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If you have donated to the Ukraine cause you might like to see what your money has bought you. And reconsider. Please read the following open letter to Dominic Raab and every MP at Westminster.

Dear Dominic Raab and all MPs,

Thank you for pushing for an investigation into war-crimes in Ukraine by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Hopefully, also, a cross-party parliamentary committee will investigate these thoroughly and question why we are giving support to Kiev with its own history of war-crimes.

During the Second World War Russia was our ally. Russian forces were integral in the defeat of Nazi Germany. Today they are fighting neo-Nazism and President Putin has pledged to rid Ukraine of this evil. We are not their ally this time. Why not?

Sadly, our government and our media, are on the side of the Banderist Nazis – and even deny that ultra fascism exists in Ukraine. Therefore I am submitting this evidence to your enquiry.

How Kiev treats prisoners

Russian soldiers captured by neo-Nazis are shot in the legs, left on the ground, and questioned afterwards while lying helpless in their own blood. These are disturbing images to which minors should not be exposed.

This phone footage was taken by one of the neo-Nazis as a trophy to their bravery

How Russia treats prisoners

By contrast Ukrainian soldiers near Kiev are treated as human beings within the strict guidelines of combat. This is footage of 61 Ukrainian soldiers captured at one of their command posts at Nikolaevna over the weekend. All the soldiers laid down their weapons and surrendered “due to an acute shortage of material, ammunition and food”. They were given food and medical attention if needed.

Source: Russia Today (RT)

If the war-crimes above are not disturbing enough I want to include video footage and images from my blog that the Donetsk and Lukansk National Republics have put together since 2014 and which Russia wants investigated.

Please set up your cross-party inquiry and don’t be one of those politicians who says one thing and does another.

This war has been going on for nearly eight years not reported in the west. It is time the UK made clear why we are supporting Ukraine.

Thank you for your attention.

Update (28 March 2022, 12.30 pm)

It is claimed that the shootings took place at Malaya Rogan, Kharkiv, where Russian prisoners were subjected to a mock execution before being taken away in a Multivan to be shot. The “exact place” is alleged to be a dairy, the owner of which let his estate be used as a torture base for Konstantin Nemichev’s “Shidny Corps”.

Further claims relate to the identification of one of the perpetrators of this crime, Sergey Velichko.

The Russian soldiers were allegedly captured following a raid on the village of Biskvitnoe.

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What follows is a segment of the show March 25, 2022 Global Research News Hour program. It featured Scott Ritter, a former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Officer and outspoken columnist and commentator elaborating on some of the points surrounding the Russian intervention in Ukraine that have gone under -mentioned in standard media narratives.

In this interview (complete transcript available below) Ritter spoke of the role of Nazis in Russia’s move, the fact that the Russians will soon achieve a victory, the role of Zelensky in his public demands, and the role sanctions ultimately played in Vladimir Putin’s favor.

Scott Ritter is a U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence officer, former UN Chief Weapons Inspector from 1991 -1998, and is currently engaged as a commentator and columnist on Huffington Post, consortiumnews and the American Conservative.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Transcript – Interview with Scott Ritter, March 23, 2022

Global Research: The last time you were on the show, about a month before Russia authorized a military incursion into Ukraine you mentioned that if it did happen it would not be trying to occupy the country. It would be in your words “lancing the boil.” An attempt to demilitarize and destroy Ukraine as a modern nation-state. It seems based on mainstream media coverage that it is in fact trying to occupy the country. Millions of Ukrainians are literally leaving the country as we speak, and this is not an operation that would end in days. It’s now approaching a month. Several Russian soldiers have been killed. They seem to be bogged down outside of cities. Certainly NATO is not yet going to engage them it’s true. Russia isn’t succeeding, no doubt due in part, it seems, to the resistance of the Ukrainian soldiers.

So let me ask you if you’ve changed your mind about what you said two months ago. I mean, did you err in your assessment of the Russian logistics in the situation?

Scott Ritter: NO! I’m a hundred percent correct! I mean, the fact of the matter is Russia isn’t occupying Ukraine!

Ukraine is a nation of forty one million people. Now, they say ten million of those are displaced, some internally some have fled. That still leaves thirty million people occupying expansive areas of terrain, including cities such as Kiev where you have over three million people. Russia came in with two hundred thousand troops. Military math just simply says no, you’re not occupying Ukraine with two hundred thousand troops!

So, let’s just stop that kind of nonsense right off the bat! This is politicized rhetoric, what people say, that Russia is trying to occu – because what you’ve done now is create a straw man that says therefore Russia has failed in its objectives!

Russia is succeeding wildly in its objectives! I don’t have to speculate. Russia has stated what its objectives are! There are two military objectives that will lead to one political objective.

The first military objective is de-Nazification. That is, the absolute destruction, liquidation, annihilation of the neo-Nazi and ultra-right wing nationalist military formations and the political parties that sustain them, along with any legislation that empowers them.

For instance, legislation passed in January of 2021 which made Stepan Bandera, a right wing Nazi supporting, Jew killing Ukrainian nationalist, elevated him to the status of national hero! And then went around – they passed additional legislation which named streets after him, named boulevards, named places, raised monuments and then also brought back into the mainstream people of his ilk. Nazis, people who had enlisted and served in Waffen SS units during World War II. People who had served in Einsatzgruppen that killed Jews during World War II. These people are now rehabilitated, and their names are put up in places of honour!

The Russians want to eliminate this. They want legislation passed in Ukraine which de-legitimizes Nazis instead of praising Nazis.

The Russians are doing very well on this front! They’re in the process of finishing off the last Nazi defenders of the city of Mariupol. This is where the Azov battalion, now a regiment, was headquartered. These are right-wing neo-Nazi extremists, many of whom have swastikas and other Nazi symbols tattooed on their bodies. This is where they tormented the Russian speaking population for the past eight years! They are now in the process of being killed, or captured by the Russians.

 

That is what de-Nazification looks like. Similar de-Nazification processes are taking place elsewhere in Ukraine anywhere where the Russian forces find a neo-Nazi national unit of Ukrainian army. So anybody who thinks that the Nazis are doing well against the Russians, think again!

The second is de-militarization! This means that Russia is going to dismantle the NATO army that had been built in Ukraine. A lot of people don’t realize that there were 260,000 active duty Ukrainian military personnel, most of whom have been trained by NATO in the past eight years to NATO standards. That means that Ukrainian military units were inter-operable with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. You could take a battalion, a NATO trained Ukrainian troops, and place them under NATO command and they would perform well.

This isn’t theory. This is reality. Ukrainian troops participated in numerous NATO-led operations around the world and in Europe. So, Russia has said that this – the existence of a NATO proxy-force is unacceptable, and that its goal is to de-militarize Ukraine.

Now, this could be done peacefully with Ukrainian soldiers staying in their barracks, while the Russians dismantled and removed from Ukraine all NATO provided equipment and oversaw the reorganization of Ukrainian military in a manner which made it no longer a de-facto proxy of NATO. Or if they wanted to resist, Russia would destroy them.

Now Russia came in a little soft handed early on. They didn’t bomb the barracks. They went out of their way to avoid unnecessary deaths among the Ukrainian troops. But the Ukrainians decided to fight!

Lets be clear here. This is a big army: 260,000 active duty, 310,000 reservists and security forces. Normally in the military if you want to launch an offensive operation, you want a three-to-one advantage. That is, for every single defender, you want three of your own troops. Russia went into Ukraine with a three to one disadvantage! Meaning for every single Russian, there were three Ukrainians. And yet, Russia is winning on the battlefield. They are advancing at a rate faster than the German army advanced during the Blitzkrieg of World War II! They are engaging the Ukrainian forces on large scale combat operations the likes of which have not been seen in Europe since World War II. And they are prevailing.

They are in the process of entrapping 60-100 thousand Ukrainian troops in Eastern Ukraine, one of the largest bedlam development cauldron type operations seen since World War II. They are doing the same around Kiev. And they are doing the same in the area of Odessa.

A lot of people will look at video-tapes that have been put out on YouTube and elsewhere showing destroyed Russian columns, dead Russian troops. This is war on a scale that people can’t imagine! It’s well beyond anything the United States and its allies undertook in Iraq and Afghanistan. When you have war on this level, there will be tactical setbacks.

Ukrainians who are extremely hard fighting, well-trained, well equipped groups are capable of limited combat success. And they are enjoying limited combat success on the battlefield. There is multiple occasions where they had defeated the Russians. Where they have inflicted serious casualties on the Russians. But from an operational and strategic stand-point, the Russians are winning and winning decisively. Ukrainians cannot sustain their defence. They lacked a logistical depth. They’re running out of gas. They’re running out of ammunition. They’re running out of food and water. Their troops are worn out, worn down, and are rapidly disintegrating as we speak. As we speak!

The Ukrainian defences in Eastern Ukraine are collapsing. They’re starting a panicked retreat westward. They’re going to be cut off by the Russians, and probably killed by the Russians if they don’t surrender to the Russians. So no, the Russians are doing quite well. People are…

GR: Did you say the Russians, I mean, put on your military and analyst glasses for a moment. Is Russia going to prevail? And how far away is the victory? IS it weeks away, or…

SR: Russia will prevail. And I believe that Russia is closer to victory than they were starting this conflict. Meaning that Ukrainian military is collapsing as we speak, and the ability for Ukraine to sustain large scale resistance is diminishing if not being eliminated.

This war’s over! It’s all over but the shouting! That’s all just a statement of fact.

GR: If you’re right about this, then what do you make of the role of Zelensky in this situation? Because he’s been speaking to governments around the world, and he’s a national hero and everything. But dies he think that he can still win this? The forces will, you know, “close the sky” and all the other things? Or is there something more going on in terms of seeing the writing on the wall as it were?

SR: Well, Zelensky knows what the outcome of this will be.

Think about it for a second. Every time he says, “if you just close the skies, if you just give us a no-fly-zone, we can win!” But what’s he really saying? That the Russians are winning the war! Okay? I mean there’s no other way of interpreting that!

GR: Yeah…

SR: He’s not saying, “hey, don’t worry about not closing the skies because we’re doing pretty well on the battlefield. We’re going to win this thing!” He’s saying that if you don’t close the skies, we have lost this war!

GR: Ahhh! Okay…

SR: And that’s exactly what’s happening. Because NATO is not going to close down the skies, and Ukraine is losing the war. He knows this. His generals know this. His troops know this. This is why at every single chance, everybody involved in the Ukrainian resistance is demanding a no-fly-zone because without this, they’re doomed, and they know it!

GR: What about the sanctions aspect of it. I mean, are they going to wear down the Russian public over time? Or will the boomerang effect of the sanctions wear down the US, Canada, and the EU first? How do you see that the sanctions aspect playing out?

SR: Well, let’s look at this strategically for a second. Joe Biden looked Vladimir Putin in the eye last June and threatened him with massive sanctions should he act on Ukraine. Sanctions like you’ve never seen before! Alright, now Putin as soon as he got done changing his pants and everything because I’m sure that just scared him to death. He had months to sit down with his inner circle and say, “how do we prepare for this?” Nothing the U.S. and its allies are doing has taken the Russians by surprise. NOTHING! They anticipated EVERYTHING! And they have a plan in response.

As for instance today, when the sanctions came out, remember Russia had 650 billion dollars in sovereign fund in reserves – foreign reserves, gold reserves – and half of that was dispersed in banks around the world. And people went, “why would you do that?” Because the West is going to freeze them, which the West did. And the answer is because Russia was setting the West up for a trap, which was sprung today.

 

Today, Vladimir Putin gave a speech in which he said the following: “Because you froze our assets illegally, you have defaulted on every obligation you have in regard to Russia. Therefore, Russia will not only never again accept foreign currency, you know, for payment for Russian services or goods, we are going to demand from this moment on that all nations that are on the non-friendly list that is everybody who sanctioned them must now pay in Russian Rubles for natural gas.

Okay Europe cannot survive! One of the big things that came out of this economic sanctions was that the United States had been promising Europe, “Don’t worry about Russia gas! We have a plan B! We will be able to bring together resources and make sure that you have the gas you need!”

Well, there is no plan B. There aren’t the resources available. There’s not enough gas. And Europe will shut down immediately.

Now, Russia hasn’t shut off the pipelines. Because Russia was laying a trap. Russia now has confirmed that Europe is addicted. Germany has admitted right now that if Russia turns off the gas pipelines, Germany won’t have any gas for next winter. It’s over! All she wrote! Their economy will collapse! The French economy will collapse! Every economy in Europe will collapse! And there will be a rebounding effect in Canada and the United States.

So now, Europe is in the difficult position of if they want to keep the gas going, that they must keep going in order to survive, they’ve got to pay in Russian Rubles. Take a look at what’s happened to the Russian Ruble just today! IT’s rebounding! Everbody said the Ruble is collapsing. No! It’s the dollar that’s collapsing right now! Because the Russians have laid a trap. They set the trap. And this is just the first of many! The Russians have many other traps out there that they have set, and they can initiate at a time of their choosing. So, the notion that the sanctions…

Look, the sanctions are hurting Russians right now. There’s no doubt about that. But the sanctions also liberated Putin for the first time since he took power to be able to divorce Russia from the Western economy. And in doing so, eliminate in totality any leverage the West had over Russian domestic political affairs. The West used to be able to threaten sanctions. And the Russians are saying, “gosh, maybe we don’t want to do that so we’ll…” The West no longer has – the West has sanctioned everything. It’s over!

Putin has said, “thank you very much! Thank you! You’ve done me a big favour! The first thing you’ve done by freezing all the assets is that you have disembowelled the oligarchs!” You know that corrupt class of Russian businessmen that came to life during Boris Yeltsin’s ten years as a president. That Putin inherited!

Putin was able to neuter them politically by telling them that if they get involved in domestic politics he will destroy them, and he did. Several of them have been forced to flee to London and elsewhere because Putin will put them in jail for life. The others that remained were able to retain their riches and continue to get rich, but they were not allowed to be involved in politics. But their existence has always been a thorn in Putin’s side. He doesn’t like them. He doesn’t want them. And he hates the fact that he needed them. But now that the West has gone in and seized all their assets, they’re bankrupt and broke! And guess what! Putin doesn’t want them now! He’s told them to get the heck out of Russia! HE has no use for them! Go live where you wanted to live over there! You’re no longer welcome here!

The other thing that’s happened is about 20 percent of the Russian population that was relatively apolitical, who tended to vote for the status quo, meaning vote for Putin would have turned on Putin had Putin initiated a divorce with the West. These are the Russian middle class whose economic well-being had become so intertwined with the West that there could be no thought of breaking with the West. If any move by Russia, by Putin, by anybody, to do so would have caused a backlash that any democracy, and Russia is a democracy, would have cost the incumbent the vote. Putin would have been voted out.

But now that the West has sanctioned Russia, it is not Putin that has made the divorce, it’s the West! Putin is now applying shock therapy to these people, seeking to rapidly reinstate their middle class status, by pivoting eastward to China, to India, to elsewhere, to recapitalize the Russian economy. And now that he has made gas based upon the Ruble standard, those Rubles that these Russians had in the bank that last week were worth nothing, they’re worth twice as much today! And this time next week, they’ll double in value again! And the middle class is going to forget the West ever existed.

GR: Amazing analysis! Scott Ritter, it’s been a pleasure hearing your unique take on this situation. We thank you so much for your time!

SR: Thanks for having me!

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

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Reputed foreign policy think tanks, lavishly funded by security establishments and the military-industrial complex, are the real terrorist organizations that have a long and checkered history of cheerleading Western nations into pursuing militarist and belligerent state policies, clandestinely orchestrating proxy wars, publicly pleading for imposing no-fly zones and mounting purported “humanitarian interventions,” oftentimes on the ostensible pretext of so-called “responsibility to protect” and upholding capitalist and neocolonial exploitation in the garb of promoting bourgeois democracy in the developing world.

A “prophetic” RAND Corporation report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” published in 2019 declares the stated goal of American policymakers is “to undermine Russia just as the US subversively destabilized the former Soviet Union during the Cold War,” and predicts to the letter the crisis unfolding in Ukraine. RAND Corporation is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.

While designating Russia as an “intractable adversary,” the report notes that “Russia has deep seated anxieties” about Western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be “a vulnerability to exploit.”

The RAND report lists several “provocative measures” to insidiously “destabilize and undermine” Russia. Some of the steps include: repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets; deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia; increasing US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea); holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders; and withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Almost all the provocative actions recommended in the RAND report have practically been implemented by the successive Obama, Trump and Biden administrations since the 2014 Maidan coup, toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.

The US Air Force has flown B-52 strategic bombers and RC-135 reconnaissance planes over eastern Ukraine in months before the invasion, as part of its effort to deter Russia. To stiffen Ukraine’s ability to resist, the United States and NATO dispatched teams of military advisers in months before the invasion to survey air defenses, logistics, communications and other essentials.

Besides deploying 15,000 additional troops in Eastern Europe last month, total number of US troops in Europe is now expected to reach 100,000. “We have 130 jets at high alert. Over 200 ships from the high north to the Mediterranean, and thousands of additional troops in the region,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN on March 9.

Ahead of the NATO summit attended by President Biden Thursday, March 24, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced the transatlantic military alliance would double the number of battlegroups it had deployed in Eastern Europe.

“The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland,” Stoltenberg said. “This means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.”

NATO issued a statement after Thursday’s emergency summit attended by Joe Biden and European leaders:

“In response to Russia’s actions, we have activated NATO’s defense plans, deployed elements of the NATO Response Force, and placed 40,000 troops on our eastern flank, along with significant air and naval assets, under direct NATO command supported by Allies’ national deployments. We are also establishing four additional multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.”

Regarding RAND’s recommendation of “augmenting naval force posture in the Black Sea,” it’s worth recalling that before the Biden-Putin summit at Geneva last June, the British Royal Navy Defender breached Russia’s territorial waters in the Black Sea and as many as 20 Russian aircraft conducted “unsafe maneuvers” merely 500 feet above the warship and Britain also lamented shots were fired in the path of the ship.

“British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would not say whether he had personally approved the Defender’s voyage but suggested the Royal Navy was making a point by taking that route,” a Politico report alleged in June. A Telegraph report noted that former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had raised concerns about the mission, proposed by defense chiefs, and that Boris Johnson was ultimately called in to settle the dispute.

Among the 50-page Ministry of Defense documents discovered at a bus stop in Kent and passed to BBC were papers showing that ministers knew that sending a Royal Navy warship close to Crimea last June would provoke Russia, and did it anyway, sparking an international incident.

Similarly, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987, the United States withdrew from the Cold War-era agreement, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in August 2019. Intermediate range missiles are considered particularly destabilizing because the missiles can reach their targets within ten minutes, giving little warning and time for decision-making and, consequently, raising the specter of miscalculation.

The full RAND report says:

“While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.”  (emphasis added)

In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. The agreement confirmed “Ukraine’s aspirations for joining NATO” and “rejected the Crimean decision to re-unify with Russia” following the 2014 Maidan coup.

In December 2021, Russia proposed a peace treaty with the US and NATO. The central Russian proposal was a written agreement assuring that Ukraine would not join the NATO military alliance. When the proposed treaty was contemptuously rebuffed by Washington, it appeared the die was cast.

The Intercept reported on March 11 that despite staging a massive military buildup along Russia’s border with Ukraine for nearly a year, “Russian President Vladimir Putin did not make a final decision to invade until just before he launched the attack on February 24,” senior current and former US intelligence officials told the Intercept. “It wasn’t until February that the agency and the rest of the US intelligence community became convinced that Putin would invade,” the senior official added.

Last April, US intelligence first detected that “the Russian military was beginning to move large numbers of troops and equipment to the Ukrainian border.” Most of the Russian soldiers deployed to the border at that time were later “moved back to their bases,” but US intelligence determined that “some of the troops and materiel remained near the border.”

In June 2021, against the backdrop of rising tensions over Ukraine, Biden and Putin met at a summit in Geneva. The summer troop withdrawal brought a brief period of calm, but “the crisis began to build again in October and November,” when US intelligence watched as Russia once again “moved large numbers of troops back to its border with Ukraine.”

Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last June. Instead of returning the favor, however, the conceited leadership of supposedly world’s sole surviving super power turned down the hand of friendship and haughtily refused to concede reasonable security guarantees demanded by Russia at the summit that would certainly have averted the likelihood of the war.

Current Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland said that over 20 years the US invested $5 billion in the project to destabilize Ukraine and provoke Russia. The culmination was a violent coup in February 2014. Since 2015, the US has been training ultra-nationalist and Neo-Nazi militias.

Prior to 2018, the US only provided “defensive military assistance” to Ukraine. The RAND report assesses that providing lethal (offensive) military aid to Ukraine will have “a high risk but advantages will far outweigh the cost.”

Accordingly, US lethal weaponry to Ukraine skyrocketed from merely a trickle to $250 million in 2019, $303 million in 2020 and $650 million in 2021. Total military aid is much higher. A few weeks ago, the Hill reported, “The US has contributed more than $1 billion to help Ukraine’s military over the past year.”

On March 16, President Biden announced an unprecedented package of $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine, which included 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,000 anti-armor Javelins, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems and 100 Switchblade kamikaze drones.

The $800 million will mean more than $2 billion in the US military assistance has gone to Ukraine since Biden entered office in Jan. 2021, as the Biden administration had previously pledged $200 million days before announcing the $800 million package, $350 million were disbursed immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and the administration provided $650 million in military assistance to Ukraine during Biden’s first year in office.

Speaking to reporters in Brussels ahead of the European Union foreign ministers meeting last week, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the EU would provide $1.1 billion in armsto Ukraine. The United States and its allies have reportedly infused over $3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan coup.

Recently, the Congress announced $1.5 trillion package for funding the federal government through September, boosting national defense coffers to $782 billion, about a 6 percent increase. On top of the hefty budget increase, the package is set to deliver $13.6 billion in emergency funding to help Ukraine, nearly twice the assistance package initially proposed, including $3 billion for US forces and $3.5 billion for military equipment to Ukraine, plus more than $4 billion for US humanitarian efforts.

Nonetheless, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last month was only a logical culmination of a long-simmering, eight-year war of attrition initiated by NATO powers against Russia in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region after the 2014 Maidan coup.

In an explosive scoop, Zach Dorfman reported for the Yahoo News on March 16:

“As part of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.

“When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold. First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region. But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials.”

Besides the CIA’s clandestine program for training Ukraine’s largely conscript military and allied neo-Nazi militias in eastern Ukraine and the US Special Forces program for training Ukraine’s security forces at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part of the country bordering Poland that was hit by a barrage of 30 cruise missiles killing at least 35 militants on March 13, Dorfman claims in a separate January report that the CIA also ran a covert program for training Ukraine’s special forces at an undisclosed facility in the southern United States.

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

“While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it.”

By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA Ground Branch paramilitaries also “started traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine” to advise and assist Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias there. The multiweek, US-based CIA program included “training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like cover and move, intelligence and other areas.”

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. “The United States is training an insurgency,” said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.” Going back decades, the CIA had provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up a US-allied Kyiv and undermine Russian influence, but cooperation ramped up after the Crimea annexation, a former CIA executive told Dorfman.

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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.  

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.

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.

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The corporate media is now controlled by the interests of Big Pharma which has spent over $1 BILLION in promoting COVID-19 vaccines. See: Local, National Media Paid $MILLIONS To Push COVID-19 Vaccines

Even last night’s Oscar’s show was sponsored by Pfizer and BioNTech.

So when this corporate media now switches their focus to trying to convince the American public that Russia and Putin are a threat to our national security, that’s an indication to look around and see what they are trying to cover up and hide.

And one does not have to look very far to see the damaging effects of their COVID-19 vaccines. The government’s own database of Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) through March 18, 2022 shows that there are unprecedented increases in recorded deaths and injuries following COVID-19 vaccines for the past 15 months since they were issued emergency use authorizations (EUAs), as compared to recorded deaths and injuries reported following all FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30 years.

These government statistics show there is no greater danger to the lives of Americans today than our own government which is sitting on data that show the following increases of reports in VAERS following COVID-19 vaccines:

• 68,000% increase in strokes
• 44,000% increase in heart disease
• 6,800% increase in deaths
• 5,700% increase in permanent disabilities
• 5,000% increase in life threatening injuries
• 4,400% increase in hospitalizations

This is mass murder and genocide.

If the corporate media switched from covering the war in Ukraine and published this data directly from the government’s own database, there would be riots all across the U.S. right now, if not a Civil War.

But the largely brain-dead American consumer is content to watch their corporate news and blame all the world’s problems on Russia right now instead, as we face huge labor shortages and supply chain bottlenecks due to all these deaths and injuries from the COVID-19 vaccines that will now be blamed on Russia.

A false flag attack on American soil that will be blamed on Russia seems imminent now.

Here is a summary of the raw data in VAERS for the past 15 months following COVID-19 vaccines. (Source.)

Here is the same raw data in VAERS following all non-COVID vaccines for the previous 30 years. (Source.)

The majority of cases now found in the 31+ year history of VAERS are from after 12/1/2020 when the FDA granted emergency use authorization for the COVID-19 vaccines.

To check our math on the percentage increase, take the numbers from the non-COVID vaccines and divide by 360 months for the previous 30 years to get the monthly average, and then take the numbers from the COVID-19 vaccines and divide by the 15 months since they were approved in December of 2020.

The number of strokes following COVID-19 vaccines is found here, and the number of strokes following all vaccines for the previous 30 years is found here.

The number of cases of heart disease (all cases of *carditis) following COVID-19 vaccines is found here, and the number of cases of heart disease following all vaccines for the previous 30 years is found here.

The greatest threat to the national security of the United States today is our own government, and the Wall Street Billionaires and bankers who fund Big Pharma who seem to have the government in their pocket, and that includes both political parties.

Government is the problem, NOT the solution.

A sampling of the hundreds of tragic stories we have covered since the COVID-19 vaccines started.

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***

The Federal Reserve and most other world central banks are lying about how interest rates affect inflation. It’s no small matter, as it clearly is being used to usher in a global economic depression, this time far worse than in the 1930s, using Russia as the scapegoat to blame, as the powers that be prepare to push the world into what Joe Biden recently called “a New World Order.”

I have made the case many times that every major economic depression or recession of the past century or so, since creation of the US Federal Reserve, has been the deliberate political result of Fed actions. The present situation is clearly a repeat of that. Recent statements and actions of the Fed on combating inflation indicate that they plan to provoke a full blown global depression in the next several months. The conflict in Ukraine and the insane flood of NATO country sanctions on everything Russian will be used to accelerate the process of global inflation in food, energy and everything else, and allow blame to be put on Russia while the Fed gets away unscathed. Follow the money creators.

If we look at the recent statements of the Fed, far the most powerful central bank in the world regardless of predictions of the dollar’s imminent demise as the global reserve currency, it becomes clear they are openly lying. Keep in mind the same Fed deliberately kept interest rates at near zero for more than 14 years since the 2008 crisis to bail out Wall Street at the expense of the real economy. Now they claim they must reverse rates for the good of that economy. They are simply lying.

The Bogus Phillips Curve

Over the past several years Turkish President Erdogan has been severely attacked for claiming that higher central bank interest rates are not effective in controlling Turkey’s high inflation. Ironically, he is right as far as he goes. He dared to attack today’s monetary orthodoxy, for which financial markets punished him by attacking the Lira. The basis of the theory on interest rates and inflation today goes back to an article in 1958 published by A.W. Phillips, then at the London School of Economics. Philips, reviewing UK economic data on wages and inflation over a century concluded there was an inverse relation between wages and inflation.

 

Basically Philips, who put his data into what is now known as the Philips Curve, concluded that inflation and unemployment have an inverse relationship. Higher inflation is associated with lower unemployment and vice versa. Yet correlation does not prove causality, and even the Fed’s own economists have published studies showing the Philips Curve invalid. In 2018 Princeton economist Alan Blinder, a former Vice‐​Chairman of the Fed, noted that “the correlation between unemployment and changes in inflation is nearly zero… Inflation has barely moved as unemployment rose and fell.”

Despite that, the Federal Reserve, as well as most central banks worldwide since the 1970s, have used this Philips Curve notion to justify raising interest rates to “kill” inflation. The most infamous in this was Fed chairman Paul Volcker who in 1979 raised key US interest rates (at the same time as the Bank of England) by 300% to near 20% levels where he triggered the worst US recession since the 1930’s.

Volcker blamed the extremely high inflation of 1979-82 on worker wage demands. He conveniently ignored the true cause of global inflation then, soaring prices of oil and grains through to the 1980’s as a result of geopolitical actions of Volcker’s patron, David Rockefeller, in creating the oil shocks of the 1970’s. I write about this extensively in my book A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics.

Since the brutal Volcker interest rate operation it has become orthodoxy for the Fed and other central banks to say rising inflation must be “tamed” by rising interest rates. In fact the ones to gain are the main banks of Wall Street who hold US Treasury debt.

Causes of Recent Inflation

The cause of the alarming inflation rises since the 2020 COVID lockdowns has little or nothing to do with rising wages or a booming economy. Raising rates to create a “soft landing” or so-called mild recession will have virtually no effect on real inflation.

Prices are soaring for the very necessities that families must spend on. According to a study by US economist Mike “Mish” Shedlock, more than 80% of the components of the US Consumer Price Index used to officially measure inflation is made up of so-called “inelastic components.” That includes above all cost of housing, gasoline fuel, transportation, food, medical insurance, education. Most families are not able to seriously reduce any of these necessary living costs regardless of higher interest rates.

Food cost is soaring as global shortages of grain, sunflower oil and fertilizers appear, owing to skyrocketing cost of natural gas to make nitrogen fertilizers.

This was well before the Ukraine conflict. Eliminating Russian and Ukrainian wheat exports because of sanctions and war can cut up to 30% of world grain supply. Drought in USA Midwest and South America, and heavy floods in China are adding to exploding food costs. Natural gas is rising because of the foolish EU and Biden Zero Carbon agenda to eliminate all hydrocarbon energy in the next years. Now because of the suicidal sanctions by the West against Russia, a major source of global diesel fuel, Russia, is being eliminated. Russia is the second largest crude oil exporter in the world after Saudi Arabia. It is the largest natural gas exporter in the world, most to the EU.

Sanctions, Urea and Microchips

An example of how interconnected the globalized world economy has become, in October, 2021 China imposed severe export controls on export of urea, a key component of not only fertilizer but also of a diesel engine additive, DEF or AdBlue, which most modern diesel engines need to control Nitrogen Oxide emissions.

Without AdBlue the engines don’t run. That threatens trucks, farm tractors, harvesters, construction equipment. U.S. military uses diesel fuel in tanks and trucks. Now with the sanctions on Russia, the world’s second largest exporter of refined diesel fuel is being forced out. The EU imports half of its diesel from Russia. Shell and BP have warned German buyers of potential supply problems and prices are soaring. The diesel loss comes as diesel fuel stocks in Europe are at their lowest since 2008. In the US according to OilPrice.com, the situation is graver still. There, diesel fuel inventories are 21 percent lower than the pre-pandemic five-year seasonal average.

Neon gas is a byproduct from steel production. Some 50% of world semiconductor high-purity neon gas critical for the lasers needed for lithography to make chips comes from two Ukrainian companies, Ingas and Cryoin. Both got their neon from Russian steel plants. One is based in Odessa and the other in Mariupol. Since the fighting there began a month ago, both plants have shut down. Moreover, according to the California-based firm TECHCET, “Russia is a crucial source of C4F6 which several US suppliers buy and purify for use in advanced node logic device etching and advanced lithography processes for chip production.” As well Russia produces about a third of all world palladium used in car catalytic converters and in sensors and emerging memory (MRAM).

Oleg Izumrovov, a Russian computer data expert points out further that Russia today “accounts for 80 percent of the market of sapphire substrates – thin plates made of artificial stone, which are used in opto- and microelectronics to build up layers of various materials, for example, silicon. They are used in every processor in the world – AMD and Intel are no exception.” He adds, “Our position is even stronger in the special chemistry of etching chips using ultra-pure components. Russia accounts for 100 percent of the world’s supply of various rare earths used for these purposes.”

Not to mention Russia is the world’s second largest producer of Nickel and of aluminum.

As Washington continuously escalates sanctions against Russia it is only a matter of weeks before these supply chain links impact global and USA inflation to a degree not seen in recent memory. At the March 24 Brussels NATO meeting Joe Biden tried (unsuccessfully for now) to push the EU member states to sanction Russian oil and gas. Energy prices are already soaring globally and Biden admitted to a reporter that prices are going to go much higher for food and energy, blaming it on the Ukraine conflict.

None of these effects, most of which are only beginning to impact the cost and even availability of food and other essentials, can be altered by raising Federal Reserve Fed Funds rates. And the Fed knows that. They are literally throwing kerosene onto a burning economic fire with their actions. They will point to alarming rises in inflation by May and double-down on their false “cure”, namely higher interest rates that risk plunging the US and world into a global depression that will make the 1930s seem mild. We can expect much talk about introducing a digital central bank currency to replace the dollar at that point. Welcome to the Davos Great Reset.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-2-3

Year: 2007

Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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***

This March 24, on the Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, after a pause of two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Argentines took to the streets across the country to pay homage to the victims of the last military dictatorship

March 24, 2022, marked 46 years since the US-backed civic-military coup overthrew the left-wing government of President Isabel Martínez de Perón in Argentina (July 1974-March 1976). The coup installed the bloodiest dictatorship in the history of the country, led by General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Eduardo Massera and Brigadier-General Orlando Ramón Agosti (March 1976-December 1983). The dictatorship period was marked by state terrorism and grave human rights violations.

During over seven years of dictatorship, Argentine security forces, along with right-wing death squads such as Triple A, hunted down anyone believed to be associated with socialism, left-wing Peronism, or the Montoneros movement. It is estimated that over 30,000 students, activists, trade unionists, writers, journalists, artists and any citizens suspected of being left-wing activists were kidnapped, tortured and disappeared. The military junta silenced any political or ideological dissidents, even those seen as antithetical to its neoliberal economic policies.

The armed forces even seized their property and their babies. According to available data, around 500 children, who were detained with their militant parents or born in captivity, were appropriated as war trophies by the repressive forces and handed over to military families, sold or abandoned in state institutions.

In the years following the return of democracy, government authorities took some steps in order to honor the victims and ensure that those horrible times are never repeated. In 2002, the Argentine Congress declared that this tragic day would be remembered as the National Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice, with the purpose of making it a day of reflection on recent history. In 2006, it was declared a public national holiday in Argentina.

For over three decades, every year, on March 24, hundreds of thousands of citizens, relatives of the disappeared people, members of social movements, human rights organizations and left-wing political parties march to the Plaza de Mayo in the capital Buenos Aires to commemorate the victims of the last dictatorship and demand justice for the crimes against humanity committed by the State during that period.

This March 24, after a pause of two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, once again, hundreds of thousands of Argentines took to the streets across the country to pay homage to the victims and their revolutionary spirit.

In Buenos Aires, wearing white scarfs, shouting “memory, truth and justice,” members and sympathizers of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the human rights organizations that have been at the forefront of the struggle to justice for and truth about their disappeared relatives, marched from 9 Julio Avenue to Plaza de Mayo, carrying a large flag with the photos of the 30,000 victims. Over one hundred thousand people flooded the plaza and surrounding streets.

Massive demonstrations and marches were held in the cities such as Santa Fe, Rosario, Salta, Cordoba, Tucumán, Neuquén, among others.

In Buenos Aires, members and sympathizers of human rights organizations Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo marched from 9 Julio Avenue to Plaza de Mayo, carrying a large flag with the photos of the 30,000 victims. Photo: @dicoluciano/ @emergentemedio

Human rights activist and one of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Nora Cortiñas, addressed the multitudinous crowd and delivered the annual speech prepared by human rights organizations, such as the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Relatives of the Disappeared and Detained for Political Reasons, the Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice against Oblivion and Silence (HIJOS), among others.

“46 years after the genocidal coup, and two years after taking care of ourselves, we march again to the Plaza de Mayo, our Plaza, as it is being done today throughout the country. Once again, we arrive with the photos of those who were victims of the genocide. Their absences continue to hurt us, but we bring high their flags, their faces, their names, their stories, their lives, their militancy, and we make them present,” said Cortiñas.

She stressed that “they are present because we have never abandoned our fight against impunity. The annulment of the full stop and due obedience laws allowed the times of justice to return,” and recalled that “16 years of effective trials for crimes against humanity with 1,058 convicted is an achievement that we must never minimize.” At the same time, Cortiñas said that “we are concerned about the increase in benefits granted to convicts and detainees with preventive prisons,” and highlighted that “currently, 579 have the benefit of house arrest. Of the total number of people investigated at this time, there are 764 people in detention, while 1,532 remain free.”

She emphasized that

“it is necessary that the appointment of judges be resolved urgently; that resources be strengthened to deepen the investigative work in the investigation stage; that the gender and diversity perspective be incorporated into the judicial view; that the orality stage be accelerated by adding days of hearings; that the endless times in the recursive routes before Cassation and the Court end.”

Norita concluded the speech by stating that

“we, the people, are the strength of the struggles that were born in this country to make it fair, free and supportive. We are the identity of a nation that continues to build Memory, Truth and Justice, that defends sovereignty and independence. We will not allow any damage to democracy. Since we recovered it, the people will take care of it forever.”

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Featured image: On March 24, hundreds of thousands of Argentines flooded the Plaza de Mayo and surrounding streets in capital Buenos Aires to commemorate the victims of the last dictatorship and demand justice for them. Photo:Leandro Mastronicola / Emergentes

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***

Western countries and their closest allies imposed new sanctions on Moscow after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine on February 24 in what Moscow calls a special military campaign to demilitarise the NATO-aspiring country. Although the EU enthusiastically followed Washington’s lead in engaging in an economic war with Russia, the harsh realization of sanctions are beginning to set in, with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis telling CNN on March 25, when referring to rising energy costs, that “Europe must be very careful not to allow them [sanctions] to harm Europe more than Russia.”

A similar sentiment was shared by German economist Aika Hamer, who said that the EU could face backlash from anti-Russian sanctions and warned that if the German economy collapses, then the whole of Europe will fall apart.

“If the German economy collapses because of these measures, then the whole of Europe will fall apart,” he said. “We may face the fact that diesel fuel or gasoline will cost €4-5 or even €6 per liter. We may also face the fact that most Europeans will no longer be able to afford to drive. Without this, the great prosperous West is nothing more than an illusion.” Hamer also noted that the losers in this situation “will be the middle class and the poorest people in Germany, Europe and the United States.”

Hamer’s warning comes as fuel prices have already reached unprecedented heights and broken different records in the US, the UK and across different EU countries. German motorists have been hit at the pump by the skyrocketing fuel prices — forking out €2.14 for a liter of gasoline and at one point in March paying as much as €2.25 per liter for diesel, thus making it more expensive than gasoline for the first time in history despite government subsidies.

It is recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on March 23 that the transfer of gas supply payments from so-called unfriendly countries will from now on be conducted in rubles in light of Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT, and effectively from the US Dollar. The demand for rubles was the obvious outcome as it made no sense to supply energy to the EU and the US whilst receiving payments in their own currency that Moscow in turn cannot use or face having frozen.

For her part, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said that the EU will not allow the payment of Russian gas in rubles as it is, in her view, “a unilateral decision and a clear breach of contract. We will not allow our sanctions to be circumvented. The time when energy could be used to blackmail us is over.” At the same time, she announced a new partnership between the EU and the US, which involves providing more American liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the bloc as a replacement for Russian gas.

However, it was naïve for the Europeans to believe that Russia would tolerate such a situation where they are excluded from Western financial mechanisms but are expected to continue receiving payments in Dollars and Euros. In this way, the main aim of wanting rubles for energy is to support the national currency against such pressure.

Although von der Leyen speaks bravely about replacing Russian LNG with the 15 billion cubic meters (15 bcm) of LNG that Washington had pledged, it does nothing to stop European countries from buying an additional 150 bcm of Russian natural gas that is delivered via pipeline.

“Europe has an import capability that is limited, and they don’t have any additional infrastructure that is going to come online,” Charlie Riedl, executive director of the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas, told VOA regarding greater LNG use in Europe. “Infrastructure that’s currently operational is basically running at capacity right now, and I would expect that it will run at capacity for the remainder of this year.” He added that coming into 2022, the amount of gas held in storage by European countries was well below recent averages, making the continent especially vulnerable to potential supply disruptions.

In effect, in the drive to wean off Russian energy, it will be the West’s Middle Class and poorest who will be most affected by drastically rising costs. At the same time, gas storage amounts throughout 2022 will be at a high-risk level, meaning that if there is a disruption in the supply or there is another unexpected global event akin to a pandemic or to the magnitude of the conflict in Ukraine, it very well could be the case that the EU has allowed sanctions to harm Europeans more so than Russia. Already rising energy and food costs suggests that average European citizens are already suffering.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

The semi-official United States government plus media lie machine knows that constructing a plausible reason to bomb the crap out of someone all depends on where you begin your narrative. If you keep starting your accusations at a point where the target has done something bad, all you have to do is repeat yourself over and over again to drown out any alternative backstory that surfaces. And if you really want to demolish all contrary views, all you have to do is liken the targeted foreign leader to Adolph Hitler and keep repeating. That tactic was used with Saddam Hussein of Iraq and is now being employed against Vladimir Putin of Russia and it always works.

In the current context of Ukraine versus Russia the trick has been to tie everything to the invasion by Putin’s armed forces over four weeks ago, an undoubted act of aggression. Once you establish that as your launching point, preceding developments are rendered moot. Who cares about US promises not to expand the NATO alliance eastwards after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991? And there is also Washington’s role in regime change in Ukraine in 2014? Or even the relentless demonization of Russia linked to the 2016 US presidential election followed by any unwillingness by Washington to negotiate even the most reasonable of Putin’s demands? Fugged about it! And also forget about considering whether or not the US has any national interest in going to war over Ukraine. Only Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard seem inclined to challenge the basic premise, which is to raise the question “Since Russia does not threaten us why are we doing this? Do we really want a possible nuclear war over Ukraine?”

Just read the New York Times and you will learn that it is not about what’s good for America at all. It is all about a big bully country attacking a “democratic” neighbor with the US and its brave allies standing up as the standard bearers of a Washington imposed “rules based international order.” And now the US is upping the ante by pushing ahead with its insistence that Russia is committing war crimes. But convincing the world on that point is a bit more difficult to accomplish. If one were to ask the question “Which nation in the world commits the most war crimes?” the general international response might well be Israel or the United States. Part of the problem would be working out an acceptable definition for a war crime while also developing a methodology for defining “the most.” If Israel attacks Syria four times in a week is that four separate war crimes or only part of one continuous war crime. As the United States has military bases in both Syria and Iraq that the respective governments have not authorized, and have in fact, asked the Americans to leave, is that a single war crime of illegal invasion and occupation or a continuous one punctuated only by the occasions when US troops kill a few of the natives?

In any event it is difficult to “convict” Russia as neither Israel nor the US has ever been held accountable for the war crimes they have committed, to include shooting and bombing civilians, hospitals, schools at random and occasionally wedding parties and other social gatherings. President George W. Bush even started a couple of wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq based on fabricated “intelligence” and the greatly beloved Barack Obama did the same to Libya and Syria. Both are now regarded as venerable elder statesmen even though they should be in prison and there is lately some talk among Democrats of seeing Obama or his wife run again in 2024 for the highest office in the land. And is that Hillary waiting in the wings for a second try? Either way, it will be a bad day for anyone trying to establish a modus vivendi for working with Russia.

