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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


The speed of Western retaliation over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised eyebrows among Yemenis who have endured a relentless bombing campaign and deadly air, land, and sea blockade for 2,520 consecutive days.

“We’re brutally bombed every day. So why doesn’t the Western world care like it does about Ukraine?!!… Is it because we don’t have blonde hair and blue eyes like Ukrainians?”  Ahmed Tamri, a Yemeni father of four, asked with furrowed brows about the outpouring of international support and media coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the lack of such a reaction to the war in Yemen.

Over the weekend, a member of Tamri’s family was killed and nine relatives injured when their family home was targeted in a Saudi-led Coalition airstrike in the remote al-Saqf area in Hajjah Governorate. Tamri claims that al-Saqf has been subjected to a brutal Saudi bombing campaign for the past seven years – more so, he says, than all of Ukraine has endured since it was invaded by Russia.

Despite the horrific bombing campaign against Yemeni civilians, Saudi Arabia’s human rights violations and war crimes have garnered nowhere near the level of coverage and sympathy that the mainstream Western media has rightfully given to Ukraine. “They shed tears for the Ukrainians, and ignore our tragedies… What hypocrisy and racism!” Tamri told MintPress News.

Yemenis ask the obvious

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine continues into the sixth day, an outpouring of support for Ukrainians continues to be seen across the Western world. Severe sanctions against Russia have been imposed by the United States, Europe, Australia, and the West in general, amid a flurry of emergency talks at the UN Security Council. The speed of Western retaliation – which includes banning Russia from the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) international banking network and calls to treat Russians as international pariahs in sports, culture, and even science – has raised eyebrows among Yemenis who have endured a relentless bombing campaign and deadly air, land, and sea blockade for 2,520 consecutive days.

Since Thursday, when Russian forces began their wide-ranging assault on Ukraine, the Saudi-led Coalition, supported by the United States, has launched more airstrikes in Yemen than Russia has in Ukraine. In Hajjah, a province surrounded by heavy Saudi artillery, Saudi-led coalition warplanes launched more than 150 airstrikes on the cities of Haradh, Heiraan, Abbs, and Mustab, killing scores of civilians, including a father of six killed over the weekend by a Saudi drone that targeted his car as it traveled between Shafar and the Khamis Al-Wahat market.

Since Russia’s incursion into Ukraine began, dozens of civilians, including a number of African migrants, have been killed and hundreds wounded by Saudi artillery and airstrikes in Yemen’s heavily populated Saada province, declared a military area by Saudi Arabia at the start of its military campaign in March 2015.

As news cameras and solidarity protests gave much-needed sympathy to Ukrainian civilians, in Sana’a, Yemen – which has effectively been turned into a large prison for the city’s more than four million residents and refugees, thanks to a crippling Saudi blockade – warplanes bombed a number of densely populated areas, including the airport. An additional 160 airstrikes were launched on the provinces of Marib, al-Jawf, al-Baydha, Taiz, Najran, and Hodeida, the main entry point for commercial goods and aid into a country facing the worst man-made famine in the 21st century.

In fact, it seems as though the Saudi regime is taking advantage of a distracted media in order to escalate attacks on a number of sensitive targets along the Yemen-Saudi border and strengthen its hold over the Al-Mahra Governorate. The UAE, the other major Western-backed oil monarchy occupying Yemen, is likewise making hay, accelerating its project to change the demographics on the prized Socotra Island by displacing locals in favor of settlers more aligned with UAE policies. And while the U.S. readies massive shipments of arms and military aid to Ukrainian “freedom fighters” defending against a Russian invasion, Yemeni “rebels” downed an American-made MQ9-1 drone flown by the UAE in al-Jawf and two American-made Boeing Insitu ScanEagles in Marib and Hajjah.

As countries that have spent the past decades building literal and figurative walls to keep out desperate brown and black refugees fleeing violence and foreign invasion in their own lands open their arms, homes, and hearts to fleeing Ukrainian refugees, Saudi Arabia unleashed a force of Yemeni mercenaries upon their homeland with a promise of a Saudi green card and safety for their families if they turn on their fellow countrymen. Ironically named the “Happy Yemen Forces,” the unit was finalized in late 2021, according to leaked military documents, with a mandate to secure Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen and ensure Saudi security in exchange for a green card and access to the Saudi social services that come with it.

If we are to compare

In terms of the sheer cost of human life, the tragedy in Yemen has been much more deadly than that in Ukraine, where 325 Ukrainians, including 14 children have tragically lost their lives according to Ukrainian officials. Granted the war in Yemen has raged on unabated for more than six years, but comparatively the numbers are astonishing. Since 2015 the death toll has reached an estimated 400,000 people, including 3,900 children.

Those deaths have included attacks on civilians so egregious that they did garner fleeting media attention but, inevitably, no sanctions, little international condemnation, not even a cessation in the military aid and support to the perpetrators. Bombed-out schools, funerals, wedding halls, refugee camps, even a school bus full of children targeted by the most advanced U.S. weaponry on offer have not been sufficient to elicit the reaction that Ukraine has garnered in less than one week.

