness and distance. Moscow was always considered a strong ally of New Delhi.

But on the sidelines of the Beijing Olympics, Russian President Putin extended an invitation to Prime Minister Khan. Seeing an opportunity to at least neutralize a regional powerhouse that has historically been Islamabad’s foe, he agreed to the visit.

However, as soon as Khan landed in Moscow, Putin launched his military assault against Ukraine. Khan was lambasted by Western capitals for not condemning Russia then, and this continued when he returned home.

Khan received a strongly worded letter from European ambassadors demanding he denounce Moscow. The prime minister’s response, “we are not your slaves,” became quite popular not only in Pakistan, but in many parts of the Muslim world and the Global South.

Khan noted that his requests that these same Western countries condemn India’s behavior in Kashmir or Israel’s crimes in Palestine routinely fell on deaf ears.

Since then, Khan has consistently called for an end to the war in Ukraine and a diplomatic solution.

At the OIC summit he hosted, Khan specifically called on China to help mediate between Russia and Ukraine.

But the rapprochement with Russia appears to be where Khan crossed the rubicon.

As the global geopolitical battle lines are being rigidly drawn, Khan’s Pakistan seems to increasingly be on the “wrong side,” according to Washington.

5. Khan’s leadership in the Muslim world

The decision to host the 48th Session of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Islamabad this March crystallized Imran Khan’s role as one of the most popular Muslim political leaders today.

Khan seemed to be trying to mimic the performance and standing of Pakistan’s prime minister in the 1970s, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who similarly hosted an OIC meeting in Lahore, with great fanfare and purpose.

Whatever one’s feelings about Islam and politics, there is no question that powerful external forces detest those Muslim actors that they cannot control.

Washington has continued to work closely with brutal exclusivist forces such as al-Qaeda in Syria and the House of Saud. It has also cultivated a class of “moderate” Muslims since 9/11 that have faithfully delivered an empire-friendly Islam.

There is one factor that unites all of these disparate Muslim actors: their servility to Washington.

Unfortunately, Khan does not fit these imperial categories – as much as both Western and Pakistani liberal elites would want to portray him as a “fundamentalist.”

Khan’s invocation of an Islamicate civilizational ethos that centers social justice, however incoherently articulated and scarcely implemented, also advanced a politics of countering Western supremacy.

6. Pakistan’s gradual challenge to Saudi-led hegemony in the Muslim world

Imran Khan has demonstrated a gradual tilt toward countries that, on the whole, represent a counterweight to Saudi-led hegemony throughout the Muslim world.

The 2019 Kuala Lumpur Summit called by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad marked a milestone in this project. Nations such as Turkey, Iran, and Qatar participated.

Everyone knew that this was a significant attempt to challenge traditional Saudi dominance and influence.

Mahathir, who is very fond of Khan, invited Pakistan, and the participants understood how important the Pakistani prime minister’s presence would be.

Yet in the last minute, Islamabad pulled out.

Days before the Kuala Lumpur Summit, Khan was summoned to Riyadh, where he was warned in no uncertain terms: You are not to go to Malaysia, and if you do, the House of Saud will begin the deportation of Pakistani laborers, halt all oil subsidies and supplies, rescind any and all loans, and so on.

Khan was humiliated, but had to comply. He did not go to Kuala Lumpur.

7. Khan can’t be simply controlled by the military

Imran Khan came to power with the blessing of the Pakistani army. The commonsense understanding was that he and the military have a snug relationship and are on the same page – to the point that Khan was for a time portrayed as a puppet of the military establishment. That has turned out not to be true.

The military has always been in control of Pakistan’s national security and foreign policy. To the extent both Khan and the generals viewed things the same, all was fine.

However, Khan turned out to be no pushover. He has firmly asserted his right to be a part of any crucial national security issue – a right most previous civilian governments readily relinquished.

When the Pakistani media now incessantly reiterates “Khan has fallen out of favor with the military,” it simply means that the cat is finally out of the bag: Khan is no lackey of the men in khaki.