America’s blood lust vis-à-vis Russia is completely bipartisan, with the few sensible voices in Congress drowned out by the drumroll in high places accompanying the avalanche of propaganda pouring out of the mainstream media. It has long been axiomatic that the first victim of war propaganda is truth, but the United States only needs the stimulus of the possibility of war or conflict to begin its pattern of lying. And, as the current situation illustrates, it is quite prepared to designate enemies that in reality do not threaten the country. It did so to bring about a greatly enlarged US commitment in Vietnam and also through the Cold War by deliberate CIA overestimates of the power and reach of the Soviet Union. Since 9/11 there has been a succession of presidents who have lied about nearly everything relating to national security and foreign policy, leading to invasions, assassinations, other types of interventions, and a “sanctions” prone government that has denied ordinary citizens of food and medicines while leaving the leadership of the targeted countries untouched.

One of the recent lies is a replay of the old “let’s get Saddam Hussein” playbook. Remember those savage Iraqi soldiers tearing Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators and throwing them onto the floor? Of course, it was all a lie concocted by the Kuwaiti ruling family and US government largely neocon accomplices. Now we are learning that the vile Russians bombed a maternity hospital! Except, of course, that it may have turned out to be completely untrue. And the media is now exclaiming that “Russia is putting the planet on the brink of World War 3!” while the New York Timesis indicting political conservatives as purveyors of Russian propaganda. Actually, it was the United States and NATO that have opened the door to a possible nuclear holocaust, but one hates to dispute what is an apparently a profitable and well-received story line.

But the best bit of lying has to be the ongoing propaganda war over twenty-six biological laboratories in Ukraine funded at least in part by the Pentagon. “Nothing to see here” says the Biden White House, while Russia is saying “Just a minute, folks…” Meanwhile the plot thickens as emails have now surfaced indicating that Joe Biden’s son Hunter was involved in obtaining, and profited from, the US government’s funding of the labs.

The biolab controversy began when the United States government’s State Department number three Victoria Nuland recently admitted to a congressional panel that the labs exist and also added that Ukraine possesses chemical and biological weapons. She then realized her error and both backtracked and elaborated that “uh, Ukraine has, uh, biological research facilities [and] we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to, uh, gain control of [those labs], so we are working with the Ukrainiahhhns [sic] on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

The statement is absurd as the Russians undoubtedly already possess their own stocks of bioweapons. The existence of the labs themselves may be linked to the legacy of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, when, by one account, the US provided assistance through its “Cooperative Threat Reduction Program” to manage the existing bio and chem labs lest their toxic chemicals and pathogens fall into the wrong hands. But the US has actually done much more than that, Ron Unz observes how “Over the decades America had spent over $100 billion dollars on ‘biodefense,’ the euphemistic term for biowarfare development, and [has] had the world’s oldest and largest such program, one of the few ever deployed in real life combat.”

Currently, the US government claims blandly that the labs, which are run by America’s Department of Defense, remain active for “peaceful research and the development of vaccines.” The US Embassy in Kiev described the activity in greater detail as working “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.”

Some Ukrainians have, however, been suspicious of their purpose, particularly as their activities are secret and are managed by the Pentagon rather than some civilian agency. And if the original objective was to prevent the development of bioweapons, why is the US still hanging around seventeen years later? Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who held the post under President Viktor Yanukovych, spoke about how the decision to start collaborating with the Americans was taken by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s office and subsequently implemented under President Viktor Yushchenko in 2005. It was generally believed in the government that the agreement was focused on Ukrainian biosecurity, but all its related activities were and are classified and Ukrainian citizens were not even allowed to work together with the Americans.

There was some pushback on the labs, to include a cursory inspection in 2010-2012 and by 2013 the Ukrainian government sent an official letter demanding that the labs be closed. The 2014 regime change intervened however, and the decision was never implemented by the new regime.

It should be noted that if one is to protect against toxins and pathogens one must first create them in order to manipulate them or prevent them. If one thinks back to the notorious Anthrax scare in the United States in 2001, investigators determined that the lethal strain of the pathogen had actually been created in a US Army biological weapons lab at Fort Detrick Maryland. One might also consider COVID and the widely held belief that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had been manipulating various coronavirus strains to make them more contagious and lethal.

Nuland clearly admitted that there were US-funded bioweapons in Ukraine when she expressed concern that Russia might occupy one of the labs and be tempted to acquire the material for its own use against Kiev. And the Biden Administration, clearly embarrassed by the admission, has attempted to turn the tables by rejecting Russian suggestions that the labs might be seeking to design biological pathogens that target certain ethnic groups, which is why the existing labs have been placed all around the world, including Ukraine. As far back as 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his concerns about US collection of biological material from ethnic Russians, as Unz puts it “certainly a very suspicious project for our government to have undertaken.”

If these Pentagon funded laboratories are indeed involved in propagating mutated strains of pathogens like anthrax and plague as biological weapons, like may have taken place at Wuhan, it would be a violation of Article I of the “UN Biological Weapons Convention,” making the United States government indisputably a War Criminal, with its leaders subject to the death sentence under the Nuremberg Laws which were in large part established by the United States Government itself in 1946. That aside, the real concern right now should be that the US/NATO will stage some kind of false flag incident which will lead to calls for direct military intervention. Watching Biden’s serial blunders and cover-ups suggests that there is nothing that Biden and Blinken will not do, up to an include started some kind of hopefully manageable war to boost the presidents sinking approval ratings. Now that Joe Biden is talking tough, it is hard to imagine how he will get off of the horse that he is riding without stepping into some sort of armed conflict. As the former Reagan Administration official Paul Craig Roberts has astutely observed “The evil that [now] resides in Washington is unprecedented in human history.”

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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

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***

Previewing President Biden’s trip to Europe last week, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said that, “the president is traveling to Europe to make sure we stay united.”

That sure didn’t go as planned. This may have been the most disastrous – and dangerous – Presidential overseas trip ever.

The US and its NATO allies have repeatedly proclaimed that “protecting Ukraine’s democracy” has never been about threatening Russia. Holding out NATO membership and sending billions of dollars in military equipment to Ukraine, starting under Trump, was not threatening Russia. CIA training camps in eastern Ukraine, where paramilitaries were trained on US weapons systems, was not about threatening Russia.

But at every stop, President Biden seemed to undermine the narrative his own Administration had carefully crafted. First up, warning that Russia might use chemical weapons in Ukraine, Biden promised it would “trigger a response in kind,” meaning the US would use chemical weapons as well. That would be a serious war crime.

National Security Advisor Sullivan had to be brought to explain that the US has “no intention” of using chemical weapons.

Later, speaking to the 82nd Airborne in Poland, President Biden told them that US troops would soon be in Ukraine. He said to the troops, “you’re going to see — you’re going to see women, young people standing — standing the middle of — in front of a … tank, just saying, ‘I’m not leaving. I’m holding my ground.’”

A White House spokesman had to clarify that, “the president has been clear we are not sending US troops to Ukraine and there is no change in that position.”

Clear? Well, not really. He had just said the opposite to our own troops!

Then, at the end of Biden’s final speech in Poland, the President inadvertently told the truth: the US involvement in Ukraine is all about “regime change” for Russia. Speaking of Russian President Putin, he told the audience, near the border of Ukraine, “for God‘s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

The President’s disaster control team immediately mobilized in the person of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who offered this pained interpretation of Biden’s clear statement, “I think the president, the White House, made the point last night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else.”

No, that’s not what he said. The president has a leading Constitutional role in the formation of US foreign policy, and he said in a public speech that “regime change” in Russia is US policy. Any attempt by his staffers to try to explain it away looks terrible: either the President has no idea what he’s saying so we should not take seriously what is essentially a declaration of war on Russia, or the President took the opportunity on the border with Ukraine to essentially declare war on Russia.

Presidents Reagan, Ford, and Bush Jr. were all known for their gaffes. Some were funny and some were serious. But none of them declared war on a nuclear-armed adversary in that adversary’s own backyard and then afterward had to send out staff to explain that the president didn’t mean what he just said.

Interestingly, Biden saved his most hawkish and bombastic statements for this final speech in Poland, at which none of the more cautious NATO partners like Germany and France were present. So much for “unity” being the prime purpose of the trip.

There is a real problem in the Biden Administration and the sooner we face it the better.

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***

On Thursday, March 24, the Russian government held a press conference in which it presented evidence that Hunter Biden, the disgraced son of American president Joe Biden, helped to finance bioweapons research in Ukraine.

Hunter’s untoward activity took place in 2014. The proof comes from emails and other forms of communication found on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which he recklessly abandoned in a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019.

When Hunter was facilitating bioweapons research in Ukraine, his father, Joe Biden, served as vice president of the United States. Because of his background in foreign affairs, Joe Biden was tasked by then President Obama with overseeing America’s foreign policy. Joe Biden relished the assignment and took deep personal interest in countries such as Ukraine, Russia, and China.

But rather than advancing the interests of the United States, the Bidens used Ukraine – and other countries – to enrich themselves through brazen influence peddling schemes. Hunter Biden was paid, for example, one million dollars a year by a shady gas and oil Ukrainian company called Burisma. Since Hunter Biden does not appear to know much about oil or gas, he was obviously given his appointment and lavish pay because the company’s owners believed he could influence – through his father – American policy in ways that were favorable to the company.

Joe Biden would get a cut from Hunter’s takings, a fact which was communicated by Hunter in his emails. In their drive to enrich themselves, the Bidens would go into business with some of the unscrupulous characters around. Burisma, for instance, was co-founded by a well-known corrupt Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky who is now a fugitive from justice.

When Burisma was being investigated for money laundering, tax evasion and other serious offences by Ukraine’s top prosecutor Viktor Shokin, a Burisma executive by the name of Vadym Pozharskyi sent an email to Hunter Biden asking him how he could use his political influence on Burisma’s behalf. This is what he wrote, in part, to Hunter:

“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc. to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions.”

When Joe Biden subsequently visited Ukraine in his role as vice president of the United States, he pressured Ukrainian government officials to have the prosecutor fired. This he did by threatening to withhold one billion dollars in US aid which had been promised by Barrack Obama. After some resistance, the Ukrainian government officials caved in and fired the prosecutor. Joe Biden later boasted about it in a talk which was recorded on video.

Joe Biden brags about having effected firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating a company by which his son was paid a million dollars per year

Notice what Joe Biden was doing: He was using US taxpayers’ money to bully a foreign government for the purpose of enriching his own family.

While Joe Biden served as vice president of the United States, the Bidens ran their influence peddling ploy in numerous places across the world. By directing US foreign policy in ways that would enrich himself and his family, Joe Biden sold out his country and betrayed the trust of the high office he held.

Rudy Giuliani, a former prosecutor himself, called the Bidens a “crime family.” It is painful to admit, but the contents of Hunter’s hard drive clearly show that this is, indeed, an apt description of their activities.

As you may know, Joe Biden and other American high-level officials have been repeatedly calling in recent weeks for a regime change in Russia. They have been openly urging the Russian people to remove or kill Vladimir Putin.

Just the other day, Joe Biden declared on his visit to Poland that Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” According to a report by CNN:

“President Joe Biden declared forcefully Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin should no longer remain in power, an unabashed challenge that came at the very end of a swing through Europe meant to reinforce Western unity.”

In response to the calls of US politicians, Russian government called a press conference and showed its people the incontrovertible evidence of Biden’s corruption and malfeasance. In the process, they used Hunter Biden’s crooked dealings in Ukraine and elsewhere to paint the United States as a corrupt and hypocritical nation.

The Russian government officials showed that the United States was involved with bioweapons labs in Ukraine, a country that borders with the Russian Federation. Such labs are illegal under American and international laws. The Biden administration had until recently denied the existence of such facilities, calling those who said otherwise “conspiracy theorists.”

A couple of weeks ago, however, Victoria Nuland, American Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and one of the architects of the 2014 Orange Revolution in Ukraine haltingly admitted the existence of these labs while testifying under oath before a senate committee.

Victoria Nuland admits the existence of a biolabs in Ukraine in a Senate hearing

Using material from Hunter Biden’s hard drive, the Russians showed the world that the president’s own son was involved in this illicit enterprise. Hunter tried to profit from it by investing in a company called Metabiota. Metabiota is a Department of Defense contractor that specializes “in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons.”

Hunter raised millions for that company and also put half a million of his own cash into the project. He also connected the leadership of Metabiota with that of notorious Burisma, the corrupt enterprise on whose board he served.

This is what we read in the Mail Online:

Emails and defense contract data reviewed by DailyMail.com suggest that Hunter had a prominent role in making sure Metabiota was able to conduct its pathogen research just a few hundred miles from the border with Russia.

What do you think was the Russian people’s reaction when they were shown this evidence by their government last Thursday?

Do you think that they feel like rising against Putin as Joe Biden urges them to do?

Quite to the contrary, they must have been enraged at the Americans’ apparent malfeasance.

They must have been shocked that such a corrupt man as Joe Biden could hold the highest public office in the United States.

It is Joe Biden who should be removed from office for betraying his nation and by selling his influence to corrupt foreign entities through his lamentable son Hunter.

The incriminating evidence of his crimes and betrayal of his nation is on his son’s own laptop. But when this laptop was presented to the authorities in 2019 by Rudy Giuliani, they refused to do anything about it.

Rather than doing what is right, the establishment turned on Giuliani and those who tried to call attention to the corruption that exists at the highest places of our government.

They claimed that the hard drive was a product of a Russian misinformation campaign even though they knew full well that it was not the case. Their false claim has been soundly disproved and now even the hyper-partisan New York Times admits that the incriminating hard drive is genuine.

What in the world has happened to America? How can our country be led by such corrupt people?

The evidence of their malfeasance is right there for everybody to see on Hunter Biden’s own computer, but our agencies tasked with investigating these kinds of crimes refuse to touch it.

And now the compromised Joe Biden, the man who has cynically sold out his country, is leading us toward World War III.

As part of the US foreign policy elite for decades, Joe Biden has been pushing for NATO’s expansion to the very doorstep of Russia. Russia has correctly and rightly perceived this as a vital national security threat.

Over the years the Russian government pleaded and warned against NATO’s incursion into the former Soviet republics. Rather than acknowledging Russia’s legitimate concerns, Joe Biden upped the ante as president by treating Ukraine as a de facto NATO partner by arming, equipping, and training its army.

When Russia finally responded, he falsely called its president “a war criminal” and demanded a regime change. This is an astonishingly arrogant and reckless way to treat the leader of a nuclear superpower.

One thing is quite certain: Having been shown evidence of Joe Biden’s shocking corruption, the Russian people are not going to heed his call. They doubtlessly see him as a crooked bully who should be despised and not listened to.

Yet Biden’s increasingly belligerent rhetoric and actions leave less and less room for compromise or peace. If Joe Biden and his globalist cronies are not stopped soon, these dishonest operatives will wreck the whole world in a nuclear holocaust.

The American people must insist that their government investigate the crimes of Joe Biden and his family. The authorities have hard evidence of their misdeeds on Hunter Biden’s own hard drive. Not acting on this evidence constitutes a gross dereliction of duty.

Appointing an independent counsel to investigate their sordid business dealings in Ukraine, Russia and beyond would be a good start.

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---

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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***

The British MHRA expected many vaccine adverse reactions, in October 2020, months before the vaccine rollout started. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) issued a tender for “an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs).”

The MHRA urgently seeks an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reaction (ADRs) and ensure that no details from the ADRs’ reaction text are missed.

But they went ahead with the vaccine program anyway and passed it off as “Safe and Effective,” even though they knew it would cause serious harm.

The tender was issued by the MHRA Buyer Organisation and on 2 March 2022, it was still displayed on the European Union’s Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) website. TED is a Supplement to the Official Journal of the EU.

For reasons of extreme urgency under Regulation 32(2)(c) related to the release of a Covid-19 vaccine MHRA have accelerated the sourcing and implementation of a vaccine specific AI tool.

Strictly necessary — it is not possible to retrofit the MHRA’s legacy systems to handle the volume of ADRs that will be generated by a Covid-19 vaccine. Therefore, if the MHRA does not implement the AI tool, it will be unable to process these ADRs effectively. This will hinder its ability to rapidly identify any potential safety issues with the Covid-19 vaccine and represents a direct threat to patient life and public health.

Reasons of extreme urgency — the MHRA recognises that its planned procurement process for the SafetyConnect programme, including the AI tool, would not have concluded by vaccine launch. Leading to a inability to effectively monitor adverse reactions to a Covid-19 vaccine.

Events unforeseeable — the Covid-19 crisis is novel and developments in the search of a Covid-19 vaccine have not followed any predictable pattern so far.

The tender document has been stored in multiple places in case they try to erase this evidence by removing it from the tender website. View or Download it here.

The contract was awarded to the only applicant, Genpact (UK) for 1.5 million GBP.

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***

The U.S. got its war in Ukraine. Without it, Washington could not attempt to destroy Russia’s economy, orchestrate worldwide condemnation and lead an insurgency to bleed Russia, all part of an attempt to bring down its government. Joe Biden has now left no doubt that it’s true.

The president of the United States has confirmed what Consortium News and others have been reporting since the beginnings of Russsiagate in 2016, that the ultimate U.S. aim is to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said on Saturday at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. The White House and the State Dept. have been scrambling to explain away Biden’s remark.

But it is too late.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said,

“As you know, and as you have heard us say repeatedly, we do not have a strategy of regime change in Russia, or anywhere else, for that matter,” the last words inserted for comic relief.

Biden first gave the game away at his Feb. 24 White House press conference — the first day of the invasion. He was asked why he thought new sanctions would work when the earlier sanctions had not prevented Russia’s invasion. Biden said the sanctions were never designed to prevent Russia’s intervention but to punish it afterward. Therefore the U.S. needed Russia to invade.

“No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening,” Biden said.  “That has to sh- — this is going to take time.  And we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them.  That’s what this is all about.”

It is all about the Russian people turning on Putin to overthrow him, which would explain Russia’s crackdown on anti-war protestors and the media.

It was no slip of the tongue. Biden repeated himself in Brussels on Thursday:

“Let’s get something straight …  I did not say that in fact the sanctions would deter him.  Sanctions never deter.  You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter.  The maintenance of sanctions — the maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year.  That’s what will stop him.”

It was the second time that Biden confirmed that the purpose of the draconian U.S. sanctions on Russia was never to prevent the invasion of Ukraine, which the U.S. desperately needed to activate its plans, but to punish Russia and get its people to rise up against Putin and ultimately restore a Yeltsin-like puppet to Moscow. Without a cause those sanctions could never have been imposed. The cause was Russia’s invasion.

Regime Change in Moscow

Biden’s speech in Warsaw. (Office of the President/Wikimedia Commons)

Once hidden in studies such as this 2019 RAND study, the desire to overthrow the government in Moscow is now out in the open.

One of the earliest threats came from Carl Gersham, the long-time director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Gershman, wrote in 2013, before the Kiev coup: “Ukraine is the biggest prize.” If it could be pulled away from Russia and into the West, then “Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

David Ignatius wrote in The Washington Post in 1999 that the NED could now practice regime change out in the open, rather than covertly as the C.I.A. had done.

The RAND Corporation on March 18 then published an article titled, “If Regime Change Should Come to Moscow,” the U.S. should be ready for it. Michael McFaul, the hawkish former U.S. ambassador to Russia, has been calling for regime change in Russia for some time.  He tried to finesse Biden’s words by tweeting:

On Putin, Biden expressed what billions around the world and millions inside Russia also believe. He did not say that the US should remove him from power. There is a difference.

— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) March 27, 2022

On March 1, Boris Johnson’s spokesperson said the sanctions on Russia “we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.” No. 10 tried to walk that back but two days earlier James Heappey, minister for the armed forces, wrote in The Daily Telegraph:

“His failure must be complete; Ukrainian sovereignty must be restored, and the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered and so too will those of the kleptocratic elite that surround him. He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”

After the fall of the Soviet Union and throughout the 1990s Wall Street and the U.S. government dominated Boris Yeltsin’s Russia, asset-stripping former state-owned industries and impoverishing the Russian people.  Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999 and starting restoring Russia’s sovereignty. His 2007 Munich Security Conference speech, in which he blasted Washington’s aggressive unilateralism, alarmed the U.S., which clearly wants a Yeltsin-like figure to return.   The 2014 U.S.-backed coup in Kiev was a first step. Russiagate was another.

Back in 2017, Consortium News saw Russiagate as a prelude to regime change in Moscow. That year I wrote:

“The Russia-gate story fits neatly into a geopolitical strategy that long predates the 2016 election. Since Wall Street and the U.S. government lost the dominant position in Russia that existed under the pliable President Boris Yeltsin, the strategy has been to put pressure on getting rid of Putin to restore a U.S. friendly leader in Moscow. There is substance to Russia’s concerns about American designs for ‘regime change’ in the Kremlin.

Moscow sees an aggressive America expanding NATO and putting 30,000 NATO troops on its borders; trying to overthrow a secular ally in Syria with terrorists who threaten Russia itself; backing a coup in Ukraine as a possible prelude to moves against Russia; and using American NGOs to foment unrest inside Russia before they were forced to register as foreign agents.”

JUST NOW: ""I think Ukrainians were waiting for a long time for such a statement. I think this statement is absolutely correct."

–Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on President Biden's controversial statement about Putin's removal.pic.twitter.com/6ucqdJS0oM

— John Berman (@JohnBerman) March 28, 2022

The Invasion Was Necessary

The United States could have easily prevented Russia’s military action. It could have stopped Russia’s intervention in Ukraine’s civil war from happening by doing three things:  forcing implementation of the 8-year old Minsk peace accords, dissolving extreme right Ukrainian militias and engaging Russia in serious negotiations about a new security architecture in Europe.

But it didn’t.

The U.S. can still end this war through serious diplomacy with Russia. But it won’t. Blinken has refused to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Instead, Biden announced on March 16 another $800 million in military aid for Ukraine on the same day it was revealed Russia and Ukraine have been working on a 15-point peace plan. It has never been clearer that the U.S. wanted this war and wants it to continue.

NATO troops and missiles in Eastern Europe were evidently so vital to U.S. plans that it would not discuss removing them to stop Russia’s troops from crossing into Ukraine. Russia had threatened a “technical/military” response if NATO and the U.S. did not take seriously Russia’s security interests, presented in December in the form of treaty proposals.

The U.S. knew what would happen if it rejected those proposals calling for Ukraine not to join NATO, for missiles in Poland and Romania to be removed and NATO troops in Eastern Europe withdrawn. That’s why it started screaming about an invasion in December. The U.S. refused to move the missiles and provocatively sent even more NATO forces to Eastern Europe.

MSNBC ran an article on March 4, titled, “Russia’s Ukraine invasion may have been preventable: The U.S. refused to reconsider Ukraine’s NATO status as Putin threatened war. Experts say that was a huge mistake.” The article said:

“The abundance of evidence that NATO was a sustained source of anxiety for Moscow raises the question of whether the United States’ strategic posture was not just imprudent but negligent.”

Senator Joe Biden knew as far back as 1997 that NATO expansion, which he supported, could eventually lead to a hostile Russian reaction.

Biden in 1997 saying that the only thing that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be if NATO expanded as far as the Baltic states pic.twitter.com/i0yfEgIGZA

— . (@ImReadinHere) March 7, 2022

The Excised Background to the Invasion 

It is vital to recall the events of 2014 in Ukraine and what has followed until now because it is routinely whitewashed from Western media coverage. Without that context, it is impossible to understand what is happening in Ukraine.

Both Donetsk and Lugansk had voted for independence from Ukraine in 2014 after a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych.  The new, U.S.-installed Ukrainian government then launched a war against the provinces to crush their resistance to the coup and their bid for independence, a war that is still going on eight years later at the cost of thousands of lives with U.S. support. It is this war that Russia has entered.

Lindsey Graham & John McCain in Ukraine in December 2016 preparing for a proxy war with Russia all the way back then.

Then, Trump came in and stopped it all from happening. https://t.co/5PkYe4vjv1

— ⭐️Amy Tarkanian⭐️ (@MrsT106) March 4, 2022

Neo-Nazi groups, such as Right Sector and the Azov Battalion, who revere the World War II Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, took part in the coup as well as in the ongoing violence against Lugansk and Donetsk.

Despite reporting in the BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN on the neo-Nazis at the time, their role in the story is now excised by Western media, reducing Putin to a madman hellbent on conquest without reason. As though he woke up one morning and looked at a map to decide what country he would invade next.

The public has been induced to embrace the Western narrative, while being kept in the dark about Washington’s ulterior motives.

#Russia co-existed with #Ukraine until the 2014 US-backed coup and Kiev's war against ethnic Russians who resisted it. Everything goes back to 2014–a now 8-year civil war. Airbrushing that out of the story, as Western media does, amounts to deliberate deception.

— Joe Lauria (@unjoe) March 1, 2022

The Traps Set for Russia

Six weeks ago, on Feb. 4, I wrote an article, “What a US Trap for Russia in Ukraine Might Look Like,” in which I laid out a scenario in which Ukraine would begin an offensive against ethnic Russian civilians in Donbass, forcing Russia to decide whether to abandon them or to intervene to save them.

If Russia intervened with regular army units, I argued, this would be the “Invasion!” the U.S. needed to attack Russia’s economy, turn the world against Moscow and end Putin’s rule.

In the third week of February, Ukrainian government shelling of Donbass dramatically increased, according to the OSCE, with what appeared to be the new offensive. Russia was forced to make its decision.

It first recognized the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, a move it put off for eight years. And then on Feb. 24 President Vladimir Putin announced a military operation in Ukraine to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country.

Russia stepped into a trap, which grows more perilous by the day as Russia’s military intervention continues with a second trap in sight.  From Moscow’s perspective, the stakes were too high not to intervene. And if it can induce Kiev to accept a settlement, it might escape the clutches of the United States.

A Planned Insurgency 

Biden and Brzezinski (Collage Cathy Vogan/Photos SEIU Walk a Day in My Shoes 2008/Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain/Picryl)

The examples of previous U.S. traps that I gave in the Feb. 4 piece were the U.S. telling Saddam Hussein in 1990 that it would not interfere in its dispute with Kuwait, opening the trap to Iraq’s invasion, allowing the U.S. to destroy Baghdad’s military. The second example is most relevant.

In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Jimmy Carter’s former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted that the C.I.A. set a trap four decades ago for Moscow by arming mujahiddin to fight the Soviet-backed government in Afghanistan and bring down the Soviet government, much as the U.S. wants today to bring down Putin.  He said:

“According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention. 

He then explained that the reason for the trap was to bring down the Soviet Union. Brzezinski said:

“That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: ‘We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.’  Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.”

Brzezinski said he had no regrets that financing the mujahideen spawned terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?,” he asked.  The U.S. today is likewise gambling with the world economy and further instability in Europe with its tolerance of neo-Nazism in Ukraine.

In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Brzezinski wrote:

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”

Thus U.S. “primacy,” or world dominance, which still drives Washington, is not possible without control of Eurasia, as Brzezinski argued, and that’s not possible without control of Ukraine by pushing Russia out (U.S. takeover of Ukraine in the 2014 coup) and controlling the governments in Moscow and Beijing. What Brzezinski and U.S. leaders still view as Russia’s “imperial ambitions” are in Moscow seen as imperative defensive measures against an aggressive West.

Without the Russian invasion the second trap the U.S. is planning would not be possible: an insurgency meant to bog Russia down and give it its “Vietnam.” Europe and the U.S. are flooding more arms into Ukraine, and Kiev has called for volunteer fighters. The way jihadists flocked to Afghanistan, white supremacists from around Europe are traveling to Ukraine to become insurgents.

Just as the Afghanistan insurgency helped bring down the Soviet Union, the insurgency is meant to topple Putin’s Russia.

An article in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency” was published Feb. 25, just one day after Russia’s intervention, indicating advanced planning that was dependent on an invasion. The article had to be written and edited before Russia crossed into Ukraine and was published as soon as it did. It said:

“If Russia limits its offensive to the east and south of Ukraine, a sovereign Ukrainian government will not stop fighting. It will enjoy reliable military and economic support from abroad and the backing of a united population. But if Russia pushes on to occupy much of the country and install a Kremlin-appointed puppet regime in Kyiv, a more protracted and thorny conflagration will begin. Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that could spread across multiple borders, perhaps even reaching into Belarus to challenge Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s stalwart ally. Widening unrest could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit, such as Kazakhstan, and even spill into Russia itself. When conflicts begin, unpredictable and unimaginable outcomes can become all too real. Putin may not be prepared for the insurgency—or insurgencies—to come.

WINNER’S REMORSE

Many a great power has waged war against a weaker one, only to get bogged down as a result of its failure to have a well-considered end game. This lack of foresight has been especially palpable in troubled occupations. It was one thing for the United States to invade Vietnam in 1965, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 2003; likewise for the Soviet Union to enter Afghanistan in 1979. It was an altogether more difficult task to persevere in those countries in the face of stubborn insurgencies. … As the United States learned in Vietnam and Afghanistan, an insurgency that has reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely, sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home.’”

As far back as Jan. 14, Yahoo! News reported:

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

The CIA-trained forces could soon play a critical role on Ukraine’s eastern border, where Russian troops have massed in what many fear is preparation for an invasion. …

The program has involved ‘very specific training on skills that would enhance’ the Ukrainians’ ‘ability to push back against the Russians,’ said the former senior intelligence official.

The training, which has included ‘tactical stuff,’ is “going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,’ said the former official.

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. ‘The United States is training an insurgency,’ said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how ‘to kill Russians.’”

In his Warsaw speech, Biden tipped his hand about an insurgency to come. He said nothing about peace talks. Instead he said: “In this battle, we need to be clear-eyed. This battle will not be won in days or months either. We need to steel ourselves of a long fight ahead.”

Hillary Clinton laid it all out on Feb. 28, just four days into Russia’s operation. She brought up the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, saying “it didn’t end well for Russia” and that in Ukraine “this is the model that people are looking at … that can stymie Russia.”

"Remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980," Hillary Clinton says. "It didn't end well for the Russians…but the fact is, that a very motivated, and then funded, and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan." pic.twitter.com/iirtXI4vz4

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 1, 2022

What neither Maddow nor Clinton mentioned when discussing volunteers going to fight for Ukraine is what The New York Times reported on Feb. 25, a day after the invasion, and before their interview: “Far-right militias in Europe plan to confront Russian forces.”

The Economic War

Along with the quagmire, are the raft of profound economic sanctions on Russia designed to collapse its economy and drive Putin from power.

These are the harshest sanctions the U.S. and Europe have ever imposed on any nation. Sanctions against Russia’s Central Bank sanctions are the most serious, as they were intended to destroy the value of the ruble.  One U.S. dollar was worth 85 rubles on Feb. 24, the day of the invasion and soared to 154 per dollar on March 7.  However the Russian currency strengthened to 101 on Friday.

Putin and other Russian leaders were personally sanctioned, as were Russia’s largest banks. Most Russian transactions are no longer allowed to be settled through the SWIFT international payment system. The German-Russia Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was closed down and become bankrupt.

The U.S. blocked imports of Russian oil, which was about 5 percent of U.S. supply. BP and Shell pulled out of Russian partnerships. European and U.S. airspace for Russian commercial liners was closed. Europe, which depends on Russia gas, is still importing it, and is so far rebuffing U.S. pressure to stop buying Russian oil.

A raft of voluntary sanctions followed: PayPal, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix and McDonalds have been shut down in Russia. Coca-cola will stop sales to the country. U.S. news organizations have left, Russian artists in the West have been fired and even Russian cats are banned.

It also gave an opportunity for U.S. cable providers to get RT America shut down.  Other Russia media has been de-platformed and Russian government websites hacked. A Yale University professor has drawn up a list to shame U.S. companies that are still operating in Russia.

Russian exports of wheat and fertilizer have been banned, driving the price of food in the West.  Biden admitted as much on Thursday:

“With regard to food shortage … it’s going to be real.  The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia, it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well.  And — because both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example — just to give you one example.”

The aim is clear: “asphyxiating Russia’s economy”, as French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian put it, even if it damages the West.

"We are going to wage a total economic and financial war on Russia" declared Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of the Economy and Finance today.

"We will therefore cause the collapse of the Russian economy" until "Putin returns to better intentions in Ukraine" https://t.co/IWuGeZRSWX

— Aki Heikkinen (@akihheikkinen) March 1, 2022

The question is whether Russia can extricate itself from the U.S. strategy of insurgency and economic war.

To be continued: How Russia Can Escape the US Traps. 

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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

Featured image: President Biden departs Brussels en route to Poland early Friday morning. (White House)

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In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Richard Sprague said his wife, Jennifer, developed Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease after the Pfizer COVID-19 shot and died within five months of the second dose.

Jennifer Deason Sprague, a healthy 60-year-old woman from Missouri, died Feb. 21, five months after receiving her second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

Jennifer died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a fatal degenerative brain disorder.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Richard Sprague said his wife received the first dose of Pfizer on Aug. 29, 2021, and her second dose on Sept. 21, 2021.

Although he remained unvaccinated, Sprague said his wife got the vaccine because she worked for the Perkins Restaurant Corporation, which required employees to get the shot.

“I told her to just lie about it and if they asked for a vaccination card, then she should ask them to make everyone show proof they had the shot,” Sprague said. “She felt bad lying about it, so she went ahead and got it.”

Four days after the second dose, Jennifer experienced her first episode of a “sudden strange event she couldn’t explain,” while she and her husband were at a dinner theater.

Sprague said:

“We had just finished our meal and were just visiting. All at once, she said, ‘There is something wrong. Please take me home now. I don’t know what it is and I cannot explain it.’ So we missed the theater and went straight home.”

The following week Jennifer called her doctor and asked if the episode she experienced could be related to the COVID vaccine.

“The doctor said if it was the shot, she would have known it after a couple of hours, not a couple of days,” Sprague said.

Jennifer started having more episodes and her left hand and side began to tremble. On Oct. 13, 2021, Jennifer went back to the doctor, who prescribed Xanax for anxiety.

Over the next few weeks, her symptoms worsened and her left side began to feel heavier than her right side, Sprague said. This continued throughout November and December. Jennifer’s doctor instructed her to stay on the Xanax because he thought it was anxiety.

Jennifer experienced another episode of the “events she couldn’t explain” on Dec. 24, 2021, only this time it was worse, Sprague said. She told everyone she needed to go home and apologized.

Later that evening, Sprague took his wife to the ER, where physicians treated her for anxiety and recommended pills she could take to “get her through the night.” The doctors could find nothing wrong with her, Sprague said.

The next morning, Jennifer went to work at Perkins, as all employees were required to work on Christmas day. But by 10 a.m., Richard got a call to pick up his wife.

“She had a very bad episode at work,” Sprague explained. “She couldn’t hold a tray or pour coffee.”

Sprague found a new doctor. At Jennifer’s appointment on Jan. 5, the physician said she was being over-medicated and stopped everything cold turkey, thinking this would resolve her symptoms, Sprague said.

A follow-up was scheduled for Feb. 10, but Sprague took Jennifer back to the doctor at the end of January because her symptoms were more severe.

Sprague explained:

“By this time, I’m having to tow her along when we walk. We would go to the mall and walk laps so she was in shape when she would return to work, but around January 23, to look at my wife — if this is Xanax withdrawal I felt I needed someone to encourage me.

“She was having a hard time dressing herself. It would take her two hours to get focused in the morning, and her brain fog was bad. She would lose her train of thought. After 30 minutes or so I’d walk in the bathroom and ask if she was okay and the shower would be cold again. At the time, we laughed about it.”

“When I took Jennifer back to the doctor, they took one look at her and knew something was going on,” Sprague said. Doctors performed blood work and MRIs, but the results came back normal.

“They recommended a neurologist — because something didn’t look quite right — and a psychiatrist to see if it was psychological, which scared Jennifer because she said she wasn’t crazy,” Sprague said. “If this was Xanax withdrawal this thing would be turning around any day.”

Sprague said:

“Early that evening something happened in her head. She did not like the neurologist because he wanted her to see the psychiatrist and she started repeating herself over and over: ‘This guy thinks I’m crazy. This guy thinks I’m crazy.’ She started stumbling around. She stumbled trying to get in the car. I called my son to help me and we took her straight home.”

After they arrived home, two of Sprague’s children — an RN and a chemist — came over. They persuaded Jennifer to go back to the ER.

“Doctors immediately did another MRI and admitted her around January 30,” Sprague said.

At the time, Jennifer was still able to sit up and walk independently.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but the neurologist had read the MRI and saw a significant change on the right side of her brain and suspected CJD,” Sprague said. “They didn’t tell me because they wanted to rule out everything else.”

Doctors did more scans of Jennifer’s brain and entire body to rule out infections and cancer.

“They said she was a 60-year-old in a 40-year-old’s body,” Sprague said.

At the end of the week, Jennifer’s doctors said they needed to perform a spinal tap, but by this time, she was unable to get out of bed by herself.

Sprague said:

“In one week she started regressing so fast it was unbelievable. She was fogged, having a hard time, was seeing snakes on the wall — like she had dementia — and it would only last about three days until that part of the brain was gone. But she never forgot who I was. She always remembered who I was.”

The spinal tap confirmed Jennifer had CJD, a prion disease. A study published last year in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases found a potential link between Pfizer’s COVID vaccine and prion disease in humans.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), prion diseases are a family of rare progressive neurodegenerative disorders that affect humans and animals. Prion diseases are usually rapidly progressive and always fatal.

The CDC’s website states:

“The term ‘prions’ refers to abnormal, pathogenic agents that are transmissible and are able to induce abnormal folding of specific normal cellular proteins called prion proteins that are found most abundantly in the brain. The functions of these normal prion proteins are still not completely understood. The abnormal folding of the prion proteins leads to brain damage and the characteristic signs and symptoms of the disease.”

Sprague said the doctors hoped Jennifer had the curable autoimmune disorder known as “Brain on Fire,” which is triggered by an attack on one of the key neurotransmitter receptors in the brain.

Brain on Fire mimics CJD but can be cured, Sprague said. So, they “immediately started treating Jennifer for it and giving her steroids, but it made absolutely no difference.”

Insurance quits paying for Jennifer’s care

After Jennifer was diagnosed with CJD on Feb. 12, Jennifer’s insurance company said it would no longer pay for her care and Sprague was told his wife would not recover.

“If I leave her in the hospital it’s out of pocket,” Sprague said. “Otherwise, it’s a care facility or I take her home on hospice.”

Sprague said:

“I talked the hospital into allowing her to stay one more day and I suggested they try rehab one more time. But the next day, it was worse. They tried to get her to sit up and to communicate with her, but by then … she could take things in but could not take anything out.”

Sprague made arrangements for hospice care at his home.

“During her final days, she was pretty much in a total coma,” Sprague said. “Although at times she would still try to talk or kiss me.”

Sprague said:

“Your brain is just disappearing. It’s crazy. You’re in this perfect healthy body and your brain just dies within the course of a few months.”

Jennifer died at 12:47 p.m. on Feb. 21.

After speaking with The Defender, Sprague said he will be filing a report with the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System — a reporting system for vaccine injuries no one in the medical community told him about.

Sprague said doctors were “totally noncommittal” on whether the Pfizer vaccine caused Jennifer’s CJD, but the nurses became interested in the connection after reading an article in The Defender about Cheryl Cohen, who also experienced rapid-onset sporadic CJD and died within three months of her second Pfizer dose.

Sprague said he wants others to take the risks of COVID vaccines seriously and to understand the consequences of getting the shots.

He added:

“Never take one of these shots without full knowledge of what can happen … without full knowledge that this is experimental. This is not just something to run out and randomly do. You’re a guinea pig. Do you want to be a part of that or not?”

“I would take the consequences of not being able to do something because I’m not vaccinated over the risks of the shots,” Sprague said. “If you look at the risks and still choose to take it that’s one thing, but blindly taking it is totally wrong and unconstitutional.”

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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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.

“Unless someone is willing to come and bring 10 million barrels, we don’t see that someone can substitute Russia,” Mazrouei said during the Atlantic Council’s global energy forum in Dubai.

The Opec+ alliance has so far stuck with a plan for gradual oil production increases based on a deal struck during the height of the coronavirus pandemic lockdowns, when producers made deep cuts to output to make up for the loss in demand for fuel.

As oil prices have soared to around $100 a barrel, the United States and several European nations have been calling on Gulf Arab oil producers to do more to help bring down prices.

Earlier this month, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson travelled to the UAE and Saudi Arabia and raised the issue directly with the countries’ leaders.

Mazrouei, however, said that the Opec+ alliance was here to stay and shut down any suggestions that the UAE would break away from the pact and unilaterally increase production.

“Staying together, staying focused, and not allowing politics to kick into this organisation … we always believe that whatever we do as countries when it comes to production and to this work, it needs always to stay out of politics,” he said.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE, two close US allies and leaders of Opec+, have been constraining their criticism of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while also dodging demands from the US regarding increasing oil outputs.

The UAE’s foreign minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, visited Moscow earlier this month to discuss ways to boost bilateral ties.

“They don’t want to risk the unity of the group. Having Russia being part of the Opec+ group is incredibly important, especially for the Gulf producers,” Amena Bakr, chief Opec correspondent for Energy Intelligence, said during a Twitter Spaces panel on Monday morning.

“We’re at a point where unity is considered one of the most important factors for the group, and nobody wants to risk spoiling that unity by suggesting any kind of policy change.”

Western demands for oil now

Mazrouei also used his speech to press for greater and long-term investment in oil and gas, even though the UAE has pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

“We are in an environment where everyone is saying raise your production,” he said. “We definitely at this time need all available resources,” he added, criticising efforts to pull back from investments in oil and gas.

The current oil supply crisis has highlighted that amid the international community’s push towards transitioning to renewable energy sources, the world continues to heavily depend on fossil fuel supplies.

Bakr said that the western demands were frustrating Gulf oil producers, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, because the calls were coming without a commitment to invest in the future of their countries’ oil production.

“You need years of investment and you need investment to happen today in order to secure the future of this supply,” she said on Monday.

“They’re frustrated with hearing constant requests for more oil when they are not hearing the same persistence with or encouraging future investment to secure supplies. All they are hearing is that we need oil now, but in two, three years time, we don’t need it anymore.”

Meanwhile, oil experts have said that with western sanctions on Russia likely to remain in place for the coming months, oil prices will continue to soar. Analysts previously told MEE that even a major boost in production from countries such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE would fail to bring down prices.

The price of Brent Crude, the standard benchmark for oil, remained steady at $110 a barrel on Monday morning.

“We think that the worst month in terms of supply impact is probably still ahead of us,” Abhi Rajendran, Energy Intelligence’s research director, said during Monday’s panel on Twitter Spaces.

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The old long war in Afghanistan has barely ended and already there is a new one, this time in Europe. Most governments, the media, and the United Nations General Assembly reached a consensus quickly: the contemptible aggressor is Vladimir Putin. Public opinion strongly supports Ukraine. Large demonstrations form almost daily to demand peace. The Global South, however, with much of the world’s population, is not eager to participate in sanctions against Russia. China, India, Brazil, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, and much of Latin America will not join in. Several countries rely on grain imports from Ukraine and Russia, and worry about major shortages caused by supply chain disruptions. The efforts for peace are commendable—but could they fizzle out too soon? Is this well-meaning but perhaps myopic movement the best we can hope for, or could we aim for something better for Ukraine, for Russians, and for the rest of the planet if we step outside the framework of the Western neoliberal capitalist war machine?