Since 2015, Saudi-led Coalition warplanes have pounded Yemen with over 266,000 airstrikes, according to the Yemeni Army Operations Room, which records airstrikes against civilian and military targets. Seventy percent of those strikes have hit civilian targets. The rising smoke, rubble and flames now seen in Ukraine have been the status quo in Yemen for years, with Western media often deeming the images that appear on local Yemeni television stations, of parents pulling pieces of their children out from the rubble of their homes or schools, too graphic to display.

Thousands of Yemen’s economically vital facilities like factories, food storage facilities, fishing boats, food markets and fuel tankers have been bombed by the Western-backed Saudi Coalition. Critical infrastructure – including airports, seaports, electrical stations, water tanks, roads and bridges and countless more schools, agricultural fields, and places of worship – have been destroyed or damaged. A Saudi blockade and airstrikes on hospitals have crippled Yemen’s health system, leaving it unable to deal with even the most basic public health needs and leaving the 300 facilities that remain in the entire country barely functioning as COVID-19 spreads like wildfire.

As the outpourings of condemnation of Russia’s invasion continue, Western governments have sent massive aid packages to Ukraine and social media campaigns fill in the gaps – while in Yemen the United Nations announced that by March it would likely cut aid to 8 million people in a country that it calls home to the worst humanitarian crisis on earth. Household food insecurity in Yemen hovers at over 80%. Almost one-third of the population does not have enough food to satisfy even basic nutritional needs. Underweight and stunted children have become a regular sight and the worst is yet to come, as the Russian invasion has led to increased fuel and food prices and as humanitarian funding dries up, according to the UN World Food Programme.

Picking and choosing which invasion to condemn

In March 2015, more than 17 countries led by the oil-rich monarchy of Saudi Arabia launched a military invasion of Yemen, a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations. Ostensibly, the war was launched to restore President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to power after he was ousted following popular protests amid the Arab Spring.

By March 26 of that year, the Saudi-led Coalition, backed militarily and diplomatically by the United States, would begin a bombing campaign that has indiscriminately killed, maimed, and destroyed for seven years. Not only has Saudi Arabia, arguably the most repressive dictatorship on earth, forced Hadi back into power under the guise of protecting democracy, but it has also occupied huge swaths of southern Yemen from al-Mahara to the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

Yemeni journalists, activists and politicians have been left to ponder why Western governments – in particular, the Biden administration – condemn Russia for invading Ukraine under the pretext of national security while defending the Saudi regime’s “legitimate right” to invade Yemen under the very same pretext.

Despite the horrific human rights violations carried out by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, Western nations, and the United States in particular, have not only provided lethal weapons, training, maintenance, intelligence, and political and diplomatic cover to the monarchy but have imposed media restrictions on coverage of the Saudi regime’s human rights abuses in Yemen, pressuring tech and social media companies to deplatform and outright ban Yemeni activists and media critical of the war.

As mainstream Western media gives glowing coverage to Ukrainians resisting their foreign invaders and occupiers – with Western leaders applauding the steadfastness and resistance of Ukrainians and sending aid, weapons and moral support to them – they label Yemenis taking up arms as terrorists and target them with American-made smart bombs and drone attacks. Yemenis who take up arms against invading Saudi and Emirati forces are sanctioned and dismissed as proxies of Iran by liberal media institutions that claim to stand against war.

On Monday, the United Nations Security Council extended an arms embargo and travel ban on Yemeni forces. The resolution strongly condemned what it called cross-border attacks by the “Houthis,” a derogatory term used to refer to Ansar Allalh, the single largest force challenging the Saudi invasion and occupation. It went on to condemn “attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates” referring to Ansar Allah’s missile and drone attacks on Saudi-led Coalition airports and oil storage facilities.

Commenting on the resolution – which came as the UAE refused to publicly condemn Russiaover its invasion of Ukraine, hoping to gain Russian backing for its own invasion of Yemen – Ansar Allah leader Mohammed al-Houthi made one simple request: that Saudi Arabia’s deliberate targeting of civilians in Yemen lead to a Saudi weapons ban. Essentially, al-Houthi asked for a lifting of double standards, apparently an impossible request in today’s political climate.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums, etc.

Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

Featured image is from MintPress News

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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Important article by Eric Zuesse first published by GR on December 9, 2021 analyses the Biden-Putin conversation (December 7, 2021).

The outcome of this conversation confirms Biden’s outright refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Minsk accords:

  1. Biden is demanding that America now replace the Minsk agreements by an agreement that will be forced upon the Donbass by Russia.
  2. Putin said no. He said that the two warring parties need to come to an agreement, and that he won’t allow the United States to nullify the commitments that both sides (Ukraine v. Donbass) signed onto in those agreements.
  3. America’s demanding that Ukraine’s side in the conflict be imposed upon Donbass — so that Ukraine’s violations of Minsk are allowed but Donbass’s violations in response are prohibited — is not acceptable to him. He especially emphasizes this because ONLY Ukraine’s side wants the Minsk agreements to become nullified.

The two-hour December 7th Biden-Putin conversation (via video-conference) focused mainly on the conflict between Ukraine and its breakaway former Donbass region, which is in Ukraine’s far east and borders on Russia.