For Washington, this is a huge problem. Having militaries to “set things straight” when leaders of the Global South become disobedient has been standard American operating procedure.

8. Khan’s unequivocal support for Palestinian liberation

One of the most important reasons why imperialist forces demand Imran Khan’s ouster is the obvious: his consistent and unequivocal support for the Palestinian struggle.

His position became all too well-known and “controversial” when an intense campaign of pressure and threats came Islamabad’s way in 2020 and 2021.

After several Gulf monarchies normalized relations with apartheid Israel, and the extent of their coziness was finally paraded publicly, what followed was painful arm-twisting of other Muslim countries to follow suit.

For Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, and of course Washington, Islamabad was the real prize.

For months, Pakistanis experienced an onslaught of information warfare geared to make the public more amenable to the idea of recognizing and accepting Israeli apartheid.

Very quickly, it became obvious that not only the major national political parties, but also significant sections of the military high command all conveyed a willingness to entertain the idea of normalization.

The motive of Pakistan’s ruling elite was obvious: such a step, they believed, would get them into the good graces of Washington, and enable their private coffers to exponentially grow.

But Prime Minister Khan did not give in.

Prior to the hoopla around normalization, in May 2020, Khan vocally condemned Israel’s war on Gaza. He did not mince his words: “We are with Palestine. We are with Gaza.”

At the OIC summit this March, even at the risk of embarrassing some of his guests (especially from the Gulf), Khan consistently spoke about the failure of Muslim countries to stop Israeli brutality against the Palestinians.

There is no doubt that if Khan had avoided touching the Palestinian question, he would not be in so much trouble.

Criticisms of Imran Khan

While the reasons enunciated above explain why antagonistic global elites desire regime change in Islamabad, for the sake of clarity – especially for sincere liberal-progressive critics of Imran Khan – it is also worth acknowledging criticisms. Suffice to say, these are decidedly not reasons motivating this hybrid war on Pakistan:

1) Khan’s patriarchal views

2) Khan’s poor governance

3) Khan’s mismanagement of the economy

Whether any of the above is true or not – (and they certainly may be – it ought to be self-evident that these issues have never been the real motivations of global elites in their imperial interventions.

From the time that Khan first took power, we have been subject to an eerily familiar narrative. In the dirty war aimed at regime change in Syria, for years we heard the same refrain: the Assad regime is falling any day now.

We have been fed the same slogan for the past three-and-a-half years in Pakistan as well: the Imran Khan “regime” is just about to fall.

And since Khan has not “moderated” his views to be more palatable to the interests of Western capitals, the latter’s low-intensity hybrid war has been increased to full throttle.

The standard falsehoods recycled against all targets of regime change, including Latin American countries like Venezuela, now prevail in the narrative on Pakistan.

Claims that Khan is guilty of “increasingly authoritarian” rule, characterized by harsh repression of dissent and the media, fit an all too well-trodden script.

Yet it just so happens that the overwhelming majority of both the print and electronic media in Pakistan have been incessantly anti-Khan.

The hybrid warfare being waged against Pakistan – including information warfare, psyops, and the engineering of something like a “color revolution” – in no way means that there is not genuine opposition to the current government.

But in Pakistan we saw a coordinated campaign emerge this March, leading up to the opposition’s “no-confidence” motion in the parliament.

Virtually all of Pakistan’s media, dominant sections of elite civil society, and the opposition leaders and their moles in Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), all of a sudden united in a full-scale blitzkrieg against Khan.

That this came right at the moment when Western condemnations of the prime minister had reached their peak does not seem like a mere coincidence.

As we witness geopolitical transformations of a world-historical importance, the international fault lines in this interregnum are becoming more visible.

Pakistan’s growing proximity to China and Russia and the country’s commitment to the Eurasian integration project has activated the wrath of American ruling elites.