During the early days of the invasion, Western media showed brave Ukrainians training for the 2022 war against the Russian Army with wooden replica rifles. While they may be brave, it is impossible to ignore that they started this fight with insufficient equipment against an army that well outnumbered them. Furthermore, according to the international law of armed conflict, civilians who take part in hostilities lose certain legal protections and can become targets. That is already happening before our eyes on TV. Even if the civilian resistance is partially successful, it will suffer too many casualties. Is this what freedom supporters want for the Ukrainians who have already borne much during their last 100 years of history? It is easy to fight proxy wars when you sit safely at home and have no skin in the game. Give them weapons, sure, so they can really fight! If they are heroic and resilient, this may turn into a nasty, longer-term struggle, house ruin to house ruin, street by street. It will brutalize the population, devastate the country, and damage the environment evermore. It could also evolve into a quagmire with fallout more devastating than the already-awful tragedy of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Incremental escalation also increases the risks for the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

And if the Ukrainians, despite their cheerleaders in the West, do not last long against a mighty military machine, then the coldly calculated net sum may just be an appalling waste of life and great sad futility that simultaneously triggered a big wave of bereaved women and children as refugees (with existing inequalities of race and nationality reflected there too). According to the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute, “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 their deeds and take in huge numbers of Ukrainian refugees?

I am not drawn to these possibilities. It is eerie and disturbing to witness how fast people become nearly fanatical in blaming the newest villain or the momentary evil empire. It begins with Putin, proceeds to Russian vodka, and will end where? It also creates some type of love-of-freedom euphoria. But will it last when the time comes to face the costs of this catastrophe?

In any event, it may have been an unwise and rash move to invite newly independent countries of the former Warsaw Pact to become members of NATO. What’s the hurry? For those who lived under Soviet control in Eastern Europe, it will take more than the three decades that have passed so far to reduce the negative stockpiles of experience, emotion, resentment, and revanchist impulse. Providing incentives for building a healthy economy and showing the road to EU membership were good options, but using former Soviet-controlled countries to become a bulwark against the Russian bear was not. Finland, which again ranks as number one in the 2021 World Happiness Report, is a small successful country that has chosen a different approach while living next door to Russia. The bear is dangerous when rejected, provoked, and angered. So where was the strategic empathy? Russia knows that it is unloved in these former satellite countries. It understands that it is nearly encircled and almost under siege by the push against its borders and by efforts to pull even Ukraine into NATO. And so perhaps it is understandable that it has rolled itself up like a hedgehog facing peril, showing its prickly exterior. After all, it has been invaded repeatedly but has not done much westward invading itself, except when chasing intruders out. Yet the chance to loosen things up slowly after the Soviet era while supporting more democratic developments was squandered. The Russian people didn’t get much of a break.

There are Atlanticists who will not accept that Russia is part of Europe. But like it or not, it was, and is, and will be—at least up to the Urals. Denial will only maintain a festering trench of potential conflict, and it could drive that vast country into the “briar patch” of China’s Xi Jinping, as David P. Goldman recently put it in Asia Times. The political and economic leaders of the Western alliance who are used to things going their way are in need of a reality check; the rest of the world is no longer willing to tolerate their irrational addiction to the confrontational and rapacious behavior that is misnamed foreign policy. No, the end of the Cold War wasn’t the “end of history.” And as Andrew Bacevich wrote in the Boston Globe, “The argument made by several recent U.S. administrations that NATO expansion does not pose a threat to Russian security doesn’t pass the sniff test. It assumes that U.S. attitudes toward Russia are benign. They are not and haven’t been for decades.”

This is the key: passing the sniff test. A change in attitude is required. That is not a weakness. It is good sense and the positive will to help life and the living. The last thing the U.S., Europe, and the abused planet need is more obscene destruction, new stockpiles of mental contamination, and, as the UN reports, the additional 10 million fleeing and internally displaced Ukrainian people so far. It adds insult to injury. And the only participants you will hear laughing are the sanction-free oil and gas producers/promoters on their way to the bank. In addition, as it has repeatedly occurred, the dominant drumbeat of war drowns out much of diverse public communication. Such a one-dimensional mainstream narrative contributes nothing to de-escalation—it does the opposite. President Biden’s recent State of the Union speech barely touched on the existential threat of the climate crisis.

Yes, it is fantastic to see how the majority of the international community stands with Ukraine. But a Woodstock-like freedom frenzy will be too short in duration for the making of peace. That requires cool heads, warm hearts, at least half an ounce of humility, and the firm determination to stop the insanity of this preventable war.

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This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Erika Schelby is the author of Looking for Humboldt and Searching for German Footprints in New Mexico and Beyond (Lava Gate Press, 2017) and Liberating the Future from the Past? Liberating the Past from the Future?(Lava Gate Press, 2013), which was shortlisted for the International Essay Prize Contest by the Berlin-based cultural magazine Lettre International. Schelby lives in New Mexico.

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On Saturday, US President Joe Biden ended his week-long tour of Europe to mobilize NATO for conflict with Russia with a belligerent rant in Warsaw, Poland. Media coverage of Biden’s speech was focused on its final passage, apparently ad-libbed, in which the American president said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.”

But an even more important aspect of the speech went largely undiscussed: Biden’s declaration of a “commitment” by the United States to “decades” of war.

Against the backdrop of the largest land war in Europe since World War II, Biden declared,

“We must commit now to be in this fight for the long haul. We must remain unified today and tomorrow and the day after and for the years and decades to come.”

To what “fight” is Biden committing the United States?

Just nine months ago, when Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, he said,

“We’ve been a nation too long at war. If you’re 20 years old today, you have never known an America at peace.” He declared, “It’s time to end the forever war.”

Now, Biden is committing the American population to a new perpetual war—one that he said will have immense “costs” and “will not be easy.”

In his speech, Biden declared that the decades-long “fight” the US is initiating is a “great battle for freedom: a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

Biden picked a strange place to launch a struggle for “democracy.” This year, the Berlin-based Civil Liberties Union for Europe accused the Polish government of “seizing further control of the justice system, civil society and media, while cutting basic human rights and fuelling divisions by scapegoating migrants and other minority groups.”

The Polish government is controlled by the ultra-right, chauvinist, anti-Semitic and authoritarian PiS party. President Duda—Biden’s constant companion during his warmongering crusade—heads a government that has completely banned abortion as a form of family planning, persecutes the LGBT community, and criminalizes the exposure of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.

As with the “war on terror,” which saw the most grievous violations of democratic rights in American history, Biden’s new decades-long war invokes “democracy” as a throwaway line that no one is to take seriously.

In his speech, Biden himself made clear the extent to which the United States had provoked Russia’s invasion by arming a NATO proxy on Russia’s border.

“In the years before the invasion, we, America, had sent over $650 million, before they crossed the border, in weapons to Ukraine, including anti-air and anti-armor equipment. Since the invasion, America has committed another $1.35 billion in weapons and ammunition.”

Everything that Biden has done over the past week has been intended to stoke up the US-NATO proxy war in Ukraine. He called the Russian president every name imaginable, from “butcher” to “murderous dictator” to “war criminal” to “thug.” He has poured weapons into Ukraine and doubled the forces deployed on Russia’s borders. As Edward Luce of the Financial Times commented, “US liberals are at least as hawkish as conservatives.”

Biden’s speech in Poland followed the conclusion of the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, where the leaders of the NATO alliance plotted out a major escalation of the conflict. At the summit, NATO announced a doubling of its forces on Russia’s border, and the New York Times reported plans by the US for full-scale war with Russia.

The actual causes of this new “forever war” are to be found in the documents of US military planners.

In 1991, amidst the dissolution of the USSR, then US President George H. W. Bush declared that the Gulf War against Iraq would usher in a “New World Order” led by the United States.

The following year, the Pentagon published a Defense Planning Guidance, termed the “Wolfowitz Doctrine,” proclaiming that the United States’ “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”

The outpouring of US militarism initiated by the first invasion of Iraq was followed by three decades of perpetual war, including the bombing and breakup of Yugoslavia, the destruction and occupation of Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the overthrow of the Libyan government and the years-long regime change in Syria.

Now, these wars are metastasizing into a direct US conflict with Russia and China, with potentially incalculable consequences.

The 2018 National Defense Strategy announced a pivot from US military engagements in the Middle East to efforts to combat Russia and China. “Inter-state strategic competition,” it proclaimed, “not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.”

In this context, it is clear that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was nothing but a redeployment of forces in preparation for military conflicts on an even greater scale.

Despite the efforts by the White House to walk back Biden’s statement, Biden’s ad-libbed declaration was the inescapable conclusion of the entire speech. Biden’s statements clearly reflect the actual US policy, the aim of which is the military isolation and economic ruination of Russia, the ouster of its government and the installation of a puppet regime that would turn it into a rump state.

Biden’s declaration of a new, decades-long commitment comes just days after his proclamation before leaving for Europe, that “there’s going to be a new world order out there, and we’ve got to lead it.”

Seven years ago, in his preface to A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North wrote:

The last quarter century of US-instigated wars must be studied as a chain of interconnected events. The strategic logic of the US drive for global hegemony extends beyond the neocolonial operations in the Middle East and Africa. The ongoing regional wars are component elements of the rapidly escalating confrontation of the United States with Russia and China.

The events of this week make one thing abundantly clear. The US’s plans for “great-power conflict” with Russia and China are leaving the planning stage and are being put into practice. Having instigated the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States is seizing upon it to carry out plans, decades in the making, to assert US hegemony through military means against nuclear-armed adversaries.

The only way out of the disaster threatening mankind is the building of a movement of the working class against war, aiming to unify the working classes of Russia, Ukraine, Europe, and the Americas against the capitalist system that is the root cause of war.

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***

 

 

 

 

 

Skyhorse Publisher Tony Lyons explains how Robert Kennedy‘s THE REAL ANTHONY FAUCI sold 1 million copies while heavily censored, recounting his exchange with the NY Times as an example, and explains why he publishes politically incorrect books.

According to Lyons,

“There’s a real corporate capture in the United States where all of these journalists are basically not doing their jobs, the government is not doing their jobs, both are just kind of working for the pharmaceutical companies and are not even willing to listen to arguments. … They have this pre-planned hit pieces that attack the concept and the author, ignore the book and the arguments.”

 

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This was originally published on TNT Radio.

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The impression given was that of a temple burgled by blaspheming reprobates.  But Australian politicians were having none of it.  A draft official document published online by an adviser to the Malaita Provincial Government of Premier Daniel Suidani suggested that China was considering some military presence in The Solomons.  In its current form, Beijing would be able to send police, armed police and military personnel.

The Canberra establishment got antsy: What were those wicked freedom-hating representatives of the Middle Kingdom up to?  This was, after all, part of the Australian backyard they were poking their noses in.  The response was predictable and quick: a promise of AU$20 million in extra aid, the creation of a spanking new radio network, budget support and an extension of the Solomons International Assistance force.

Spoon-full measures about sovereignty were readily distributed through the press outlets and public.  Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan, the sober side of government paranoia, suggested that The Solomons was at risk of losing its sovereignty to China.  Australia, in contrast, had made sure that everything it had done enhanced “the sovereignty of Pacific nations, to make sure everything we’re doing is to help and support them when it comes to their sovereignty.”  The great regional helper, and local hope.

This was so clotting in arterial richness it ignored the fact that Australia’s own sovereignty, auctioned off to US troop rotations, base expansion, nuclear-powered submarines and Pine Gap, is not an example to emulate.

Australia’s Pacific backyard has become, over time, a default extension of US power, with Australian personnel keeping their eyes peeled at the incursions of any rivals.  Australia’s relationship with the Pacific is also one governed by a traditional donor-charity relationship, lately characterised by a hunger for interference.

The most prominent interference in The Solomons, even if it came in the form of a request by various officials in the country, was the 2003 intervention by Australia to arrest the implosion of what was uncharitably termed a “failed state”.  Prime Minister John Howard stated in July 2003 that, “We know that a failed state in our region, on our doorstep will jeopardise our own security.”

Cheering on this change of heart for an intervention was the Australian Strategic and Policy Institute, Washington’s cashed-up megaphone in Canberra.  The situation had, wrote Elsina Wainwright with stern warning, “paralysed the country’s capital, stifled its economy, disrupted government, discouraged aid donors, and inflicted suffering and hardship on its people.  It had virtually ceased to function as an effective national entity.”

The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was marketed as an exercise of generous paternalism, speckled with good traces of self-interest.  It signalled a sharp departure from Australia’s previous policy that had been more disposed to the sovereignty of South Pacific states, if only because keeping one’s hands clean was a good idea.

With Canberra now more concerned about the possible exercises of independence by their Pacific neighbours, the desire to guide and meddle is stronger than ever.  In late 2017, the Solomon Islands again featured in aggressive Australian efforts to influence the award of the contract to build an undersea internet cable between Honiara and Sydney.

The sovereignty of the island state was less significant then than ensuring that China’s Huawei Marine were not involved in the process.  Jonathan Pryke of the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Island Program summed the matter up: “This was seen as a red line that Australia would not cross and so we jumped in with a better deal providing the cable as a grant that would be implemented with a procurement partner of Australia’s choosing – that wouldn’t be Chinese.”

Local politics is also playing its part.  Solomon Islands Opposition Leader Matthew Wale has not been shy in claiming that the Australians have been asleep.  Last year, he attempted to wake Canberra from its slumber regarding a potential national security agreement with Beijing.  “I have intimated as much to the Australian High Commissioner and officials that this was in the offing, even as far back as last year – the indications were there and the Australian government did nothing about it – so I’m extremely disappointed.”

The penny should have dropped in November when Canberra hastily deployed police and military personnel to Honiara to help pacify anti-government riots.  At the time, Beijing had made murmurings of a possible deployment of law enforcement personnel.  This did not prevent a team of Chinese police officers being sent to the Solomon Islands last month, wordily known as the People’s Republic of China Public Security Bureau’s Solomon  Islands Policing Advisory Group.  Their mission: to aid the local police force to improve their “anti-riot capabilities”.

Wale is hoping that the bilateral security agreement between Honiara and Canberra can be refashioned and expanded as a weapon against any Chinese military presence.  In a rather rambling statement, he claimed that his country had “benefited from that treaty with Australia, what does that treaty not able to give us, maybe that should be a subject of discussions with Australia, New Zealand as opposed to going into a new treaty altogether with China.”

The concern about Beijing is not uniformly shared, even within the ranks of the Australian government.  Liberal MP Warren Entsch is optimistic about the inevitable demise of the Beijing-Honiara draft agreement.  “There’s lots of things happening there that we can continue to work with them”.  He regularly came across “Chinese announcements, but at the end of the day I’m yet to see anything come to fruition.”

Some of the politicians of the South Pacific are already realising that money and rewards can be made from such concerns.  Paranoia can provide a rich quarry to mine.  It’s time to cash in, and the governors of Solomon Islands should be advised to do so.  To obtain resources and aid from both Beijing and Canberra would suggest an advanced form of admirable, sparkling cunning.

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

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The conviction of the nurse RaDonda Vaught for negligent homicide on March 25 in Nashville, Tennessee, was a profoundly meaningful event highlighting the institutional collapse of medicine in the United States. The use of the long arm of the law to blame the consequences of the privatization of medicine on nurses has dark implications as to what may be ahead for us when the use of hospitals to inject citizens with dangerous COVID-19 vaccines can no longer be suppressed and a scapegoat must be found.

Vaught delivered the wrong medication to a patient who then died as a result. Vaught clearly had no intention to harm the patient, although she should have checked the condition of the patient regularly after administering the medication.

The initial investigation of the incident by the nursing licensing board did not result in suspension or a loss of her license.

A year later, in 2018, Vaught was subject to a criminal investigation on the basis of a murky surprise investigation of the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, followed by state and federal investigations that threatened sanctions for the hospital.

Thus a case that would normally be handled by a civil court, if the nursing licensing board’s decision was questioned, was suddenly transformed into a criminal case.

The decision to treat this case as a crime, and to hold her personally responsible (facing three to six years of jail time) as someone with no previous convictions, was extraordinary. The conviction suggests that we are not looking at simply the misjudgment of the Nashville district attorney’s office, but rather a conspiracy within the medical establishment to direct attention away from real crimes.

The criminalization of medical mistakes by nurses, while pharmaceutical companies that develop and promote harmful drugs, or the private equity firms that buy up hospitals, strip employees of benefits and subject them to grueling hours of work are not even mentioned, suggests that something is profoundly wrong.

If nurses and doctors learned anything from this case it is that if you make a mistake you should keep it secret and act as if you were not responsible.

Hospitals today in America are run as for-profit entities that treat patients, doctors and nurses as disposable commodities. There are numerous cases of poorly paid, harried, nurses and nurses aids who make mistakes because medicine is no longer a calling but rather a means of generating short-term profits for investors and pharmaceutical companies.

If an in-depth investigation of this case had been undertaken, it would have found that responsibility for this patient death lies with the privatized Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

When Vanderbilt University Medical Center was separated from Vanderbilt University in 2014, it was put under a new board consisting of “university and academic medical center leadership, and individuals with diverse experiences and talents including clinical practice, health care education, biomedical research, biotechnology commercialization, banking, capital financing, law and other disciplines,” according to the website.

Tellingly, the new VUMC is described as “an independent entity with direct capital market access to assure it can compete effectively in the health marketplace.”

In a word, VUMC is no longer run by doctors or professors, but rather by finance.

This court decision comes, not by accident, at the very moment that the deadly implications of the mandate for COVID-19 vaccines is at last receiving broad attention after the release of the Pfizer files.

These so-called vaccines, which have no properties associated with vaccines but are loaded with dangerous mRNA and other substances, are being administered at hospitals across the nation in blatant violation of the law and of the Hippocratic Oath.

When the truth eventually is out about the injection of millions of citizens with this deadly concoction, who will be responsible for the deaths and injuries that resulted?

The media tells us that the manufactures are not liable because of an exception from liability granted by Congress. That lack of liability, however, is only true if the law granting it was passed in a legal manner, without institutional corruption, and if the law is constitutional.

Neither is the case.

The enormous institutional and ideological conflict that will break out in the United States over the COVID-19 vaccines in the future is a threat to the banks and corporations behind this operation.

When corporate media can no longer suppress the facts, it will be critical for the investment banks who launched this fraud in the first place to find patsies on whom to pin the blame.

Making nurses criminally liable for dispensing the wrong medicine could be a part of this plan to fob off the entire COVID-19 operation on the people who administered the drug at hospitals.

We can imagine a future when nurses and doctors are dragged out and humiliated in public show trials and the corporate media highlighting their inhumanity in administering these deadly drugs.

The charge would be accurate, but it would ignore the role that investment banks and the super-rich played in planning this fake pandemic and in promoting this deadly “vaccine.”

Criminalizing the acts of the doctors and nurses bares comparison with the demonization of Doctor Josef Mengele, a man labelled by the press as the “angel of death” for his experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.

There is no doubt as to the evil acts undertaken by Dr. Mengele. The rounding up and killing of millions across Europe in death camps, however, was not his responsibility. That was carried out by the Nazi Party and the German Government with the help of major pharmaceutical companies in Germany like Bayer and IG Farben, German banks, and even the American multinationals like IBM (as discussed in Edwin Black’s book IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation) and Ford Motors.

Those planners and enablers of that Holocaust were never tried and their assets (in most cases) were not confiscated.

What did those business interests gain from the massive killing of people, and specifically from the experiments of Dr. Mengele? After all, the German Research Foundation funded Mengele’s research in return for regular reports and shipments of samples.

When the full truth of COVID-19 is out, it will be clear that the hospitals of the United States were transformed into death camps where, like Jews and Gypsies at Auschwitz, citizens were innocently led to take deadly injections at the hands of doctors pledged to defend their health. Who will take the blame for this massive crime?

It is no accident that as the COVID-19 holocaust reaches its peak, criminal charges are being levelled at a nurse for negligence while all other responsible parties are let off the hook.

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This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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***

Women, particularly those in the Third World, often find themselves with limited ability to participate in community organizations and political life because of the poverty and their traditional sex role imposes on them.

On them falls sole responsibility to care for their children and other family members, especially when sick; they maintain the home, cook the meals, wash the dishes, the clothes, bathe the children, clean the house, mend the clothes. This labor becomes unending manual labor when households have no electricity (consequently, no lights, no refrigerator, no labor-saving electrical devices), and no running water.

The burden of this work impedes the social participation, self-expectations, and education of the female population.

Women in the Third World (and increasingly in the imperial First World) face problems of violence at home and in public, problems of food and water for the family, of proper shelter, and lack of health care for the family, and their own lack of access to education and, thus, work opportunities.

In Nicaragua, before the 1979 Sandinista revolution, men typically fulfilled few obligations for their children; men often abandoned the family, leaving the care to women. It was not uncommon to hear the abuse that men inflicted on women, to see women running to a neighbor for refuge.

It was not uncommon to encounter orphaned children whose mothers died in childbirth, since maternal mortality was high. Common illnesses were aggravated because there were few hospitals and, if there were, cash payment was demanded.

After the 1979 Sandinista victory, living conditions for women dramatically improved, achievements the period of neoliberal rule (1990-2006) did not completely overturn. Throughout the second Sandinista period (2007- today), the material and social position of women again made giant steps forward.

The greatest advances have been made by poor women in the rural areas and barrios, historically without safety, electricity, water and sanitation services, health care, or paved roads.

The liberation women have attained during the Sandinista era cannot be measured only by what we apply in North America: equal pay for equal work, the right to abortion, the right to affordable childcare, freedom from sexual discrimination.

Women’s liberation in Third World countries involves matters that may not appear on the surface as women’s rights issues. These include the paving of roads, improving housing, legalized land tenure, school meal programs, new clinics and hospitals, electrification, plumbing, literacy campaigns, potable water, aid programs to campesinos and crime reduction programs.

Because half of Nicaraguan families are headed by single mothers, this infrastructure development promotes the liberation and well-being of women.

Government programs that directly or indirectly shorten the hours of household drudgery free women to participate more in community life and increase their self-confidence and leadership. A country can have no greater democratic achievement than bringing about full and equal participation of women.

Women participating in 1979 Sandinista revolution. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Women’s Liberation Boosted with the FSLN’s Zero Hunger and Zero Usury Programs

These programs, launched in 2007, raise the socio-economic position of women. Zero Hunger furnishes pigs, a pregnant cow, chickens, plants, seeds, fertilizers, and building materials to women in rural areas to diversify their production, upgrade the family diet,and strengthen women-run household economies.

The agricultural assets provided are put in the woman’s name, equipping women to become more self-sufficient producers; it gives them more direct control and security over food for their children.

This breaks women’s historic dependency on male breadwinners and encourages their self-confidence. The program has aided 275,000 poor families, more than one million people (of a total of 6.6 million Nicaraguans) and has increased both their own food security and the nation’s food sovereignty.

Nicaragua now produces close to 90% of its own food, with most coming from small and medium farmers, many of them women. As Fausto Torrez of the Nicaraguan Rural Workers Association (ATC) correctly noted, “A nation that cannot feed itself is not free.”

Market in Managua selling locally produced food. [Source: tortillaconsal.com]

The Zero Usury program is a microcredit mechanism that now charges 0.5% annual interest, not the world microcredit average of 35%. More than 445,000 women have received these low-interest loans, typically three loans each.

The program not only empowers women but is a key factor reducing poverty, unlocking pools of talent, and driving diversified and sustainable growth. Many women receiving loans have turned their businesses into cooperatives, providing jobs to other women. Since 2007, about 5,900 cooperatives have formed, with 300 being women’s cooperatives.

Poverty has been reduced from 48% in 2007 to 25% and extreme poverty from 17.5% to 7%. This benefited women in particular, since single mother households suffered more from poverty. The Zero Hunger and Zero Usury programs have lessened the traditional domestic violence, given that women in poverty suffer greater risk of violence and abuse than others.

Giving Women Titles to Property Is a Step Toward Women’s Liberation

Since most Nicaraguans live by small-scale farming or by small business, possessing the title of legal ownership is a major concern. Between 2007 and 2021, the FSLN government has given out 451,250 land titles in the countryside and the city, with women making up 55% of the property-owners who benefited. Providing women with the legal title to their own land was a great step toward their economic independence.

Infrastructure Programs Expand Women’s Freedom

The Sandinista government has funded the building or renovation of 290,000 homes since 2007, free of charge for those in extreme poverty, or with interest-free long-term loans. This aided more than one million Nicaraguans, particularly single mothers, who head half of all Nicaraguan families.

In 2006 only 65% of the urban population had potable drinking water; now 92% do. Access to potable water in rural areas has doubled, from 28% to 55%. This frees women from the toilsome daily walk to the village well to carry buckets of water home to cook every meal, wash the dishes and clothes, and bathe the children. Homes connected to sewage disposal systems have grown from 30% in 2007 to 57% in 2021.

Now 99% of the population has electricity compared to 54% in 2006. As we know from experiencing electrical blackouts, electricity significantly frees our lives from time-consuming tasks. Street lighting has more than doubled, increasing security for all. Reliable home electricity enables the use of electrical labor-saving devices, such as a refrigerator.

Today, high-speed internet connects and unites most of the country, reducing people’s isolation and lack of access to information. Virtually everyone has a cell phone, and free internet is now available in many public parks.

Nicaragua’s road system is now among the best in Latin America and the Caribbean, given it has built more roads in the last 15 years than were built in the previous 200 years. Outlying towns are now connected to the national network. Now women in rural areas can travel elsewhere to work, sell their products in nearby markets, attend events in other towns, and take themselves or their children to the hospital. This contributes to the fight against poverty and the fight for women’s liberation.

New roads on the outskirts of Ésteli, Nicaragua’s third-largest city. [Source: bcie.org]

Better roads and housing, almost universal electrical and internet access, as well as indoor plumbing, greatly lessens the burdens placed on women homemakers and provide them with greater freedom to participate in the world they live in.

The Sandinista Educational System Emancipates Women

The humanitarian nature of the FSLN governments, as opposed to the disregard by previous neoliberal regimes, is revealed by statistics on illiteracy. When the FSLN revolution triumphed in 1979, illiteracy topped 56%.

Within ten years they reduced it to 12%. Yet by the end of the 16-year neoliberal period in 2006, which dismantled the free education system, illiteracy had again risen to 23%. Today the FSLN government has cut illiteracy to under 4%.

The FSLN made education completely free, eliminating school fees. This, combined with the aid programs for poor women, has allowed 100,000 children to return to school. The government began a school lunch program, a meal of beans and rice to 1.5 million school and pre-school children every day.

Pre-school, primary and secondary students are supplied with backpacks, glasses when needed, and low-income students receive uniforms at no cost. Now a much higher proportion of children are able to attend school, which provides more opportunities for mothers to work outside the home.

Nicaragua has established a nationwide free day-care system, now numbering 265 centers. Mothers can take their young children to day care, freeing them from another of the major hurdles to entering the workforce.

Due to the vastly expanded and free medical system, the  Zero Hunger, Zero Usury and other programs, chronic malnutrition in children under five has been cut in half, with chronic malnutrition in children six to twelve cut by two-thirds. Now it is rare to see kids with visible malnutrition, removing another preoccupation from mothers.

Schools and businesses never closed during the Covid pandemic, and Nicaragua’s health system has been among the most successful in the world addressing Covid. The country has the lowest number of Covid deaths per million inhabitants among all the countries of the Americas.

Nicaragua has also built a system of parks, playgrounds, and other free recreation where mothers can take their children.

Throughout the school system, the Ministry of Education promotes a culture of equal rights and non-discrimination. It has implemented the new subject “Women’s Rights and Dignities,” which teaches students about women’s right to a life without harassment and abuse and the injustices of the patriarchal system. Campaigns were launched to promote the participation of both mom and dad in a child’s education, such as emphasizing that attending school meetings or performances are shared responsibilities of both parents.

Women receive their diplomas from the National Technology Institute INATEC, where 62% of those enrolled are women. [Source:radiolaprimerisima.com]

Sandinistas’ Free Health Care System Liberates Women 

In stark contrast to Nicaragua’s neoliberal years, with its destruction of the medical system, and in contrast to other Central American countries and the United States with their privatized health care for profit, the Sandinistas have established community-based, free, preventive public health care. Accordingly, life expectancy has risen from 72 years in 2006 to 77 years today, now equal to the U.S. level.

Health care units number more than 1,700, including 1,259 health posts and 192 health centers, with one-third built since 2007. The country has 77 hospitals, with 21 new hospitals built, and 46 existing hospitals remodeled and modernized. Nicaragua provides 178 maternity homes near medical centers for expectant mothers with high-risk pregnancies or from rural areas to stay during the last weeks of pregnancy.

The United States is the richest country in the Americas, while Nicaragua is the third-poorest. Yet in the U.S. since 2010, more than 100 rural hospitals have closed, and fewer than 50% of rural women have access to pre-natal services within a 30-mile drive from their homes. This has disproportionately affected low-income women, particularly Black and Latino women.

Nicaragua has equipped 66 mobile clinics, which gave nearly 1.9 million consultations in 2020. These include cervical and breast cancer screenings, helping to cut the cervical cancer mortality rate by 34% since 2007. The number of women receiving Pap tests has increased almost five-fold, from 181,491 in 2007 to 880,907 in 2020.

In the pre-Sandinista era, one-fourth of pregnant women gave birth at home, with no doctor. There were few hospitals and pregnant women often had to travel rough dirt roads to reach a clinic or hospital. Now women need not worry about reaching a distant hospital while in labor because they can reside in a local maternity home for the last two weeks of their pregnancies and be monitored by doctors.

In 2020, 67,222 pregnant women roomed in one of these homes, and could be accompanied by their mothers or sisters. As a result, 99% of births today are in medical centers, and maternal mortality fell from 115 deaths per 100,000 births in 2006 to 36 in 2020. These are giant steps forward in the liberation of women.

Contrary to the indifference to women in the U.S., Nicaraguan mothers receive one month off work before their baby is born, and two months off after; even men get five days off work when their baby is born. Mothers also receive free milk for six months. Men and women get five paid days off work when they marry.

The Question of Abortion Rights

The law making abortion illegal, removing the “life and health of the mother” exception, was passed in the National Assembly under President Enrique Bolaños in 2006. There had been a well-organized and funded campaign by Catholics all over Latin America as well as large marches over the previous two years in Nicaragua in favor of this law.

The law, supported by 80% of the people, was proposed immediately before the presidential election as a vote-getting ploy by Bolaños. The Sandinistas were a minority in the National Assembly at the time, and the FSLN legislators were released from party discipline for the vote. The majority abstained, while several voted in favor. The law has never been implemented or rescinded.

Since the Sandinistas’ return to power in 2007 no woman or governmental or private health professional has been prosecuted for any action related to abortion. Any woman whose life is in danger receives an abortion in government health centers or hospitals. Many places exist for women to get abortions; none has been closed or attacked, and none is clandestine. The morning-after pill and contraceptive services are widely available.

Sandinista Measures to Free Women from Violence 

Nicaragua has created 102 women’s police stations, special units that include protecting women and children from sexual and domestic violence and abuse. Now women can talk to female police officers about crimes committed against them, whether it be abuse or rape, making it easier and more comfortable for women to file complaints, receive counseling for trauma, and ensure that violent crimes against women are prosecuted in a thorough and timely manner.

Women make up 34.3% of the 16,399 National Police officers, a high number for a police department. For instance, New York City and Los Angeles police are 18% women and Chicago is 23%.

The United Nations finds Nicaragua the safest country in Central America, with the lowest homicide rate, 7.2 per 100,000 (down from 13.4 in 2006), less than half the regional average of 19.

It also has the lowest rate of femicides in Central America (0.7 per 100,000), another testament to the Sandinista commitment to ending mistreatment of women.  The government organizes citizen-security assemblies to raise consciousness concerning violence against women and to handle the vulnerabilities women face in the family and community. Mifamilia, the Ministry of the Family, carries out house-to-house visits to stress prevention of violence against women and sexual abuse of children.

Nicaragua is the most successful regional country in combating drug trafficking and organized crime, freeing women from the insecurity that plagues women in places such as Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.

Women’s Leadership in the Nicaragua Government

The progress women have made during the second FSLN era is reflected in their participation in government. The 1980s’ Sandinista directorate contained no women. In 2007, the second Sandinista government mandated equal representation for women, ensuring that at least 50% of public offices would be filled by women, from the national level to the municipal.

Today, 9 out of 16 national government cabinet ministers are women. Women head the Supreme Electoral Council, the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s office, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and account for 60% of judges. Women make up half of the National Assembly, of mayors, of vice-mayors and of municipal council members. Women so represented in high positions provides a model and inspires all women and girls to participate in building a new society with more humane human relations.

Source: ipu.org

No Greater Democratic Victory Than the Liberation of Women

The progress made in women’s liberation is seen in the Global Gender Gap Index: In 2007, Nicaragua ranked 90^th on the index; by 2020, it had jumped to 5^th place, exceeded only by Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

Nicaragua is a country that has accomplished the most in liberating women from household drudgery and domestic slavery because of its policies favoring the social and political participation and economic advancement of poor women.

Women have gained a women’s police commissariat, legal recognition of their property, new homes for abused women and for poor single mothers, economic programs that empower poorer women, abortion is not criminalized in practice, half of all political candidates and public office holders are women, extreme poverty has been cut by half, mostly benefiting women and children, domestic toil has been greatly reduced because of modernized national infrastructure, women have convenient and free health care.

In their liberation struggle, Nicaraguan women are becoming ever more self-sufficient and confident in enforcing their long-neglected human rights. They are revolutionizing their collective self-image and ensuring their central role in building a new society. This betters the working class and campesinos as a whole by improving the quality of life for all and is a vital weapon in combating U.S. economic warfare.

As Lenin observed, “The experience of all liberation movements has shown that the success of a revolution depends on how much the women take part in it.” Nicaragua is one more living example that a new world is possible.

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Stansfield Smith is a member of Chicago ALBA Solidarity, formerly the Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5. He has published in Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Monthly Review online, and other websites. Smith is a long time anti-war activist, and opposed U.S. interference over the years in Latin America. He produces AFGJ’s Venezuela & ALBA Weekly News. Stan’s website is ChicagoALBASolidarity.org and he can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from telesurenglish.net

“Grocery Stores are Partially Empty”: Biden Tells Americans They Will Go Hungry. Blames it on Russia

By Kurt Nimmo, March 28, 2022

The grocery store shelves are partially empty, thanks largely to the Covid lockdowns and restrictions, but if Joe Biden and his warmongering neocons have their way, the shelves will be almost completely empty. Americans are about to pay for the ruling elite’s decision to sanction Russia.

Polish Brinkmanship: De Facto Leader Settling Score with Putin

By Nauman Sadiq, March 28, 2022

Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the twin brother of the late President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash at Smolensk, Russia, in 2010 along with 95 other Poles, among them political and military leaders, as they traveled to commemorate the Katyn massacre that occurred during the Second World War.

Attorney Brent Wisner Tells RFK, Jr.: Drugmakers Knew Zantac Caused Cancer But Sold It Anyway for 40 Years

By Susan C. Olmstead, March 28, 2022

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense, interviewed Brent Wisner, an award-winning mass tort litigator with Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, who is representing plaintiffs who allegedly developed cancer after taking Zantac. The plaintiffs are suing the pharmaceutical companies that sold the drug.

Treating Canada’s Freedom Convoy Truckers and Their Supporters as Terrorists

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, March 28, 2022

Calgary’s Street Church Pastor, Arthur Pawlowski, clearly has a target painted on his back by the police state apparatchik of COVID officialdom. Pastor Pawlowski recently received bail after sitting in jail for 45 days including 23 of solitary confinement. See this.

Ukraine-Russia and the World Economic Forum (WEF). A Planned Milestone Towards “The Great Reset”?

By Peter Koenig, March 28, 2022

The currently ongoing and devastating Ukraine-Russia war is the result of such power obsession. Let’s look back and analyze what may unfold, when we connect the dots; how the WEF may be crucially involved in this war. A war of Power towards the Great Reset?

The MADness of the Resurgent U.S. Cold War with Russia

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 28, 2022

If Americans just echo U.S. propaganda, deny our own country’s role in provoking this crisis and turn all our ire towards President Putin and Russia, it will only serve to fuel the escalating tensions and bring on the next phase of this conflict, whatever dangerous new form that may take.

On US Imperialism’s Proxy War with Russia in Ukraine

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, March 28, 2022

The US refused to acknowledge that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine, and repeatedly in 2021 refused when asked to clarify. Encouraged by these US statements and actions, Ukrainian president, Zelensky, became more strident in his request for US military protection, membership into NATO, and even began publicly saying Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons.

How the Anti-Russian Sanctions Were Planned

By Nick Beams, March 28, 2022

Details of the considerable planning that went into the sanctions, involving the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and top intelligence and military personnel, together with EU officials, were revealed in an article published in the Wall Street Journal on March 18.

Leading Provider of Financial Research Says US Is Headed for Third World Status

By Charles Gave and Kristina Borjesson, March 28, 2022

Americans and anyone living in the US should listen intently to this one because according to Charles Gave of Gavekal, one of the world’s leading independent providers of financial research, there are very tough times ahead for us all. He explains how the US has triggered the dollar’s demise, lost reserve currency hegemony, and has hallmarks of a third world country.

Hunter Biden Did Help Secure Millions in Funding for US Contractor in Ukraine Specializing in Deadly Pathogen Research, Laptop Emails Reveal, Raising More Questions About the Disgraced Son of Then Vice President

By Josh Boswell, March 28, 2022

Moscow’s claim that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine is at least partially true, according to new emails obtained exclusively by DailyMail.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).

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“Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours…. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”—Professor Neil Postman

Once again, the programming has changed.

Like clockwork, the wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis has shifted gears.

We have gone from COVID-19 lockdowns to Trump-Biden election drama to the Russia-Ukraine crisis to the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearings to Will Smith’s on-camera assault of comedian Chris Rock at the Academy Awards Ceremony.

The distractions, distortions, and political theater just keep coming.

The ongoing reality show that is life in the American police state feeds the citizenry’s voracious appetite for titillating, soap opera drama.

Much like the fabricated universe in Peter Weir’s 1998 film The Truman Show, in which a man’s life is the basis for an elaborately staged television show aimed at selling products and procuring ratings, the political scene in the United States has devolved over the years into a carefully calibrated exercise in how to manipulate, polarize, propagandize and control a population.

This is the magic of the reality TV programming that passes for politics today: as long as we are distracted, entertained, occasionally outraged, always polarized but largely uninvolved and content to remain in the viewer’s seat, we’ll never manage to present a unified front against tyranny (or government corruption and ineptitude) in any form.

The more that is beamed at us, the more inclined we are to settle back in our comfy recliners and become passive viewers rather than active participants as unsettling, frightening events unfold.

We don’t even have to change the channel when the subject matter becomes too monotonous. That’s taken care of for us by the programmers (the corporate media).

“Living is easy with eyes closed,” observed John Lennon, and that’s exactly what reality TV that masquerades as American politics programs the citizenry to do: navigate the world with their eyes shut.

As long as we’re viewers, we’ll never be doers.

Studies suggest that the more reality TV people watch—and I would posit that it’s all reality TV, entertainment news included—the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between what is real and what is carefully crafted farce.

“We the people” are watching a lot of TV.

On average, Americans spend five hours a day watching television. By the time we reach age 65, we’re watching more than 50 hours of television a week, and that number increases as we get older. And reality TV programming consistently captures the largest percentage of TV watchers every season by an almost 2-1 ratio.

This doesn’t bode well for a citizenry able to sift through masterfully-produced propaganda in order to think critically about the issues of the day, whether it’s fake news peddled by government agencies or foreign entities.

Those who watch reality shows tend to view what they see as the “norm.” Thus, those who watch shows characterized by lying, aggression and meanness not only come to see such behavior as acceptable and entertaining but also mimic the medium.

This holds true whether the reality programming is about the antics of celebrities in the White House, in the board room, or in the bedroom.

It’s a phenomenon called “humilitainment.”

A term coined by media scholars Brad Waite and Sara Booker, “humilitainment” refers to the tendency for viewers to take pleasure in someone else’s humiliation, suffering and pain.

“Humilitainment” largely explains not only why American TV watchers are so fixated on reality TV programming but how American citizens, largely insulated from what is really happening in the world around them by layers of technology, entertainment, and other distractions, are being programmed to accept the government’s brutality, surveillance and dehumanizing treatment as things happening to other people.

The ramifications for the future of civic engagement, political discourse and self-government are incredibly depressing and demoralizing.

This explains how we keep getting saddled with leaders in government who are clueless about the Constitution and out-of-touch with the needs of the people they were appointed to represent.

This is also what happens when an entire nation—bombarded by reality TV programming, government propaganda and entertainment news—becomes systematically desensitized and acclimated to the trappings of a government that operates by fiat and speaks in a language of force.

Ultimately, the reality shows, the entertainment news, the surveillance society, the militarized police, and the political spectacles have one common objective: to keep us divided, distracted, imprisoned, and incapable of taking an active role in the business of self-government.

Look behind the political spectacles, the reality TV theatrics, the sleight-of-hand distractions and diversions, and the stomach-churning, nail-biting drama, and you will find there is a method to the madness.

We have become guinea pigs in a ruthlessly calculated, carefully orchestrated, chillingly cold-blooded experiment in how to control a population and advance a political agenda without much opposition from the citizenry.

This is mind-control in its most sinister form.

How do you change the way people think? You start by changing the words they use.

In totalitarian regimes where conformity and compliance are enforced at the end of a loaded gun, the government dictates what words can and cannot be used.

In countries where tyranny hides behind a benevolent mask and disguises itself as tolerance, the citizens censor themselves, policing their words and thoughts to conform to the dictates of the mass mind.

Even when the motives behind this rigidly calibrated reorientation of societal language appear well-intentioned—discouraging racism, condemning violence, denouncing discrimination and hatred—inevitably, the end result is the same: intolerance, indoctrination, infantilism, the chilling of free speech and the demonizing of viewpoints that run counter to the cultural elite.

As George Orwell recognized, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Orwell understood only too well the power of language to manipulate the masses.

In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.” In this dystopian vision of the future, the Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the Ministry of Peace deals with war and defense, the Ministry of Plenty deals with economic affairs (rationing and starvation), the Ministry of Love deals with law and order (torture and brainwashing), and the Ministry of Truth deals with news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda). The mottos of Oceania: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Orwell’s Big Brother relied on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.

Where we stand now is at the juncture of Oldspeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted).

Truth is often lost when we fail to distinguish between opinion and fact, and that is the danger we now face as a society. Anyone who relies exclusively on television/cable news hosts and political commentators for actual knowledge of the world is making a serious mistake.

Unfortunately, since Americans have by and large become non-readers, television has become their prime source of so-called “news.” This reliance on TV news has given rise to such popular news personalities who draw in vast audiences that virtually hang on their every word.

In our media age, these are the new powers-that-be.

Yet while these personalities often dispense the news like preachers used to dispense religion, with power and certainty, they are little more than conduits for propaganda and advertisements delivered in the guise of entertainment and news.

Given the preponderance of news-as-entertainment programming, it’s no wonder that viewers have largely lost the ability to think critically and analytically and differentiate between truth and propaganda, especially when delivered by way of fake news criers and politicians.

While television news cannot—and should not—be completely avoided, the following suggestions will help you better understand the nature of TV news.

1. TV news is not what happened. Rather, it is what someone thinks is worth reporting. Although there are still some good TV journalists, the old art of investigative reporting has largely been lost. While viewers are often inclined to take what is reported by television “news” hosts at face value, it is your responsibility to judge and analyze what is reported.