In order to understand the conversation, some basic history that produced the current situation there needs to be stated, because this is the point-of-reference behind the summit-conversation that occurred on December 7th:

The 5 September 2014 Minsk Protocol, and its followup 12 February 2015 Minsk II Agreement, established the agreements between Ukraine and the Donbass breakaway region, that ended the intense hot war; and both of the two Minsk agreements were negotiated directly between the two warring sides, in order to stop the hot war, in which the Donbassers were defending themselves against the bombs and missiles from Ukraine, and to peacefully establish the framework — called “The Normandy Framework” — in which a final settlement between the two sides in that war would peacefully become settled, by its two participants.

That “Normandy Framework” was between the two warring regions — Ukraine versus the breakaway former region of Ukraine — being advised by three nations that were not directly, but only indirectly, involved, and which three nations wanted the matter to be settled without restoring the full-fledged warfare which had existed in 2014: these three were France, Germany, and Russia.

France and Germany were involved because they led the European Union, and because the EU wanted Ukraine to become a member of the EU. Russia was involved because both Ukraine and Donbass are on Russia’s border, and Russia doesn’t want U.S. missiles to be placed less than a ten-minute flying time to hit Moscow. Obama wanted Ukraine in the EU as a preparation for Ukraine to become admitted into NATO so that America can then place its missiles in Ukraine.

The United States was not invited into the Normandy framework, because its Government wanted restoration of the warfare between those two regions and a conquest of Donbass by Ukraine.

The initial idea for the Normandy framework had been worked out between Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande, in order to enable Ukraine to be restored to peace so that all member-states of the EU could then vote favorably on Ukraine’s admission into the European Union. (Otherwise, a veto by one or more of the EU member-nations would be certain, in accord with the EU’s still-unratified ‘Constitution’, because the EU’s “Rule of Unanimity” would apply, and because any attempt to override that “Rule” would collapse the EU altogether.)

Hollande and Merkel would not have initiated the Minsk agreements unless they were dissatisfied with the way that Obama was dealing with the Ukraine issue. In other words: America was being shut out of the matter entirely, by the EU.

Biden is demanding that America now replace the Minsk agreements by an agreement that will be forced upon the Donbass by Russia.

Putin said no. He said that the two warring parties need to come to an agreement, and that he won’t allow the United States to nullify the commitments that both sides (Ukraine v. Donbass) signed onto in those agreements.

America’s demanding that Ukraine’s side in the conflict be imposed upon Donbass — so that Ukraine’s violations of Minsk are allowed but Donbass’s violations in response are prohibited — is not acceptable to him. He especially emphasizes this because ONLY Ukraine’s side wants the Minsk agreements to become nullified.

The big hang-up in implementing the agreements is, and has been, the refusal by Ukraine to allow the breakaway region to become a special administrative district of Ukraine as Crimea had been during the 60 years (1954-2014) during which Crimea was transferred by the Soviet government of Nikita S. Khrushchev away from Russia (of which it had been a part since 1783) and forced into Ukraine.

Because of the resistance by Crimeans, Crimea became allowed to be largely self-ruled within Ukraine. The U.S. regime refuses to allow Ukraine to agree to treating the breakaway Donbass region in that way.

The U.S. has the full backing, in this, of the two Ukrainian racist-fascist, or nazi, Ukrainian Parties, “Right Sector,” and (originally called the “Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine” in honor of Nazi Germany) the “Freedom” Party, or “Svoboda” (which means freedom in Ukrainian); and those two Parties had been the on-the-ground forces whom the CIA trained (inside the U.S. Embassy, and also in Poland) to perpetrate the U.S. coup that occurred in Kiev in February 2014. The coup’s preparation began no later than 2011.

An extermination plan was promptly instituted after the coup, by the new Ukrainian government, against the supporters of Donbass autonomy, and the war against Donbass began, in order to force the residents there to remain in the new, U.S.-imposed, nazi Ukraine. (Among their “Commanders” who admitted this was Ruslan Onishchtschenko, who even admitted that their “mission, being employees of the Ministry of the Interior, is to clean the cities after the army has worked this territory with aircraft, artillery and heavy military equipment.”) Obama wanted the residents eliminated from there, because 90+% of them had voted for the Ukrainian President (“Janukovych”) that Obama overthrew. (Obama overthrew him because that Ukrainian President didn’t want Ukraine to become a NATO-member.)

If those people, in Donbass, were to vote in another Ukrainian Presidential election, then the U.S. control over Ukraine would terminate. The U.S. regime doesn’t want that to happen, because it wants to place its missiles there.

It also planned to turn Russia’s biggest naval base, which was (and remains) in Crimea, into a U.S. naval base, but Russia succeeded in thwarting that aspect of his plan.

Although most EU member-nations wanted Ukraine to become a member of the EU, they objected to America’s plan for a hot war against Russia, even though they were hostile toward Russia.

On 26 April 2015, the Financial Times headlined “Germany urges Ukraine to fulfil Minsk ceasefire agreement”, and that neoconservative news-medium reported:

In the UK, which has followed the US in taking a tougher line against Moscow, an official said Ukraine should fulfill its side of the Minsk deal and “not give Russia the space to criticise them”.