At this particularly precarious conjuncture, Washington views Islamabad as a, if not the, major Muslim capital that needs to be controlled and severely disciplined if an independent Khan-type leader arises.

The turmoil afflicting Pakistan is the outcome of a well-coordinated strategy to discipline and punish Khan.

The opposition demand for a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly reflects the amalgamation of domestic and foreign machinations.

This vote will be a reflection of the balance of forces, resulting either in a victory for Washington and its political quislings, or the retention of at least quasi-sovereign Pakistan with Khan still in power.

The shenanigans of politicians and their maneuvering to be on the “right side” of the political winds are the games of corrupt, power-hungry elites.

None of this has anything to do with genuine grievances of Pakistanis, and is largely a diversion from the real global power play inside the country.

Hostile global elites are trying desperately to find a new, Pakistani version of Juan Guaidó (the Western minion chosen unilaterally by Washington to replace Nicolás Maduro as supposed “interim president” of Venezuela).

Whether or not Khan survives, anyone even vaguely familiar with global regime-change operations will see exactly what is going on.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Junaid S. Ahmad teaches Religion, Law, and Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Feature image the bombing of Yugoslavia

First published on July 1, 2018

***

In order to justify aggression on Yugoslavia, NATO, Western allies, public medias, international humanitarian organizations and even Western intellectuals, were fabricating the story that Serbian forces ethnically cleansed more than 800 000 Albanians from Kosovo (they said 90 % of the total Albanian population were forced to leave Kosovo).

What really happened is that Albanians were leaving Kosovo via trains towards Macedonia and Albania fleeing from the armed conflict between Yugoslavian military/police against the [US-NATO supported] Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) [UCK] a terrorist entity with links to Al Qaeda and organized crime.

Screenshots, sources CNN and NATO

Most of the fights were done in villages with Albanian majority, because terrorists used their homes as military camps and strongholds. Thousands of Serbs and Albanians were used by terrorists as a live shield.

Image left: Insignia of the KLA 

None of the Yugoslav authorities ordered the removal of the Albanians nor did the Serbs living in Kosovo. The individual crimes committed by Yugoslav forces were registered and legally processed by military and civilian authorities.

In order to frame a process of ethnic cleansing many of the Albanian refugees were leaving their homes during the day, after they have been recorded by CNN/BBC, they would then return to their homes at night. Operation “Horseshoe” coordinated by the CIA was proven to be at The Hague Tribunal as an attempt to blame Serbs for ethnic cleansing.

The Yugoslav Army and Police organized public kitchens for all citizens throughout Kosovo and Metohija, and provided regular humanitarian aid to all citizens. The first massive refugee columns of Albanians started leaving Kosovo after NATO’s aerial attacks, which caused the humanitarian catastrophe.

NATO Atrocities

NATO was intentionally targeting Albanian villages, humanitarian aid deliveries and even refugee columns in order to trigger a humanitarian disaster, incriminating Serbs for it. [Similar procedure to what is now being applied in Syria]

In the city of Đakovica on 14th April 1999, NATO targeted Albanian refugee columns and killed 75 civilians;

14 May 1999, village Koriši near Prizren, NATO hit again Albanian refugee column with cluster bombs (thermovisual bombs which reach temperature up to 2000 °C) and killed more than 100 people (NATO and world’s fake news medias accused Serbian forces for these crimes).

On 1 May 1999, near the town of Lužane, NATO hit the passenger bus killing 60 people.

In the city of Surdulica (my hometown), on 21 April 1999, NATO hit a civilian refugee shelter, where Serbian refugees from Croatia (Republic of Serbian Krajina) were settled, killing 10 people, of which 6 were children and mutilating 16.

On 27 April in the same city, NATO hit residential houses in the city center with 10 projectiles, killing 20 people, of which 12 were children, and mutilating more than 100 people.

Again in the same city, on 31 May 1999, NATO hit the hospital for respiratory diseases, hospital-gerontological center and refugee shelter, killing over-again 20 Serbian civilian refugees from Krajina and mutilating 88.