2. TV news is entertainment. There is a reason why the programs you watch are called news “shows.” It’s a signal that the so-called news is being delivered as a form of entertainment. “In the case of most news shows,” write Neil Postman and Steve Powers in their insightful book, How to Watch TV News (1992), “the package includes attractive anchors, an exciting musical theme, comic relief, stories placed to hold the audience, the creation of the illusion of intimacy, and so on.”

Of course, the point of all this glitz and glamour is to keep you glued to the set so that a product can be sold to you. (Even the TV news hosts get in on the action by peddling their own products, everything from their latest books to mugs and bathrobes.) Although the news items spoon-fed to you may have some value, they are primarily a commodity to gather an audience, which will in turn be sold to advertisers.

3. Never underestimate the power of commercials, especially to news audiences. In an average household, the television set is on over seven hours a day. Most people, believing themselves to be in control of their media consumption, are not really bothered by this. But TV is a two-way attack: it not only delivers programming to your home, it also delivers you (the consumer) to a sponsor.

People who watch the news tend to be more attentive, educated and have more money to spend. They are, thus, a prime market for advertisers. And sponsors spend millions on well-produced commercials. Such commercials are often longer in length than most news stories and cost more to produce than the news stories themselves. Moreover, the content of many commercials, which often contradicts the messages of the news stories, cannot be ignored. Most commercials are aimed at prurient interests in advocating sex, overindulgence, drugs, etc., which has a demoralizing effect on viewers, especially children.

4. It is vitally important to learn about the economic and political interests of those who own the “corporate” media. There are few independent news sources anymore. The major news outlets are owned by corporate empires.

5. Pay special attention to the language of newscasts. Because film footage and other visual imagery are so engaging on TV news shows, viewers are apt to allow language—what the reporter is saying about the images—to go unexamined. A TV news host’s language frames the pictures, and, therefore, the meaning we derive from the picture is often determined by the host’s commentary. TV by its very nature manipulates viewers. One must never forget that every television minute has been edited. The viewer does not see the actual event but the edited form of the event. For example, presenting a one- to two-minute segment from a two-hour political speech and having a TV talk show host critique may be disingenuous, but such edited footage is a regular staple on news shows. Add to that the fact that the reporters editing the film have a subjective view—sometimes determined by their corporate bosses—that enters in.

6. Reduce by at least one-half the amount of TV news you watch. TV news generally consists of “bad” news—wars, torture, murders, scandals and so forth. It cannot possibly do you any harm to excuse yourself each week from much of the mayhem projected at you on the news. Do not form your concept of reality based on television. TV news, it must be remembered, does not reflect normal everyday life. Studies indicate that a heavy viewing of TV news makes people think the world is much more dangerous than it actually is.

7. One of the reasons many people are addicted to watching TV news is that they feel they must have an opinion on almost everything, which gives the illusion of participation in American life. But an “opinion” is all that we can gain from TV news because it only presents the most rudimentary and fragmented information on anything. Thus, on most issues we don’t really know much about what is actually going on. And, of course, we are expected to take what the TV news host says on an issue as gospel truth. But isn’t it better to think for yourself? Add to this that we need to realize that we often don’t have enough information from the “news” source to form a true opinion. How can that be done? Study a broad variety of sources, carefully analyze issues in order to be better informed, and question everything.

The bottom line is simply this: Americans should beware of letting others—whether they be television news hosts, political commentators or media corporations—do their thinking for them.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, a populace that cannot think for themselves is a populace with its backs to the walls: mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all.

It’s time to change the channel, tune out the reality TV show, and push back against the real menace of the police state.

If not, if we continue to sit back and lose ourselves in political programming, we will remain a captive audience to a farce that grows more absurd by the minute.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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

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Two years in the making, John C. A. Manley’s long-awaited novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story, will be released to the world during a Vaccine Choice Canada live online event on March 30, 2020 at 7 pm EDT. In a way only fiction can depict, this 500-page novel exposes the inhumanity of the COVID-19 deception and portrays the courageous non-compliance required to stop it.

“Much Ado About Corona weaves a fascinating, entertaining, and sometimes very sad story, full of irony and subtle humour,” says Dr. Éva Székely, retired psychologist, and author of Never Too Thin, “The protagonist’s narrative is full of sarcasm, openness and directness. Heart warming and outright hilarious.”

“With the dawn of COVID-19,” says author John C. A. Manley, “it was apparent that wordsmiths serving the established power had been hard at work coming up with a narrative, and even a new normal language, to lure people into accepting medical dictatorship. To counter the onslaught of this well-prepared attack on the minds and hearts of humanity, I began writing Much Ado About Corona at the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020.”

Manley’s “dystopian love story” begins shortly after that first lockdown ends in the fictional Canadian town of Moosehead, Northern Ontario. Twenty-four-year-old Vincent McKnight emerges from three months of stay-at-home orders into a surreal new normal of multi-coloured face masks, acrid hand sanitizers, and germaphobic neighbours standing six feet apart.

The new normal becomes even stranger when Vince’s Indigenous grandfather sends him to buy a loaf of bread from the town’s new baker. Stefanie Müller speaks five languages, has beautiful blue eyes… and is a certified conspiracy theorist. She believes the pandemic is a hoax being perpetrated to justify totalitarian “public health” measures.

But when the local cop pulls out his taser, Stefanie’s dystopian premonitions no longer seem so theoretical. And when the restrictions threaten Granddad’s life, Vince finds himself going face-to-mask with the emerging police state—forced to choose whether to follow senseless rules or to follow his pounding heart.

Former writer, director and producer of CTV’s W-5, CBC’s Beachcombers and NBC’s Dateline, Patrick Corbett, says: “Sometimes fiction is the best way to get the truth across. Shakespeare and Charles Dickens knew that and so does John Manley. He has crafted a ripping story of courage, awakening and love (with some good laughs thrown in) all in the time of COVID. As with the truth, you won’t want to put Much Ado About Corona down.”

John C. A. Manley launched one of the first websites to question the COVID measures. He’s worked as a freelance ghostwriter for over a decade, often writing on behalf of health professionals.

Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story is his debut novel and will be available in ebook and paperback formats from Amazon on March 30, 2022; followed by hardcover a week later, with distribution expanding to other retailers. One can register for the live event at wed.vaccinechoicecanada.com or find out more about the novel at muchadoaboutcorona.ca/the-novel

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The chaos we see around us every day is not arbitrary chaos. It is organized chaos.

It results from the fact that almost no one wants to take responsibility for their own lives and for the larger life of the planet and the biosphere.

Therefore, those whose desire is to control — fill the vacuum.

Everyone wants someone else to ‘take responsibility.’

They believe that their ‘freedom’ would be lost if they themselves took responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Imagine: take responsibility for the way food is produced, for your health and the health of planetary ecosystems. Suddenly — no shopping at the supermarket. Supermarkets destroy food, the environment, the soil in which food is grown, and human health.

All because — like all global corporations — they put profit and power ahead of people, ecology and the well-being of all living things.

So no more supermarket shopping — what’s next?

Take a responsible stand on EMF/RMF pollution — and suddenly — no cell phone!

Radiating yourself and those around you with electromagnetic waves is designed to ensure the continued deterioration of the health of all concerned – including the environment in which we live.

There are thousands of peer-reviewed scientific publications supporting this thesis.

Adopt a responsible attitude toward healthy living? The list is too long, but let’s start with reducing dependence on pharmaceuticals. Big Pharma is the richest killer in the world. Do we want to support it and kill ourselves at the same time?

Take a responsible position towards the leadership of your country — and suddenly you are amazed to find that no one meets the criteria needed for wise and responsible leadership. They are all power-hungry careerists.

And so on, and so forth…

The chaos we see around us has — more than most people would like to admit — a lot to do with ourselves. We are addicted to ‘passing the buck’.

So what do we do when there is an actual loss of what we call ‘our basic freedoms’ — our customary way of life?

We curse the government we ourselves elected — and demand another.

This ‘other’ is always worse than the previous one. Have you noticed?

And yet we keep dreaming — it MUST be better.

It is this — our delusional state of mind — that allows criminals to reach the highest positions of power.

It is so easy for them. They see that very few want to take responsibility for their lives — for life — so they fill that vacuum.

And then suddenly war breaks out. Everyone is desperately trying to figure out — who is responsible for this war?

They find every possible answer except the one that says: “we are”.

We who have turned away from taking responsibility for the life we inherited on this planet.

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Julian Rose is a an organic farmer, writer and international activist. He is co-founder of The Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology (HARE) and President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside: www.julianrose.info

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Pixabay

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David Petraeus, the disgraced general and former head of the CIA, recently told ABC’s “This Week” the “heroic” people of Mariupol, Ukraine are “fighting to the last defender, and pinning down multiple Russian battalions and doing so very heroically. But ultimately, it looks as if it’s going to have to collapse, it’s going to be taken. And when it does that is a moment of some peril for Ukraine, because now that port can be used by the Russians,” Newsweek reports.

Petraeus, of course, left out an important detail about the city of Mariupol, located on the Sea of Azov, an arm of the Black Sea. The besieged city is home base for the Azov Battalion, now known as the Azov Special Operations Detachment, a group of violent Neo-Nazis. Andriy Biletsky, the original commander of the far rightwing paramilitary, has said he believes the mission of Ukraine is to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade… against Semite-led subhumans.”

Members of the group wear Nazi insignia and blazon, including SS rune symbols. The Azov Battalion insignia features the Wolfsangel symbol, inspired by medieval wolf traps, and later adopted by the Nazis as a heraldry charge. The Wolfsangel was used by the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, an elite division of the Waffen-SS.

“Azov Battalion is reportedly a unit of the NGU [the National Guard of Ukraine], backed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Huang Lanlan and Cui Fandi reported for Global Times on March 7. “Despite its possible official background in Ukraine, Azov Battalion is known in the West for its extreme neo-Nazi stance, and for its suspected involvement in a number of terrorist attacks and separatist incitement incidents in various countries and regions, including the riots in China’s Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in 2019.”

 

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in a report dated May 15, 2016, details kidnappings, torture, rape, disappearances, and other violent acts committed by the Azov Battalion, as well as crimes committed by members of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, lately recognized by Russia.

The corporate media, prior to the Russian “de-nazification” incursion, ran stories on this group of white supremacists. However, because much of the corporate media is essentially state-run propaganda media, we now hear little about the Azov Battalion.

In fact, the propaganda media now insists the group is at the forefront of the effort to defeat Russia.

“There were no Nazi battalions roaming around the streets and trying to embed into [the government] system, as the Kremlin is trying to portray,” Ruslan Leviev, an analyst with the Conflict Intelligence Team, a group of investigative journalists tracking the Russian military in Ukraine, told CBS News.

Mariupol is a city of nearly a half million people. It is largely socialist and communist. The city’s political parties are pro-Russian; at the turn of the century, the Party of Regions (the largest party in Ukraine) dominated the City Council, followed by the Socialist Party of Ukraine.

Despite this, and contrary to corporate propaganda and the assertion made by Biletsky, the Azov Battalion served as a police detachment in Mariupol prior to its incorporation into the Ukrainian national guard. In other words, these violent, fanatical neo-Nazis were “roaming the streets” of Mariupol, and undoubtedly spreading their racist ideology. The OHCHR report underscores the repeated use of “arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment” that “remain deeply entrenched practices” by Azov and the state government in Kyiv. (See “You Don’t Exist, Arbitrary Detentions, Enforced Disappearances, and Torture in Eastern Ukraine,”Human Rights Watch, July 21, 2016.)

As history demonstrates, the CIA prefers radical, fanatical, and brutal groups to carry out its subversion operations abroad, thus the Azov Battalion is a natural. “Russian President Vladimir Putin’s accusation that Ukraine advocated Nazism, the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion seemed proof of his claim. But further research seems to implicate the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in establishing and funding the white supremacist paramilitary,” Israel 365 reported in early March.

Beginning in January 2022, the CIA began secretly training the Azov Battalion and the Ukrainian military for war, according to a story posted by a national security correspondent for Yahoo News earlier this month.

According to the Global Times,

The multi-week program includes training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like “cover and move,” intelligence and other areas, said the former officials. In addition to the above-mentioned, the CIA also started “traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise their counterparts there by 2015,” Yahoo reported.

That same year, the Global Times noted, Congress

removed a ban on funding neo-Nazi groups like Azov Battalion from its year-end spending bill, said an article by The Nation magazine in January 2016. In July 2015, two Congressmen drew up an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill that limited “arms, training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov Battalion,” but the amendment was removed in November following “pressure from the Pentagon,” an insider told The Nation.

The CIA’s “Ground Department,” the latest permutation of the agency’s former “special operations” (subversion, overturning elections, assassinating foreign leaders), has been in eastern Ukraine since at least 2016. Officers of the Ground Department, according to Jack Murphy at SoFrep, are “among the baddest-ass military units—SEALs, Marine Force Recon, Air Force parajumpers, and the Army’s Combat Applications Group (formerly known as Delta Force).” However, according to the author, the CIA prefers to use the “quiet professionals” assigned to the US Army’s Special Forces unit.

In short, the CIA is sending professional killers and mass murder technicians to assist the Azov Battalion and the Zelenskyy government military in its terror and ethnic cleansing campaign in Donbas.

No longer able to fight conventional war against its adversaries—taking into consideration the “failures” of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria—the US decided some time ago to fight wars by proxy. Afghanistan and Pakistan under the directorship of William Casey are a case in point. The US funded and Pakistan trained tribal mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, later including al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, in their jihad against the Soviet Union’s western influence and its government in Kabul.

In July, 1992, published in the CIA’s newspaper, The Washington Post, we learn

Casey’s visit was a prelude to a secret Reagan administration decision in March 1985, reflected in National Security Decision Directive 166, to sharply escalate U.S. covert action in Afghanistan, according to Western officials. Abandoning a policy of simple harassment of Soviet occupiers, the Reagan team decided secretly to let loose on the Afghan battlefield an array of U.S. high technology and military expertise in an effort to hit and demoralize Soviet commanders and soldiers. Casey saw it as a prime opportunity to strike at an overextended, potentially vulnerable Soviet empire. (Emphasis mine.)

The CIA is involved in training and arming Ukraine’s fiercest fighters, that is to say primarily fanatical anti-Russian nationalists and neo-Nazis. They are on the frontline of the stalled effort to cleanse the Donbas of its Russian-speaking inhabitants and reclaim the territory for the government in Kyiv.

An example may be the largely unverified reports of Ukrainian marksmen killing a number of Russian generals. If true, the murderous handiwork of the US Army Marksmanship Unit comes to mind.

If we judge past history, we should assume many if not most of the weapons now flooding into Ukraine are being supplied by the United States. As of this writing, those weapons include the “Javelin, a shoulder-held anti-tank weapon that shoots heat-seeking rockets hurtling towards targets up to 4km (2.5 miles) away,” and other armaments, including “drones that can be turned into flying bombs and anti-aircraft weapons that can shoot helicopters from the sky,” in other words, the latest military tech.

Any rational person would conclude that by directly aiding and arming Ukraine and its nationalists and neo-nazis, we are currently at work with Russia. Vladimir Putin has said as much.

“These sanctions that are being imposed are akin to a declaration of war but thank God it has not come to that,” Putin said, warning that any country that imposes a no-fly zone over Ukraine is inviting retaliation.

“We will immediately consider them as participants in a military conflict, and it doesn’t matter members of which organizations they are,” Putin said. “It is impossible to do it, on the very territory of Ukraine, it’s possible only from the territory of some neighboring states. But any movement in this direction will be considered by us as participation in an armed conflict.” (Emphasis mine.)

So, here we are, at a momentary stalemate, if media reports can believed, and nobody knows how far the cerebrally deficient Biden will go. He has already slandered Putin, calling him a “butcher,” “war criminal,” and a “murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine.”

For some, this sort of cartoonish rhetoric equals fighting words. For now we are spared the horrific prospect of nuclear war, no matter how limited, or “dialed down” the nukes are.

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***

The West, following the lead of the United States, has reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by introducing a “crippling” regime of sanctions. It is a “total economic and financial war” aimed at “caus[ing] the collapse of the Russian economy”, the French finance minister Bruno Le Maire candidly admitted. And yet many of the current sanctions appear to be run-of-the-mill restrictions used against several countries in the past. A number of them — including export bans and the freezing of certain assets — have been imposed on Russia since its annexation of Crimea in 2014. Even the much-discussed exclusion of a number of Russian banks from the main international banking message system, SWIFT, is not new, having already been used against Iran, with mixed results.

The most controversial aspect of the new sanctions regime is without a doubt the freezing of Russia’s offshore gold and foreign-exchange reserves — about half of its overall reserves — but even this is not unprecedented: last year, the US froze foreign reserves held by Afghanistan’s central bank in order to prevent the Taliban from accessing its funds; the US has also previously frozen the foreign-exchange reserves of Iran, Syria, and Venezuela.

So, taken individually, these measures are not as exceptional as they’ve been portrayed. However, never before have so many sanctions been deployed at once: there are already 6,000 various Western sanctions imposed on Russia, which is more than those in existence against Iran, Syria and North Korea put together. Even more importantly, none of the previous targets of sanctions were remotely as powerful as Russia — a member of the G20, and the world’s largest nuclear power.

Likewise, none of the 63 central banks that are members of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel — known as the central bank of central banks — has ever been the target of financial sanctions. The BIS itself has even joined in on the sanctions in order to prevent Russia’s access to its offshore reserves. This really is unprecedented: since its establishment in 1931, the BIS had never taken such a measure, not even during World War II.

 

 

So what should we expect from the sanctions?

Western pundits and commentators have little doubt: the sanctions will hamstring the Russian economy, sow discontent among the Russian people and elites alike, and possibly even cause the downfall of the Putin regime.

At the very least, we’re told, they will hinder Russia’s war efforts. But history suggests otherwise: see Iraq, or more recently Iran. Far more likely is that this turns out to be the latest Western strategic miscalculation in a long list of strategic blunders, of which the United States’ inglorious withdrawal from Afghanistan is just the most recent example.

After all, Russia has been preparing for this moment for quite some time. Following the first wave of Western sanctions, in 2014, and partly in retaliation against them, Putin embarked on what analysts have dubbed a “Fortress Russia” strategy, building up the country’s international reserves and diversifying them away from US dollars and British pounds, reducing its foreign exposure, boosting its economic cooperation with China, and pursuing import substitution strategies in several industries, including food, medicine and technology, in an effort to insulate Russia as much as possible from external shocks.

True, Putin made the mistake of leaving around half of those reserves parked in foreign central banks, resulting in these now being confiscated. But nonetheless Russia still has access to more than $300 billion in gold and foreign-exchange reserves — more than most countries in the world and more than enough to cushion any short-term fall in exports, or prop up the ruble (for a while).

 

Moreover, 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.

These measures are aimed at bolstering the ruble’s value and providing a flow of foreign exchange into the country. They appear to be working: while the ruble is around 40% of its value since the start of the conflict, the Russian currency’s free-fall seems to have come to a halt for now, even registering an uptick over the past two weeks. For the time being, Russia’s financial account — the difference between the money flowing in and out of the country — is far from disastrous.

Let’s not forget that the main source of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves — oil and gas exports — has been excluded from the sanctions, for obvious reasons: for most European countries, Russia accounts for a huge part of their oil and gas imports (and other staple commodities), and there’s simply no way of replacing those energy sources from one day to the next.

In short, Russia runs no risk, in the short term, of running out of reserves and not being able to pay for its imports. But even assuming that the West decided to put a stop to all its imports from Russia overnight, there’s no reason to believe that this would bring the Russian military machine to a halt. The notion that “we are financing Russia’s war by purchasing gas and oil”, as the Finnish prime minister recently stated, is fundamentally misplaced.

As the economist Dirk Ehnts has observed, the Russian military machine, for the most part, doesn’t rely on imports (if anything, Russia is an arms exporter). It is sourced domestically and, like the salaries of its soldiers, is paid for in roubles, which the Russian central bank can create in an unlimited quantity, just as the Bank of England does when it comes to pounds.

Equally unfounded are rumours of an impending Russian default. In recent years, the Russian government has taken steps to reduce its foreign liabilities: its foreign currency-denominated debt amounts today to about $40 billion — a tiny amount compared with the size of Russia’s yearly exports of more than $200 billion in oil and gas. Any decision to default would be entirely political. We mustn’t forget that the very creditors expecting to be paid back in dollars are the same that have just confiscated a good part of Russia’s dollars — if the latter were to default on their payments, it would be an even bigger problem for their Western creditors. As with Russia’s oil exports, hurting Russia inevitably means hurting ourselves as well.

Moreover, thanks to the Russian government’s successful efforts at boosting domestic agricultural production, domestic food production now accounts for more than 80% of retail sales, up from 60% in 2014. This means Russia is largely self-sufficient food-wise. So even if its export revenues were to plummet (which is unlikely), the country wouldn’t go hungry — unlike the rest of the world — and would most likely be able to continue to finance its war efforts.

Might a selective ban on exports of specific high-tech Western components, some of which are bound to be used in Russia’s defence industry, prove more effective? Possibly. But Russia has been reducing the dependence of its military-industrial apparatus on foreign components and technologies for years. More importantly, both hypotheses — that Russia’s economy and military can be brought to their knees through export and/or import bans — rest on the flawed assumption that the whole world is on board with the sanctions. But that is far from the case.

While most of the world’s nations — 143 out of 193 — voted for a resolution in the UN’s General Assembly condemning Russia, the 35 countries that abstained include China, India, Pakistan and South Africa, as well as several African and Latin American states. These and many more countries — including several that voted in favour of the resolution, such as Brazil — have strongly criticised the sanctions against Russia and can be expected to continue trading with Putin. It’s frankly very hard to call Russia isolated when some of the world’s largest economies have refused to support the West’s sanctions regime.

China, in particular, has been very vocal in its support of Russia.

Beijing is already the Kremlin’s main trading partner, and it alone can absorb huge quantities of Russian energy and commodities, as well as provide Russia with basically any industrial and consumer goods that the latter currently imports from the West. China also operates an alternative to the Western-managed SWIFT system called CIPS to manage cross-border transactions in yuan, which could allow Russia to partially circumvent the West’s financial blockade.

Even though the yuan still makes up a small percentage of international transactions, its role is bound to grow rapidly in the coming years (consider the news that Saudi Arabia may start pricing its oil sales to China in the latter’s currency). All this helps explain why even Western financial analysts, such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, predict a year-on-year contraction for the Russian economy of about 7% — bad, but hardly catastrophic (Covid caused a much larger drop in GDP for most countries).

However, much will depend on the policy response of the Russian government. Obviously, the withdrawal of many foreign firms and decline in foreign investments will increase unemployment. But the Russian government can cushion the blow by resorting to a “Keynesian” expansionary fiscal policy aimed at boosting domestic investment and supporting incomes. If ever there were a time for Russia to abandon its historically ultra-tight fiscal policy, as several Russian economists have been arguing for some time, it is now.

Two weeks ago, I suggested that, in the short term at least, the US will benefit from the conflict in Ukraine. In the long term, however, it is slowly becoming clear that the US-led global Western order will suffer.

The West’s imposition of sanctions — involving not only governments, but also private companies and even allegedly apolitical organisations such as central banks — has sent a clear message to the countries of the world: the West will stop at nothing to punish countries that step out of line. If this can happen to Russia, a major power, it can happen to anyone. “We will [never again] be under the slightest illusion that the West could be a reliable partner,” the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has said. “We will do everything so as never, in any way, to be dependent on the West in those areas of our life which have a decisive significance for our people.”

Those words are bound to reverberate across the world, with dramatic implications for the West. As Wolfgang Münchau has warned: “For a central bank to freeze the accounts of another central bank is a really big deal… As a direct result of these decisions, we have turned the dollar and the euro, and everything that is denominated in those currencies, into de facto risky assets”. At the very least, it will inevitably push countries to diversify their reserves and increase their yuan holdings, in order to loosen the West’s grip on their economies and bolster their economic resilience and self-sufficiency. Even if it doesn’t push countries straight into Beijing’s arms, as is already happening with Russia, it will likely lead to the emergence of two increasingly insulated blocs: a US-dominated Western bloc and a China-dominated East-Eurasian one.

In this new pseudo-Cold War, “non-aligned” countries could find that they are in a better position to assert their sovereignty than they were under the American global empire. Forget “the collapse of the Russian economy” — this could be the result of the West’s new economic war.

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Thomas Fazi is a writer, journalist and translator. His latest book ‘Reclaiming the State’ is published by Pluto Press.

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***

The grocery store shelves are partially empty, thanks largely to the Covid lockdowns and restrictions, but if Joe Biden and his warmongering neocons have their way, the shelves will be almost completely empty. Americans are about to pay for the ruling elite’s decision to sanction Russia.

Biden said the other day people will suffer under the escalating sanctions imposed on Russia.

“It’s going to be real,” the president said about the impact of sanctions.

“The price of these sanctions is not just imposed upon Russia; it’s imposed upon an awful lot of countries as well, including European countries and our country as well,” Biden said.

“Both Russia and Ukraine have been the breadbasket of Europe in terms of wheat, for example — just to give you one example.”

You heard that right. Biden expects you to sacrifice for the sake of the Azov Battalion, a gaggle of ultra-nationalists and Neo-Nazis that have killed untold numbers of ethnic Russians in Donbas since 2014 and the “Revolution of Dignity” sponsored and funded by the US State Department and the neocon Victoria Nuland.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said not to worry, Americans will not go hungry.

She did not mention many Americans are already going hungry and homeless due to over two years of draconian Covid restrictions, broken globalist “just in time” supply chains of essential goods, rising inflation the government downplays, and unemployment due to the strangulation of business, particularly small business. Biden told the truth and Psaki tried to rollback the fallout.

The government routinely lies about the actual shape of the economy. As the corporate media attempts to downplay the real condition of the economy—relying on fudged numbers put out by the state—alternative economic monitors put the real inflation rate at 16.05%, the worst inflation rate since the end of WWII. According to the government, however, the inflation rate was 7.9% in February.

The Federal Reserve, primarily responsible for much of our economic pain, has predictably shifted the blame to Russia. “We have seen a very meaningful increase in gas prices, and my guess is that next month we’ll see further evidence of an impact on U.S. inflation of Putin’s war on Ukraine,” said former Fed boss Janet Yellen.

The “V-shaped recovery” touted by the state and its corporate media in the wake of Covid turned out to be a wishful thinking (more likely a flimsy palliative to placate shell-shocked citizens).

Biden is now in Poland rallying the troops, eating pizza, and embarrassing everyone with his cognitive decline. The day before, NATO held a summit in secret “with not only cameras and phones prohibited but even aides,” writes Andre Damon, “the leaders of the Western powers met to plan out the unthinkable: A full-scale war between nuclear-armed states.”

Following the summit, Biden pledged he will work to remove Russia from the G-20, or Group of Twenty.

“The single most important thing is for us to stay unified and the world to continue to focus on what a brute this guy is and all the innocent people’s lives that will be lost and ruined and what’s going on,” Biden said hypocritically.

Biden, as then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, voted to invade Iraq and kill over a million people.

Like many Democrats, Biden later declared he was against the war. In 2020, a video surfaced showing Biden praising George W. Bush’s neocon inspired invasion of Iraq. “In the 45-second clip, Biden can be seen taking a highly optimistic viewpoint toward the war and he also makes no effort to distance himself from the president who orchestrated it. Instead, he chastises fellow Democrats for their skepticism and pledges support and patience for Bush,” writes Reed Richardson for Mediaite.

During the Obama administration, he was part of the effort to undermine Syria, and not long after his disputed election victory he bombed Syria, a direct violation of international law. “The president’s decision appeared aimed at sending a signal to Iran and its proxies in the region that Washington would not tolerate attacks on its personnel in Iraq, even at a sensitive diplomatic moment,” never mind the unanimous demand of the Iraqi people that the US get its troops out of their country.

Joe Biden is and always has been an eager tool for the ruling elite and the neocon faction.

“In 2019, Robert Kagan, a prominent neoconservative, along with Antony Blinken [now Biden’s Secretary of State] wrote an article urging the US to abandon Trump’s America First policies and continue the policies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Specifically, they called for a policy of ‘preventive diplomacy and deterrence’ against ‘US adversaries,’ calling for containment of Russia and China. According to The Daily Sabah columnist Hakki Öcal, ‘preventive diplomacy and deterrence’—‘is shorthand for sending boys and tanks wherever they can,” reports United World International.

Kagan’s wife is Victoria Nuland, Biden’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. “This is currently the third-ranking position in the United States Department of State, after the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary. This way, Nuland will be promoted and will be able to pursue neoconservative policies more aggressively,” UWI continues.

“In a recent Foreign Affairs article, she called for a more ‘activist’ policy toward Russia, including ‘speaking directly to the Russian people about the benefits of working together and the price they have paid for (President Vladimir) Putin’s hard turn away from liberalism’,” which is corporatocracy, the very essence of fascism.

“The only important intellectual difference between neoconservatives and liberal interventionists is that the former have disdain for international institutions (which they see as constraints on US power), and the latter see them as a useful way to legitimate American dominance. Both groups extol the virtues of democracy, both groups believe that US power—and especially its military power—can be a highly effective tool of statecraft,” notes Stephen M. Walt.

Back in 2003, as the invasion of Iraq was gaining steam, Danny Postel quoted Shadia Drury, then professor of political theory at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan. “The people will not be happy to learn that there is only one natural right –,” Drury told Postel, “the right of the superior to rule over the inferior, the master over the slave.” The “masters” are the neocons and their associates, and the slaves are you and me.

Drury said leading neocon thinkers believe

“that man’’s humanity depend(s) on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death. Only perpetual war can overturn the modern project, with its emphasis on self-preservation and “creature comforts… The combination of religion and nationalism is the elixir that [Leo] Strauss [the late guru of the neocons] advocates as the way to turn natural, relaxed, hedonistic men into devout nationalists willing to fight and die for their God and country.”

As it now stands, people deluded by the philosophy of Leo Strauss have packed the Biden administration. “In early June [2020], a group of former officials from the George W Bush administration launched a political action committee (PAC) in support of Biden’s candidacy. The group, 43 Alumni for Biden, boasts nearly 300 former Bush officials and is seeking to mobilize disaffected Republicans nationwide,” write Marshall Auerback and James Carden.

Thus, as political operative Karl Rove bragged,

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

The Biden-neocon “liberal hawk” coterie occupying the White House has long sought to confront Russia, as well as Iran and China. If they are serious about going to war with Russia over Ukraine, this will require great sacrifice on the part of every American. The sanctions placed on Russia alone will produce misery for millions who believe they live in a democracy and have a say in their “representative” government.

This is, unfortunately, the greatest delusion.

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***

Seit Beginn des Krieges in der Ukraine schwebt das Damokles-Schwert eines atomaren Schlagabtauschs zwischen den Großmächten USA und Russland über der Menschheit. Bereits die Drohung mit Nuklearwaffen ist nach dem amerikanischen Völkerrechtler Francis Boyle „Nuklearterrorismus“ und seit dem Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecher-Tribunal 1945 ein Verbrechen gegen den Frieden und die Menschheit. Das sagte Boyle vor circa zehn Jahren während eines Vortrags auf der XVIII. „Mut-zur Ethik“-Konferenz in Feldkirch, Österreich.

Professor Boyle warf der US-Regierung vor,

„nach den Atombomben von Hiroshima und Nagasaki und der Verbrennung von 250.000 unschuldigen Menschen weiter an der Entwicklung dieser die gesamte Menschheit bedrohenden Waffen festzuhalten und damit nachweisbar Verbrechen wie die Nazis zu begehen. (…) Daher sind die Regierungsbeamten in allen Nuklearwaffenstaaten, nicht nur die der Vereinigten Staaten – sie sind natürlich die schlimmsten –, (…) Verbrecher. Sie sind Verbrecher! Für ihre Androhung, die ganze Menschheit zu vernichten! Für ihre Androhung, die Nürnberg-Verbrechen gegen den Frieden, die Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit, die Kriegsverbrechen und den Genozid zu wiederholen! (…).“

Sodann formulierte Boyle einen dringenden Appell an alle Menschen:

„Die Menschheit muss die Nuklearwaffen abschaffen, bevor die Nuklearwaffen die Menschheit abschaffen!

Jeder auf der ganzen Welt hat das grundlegende Menschenrecht, frei von der verbrecherischen Praxis nuklearer Bedrohung/nuklearen Terrorismus’ und seinem Gespenst der nuklearen Ausrottung zu sein. Alle menschlichen Wesen (…) besitzen das Grundrecht unter dem humanitären Völkerrecht, zivilen Widerstand zu leisten, um diese angedrohten Taten internationaler Verbrechen entweder zu verhüten, zu behindern oder zu beenden.“

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor a. D.), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Schwerpunkte: Klinische-, Pädagogische- und Medien-Psychologie). Als Pensionär arbeitete er viele Jahre als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung und eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und Frieden.

Quelle

Mitschrift des Vortrags durch den Autor sowie Artikel in der „Neuen Rheinischen Zeitung“ (NRhZ) vom 13. 01 2016: http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=22455&css=print

Featured image: ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)

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***

In a highly symbolic move expressing solidarity with Ukraine, the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled together to the embattled Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 15.

The three leaders took hours-long train trip on their journey from the west Ukrainian city of Lviv to the capital Kyiv, allegedly “endangering their lives” due to security risks involved in traveling within a war zone, though there was no risk to their lives as such because they had requested prior permission for the official visit from the Kremlin, which was graciously granted keeping in view diplomatic conventions.

Image on the right: Jarosław Kaczyński speaking during the inauguration of a monument to his brother Lech Kaczyński (November 2018, Warsaw) (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Accompanying the trio of premiers was a “special guest” of the Ukraine government, Jaroslaw Kaczynski—the deputy prime minister of Poland, the head of Law and Justice (PiS) Party to which the president and prime minister of Poland belong and the infamous “puppet master” who hires and fires government executives and ministers on a whim.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski is the twin brother of the late President Lech Kaczynski, who died in a plane crash at Smolensk, Russia, in 2010 along with 95 other Poles, among them political and military leaders, as they traveled to commemorate the Katyn massacre that occurred during the Second World War.

Subsequent Polish and international investigations led by independent observers conclusively determined that the crash-landing was an accident caused by fog and pilot error. Still, Kaczynski, 72, has long suspected [1] that Russian President Vladimir Putin had a role in provoking the accident, and is harboring a personal grudge against the Russian president.

Speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at Kyiv, Kaczynski said:

“I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission—NATO, possibly some wider international structure—but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory.”

Kaczynski’s escalatory rhetoric isn’t merely a verbal threat, as a secret plan [2] for a “peacekeeping mission” involving 10,000 NATO troops from the member states surreptitiously occupying Lviv and the rest of towns in western Ukraine and imposing a limited no-fly zone is allegedly being prepared by the Polish government that could potentially trigger an all-out war between Russia and the transatlantic military alliance.

The plan is seemingly on hiatus due to a disagreement between figurehead Polish President Andrzej Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as Duda wanted Washington’s approval before going ahead, whereas Kaczynski appeared keen to obtain political mileage from the Ukraine crisis and was also desperate for settling a personal score with Putin, even if his impulsive and capricious attitude risked triggering a catastrophic Third World War.

In another diplomatic fiasco involving Kaczynski’s shady hand in the Polish policymaking, Secretary of State Tony Blinken suggested early this month that Poland could hand over its entire fleet of 28 Soviet-era MiG-29s to Ukraine, and in return, the United States government would “backfill” the Polish Air Force with American F-16s.

“We are looking actively now at the question of airplanes that Poland may provide to Ukraine, and looking at how we might be able to backfill it should Poland decide to supply those planes,” Blinken told a briefing in Chisinau on March 6.

The transfer might have been possible if the deal was kept under wraps, but that became impossible after Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign affairs and security policy chief, declared unequivocally to reporters on Feb. 27 that the bloc would provide Ukraine with fighter jets.

The Ukraine government heard the proposal and ran with it, producing infographics claiming they were about to receive 70 used Russian fighter jets from Poland, Slovakia and Bulgaria. A Ukrainian government official told Politico [3] that Ukrainian pilots had even traveled to Poland to wrap up the deal and bring the planes back over the border.

Upon getting wind of the illicit deal, Russian defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov issued a stark warning that any attempt by an outside power to facilitate a no-fly zone over Ukraine, including providing aircraft to Kyiv, would be considered a belligerent in the war and treated accordingly.

Hours after the Russian warning, the Polish Foreign Ministry issued an emphatic denial, saying providing aircraft to Ukraine was out of question as the MiG-29 fleet constituted the backbone of the Polish Air Force.

The deal was categorically scuttled on March 3 by Polish President Andrzej Duda:

“We are not sending any jets to Ukraine because that would open military inference in the Ukrainian conflict. We are not joining that conflict. NATO is not party to that conflict,” Duda said [4].

In a bizarre turn of events overriding its own president’s categorical statement, the Polish government announced on March 8 that it was ready to transfer the aircraft to the Ramstein Air Base in Germany at the disposal of the United States which could then hand them over to Ukraine.

Clearly, there was a disagreement between Poland’s figurehead President Duda and de facto leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski over the aircraft transfer deal, too. Ultimately, Kaczynski prevailed and the Polish government announced it was ready to transfer the aircraft to Ukraine via an intermediary.

The denouement of the comedy of errors, however, came a day later on March 9, after the United States, while occupying a high moral ground, unequivocally rejected the “preposterous” Polish offer, initially made on Warsaw’s behalf by none other than the EU’s foreign affairs head and the US secretary of state.

The prospect of flying combat aircraft from NATO territory into the war zone “raises serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance,” the Pentagon sanctimoniously revealed on March 9. “It is simply not clear to us that there is a substantive rationale for it,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby dignifiedly added.

The only conclusion that could be drawn from the reluctant Polish offer of transferring its entire fleet of MiG-29s to Ramstein at the disposal of the United States is that it was simply a humbug designed to provide face-saving to its NATO patron while it was already decided behind the scenes that Washington would spurn Poland’s nominal offer.

Nonetheless, CNN reported March 6 [5] Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley visited a week before an undisclosed airfield near the Ukraine border that has become a hub for shipping weapons. The airport’s location remains a secret to protect the shipments of weapons, including anti-aircraft and anti-armor missiles, into Ukraine. Although the report didn’t name the location, the airfield was likely in Poland along Ukraine’s border.

“US European Command (EUCOM) is at the heart of the massive shipment operation, using its liaison network with allies and partners to coordinate ‘in real time’ to send materials into Ukraine, a Defense official said. EUCOM is also coordinating with other countries, including the United Kingdom, in terms of the delivery process ‘to ensure that we are using our resources to maximum efficiency to support the Ukrainians in an organized way,’ the official added.”

Besides deploying 15,000 additional troops in Eastern Europe last month, total number of US troops in Europe is now expected to reach 100,000.

“We have 130 jets at high alert. Over 200 ships from the high north to the Mediterranean, and thousands of additional troops in the region,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN [6].

A spokesman for US European Command told CNN the United States was sending two Patriot missile batteries to Poland, and was also considering deploying THAAD air defense system, a more advanced system equivalent in capabilities to Russia’s S-400 air defense system.

Famous for hosting CIA’s black sites where alleged al-Qaeda operatives were water-boarded and tortured before being sent to Guantanamo Bay in the early years of the war on terror, in Poland alone the US military footprint now exceeds 10,000 troops as the majority of 15,000 troops sent to Europe last month went to Poland to join the 4,000 US troops already stationed there.

The airfields and training camps in the border regions of Poland have a become a hub for transporting lethal weapons and heavily armed militants to Lviv in west Ukraine, who then travel to the battlefields in Kyiv and east Ukraine.

President Biden arrived in Poland Friday and spoke to American troops bolstering NATO’s eastern flank. Biden shared a meal with soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division stationed in southeastern Polish city Rzeszow, which has been acting as a staging area for NATO’s military assistance to Ukraine while also serving as a waypoint for refugees fleeing the violence.

Ahead of the NATO summit attended by President Biden Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced the transatlantic military alliance would double the number of battlegroups it had deployed in Eastern Europe.

“The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland,” Stoltenberg said. “This means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.”

NATO issued a statement [7] after Thursday’s emergency summit attended by Joe Biden and European leaders:

“In response to Russia’s actions, we have activated NATO’s defense plans, deployed elements of the NATO Response Force, and placed 40,000 troops on our eastern flank, along with significant air and naval assets, under direct NATO command supported by Allies’ national deployments. We are also establishing four additional multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.”

In an interview with CBC News [8] on March 8, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that a Russian attack on the supply lines of allied nations supporting Ukraine with arms and munitions would be a dangerous escalation of the war raging in Eastern Europe.

“Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is defending itself. If there is any attack against any NATO country, NATO territory, that will trigger Article 5.”

Reminiscent of the Three Musketeers’ motto “all for one and one for all,” Article 5 is the self-defense clause in NATO’s founding treaty which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all 30 member nations. “I’m absolutely convinced President Putin knows this and we are removing any room for miscalculation, misunderstanding about our commitment to defend every inch of NATO territory,” Stoltenberg said.

NATO chief said there’s a clear distinction between supply lines within Ukraine and those operating outside its borders.

“There is a war going on in Ukraine and, of course, supply lines inside Ukraine can be attacked,” he said. “An attack on NATO territory, on NATO forces, NATO capabilities, that would be an attack on NATO.”

On March 13, Russian forces launched a missile attack [9] at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part of the country. The military facility, less than 25 km from the Polish border, is one of Ukraine’s biggest and the largest in the western part of the country. Since 2015, US Green Berets and National Guard troops had been training Ukrainian forces at the Yavoriv center before they were evacuated alongside diplomatic staff in mid-February.

The training center was hit by a barrage of 30 cruise missiles launched from Russian strategic bombers, killing at least 35 people, though Russia’s defense ministry claimed up to 180 foreign mercenaries [10] and large caches of weapons were destroyed at the training center.

International diplomacy is predicated on the principle of quid-pro-quo. Russia evidently has no intention of mounting an incursion into NATO territory. But if the duplicitous Polish leadership is hatching treacherous plots to clandestinely occupy western Ukraine and impose no-fly zone over it, then Russia obviously reserves the right to give a response.

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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.

Notes

[1] Three EU prime ministers visit Kyiv as Russian attacks intensify

[2] Secret Plan to Send 10,000 NATO “Peacekeeping Troops” Into Ukraine

[3] How Biden scuttled Polish aircraft deal

[4] Poland will not send fighter jets into Ukraine, Andrzej Duda

[5] Mark Milley visited an undisclosed airfield near the Ukraine border

[6] Pentagon shores up its NATO defenses in Europe

[7] NATO doubles battlegroups in ‘Eastern Flank’ States

[8] NATO chief warns Russia away from attacking supply lines

[9] Pentagon push to send more trainers to Ukraine was scrapped

[10] Russian airstrike killed 180 foreign mercenaries at Yavoriv

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***

A few days ago the discovery of 30 military biolabs in Ukraine was reported, and the Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva published the leaked documents showing the direct involvement of the US Department of Defense in the financing of the Ukrainian biolabs.

The Pentagon program in the Ukrainian biolabs is "sensitive information". The government of #Ukraine is prohibited from public disclosure of this sensitive information and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense dangerous pathogens for biological research pic.twitter.com/4HhZxyi9v0

— Dilyana Gaytandzhieva (@dgaytandzhieva) March 9, 2022

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated on Tuesday, March 15, that in addition to the 30 biological laboratories in Ukraine, the United States has set up hundreds of such laboratories in other countries, highlighting that “many were established in several countries of the former Soviet Union precisely along the perimeter of Russia’s borders, as well as on the borders of China and on the borders of the other countries located there.”