The latest Minsk accord, agreed in February under pressure from Germany and France, has reduced fighting and led to the withdrawal of some heavy weapons from frontlines, though soldiers and civilians still die almost daily.

But Berlin is worried that Kiev is dragging its feet over other parts of the fragile deal, notably in trying to postpone political decentralisation until after local elections are staged in separatist-held territory. [That “until after local elections are staged in separatist-held territory” turned out to have been a false excuse, because those elections soon did occur and Ukraine continued its refusal nonetheless.]

For Ukraine this is critical because it does not want to hand over power to separatist leaders in the Donbas region, who are not recognised by the international community. EU diplomats say, however, that while local elections are indeed envisaged under Minsk, the accord does not insist that they take place before decentralisation.

The “17th EU-Ukraine Summit Joint Statement” was issued on 27 April 2015 and was the 17th EU Summit. It was the first EU Summit that included Ukraine (though still not a member, and still at war), and they stated that the EU nations

expressed their full support for the Minsk Agreements including the Package of Measures of 12 February 2015, endorsed by UNSC Resolution 2202 of 17 February 2015.

12. The leaders called on all parties to swiftly and fully implement the Minsk Agreements and honour their commitments and underlined the Russian authorities’ responsibility in this regard.

They tried to lay the blame upon Russia if the agreements were to turn out not to be complied with. But soon thereafter, no doubt could any longer exist that it was their own side — the Ukraine side — that refused to allow the basic provision, which was that Ukraine must negotiate a settlement with Donbass, to be fulfilled. The EU leaders were either willingly conned, or else they were lying throughout.

Already, on 12 April 2015, Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (DWN) had bannered “French Secret Service: Russia never planned to invade Ukraine” and reported:

“The real difficulty with NATO is the fact that US intelligence dominates while French intelligence is only occasionally taken into account. That is why it is important for us to appoint sufficient NATO commanders of French origin. NATO has announced that the Russians are preparing to invade Ukraine. However, based on the findings of the DRM, this claim could not be upheld. In fact, we found that the Russians had neither set up command posts nor took any logistical measures, such as setting up field hospitals. There were no activities to be undertaken in preparation for a military invasion. At the second level of command there was no corresponding cause. As a result, it became clear that our assumptions were correct. The Russian soldiers actually seen in Ukraine acted as if they were carrying out a maneuver to put pressure on Ukrainian President Pororschenko rather than an imminent invasion.”

With this statement, which surprisingly was not discussed further in the committee, the French general contradicts the official NATO doctrine, according to which Russia had made massive preparations to invade Ukraine.

Gomart is a seasoned officer in the French Army and was only appointed Chief of Military Intelligence in 2013.

His statements coincide with the criticism of Federal Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who complained about NATO Commander-in-Chief Philip Breedlove because of obvious differences in intelligence about the situation in Ukraine. The US general was exaggerating Russia’s military role since the crisis began, Der Spiegel reported a few weeks ago. Accordingly, the Chancellery spoke of “dangerous propaganda”, while Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier intervened with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.

Steinmeier said there was no intervention, only inquiries. “It is true that I myself have had two inquiries myself in situations in which the information we had from our sources did not completely agree with information that came either from NATO or the American side.” A dispute arises because the federal government has no interest in that [American view]. He is in close contact with US Secretary of State John Kerry so that such differences do not arise. …

In the EU, there is growing resistance to the escalation in relations with Russia, as it is being pursued by the US hawks ( see the notorious thought leader Zbigniew Brzeziński ). Italy and Greece want to get out of the spiral of sanctions because their own economies are being damaged. France must be saved because the coalition of conservatives and social democrats must prevent the Front National from winning at all costs in order not to endanger the euro zone substantially. The fact that the official NATO version about Ukraine is now being described as incorrect by France (of all places) is indelicate in this context.

few weeks ago, US President Barack Obama surprisingly called for a withdrawal and temporarily stopped sending US soldiers to Ukraine. NATO had announced that it would take over some of the training of the Ukrainian army from March. In the course of this training, the right-wing extremist militias in Ukraine are also being trained by the Americans. They are to be integrated into the regular Ukrainian army, but are allowed to continue to act autonomously. The right-wing extremists reject the Minsk Agreement.

On 25 April 2015, DWN headlined “USA and Russia are preparing for a new escalation in Ukraine” and reported:

The ceasefire in the Eastern Ukraine is deceptive: Apparently the Russians and the Americans are preparing for new military actions. The US government wants to keep the issue on the boil, to put the EU and the proposed Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership treaty under pressure [force European governments to accept it, which was a major Obama project to increase their bond with America and their separation from Russia]. The US has fallen in an energy-war tight spot, since Moscow announced it will no longer manage its natural gas from 2019 through Ukraine. The next military incident seems to be only a matter of time.