NATO also targeted Serbian refugees from Krajina in different parts of Serbia. In the city of Surdulica more than 500 residential civilian houses were destroyed during these 3 attacks, including the city waterworks, elementary school and kindergarten.

During the aggression and for several months after, the whole city didn’t have drinking water, me and my family were traveling on foot uphill for at least 8 km every days to get a potable water. After every explosion the roofs and the windows on houses were destroyed out of detonation, and the house walls were full of the missile fragments, we lived in a basement in constant fear for life throughout 78 days. 1/4 of all civilian objects in my hometown were destroyed by NATO bombing. On the 2 April 1999, NATO destroyed more than 500 civilian and religious objects in the city of Kuršumlija, including the monastery of the Holy Mother of God and St. Nicholas from 12 century…

On 30 May 1999 NATO hit the civilian Radio-television tower in the city of Vranje, using depleted uranium ammunition, the amount of measured radiation after the strike was 8 000 times higher than before the strike.

World’s average rate of malignant diseases is 2000 per 1 million people, in Serbia (without data from Kosovo) the average is 5500 per 1 million people, which is 2.7 times higher than the world’s average. In Serbia, cancer incidence rate grows 2 % per year, while in the rest of the world the incidence rate grows 0.6% per year. Death rate from leukemia has increased by  139% since 1999.

Environmental and biodiversity damage is irreversible.

---

1999-Statistics:

• Concluding with the 10th of June 1999, the total number of killed civilians is between 2700- 3500 (including civilians of all nationalities)
• Yugoslavian military and police personnel, killed: 1031
• 12 500 people injured or wounded
• 25 000 residential buildings destroyed
• Destroyed: 14 airports (5 civilian), 20 hospitals, 30 health centres and medical facilities, 18 kindergartens, 190 schools, 176 cultural monuments, 50 bridges
• 470km of the roads damaged
• 595km of the railway damaged
• 30% of energy infrastructure destroyed
• 100 billion US dollars material damage (first assessment made by the Government of the FR Yugoslavia)
• 36 250 sorties above Yugoslav airspace, done by NATO
• Carried out more than 2 300 arial strikes by NATO airplanes on the territory of Yugoslavia.
• NATO used 1150 aircraft
• More than 420 000 projectiles were thrown to Yugoslavia (total mass of 22 000 tons)
• 1300 cruise missiles fired at Yugoslavia
• More than 31 000 projectiles with depleted uranium used (according to NATO sources), the presence of the plutonium is found at targeted locations, which proves that NATO used nuclear waste products for depleted uranium ammunition. 60% of the projectiles with depleted uranium were used against civilian objects.
• Around 15 tons of depleted uranium was thrown to Yugoslavia in 112 identified locations: 4 locations in the South East of Serbia, 1 location in Montenegro, the rest of 107 is used in Kosovo (NATO sources). Kosovo was targeted with depleted uranium projectiles on a daily basis.
• More than 37 000 cluster bombs thrown.
• 20 tons of Chlorine was released in the atmosphere due to bombardment of the petroleum factory in the city of Pančevo on the 15th of April 1999.
• 16 500 tons of kerosene was burnt on the territory of Yugoslavia due to bombardment of the petroleum factories.
• Just in two cities: Pančevo and Novi Sad, 3 tons of mercury released into Danube due to bombardment of the chemical and petroleum factories.
• In the city of Barič, 165 tons of hydrochloric acid released into Sava river.
• Huge amount of the methylated mercury and heavy metals released in Sava and Danube rivers due to bombardment of the chemical and petroleum factories.
• 3.5 billion kilograms of soil relocated due to pollution of the soil. 

---

Joint Land Based Aggression

NATO aggression on Yugoslavia in 1999, is known in the West only as aerial campaign, but this war was conducted along with joint land-based invasion against Yugoslavia from Albania and FYR Macedonia (operation Arrow). During the war, Yugoslavian Army was successfully defending its territory against joint land and air invasion on state border between Yugoslavia and Albania and Macedonia.