Russia strongly denounced the development of biological weapons programs and demanded a response from the U.S. government to the evidence.

Earlier this week, US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland appeared before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and with a whiff of hope, Senator Marco Rubio expected her to debunk the claims of biological and chemical weapons being developed in the network of laboratories in Ukraine.

But Nuland confirmed what was expected:

“Ukraine has biological research facilities…we are now quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be trying to control. So we’re working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they get close.”

During the hearing, Rubio interrupts and does the typical damage control maneuver: “Would there be any doubt that Russia would be behind an attack?” to which Nuland replied, “I have no doubt, Senator, and it’s a classic Russian technique to blame the other person for what they’re planning to do themselves.”

Nuland’s confirmation of the existence of a network of biolaboratories reconfirms the credibility of the Bulgarian journalist’s research. Gaytandzhieva published documents of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), attached to the Pentagon, confirming the financing of biological research in Ukraine, under the aegis of the U.S. company Black & Veatch Special Projects Corp. The U.S. agency allocated $80 million in 2020.

DTRA Acquisition Forecast 20200730 (CREDITS: Dilyana Gaytandzhieva)

But this was not the only company. The U.S. engineering company, CH2M Hill, was awarded a $22.8 million contract to equip two new biolabs in Ukraine.

In addition, access to the biolabs was forbidden to independent expert supervisions, with the excuse that the pathogens they were handling were dangerous, and so shows this leaked letter from the Ukrainian Ministry of Health when access to scientists from the Problems of innovation and investment development journal was denied.

Letter Ministry of Health of Ukraine (CREDITS: Dilyana Gaytandzhieva)

European countries were also involved in the biolaboratories

Igor Kirillov, Head of the Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, explained this week the results of the analysis of documents found in Ukrainian military biolabs:

• The U.S. funded biolabs in Kiev, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkov, awarding $32 million, in order to “study” pathogens of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis and hantaviruses. Their use can be disguised as natural disease outbreaks.
• Six families of viruses (including coronaviruses) and three types of pathogenic bacteria (causative agents of plague, brucellosis and leptospirosis) have been identified as having characteristics suitable for infecting humans from animals. Research has even been carried out on the transmission of diseases through bats.
• There are a number of documents confirming the transfer of biological samples taken in Ukraine to the territory of third countries, including Germany, Great Britain and Georgia.
• The transmission of highly pathogenic avian influenza by wild birds was studied at the Kharkiv Institute of Veterinary Medicine.
• The transfer of 5,000 blood serum samples taken from Ukrainian residents to the Pentagon-supported Richard Lugar Center in Tbilisi, Georgia, was confirmed.
• Another 773 assays were transferred to the United Kingdom, while an agreement was signed to transfer “unlimited quantities” of infectious supplies to the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, Germany’s leading animal disease center.

The findings of these biolabs cannot be ignored. Ukraine as one of the satellite states of the United States served as a space for biological weapons to start gaining ground in the new forms of warfare against Russia (and the world, looking at it in perspective).

It is at least suspicious that the Ukrainian-US biolabs are located along the perimeter of the Russian border, considering that these facilities were also reported to have used samples from people of different ethnicities living in the Russian Federation and other Eurasian countries.

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***

The once widely used heartburn drug Zantac was the topic of a recent episode of the “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., chairman and chief legal counsel of Children’s Health Defense, interviewed Brent Wisner, an award-winning mass tort litigator with Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman, who is representing plaintiffs who allegedly developed cancer after taking Zantac. The plaintiffs are suing the pharmaceutical companies that sold the drug.

Kennedy and Wisner are colleagues. They worked together during the landmark lawsuit Dewayne Johnson v. Monsanto Company, the first Roundup cancer lawsuit to proceed to trial. The jury awarded groundskeeper Johnson $289.2 million.

“Brent Wisner arguably is the best lawyer in the country,” said Kennedy. “He’s won every award that you can possibly win for litigation. He is a versatile lawyer and he’s an extraordinary performer. He has a chemical link to jurors like I’ve never seen before.”

Wisner is now working to hold accountable the makers of Zantac for allegedly concealing knowledge of a cancer-causing ingredient in the drug.

Zantac, an over-the-counter medication, was withdrawn from the market in 2020 when it was determined that it contained the human carcinogen N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA).

Now, pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, Pfizer and Boehringer Ingelheim are facing class-action lawsuits from people who developed cancer after taking the drug.

Wisner claims that the product was sold for decades with the knowledge that NDMA caused harm. He said,

“We’re talking 40 years they sold this product and they knew it. And we have the documents. … I mean, we have documents where they straight up say, ‘this stuff causes this cancer.’”

Wisner explained:

“NDMA is a very, very potent human carcinogen discovered in the thirties, in the development of rocket fuel. And it literally has no purpose in our world, except for the fact that it causes cancer. It’s actually used in laboratory experiments to induce cancer in animals.

“It’s probably something that has caused an innumerable number of people’s cancers, because it was such a widely used product.”

The cancers that MDNA are more likely to cause include those of the bladder, liver and stomach, as well as colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and breast cancer, said Wisner.

“It’s a complex scientific inquiry, but we think that we have the science to really push those cancers forward,” he said. “And we’re litigating them actively right now in our proceeding in California, which is exciting.”

Kennedy pointed out that people can still become plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit.

“If people who are listening to this podcast — or people who are friends or family of those who are listening to this podcast — have any of those kind of cancers and can show that they took Zantac for a period of time, they have an opportunity to … become part of this litigation,” he said.

Wisner is confident the litigation will be successful, although he warned it will take some time.

“These things take many years and involve many, many thousands and thousands of people,” he said. “But, you know, we have a good track record of taking care of our clients like we did in the Roundup litigation. And we’re planning to do the same here.”

A California state court judge has scheduled the first Zantac trial to take place on Oct. 10.

Watch the podcast here or click the image below.

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Susan C. Olmstead is the assistant editor of The Defender.

Featured image is from CHD

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***

Calgary’s Street Church Pastor, Arthur Pawlowski, clearly has a target painted on his back by the police state apparatchik of COVID officialdom. Pastor Pawlowski recently received bail after sitting in jail for 45 days including 23 of solitary confinement. See this.

Pastor Pawlowski is one of three Alberta clergymen to be apprehended, convicted and jailed for conducting church services that violate the COVID restrictions enforced by Alberta Health Services. The AHS is a murky organization in crisis that is busy both suing and being sued on a number of fronts. See, for instance, this.

The police state persecution of Pastor Pawlowski belongs in the context of the intrusive violations on the religious freedoms of the Pastor James Cameron’s Grace Life Church in Spruce Grove. Canada’s RCMP went so far as to put up a dark, barbed wire fence around the Grace Life structure to keep parishioners away.

Pastor Tim Stephens’ Baptist Church in Calgary was also shut down by the COVID police in Alberta. Law enforcement officials and their accompanying media entourage arrested Pastor Stevens at his own home as his children cried out in despair at what they were witnessing.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney seems to have found common purpose with Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, in making a spectacle of aggressively shutting down Christian churches. One result is that the steady assaults on the religious freedom of Albertans and Canadians have made both jurisdictions notorious internationally. For instance, Josh Hawley, a US Senator representing Missouri, reported Canada as a violator to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. See this and this.

Justin Trudeau was just warming up with his warrior attack on religious freedom in Alberta. Trudeau’s outrageous treatment of the Canadian Truckers and their supporters has put a conspicuous international stain on the reputation of Canada’s Prime Minister.

Before Trudeau spoke at the European Parliament, he was made to witness the intervention on the part of parliamentarian Christine Anderson. In building up to her request that he should exit the building, Anderson described Trudeau

“As a man who tramples on fundamental rights by persecuting and criminalizing his own citizens as terrorists just because they dared stand up to his perverted concept of democracy, should not be allowed to speak in this House at all.”

Anderson concluded by asserting,

“Mr. Trudeau you are a disgrace for any democracy. Please spare us your presence.”

🇨🇦🇬🇧|Yesterday, Canada's Prime Minister @JustinTrudeau visited the #EU Parliament to give a speech. I took the opportunity to give him an appropriate "welcome" there. Short, concise and right hitting the bull's eye! #ID pic.twitter.com/qpcQyGTixQ

— Christine Anderson (@AndersonAfDMdEP) March 24, 2022

Croatian MEP, Mislav Kolakušić, presented another critique of Trudeau’s regime “as a dictatorship of the worst kind” now known to “many citizens throughout the world.” Again with Trudeau present, Kolakušić explained that under the Prime Minister’s “quasi-liberal boot…. Canada has become a symbol of civil rights violations.” See this.

Judges Forcing Canadian Citizens to Become Liars

Pastor Arthur Pawlowsky is one of those being treated by the Canadian government and Canada’s captive judiciary as a terrorist of sorts. Christine Anderson was astute in noticing the fixation of Trudeau and his “Deputy Prime Minister Chystia Freeland in setting up some of the truckers and their supporters as terrorists.

Pastor Pawlowski was charged on February 7 not for giving a religious sermon in his Church, but for delivering a political speech urging Canadian truck drivers not to pull back from the on-and-off blockade at the Coutts/Sweetgrass border crossing between Montana and Alberta. One of the charges faced by Pastor Pawlowski was according to the new Critical Infrastructure Defence Act. See this.

Some think that if it had not been for Pastor Pawlowky’s speech, the truckers at Coutts would have abandoned their positions. The truckers cooperated in taking a collective position at a fairly busy Canada-US border crossing. Their objective was to express support for the positions being brought forward from the main truckers action then unfolding in Ottawa.

The treatment of Pastor Pawlowski is fairly indicative of the monstrosity of government injustice and stupidity that caused Christine Anderson to ask Trudeau “to spare us your presence” in the EU on 24 March.

Pastor Pawlowski is engaged in a number of court processes, all connected in one way or another to his very vocal and assertive condemnation of the COVID restrictions. An Alberta judge made a ruling that he must initiate any public presentation with the following prelude,

“While I may disagree with them, I am obliged to inform you that the majority of medical experts favor social distancing, mask-wearing, and avoiding large crowds to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Most medical experts also support participation in a vaccination program unless for a valid religious or medical reason you cannot be vaccinated. Vaccinations have been shown statistically to save lives and to reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms.” See this.

The absurdity of this shameful ruling is indicative of where things still seem to be headed until sensible Canadians take back from the Davos devotees our parliament, our media, and our courts. All these institutions and more are still entrapped in a web of lunacy. In commenting on this denial of free speech with an order requiring mandatory speech, Pastor Pawlowki has observed,

“I have to become a liar every time I open my mouth in order to appease the corrupted judges and the corrupted court systems and the corrupted politicians…. it’s one law for the peasants, for the slaves and another for the kings and the judges.”

Oftentimes Pastor Pawlowki speaks while prominently displaying an Israeli Star of David on his sleeve. Pastor Pawlowski seems to feel no need to grapple with the problem that many aspects of the current playbook in the West for criminalizing political opponents draws on the ongoing maltreatment of Palestinians.

Israel has made a big business of instructing police and military officers from many countries on how to suppress political dissidents by demonstrating the sometimes brutal techniques they deploy for keeping Palestinians under Israeli control. Canada is a country where the process of the Palestinianization of political dissents is already far advanced. Trudeau seems to think of non-compliant Truckers in Canada much like some in Israel think about non-compliant Palestinians.

Pastor Pawlowski is often outspoken in incorporating into his public commentaries abundant references to Canadian law enforcement officials as “Nazis.” Unfortunately, this characterization of Trudeau, Freeland and their inner circle, seems increasingly relevant given recent revelations.

The Russian military intervention into Ukraine has revealed many harsh international realities. We are discovering that many Western governments, including the Liberal/NDP regime in Canada, are supportive of many actual National Socialist units in the Ukrainian government. Trudeau has been funnelling weaponry, resources and military training to the outgrowths of Hitler’s Waffen SS in Ukraine. The Nazi attachments of the Trudeau/Freeland crowd are starting to come to light, a phenomenon I have written about in “Nazification and Denazification in Our Times.” See this.

The most concerted effort to criminalize the Truckers and classify them and their supporters as terrorists and insurrectionists, has taken place in Coutts where Pastor Pawlowski arrested. Although police tried, they did not find weapons in trucks parked in Ottawa throughout the peak of the protest.

After several attempts by CPC MP @DaneLIoydMP to get a clear answer, Ottawa Police Interim Chief Steve Bell finally admits there were no firearms found at the freedom convoy protest in Ottawa. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/CXAHy2P4yu

— True North (@TrueNorthCentre) March 24, 2022

The story was different in Coutts. Just hours before Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland introduced the draconian Emergency Act, RCMP swooped down on three trailers at the Coutts camp at 3 am on Feb. 14. 

The police officers claim they discovered a cache of weapons which they displayed in a photograph without sharing with the press an interpretation of contents of the picture: 

RCMP slow to release status of weapons seized at Coutts protest

Due to the main investigator being away and the RCMP “managing other cases at the same time,” information “didn’t get conveyed to our media spokespeople,” said Fontaine.”

The RCMP charged thirteen people with crimes. Four of them were charged with something called “conspiracy to commit murder.” The other 9 were charged with weapons related matters. When I add Pastor Pawlowski to the group I come up with the name, the Coutts 14.

Tamara Lich and Pat King, both front and centre at the Ottawa political action, seem to be subject to the process that Christine Anderson described at the European Parliament. It seems Lich and King are being smeared. According to the CBC: 

They are being criminalized “as terrorists just because they dared stand up to Trudeau’s perverted concept of democracy.”

The Coutts 14 is the main group being put on display to embody the concept of  Truckers as terrorists and insurrectionists. Since Feb. 14 the Coutts 14 has provided Freeland, for instance, with her justification for invoking the Canada’s Terrorist Financing Act. How are we to know if Trudeau isn’t still operating as if the Emergency Act is still operative?

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Dr. Anthony Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

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).

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***

I can’t get a single one of these questions answered. I promise to stop spreading misinformation if you can just publicly answer just these questions with truthful and accurate answers.

An open letter to the White House, Surgeon General Murthy, Twitter censors, Medium censors, LinkedIn censors, YouTube censors, the medical community, the mainstream media, all members of US Congress, world leaders, all public health officials anywhere in the world, all “fact checker” organizations, and members of the California legislature especially Assemblymember Evan Low and Senator Dr. Richard Pan.

Dear folks,

I know you want to stop COVID misinformation. I agree. It’s a problem.

In my view, you are the ones spreading it, not me.

Unfortunately, not everyone sees it the same way. According to CCDH, who is arguably a world authority on misinformation spreaders (they created the original Disinformation Dozen list relied on by the White House), I’m one of the worst offenders: I’m #3 on their list.

The problem I have is simple: the data clearly shows that it is the CDC and other government agencies that are spreading misinformation, not me.

In order to resolve the conflict, I’m going to make the following offer in good faith: I will happily stop spreading “misinformation” if you all would just take a few minutes to answer a few questions for me. Fair enough? Will you do that?

If not, please tell me why not since this is your only chance of convincing people like me to get the jab.

I know this is important to you because you have a list of misinformation spreaders you want to silence. Just answer all these questions and you’ll silence us (the right way).

Here are my questions:

1. Why no debates? Why won’t any mainstream doctors or scientists or public health officials (or any other health authority for that matter) debate me or any of my colleagues in a live, recorded debate? I even offer some people (members of the ACIP and VRBPAC committees) $1 million just to come to the debate table and it made no difference. We can’t even get any of them to propose any ground rules that they will accept! For example, Professor Makary proposed debate terms (which weren’t a debate) and then ignored me when I tried to accept them.
2. VAERS safety signals flashing red since January 2021. How could the CDC and the FDA possibly miss all the safety signals in VAERS which have been flashing red since January 2021 for thousands of symptoms, some elevated by 1,000X or more? Why did they ignore all attempts to bring this to their attention (if it wasn’t already obvious). They clearly must have known in January that the data coming in didn’t match the claims in the clinical trials.
3. Risk benefit calculation. I have more than 10 methods that show that over 150K people have been killed by the vaccine and the Pfizer trial showed we’d save 1 life from COVID for every 22,000 vaccinated. So after vaccinating 220M people, we kill 150,000 people or more and we save 10,000 lives. If this is wrong, where is the mistake and what are the correct numbers?
4. Why no investigation into Maddie de Garay? Why did the FDA not investigate the Maddie de Garay case after agreeing to look into it? Why is the press silent on this as well? She was 12 years old in the Pfizer clinical trial and became paralyzed less than 24 hours after injection. Why were her symptoms reported as mild abdominal pain and not paralysis? What is causing her to now progress to being a quadriplegic? And if her symptoms weren’t caused by the vaccine (as claimed by the “fact checkers,” then why are her symptoms virtually identical to other vaccine victims and not explainable any other way?
5. More people died who took the drug than those who didn’t take the drug. The Pfizer 6 month study showed that more people died who got the drug than who got the placebo (they conveniently forgot to mention this in the abstract or conclusion). Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? Where is the RCT showing an all-cause death benefit? See this article for updated numbers in the pre-unblinding phase showing 21 dead who took the drug vs. 17 dead who took the placebo. And how was Pfizer certain that none of the people who got the drug was killed by the vaccine? What tests were done during the autopsies that exonerated the drug? These tests were never revealed and they are still being kept hidden for some odd reason. Since the vaccine wasn’t the cause, why not make the autopsy reports and tests done public that prove this?
6. Elevated myocarditis rates. How is a 559-fold increase in the reporting rate of myocarditis in VAERS (see slide 19) considered to be a “slightly elevated risk” of myocarditis? Why wasn’t this noticed in January 2021? How did the CDC completely miss this signal (they admitted it was the DoD who spotted it). How do you explain 4 cases of myocarditis at the Monte Vista Christian School (with only 800 students, half of them male and perhaps half of those not vaccinated)? That’s a 1 in 50 rate. Is that just bad luck? And how is it possible that multiple military doctors I’ve asked about the rates in the military both give me numbers over 1%? Am I just unlucky?
7. How do you explain Schirmacher’s study? Dr. Peter Schirmacher, one of the world’s top pathologists, reported that in 40 cases examined 2 weeks after vaccination, the vaccine killed 30% to 40% of them. Immediately after he reported this, his family was threatened if he spoke out. So Dr. Schirmacher has been silenced. See my article for details. Do you support intimidation techniques to silence legitimate scientists with dissenting views? The Federal Association of German Pathologists has called for autopsies, but the government has silenced them as well. Do you support my call for autopsies? If not, why not? Also, Schirmacher’s results have been validated by Bhakti and Burkhardt. Did all of them get it wrong? How were they fooled?
8. What is causing the telltale clots? Embalmers have seen odd blood clots, never before seen before the vaccines rolled out, in up to 93% of cases. These are not normal clots and have never been seen before the vaccines rolled out. What are they caused by and why are they killing so many people?
9. Excess deaths. What’s causing the excess deaths observed by insurance companies? Insurance company deaths rose in Q3 and Q4 of 2021 at the same time the boosters rolled out. The fact checkers say it is due to COVID, but the data doesn’t line up which they fail to point out. Delta started in June and was 93% by August. You’d never know that from the graph:

10. The more you vaccinate, the worse the outcomes. Why do over 10 studies (including one covering 145 countries) all show that the more we vaccinate, the worse the infection and fatality rates? Since nobody has been able to refute any of these studies, shouldn’t we at least put the mandates temporarily on hold until the studies are refuted?

11. Negative efficacy. The latest UK government report shows that for most age groups, you are now more than 3 times more likely to get COVID if you are triple vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated. It seems the more you vaccinate, the worse the disparity. It’s clearly tied to the number of vaccinations. How do you explain this if the vaccines are protective?

12. CDC paper admits to negative vaccine efficacy. This is big. Finally, a paper by nine CDC authors published in JAMA in January 2022 (Association Between 3 Doses of mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine and Symptomatic Infection Caused by the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron and Delta Variants) shows in Fig. 3 that the vaccines create negative efficacy for Omicron at month 7, just like the Denmark study showed too (in Denmark it was after 3 months). In other words, the CDC authors admit that the vaccines make you more likely to get Omicron starting in month 7. Isn’t this contrary to what the CDC has been telling us? The vaccines aren’t supposed to make things worse, right?

13. VAERS underreporting factor. What is the URF for VAERS this year? Why didn’t anyone calculate it? Why didn’t the FDA simply admit they don’t know what it is when asked by a reporter? Why does John Su never talk about the proper URF when he talks about the VAERS data? He knows how to calculate the URF since he was one of the authors on the CDC paper for how to do this. So why is he silent?

14. How can you do risk benefit calculation without estimating the VAERS URF? This is elementary, yet none of the outside committee members of the CDC or FDA ever asks about this. Why not? I keep bringing this up in my public testimony, but they just ignore me.

15. Pfizer Phase 3 trial exclusions. How do you explain the gaming in the Pfizer trial on exclusions (311 vs. 60)? (see Slide 65). That couldn’t have happened by chance. And while you have that slide deck open, if you can answer any other questions in that deck, that would be super helpful.

16. Every randomized trial shows masks make no difference at all. If masks work, then how come the graph for purple cloth masks in the Bangladesh studyshowed absolutely no effect and why did they omit this graph from the published paper? I read through all 111 pages and couldn’t find the graph. Not only did they omit the graph, but nowhere in the paper did they point out that the purple cloth masks had no effect. Isn’t that scientific fraud? Also, if masks work, then why isn’t there any data supporting the mask policy in Israel?

17. Why don’t we have any autopsies done by a competent authority? Why don’t we just do autopsies of 100 people who died within 2 weeks of vaccination? We can have people like Peter Schirmacher, Ryan Cole, Sucharit Bhakdi, and Arne Burkhardt observe this work. That would settle the argument and end the vaccine hesitancy for sure.

18. Why is there a 5% rate of neurological damage after vaccination? If the vaccines are perfectly safe, then how do you explain how a California neurologist can have 1,000 vaccine injured in their practice of 20,000 patients. That’s a 5% neurological injury rate. This closely matches the vaccine injury rate discovered by the Israeli Ministry of Health (which was 4.5%).

19. How do you explain this data?

20. Can you answer any of the questions on this list?

I look forward to hearing from you. I’d love to get back to technology.

Bonus questions:

1. FDA’s Steven A. Anderson. He promoted himself as the top guy at the FDA on safety in his slide presentation on October 22, 2020. This was the famous presentation with Slide 17 which was a list of adverse events that was skipped over quickly. It’s remarkable how well it matched up with the safety signals that showed up in VAERS in January after the vaccines rolled out. I reached out to him multiple times by phone and email when the VAERS data showed clear safety signals. He ignored all attempts. This seems like really odd behavior for someone who is obsessed with finding a safety signal. He has never found a single safety signal himself, so when he gets a call from anyone who claims there might be a signal, how can he ignore it? He should be embracing it, right?
2. Brook Jackson. Watch the video. Explain to me why there isn’t an independent investigation into the allegations in this video. And how is it possible that the day after Brook went to the FDA that she was fired from her position?
3. Vaccine mandates: In Santa Clara County, they mandate vaccination for first responders. But vaccinated and unvaccinated first responders get COVID at the same rates in Santa Clara County, so why is vaccination mandated?
4. Informed consent. A military doctor briefs 3,000 soldiers on the vaccine for 30 minutes and 99.8% refuse the jab. Nothing he said was false, but the doctor is relieved of duty. So if the vaccine is so safe and effective, why doesn’t anyone want to take it?
5. UVGI technology. Why wasn’t UVGI technology (ultraviolet light) recommended by the CDC when the outbreak happened? Why aren’t they saying anything about it now? It’s quite effective everywhere it has been deployed as far as I’m aware. Industrial hygienists have been using this technology for their clients since early 2020. Here’s a note I received:

I know the CDC had a page early on that had controls listed in the various control categories but I haven’t seen anything this specific about prioritizing engineering controls like this, especially with the UVGI technology. We started rolling that tech option out to our clients in 2020. Nobody in government was touting UVGI tech at all. We’ve had that in our office since 2020 and have seen first hand how successful that option is. Our UVGI equipment is set to sanitize the air and surfaces every 6 minutes. Though we had infected people in our office at times, there was never an outbreak. Clients that implemented this system had similar success. This would’ve been a game changer for schools, instead of them shutting down and putting PPE on kids. It’s been difficult to watch this buffoonery from public health officials who are clearly out of their lane of expertise.

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***

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise video appearance at the Doha Forum in Qatar on 26 March to plead with the oil-producing Arabian Peninsula nations to increase their oil output.

Oil prices have seen record increases since the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine and the unprecedented sanctions placed on Russia since then.

Alternative supplies of fuel to Europe serve as a counterweight to Russia’s ability to use European and global dependency on its fuel to maintain economic viability during the global economic boycott of Russia.

Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states are torn between their loyalty to Washington and their partnerships with Moscow.

Most visibly, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have snubbed Washington in favor of Moscow. Saudi Arabia has refused requests to increase output, even snubbing phone calls from US President Joe Biden. The UAE has similarly refused to increase output and has reaffirmed its ties with Moscow.

Qatar’s Minister of State for Energy Affairs Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi said in a CNN interview on 25 March that they will continue to supply Europe with gas.

Qatar, however, balances its ties with Moscow. A recent meeting between Russian and Qatari foreign ministers on 14 March demonstrated that the two seek cooperation in the energy market.

The meeting came after President Biden designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally of the US on 10 March.

Kuwait leans considerably more towards the US. Aside from Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain share similar designations as major non-NATO allies of the US.

Nikkei Asia reported on 26 March that major Japanese banks are teaming up with banks from the US and Europe to lend Kuwait $1 billion and bolster its oil output, in the hopes of increasing crude production in order to weaken Russia’s position in the energy markets.

Western powers continue to pressure GCC member states to increase crude output. Under NATO pressure, German Economy and Climate Minister Robert Habeck visited Qatar and the UAE on 19 March to urge them to increase oil output.

NATO expects Germany to boycott Russian gas, a move that would leave the EU member state with insufficient fuel to heat homes during winter or to power industrial centers. Neither Qatar nor its neighboring states have the capacity to replace Russian oil and gas in a short period of time.

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***

The war in Ukraine has placed U.S. and NATO policy toward Russia under a spotlight, highlighting how the United States and its allies have expanded NATO right up to Russia’s borders, backed a coup and now a proxy war in Ukraine, imposed waves of economic sanctions, and launched a debilitating trillion-dollar arms race. The explicit goal is to pressure, weaken and ultimately eliminate Russia, or a Russia-China partnership, as a strategic competitor to U.S. imperial power.

The United States and NATO have used similar forms of force and coercion against many countries. In every case they have been catastrophic for the people directly impacted, whether they achieved their political aims or not.

Wars and violent regime changes in Kosovo, Iraq, Haiti and Libya have left them mired in endless corruption, poverty and chaos. Failed proxy wars in Somalia, Syria and Yemen have spawned endless war and humanitarian disasters. U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela have impoverished their people but failed to change their governments.

Meanwhile, U.S.-backed coups in Chile, Bolivia and Honduras have sooner or later been reversed by grassroots movements to restore democratic, socialist government. The Taliban are governing Afghanistan again after a 20-year war to expel a U.S. and NATO army of occupation, for which the sore losers are now starving millions of Afghans.

But the risks and consequences of the U.S. Cold War on Russia are of a different order. The purpose of any war is to defeat your enemy. But how can you defeat an enemy that is explicitly committed to respond to the prospect of existential defeat by destroying the whole world?

This is in fact part of the military doctrine of the United States and Russia, who together possess over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. If either of them faces existential defeat, they are prepared to destroy human civilization in a nuclear holocaust that will kill Americans, Russians and neutrals alike.

In June 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree stating,

“The Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies… and also in the case of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons, when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

U.S. nuclear weapons policy is no more reassuring. A decades-long campaign for a U.S. “no first use” nuclear weapons policy still falls on deaf ears in Washington.

The 2018 U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) promised that the United States would not use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state. But in a war with another nuclear-armed country, it said, “The United States would only consider the use of nuclear weapons in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners.”

The 2018 NPR broadened the definition of “extreme circumstances” to cover “significant non-nuclear attacks,” which it said would “include, but are not limited to, attacks on the U.S., allies or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment.” The critical phrase, “but are not limited to,” removes any restriction at all on a U.S. nuclear first strike.

So, as the U.S. Cold War against Russia and China heats up, the only signal that the deliberately foggy threshold for the U.S. use of nuclear weapons has been crossed could be the first mushroom clouds exploding over Russia or China.

For our part in the West, Russia has explicitly warned us that it will use nuclear weapons if it believes the United States or NATO are threatening the existence of the Russian state. That is a threshold that the United States and NATO are already flirting with as they look for ways to increase their pressure on Russia over the war in Ukraine.

To make matters worse, the twelve-to-one imbalance between U.S. and Russian military spending has the effect, whether either side intends it or not, of increasing Russia’s reliance on the role of its nuclear arsenal when the chips are down in a crisis like this.

NATO countries, led by the United States and United Kingdom, are already supplying Ukraine with up to 17 plane-loads of weapons per day, training Ukrainian forces to use them and providing valuable and deadly satellite intelligence to Ukrainian military commanders. Hawkish voices in NATO countries are pushing hard for a no-fly zone or some other way to escalate the war and take advantage of Russia’s perceived weaknesses.

The danger that hawks in the State Department and Congress may convince President Biden to escalate the U.S. role in the war prompted the Pentagon to leak details of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) assessments of Russia’s conduct of the war to Newsweek’s William Arkin.

Senior DIA officers told Arkin that Russia has dropped fewer bombs and missiles on Ukraine in a month than U.S. forces dropped on Iraq in the first day of bombing in 2003, and that they see no evidence of Russia directly targeting civilians. Like U.S. “precision” weapons, Russian weapons are probably only about 80% accurate, so hundreds of stray bombs and missiles are killing and wounding civilians and hitting civilian infrastructure, as they do just as horrifically in every U.S. war.

The DIA analysts believe Russia is holding back from a more devastating war because what it really wants is not to destroy Ukrainian cities but to negotiate a diplomatic agreement to ensure a neutral, non-aligned Ukraine.

But the Pentagon appears to be so worried by the impact of highly effective Western and Ukrainian war propaganda that it has released secret intelligence to Newsweek to try to restore a measure of reality to the media’s portrayal of the war, before political pressure for NATO escalation leads to a nuclear war.

Since the United States and the U.S.S.R. blundered into their nuclear suicide pact in the 1950s, it has come to be known as Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. As the Cold War evolved, they cooperated to reduce the risk of mutual assured destruction through arms control treaties, a hotline between Moscow and Washington, and regular contacts between U.S. and Soviet officials.

But the United States has now withdrawn from many of those arms control treaties and safeguard mechanisms. The risk of nuclear war is as great today as it has ever been, as the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists warns year after year in its annual Doomsday Clock statement. The Bulletin has also published detailed analyses of how specific technological advances in U.S. nuclear weapons design and strategy are increasing the risk of nuclear war.

The world understandably breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Cold War appeared to end in the early 1990s. But within a decade, the peace dividend the world hoped for was trumped by a power dividend. U.S. officials did not use their unipolar moment to build a more peaceful world, but to capitalize on the lack of a military peer competitor to launch an era of U.S. and NATO military expansion and serial aggression against militarily weaker countries and their people.

As Michael Mandelbaum, the director of East-West Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, crowed in 1990, “For the first time in 40 years, we can conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about triggering World War III.” Thirty years later, people in that part of the world may be forgiven for thinking that the United States and its allies have in fact unleashed World War III, against them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Pakistan, Gaza, Libya, Syria, Yemen and across West Africa.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin complained bitterly to President Clinton over plans for NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, but Russia was powerless to prevent it. Russia had already been invaded by an army of neoliberal Western economic advisers, whose “shock therapy” shrank its GDP by 65%, reduced male life expectancy from 65 to 58, and empowered a new class of oligarchs to loot its national resources and state-owned enterprises.

President Putin restored the power of the Russian state and improved the Russian people’s living standards, but he did not at first push back against U.S. and NATO military expansion and war-making. However, when NATO and its Arab monarchist allies overthrew the Gaddafi government in Libya and then launched an even bloodier proxy war against Russia’s ally Syria, Russia intervened militarily to prevent the overthrow of the Syrian government.

Russia worked with the United States to remove and destroy Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, and helped to open negotiations with Iran that eventually led to the JCPOA nuclear agreement. But the U.S. role in the coup in Ukraine in 2014, Russia’s subsequent reintegration of Crimea and its support for anti-coup separatists in Donbass put paid to further cooperation between Obama and Putin, plunging U.S.-Russian relations into a downward spiral that has now led us to the brink of nuclear war.

It is the epitome of official insanity that U.S., NATO and Russian leaders have resurrected this Cold War, which the whole world celebrated the end of, allowing plans for mass suicide and human extinction to once again masquerade as responsible defense policy.

While Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine and for all the death and destruction of this war, this crisis did not come out of nowhere. The United States and its allies must reexamine their own roles in resurrecting the Cold War that spawned this crisis, if we are ever to return to a safer world for people everywhere.

Tragically, instead of expiring on its sell-by date in the 1990s along with the Warsaw Pact, NATO has transformed itself into an aggressive global military alliance, a fig-leaf for U.S. imperialism, and a forum for dangerous, self-fulfilling threat analysis, to justify its continued existence, endless expansion and crimes of aggression on three continents, in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya.

If this insanity indeed drives us to mass extinction, it will be no consolation to the scattered and dying survivors that their leaders succeeded in destroying their enemies’ country too. They will simply curse leaders on all sides for their blindness and stupidity. The propaganda by which each side demonized the other will be only a cruel irony once its end result is seen to be the destruction of everything leaders on all sides claimed to be defending.

This reality is common to all sides in this resurgent Cold War. But, like the voices of peace activists in Russia today, our voices are more powerful when we hold our own leaders accountable and work to change our own country’s behavior.

If Americans just echo U.S. propaganda, deny our own country’s role in provoking this crisis and turn all our ire towards President Putin and Russia, it will only serve to fuel the escalating tensions and bring on the next phase of this conflict, whatever dangerous new form that may take.

But if we campaign to change our country’s policies, de-escalate conflicts and find common ground with our neighbors in Ukraine, Russia, China and the rest of the world, we can cooperate and solve our serious common challenges together.

A top priority must be to dismantle the nuclear Doomsday machine we have inadvertently collaborated to build and maintain for 70 years, along with the obsolete and dangerous NATO military alliance. We cannot let the “unwarranted influence” and “misplaced power” of the Military-Industrial Complex keep leading us into ever more dangerous military crises until one of them spins out of control and destroys us all.

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Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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***

The takeaway from the US President Joe Biden’s European tour on March 25-26 is measly. Dissenting voices are rising in Europe as western sanctions against Russia start backfiring with price hikes and shortages of fuel and electricity. And this is only the beginning, as Moscow is yet to announce any retaliatory measures as such. 

The unkindest cut of it all is that the Russian Defence Ministry chose Biden’s trip as the perfect backdrop to frame the true proportions of success of its special operation in Ukraine. The US and NATO’s credibility is perilously close to being irreparably damaged, as the Russian juggernaut rolls across Ukraine with the twin objectives of ‘demilitarisation’ and ‘denazification’ in its sights. 

The Russian General Staff disclosed on Friday that the hyped up Ukrainian Armed Forces, trained by the NATO and the US, have sustained crippling losses: Ukrainian air force and air defence is almost completely destroyed, while the country’s Navy no longer exists and about 11.5% of the entire military personnel have been put out of action. (Ukraine doesn’t have organised reserves.) 

According to the Russian General Staff’s deputy head Colonel General Sergey Rudskoy, Ukraine has lost much of its combat vehicles (tanks, armoured vehicles, etc.), one-third of its multiple launch rocket systems, and well over three-fourths of its missile air defence systems and Tochka-U tactical missile systems. 

Sixteen main military airfields in Ukraine have been put out of action, 39 storage bases and arsenals destroyed (which contained up to 70% of all stocks of military equipment, materiel and fuel, and more than 1 million 54000 tons of ammunition.)

Interestingly, following the intense high-precision strikes on the bases and training camps, foreign mercenaries are leaving Ukraine. During the past week, 285 mercenaries escaped into Poland, Hungary and Romania. Russian forces are systematically destroying the Western shipment of weapons. 

Most important, the mission to liberate Donbass is about to be accomplished. Simply put, the main objectives of the first phase of the operation have been achieved.

Apart from Kiev, Russian troops have blocked the northern and eastern cities of Chernigov, Sumy, Kharkov and Nikolaev, while in the south, Kherson and most of Zaporozhye region are under full control — the intention being to not only to shackle Ukrainian forces but to prevent their grouping in Donbass region. (See my article Dissecting Ukraine imbroglio, Tribune, March 21, 2022)  

“We did not plan to storm these cities from the start, in order to prevent destruction and minimise losses among personnel and civilians,” Rudskoy said. But, he added, such an option is not ruled out either in the period ahead.

It stands to reason that Washington and European capitals are well aware that the Russian operation is proceeding as scheduled and there is no stopping it. Thus, the NATO’s extraordinary summit on March 24 confirmed that the alliance is unwilling to get into a military confrontation with the Russian Army. 

Instead, the summit decided to strengthen the defence of its own territories! Four additional multinational NATO combat groups of 40,000 troops will be deployed in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia on a permanent basis. Poland’s proposal to deploy NATO military units in Ukraine was outright rejected.

However, Poland has certain other plans, namely, to deploy contingents to the western regions of Ukraine to support the ‘fraternal Ukrainian people” with the unspoken agenda of reclaiming control over the historically disputed territories in the those regions. What Faustian deal has been struck in Warsaw on March 25 between Biden and his Polish counterpart Duda remains unclear. Clearly, vultures are circling Ukraine’s skies. (See my blog Biden wings his way to the borderlands of Ukraine, March 24, 2022) 

Indeed, if Poland makes a bid for Ukrainian territory (with Biden’s tacit support), would Belarus be far behind to take control of the regions of Polesie and Volyn in Ukraine? Possibly not. Suffice to say, in the period since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014 when the US moved into the driving seat, Ukraine has lost its sovereignty and is now perilously close to vanishing altogether from Europe’s map! 

Washington — Biden personally, having been the Obama administration’s point person in Kiev in 2014 — should carry this heavy cross in history books. 

As for European leaders, they find themselves in a surreal world, out of touch with the stunning realities of a new world order. Eighty-year old Biden with limited grasp of the torrential flow of events, made an astounding proposal in his press conference in Brussels on Thursday that Ukraine should replace Russia in the G20! 

But Biden has a soulmate in the European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen whose latest threat is that Russian oil and gas companies “will not be allowed to demand payment for fuel in rubles.” She is blissfully unaware that the EU has no more effective means to pressure Russian companies! 

Russian President Vladimir Putin caught the western leaders huddled in Brussels by surprise with his announcement that Russia will promptly start charging “unfriendly” countries in rubles for gas supplies. There are over 45 unfriendly countries on the list — the US and EU members plus the UK, Australia, Canada, Singapore, Montenegro and Switzerland. (See the RT’s explainer What buying gas in rubles means for Russia and the West.)

Effectively, Moscow is on the one hand strengthening the weakened ruble, while on the other hand, messaging that it is pioneering a new wave internationally to bypass the dollar as  commodity currency. 

Yet, Moscow is also continuing to routinely supply Russian gas for transit to Europe through Ukraine to meet the requests of European consumers (109.5 mln cubic meters as of March 26!) The point is, despite rhetoric and grandstanding, Europe recently increased its gas purchases from Russia significantly against the backdrop of astronomically high spot prices! 

The European Council meet at Brussels on March 25 with Biden in attendance failed to adopt any concrete measures to address the energy price growth, and could not come up with a unified approach to Russia’s decision to receive payments for its gas only in rubles. 

Apropos the European Commission’s proposal to establish a new system of common purchase of gas to prevent outbidding, the final statement of the European Council merely says that the leaders agreed to “work together on voluntary common purchase of gas, LNG and hydrogen,” meaning that common purchases may be carried out only by those EU countries who are willing to unite. [Emphasis added.] 

It is a long haul for Europe to dispense with Russian gas. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said yesterday:

“There are gas shortages, and that is why we need to talk to Russians. Europe will move towards reducing its dependence on the Russian gas, but can this happen in the coming years? This is very difficult.”

“Europe consumes 500 billion cubic meters of gas, while America and Qatar can offer 15 billion, up to the last molecule… That is why German and Austrian politicians told me: “We cannot just destroy ourselves. If we impose sanctions on Russia in the oil and gas domain, we will destroy ourselves. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot before rushing into a fight.” This is how certain rational people in the West see it today.” 

With the doomsday predictions of Russian military failure in Ukraine coming unstuck and the blowback from Russia sanctions beginning to bite, Europeans are caught in a bind. They will be resentful as time passes. 

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***

 

Here is my analysis of what’s going on in Ukraine after one month. It may not prove acceptable to many. Certainly not liberals, the ruling elite in Washington, or even some left liberal and socialist left. But I’ve always spoken my mind on this blog and will continue to do so, with no allegiances to any political forces or organizations. So here goes:

First, this is a proxy war engineered by US neocons and political elites, that has its origins going back as far as 1999, when the neocons began to gain greater control over US foreign policy. The dress rehearsal for the current conflict originates with the Clinton administration. Once Clinton could not keep his zipper shut and the radical right used the opportunity to exact whatever concessions they wanted from him in his final two years in office, the shift in US foreign policy began and has gained momentum ever since.

In Bill’s last two years, in domestic policy a shift began to a more hyper neoliberalism in tax, spending, war, monetary, industrial and trade policy. In foreign policy, the main elements were a rejection of the prior US position not to move NATO east that was given to the remnants of the Russian elite in 1991-2 after the collapse of the USSR. The ‘old guard’ of US foreign policy, led by advisers like George F. Kennan and other US ambassadors was abandoned in the late 1990s. NATO led by the USA became an offensive organization. Its first victim was Yugoslavia-Serbia and the bombing of Servbia-Kosov0. That same year the march of NATO east also began.

In 2005 the US supported the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in Ukraine that ended in a stalemate between pro-US and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. The US next moved on Georgia encouraging it to invade south Russia, which it did but lost. NATO moved further into east europe in the wake of that conflict. In the Ukraine in 2010 the pro and anti-US elements came to an uneasy truce. The US then built up its influence by courting the ground forces of fascists as a popular uprising force, led by US under secretary of state, Victoria Nuland, who bragged the US had spent $5 billion financing the coup that occurred in 2014. The election of that year was narrowly won by the pro-Russian president. The street forces were then unleashed in mass protests in Kyiv that winter, 2014-15 and the pro-Russian president fled the country. Buttressed by publicly declared fascist elements in the street, many of whom then took seats in the new Parliament, the US deepened its economic and political involvement in Ukraine further. Victoria Nuland was appointed by the new Kyiv government as ‘economic czar’ over the Ukraine economy. (Made possible by Ukraine suspending its constitution that foreigners could not assume such a position. She was made an honorary citizen). Following her appointment the floodgates of US capital and business opened wide and US companies absorbed, purchased, and joint ventured with former Ukrainian companies. The US military advisers descended on Ukraine.

Russia responded by supporting the pro-Russia Donbass region. A local war in that area began. 14,000 pro-Russian Ukrainians died, as the fascist forces were organized in special military units and unleashed on the Ukrainian east (aka the Azov battalion). A peace armistice was arranged at Minsk in 2016 and the fighting and attacks slowed but never ceased. NATO moved east once again, a third time since 1999, absorbing the three Baltic countries after having already brought the rest of eastern Europe into the NATO fold.