The President as a perpetual commander: the US has an economic interest that Ukraine remains a controversial land.(Photo: Reuters)

While somewhat keeping the warring parties in eastern Ukraine to the agreements of Minsk, there are, running in the background, obvious preparations for a new escalation. The Financial Times is already writing about a “war of words”. Such propaganda war is inherently favorable to escalation. France and Germany have noted that the US government has indeed recently been criticized for manifest misinformation. But this doesn’t prevent the US officials to maintain the chosen course. The US envoy Geoffrey Pyatt is tweeting almost maniacally about new threats every hour. …

The US government has only recently come under fire from France and Germany for blatant misinformation. But this does not prevent the US representatives from maintaining the course they have chosen. …

On 30 April 2015, Voice of America bannered “Carter Pleased with Russia’s Embrace of Minsk Agreement” and reported:

“In an exclusive interview with VOA after meeting with President Putin, [Jimmy] Carter said the Elders were pleased with Russia’s allegiance to the Minsk agreement. ‘There’s not any doubt in our mind that the Russians genuinely want to see all the aspects of that concluded.’ … [But, General ‘Breedlove’, the NATO Commander,] said many of Russia’s actions are ‘consistent with preparations for another offensive’ into Ukrainian territory. … [And,] Commenting on Carter’s remarks, the U.S. State Department said Thursday it would not speculate on the reasoning behind his [Carter’s] statements. ‘We know that Russia has continued to undermine the Minsk implementation plan and the Minsk agreements.’”

The Obama Administration was determined to discredit that prior Democratic Party U.S. President’s obstructionist pronouncements.

On 2 May 2015, DWN headlined “Chaos in Kiev: Ukraine army now fighting against their own militias” and reported that a U.S.-supplied battalion of nazis (far-right ‘volunteers’, or mercenaries, whom Ukraine’s Government allowed to fight against the Donbass residents and to be led by leaders of the Right Sector and Svoboda parties) were now being attacked by some members of Ukraine’s regular army. Basically, the U.S. regime, which had imposed this government upon Ukraine, was now goading it to provoke Russian forces into the war, perhaps in order for America then to have ‘justification’ to go to war against Russia itself, so as to defend the Ukrainian government that America’s own Ukrainian coup had installed.

As a wrap-up here, the great geostrategic analyst, Alexander Mercouris, headlined, on 8 December 2021, “Following Putin-Biden summit, Neocons push for war”, and he and others listed there the ways in which the entire Biden Administration’s international-affairs team are not only incompetents, but hate-driven incompetents, who are maniacally determined to destroy Russia, if they possibly can.

So, Putin’s rejection of Biden’s demand for the U.S. Government to replace the Minsk agreements by an ‘agreement’ that would be imposed upon Donbass by the U.S (and any perhaps willing U.S.-vassal-nation such as Poland) is actually little else than an application by him of his previously stated “red line” that must not be crossed or else Russia will instantaneously be in a hot war against any nation that does.

The world will soon know whether Biden has finally gotten the message. *

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above or below. Follow us on Instagram, @crg_globalresearch. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research 

Featured image is from OneWorld

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Proposed Navy Radio Towers Threaten Community

March 4th, 2022 by Pat Elder

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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Webster Field Annex, Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland plans to build six radio towers to aid drone warfare.

Locals are concerned about radio frequency radiation and the disturbance of contaminated groundwater and surface water.

The six towers the Navy plans to construct on Webster Field will emit various levels of radio frequency radiation, (RFR). Epidemiological studies and research on laboratory animals link RFR with impacts on the heart, brain, and other organs.

Several human studies indicate that proximity to base stations correlates with headaches, dizziness, depression and other neurobehavioral symptoms, as well as increased cancer risk. Animal studies also indicate that these effects may be cumulative.  This is the take-away from a study by Michigan Technological University that urges caution regarding the placement of towers that emit RFR. The study says a 500-meter (1,640’) buffer may help reduce risk for vulnerable populations.  Given the current research, the study says cell towers should be cautiously placed this far away from “lots of sleeping people.”

The quantity used to measure the rate at which Radio Frequency (RF) energy is absorbed in a body is called the “Specific Absorption Rate” or “SAR.” A Maximum Permissible Exposure is recommended by various federal agencies for electric and magnetic field strength and power density. The threshold level is a Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) value for the whole body of 4 watts per kilogram.

(Questions to the Navy in bold.)

The width of St. Inigoes Creek varies from 800’ at the tip of the Lucas Cove peninsula to 2,000’ at the mouth of the creek.

If I am on my dock, 1,600 feet from the shores of Webster Field, can you provide an estimate of the SAR in watts per kilogram from each tower?

If I’m in my boat, directly across from my property, along the shores of Webster Field, can you provide an estimate of the SAR from each tower?

A number of reports have appeared in the scientific literature describing the observation of a range of biological effects resulting from exposure to low levels of RF energy.  Tissue damage in humans can occur as a result of long-term exposure  because of the body’s inability to cope with or dissipate the excessive heat that may be generated.

Have you performed studies that estimate the levels of radio frequency radiation from the types of towers you are constructing? If so, could you share them with us?

If you have not performed a study, are you willing to commission a study in this regard and share the results with us?

We know that guidelines for maximum permissible exposure are different for different transmitting frequencies.  The most restrictive limits on whole-body exposure are in the frequency range of 30-300 MHz where the human body absorbs RF energy most efficiently when the whole body is exposed.

What frequency ranges will the Navy be using at each of the six towers?

The FCC authorizes and licenses devices, transmitters and facilities that generate RF radiation.  It has jurisdiction over all transmitting services in the U.S., but not over the DOD.