NATO forces (consisted of 12 000 soldiers in northern Albania and 17 000 forces in northern Macedonia), included: CIA and US military personnel; British SAS; Norwegian commandos (Hærens Jegerkommando) and Norwegian special units (Forsvarets Spesialkommando); Kosovo Liberation Army (which included the Atlantic Brigade of mercenaries, consisting of US born Albanians), Al Qaeda fighters and other mercenaries, total strength of 25 000 soldiers); Army of the Republic of Albania (2nd Infantry Division of the Army of the Republic of Albania, strengths of about 5,000 people, as well as independent artillery regiments with command in the city of Kukes,). Army of the Republic of Albania used armored units.

NATO used all available land and air artillery capacities, including strategic bombers B-1, B-52, airplanes F-16, A-10, and Apache helicopters, launching more than 40 000 projectiles and over 1000 cruise missiles. Despite enormous efforts and devastation, NATO and its allies couldn’t penetrate into Yugoslavian territory as planned, therefore Nobel Prize winner Martti Ahtisaari, threatened to flatten Belgrade and major Serbian cities and infrastructure objects by using strategic bombers all across Serbia. This threat made Serbian political leadership to sign Military Technical Agreement in Kumanovo on the 10th of June, 1999.

*

Radovan Spasic is a political scientist from Serbia.

David Orchard led the anti-war campaign across Canada relentlessly mobilizing support against NATO’s war on Yugoslavia.

March 24, 2018 commemorates the 19th anniversary of  NATO’s war on Yugoslavia.

This article was originally published by Toronto’s National Post on June 23, 1999.

David Orchard (image left)

In March [1999], the most powerful military force in history attacked tiny Yugoslavia (one fifth the size of Saskatchewan) and after seventy-nine days of flagrantly illegal bombing forced an occupation of Kosovo. Admitting its intention was to break Yugoslavia’s spirit, NATO targeted civilian structures, dropping over 23,000 bombs (500 Canadian) and cruise missiles in a campaign of terror bombing, described recently by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as follows: “I don’t see any difference in the behaviour of NATO and of Hitler. NATO wants to erect its own order in the world and it needs Yugoslavia simply as an example: We’ll punish Yugoslavia and the whole rest of the planet will tremble.”

The idea that NATO attacked Yugoslavia to solve a humanitarian crisis is about as credible as Germany’s claim in 1939 that it was invading Poland to prevent “Polish atrocities.” The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported the first registered refugees out of Kosovo on March 27th — three days after the bombing began. Civilian casualties after twenty-one days of bombing exceeded all casualties on both sides in Kosovo in the three months before the war.

In an all out effort to convince public opinion that Yugoslavia deserved the onslaught, Western politicians and media are churning out endless accusations of Serb atrocities, while the proven and infinitely greater atrocities of NATO — launching an aggressive war, using internationally outlawed cluster bombs and firing depleted uranium ammunition into Yugoslavia — are buried.

Why did NATO attack Yugoslavia and why are Serbs — Canada’s staunch allies in both World Wars, with 1.5 million dead resisting Hitler’s Nazis and Italian Fascism — being demonized?

Most 19th century wars were over trade. When the U.S. invaded Canada in 1812, Andrew Jackson declared, “We are going to… vindicate our right to a free trade, and open markets… and to carry the Republican standard to the Heights of Abraham.” In 1839, Britain demanded China accept its opium and attacked when China said no. When Thailand refused British trading demands in 1849, Britain “found its presumption unbounded” and decided “a better disposed King [be] placed on the throne… and through him, we might, beyond doubt, gain all we desire.”

In 1999, NATO said it was attacking Yugoslavia to force it to sign the Rambouillet “peace agreement” (even though the Vienna Convention states that any treaty obtained by force or the threat of force is void).