Trump was elected president in 2017 and for the next four years a hiatus of sorts in the conflict followed. The Democrats believed Russian intervention in the US election of 2016 stole the presidency from Hillary Clinton and they never forgot. They waited their turn.

In 2020 Biden won and the preparation to step up the political pressure on Russia began anew: In late summer-fall 2021 the Biden administration deepened its military and political cooperation with Ukraine, as it pulled out quickly from Afghanistan. Joint US-Ukraine military exercises occurred. More US advisers poured into Ukraine to train the Ukrainian army. In November 2021 a preliminary agreement was signed by the US with Ukraine to bring it into the European Union, a necessary precursor to NATO membership. (Over the previous two decades the US withdrew from several missile treaties with Russia and set up advanced early warning radar in Poland and Romania.) All of eastern europe and baltics was now under NATO by 2021. Only Ukraine, which had repeatedly requested membership remained.

The US refused to acknowledge that NATO membership would not be offered to Ukraine, and repeatedly in 2021 refused when asked to clarify. Encouraged by these US statements and actions, Ukrainian president, Zelensky, became more strident in his request for US military protection, membership into NATO, and even began publicly saying Ukraine should be given nuclear weapons. Zelensky was being played like a violin by the US. A plausible explanation is the US was taunting and provoking Russia to invade. It had much to gain by a Russian invasion on a proxy country soil. (See my prior article ’10 Reasons Why the US May Want Russia to Invade Ukraine’ posted on this blog in February)

Russia began its military build up last winter in response. The US and neocon elements running US foreign policy used the threat of a Russian invasion to re-establish its hegemony over NATO among European nations which were showing signs of distancing from NATO, especially under Trump. US business interests, especially the oil and gas companies, had much to gain from a US policy of driving Russian out of Europe–not only in energy but in all areas of business. There was much profit to be gained by US corporations entering the European economic vacuum that would be left by a Russian exit.

Russia took the US bait and invaded on February 24, 2022. The US media-propaganda corporation machine immediately went to work to freeze out any and all global alternative commentary on the origins and state of the military conflict. The American public was force fed carefully selected stories about the plight of refugees, estimates of civilians killed, heroic Ukrainian fighters, and how the US was again the leader of protecting Democracy and Freedom. Little or nothing slipped through the US media to provide an actual picture of what was going on in Ukraine on the ground. The story was Russian military forces were bogged down, poorly equipped and led, being killed by the thousands and about to be defeated. Much of the reporting taken directly from Ukrainian government press releases.

Then the US media drumbeat began to assume an ominous character: the Russians were preparing chemical or biological weapons under a ‘false flag’ (but whose?); the Russians were prepared to continue on to invade NATO countries; and, most concerning, talking heads began to appear increasingly proposing how a tactical nuclear war could be won with Russia. Biden in recent days assumed the even more disconcerting public position declaring Putin was a ‘war criminal’ and that ‘Putin had to go’. The former declaration made it difficult to negotiate a truce at some point; the latter a virtual declaration of ‘regime change’ for Russia that would make Russia assume no hope in negotiating a truce whatsoever. It almost amounts to evidence the US does not want a truce or end to the conflict. It wants to debilitate Russia economically with its sanctions for some time to come, foment popular unrest in Russia, and humiliate it into a virtual surrender instead of a negotiated compromise at some point. The US still has much to gain geopolitically and economically from an extension (and perhaps even intensification) of the Russian-Ukraine conflict. How else can one interpret the US president’s declaration of Putin as ‘war criminal’ and need for ‘regime change’?

But Putin and Russia are not Milosevic and Yugoslavia. Nor Quaddaffi or Saddam Hussein. Nor Noriega of Panama. Nor the Taliban. Russia is one tenth of the global economy and source of much of its economic resources. And it’s a country with 6500 nuclear weapons.

One may ask, how can US neocons pushing the conflict in Ukraine be so short sighted? To that one can only recall their disastrous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan that they drove the US into. Biden appears increasingly unable to halt the US neocon insistence on further extending NATO and provoking Russia into a deeper conflict. Thoroughly neutralizing Russia is a necessary strategic precursor to taking on China in Taiwan or South China sea.

We are in an era of US imperialism running amuck. The same year, 2021, that the US ended its 20 year long disastrous war in the middle east, it is slouching toward another in Ukraine. Biden says US won’t get involved in Ukraine directly. But it already is. Ukrainian forces have many US advisors fighting side by side, directly tactics on the ground and use of US made weapons. US weapons like drones are likely US directed, being used with some effect to ambush Russian advanced forces. There’s also the very likely use of US satellites and AWACs helping Ukrainian forces identify where Russian forces are advancing on the ground so they can be ambushed. The US is sending thousands of javelin and stinger missiles, and training thousands of Ukrainian troops is the far west of Ukraine. As the conflict continues, it is almost inevitable NATO & even US forces will be drawn into the fight–under the cover as mercenary or volunteers.

My Position on the Conflict

Ukraine is a proxy war between US and Russia that has its origins in the US, going back to 1999 and continuing and growing ever since. It is US imperialism that is at play here. It’s not a Russian imperialism. Russia is desperately trying to prevent further penetration of US imperialism, not advance to the west. Russia lost whatever empire it had with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The US media-Neocon narrative that Russia in planning to restore the former Soviet empire into the baltics and eastern europe is nonsense. Russia clearly lacks the military resources to do so if it wanted. Even its 150,000 troops in Ukraine are dangerously spread thin along four fronts. Russia has plans to attack the baltics or Poland is a neocon narrative used to restore US leadership over NATO and serves as an excuse to increase US military combat forces in eastern europe.

The foregoing is not to approve of the current Russian invasion. It is just to acknowledge the Russian security reasons, fears and concerns driving it. One can only imagine if Mexico joined the former USSR ‘Warsaw Military Pact’ and began joint military exercises with the former Soviet Union, what the US response would have been. It would have been a US Mexico invasion in a New York minute, as they say. That’s how Russia views the situation in Ukraine. It knows if Ukraine joins NATO, then Finland and Sweden would quickly follow. The next US/NATO destabilization ‘targets’ would be Belarus and Kazakhstan (where popular uprisings have already occurred with no doubt some degree of US encouragement). A Ukraine in NATO would mean a Russia completely surrounded by NATO and it would either have to capitulate to US/NATO demands (including demobilizing its nuclear forces) or else in desperation fight a war next time using those nuclear weapons–an even worse scenario than the present. Russia no doubt believes it is either a fight in Ukraine now, before Ukraine joins NATO, or a much worse conflict later. Today’s Ukraine proxy war may be the last non-nuclear war in the 21st century.

To continue to see the conflict as a moral issue of unjustified invasion will not bring a resolution to the conflict any closer; in fact, it will perpetuate and risk a deeper conflict as public opinion is corralled in support of war hawks, neocons, and elites’ plans to continue it.

This is not to deny that Russia is a capitalist country and economy and its government deeply integrated with greedy capitalist Oligarchs. But the US is not any different: it’s a capitalist country with its own gaggle of even greedier oligarchs (bankers, shadow bankers, oil corps, and the more visible tech versions-Musk, Zuckerman, Bezos, et. al.)

Leftists and socialists are wrong to assume the position of “a plague on both their houses. They’re both capitalists and oligarchic and therefore we should support neither and call for a workers revolution to overthrow them all (as per Lenin’s call in 1914).” Their demand is Europe out of NATO! And Russia out of Ukraine!

But a workers revolution is not even remotely on the agenda anywhere. That therefore will not stop the conflict from escalating into an even wider, or more dangerous nuclear, confrontation.Nor is Europe about to exit NATO. Quite the opposite. So this left position sounds good but is completely naive. The demand should be to oppose US imperialism, even if it means another capitalist country (in this case Russia) is being attacked by that imperialism. The socialist left position sees Russia and US imperialism as equivalents. And in taking that view it in effect abstains. But to take an abstentionist position with regard to US imperialism, which is now running amuck in the 21st century, is tantamount to supporting it. It ignores which is the greater threat to world peace? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or US imperialism intent on driving NATO east into Ukraine (and likely points to follow)? It should be asked which policies originated the conflict and now show indication of a desire to perpetuate and even deepen the crisis?

The demand should be an immediate truce and halt to the fighting. Ukraine and US/NATO should immediately sign a formal agreement of no extension of membership in NATO and no US military presence in Ukraine as part of the truce agreement. Ukraine should assume a model of Finland neutrality in its relation to Russia. Finally, Russian speaking areas of eastern and southern Ukraine should be allowed an independent international observed vote as to what country they want to join as independent republics. All sanctions should be rescinded within 30 days of a settlement. And no Ukrainian military units should tolerate soldiers or officers with extremist political associations or views.

There is no denying that fascist elements have been present in Ukraine since 2014 at least, and have a deep role within the Ukrainian military and influence within the Ukrainian Parliament and government itself. The US and west does not understand how deep the memory and fear of anything fascist runs in Russia. Russia may be over-estimating the fascist threat. But what the unleashing of the Azov battalion and other such forces did in 2015-16 and after is a stark reminder. And is it also a fact that the Azov and other forces were once again shelling and attacking the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lughansk in 2021.

The greatest danger to world peace is US imperialist interests now reacting irrationally to growing indications that the American empire is now under threat like never before; that the US global unipolar world order since 1991 can no longer be sustained. With neocons largely in control of US foreign policy since the late 1990s it is likely the US is about to engage in another, even more dangerous adventure in Europe than it did in the middle east in the previous two decades. That conflict ended with a tremendous loss of life, trillions of dollars of wasted US resources, a region left in shambles from Libya to Syria to Iraq to Afghanistan. A repeat of that policy on the Eurasian continent will prove many times more destructive and very likely lead to a tactical nuclear conflict that cannot be contained.

This proxy war in Ukraine is not at all about freedom or democracy. That’s just bullshit propaganda. It’s about money and power. It’s about restoring US imperial hegemony over Europe, breaking Russia as a global challenger to the US, and a dress rehearsal for then going after China.

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Jack Rasmus blogs at http://jackrasmus.com and hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network every Friday at 2pm eastern time. Join him at twitter for daily updates at @drjackrasmus.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Within days of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, the US and the European Union imposed a series of sweeping sanctions on Russia aimed at crippling its economy by cutting off major banks from the SWIFT international financial messaging system and preventing the Russian central bank from using its foreign currency reserves to prop up the rouble.

The rapid action was the outcome of planning that had been developed for at least three months. The expectation was that the refusal of the US and NATO to even consider Russian demands for an end for NATO’s continued expansion to the east and engage in negotiations to address its legitimate security concerns would soon provoke military action.

Details of the considerable planning that went into the sanctions, involving the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and top intelligence and military personnel, together with EU officials, were revealed in an article published in the Wall Street Journal on March 18.

According to the article, the planning began shortly before Thanksgiving (the last Thursday in November) when Yellen met with senior officials and said she would contact her counterparts in Europe and elsewhere “to urge them to begin preparations for an economic response” to a Russian invasion.

The meeting was the launch of “an unprecedented financial sanctions program by the West aimed at a major economy” and “that program, along with [a] massive arms shipment, were the front lines of the West’s engagement.”

The senior Treasury officials involved in the planning were Yellen, her deputy Wally Adeyemo, who oversees sanctions operations, and Elizabeth Rosenberg, assistant secretary on terror financing issues.

Contact with the White House was through Daleep Singh, a former Federal Reserve and Treasury official who is now at the National Security Council. He was in constant touch with Björn Seibert, a former German defence official, who is head of cabinet to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

The working out of an agreement with the EU was crucial to the implementation of the sanctions because of the impact they would have on the EU economy—particularly for Italy and Germany that are heavily dependent on natural gas supplies from Russia. Singh and Seibert began discussions on the effects of any blowback in December.

According to the WSJ article, citing several of the participants, there was an “unprecedented level of co-operation and scope between the Treasury, the White House, the Commerce Department and the European Commission.”

The US was able to bring to the table its experience in imposing sanctions and other measures directed against Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, as well as the action it has taken to cripple the giant Chinese telecommunications maker Huawei.

However, the action against Russia, the world’s 12th largest economy, and a major supplier of oil, gas, grains, and many important industrial metals, took these operations to a new level.

In early February, several weeks before the Russian invasion, key US officials went to Brussels where they “spent hours at European Commission headquarters thrashing out the plan.”

Throughout this period, the White House insisted that Russia was set to invade based on “intelligence” reports.

But the certainty with which these pronouncements were made was not the result of any advanced spying operations. It was grounded on the understanding that the US refusal to entertain any diplomatic negotiations had backed Russia into a corner. As Biden said on January 20, Putin would have to “do something.”

Further plans are now being made to extend the sanctions both against Russia and more broadly.

Yellen said earlier this month that it was “certainly appropriate for us to be working with our allies to consider further sanctions.”

China is coming into the firing line. Last week US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the US was considering “secondary” sanctions directed against countries deemed by the US to be providing aid to Russia by assisting it to circumvent the measures applied to it. In effect, this means the US can interpret normal trade and financial dealings as providing such assistance if it chooses to do so.

“We have a number of tools to ensure compliance, and one of those tools is the designation of individuals or entities in third-party jurisdictions who are not complying with US sanctions or are undertaking systematic efforts to weaken or evade them,” he told reporters.

Secondary sanctions are a controversial subject in the EU because it opposed their imposition on European companies dealing with Iran after the Trump administration had sanctioned it. However, the EU was not able to do anything about it.

Asked about the issue on Friday, von der Leyen said the allies were looking “deep” into the sanctions regime to see if there were any loopholes. Action would be taken to close them, he added, making circumvention impossible.

On the issue of China, the US President Biden has said Beijing will face “consequences” if it were to assist Russia.

Speaking to the business channel CNBC on Friday, Yellen said it was premature to impose sanctions on China and it would be inappropriate at this point. But her remarks carried an implicit threat.

“We, as senior administration officials, are talking privately and quietly with China to make sure they understand our position,” she said.

In other moves, the G7 grouping of major imperialist powers has said it will act against any sale of Russian gold reserves aimed at supporting its currency.

A statement from the White House said G7 leaders and the EU would work jointly to blunt Russia’s ability to deploy its international reserves to prop up its economy. It made clear that “any transaction involving gold related to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation is covered by existing sanctions.”

The sanctions regime imposed by the US has implications that go far beyond Russia.

The measures imposed so far make clear that any country, including major powers, that crosses the path of US imperialism in its drive to open new regions of the world for plunder can be immediately excluded from the global financial system based on the US dollar.

In a significant comment in his letter to shareholders last week, Larry Fink, the head of the giant investment fund BlackRock, said: “The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades.”

In other words, the period that followed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, supposedly based on market mechanisms and the free movement of finance, is over and a new situation is emerging.

Fink said companies and governments would be looking to onshore or nearshore more of their operations. As it did in the 1930s, this movement back to the “national hearth” has geo-economic and strategic implications.

The US actions against Russia constitute a major blow to the international financial system. Henceforth every country must consider that its foreign reserves, denominated in dollars, can be rendered essentially worthless overnight.

The outcome will not be the establishment of a new global financial system based on another currency such as the euro, let alone the Chinese yuan.

Rather the tendency will be towards the division of the world into conflicting currency and economic blocs, akin to those of the 1930s, which played a significant role in creating the conditions for World War II.

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***

In the now month-long mainstream media coverage of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, much attention has been paid to the actions of the ‘Ukrainian Resistance’.

In a manner not dissimilar to its coverage of the ‘Syrian rebels’ a decade ago, a romanticised image of ‘Ukrainian freedom fighters’ fighting bravely against a militarily superior Russian foe has been widespread amongst corporate outlets, alongside their fawning over Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in his calls for the implementation of a No Fly Zone – a move that would undoubtedly trigger nuclear war.

This Hollywood-style PR makeover of the Ukrainian military by the corporate media, including the notorious neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, also shares a strong similarity with the aforementioned ‘Syrian rebels’ in that it highlights the strong presence of CIA involvement in the background.

Indeed, the training of Ukrainian military personnel by the CIA to engage in guerrilla warfare against Russia was recently outlined in a Western corporate media report, indicating that a plan was in place to draw Moscow into an Iraq-war style military quagmire in Ukraine – the second largest country in Europe.

Such a tactic has historical usage against the Kremlin, when in 1979, then-US President Jimmy Carter would launch Operation Cyclone, a CIA programme which would see the arming, funding and training of Wahhabi insurgents known as the Mujahideen, who would go onto wage war on the USSR-aligned government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan – with Kabul, previously Western-friendly, having come under Soviet influence following the 1978 Saur Revolution.

This romanticised image of ‘Ukrainian freedom fighters’ by the corporate media however, lies in stark contrast to their coverage of Ansar Allah, more commonly known as the Houthis, currently waging an armed resistance campaign against Western-allied Saudi Arabia’s seven year long war and blockade on neighbouring Yemen – leading to mass-starvation in what is already the most impoverished country on the Arabian Peninsula.

Indeed, this was evidenced as such on Friday, when the Yemeni armed forces launched air strikes against a key oil refinery in the Saudi city of Jeddah, to a noticeable absence of articles by the Western media celebrating the actions of the Yemeni resistance against the Western-backed might of Riyadh, unlike their coverage of Ukraine and Russia.

To understand this contrasting approach to both Yemen and Ukraine by the corporate media, one must look further into the wider geopolitical and historical context in the West’s relationship with both countries.

In 1979, the same year as the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Islamic Revolution in Iran saw the anti-Western and anti-Zionist Ayatollah Khomeini come to power in Iran following the overthrow of the US and UK-aligned Shah Pahlavi – who had himself come to power following 1953’s Operation Ajax, an MI6 and CIA-orchestrated regime change operation launched in response to then-Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh’s decision to nationalise Iran’s vast oil reserves.

In order to counter the influence of Khomeini’s newly-established anti-Imperialist state and to maintain hegemony in the Middle East, the United States adopted the strategy of using Saudi Arabia – separated from the Islamic Republic by the Persian Gulf – as a political and military bulwark against Iran.

This is where the media coverage of the Yemen conflict comes into play, with Tehran long being accused of backing the Houthis, whose seizure of the capital Sana’a in March 2015 led to Riyadh launching its current air campaign – involving US and British-supplied bombs – in a bid to restore its favoured Presidential candidate, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, to power.

Therefore, with the aims of Ansar Allah consequently being opposed to the aims of the US-NATO hegemony, this explains why no heroic descriptions such as ‘Yemeni resistance’ or ‘freedom fighters’ are ascribed to the Houthis by the Western media, in stark contrast to their coverage of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – supported by the West since the 2014 Euromaidan colour revolution and their subsequent war on the breakaway Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, a situation that has escalated to the point where nuclear war has now become a distinct possibility.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Americans and anyone living in the US should listen intently to this one because according to Charles Gave of Gavekal, one of the world’s leading independent providers of financial research, there are very tough times ahead for us all.

He explains how the US has triggered the dollar’s demise, lost reserve currency hegemony, and has hallmarks of a third world country.

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This was originally published on TNT Radio.

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***

Below are excerpts of  an important article by London’s Daily Mail. Our thanks to the Daily Mail for having brought this article to our attention

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Moscow’s claim that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine is at least partially true, according to new emails obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.

The commander of the Russian Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, claimed there was a ‘scheme of interaction between US government agencies and Ukrainian biological objects’ and pointed to the ‘financing of such activities by structures close to the current US leadership, in particular the investment fund Rosemont Seneca, which is headed by Hunter Biden.’

Intelligence experts say the Russian military leader’s allegations were a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin‘s invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US.

But emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons.

He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a ‘science project’ involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine.

And although Metabiota is ostensibly a medical data company, its vice president emailed Hunter in 2014 describing how they could ‘assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia’ – an unusual goal for a biotech firm.

In April 2014, Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri wrote a memo to Hunter outlining how they could ‘assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia’. ‘Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy [Dimeo, Metabiota executive] and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion,’ Guttieri wrote

Click here to read the full article.

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***

Eighteen months ago, reports started to surface that Boris Johnson’s Conservative government in the U.K. was planning to detain would-be asylum seekers in places as far away as the South Atlantic. Some sites, such as Ascension Island, are 4,000 miles from Britain.

Johnson’s plan was actually a spinoff of a never-implemented idea put forward by the Labour government back in 2003 to “offshore” the country’s asylum process to “regional protection zones” in the vicinity of the conflicts and collapsing economies that were sending hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers to the U.K. and other European countries. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair and his colleagues backed off of that idea after it received tremendous pushback from social justice and immigrant rights organizers, who averred that it would place large and unfair financial burdens on poor countries that had the geographic misfortune to be located on the periphery of war zones.

Since those initial reports — with asylum seekers finding ever-more creative ways to cross over to England from the continent, either via boats or, in some instances, being smuggled through the Channel Tunnel — Home Secretary Priti Patel has increasingly looked to penalize asylum seekers, to render their actions criminal and to deny them the right to a fair hearing in the U.K. The British government is mirroring U.S. government actions taken during the Trump administration against would-be asylees attempting to traverse the southern border into the U.S., such as the Orwellian-named Migrant Protection Protocols.

This past summer, Patel unveiled plans, contained in legislation called the Nationality and Borders Bill, to criminalize asylum seekers entering the country without the correct paperwork and to make it easier to deport them. The plans also sought to house asylum seekers in offshore facilities such as abandoned oil rigs, or on Ascension Island off the coast of southern Africa, while their cases slowly wend through the court system. This sort of offshore detention — a practice long utilized in Australia, and currently being proposed in Denmark — is one that immigrants’ rights groups view with deep suspicion. If implemented, it would also give the British home secretary unprecedented powers to revoke the citizenship of certain U.K. citizens deemed politically undesirable, a move that picked up steam in the wake of a number of high-profile cases of U.K. citizens operating within the ranks of ISIS.

So desperate is Johnson’s government to deliver on its electoral promise to anti-immigrant voters of curtailing immigration that it has reportedly turned to a range of countries, from Norway to Rwanda to Albania to host its detention facilities. All, apparently, have turned down the U.K.’s overtures, leaving the remote Ascension Island, with its once-a-week flight to South Africa, as choice number one. If this tough-on-asylum proposal becomes law, it could end up costing the U.K. a fortune: A similar offshoring policy in Australia ultimately cost the Australians roughly 2 million pounds per person per year held at these remote detention sites, and helped shred the country’s human rights record in the process. In addition to the immorality of such a measure, as a deterrent system this sort of off-shoring policy is shockingly expensive to implement.

Since the bill was first proposed, opposition parties, combined with a number of rebels from within Conservative ranks, have fought a rearguard action to try to prevent it being enacted into law.

Now, with war raging once again on the European continent and displacing millions of people, and with tens of thousands of British families having signed up for a government program to host Ukrainian refugees in their homes, one might imagine that Prime Minister Johnson and Home Secretary Patel would use the moment as cover to back off of the more inflammatory of their anti-immigrant proposals.

To the contrary, they have doubled down. Earlier this month, the government repeatedly made it clear that it was sticking by this bill, and sent the legislation over to parliament’s upper chamber, the House of Lords, to be debated, amended and voted upon. But members of the House of Lords weren’t happy about the legislation, and in a series of hearings successfully defeated or amended many of its more contentious, more anti-democratic, provisions.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the bill is dead. The House of Lords is, these days, more of an advisory chamber than an institution with veto powers over legislation. And, at this point, it’s looking as if Johnson’s government intends to try to steamroll the legislation through Parliament later this month, when members of Parliament once more debate the merits of the proposals.

Yet, Johnson is, after months of political scandals, a wounded leader, and his hold on the Conservative Party is nowhere near as total as it was last year. In recent days, more than two dozen of his members of Parliament have indicated their discomfort with key parts of the legislation, including the part which refuses to grant asylum seekers temporary work permits while they are waiting for their cases to be heard.

The war in Ukraine is rapidly shifting the dynamics around refugees and asylees. For years, a growing number of countries in Europe, pushed by electorates increasingly wary of large-scale migration, locked down against poor (mainly non-white) migrants seeking asylum. But Ukrainians, forced to flee suddenly before a staggeringly violent Russian onslaught, aren’t seeking asylum, a process that can take years of legal hearings to complete; rather they are heading west as refugees — into refugee camps in countries bordering Ukraine, and then westward into other countries in Europe. And, unlike with the victims of other conflicts in previous years, aid agencies in Europe are watching, somewhat amazed, as governments welcome these displaced Ukrainians with open arms. This treatment is far cry from how European countries’ response to the civil war in Syria — a year after a mass migration into Europe in 2015, one country after another began locking its borders down against the refugees — and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

In contrast, Ukrainians are being met with work permits, with free public transit passes and so on, despite the fact that these same European governments have steadily been turning away refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other non-European conflict zones in recent years after a populist backlash against the liberal entry policies of 2015.

After a slow start denounced by opposition politicians as “shameful,” Britain has begun easing its rules-of-entry to allow for large numbers of Ukrainians to be temporarily resettled in the U.K. As a result, somewhere in the region of 200,000 Ukrainians could end up living in the country over the coming months and years — a number roughly equal to the number of EU nationals who left the U.K. in 2020 as Brexit’s provisions began to kick in, and one that might go a long way to fill the labor shortage in key sectors of the economy that Britain has repeatedly experienced post-Brexit.

Some relief workers and experts argue that this is a moment for Europe to fundamentally rethink its obligations to those fleeing persecution and violence, finally bringing the continent more in line with the spirit of the 1951 Refugee Convention.

But, at least in the short term, that seems an unlikely outcome. In Britain, the political tradeoff is, perhaps, most obvious. The home secretary, with Prime Minister Johnson’s backing, is continuing to push the noxious Nationality and Borders Bill in the same month that the government has been forced, by public opinion as much as by internal party dissent, to roll out a much larger welcome mat for Ukrainians than it had initially intended.

The U.K. is rightly responding with generosity to the victims of Russia’s violence in Ukraine. But, unless the Conservative parliamentary rebels pick up more followers in the coming weeks, it will soon be going down an even nastier road than before in its responses to other displaced, traumatized people fleeing non-European conflicts, non-European economic collapse and non-European zones of despair.

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Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist and a part-time lecturer at the University of California at Davis. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, New York Magazine, The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. He also writes a weekly political column. Originally from England, with a bachelor’s in politics, philosophy and economics from Oxford University and a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he now lives in Sacramento, California.

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

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***

As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its third week, and the number of Ukrainian immigrants has increased under the strain of war, Israel is witnessing sharp differences between one group that supports the reception of all immigrants and another that supports accepting only Jewish ones. A third group warns against dispersing the efforts of preserving the state’s so-called “ethnic purity”.

Meanwhile, this growing dispute within the Israeli government indicates a state of divergence on the Israeli vision of the ongoing war and the lack of consensus on its position. There is a division between those who reject the Russian invasion, those who consider that this position may incur Israel considerable prices and a third group that calls for a total alignment with the West.

When the war between Ukraine and Russia becomes bloodier, Israel is preparing for new waves of Jewish immigration from Ukraine. The population of the Jewish community in Ukraine is 48,000, and the Israeli government started to realise the need to prepare for the increase in applications to immigrate to Israel. These waves of migrations began to be organised by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, the Ministries of Immigration, Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the prime minister’s office to communicate between Jews and their families in the former Soviet Union. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, 6,000 new Jewish immigrants from Ukraine have immigrated to Israel.

In 2021, 3,080 new Jewish immigrants immigrated to Israel from Ukraine, but due to the war between Russia and Ukraine, Jewish immigration officials believe there will be a dramatic increase in the applications of migration requests by Ukrainian Jews. The Ministry of Aliyah and Integration stated a rise of 12 per cent in applications to open migration files, and the numbers are expected to increase further.

The Israeli currents that support receiving Ukrainian refugees claim that Israel is the protector of every Jew wherever they may be. Therefore, hundreds of Israelis in Ukraine assist at a field hospital on the border. Every day, 12 to 16 flights from Russia and the countries around Ukraine land at Ben Gurion Airport. It is expected that around 2,000 to 3,000 immigrants may arrive, besides those entitled to the racist “law of return”, specific to Jews and Jews alone.

The group with reservations about the comprehensive reception of refugees from Ukraine called for a ministerial committee to form a clear immigration policy for Israel to adapt to the situation and set parameters on the number of refugees received. So far, Israel does not have a specific and clear immigration policy, and the Ukrainian refugee crisis necessitates a governmental decision based on an agreement between the different components of the government. They do not agree on the current situation, but rather seem indifferent to what they call a “humanitarian disaster”.

A third Israeli current considers the request to implement a plan for refugees as “shameful” because it distorts Israel’s reputation and undermines its immigration policy since it cannot afford the cost of receiving refugees coming from Ukraine. This prompted hundreds of demonstrators to protest in front of the home of the Minister of Interior Ayelet Shaked, accusing her of discriminating between refugees according to religion, race and gender. This group believes that any government’s discrimination based on these grounds is shameful.

This Israeli racist policy towards Ukrainian refugees, compared with other policies regarding immigrants coming from other countries such as Ethiopia, has caused all ministers of the government to be accused of committing a “scandal” and causing a “disgrace” to Israel because they have demonstrated a racist policy separating Jews from others.

It is clear that Israel, the country that cared about its citizens in Ukraine and the Jews there, has closed its doors to victims more than any other country has. Israel has remained silent, turned its back and closed its doors. The world will not forget Israel’s silence. There will come a day when the world will hold Israel accountable because it has evaded punishment for its endless occupation.

Being aware of the Israeli concern about the Jews impresses those described as “lovers of the Jewish race”. But when the war refugees arrive at the Israeli airport and are requested to deposit a huge amount of money to experience freedom and security, it is evident that something in the Israeli conscience is completely distorted. Is there really a difference between a child from Ukraine who fled to search for security and safety, who does not have a Jewish grandmother, and a child from Ukraine who has a Jewish grandmother? What is the difference? Racism.

The Israelis fear that Ukrainian refugees will face personal difficulties, health conditions and other difficulties in Israel, such as not speaking Hebrew or understanding Israeli mentality and culture. As a result, Israeli studies reveal an increase in the diagnosis of depression among Jewish immigrants, and even suicide cases, prompting the Ministry of Aliyah and Integration to launch a health centre to deal with this. Based at the centre are mental health specialists, operating five days a week, offering services in five different languages: English, French, Spanish, Amharic and Russian.

At the same time, recent days have revealed that Israeli human trafficking networks are actively working to lure Ukrainian women and girls to work in prostitution under the guise of receiving them as refugees. The trafficking networks are based at Ben Gurion Airport and nearby hotels designated by the authorities to host refugees.

During their testimonies at Ben Gurion Airport, about a hundred female Ukrainian refugees mentioned that people offered them money to help flee the war areas in Ukraine. The women crossed the border and boarded a plane heading to Israel. However, upon their arrival, the same people informed the women that they would be forced to provide sexual or domestic services to pay back the money.

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A proposed amendment to a 2019 federal law would have allowed federal agencies to conduct vague, pandemic-related “drills and operational exercises” just before the onset of the COVID crisis – and an amendment eventually included in the bill may have had a similar effect.

This article provides more significant information which suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic may be a falsified national and international hoax, ruse, ploy, national security operational exercise, or other falsified “activity.” While this article does not thoroughly discuss the question, one might reasonably ask if a falsified pandemic committed by U.S. government national security officials, public health officials, and politicians would be terrorism. Without being an expert, one could predict that a falsified pandemic would greatly harm America and other countries and thus could be used as terrorism.

FBI ‘linking public health and law enforcement’

Before getting to the information suggesting COVID-19 is a falsified exercise, it is necessary to mention again that in 2016, the Obama-Biden administration ordered the FBI and Department of Justice to link “public health and law enforcement” and to coordinate with countries such as China, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other potentially terroristic governments, through the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL), “on the Global Health Security Agenda and its successful implementation.”

This may be significant in part because if the implementation of the Global Health Security Agenda included a falsified pandemic and is therefore terrorism and a crime against the United States, then the FBI would apparently be the entity to investigate such potential terrorism committed by U.S. government officials. But if the FBI is coordinating the terrorism, then, of course, there probably won’t be an honest investigation.

The Obama-Biden administration’s ordering of the FBI to “coordinate with INTERPOL on the Global Health Security Agenda and its successful implementation” may also refer to the use of law enforcement/police and intelligence entities to intimidate and/or eliminate potential whistleblowers; history shows that it sometimes only takes one good and honest person to bring down widespread corruption. “Successful implementation” of a falsified pandemic or “global health security agenda” might require intimidation and/or elimination of whistleblowers, judges deciding cases on government forced injections, etc.

The FBI’s and DOJ’s recent history suggests the use of covert “law enforcement” as corrupt political entities; and the U.S. federal government’s anti-freedom response to COVID-19 in itself suggests widespread corruption. Thus, the methods and advanced technologies used by the FBI and other law enforcement entities may be relevant to this discussion.

Discussing this topic often leads to the false label of paranoia, but it is going to be asked anyways: why do the FBI and other entities keep methods and technologies secret? What do they have to hide? Some might say that persons who do wrong might be able to avoid punishment if methods and technologies are known; that is unlikely due to the advancement in technologies. But hiding methods and technologies does allow entities like the FBI to hide their own crimes, which the FBI has done in the past.

False investigations can be used as a weapon against innocent Americans in that they may involve stalking and harassment with covert law enforcement or intelligence community employees. “Investigations” also may involve stalking and harassment of acquaintances of the target of the false investigation. (Page 5) Such methods, including deliberate committing of crimes, were used by the FBI or other intelligence agencies in the past. (Pages 5, 10-12, etc.)

One problem with the Obama-Biden Administration’s ordering of the FBI to link law enforcement with public health and successfully implementing the Global Health Security Agenda might be summarized best by a document from the U.S. Senate describing previous crimes committed by the FBI and U.S. intelligence community:

intelligence activity in the past decades has, all too often, exceeded the restraints on the exercise of governmental power which are imposed by our country’s Constitution, laws, and traditions. Excesses in the name of protecting security are not a recent development in our nation’s history…Intelligence activity, on the other hand, is generally covert. It is concealed from its victims and is seldom described in statutes or explicit executive orders. The victim may never suspect that his misfortunes are the intended result of activities undertaken by his government, and accordingly may have no opportunity to challenge the actions taken against him. (Pages 2-3, emphasis added)

The U.S. Senate document indeed implies that covert stalking with the intent to cause harm was used by the FBI and other entities. It is documented that the ultimate intent might have been to cause the targeted person to harm themselves. (Page 11) And rather than eliminate such covert activities, it appears as though President Joe Biden (as a U.S. Senator) and others U.S. officials greatly expanded the use of potentially covert intelligence and/or law enforcement personnel across the nation. (108 STAT. 1807-1808) The law implies potential use of covert employees. (Not all opinions in linked sources are endorsed.)

Here’s one way in which such covert government actions could cause harm and potentially death: as the above-mentioned U.S. Senate document mentioned, people who are victims of the covert actions of law enforcement or intelligence agencies like the FBI “may never suspect that…misfortunes are the intended result of activities undertaken by [the U.S.] government.” “Misfortune” often causes suffering.

In the modern Big Pharma society such suffering may be much worse. What is one possible consequence of a person experiencing “misfortunes” and covert stalking and/or harassment? Sometimes the victim may begin using illicit chemicals. (The contents of this article or other articles by this author are not medical advice.) Or, because the government actions may involve covert stalking or harassment with not-in-uniform law enforcement or intelligence agency personnel, others may be misdiagnosed and may be wrongly prescribed certain chemicals. And what is one of the common consequences of using certain illicit chemicals? And what is a major “adverse effect” of certain prescribed chemicals which act on the brain? Remember, the FBI’s previous intent was to cause misfortune and attempt to convince targeted persons to harm themselves.

In other words, if the U.S. federal and/or local governments wanted to remove certain political opponents or other persons from society as they did in the past, such covert methods that they have used in the past, combined with chemicals with sometimes torturous effects, may be a way to do so.

And, again, due to the potential use of advanced technologies that may remotely and covertly act on the human brain and/or body, the current actions of the FBI and other intelligence or covert law enforcement entities may be even worse than the past. Covert and remote torture is not beyond the realm of possibilities. It seems that Americans should demand that such entities are no longer allowed to operate with such secrecy.

Proposed amendment before COVID again suggests pandemic ‘exercise’

Those subjects cannot be further discussed here, though. This article provides even more information which suggests that COVID-19 may be a falsified pandemic. Previous articles discussed significant information in the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019. Before that became law, though, there was another version of the bill which implies that a falsified operational exercise with “emerging infectious disease” enacted by the U.S. government and others may have been in the planning phase. An “emerging infectious disease program” was proposed to be established as follows:

“(e) EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASE PROGRAM.—  The Secretary [of Health and Human Services], acting through the Director of BARDA,  shall establish and implement a program that supports research and development, and manufacturing infrastructure, activities with respect to an emerging infectious disease.” (Page 88, emphasis added)

And what was one of these potential “activities with respect to emerging infectious disease”? The same bill provides the suggested amendment entitled “Strengthening National Preparedness and Response for Public Health Emergencies” which would have enhanced the duties of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response to include “comprehensive, synchronized, and mutually supportive” “drills and operations exercises” with the “emerging infectious disease program.” The proposed amendment (Pages 3-4) is difficult to understand without the wording of the law to be amended. The proposed amendment is emphasized as it would have appeared if it was passed:

[Subject to the authority of the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response shall utilize experience related to public health emergency preparedness and response, biodefense, medical countermeasures, and other relevant topics to carry out the following functions:]

(G) Drill and operational exercises

Carry out drills and operational exercises, in consultation with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other applicable Federal departments and agencies, as necessary and appropriate, to identify, inform, and address gaps in and policies related to the pandemic influenza and emerging infectious disease program established under section 319L(d), or all-hazards medical and public health preparedness and response, including exercises based on—

(i) identified threats for which countermeasures are available and for which no countermeasures are available; and

(ii) unknown threats for which no countermeasures are available.

Such drills and operations exercises shall be comprehensive, synchronized, and mutually supportive. (42 U.S. Code § 300hh–10(b)(4)(G), proposed amendment emphasized, from pages 3-4)

The proposed amendment suggests that the U.S. federal government, apparently including at least some members of Congress, intended the U.S. government to “carry out drills and operational exercises…related to…the emerging infectious disease program” mentioned above. Coronaviruses are in the realm of “emerging infectious diseases.”

The proposed amendment also wanted to make sure it was written into law that “such drills and operations exercises shall be comprehensive, synchronized, and mutually supportive.” “Synchronized…and mutually supportive” appears to imply that different government entities – potentially including the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA’s National Exercise Program – should synchronize and support “comprehensive” exercises with the Department of Health and Human Services’ exercises, including exercises related to “emerging infectious disease.”

Like other articles mentioned, why would it be necessary to attempt to put such wording into law unless a “comprehensive, synchronized, and mutually supportive” exercise was being planned and required more legal protection for those planning it?

And soon after the proposed amendment, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic – an “emerging infectious disease” pandemic – reportedly emerged. The timing of the proposed amendment followed by the emerging infectious disease pandemic could be coincidence but the reasonable person may suggest otherwise.

And while the proposed amendment was not included in the enacted law, one specific amendment was included which may have been intended to have the same effect as the proposed amendment above but with more broad language to provide secrecy for government officials potentially planning a falsified pandemic “operations exercise.” The amendment included in the enacted law is as follows:

(b) PROTECTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY FROM THREATS.—Section 2811 (42 U.S.C. 300hh–10) is amended by adding at the end the following:

“(f) PROTECTION OF NATIONAL SECURITY FROM THREATS.—

“(1) IN GENERAL.—In carrying out subsection (b)(3), the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response shall implement strategic initiatives or activities to address threats, including pandemic influenza and which may include a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agent (including any such agent with a significant potential to become a pandemic), that pose a significant level of risk to public health and national security based on the characteristics of such threat. Such initiatives shall include activities to—

“(A) accelerate and support the advanced research, development, manufacturing capacity, procurement, and stockpiling of countermeasures, including initiatives under section 319L(c)(4)(F);

“(B) support the development and manufacturing of virus seeds, clinical trial lots, and stockpiles of novel virus strains; and

“(C) maintain or improve preparedness activities, including for pandemic influenza. (133 STAT. 948-949, emphasis added)

The approved amendment included in the enacted law is broader than the initially proposed amendment, but it appears to have a similar effect: strategic initiatives and “preparedness activities” may include exercises (133 STAT. 940) and “any such agent with a significant potential to become a pandemic” would likely include coronaviruses. Thus, the amendment, like several other amendments, could be interpreted to mean that the U.S. government was planning a falsified pandemic exercise as a “strategic initiative” or “preparedness activity.”

When taken together, the proposed amendment and the approved amendment in light of the soon-to-follow COVID-19 pandemic are again extremely significant indications that the COVID-19 pandemic may be a falsified exercise. Of course, if it is a falsified exercise, it is likely being used as a form of terrorism to coerce large populations into doing things they would otherwise not do.

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According to a 2019  Rand report titled  “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia”,  the US goal is to undermine Russia just as it did the Soviet Union in the cold war. Rather than “trying to stay ahead” or trying to improve the US domestically or in international relations, the emphasis is on efforts and actions to undermine the designated adversary Russia. Rand is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.

The report lists anti-Russia measures divided into the following areas:  economic, geopolitical, ideological/informational, and military.  They are assessed according to the perceived risks, benefits and “likelihood of success”.

Screenshot from RAND

The report notes that Russia has “deep seated” anxieties about western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be a vulnerability to exploit. There is no mention of the cause of the Russian anxieties: they have have been invaded multiple times and had 27 million deaths in WW2.

Significance of Ukraine

Ukraine is important to Russia. The two countries share much common heritage and a long common border.  One of the most important leaders of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, was Ukrainian. During WW2, Ukraine was one of Hitler’s invasion routes and there was a small but active number of Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi Germany. The distance from the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, to Moscow is less than 500 miles.

For these same reasons of geography and history, Ukraine is a major component of a US/NATO effort to undermine Russia.  Current Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland,  said that over 20 years the US invested $5 billion in the project to turn Ukraine. The culmination was a violent coup in February 2014.  Since 2015, the US has been training ultra nationalist and Neo-Nazi  militias. This has been documented in articles such as “U.S. House admits Nazi role in Ukraine” (Robert Parry, 2015),  “The US is arming and assisting neo-nazis in Ukraine while the House debates prohibition.”(Max Blumenthal, 2018),  “Neo Nazis and the far right are on the march in Ukraine” (Lev Golinken in 2019) and “The CIA may be breeding Nazi terror in Ukraine” (Branko Marcetic Jan. 2022).

Rand suggested provocations

Prior to 2018, the US only provided “defensive” military weaponry to Ukraine. The Rand report assesses that providing lethal (offensive) military aid to Ukraine will have a high risk but also a high benefit.  Accordingly, US lethal weaponry skyrocketed from near zero to $250M in 2019,  to  $303M in 2020,  to $350M in 2021.  Total military aid is much higher.  A few weeks ago, “The Hill” reported, “The U.S. has contributed more than $1 billion to help Ukraine’s military over the past year”.

The Rand report lists many techniques and “measures” to provoke and threaten Russia. Some of the steps include:

• Repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets
• Deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia
• Increasing US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea)
• Holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders
• Withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty

These and many other provocations suggested by Rand have, in fact, been implemented. For example, NATO conducted massive war exercises dubbed “Defender 2021” right up Russia’s border.  NATO has started “patrolling” the Black Sea and engaging in provocative intrusions into Crimean waters. The US has withdrawn from the INF Treaty.

Since 2008, when NATO “welcomed” the membership aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia, Russia has said this would cross a red line and threaten its security. In recent years NATO has provided advisers, training and ever increasing amounts of military hardware. While Ukraine is not a formal member of NATO, it has increasingly been treated like one. The full Rand report says “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.”