Facilities under the jurisdiction of the FCC having a high potential for creating significant RF exposure to humans, such as satellite-earth stations, etc. are required to undergo routine evaluation for compliance with RF exposure guidelines whenever an application is submitted to the FCC for construction or modification of a transmitting facility or renewal of a license.  This oversight is not extended to DOD facilities. Even if it did, the FCC has been failing in its responsibility to enforce health and safety guidelines.

Is the Navy willing to submit to civilian authority in this matter?  

The amount of RF energy to which the public might be exposed as a result of antennas depends on several factors, including the type of station, design characteristics of the antenna being used, power transmitted to the antenna, height of the antenna and distance from the antenna.

Could you describe for us the exact type of stations you are planning to build?

What are the design characteristics of the antennas being used?

How much power will be transmitted to the antennas? 

Calculations can be performed to predict what field intensity levels would exist at various distances from an antenna.

Can you provide the amount of RF energy generated at each tower in terms of increments of 100 feet heading north toward the Rosecroft community?

Also, since energy at some frequencies is absorbed by the human body more readily than at other frequencies, both the frequency of the transmitted signal and its intensity is important.

Could you provide this information for each tower?

We have compelling reasons to be skeptical that the DOD and the federal government are taking steps that are protective of our health. The Children’s Health Defense won a historic case against the Federal Communications Commission in August, 2021. The case challenged the agency’s decision not to review its 1996 health and safety guidelines regarding the latest wireless-based technologies.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled that the FCC failed to consider the non-cancer evidence regarding adverse health effects of wireless technology when it decided that its 1996 radiofrequency emission guidelines continue to protect the public’s health.

Children’s Health Defense Chairman and attorney for the case Robert F Kennedy, Jr. said, “The court’s decision exposes the FCC and FDA as captive agencies that have abandoned their duty to protect public health in favor of a single-minded crusade to increase telecom industry profits.”

We’ve witnessed the same abdication of federal power among several agencies regarding the threat posed to human health by PFAS contamination.

Is there  a potential for radio frequency interference with our communication equipment such as radios, TVs, wireless, cell phones, garage door openers, etc.?

What is the Navy doing to ensure RFI does not occur?

Is there a project test plan that addresses RFI and RF human exposure issues?

Soil, Groundwater and Surface Water Issues

Carcinogenic PFAS foam gathers on my beach on the north shore of St. Inigoes Creek in St. Mary’s City, Maryland.. Webster Field is shown 1,600’ across the creek. The foam was tested and found to contain nearly 5,000 parts per trillion of PFAS while the European Union limits the chemicals to .65 ppt. in surface waters.

This narrative on soil and groundwater contamination at Webster Field is followed by several questions for the Naval command regarding the proposed construction of the six towers on base.

Webster Field is a trainwreck of toxic chemicals. The Navy has reported that high concentrations of aluminum, arsenic, cobalt, iron, manganese, and thallium are present in surface soil samples, while cobalt, copper, cyanide, manganese, mercury, thallium, vanadium, and zinc were recently found in subsurface soil samples.

The construction of the towers may result in contaminated waters draining into the creek and the river.

 The base was used as a bombing range in the 1940’s and 1950’s, leaving massive concentrations of poisons in the soil. Just a few years ago Navy contractors unearthed Twelve 3-pound practice bombs – depths ranged from 2 to 32 inches. The Navy classifies these as MPPEH –  material potentially presenting an explosive hazard.

Navy reports say the primary mechanisms for transport of MPPEH and related constituents from the potential source areas may include:

  • Transport or migration of munitions-related items by erosion or soil disturbance
  • Transport of contaminated soil particulates via overland surface runoff to downgradient terrestrial areas and/or surface water bodies
  • Transport of contaminated soil particulates via wind or soil disturbing activities to surrounding terrestrial areas and/or surface water bodies
  • Leaching of chemicals from surface/subsurface soils into groundwater via infiltrating precipitation, and potential discharge of contaminated groundwater into downgradient surface water bodies
  • Uptake by biota from soil and trophic transfer to upper trophic level receptors (the poisons enter the seafood we consume)

The last item is most important because many in the neighborhood still consume the seafood from these contaminated waters.

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Sources

FINAL PROPOSED REMEDIAL ACTION PLAN MUNITIONS RESPONSE SITE UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE 1 (UXO 1) FORMER AERIAL BOMBING RANGE WEBSTER FIELD ANNEX NAS PATUXENT RIVER MD 10/01/2019 CH2M HILL

https://www.navfac.navy.mil/niris/WASHINGTON/PATUXENT_RIVER_NAS/N0428A_003069.pdf

FINAL REMEDIAL INVESTIGATION AND FEASIBILITY STUDY MUNITIONS RESPONSE SITE UNEXPLODED ORDNANCE 1 (UXO 1) FORMER AERIAL BOMBING RANGE NAS PATUXENT RIVER MD 09/01/2019 CH2M HILL https://www.navfac.navy.mil/niris/WASHINGTON/PATUXENT_RIVER_NAS/N0428A_003058.pdf

Featured image: In order to estimate the visual effect, the Navy flew drones to 150’ – the height of the proposed towers, then photo-shopped an estimated appearance of the tower onto an image taken from the water adjacent to the historic properties. https://lexleader.net/navy-plans-webster-field-tower-project/ This is the location of Maryland’s first settlement by English Catholics in 1634. Webster Field was purchased by the Navy from the Jesuits in 1943. The Jesuits acquired the property when Maryland was founded.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


South Korean Trade Minister Yeo Han-koo secured an exemption from US export sanctions on Russia, something that will shift economic advantages to East Asia as the European Union has decided to sacrifice access to Eurasia to serve an Atlanticist agenda instead. The South Korean Ministry of Trade announced on its website that South Korean companies will not have to apply for licenses to export technology products to Russia. However, South Korea’s export restrictions will be in line with the sanctions of Western states.