Significantly, Rambouillet stipulated:

“The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles” and “There shall be no impediments to the free movement of persons, goods, services and capital to and from Kosovo.”

During the war, Bill Clinton elaborated:

“If we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world Europe has got to be the key; that’s what this Kosovo thing is all about… It’s globalism versus tribalism.”

“Tribalism” was the word used by 19th century free trade liberals to describe nationalism. And this war was all about threatening any nation which might have ideas of independence.

Yugoslavia had a domestically controlled economy, a strong publicly owned sector, a good (and free) health care system and its own defence industry. It had many employee owned factories — its population was resisting wholesale privatization. It produced its own pharmaceuticals, aircraft and Yugo automobile. It refused to allow U.S. military bases on its soil. According to the speaker of the Russian Duma:

“Yugoslavia annoys NATO because it conducts an independent policy, does not want to join NATO and has an attractive geographic position.”

Ottawa, cutting medicare, agricultural research, social housing and shelters for battered women, spent tens of millions to bomb Yugoslavia and is spending millions more occupying Kosovo, while abandoning its own sovereignty to U.S. demands, from magazines to fish, wheat and lumber. It is expropriating part of British Columbia for the U.S. military and considering the U.S. dollar as North America’s currency. Now, the Liberals have thrown our reputation as a peace keeper into the trash can, along with the rule of international law, by smashing a small country to pieces at the behest of Washington.

In a March 28 New York Times article, Thomas Friedman wrote:

“For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is… The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”

As NATO troops entered Kosovo, the same newspaper announced Kosovo’s new currency will be the U.S. dollar or German mark, currencies of the two countries most responsible for Yugoslavia’s break-up. And after months of being told that Slobodan Milosevic was the problem, we heard Washington Balkans expert, Daniel Serwer, explain:

“It’s not a single person that’s at issue, there’s a regime in place in Belgrade that is incompatible with the kind of economy that the World Bank… has to insist on…”

The Canadian government professes great interest in human rights. Globalization undermines both democracy and national sovereignty, the only guarantors of human rights. Unfortunately for Messrs. Clinton, Chretien et al, that message was not lost on millions around the world watching NATO bombs pulverize Yugoslavia.

*

This article was originally published on National Post on June 23, 1999.

David Orchard is the author of The Fight for Canada – Four Centuries of Resistance to American Expansionism. He  ran twice for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. He was convenor in 1999 of the Ad Hoc Committee to Stop Canada’s Participation in the War on Yugoslavia.  He farms in Borden, SK and can be reached  at [email protected].

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Ukraine forces pulled off a rare attack on Russian soil Friday when two military helicopters destroyed a fuel depot in the city of Belgorod, situated roughly 40 miles north of the border with Ukraine.

The attack was purportedly carried out by two Ukrainian helicopters that crossed into Ukrainian territory. Videos circulating online purported to show Ukrainian Air Force Mi-24 helicopters flying low over Belgorod just before the strike.

The strike will certainly create an interesting backdrop to talks between the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, which are set to resume via video-conference on Friday.

Meanwhile, the UN said Friday that its relief convoys had failed to reach Mariupol, the southern port city devastated by weeks of shelling, after Russia said it had opened up a “humanitarian corridor” to allow the evacuation of civilians.

Video images of the purported attack posted online showed what looked like several missiles being fired from low altitude, followed by an explosion. Reuters has not yet been able to verify the images.

While Russian authorities have confirmed the attack, some Ukrainian defense analysts insisted that the strike  may have been a “false flag” planned by Moscow to further turn the tide of public opinion in favor of the war (although at least one recently released independent poll showed that the majority of Russians have rallied around the flag in support of the war, per the NYT).

Day 37 of Ukraine resistance. Ukraine kicked Russians out of some Kyiv suburbs. They are withdrawing, likely to regroup, but for now Kyiv is safe. Russia said Ukrainian helicopters hit an oil depot on its territory, in Belgorod. Ukrainian analysts believe it's likely a false flag

— Olga Tokariuk (@olgatokariuk) April 1, 2022

The Ukrainian Foreign Minister said early Friday morning that he “could not confirm nor deny” Ukrainian involvement in the strike.