The alternative, which could have prevented or at least forestalled the current Russian intervention in Ukraine, would have been to declare Ukraine ineligible for NATO.  But this would have been contrary to the US intention of deliberately stressing, provoking and threatening Russia.

Ukraine as US client

In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. This agreement confirmed Ukrainian aspirations to join NATO and rejection of the Crimean peoples decision to re-unify with Russia following the 2014 Kiev coup. The agreement signaled a consolidation of Washington’s economic, political and military influence. 

December 2021 Russia red lines followed by military action

In December 2021, Russia proposed a treaty with the US and NATO.  The central Russian proposal was a written agreement that Ukraine would not join the NATO military alliance.

When the proposed treaty was rebuffed by Washington, it seems the die was cast. On February 21, Putin delivered a speech detailing their grievances. On February 24, Putin delivered another speech announcing the justification and objectives of the military intervention to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine.

As Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov later said, “This is not about Ukraine. This is the end result of a policy that the West has carried out since the early 1990’s.”

Afghanistan again?

As earlier indicated, the Rand report assesses the costs and benefits of various US actions. It is considered a “benefit” if increased US assistance to Ukraine results in the loss of Russian blood and resources. Speculating on the possibility of  Russian troop presence in Ukraine, the report suggests that it could become “quite controversial at home, as it did when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.” (p 99 of full report)

That historical reference is significant. Beginning in 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia funded and trained sectarian foreign fighters to invade and destabilize the progressive Afghan government. The goals were to overthrow the socialist inclined government and lure the Soviet Union into supporting the destabilized government. It achieved these Machiavellian goals at the cost of millions of Afghan citizens whose country has never been the same.

It appears that Ukrainian citizens are similarly being manipulated to serve US  goals.

A “disadvantageous peace settlement”

The Rand report says,  “Increasing U.S. military aid would certainly drive up the Russian costs, but doing so could also increase the loss of Ukrainian lives and territory or result in a disadvantageous peace settlement.”

But who would a peace settlement be “disadvantageous” for? Ukrainian lives and territory are currently being lost. Over fourteen thousand  Ukrainian lives have been lost in the eastern Donbass region since the 2014 coup.

A peace settlement that guaranteed basic rights for all Ukrainians and state neutrality in the rivalry of big powers, would be advantageous to most Ukrainians.  It is only the US foreign policy establishment including the US military media industrial complex and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who would be “disadvantaged”.

Since Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state, it would seem best to accept that reality and find a compromise national solution which facilitates all Ukrainians. Being a client of a distant foreign power is not in Ukraine’s national best interest.

The Rand report shows how US policy focuses on actions to hurt Russia and manipulates third party countries (Ukraine) toward that task.

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Rick Sterling is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the sword of Damocles of a nuclear exchange between the great powers USA and Russia has been hovering over humanity. According to the American international law expert Francis Boyle, the very threat of nuclear weapons is “nuclear terrorism” and, since the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in 1945, a crime against peace and humanity. Boyle said this about ten years ago during a lecture at the XVIII “Courage to Ethics” Conference in Feldkirch, Austria.

Professor Boyle accused the US government of,

“after the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the incineration of 250,000 innocent people, to persist in the development of these weapons which threaten all humanity and thus to commit verifiable crimes like the Nazis. (…) Therefore, the government officials in all nuclear weapons states, not only those of the United States – they are of course the worst – (…) are criminals. They are criminals! For their threat to destroy all humanity! For their threat to repeat the Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide! (…).”

Then Boyle made an urgent appeal to all people:

“Humanity must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humanity!

Everyone around the world has the basic human right to be free from the criminal practice of nuclear threat/nuclear terrorism’ and its spectre of nuclear extinction. All human beings (…) possess the fundamental right under international humanitarian law to engage in civil resistance to either prevent, impede or end these threatened acts of international crimes.”

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a teacher (retired headmaster), doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and 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.

Source

Transcript of the lecture by the author as well as article in the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung” (NRhZ) of 13 01 2016: http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=22455&css=print

Featured image: ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)

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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is exploiting his now-American ally’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to add credence to the false speculation that Russia might end up using nuclear weapons in Ukraine or elsewhere. This is similar in spirit to what two German states just did in equating the Russian ‘Z’ with the Nazi swastika.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Saturday while visiting Hiroshima with US Ambassador Rahm Emanuel that “the possible use of nuclear weapons by Russia is increasingly real” even though it was his country’s post-World War II mutual defense American ally that dropped atomic bombs on that city and Nagasaki in the final days of that global conflict. President Putin actually spoke about those unprecedented war crimes last week when reminding everyone that:

“When Japan annually commemorates the victims of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, they either bashfully keep silent about who dropped the bombs on their cities, or they write flagrant nonsense, that some abstract allies did it. This is what their textbooks say. They simply prefer not to talk about the fact that it was the United States that committed such as a terrible and unjustified massacre at the end of World War II. They have cynically decided to ‘cancel’ this truth as well.”

It’s therefore not unsurprising to those who are aware of this historical truth and the “politically correct” historical revisionism that followed to find out that Japan is nowadays fearmongering about Russian nuclear weapons instead of American ones. Tokyo is motivated by its desire to become the “Asian Poland” in the sense of doing everything it possibly can to show fealty to its overlords in Washington vis-à-vis their top rival in each respective Eurasian theater of the New Cold War.

It seems inevitable that the Russian scenario of provoking Moscow into undertaking kinetic action in the region through its ongoing special military operation in Ukraine aimed at ensuring the integrity of its national security red lines will be replicated with China in the coming future. In preparation of that, Japan wants to play a leading role in provoking that sequence of events from China in East and/or Southeast Asia exactly like Poland presently is when it comes to Russia in Eastern Europe.

Russia just broke off peace talks with Japan after the US-led West’s unprecedented and preplanned sanctions campaign against it. Japan’s reversion to its fascist ways threatens regional peace, which is evidenced by Tokyo encouraging Washington to step up its meddling in the legitimately Russian-administered Southern Kuril Islands over which Japan recently reaffirmed its unilateral claims. Moscow’s response was to conduct more military drills there.

Former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev reviewed the circumstances under which his country would employ nuclear weapons in an interview with RT late last week. There’s no shift in its respective policy but the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) misportrayed his citing of the preexisting facts as some kind of “nuclear saber-rattling” that in turn facilitates their ability to mislead their targeted audience with Kishida’s fearmongering.

Returning back to the topic of this analysis after having explained the strategic context in which the Japanese leader’s information provocation was unleashed, he’s exploiting his now-American ally’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to add credence to the false speculation that Russia might end up using nuclear weapons in Ukraine or elsewhere. This is similar in spirit to what two German states just did in equating the Russian “Z” with the Nazi swastika.

The average member of Western society naively assumes that post-World War II Germany become the global vanguard of anti-fascism in order for its society to eternally atone for the sins that the Nazis committed in their name. Similarly, they also naively assume that post-World War II Japan is the global vanguard of nuclear non-proliferation, with neither exploiting these artificially manufactured reputations. Nevertheless, exploit them they do, as evidenced by both examples.

Combining the equally false narratives being pushed by German and Japanese officials nowadays, who not coincidentally are the inheritors of the same two states that sparked World War II in their respective Eurasian theaters, the emerging weaponized information warfare narrative is that Russia is basically a “nuclear-armed Nazi state that already started World War III”

Add to it Poland’s de facto declaration of Hybrid War against Russia and Biden’s Warsaw speech where he articulated America’s aims and motivations in the New Cold War’s Western Eurasian theater, and it’s clear to see that this sequence of events was very likely preplanned for maximum impact in terms of comprehensively manipulating its targeted audience’s perceptions about Moscow. Untold millions will likely be misled by these interconnected psy-ops, but the truth is available for those who want to know.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: In this handout picture released by the U.S. Army, a mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. Japanese officials say a 93-year-old Japanese man has become the first person certified as a survivor of both U.S. atomic bombings at the end of World War II. City officials said Tsutomu Yamaguchi had already been a certified “hibakusha,” or radiation survivor, of the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing in Nagasaki, but has now been confirmed as surviving the attack on Hiroshima three days earlier as well. (AP Photo/U.S. Army via Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, HO) ** NO SALES, CREDIT MANDATORY **

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***

While the US seeks to distance China from Russia over the issue of Ukraine, the Chinese see Ukraine as a harbinger of things to come in the Pacific. By failing to communicate over the Ukraine issue, the US and China are inching closer to a direct military conflict over Taiwan.

On Mar. 18, US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke via video link. The primary topic, according to a White House readout, was “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.” Biden reportedly outlined the view of the US and its allies that the best way to respond to the invasion is to impose costs on Russia. Biden, the White House stated, “described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia.”

Biden’s threatening language echoed that of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan at a Mar. 14 meeting with the Director of China’s Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission, Yang Jiechi, in Rome. While the White House’s succinct readout merely said the talks involved “substantial discussion of Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the meeting lasted some seven hours, implying a conversation of much greater complexity. State Department spokesperson Ned Price hinted at this to the press in Rome:

“The national security adviser raised directly and very clearly our concerns about the [People’s Republic of China’s] support to Russia in the wake of the invasion, and the implications that any such support would have for the PRC’s relationships around the world.”

Biden and Sullivan’s concern reflected intelligence reports that China had received a request from Russia for military aid and had indicated a willingness to grant this request. Both Biden and Sullivan apparently emphasized to China that any such assistance would provoke US economic sanctions.

Every story has two sides. However, the Chinese version of the talks sounded like it was reporting on a completely different event. According to China’s official Xinhua News Agency, far from being a passive receptor of US angst, Yang controlled the tempo and tone of the Rome meeting, calling on the international community to “jointly support the Russia-Ukraine peace talks so that substantive results can be achieved as soon as possible,” and encouraging all parties to “exercise maximum restraint, protect civilians and prevent a large-scale humanitarian crisis.”

Yang also said the “historical context of the Ukraine issue” needs to be “straightened out.” He encouraged all parties to “get to the bottom of the problem’s origins” and respond to “the legitimate concerns of all the parties.”

This point was driven home by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. A few days after the Rome meeting, he stated that

“China is not involved in the [Ukraine] crisis, and we do not wish to be affected by the sanctions.” China “has the right to defend its own interests,” Wang declared, adding “[t]he Ukrainian crisis is a result of the accumulation of Europe’s security conflicts.” Both Wang and Yang avoided labeling the Russian operation in Ukraine as either an invasion or war, stating that “While China encourages Russia and Ukraine to cease fire, we wish to see fair peace talks between Europe and Russia.”

Xi left even less doubt as to whom he held responsible for the Ukraine crisis. The Chinese readout of the Biden-Xi phone call said the Chinese leader told Biden that, while China wants peace in Ukraine, it strongly opposes US and European sanctions against Russia. The US and Nato sparked the conflict and should take responsibility for solving it:

“He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off,” Xi told Biden, using a Chinese aphorism. The US and Europe should “conduct dialogue with Russia to solve the crux of the Ukraine crisis and resolve the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine.”

Russian-Chinese Partnership

If Sullivan and Biden’s goal was to create a divide between China and Russia over Ukraine, they failed. The Biden administration often appears indifferent to Xi’s characterization of Sino-Russian ties as the “best in history,” with both nations “each other’s most trustworthy strategic partners.” The concept of Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin having “built good working relations and a close personal friendship” seems foreign to both the US president and his national security adviser.

Xi and Putin in Beijing on Feb. 4 issued a 5,000-plus word joint statement detailing the substance of, and the common impetus behind, the Russian-Chinese partnership: It provides a vital counterforce to what they view as the unilateralist, aggressive global agenda of the US, which threatens not only their two nations, but the peace and security of the world.

The notion that China would be willing to desert Moscow over matters of critical national-security importance to Russia is all the more dubious given the emphasis China placed in the joint statement with Russia to its own national-security priority: the status of Taiwan. For Xi, there is an echo between how the US used Nato in Europe, and US efforts to rally regional support in the Pacific through quasi-alliances such as the “Quad” — comprised of the US, Japan, Australia and India — and the newer Aukus collaboration between Australia, the UK and US to confront China over its claims over both Taiwan and the South China Sea.

From the Chinese perspective, the same strangulation tactics used against Russia in Europe are being mirrored in the Pacific. There, the US and its allies have begun to aggressively challenge China militarily through freedom of navigation exercises in the Strait of Taiwan and South China Sea, and by the deployment of new advanced submarines, hypersonic missiles, and amphibious forces specifically acquired and configured for a military confrontation with China.

Actions Speak Louder

Biden repeatedly informed Xi during their call that the US is not seeking to have a new Cold War or conflict with China, alter its system of government, revitalize alliances against China, or support Taiwan independence. However, in his very first press conference as president, back in March 2021, Biden took an aggressive tone on China.

“They [China] have an overall goal to become the leading country in the world, the wealthiest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. That’s not going to happen on my watch.”

Biden criticized the Chinese system of government as “autocratic” and held a global “Summit for Democracy,” where he actively promoted American-style democracy over Chinese autocracy. He has sought to strengthen the military aspects of the Quad, and created a new military alliance, Aukus, solely focused on China. The US continues to sell weapons to Taiwan and has dispatched US troops there on training missions, violating a long-standing taboo against such deployments. Finally, the US is acquiring long-range missiles, including hypersonic weapons, and has reconfigured the Marine Corps force structure in the Pacific for a military conflict with China in the South China Sea.

From Xi’s perspective, the US is saying one thing, and doing another.

According to Xinhua, Xi informed Biden that, in his view, the “direct cause” of the current strain on China-US relations is that “some people on the US side have not followed through on the important common understanding reached by us, neither have they acted on President Biden’s positive statements. The US has misperceived and miscalculated China’s strategic intention.” America, Xi added, has failed to deliver on virtually all of its promises to China regarding the avoidance of conflict, while simultaneously promulgating deep-seated notions of China as an “imagined enemy.”

The US, Xi added, is sending the wrong signal to “Taiwan independence” forces, which is “very dangerous.” Continuation of this would “exert a disruptive impact on China-US relations.” Xi’s remarks, made in the context of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, should not be seen as anything less than a clear warning that the US needs to start taking China’s security concerns seriously and exercise greater caution over its words and actions — lest it find that it has, again, tied a bell onto a tiger.

*

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer whose service over a 20-plus-year career included tours of duty in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control agreements, serving on the staff of US Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War and later as a chief weapons inspector with the UN in Iraq from 1991-98. The views expressed in this article are those of the author.

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The History of Nazism in Ukraine. Who Is Stepan Bandera?

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, March 27, 2022

It’s a tragedy in the making. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reprehensible and should never have happened, but it is a fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin for several years had been warning Washington and its allies of an impending danger, that NATO expansion to its borders could lead to military confrontation.

Tens of Thousands Threatened with Property Tax Foreclosures in Detroit

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 28, 2022

March 31 has been designated as the deadline for Wayne County residents to pay back property taxes from 2019 and before despite the failure of the relevant authorities to provide adequate assistance to working and impoverished households.

Uncovering the Corona Narrative

By Dr. Robert Malone and Ernst Wolff, March 28, 2022

Many who have followed this coronavirus “public health crisis” and the non-sensical response provided by most of the western nations (including the USA) have been perplexed by two big questions – how was this done (in such a globally coordinated fashion), and why was it done?

Will Humans be the Next ‘Freedom Fries’?

By Ray McGovern, March 28, 2022

Here’s the thing: the Russians have good reason to be on hair-trigger alert. Their early-warning radar system is so inadequate that there are situations (including those involving innocent rocket launches) under which Russian President Putin would have only a few minutes – if that – to decide whether or not to launch nuclear missiles to destroy the rest of the world – on the suspicion that Russia was under nuclear attack.

Reporting From Southern Ukrainian City of Henichesk along the Sea of Azov: “Russians Welcomed as Liberators”

By Sonja van den Ende, March 27, 2022

The Russian army, patrolling the city, went with us—the embedded journalists—for protection. But actually the protection was not really needed; the people in Henichesk, at least the majority with whom I spoke, were very happy that the Russian army was there.

Nightmare Scenario: Operational Miscalculation Triggering Nuclear War

By Nauman Sadiq, March 27, 2022

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have tried to set up phone calls with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov but the Russians “have so far declined to engage,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby in a statement Wednesday, March 23.

95% of Committee Members Advising on U.S. Dietary Guidelines Had Ties to Big Pharma, Big Food

By Michael Nevradakis, March 27, 2022

Describing their findings as “particularly worrisome,” the authors of a study published Monday in Public Health Nutrition noted that in the U.S., the Dietary Guidelines for Americans form “the foundation for all national nutrition programs,” which amount to nearly $100 billion annually.

Aroused by Power: Why Madeleine Albright Was Not Right

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 27, 2022

The late US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will always be tied with the appallingly named humanitarian war in Kosovo in 1999, one that saw NATO attacks on Serbian civilian targets while aiding the forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army.  It was a distinct backing of sides in a vicious, tribal conflict, where good might miraculously bubble up, winged by angels.  Those angels never came.

NATO Wants a Ground-War in Ukraine?

By Mike Whitney, March 26, 2022

Didn’t Putin say that pouring arms into Ukraine would increase the likelihood of war? Yes, he did, but the US and NATO continue sending more shipments anyway. Why? And why does Ukraine need more weapons?

White House Plans Major Escalation of NATO’s Proxy War with Russia

By Andre Damon, March 27, 2022

One month since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden will begin a tour of the continent this week in an effort to mobilize the NATO powers in a major escalation of the conflict against Russia.

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***

March 31 has been designated as the deadline for Wayne County residents to pay back property taxes from 2019 and before despite the failure of the relevant authorities to provide adequate assistance to working and impoverished households.

For the last two years, Wayne County Treasurer Eric Sabree has not foreclosed on properties due to the COVID-19 pandemic which has had a disproportionate impact on area residents, particularly African Americans who make up approximately 80 percent of the Detroit population.

This issue is not a new one in Detroit and Wayne County. Since 2005, there have been tens of thousands of homes and small businesses seized due in part to over assessments which grew out of the mortgage crisis during the first decade of the century. Values of homes were artificially inflated by financial institutions in order to sell more first-time and refinancing loans which proved beneficial only to the banks and insurance companies.

Detroit and the state of Michigan were at the epicenter of the economic crisis leading up to and during the so-called “Great Recession” from 2007 to 2010. The impact of the mortgage home foreclosures was to create even more neighborhood abandonment and blight. Successive state and local officials refused to take effective measures through the implementation of long-term moratoriums along with legal actions against the banks which created the housing crisis.

Moreover, the working and poor people of the United States were saddled with bailing out the banks and insurance firms that engineered the economic downturn. Legislation passed by Congress during the final quarter of 2008 placed the burden of the recession on taxpayers within the proletariat. This bailing out of the banks coincided with similar efforts related to the automotive industry where both General Motors and Chrysler were subsidized by public funding in order save them from consolidation or liquidation.

These factors are largely responsible for the housing situation in Detroit and Wayne County where more than a quarter of the population (240,0000) were driven out of the region between 2000-2010. In Detroit, the population, according to the latest Census figures, has declined an additional 80,000 since 2010. At present, population estimates indicate that the state’s largest municipality has a population of 635,000.

Detroit demonstration outside Wayne County Treasurer’s Office downtown (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Detroit’s population reached its maximum in 1950 with approximately 1.8 million. Therefore, over the last 72 years, 1.2 million people have been relocated from the city. This massive displacement was both voluntary and forced when government entities such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the National Interstate and Defense Highway Act facilitated the destruction of majority African American communities and the suburbanization of whites outside the city limits.

The deliberate downsizing and disinvestment in heavy and light industrial production from inside the city center to suburban, out-of-state and offshore locations fueled the migration from the municipality by workers seeking viable employment. The current property tax foreclosure crisis will only further depopulate and impoverish the city.

Corporate Restructuring and the Legacy of Residential Depopulation

Since the contrived and illegal bankruptcy which was imposed on Detroit during 2013-2014, the city has fallen into deeper poverty and community underdevelopment. The appropriation of city assets such as Belle Isle, public works, lighting, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and other institutions, has not reversed the economic trajectory of the municipality.

Tax incremental funding, popularly referred to as “tax captures”, are touted for their utility in fostering “development” largely centered in key areas of the city such as downtown, Midtown, New Center and industrial sites including the new Flex-N-Gate, Stellantis, and the now under construction Amazon facilities located on the eastside of Detroit. Yet these plants and the opening of three casino hotels since 1999, has not fostered sustainable development and a rise in household incomes.

These prestige projects where the owners are largely absolved from paying corporate and other taxes are profiting at the expense of the majority Black population. At present some plants have been forced to lay-off workers as a result of supply chain problems stemming from the continuing impact of the pandemic since 2020. Noise and other forms of environmental pollution caused by these plants are also forcing people from neighborhoods.

Moratorium NOW! Coalition Calls for Mobilization Against Tax Foreclosures

On March 30, the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and other housing activists are holding a press conference and rally outside the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office located at 400 Monroe in Greektown section of downtown. Sabree says he is being pressured to not extend the moratorium on home seizures despite the ongoing crisis related to the pandemic and the overall economic situation.

In a statement issued by Moratorium NOW! Coalition on March 23, it says that:

“There is no reasonable cause for the home seizures to resume when many households have not recovered from the economic and social impact of a public health crisis not witnessed in more than a century. We are calling on the Wayne County Treasurer to stop the foreclosures; protect renters from evictions where taxes are delinquent; and to work towards a long-term plan to put an end to the housing property tax disaster which has been in existence for more than a decade-and-a-half. A list of over 17,000 homes is being threatened with seizure. The problem is so severe that the Treasurer’s Office is not answering calls from the public seeking assistance. This is totally unacceptable. The only solution is to halt the foreclosures and work towards a sustainable solution.”

The ultimate solution to the housing crisis in Detroit lies within the necessity to change the rubric which guides property rights. Housing should be considered a human right and not a profit-making mechanism controlled by real estate firms and financial institutions. The existing model has only forced more people into homeless and poverty.

Housing Remains a National Crisis

Property tax foreclosures, rising rents, the current inflationary spiral plaguing the U.S. and the subsequent social instability, are all manifestations of the failure of the current administration of President Joe Biden and the Congress to pass legislation that would assist millions of households. None of the social spending initiatives proposed by progressive elements within the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed into law.

Therefore, the striking down of a public health moratorium enacted through the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) by the Supreme Court has never been reversed through legislative measures. This holds true as well for the programs to provide permanent child tax credits to working families along with investments in childcare and the lifting of the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour.

The Supreme Court since 2013 has eviscerated the enforcement provisions of 1965 Voting Rights Act while Congress even with a democratic majority in both the House and Senate have failed to take action to guarantee universal suffrage. A series of Civil Rights bills passed by Congress between 1957 and 1968 are effectively null and void. Due to the passage by states of restrictive voting laws, millions of African Americans and other people of color communities will be subjected to massive disenfranchisement across the U.S. in 2022 and 2024.

Yet these issues have been taken off the agenda by the Biden administration and the corporate media which are exclusively promoting sanctions and war against the Russian Federation. Biden travelled to the Western European North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries during late March to drum up support for further hostilities against Russia and the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, workers are paying more than $6 per gallon for gasoline in California along with astronomical inflationary increases for the prices for automobiles, auto services, food and housing expenses throughout the length and breath of the U.S.

Consequently, the struggle to win housing rights is an important aspect of the overall movement against austerity and imperialist war. Working people and the nationally oppressed must organize independently of the Democratic and Republican parties in order to wage the necessary campaigns aimed at improving living conditions and social stability.

*

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

Featured image is from Abayomi Azikiwe

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***

Many who have followed this coronavirus “public health crisis” and the non-sensical response provided by most of the western nations (including the USA) have been perplexed by two big questions – how was this done (in such a globally coordinated fashion), and why was it done?

In my case, I have tried to follow the various threads of facts and logic, to confront the perplexingly dysfunctional public policies, and to make sense of what is so deeply illogical. What I have found has been layers of lies, one on top of another, which seem to require an amazingly coordinated and globally comprehensive control and shaping of information in the form of propaganda and censorship on a scale which was previously unimaginable. Total information control, and total unrestricted, all encompassing information warfare. Modern media manipulation of thought and minds without boundaries, and without any ethical constraints.

One constant thread which runs through all of the mismanagement, all of the authoritarian policies, all of the totalitarian logic and messaging, has been the role of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its acolytes.

WEF is a key think tank and meeting place for global capitalism management, and arguably qualifies as the leading global Deep State organization. Under the leadership of Professor Klaus Schwab, it has played an increasingly important role in coordinating the globalized hegemony of transnational capital and large corporations over Western democracies during the last three decades.

Many of its members actively use Covid-19 as cover to carry out a “Great Reset” as described in Schwab’s writings.

This Great Reset involves implementation of digital tracking and control of people, ushering in techno-feudalism, and the WEF objective of a fourth industrial revolution incorporating technologies collectively referred to as “transhumanism.”

Western governments and WEF have identified genetic mRNA vaccines as a first step toward an inevitable transhuman society which they seek to guide us towards. The WEF has developed and implemented a training program which has yielded thousands of acolytes who have been placed into positions of power throughout the western world. A small representative sampling of these includes the following drawn from the ranks of the United States government and industry:

• Politics and policy: White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeffrey Zients, lobby group #Masks4All co-founder Jeremy Howard, California Governor Gavin Newsom, 2020 presidential candidate and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton confidante Huma Abedin, former U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the UN and USAID administrator Samantha Power, Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer, U.S.-British financier Bill Browder, Jonathan Soros (son of George Soros), Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth, economist Paul Krugman, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, Ivanka Trump, and former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii).
• Legacy media: CNN medical analyst Leana Wen, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, Twitter personality Eric Feigl-Ding, New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, ABC News commentator George Stephanopoulos, Fox CEO and News Corp co-chair Lachlan Murdoch, Bloomberg columnist Justin Fox, and CNN commentator Anderson Cooper.
• Technology and social media: Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and Pfizer VP Vasudha Vats.

So how does this all tie together? How does reading and listening to the pronouncements of Klaus Schwab and his WEF organization help make sense out of the otherwise nonsensical? What is the underlying answer to the big “how” and “why” questions?

In August 2021, German author, journalist, International Monetary Fund and financial expert Ernst Wolff provided his explanation and hypotheses in a seminal lecture which many find useful as they try to make sense out of all that we have experienced and continue to find ourselves having to adapt to. The following is English language translation of the lecture, which was provided in German. Whether you agree or disagree, I suggest that his insights deserve consideration. I always recommend that you do your own thinking, and some may dismiss his thoughts as conspiracy theories, but this presentation certainly provides plenty to think about.

***

August 2021 presentation given by Ernst Wolff

The American president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, once said:

“Nothing happens accidentally in politics, and when something happens, you can bet on it that it was exactly planned that way.”

When one looks at what happened in the last year and a half, then these words are especially alarming.

Can it really be the case, that everything that we’ve experienced was planned?

I’ll say one thing right away. I can’t produce any evidence for such a plan, in the form of verified documents, but after studying this topic in detail for 18 months, I must say that there is an impressive number of signs and indications pointing in exactly this direction.

It is this and the consequences thereof that I want to talk about today. The current situation we find ourselves in is unique in the history of mankind. Never before has the whole world been thrown under the rule of this type of coercive regime as now in our time, and never have so many measures been taken which at first glance appear so unintelligible, partly so nonsensical, and in many cases so contradictory.

Officially, this is about the most serious health crisis in living memory, but the measures being used against this have not improved the situation but continuously made things worse. Every doctor today can confirm the health condition of people, the majority of people, is worse than before the crisis, and even from the point of view of those who ordered the measures we are faced with a shamble. The allegedly threatening 4th wave, and the announcement of the need for 3rd, 4th and 5th vaccinations, show that the purpose of the measures up to now, namely preventing the illness, has failed completely.

But that is not all by far.

As a consequence of the lockdowns up to now, we have a severe global economic crisis to manage.

Worldwide production hangs in complete disarray. Global logistics is on the floor, supply chains are broken, harvests are being lost, food supply bottlenecks, and on top of this a scarcity for a large part of the economy of essential semi-conductors. But also, in this we are seeing the problems are not being addressed and solved, but multiplied and magnified, via the application of further measures, and the constant threats of new restrictions.

The most recent example, in China, a port freight terminal, the 3rd largest in the world, has been closed down due to a single positive test from a worker there. Or, take New Zealand, where in all seriousness during the last week, 5 million people were put in lockdown for 3 days, because a single 58-year-old had a positive test.

A further crisis is affecting the small to medium business sector, which by a long way provides the most jobs worldwide and additionally, supplies the largest share of tax revenues. The Mittelstand (small to medium industry sector), is being driven from week-to-week further to the wall, through the incessant uncertainty and new regulations, and has never before been stuck in such a deep crisis as today.

But that is not all.

We are experiencing at present, a brutally increasing worldwide inflation, especially for raw materials, with produce prices and with food products. But also, here, nothing is being done to alleviate the situation. But rather the opposite. The flood of money printing continues, and will even be further increased. Countries and central banks, have, since the start of the crisis, thrown in almost USD 20 trillion into the worldwide monetary system. Without any end in sight! And the International Monetary Fund, as the most powerful financial organization in the world will give out next Monday, with USD 650 billion, the largest amount ever of its own currency under special withdrawing rights.

And the situation in society is no better.

Just one example.

In the USA, the strongest economy in the world, almost 4 million people are threatened with eviction because they cannot pay their rent or cannot cover their mortgage costs. And more than ten times as many, in the USA, note in the richest country in the world, are not in a position to feed themselves from their own income, and that, which the intentional destruction of the economy and the rising inflation have not managed to accomplish, politicians have managed to do.

A country wide fracture of the population as we have never witnessed before, and now, on top of this come vicious measures as the crowning of the whole thing. The premeditated change of power in Afghanistan managed by the USA. There, the Taliban have been deliberately handed military materials, to the value of $20 billion, a complete air force, with 11 airfield support bases available for use, which with absolute certainty will cause the next enormous flood wave of refugees. Why this, one asks oneself?

Why were worldwide measures taken which have caused one disaster after another and pushed the majority of humanity deeper towards the abyss, instead of lifting them out of their misery?

To answer this question, one has to ask two further questions, namely: Who has an interest in this global agenda, and who profits from this?

The answer to both questions is clear. The biggest profiteer of the current crisis, and the most important string puller behind the scenes, is the digital-financial complex. So, a type of special interest community, with the largest IT corporations and the largest asset managers of our time at its head.

The largest IT concerns, include: Apple, the Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. The market capitalization of these 5 companies alone at present amount to an incredible USA 9.1 trillion. Just for comparison, the gross GDP of Germany, France and Italy is USD 8.6 trillion.

Along with these digital concerns, we also have the large asset managers, namely, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity. They are significantly involved in all IT companies, and not only this, these four companies alone, currently manage a total USD 220.6 trillion. Again, for comparison, the GDP of all 28 nations of the EU last year amounted to USD 15.7 trillion.

But it is not just the monstrous financial clout of these concerns which makes the digital-financial complex so powerful.

Let’s first take the IT corporations. They don’t just have an enormous power themselves. They also control hundreds of thousands of other companies, because they organize the digital systems of these other businesses, and in this way have a constant overview of their data streams. The IT industry is nothing other than a tumor, which, in the course of the past years has metastasized into all other branches of the economy, to make them dependent upon it and in the meantime to completely dominate them.

And it is not any different with the asset managers They are involved in every large company in the world, and able to influence every popular brand in the world. The largest of them, BlackRock, supplies with the more than 40 years old data analysis system “Aladdin Data Cloud”, the greatest fund and financial information the world has ever seen. And in the background, BlackRock uses this knowledge, to advise the largest central banks in the world, the Federal Reserve and the EZB (European Central Bank). Through the huge information advantage which BlackRock has, it is very clear who is dependent upon whom.

So, this has to do with a unique historic mix, of raw financial power and the discretionary power over an unimaginable huge data pool. This combination allowed these corporations to make a business upswing, since the beginning of the crisis as never before.

And not only that. Their advantage is accelerating continuously. Alone, in the last quarter of this year, April, May and June, these companies have made the largest profits in their whole history and also, in view of these facts, there’s not much left to the imagination.

And to come to the conclusion, it is this digital-financial complex which is a global power center which drives everything.

The digital-financial complex stands far above all governments, and is ready at all times to bring every government cabinet in the world to its knees and make it compliant.

One must wonder, however, all the more about the methods introduced by the digital-financial complex since the start of the crisis. Because it seems almost as if, as if it is undermining the very system from which it benefits.

Here are a few examples:

If the digital-financial complex destroys small to medium businesses, then really it is destroying its own livelihood, because, s we just heard, the small to medium business sector (Mittlestand) pays the greatest share of taxes revenues and creates the most jobs, and when inflation increases that also hurts the digital-financial complex, and when it destroys social peace through increasing inequality, then it also destroys those who it makes its business from.

All these are valid objections. But they miss the reality.

Namely, this is how it works.

The digital-financial complex has no other choice other than to do what it does at present. What we currently experience is namely, is not something which is a formulated written agenda with which it will accumulate yet more money and power and then sit back to enjoy the fruits of its labors. What we are experiencing at this time is a gigantic act of desperation, probably the biggest that has ever occurred in the whole history of mankind.

The cause of this act of desperation, is that the system to which the digital-financial system owes its existence, can no longer be kept alive with the previous business model. It was very close to its demise already during the world financial crisis of 2007-8. If governments back then had not mobilized huge amounts of tax money and the central banks instructed oodles of money to be created out of nothing the system would have collapsed there and then.

But salvation was only temporary.

The amounts of money had to be continuously increased over a period of 12 years and the interest rates had to be reduced several times. So, the system was made ever more unstable. In the long term that could not go well. And last year it was to the point that the next collapse was threatening. And this collapse has been postponed through a final feat of strength namely the reduction of interest rates to zero and the injection of billions and billions for one final time.

With that however, a qualitatively new situation has come about. A further deferral would require interest rates to be dropped into the minus range, and this would destroy the foundation of the current banking system. Banks cannot operate long-term with negative interest rates. This means that a further deferral with the previously used approach will not be possible. In the present situation one can inject billions and billions into the system at maximum one more time. However, with the result that the already strongly growing rate of inflation will further overhead and will be driven into hyperinflation.

The situation in which the digital-financial complex finds itself is between the alternatives of, on one side the final collapse and hyper-inflation on the other side. So, the total loss of value of money. That means, historically we’ve arrived at a point in which the digital-financial complex, in the framework of the existing system, only still has the choice between two various forms of collapse.

So, what can they do?

Quite clearly, they have, in this situation, chosen to install a new system and a double strategy. On one side, in the background and away from public view, they are preparing a new system. And on the other side, they are using the end phase of the present dying system, to plunder it using all tricks at their disposal. This is exactly what we’ve seen since March 2020. The quite deliberate and premeditated destruction of the world economy, for the exclusive expansion of the digital-financial complex, with simultaneous preparation via the central banks of a new system and in collaboration with the IT corporations. And we already know how this system will look. It is about the complete removal of cash and banks in their previous form, and the introduction of digital money from central banks. The end goal as it appears, is that we will all have just a single account through which all transactions run. And this account will not reside in a business or high-street bank but with the central bank.

The background to this plan is the following: Digital central bank money is programmable, and because central banks can create unlimited money out of nothing, one can indeed operate in this way with negative interest rates without having to destroy the system. But that is furthermore, not the only feature of digital central bank money. It will allow governments to watch over all transactions made.

To assign us various tax rates and impose upon us individual fines. Governments can also place an expiry limit on a part of our money and require that we spend certain amounts within certain time periods. But it can also require the money to be used for specific purposes, and require that specific amounts be paid only for certain products, or that they be sourced only from certain regions. Above all, government will be in the position to cancel our ability to make all transactions with a single mouse click, and so, shut us down financially. Digital central bank money would be the most efficient tax collection method for society that has ever occurred in the whole history of man, and with that, nothing more and nothing less than the realization of an all-encompassing dictatorship brought about through money.

However, the whole thing has a huge snag. Namely, the expected resistance from the public. One can be very certain that a large proportion of people won’t accept this form of disenfranchisement. So, the introduction of digital central bank money would be expected to produce huge social unrest. And it is exactly this problem that the digital-financial complex has quite obviously thought about, to reverse the process of introducing this (digital) currency. So, they won’t try to make this switch to digital currency gradually, but and thereby risking huge resistance will do it exactly the other way around. They will drive society into chaos, in order to present the introduction of digital central bank money as the solution to all problems. Namely, in the form of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

For anyone who thinks this is a “conspiracy theory” pulled out of the air, I recommend that you once again, take a close look at everything we’ve experience in the past 18 months. Under the pretext of fighting an illness devastating and irreparable damages have been done to health, economy and finances, whose full effects are only beginning to show up so far in traces. But at the same time, day by day work is being done to increase these damages, and in parallel, the social rift in society is being systematically deepened, by constantly driving new wedges between people. All of this leades us purposefully in one single direction, social unrest to the point of a civil war, and indeed, worldwide. Exactly that, according to all available information I have, is what is wanted (by the other side).

We are experiencing today is that by using all conceivable means, one is trying to create the maximum social chaos, and then at the high point of this chaos, bring in a panacea with the name “Universal Basic Income”, and in this way effect a change, from maximum chaos to maximum control.

By the way, there is a second reason why, from the perspective of these power brokers UBI must come. We are sitting right in the middle of the 4th Industrial Revolution, and expect, in the period ahead of us, the loss of millions and millions of jobs, due to the introduction of Artificial Intelligence.

This means, millions of consumers will disappear. The demand for consumer goods will increasingly collapse and because the current economic system is consumer driven, one must, to maintain life, break through this downward spiral. And that can only happen, if all these unemployed consumers who cannot find work are provided with an income.

We see that what has happened in the last 18 months and what is still going on is obviously all following a (prepared) plan. And the name of this plan is: “Deconstruction of the present economic system to the benefit of elites”. The generation of the maximum economic and social chaos and the establishment of a new system, under the guise of wanting to provide humanitarian help. This plan is however available to read and that is in both books about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and The Great Reset, by Klaus Schwab, whose World Economic Forum (WEF) plays a key role in this whole agenda.

The WEF has succeeded over the past 50 years to become the most important control center of the digital-financial complex. First of all, business leaders were brought together, then later all politicians, and still later, media creators, and in commanding roles, and prominent figure all networking with one another.

Additionally, in the 90’s, people were subjected to a targeted training program. We know today that since 1992 the “Global Leaders of Tomorrow” and since 2005 the “Young Global Leaders” always received a systematic onboarding schooling from the WEF, and it is exactly these same people who right now, occupy positions of political power and influence. Whether it is Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg from the IT area. Whether it is CEO Larry Rink of BlackRock, head of the IMF Kristalina Georgieva, or former head of the Bank of England Mark Carney from the finance sector. Or Emanuel Macron, Sebastien Kurz, or Angela Merkel from politics. All of these people have been either trained by the WEF or they sit on its leadership board.

And it is not just the 1300 members, of this closely networked elite leader group who pull the strings worldwide. Since 2012, there is also a further ten thousand under 30-year-olds, so-called “Global Shapers” who have joined the club and who have also been brought together by the WEF and in its sense, exert influence on the course of world events. And we know how these events should look. To see this, I recommend looking into the work of WEF founder, Klaus Schwab.

For those who still cannot believe that everything we have experienced follows a plan, they should check the publishing date of Schwab’s work, “The Great Reset”. This book appeared on 20th June 2020, not even 4 months after the worldwide lockdown and already gives exact instructions on how one should use Covid-19 in order to put it darkly creatively destroy the world and build up a new world in the image of the man he (Schwab) has drawn up, which is reminiscent of the darkest times of national socialism.

I know that all of this sounds shocking, like a carefully prepared apocalypse. Indeed, the agenda is being followed here is obviously not only planned but also, can hardly be surpassed in terms of evilness and deceitfulness. Who would ever have suspected that under the guise of protecting mankind from the effects of a disease, the world economy would be driven to a total collapse? To take away: people’s freedom to travel, their rights of association and free speech, their freedom to express opinions, and in addition, to condemn more than 100 million people to starvation, and all this allegedly “for their own protection”!

And who would have thought that an unapologetic eugenicist named Klaus Schwab would be put in a position to not only spread worldwide his gruesome vision of a melding of the human being with machine intelligence (AI), but also to have this vision driven forward by ten thousand helpers. All of these are deeply destructive developments with which we are now living and having to suffer under, and their details are enough to freeze the blood in the veins of any normal thinking and feeling person.

But now I am coming to the most important message that I have to give today.

The whole thing also has another side to it. A quite different side and above all one which gives us a huge boost and a great amount of power for our future work.

The plan of the elites, the visions of Klaus Schwab, are namely, are condemned to fail, and this is for several reasons, the most important is that the narrative of a deadly virus which is an existential threat to humanity cannot be sustained in the long run, we already see how the pack of lies is collapsing in on itself from all sides.

We see how, in efforts to legitimize it, resort is made to ever more absurd arguments and rabid defamation. It is important to recognize here, that the vehemence the media are displaying these days, testifies not to their strength but to their weakness. Whoever, with. Ever more emphasis, spreads ever more grotesque lies, like the pandemic of the unvaccinated, who declares healthy people public enemy number one, and whoever on the basis of a single illness or test “case”, locks down whole countries, they are doing this only because they have run out of arguments and in desperation are blindly lashing out.

Abraham Lincoln once said “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all of the time.”

Exactly that, the truth will appear in our time, and this naturally has an enormous meaning for us, because ironically, it opens up for us that which Klaus Schwab has termed “ a unique window of opportunity”, however, in exactly the reverse dynamic (to what he intended).

Namely, that via the collapsing narrative, the credibility of those who have led us into this situation is being buried by the day, and because of that, a unique window of opportunity has opened for all of us for a vast and comprehensive campaign of enlightenment. The objective conditions to enlighten others about the real background to the alleged “pandemic”, about the real balance of power in the world, and the real threats we face, have never been as good as now and they are getting better day by day because the other side are getting entangled in their increasingly unbelievable lies and even if the digital-financial complex should succeed in introducing the new currency that would also not be the end of the world. Digital central bank money can, namely only function as the basis of a comprehensive coercive system. One will always introduce new price controls, continuously increase the Universal Basic Income and create permanent inflation with emphatic pressure, which in turn will lead to a continuous impoverishment of the population and constant conflict with the state and the authorities.

What we need to understand is the following:

Without any doubt, we stand before turbulent and also dangerous times, but we hold an historic trump card in our hands. It consists in the fact that the other side does not act according to the rules of reason but strives out of motives of greed and power and therefore, cannot do anything other than bring itself into ever greater difficulties. We should use exactly that (weakness) and always keep in view, that the other side likes more money, more property and additionally, to have available all the weapons in the world. But their power is not based on their money, nor on their possessions or their weapons but relies solely upon one factor: And that is the ignorance of the majority of people. i.e., the majority doesn’t understand the evil game that this minority are playing with them.

As terrible as everything is that the digital-financial complex and it’s helpers have served up in the past 18 months, and still continue to serve up, it has put itself in a situation which it cannot get out of and in which, out of despair it must cross ever more “red lines.”

This means for all of us, that in this exceptional situation we should quite simply, keep the peace, consistently expose all the lies, and show people bit by bit, why, and by whom, they are being deceived.

When we do that, and in doing so reflect on the strength of our arguments, then, we can not only solve the current problem, but possibly, achieve something much bigger, namely, use one of the deepest crises of humanity to turn around the direction of human history, and so, open the door to a new (and better) era.

Thank you.