“The US side noted that export restrictions of the Republic of Korea against Russia correspond to measures of the international community and agreed to add South Korea into the list of countries with the exception made from the foreign direct product rule,” the Ministry said. “The government will take further measure of export control in accordance with the like measures of the international community and the US.”

The US Department of Commerce has issued a foreign direct product rule (FDPR) regarding Russia. According to this regulation, companies from third countries that use American technology in manufacturing will need a US government license to export products to Russia. At least 32 countries have received such an exemption.

In this way, South Korean manufacturers have fought for their interests so they do not lose access to the Russian market, something that the European Union has already restricted itself from doing. What is evident is that Seoul’s position on sanctions against Russia is clear. In fact, the majority of Asian countries will likely support this position as they view events in Ukraine as far off and something best not to get involved in, especially in the context of the US-China rivalry raging in their own region.

The current election campaign in South Korea is also having a significant impact on the situation in the country. The next presidential election is scheduled for March 9 and current President Moon Jae-in will not run as each person can only be elected as the head of state of South Korea once.

Interestingly, despite the South Korean election only days away, which means we can expect many different policy suggestions as every presidential candidate has their own vision, there appears not to be a negative attitude towards Russia. In fact, it appears that the Ukrainian Crisis is very far low on Seoul’s pecking order of priorities to address or deal with.

However, it is the belief of Professor Lee Sang-chung of Kunming University that South Korean companies will continue to search for foreign trade opportunities, just as they did even during the Cold War.

“Our companies will be willing to continue trading if there are buyers willing to buy their goods,” he said.

His comment came as news began filtering in that South Korea had gained some kind of immunity from US export sanctions on Russia – in exchange for imposing export control measures. However, according to the professor, not being forced into sanctions does not help improve the economic situation in South Korea too much as the global market is still in limbo.

However, the global market will not remain in limbo forever, especially as we begin exiting the COVID-19 pandemic and because the crisis in Ukraine will not wage on forever, especially if Russia remains truthful to its claim that its operation in Ukraine is only aimed at the de-Nazification and demilitarization of the country.

Seoul has not yet formulated a position on sanctions, likely because of the upcoming presidential election. Due to this, there is still much uncertainty that could affect trade with Russia.

“Big companies will try to take some preparatory measures, but small and medium-sized businesses, as far as I know, have stopped and are in a state of tension over how the war will end,” Professor Lee Sang-chung explained.

South Korea has so far only announced a ban on the export of strategic materials. Additional export controls will be announced soon though. Seoul has imposed sanctions against some Russian banks, including Sberbank, VEB, Promsvyazbank, VTB, Otkritie, Sovcombank and Novikombank and its subsidiaries, but it will still be allowed to make transactions related to the supply of agricultural, energy and medicinal products.

However, once the war in Ukraine is over and the long path towards normality is being trotted on again, it will be countries like South Korea and other Asian states that will benefit as Moscow will certainly place more trust in Eastern partners that did not get to involved in the Ukraine war, unlike the European Union.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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***

“There are always those who will want to profit from war or the threat of war, as unscrupulous as it may seem,” said one critic. “And for the American oil and gas industry there is no exception.”

The U.S. fossil fuel industry is poised to benefit from an expected expansion of gas exports to Europe after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Tuesday suspended approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in response to Russian military aggression toward Ukraine.

Completed in September but awaiting certification by Germany and the European Union, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which bypasses Ukraine by running under the Baltic Sea, could double the flow of gas from Russia to Germany.

While the $11 billion pipeline—owned by Nord Stream 2 AG, a subsidiary of Gazprom, the Russian majority state-owned energy company, with Western partners including the United Kingdom’s Shell, France’s Engie, and Germany’s Uniper—has been criticized on ecological and geopolitical grounds, Scholz had been reluctant to connect the permitting process to deescalation efforts in Ukraine, calling it a “private sector project.”

Two weeks ago, Sludge journalist David Moore shed light on the potential reason for Scholz’s hesitancy to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline:

With Russia massing its military presence along the border with Ukraine, the Kremlin could seek to weaken the international blowback by constricting gas supply delivered through pipelines in Ukraine. The result would be to ratchet up already near record-high costs for German businesses and households. Germany is projected to have enough gas in reserve for the cold months ahead and has been investing in renewable energy, and energy industry experts say it’s unlikely that Russia would entirely cut off the flow of gas because of the severe economic risks to its export markets. But Russian gas accounts for about a third of German supply and over 15% of its electricity generation, making up Europe’s largest gas source, so the pinch could be real.