He’s not the first Ukrainian official to neither “confirm nor deny” the attack.

#BREAKING
The Ukrainian General Staff tells my colleague @fpiatov, it does “not have this information” that Ukrainian forces attacked an oil depot in Belgorod oblast, hinting that the attack could have been a Russian false flag operation to justify further brutal attacks on 🇺🇦.

— Julian Röpcke🇺🇦 (@JulianRoepcke) April 1, 2022

Still, video of the strike has circulated on Western social media.

Insane. The fire at the oil facility in Belgorod was reportedly a result of an attack by two Ukrainian helicopters apparently firing S-8 rockets. https://t.co/kx5wDfJ88C pic.twitter.com/HhHkirNJWk

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 1, 2022

Given the number of videos of the attack circulating online, many believe some sort of attack did occur.

Another video of that apparent Ukrainian helicopter strike on the oil facility in Belgorod with rockets. I was very skeptical when I first heard reports of this but there are multiple videos showing some sort of air strike. https://t.co/a8QViXymRG pic.twitter.com/lvgVxTIFWB

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) April 1, 2022

A WSJ reporter described it as “the most daring known Ukrainian cross-border attack” since the start of the conflict.

Video of what the governor of Belgorod, Russia, says was a Ukrainian helicopter raid on the fuel storage depot in the city, a logistical hub for the invasion. The most daring known Ukrainian cross-border attack. Russia has been setting Ukrainians fuel depots ablaze for weeks. pic.twitter.com/KXNCkWISs8

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) April 1, 2022

A fire at the facility was raging uncontrolled up until a few hours ago.

Fuel depot in Belgorod, Russia is on fire a result of a Ukrainian air strike according to local officials pic.twitter.com/8QycPuAzC5

— Igor Schatz (@Copernicus2013) April 1, 2022

Here’s video of the fire from another angle.

Oil depot caught fire in Belgorod, Russia pic.twitter.com/R9S6SYJ2pN

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) April 1, 2022

Video taken later in the morning showed the fire had been almost extinguished.

The fire at the oil depot in Belgorod continues to be extinguished from helicopters. #ukraine #poland #russia #breakingnews #breaking #war #ukrainewar #Krieg #polska #ukraina #putin pic.twitter.com/hUXhGtIEyG

— Mateusz Sobieraj (@MateuszSobiera3) April 1, 2022

Dmitry Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin, said the strike wouldn’t help the cause of peace talks.

Russia’s Peskov says the attack on the oil depot in Belgorod doesn’t help peace talks.

Apparently, the destruction of Ukrainian cities and the murder of Ukrainians does.

Peskov also says “Russian air superiority is an absolute fact.” 🙃

— Oleksiy Sorokin (@mrsorokaa) April 1, 2022

According to one media report, 8 tanks with fuel volume of 2,000 cubic meters each are burning. The Russian Defense Ministry hasn’t officially commented on the incident.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from ZH

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The European Union (EU) and China are planning to hold a virtual summit on 1 April 2022, in an attempt to diffuse growing tensions between the two. This was the assessment given to the media by European Commission Vice-President and EU trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis.

The meeting will be attended by both, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang and European Union representatives Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen, presidents of the European Council and European Commission, respectively, as reported by Politico.

The summit comes at the height of the Ukraine-Russian war, that was largely provoked – though not justified – by the west, led by the United States and NATO. The Russian invasion of Ukraine was immediately followed with a barrage of western sanctions against Russia – sanctions which, when properly analyzed, hurt the west, mainly Europe, much more than they hurt Russia.

On 3 March 2022, in a historic Emergency UN General Assembly vote, 141 nations of the 193 UN member countries, reprimanded Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, demanding withdrawal of forces.