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***

U.S. pundits and strategic experts seem blissfully unaware of how close we all are to being fried in a nuclear strike by Russia. (Fair Labeling: if you are simply looking for yet another reason to demonize Putin, rather than to understand where he is coming from, save time and read no further.)

Here’s the thing: the Russians have good reason to be on hair-trigger alert. Their early-warning radar system is so inadequate that there are situations (including those involving innocent rocket launches) under which Russian President Putin would have only a few minutes – if that – to decide whether or not to launch nuclear missiles to destroy the rest of the world – on the suspicion that Russia was under nuclear attack.

“If that”? Yes, launch-to-target time is now so short that it is altogether likely that the authority to launch nuclear weapons is now vested in subordinate commanders “in the field,” so to speak. Readers of Daniel Ellsberg’s Doomsday Machine are aware of how the US actually devolved this authority during the days of the first cold war. I, for one, was shocked to learn that. Worse: today the subordinate commanders might be non-commissioned computers.

Russia, of course, is not about to admit that its early-warning system is far inferior to the US’s world-wide, satellite-based capability. But such is the case. The implications could not be more serious.

This came to mind today as former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the Kremlin would never allow the destruction of Russia. He warned, however, that if Washington did achieve what he described as its destructive aims, the world could face a dystopian crisis that would end in a “big nuclear explosion.”

President Putin addressed this issue four years ago, shortly after unveiling Russia’s new nuclear arsenal, including hypersonic missiles and other highly advanced weapons. Commenting on nuclear war, Putin told an interviewer:

“Certainly, it would be a global disaster for humanity; a disaster for the entire world.” He added that “as a citizen of Russia and the head of the Russian state I must ask myself: Why would we want a world without Russia?”

Use Them or Lose Them

Putin went on to say that, despite the disastrous consequences, Russia would be forced to defend itself using all available means, if its very existence were put at stake:

“A decision on the use of nuclear weapons may only be taken if our ballistic missile attack warning system not only detects a launch, but also predicts that the warheads would hit Russian territory. This is called a retaliation strike.”

That’s the rub. Some radar “detects” and “predicts,” and we’re all toast – or freedom fries. While Russia now has in its operation inventory sophisticated weaponry that can defeat any traditional Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense, it lags the US in the capability for early warning.

Think about it. Which should you fear more: getting fried on purpose, or getting fried by mistake? Macabre. Are not these choices incredibly stupid for rational human beings? If forced to choose, though, I think I’d resent much more getting fried by “Opps, pardon our mistake”. Please read what follows and ask yourself whether an immediate ceasefire is needed in Ukraine, or whether those who want to risk war with Russia should be given their head.

Russia: Limited Early-Warning Coverage

The US’s satellite “global situational awareness” alert system enables it to detect immediately the launch and location of a ballistic missile anywhere on the planet, including the sea. Russia lacks that worldwide capability. If this technical shortcoming is not taken into account (and there are signs that the Pentagon is paying it no heed), we could all suddenly be very dead – or “mostly dead” (to quote Billy Christal in The Princess Bride). (Ted Postol spelled this out in some detail at a Committee for the Republic virtual salon on March 17.

Postol, a retired MIT professor of physics and senior Pentagon adviser, provided a brief case study, which I summarize below:

On Jan. 25, 1995, Russian generals were focused on a rocket that was launched from Norway and detected by their automatic-alarm radar. Could this be the opening volley of a large-scale nuclear attack including sea-launched ballistic missiles? Given Russia’s inability to detect missile launches from submarines at sea, those generals could not rule out the possibility that Russia was already under attack by nuclear-armed Trident submarines.

A saving grace in 1995 was that those same generals had reliable intelligence that US ICBMs were not about to attack. At least equally important, in 1995 relations between Russia and the US were on a relatively even keel. Now? Not so much.

Postol added the following to indicate Russia’s redoubled concern over its early warning deficiency: the US has now increased the overall killing power of US ballistic missile forces by a factor of between two or three. This is exactly the kind of capability that a nuclear-armed state would build if it wanted to have the capacity to fight and “win” a nuclear war by a disarming first-strike.

The rocket from Norway? Scientists launched it to study the Northern Lights, but apparently no one had thought to tell the Russians.

Aside from asking the Norwegians to forewarn the Russians next time, what else can be done? The Washington can stop making relations still more tense over Ukraine. The Pentagon may boast about its formidable offensive strategic capabilities, but it has no way to protect us from a Russian nuclear attack. And if a false alert occurs a la 1995, this time sans the “saving grace” of a decent bilateral relationship with Russia, we could all end up as human fries. It should give us zero consolation to know that most Russians would too.

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

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

Last week I was embedded with the Russian army and visited two towns in southeastern Ukraine. The first town was called Henichesk, a port city along the Sea of Azov in Kherson Oblast (province) of southern Ukraine, bordering on Crimea.

The Russian army, patrolling the city, went with us—the embedded journalists—for protection. But actually the protection was not really needed; the people in Henichesk, at least the majority with whom I spoke, were very happy that the Russian army was there.

The people that I spoke to all said the same thing: They felt protected from the criminal gangs, with their Nazi ideology, who raged the towns. They in turn hoped that Ukraine will prosper again.

Source: wikipedia.org

Since the coup d’état of 2014, the economy of Ukraine has become very bad, according to many citizens in Henichesk.

I could see that people were standing in line to get money from ATM machines outside the banks, money which was barely there.

At the market, the food was scarce. The Russian army is providing humanitarian aid, which they do in every village and town, liberated from these criminal gangs. This is how many Ukrainians call them.

Sonja Vandenende with Henichesk resident. [Photo courtesy of Sonja Vandenende]

Numerous villagers in Henichesk told me that, as the Russians entered their town, they left everything intact. I heard this stated many times. No damage, no dead, no wounded. Most people, they said, are happy that the Russians were there.

The town of Henichesk was undamaged after the Russian army came. People were rushing on the streets to do their shopping or just talking and socializing on the street. The population was very diverse. It included ethnic Russians, Ukrainians and Tatars. They have churches and mosques.

According to residents, before the 2014 coup d’état,^[1] the people lived in harmony. Many Tatars originating from Crimea live in Henichesk. They have been allowed to go back to Crimea since Vladimir Putin became Russia’s president.

Photo courtesy of Sonja Vandenende

Propaganda has been spread on the Wikipedia page of Henichesk, stating the following:

“On 24 February 2022, Henichesk was captured by the Russian Army in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was where the famous incident occurred where an old woman confronted Russian soldiers and said ‘Put sunflower seeds in your pockets so they grow on Ukraine soil when you die,’ as well as the death of Vitalii Shakun blowing up a bridge to stop their advance.”

Indeed, Shakun tried to blow up the bridge connecting Crimea with southern Ukraine. But they neglect to say that he was not from southern Ukraine, but from Lviv, in the western part of Ukraine. He was also a combat engineer with the Ukrainian Army. The damage his explosives caused to the bridge was actually minor and the bridge is still passable. It is a pity generally that boys (Shakun was born in 1996) should die for a false ideology, by blowing up a bridge without success.

Fact Versus Fiction

Western propaganda claims that the Russian army is besieging towns and that the population is starving. From my observation, the latter was not true in Henichesk or in the next town called Melitopol, which I also visited (to be discussed in a future article).^[2]

The Western countries are pouring in weapons, most of them old Soviet weapons into Ukraine to shoot at the “evil Russians,” and imposing sanctions. Nothing positive is being done to help the long suffering people of Ukraine.

Photo courtesy of Sonja Vandenende

Waiting for humanitarian aid being distributed by the Russian army. [Photo courtesy of Sonja Vandenende]

Ukraine is left by itself to bleed.

Western countries have no interest in its economy or people, because Ukrainian people have many similarities with their “brother” countries—Russia and Belarus—and would naturally be aligned with them.

They share the same culture, language, and history of being invaded by the Nazis in World War II.

The West is only interested in benefits to their own economies.

Many buildings and factories are left to “rot” away and money for infrastructure was never there. Ukraine has been “bleeding” since 2014 and no one in the West has cared.

Ukraine is the breadbasket of Europe and the largest producer of sunflower oil, while Russia is the largest producer of fertilizer necessary for growing crops. However, with the war, production will be affected and the whole world economy may suffer. But the leaders in the West, who helped provoke the war, do not care—the Ukrainian people to them are pawns in a larger geopolitical game that will cause potential disaster for all humanity.

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Sonja is a freelance journalist from the Netherlands who has written about Syria, the Middle East, and Russia among other topics. Sonja can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. In February 2014, the U.S. government supported an insurrection against the legally elected government of Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian leader who spurned an IMF structural adjustment program that would have been terrible for Ukraine. Victoria Nuland famously was photographed handing out cookies to the demonstrators, many of whom worshipped World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. For more details on these events, see Chris Kaspar de Ploeg, Ukraine in the Crossfire (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019).

2. These observations correlate with other eyewitness accounts. The Grayzone Project recently ran an important article pointing to misinformation about the destruction of the Mariupol theater, showing how the Azov Battalion was likely responsible for the destruction.

Featured image: Russian troops in Henichesk. [Photo courtesy of Sonja Vandenende]

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***

It’s a tragedy in the making. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reprehensible and should never have happened, but it is a fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin for several years had been warning Washington and its allies of an impending danger, that NATO expansion to its borders could lead to military confrontation. 

Meanwhile, the Western media is painting a picture of Ukraine as a democracy with a president by the name of Volodymyr Zelenskyy who is a brave soul fighting for freedom and democracy, a small country against the Russian bear, a modern version of David vs. Goliath.

Russia, the bully picking on an innocent Ukraine.  But what does the world know about Ukraine? 

The Western media has kept us in the Dark. Most Americans do not know about Ukraine’s politics or its history.

Do Americans, Europeans and others around the world know the truth about Ukraine and their history of Nazi ideology?

According to The Times of Israel ‘Hundreds in Ukraine attend marches celebrating Nazi SS soldiers’ reported on a Nazi celebration in 2021 in Ukraine’s city of Kyiv:

Hundreds of Ukrainians attended marches celebrating Nazi SS soldiers, including the first such event in Kyiv.  The so-called Embroidery March took place in the capital on April 28, the 78th anniversary of the establishment of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, also known as the 1st Galician. It was a force set up under German occupation auspices comprised of ethnic Ukrainian and German volunteers and conscripts. The marchers held banners displaying the unit’s symbol.

The Kyiv march by about 300 people was an import from the western city of Lviv, which for several years has hosted such events. A day earlier, hundreds attended a larger Embroidery March there.  Ukraine has a large minority of ethnic Russians, who oppose the glorification of Nazi collaborators. Such actions were taboo in Ukraine until the early 2000s, when nationalists demanded and obtained state recognition for collaborators as heroes for their actions against the Soviet Union, which dominated Ukraine until 1991

The Father of Nazi Ideology in Ukraine: Stepan Bandera

His name was Stepan Bandera, considered a Ukrainian hero who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II and who was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN/B), an extreme far-right organization.  Bandera was born to a Greek-Catholic family in Galicia which was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but later in life he became a radical Ukrainian nationalist after his country of birth had collapsed thus becoming the West Ukrainian People’s Republic, but then it became part of Poland after the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918-1919.

In 1934, Bandera who was very angry with the new geopolitical development had organized the assassination of Poland’s Minister of the Interior, Bronislaw Pieracki.

Bandera was arrested for the crime, found guilty and sentenced to death but his conviction was later commuted to a life sentence.

In 1939, following the German–Soviet invasion of Poland also known as the September Campaign divided the country under the German-Soviet Frontier Treaty.  Soon after, Bandera was released from prison and moved to Kraków, Poland which was already occupied by the Nazis.

Bandera was convinced that working with the Nazis would allow him to establish his own government in Ukraine leading to an independent nation that would be allied with the Nazis and free from Soviet occupation.  It was well-known that the Nazis, Bandera and his lieutenants from his organization blamed Jews for establishing communism in Ukraine as a statement from Bandera at the time read that

“The Jews of the Soviet Union are the most loyal supporters of the Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.”

Then in June 1941, the Nazis invaded the USSR and occupied the East Galician capital of Lvov and this was where the OUN/B and the National-Socialist Greater Germany under Adolf Hitler collaborated and launched ‘pogroms’ of genocide against jews and poles including men, women and children of all ages over the duration of the war.

Then the relationship between the Nazis and the Bandera faction got complicated.  During the war, a declaration of independence or what is known as the Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State was announced in homage to Bandera by his own lieutenants.

At the same time, the declaration for an independent Ukraine became a serious concern for the Nazi regime since they wanted Ukraine under their sphere of influence.  So, the alliance between the Ukrainian nationalists and the Nazis became problematic.

On September 15^th, 1941, the Gestapo began to arrest its leaders including Bandera and Yaroslav Stetsko who was the prime minister of the Ukrainian National government for refusing to dismiss the Act of Renewal of Ukrainian statehood.

By January 1942, Bandera found himself in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for high-profile political prisoners.

In 1944, the Soviets and allied forces advanced on Nazi-occupied territories, so the Nazis recruited Bandera and Stetsko to create diversions to help destroy Soviet forces who were gaining ground.

Bandera who was still the leader of the OUN/B moved to West Germany with his family and continued to work with anti-communist organizations or we can say the fascists for many years to come such as the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations.

In 1959, Bandera was poisoned by cyanide gas and two years later, the German judiciary claimed that the KGB was behind his assassination.  In 2022, Bandera remains a hero to the neo-Nazis in Ukraine.  The US and the European Union support Ukraine who happens to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world with proven human rights abuses that has strong ties to neo-Nazis who admire Adolf Hitler and Stepan Bandera, now if that is not hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

The CIA and the Nazis: A Match Made in Hell  

According to author and journalist Wayne Madsen in 2016 entitled: ‘CIA: Undermining and Nazifying Ukraine Since 1953’ 

“the recent declassification of over 3800 documents by the Central Intelligence Agency provides detailed proof that since 1953 the CIA operated two major programs intent on not only destabilizing Ukraine but Nazifying it with followers of the World War II Ukrainian Nazi leader Stepan Bandera.”

Nazism has been in existence in Ukraine for a long-time under the CIA’s Project AERODYNAMIC which was “to provide for the exploitation and expansion of the anti-Soviet Ukrainian resistance movement for cold war and hot war purposes” it included several groups including the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (UBVR) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Foreign. Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Council of Liberation (ZPUHVR) in Western Europe and the United States, and other organizations such as OUN/B will be utilized.

We can say that for close to 70 years, the CIA’s operation of Nazifying Ukraine had been a success.

However, the earlier version of Project AERODYNAMIC was intended to destabilize Ukraine with exiled Ukrainians who were trained by the CIA operating inside Soviet-Ukrainian territories.  

The CIA coordinated airdrops of communications, supplies, weapons and ammunition to its operatives inside Ukrainian territory who were trained in West Germany with the US Army’s Foreign Intelligence Political and Psychological (FI-PP) unit.  In other words, the CIA is Guilty as charged for helping cultivate the neo-Nazis or what we can call the ‘fascists’ in Ukraine in order to fight the communists.

Today, far-right neo-Nazi groups are a serious problem for the Ukrainian people since many of these extremists are embedded in various levels of the Ukrainian government including members from the notorious Azov and Aidar Battalions.

Both groups were also involved in the 2014 Maidan coup that overthrew pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, a coup that was backed by the US and the European Union.

Other far-right neo-Nazi groups who were also involved in the Maidan coup was the Right Sector and the Svoboda Party.  In other words, the US and its European allies have created a monster and it will only get worse for the people in Ukraine in the years to come.

Recently, a Ukrainian television journalist by the name of Fahruddin Sharafmal quoted Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi war criminal on live TV:

Click here to watch the video.

“And Given Russia calls us Nazis, Fascists anyway – I will allow myself to quote Adolf Eichmann who said that in order to destroy a nation, it is imperative to first destroy their children because if you kill parents – these children grow up and seek revenge, but if you kill children – they never grow up and the nation dies out.”

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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

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***

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have tried to set up phone calls with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov but the Russians “have so far declined to engage,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby in a statement Wednesday, March 23.

“A nightmare scenario would be a Russian missile or attack aircraft that destroys a U.S. command post across the Polish-Ukrainian border,” James Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO from 2009 to 2013, told the Washington Post [1]. “A local commander might respond immediately, thinking the event was a precursor to a wider attack. This could lead to rapid and irreversible escalation, to include potential use of nuclear weapons.”

According to a CNN report [2] detailing a rare face-to-face meeting between Russian and US military officials last week, the US believes that the refusal for high-level meetings is due to Kremlin worries that the encounters would show them to be vulnerable if they allowed such meetings, because it risks a tacit admission that an abnormal situation exists, according to the readout of the meeting.

Though the assumption of vulnerability appears misconceived considering while the Pentagon has allegedly attempted to maintain high-level contacts with Russian counterparts, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has not attempted any conversations with his counterpart, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, since the start of the conflict last month.

The real reason the Russian military leadership has allegedly shunned maintaining high-level contacts with the Pentagon’s top brass appears to be the duplicitous and treacherous role played by the transatlantic NATO alliance of significantly escalating the conflict by substantially increasing the NATO military footprint in Eastern Europe along Russia’s western flank, publicly providing billions of dollars’ worth lethal weapons to Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias while asininely claiming to be “peacemakers” extending chivalrous courtesies to the arch-rival.

Ahead of the NATO summit attended by President Biden Thursday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg announced the transatlantic military alliance would double the number of battlegroups it had deployed in Eastern Europe.

“The first step is the deployment of four new NATO battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, along with our existing forces in the Baltic countries and Poland,” Stoltenberg said. “This means that we will have eight multinational NATO battlegroups all along the eastern flank, from the Baltic to the Black Sea.”

NATO issued a statement [3] after Thursday’s emergency summit attended by Joe Biden and European leaders:

“In response to Russia’s actions, we have activated NATO’s defense plans, deployed elements of the NATO Response Force, and placed 40,000 troops on our eastern flank, along with significant air and naval assets, under direct NATO command supported by Allies’ national deployments. We are also establishing four additional multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia.”

Last week, President Biden announced an unprecedented package of $1 billion in military assistance to Ukraine in addition to $350 million previously pledged which was disbursed within days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24. The new package includes 800 Stinger anti-aircraft systems, 2,000 anti-armor Javelins, 1,000 light anti-armor weapons, 6,000 AT-4 anti-armor systems and 100 Switchblade kamikaze drones.

Besides providing abundance of anti-aircraft and anti-armor munitions to Ukraine’s largely conscript military and allied irregular militias, a senior US administration official told Reuters [4] Washington and its allies were also working on providing anti-ship weapons to protect Ukraine’s coast. Ukrainian forces claimed on Thursday to have blown up a Russian landing ship in a Russian-occupied port.

Nonetheless, what must have exasperated Russia’s military leadership is a secret plan [5] for a “peacekeeping mission” involving 10,000 NATO troops from the member states surreptitiously occupying western Ukraine and imposing a limited no-fly zone over Lviv and rest of towns which is allegedly being prepared by the Polish government.

The plan is seemingly on hiatus due to a disagreement between Polish President Andrzej Duda and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the deputy prime minister of Poland and the head of Law and Justice (PiS) Party. Duda wants Washington’s approval before going ahead, whereas Kaczynski appears desperate to obtain political mileage from the Ukraine crisis.

The prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled via train to the embattled Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and met with President Volodymyr Zelensky on March 15 in a show of support for Ukraine. De facto leader of Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, accompanied them. Speaking on the occasion, Kaczynski said:

“I think that it is necessary to have a peace mission—NATO, possibly some wider international structure—but a mission that will be able to defend itself, which will operate on Ukrainian territory.”

In response, Russian officials condemned Poland’s proposal to send NATO “peacekeeping forces” into Ukraine as a “very reckless and extremely dangerous” idea that would risk a full-scale war between the alliance and Moscow.

“This will be the direct clash between the Russian and NATO armed forces that everyone has not only tried to avoid but said should not take place in principle,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Regarding how operational-level miscalculations could lead to all-out war between belligerents, it’s pertinent to recall that on February 7, 2018, US B-52 bombers and Apache helicopters struck a contingent of Syrian government troops and allied forces in Deir al-Zor province of eastern Syria that reportedly [6] killed and wounded scores of Russian military contractors working for the Russian private security firm, the Wagner Group.

The survivors described the bombing as an absolute massacre, and Moscow lost more Russian nationals in one day than it had lost during its entire military campaign in support of the Syrian government since September 2015.

Washington’s objective in striking Russian contractors was that the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – which is mainly comprised of Kurdish YPG militias – had reportedly handed over the control of some areas east of the Euphrates River to Deir al-Zor Military Council (DMC), which was the Arab-led component of SDF, and had relocated several battalions of Kurdish YPG militias to Afrin and along Syria’s northern border with Turkey in order to defend the Kurdish-held areas against the onslaught of the Turkish armed forces and allied Syrian militant proxies during Ankara’s “Operation Olive Branch” in Syria’s northwest that lasted from January to March 2018.

Syrian forces with the backing of Russian contractors took advantage of the opportunity and crossed the Euphrates River to capture an oil refinery located to the east of the Euphrates River in the Kurdish-held area of Deir al-Zor.

The US Air Force responded with full force, knowing well the ragtag Arab component of SDF – mainly comprised of local Arab tribesmen and mercenaries to make the Kurdish-led SDF appear more representative and inclusive in outlook – was simply not a match for the superior training and arms of the Syrian troops and Russian military contractors, consequently causing a carnage in which scores of Russian nationals lost their lives.

A month after the massacre of Russian military contractors in Syria, on March 4, 2018, Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent working for the British foreign intelligence service, and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench outside a shopping center in Salisbury. A few months later, in July 2018, a British woman, Dawn Sturgess, died after touching the container of the nerve agent that allegedly poisoned the Skripals.

In the case of the Skripals, Theresa May, then the prime minister of the United Kingdom, promptly accused Russia of attempted assassinations and the British government concluded that Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Moscow-made, military-grade nerve agent, novichok.

Sergei Skripal was recruited by the British MI6 in 1995, and before his arrest in Russia in December 2004, he was alleged to have blown the cover of scores of Russian secret agents. He was released in a spy swap deal in 2010 and was allowed to settle in Salisbury. Both Sergei Skripal and his daughter have since recovered and were discharged from hospital in May 2018.

In the aftermath of the Salisbury poisonings in March 2018, the US, UK and several European nations expelled scores of Russian diplomats and Washington ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle.

In a retaliatory move, Russia also expelled a similar number of American, British and European diplomats, and ordered the closure of American consulate in Saint Petersburg. The number of American diplomatic personnel stationed in Russia drastically dropped from 1,200 before the escalation to 120, and the relations between Moscow and Western powers reached their lowest ebb since the break-up of the former Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in December 1991.

Notwithstanding, five years following a potentially catastrophic incident that could’ve inundated Islamic State’s former capital Raqqa and many towns downstream Euphrates River in eastern Syria and caused more deaths than the deployment of any weapon of mass destruction, the New York Times reported in January [7] that at the height of US-led international coalition’s war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, US B-52 bombers struck Tabqa Dam with 2,000-pound bombs, including at least one bunker-busting bomb that fortunately didn’t explode.

In March 2017, alternative media was abuzz with reports that the dam was about to collapse and entire civilian population downstream Euphrates River needed to be urgently evacuated to prevent the inevitable catastrophe. But Washington issued a gag order to the corporate media “not to sensationalize the issue.”

The explosive report noted that the dam was contested between the US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, the Syrian government and the Islamic State. A firefight broke out in which SDF incurred heavy casualties. It was then that a top secret US special operations unit Task Force 9 called for airstrikes on the dam after repeated requests from the Kurdish leadership of the SDF.

“The explosions on March 26, 2017, knocked dam workers to the ground. A fire spread and crucial equipment failed. The flow of the Euphrates River suddenly had no way through, the reservoir began to rise and authorities used loudspeakers to warn people downstream to flee.

“The Islamic State group, the Syrian government and Russia blamed the United States, but the dam was on the US military’s ‘no-strike list’ of protected civilian sites, and the commander of the US offensive at the time, then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, said allegations of US involvement were based on ‘crazy reporting.’”

It’s worth noting that it was the same rogue Pentagon General Stephen J. Townsend, currently the commander of US AFRICOM and then the commander of Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) – Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) responsible for leading the war against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, whose “operational miscalculation” was responsible for the reckless confrontation an year later in February 2018 when US B-52 bombers struck Russian military contractors, killing and wounding scores, a tragic incident that brought two nuclear powers engaged in the Syrian conflict almost to the brink of a full-scale war.

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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.

Notes

[1] Top Russian military leaders repeatedly decline calls from US

[2] Inside a rare US meeting with a Russian general in Moscow

[3] NATO doubles battlegroups in ‘Eastern Flank’ States

[4] Russia signals scaled-back war aims, Ukrainians advance near Kyiv

[5] Secret Plan to Send 10,000 NATO “Peacekeeping Troops” Into Ukraine

[6] Russian toll in Syria battle was 300 killed and wounded

[7] A dam in Syria was on a ‘no-strike’ list. The US bombed it anyway

---

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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One month since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, US President Joe Biden will begin a tour of the continent this week in an effort to mobilize the NATO powers in a major escalation of the conflict against Russia.

The meetings, including those of NATO and the European Council, will seek to galvanize “international efforts to… impose severe and unprecedented costs on Russia,” the White House said.

Ahead of Biden’s trip, NATO military officials have been discussing plans, to be announced at the summit, to vastly expand the positioning of NATO forces on Russia’s borders in Europe as part of an effort to put the continent on a war footing, including potentially doubling the US troop presence in Europe.

The series of meetings being held this week are councils of war. According to the White House:

• On Monday, Biden held a call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to discuss “providing security assistance to the brave Ukrainians who are defending their country from Russian aggression.” The same day, the European Union announced that it would send an additional €500 million in weapons to Ukraine
• Later that evening, Biden addressed the CEOs of America’s largest corporations to “discuss the United States’ response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified war with Ukraine.”
• On Wednesday, Biden will arrive in Brussels, Belgium, to attend a meeting of the European Council, which will also include UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, despite the UK’s exit from the European Union.
• On Thursday, Biden will attend a NATO summit focused on “ongoing deterrence and defense efforts in response to Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine.”
• On Friday, Biden will travel to Warsaw, Poland, where he will hold a bilateral meeting with President Andrzej Duda. Last week, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki proposed the deployment of a NATO “peacekeeping mission” to Ukraine.

This series of meetings was preceded by clear signals from the White House that, despite statements from Ukraine that it is pursuing negotiations with Russia, the United States has no interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the war.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said,

“From where I sit, diplomacy obviously requires both sides engaging in good faith to de-escalate.” He added, “The actions that we’re seeing Russia take… are in total contrast to any serious diplomatic effort to end the war.”

Following these statements, Biden seemed to do everything he could to personally antagonize Russian President Vladimir Putin, referring to him as a “thug,” a “dictator” and a “war criminal.”

Under conditions where a war is raging out of control, killing hundreds of people, and nuclear tensions are at the highest level since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, these statements are a deliberate effort to escalate tensions. The Kremlin will see them as a US declaration of intent to carry out regime-change in Russia or massively escalate US involvement in the war.

In response to what Russia called “insults,” Russia’s foreign ministry announced that it had summoned US Ambassador John Sullivan to declare that “Russian-American relations [are] on the verge of rupture.” The “rupture” of relations between states generally signifies that war is imminent.

Indeed, Biden’s whirlwind tour of Europe in an effort to mobilize the United States’ European allies for war has been carefully prepared by extensive military discussions.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

“U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met at NATO headquarters last week with his counterparts from other alliance members to discuss beefing up forces even further. They directed military planners from all of the NATO members to draft plans that are likely to be discussed when President Biden meets with other alliance heads of government in Europe this week.”

“I expect there will be a rough doubling of the U.S. presence,” Douglas Lute, a former US ambassador to NATO and a retired Army lieutenant general, told the Journal.

The United States has deployed more than 15,000 additional troops to Europe since the outbreak of the war, and the US troop levels in Europe have reached over 100,000—the first time this figure has been surpassed since the end of the Cold War. If, as Lute suggests, the number of US troops deployed in Europe will double, this would mean the dispatch of 100,000 more US troops to Russia’s borders.

The Journal wrote:

“Troops deployed in Eastern Europe will likely be augmented with more ground units equipped with tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery and attack helicopters, instead of the primarily light infantry forces that are already positioned close to NATO’s eastern borders, current and former officials said.”

The greater significance and implications of war generally emerge as it develops. While the US succeeded in goading the Russian government to take the first shot, it is clear that the war in Ukraine is the first stage of a much broader conflict. Having provoked the Russian government into a desperate and disastrous invasion of Ukraine, the United States is using the war to reassert its global hegemony, building a war coalition for what the United States has termed “great power conflict” targeting not only Russia, but China as well.

On Friday, in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden threatened China with unspecified “consequences” if it provided any material support to Russia. A day earlier, Blinken declared that the US would “not hesitate to impose costs” on China.

This bullying language was turned into open military threats as Biden prepared to set off to Europe. U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Adm. John C. Aquilino staged a press conference to the Associated Press aboard a military surveillance aircraft plane over territory claimed by China. “Should deterrence fail,” he declared, “my second mission is to be prepared to fight and win.”

The preparations for world war are being carried out behind the backs of the American population. Biden pledged to end America’s “forever wars,” promising to “close this period of relentless war” and initiate “a new era of relentless diplomacy.” Instead, the Biden administration is carrying out the greatest military escalation since the launching of the “war on terror” in 2001.

In the United States, the 2023 military budget is expected to total $800 billion: $60 billion more than the $740 billion authorized for fiscal year 2022. There are calls for an even more rapid funneling of money into the US war machine.

The bill for this massive expansion of military spending will be paid by the working class. It will be utilized to attack the living standards of the working class, criminalize working class political opposition and distract attention from the deadly surge of COVID-19.

The reckless military escalation threatens to spiral out of control, potentially precipitating the first use of nuclear weapons since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War.

There is no way out of this crisis within the framework of capitalist politics. Only one force can stop the looming catastrophe: the international working class, united in a struggle against imperialism, militarism, the historically obsolete nation-state system and the capitalist social order.

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President Vladimir Putin has accused the West of trying to cancel Russian culture, including the works of great composers such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

At a televised meeting with leading cultural figures on Friday, Putin compared the cancellation of a number of Russian cultural events in recent weeks with the actions of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

“Today, they are trying to cancel a thousand-year-old country,” Putin said.

“I am talking about the progressive discrimination against everything connected with Russia, about this trend that is unfolding in a number of Western states, with the full connivance and sometimes with the encouragement of Western elites,” Putin added.

“The proverbial ‘cancel culture’ has become a cancellation of culture,” Putin said, adding that works by Russian composers were being excluded from concerts and books by Russian authors were being “banned”.

“The last time such a mass campaign to destroy unwanted literature was carried out was by the Nazis in Germany almost 90 years ago … books were burned right on the squares,” Putin said.

Since Putin sent Russian troops into Ukraine on February 24, the West has piled sanctions on Moscow that have seen Russia increasingly isolated, politically and financially, and extending to spheres such as sports and culture.

Speaking about “cancel culture”, Putin singled out British author JK Rowling, who was criticised following controversial tweets about transgender people.

“Not so long ago children’s author JK Rowling was cancelled because she, a writer of books that have sold millions of copies around the world, didn’t please fans of so-called ‘gender freedoms’,” Putin said.

A number of events involving Russian cultural figures who have voiced support for the war have been cancelled, including some involving Valery Gergiev, general director of the St Petersburg Mariinsky Theatre, who spoke to Putin during Friday’s meeting.

Our thanks to Al Jazeera for bringing this article to our attention

Click here to read the full article.

 

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When involved in war, those who feel like benefactors are bound to congratulate the gun toting initiators.  If you so happen to be on the losing end, sentiments are rather different.  Complicity and cause in murder come to mind.

The late US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright will always be tied with the appallingly named humanitarian war in Kosovo in 1999, one that saw NATO attacks on Serbian civilian targets while aiding the forces of the Kosovo Liberation Army.  It was a distinct backing of sides in a vicious, tribal conflict, where good might miraculously bubble up, winged by angels.  Those angels never came.

Through her tenure in public office, Albright showed a distinct arousal for US military power.  In 1992, she rounded on the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell for refusing to deploy US forces to Bosnia.  “What’s the point of having this superb military machine you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”

Too many apologists have come out to explain why Albright was so adamant about the use of such force.  Biographical details are cited: born in Czechoslovakia as Marie Jana Korbelová; of Jewish roots rinsed in the blood wine of Roman Catholicism.  She fled with her family to Britain, eventually finding refuge in Notting Hill Gate.  She went to school, spent time in air raid shelters, sang A Hundred Green Bottles Hanging on the Wall.

The NATO intervention – and this point was never lost on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who reiterated it in his February address – took place without UN Security Council authorisation.  For the law abiders and totemic worshipers of the UN Charter keen to get at Russia’s latest misconduct in Ukraine, this served to illustrate the fickleness of international law’s supporters.  At a given moment, they are bound to turn tail, becoming might-is-right types.  The persecuted, in time, can become persecutors.

NATO, in fact, became an alliance Albright wished to see expanded and fed, not trimmed and diminished.  The historical role of Germany and Russia in central and eastern Europe became the rationale for expanding a neutralising alliance that would include previous “victim” countries.  A weakened Moscow could be ignored.  “We do not need Russia to agree to enlargement,” she told US Senators in 1997.

Paul Wilson, considering the Albright legacy, wrote in 2012 about the danger of following analogies in history to the letter.  “Historical analogies are seductive and often treacherous.  [Slobodan] Milošević was not Hitler and the Kosovar Liberation Army was not a champion of liberal democracy.”

In fact, the KLA was previously designated by the State Department to be a terrorist organisation.  “The Kosovar Albanians,” wrote the regretful former UN Commander in Bosnia Major General Lewis MacKenzie in April 2003, “played us like a Stradivarius violin.”  In his view, NATO and the international community had “subsidised and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure Kosovo.  We have never blamed them for being perpetrators of violence in the early 1990s, and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today, in spite of evidence to the contrary.”

Such is the treacherous nature of the sort of perverse humanitarianism embraced by Albright and her colleagues.  Such a policy, Alan J. Kuperman remarks with gloomy accuracy, “creates a moral hazard that encourages the excessively risky or fraudulent behaviour of rebellion by members of groups that are vulnerable to genocidal retaliation, but it cannot fully protect against the backlash.”

One such encouraged individual, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, was all gushing over Albright’s legacy.

“She gave us hope when we didn’t have it.  She became our voice and our arm and when we had neither voice nor an arm ourselves.  She felt our people’s pain because she had experienced herself persecution in childhood.”

The first female Secretary of State will also be linked with the Clinton Administration’s sanctions policy that killed numerous citizens and maimed the country of Iraq, only for it to then be invaded by the venal architects of regime toppling in the succeeding Bush Administration.  This sickening episode sank any heroic notions of law and justice, showing that Albright was content using a wretched calculus on life and death when necessary.

On May 12, 1996, Albright was asked by Lesley Stahl on the CBS program 60 Minutes about the impact of the sanctions that served to profitlessly kill hundreds of thousands.  “We have heard that half a million children have died.  I mean, that’s more children than have died in Hiroshima.  And, you know, is the price worth it?”  Then US Ambassador Albright did not flinch.  “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.”

In September 2000, she was still crazed by the sanctions formula against Iraq, telling the United Nations in an absurd address that Baghdad had to be stood up to, being “against the United Nations authority and international law.”  Meek acknowledgment was given to the fact that “the hardships faced by Iraq’s people” needed to be dealt with.  What came first was “the integrity of this institution, our security, and international law.”

Albright could be sketchy on sanctions.  In instances where Congress imposed automatic sanctions, Albright could express furious disagreement.  When this happened to both India and Pakistan in 1998 in the aftermath of nuclear weapons testing, she could barely conceal her irritation on CNN’s Late Edition.  “I think we must do something about it, because sanctions that have no flexibility, no waiver authority, are just blunt instruments.  And diplomacy requires us to have some finesse.”

The hagiographic salutations have been many.  One, from Caroline Kelly at CNN, is simply too much.  Albright “championed the expansion of NATO, pushed for the alliance to intervene in the Balkans to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing, sought to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, and championed human rights democracy across the globe.”

As Secretary of State, she presided in an administration of the world’s only surviving superpower, uncontained, unrestrained, dangerously optimistic.  There was much hubris – all that strength, and lack of assuredness as to how to use it.  The Cold War narrative and rivals were absent, and the Clinton Administration became a soap opera of scandal and indiscretion.

In her later years, she worried about the onset of authoritarianism, of power going to people’s heads, the inner tyrant unleashed in the playpen of international relations.  She had much to complain about regarding Donald Trump, Putin and Brexit.  In encouraging the loud return of the US to front and centre of international politics, she ignored its previous abuses, including some perpetrated by her office.  When given such power, is it not axiomatic that corruption will follow?

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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Assuming that America can avoid a nuclear war with Russia, the American people would be well-served to ponder and reflect on some of the good founding principles of our country. One of those good founding principles was “no entangling alliances.”

It would be difficult to find a better example of an entangling alliance than NATO, which is really nothing more than a Cold War dinosaur. Having been called into existence as part of the U.S. national-security establishment’s Cold War racket, it should have gone out of existence at the ostensible end of the Cold War. 

Instead, not only was it kept in existence, it actually became the root cause of the current crisis in Ukraine. That’s because it continued moving eastward, absorbing former members of the Warsaw Pact and ultimately threatening to absorb Ukraine, knowing full well that Russia had made it very clear that it would never permit U.S. military bases, missiles, troops, tanks, and other weaponry to be established on its border, just as the Pentagon would never permit Russian military bases, missiles, tanks, troops, and weaponry to be established in Cuba or along the Mexico-U.S. border.

By now, every American should be aware of the dangers surrounding America’s involvement in NATO. If Russia attacks any of the Eastern European countries that are furnishing weapons to Ukraine, that means that the United States and Russia are now automatically at war with one another. That’s because the entangling alliance with NATO automatically commits the United States to go to war with any nation that attacks any other member of NATO.

Once the United States and Russia are in a state of war, the chances of the war going nuclear expand exponentially. That’s because it is in the interests of each nation to unleash its nuclear weapons first in the hope of disabling the other nation’s nuclear capability as much as possible.

As John Quincy Adams put it in his famous speech, “In Search of Monsters to Destroy,” Europe has always been besieged with wars. The United States, he said, is in a unique position given that the Atlantic Ocean stands between the U.S. and Europe. Therefore, he counseled, the United States should continue staying out of Europe’s incessant conflicts and instead devote ourselves to establishing a free, prosperous, peaceful and harmonious nation here at home. 

And yet, with NATO, it’s the exact opposite. In the event Russia or any other nation attacks Moldova, Poland, North Macedonia, or any other NATO member, the American people are now automatically at war. No national debate. No congressional declaration of war. No protests. Automatically at war, thanks to the Pentagon’s decision to entangle America in the old Cold War dinosaur NATO and, in the process, invite some 30 (yes, 30!) nations to join.

It’s time to get out. It’s time to make this Cold War dinosaur extinct. Our national well-being and perhaps even our very existence turn on returning to sound founding principles, especially “no entangling alliances.”

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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An article by Yahoo national security correspondent Zach Dorfman praising U.S. intelligence agencies for accurately predicting Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine inadvertently highlights the extent of Washington’s military provocations in Ukraine during the period before the outbreak of hostilities. Those measures went well beyond the ill-advised political decision on the part of George Bush’s administration and its successors to push for Ukraine’s admission to NATO.

Earlier warnings from realist scholars that NATO’s eastward expansion to Russia’s border was poisoning relations with Moscow are finally getting attention in the establishment news media and generating a vigorous debate. A few analysts outside the realism and restraint camp even have conceded that trying to gain NATO membership for Ukraine may have been imprudent. But the magnitude of the aggressive moves taken by the Pentagon and CIA are just now becoming apparent.

For years, the Kremlin made it emphatically clear that inviting Ukraine to join NATO would cross a red line that threatened Russia’s vital security interests. However, it was never merely an issue of Kiev’s formal accession to the alliance. Comments from Russian President Vladimir Putin and other officials signaled that the truly intolerable development was Ukraine becoming a NATO military asset and an arena for the deployment of U.S. and NATO forces. That danger could—and ultimately did—arise, even though France and Germany continued to block a formal membership invitation.

Evidence grew in recent years that the United States had begun to treat Ukraine as a NATO ally in all but name. Steps included pouring nearly $3 billion in “security assistance” (primarily weaponry) into the country since 2014. Such armaments included the deadly Javelin anti-tank missiles. Military collaboration also included joint military exercises between U.S. and Ukrainian troops—and between NATO and Ukrainian forces. A segment on National Public Radio in 2019 featured U.S. officials preening about how such measures had strengthened Ukraine’s deterrence capabilities.

In his article, Dorfman documented the extent of other provocative military measures Washington pursued with respect to Ukraine. The CIA “made a series of covert moves that have helped prepare the Ukrainian security services for the current crisis. Shortly after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the agency initiated secret paramilitary training programs for Ukrainian special operations personnel in the U.S. and on Ukraine’s former eastern front.” (The eastern front was the Donbas region where Ukrainian forces were attempting to suppress Russian-backed separatist fighters.) Current and former intelligence officials clearly thought that those programs were especially clever initiatives, insisting that they “helped teach forces loyal to Kyiv the skills that have enabled it to mount an unexpectedly fierce resistance to the Russian onslaught.”

An earlier article by Dorfman noted that coordination between the United States and Ukraine on intelligence matters also expanded greatly after 2014 (following U.S. support for the Maidan revolution that overthrew Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russia president and Moscow’s subsequent annexation of Crimea). “U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence have even participated in joint offensive cyber operations against Russian government targets, according to former officials. CIA officials have also regularly traveled to Ukraine on intelligence exchanges, and Ukrainian intelligence officials have made reciprocal visits to the U.S. to swap information.” Dorfman quoted another “former senior official” who asserted that “in many ways the U.S.-Ukraine intelligence relationship “is about as robust” as Washington’s intelligence collaboration with “just about anybody else in Europe.” That last comment implicitly referred to NATO members.

Once again, the United States was treating Ukraine as a full-fledged, albeit still informal, NATO strategic ally. One has to wonder whether U.S. leaders were so arrogant and obtuse that they believed such missions could be pursued without Russia learning about them. If so, it was a serious miscalculation, if not an epic blunder. Conversely, if policymakers in the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations realized that Moscow would get wind of the intelligence and military collaboration, then they embraced an extraordinarily reckless set of provocations.

Engaging in a mental exercise based on role reversal illustrates the inherent danger of Washington’s policies. How would U.S. leaders (and the American people) react if China or some other major power engaged in ever-growing levels of intelligence and military cooperation with an anti-U.S. government in Canada or Mexico? The answer is rather obvious: Washington would be warning Beijing to back off, and it would be threatening Ottawa or Mexico City with dire consequences if such collaboration continued. It is difficult to explain why U.S. officials and members of the foreign policy elite were unable or unwilling to comprehend that Moscow would have a similar reaction to Washington’s provocations in Ukraine.

Predictably, such conduct ultimately produced a geopolitical explosion. U.S. and NATO officials used Ukraine as a strategic pawn against Russia and are now fuming with outrage at Moscow’s decision to go to war. Russia’s invasion was indeed a horrid overreaction, but it was far from being unprovoked. The Ukrainian people, unfortunately, are the ones paying a high price in blood for the gullibility of their country’s leaders and the shocking arrogance of U.S. leaders.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on international affairs.

Featured image is from The Unz Review