China, India and South Africa were among the 35 countries that abstained, while just five – Eritrea, North Korea, Syria, Belarus and of course Russia – voted against it.

China’s abstention, a close ally of Russia, is not only an anti-war vote, but it was also a for-peace signal to the world. Likewise, China has excellent relations with Ukraine. Since 2008, the two countries have built strong trade ties. China has become Ukraine’s largest trading partner, with a trade turnover in 2020 of 15.4 billion US dollar equivalent.

China would be well-poised to play a mediating role in the conflict, precisely what China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Wang Yi, had suggested to Ukraine and Russia, presuming that the EU has an intrinsic interest in Peace in Europe.

Given the halting peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, currently ongoing in Istanbul, Turkey, the upcoming EU-China summit would be an excellent opportunity for Europe to bring fresh wind into the negotiations, by inviting China as mediator. Considering Russia’s and Ukraine’s friendly relations with China, such a move may bring positive results.

In addition to renewing and easing their currently tense relations with China, the EU might, for example, entering into trade talks with China, that may lead to new trade agreements.

Such treaties might be particularly welcome for Europe, as the current war and the preceding covid pandemic have caused interrupted supply chains, food shortages – potential famine even in Europe. China could be an excellent partner to repair supply chains and fulfill food and other essential requirements – technological goods – while western countries suffer themselves under the weight of their sanctions imposed on Russia and to some extent also on China.

The summit might be an opportunity to rethinking “sanctions” as sanctions have never resolved any political differences. To the contrary. They increase the level of hostilities. Not only are they unethical, but they are also in the purest sense of the word, illegal. Under international law, economic “sanctions”, punishment by forestalling economic progress of a sovereign nation by external financial, trading and economic pressure, is illegal.

Lifting of “sanctions” would be by themselves a move towards peace and peaceful relations between Europe and China.

The upcoming summit is also an opportunity for Europe to look eastwards – to renew a history-old geopolitical and trade relation with Eurasia, and especially with China and beyond. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), created in 2001 and headed by China, is a strategic block of some nine countries, including China, Russia, India, Pakistan and Iran, as well as another nine observer and dialogue partners.

The SCO comprises close to 50% of the world population and more than 30% of the globe’s GDP – a potentially highly attractive partnership for the EU. It would allow Europe to regain her hundreds of year-old autonomy.

Europe may become free again to trade with east and west, according to comparative advantages. Since economic relationships forge political relations – comparative-advantage trading means win-win trading – leading to peaceful cohabitation.

In general, Eurasia is a logical market for Europe, a contiguous landmass of 55 million km2, comprising some 70% of the world’s population and accounting for about two thirds of the world’s GDP. Historically, Europe has been an integral part of Eurasia. A vivid example is the 2,100-year-old original Silk Road, a trading route, of which Europe was an essential link.

Finally, Europe may be interested in joining the New Silk Road, President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative which was launched in 2013.

BRI is a transcontinental long-term policy and investment program which aims at infrastructure development and accelerating the economic integration of countries, while preserving each country’s sovereignty. The Belt and Road is patterned along the principles of the historic Silk Road.

More generally, the BRI aims at promoting the connectivity of Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas, and eventually reaching to the Americas. It strives to establish and strengthen partnerships among the countries along the Belt and Road, set up all-dimensional, multi-tiered and composite connectivity networks, and realize diversified, independent, balanced and sustainable development in these countries.

A few EU countries, like Greece, Italy, France and Germany, have already links to BRI. A large-scale connection with BRI would offer Europe another series of unique opportunities for trade, as well as cooperation in the fields of technology and research – a true potential economic relief in times of shortages due to supply chain interruptions.

The April 1, 2022 summit will offer Europe and China a myriad of opportunities to reconnecting in a friendly and mutually fruitful, new win-win relation.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This paper was first published by the “Chongyang Institute” in China’s Global Times in Chinese on 31 March 2022.

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

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