But after Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday formally recognized the independence of two separatist territories in eastern Ukraine and deployed troops to the Donbas region—a move that U.S. President Joe Biden said last month would spell death for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline—Scholz took steps to shut down the project.

“We have been in close consultations with Germany overnight and welcome their announcement,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Tuesday. “We will be following up with our own measures today.”

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has been the subject of increased lobbying and fierce congressional debate on Capitol Hill, including last month’s failed attempt, led by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to hit the project with sanctions.

Now that Germany has officially pulled the plug on the Russian pipeline, U.S. fossil fuel corporations—along with Cruz and other members of Congress who are heavily invested in oil and gas companies such as Houston-based Enterprise Products—stand to profit further from increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe, an ongoing trend that is likely to intensify amid the conflict in Ukraine.

In an opinion piece published on Monday, Oil Change International’s Andy Rowell wrote that

“there are always those who will want to profit from war or the threat of war, as unscrupulous as it may seem. And for the American oil and gas industry there is no exception.”

“As Ukraine and Russia stand on the brink of a potentially lethal and bloody conflict, the American Petroleum Institute and its allies have been active on social media, arguing that now is a perfect time to expand LNG exports,” Rowell continued. “It is a flawed and short-sighted argument and one that will only cause more problems and chaos in the long term.”

As Moore noted earlier this month, the U.S. fossil fuel industry “rushed to link domestic gas exports with European security,” as seen in a recent blog post by an operative from the American Petroleum Institute—Big Oil’s most powerful lobbying group—and the Wall Street Journal‘s right-wing editorial page.

Emphasizing that Russia and the U.S. “have a decades-long history of competing over the European energy market,” Guy Laron, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argued two weeks ago that “the crisis plays right into the hands of American shale gas companies, which are reaping a windfall.”

“American liquefied natural gas exports to Europe increased by 40% in the last quarter of 2021 and are expected to be much higher during the first quarter of 2022,” he added. “American energy executives have declared in recent weeks that they were eager to replace Russian pipeline gas with American liquefied gas.”

Although U.S. exports, Moore noted, “would not be enough to make up for the vast Russian supply, they would serve to develop trade channels for future shipments of fracked fossil gas to Germany.”

Despite numerous scientific warnings about the need to block new fossil fuel projects to have a chance of avoiding the most catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis, extraction is on the rise in the U.S., which is projected to become the world’s top LNG exporter in 2022.

Last decade’s drilling and fracking boom turned the Permian Basin into the “single most prolific oil and gas field” on the planet, and Congress’ decision to lift a ban on crude exports in late 2015 precipitated a massive build-out of pipelines and related infrastructure.

“Well-connected American gas companies,” stressed Moore, “are poised to capitalize on the export boom.”

Meanwhile, the U.S., U.K., and E.U. have all vowed to impose economic sanctions against Russia, heightening fears that the Kremlin might retaliate by cutting off gas supply to Europe.

In the wake of recent developments in Ukraine, oil prices surged to nearly $100 per barrel on Tuesday, the highest in more than seven years, and European gas futures spiked by as much as 13.8%.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s former president and now deputy chairman of its security council, suggested that prices could double: “Welcome to the brave new world where Europeans are very soon going to pay €2.000 for 1.000 cubic meters of natural gas!” he tweeted.

According to Reuters, “Putin did pledge, however, that Russia would not interrupt any of its existing gas supplies.”

Rowell, for his part, argued that “there may be a case for increasing short-term LNG exports to Europe, especially if the conflict between Russia and Ukraine intensifies, but you cannot do that long term if you want to solve the climate crisis or deescalate tensions in the region. Because a Europe addicted to gas will always be vulnerable.”

“The only way to deescalate this crisis across Europe,” he added, “is to speed up the transition away from fossil fuels.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Featured image: 15 May 2019, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lubmin: View of the construction site of the receiving station of the Baltic Sea pipeline “Nord Stream 2” near Lubmin. The 1,200-kilometer-long gas pipeline will transport around 55 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas from Russia to Germany every year. The first Russian natural gas is expected to flow through the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea pipeline at the end of the year. So far, half the pipes have been laid. Work in Germany is concentrated on the landing site near Lubmin. Photo: Stefan Sauer/dpa

Important article first published by Global Research on March 14, 2014, in the immediate wake of  EuroMaidan.

Provides a broad understanding of the history of the Ukraine crisis.

***

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

****

The hypocrisy that is part and parcel of US foreign policy throughout the globe has never been more glaring and blatant than now being demonstrated in Ukraine. Rather than succumb to the propaganda-disinformation blitz that it is Russia acting as the bad guy-oppressor, a slightly deeper examination of recent behind-the-scenes events in Ukraine would clearly indicate the opposite.

Since November it was the US and NATO forces in the form of a US State Department cover that launched an all out assault on the democratically elected Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych and his government.

That now infamous statement made by profanity-carping Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland obscured what otherwise was a transparently intended plan for the coup that was attained in February [2014] when armed US backed demonstrators and mercenaries began shooting and killing dozens of Ukrainian citizens in its capitol Kiev that then drove the Ukraine President fleeing his country to seek refuge in Moscow. While the Putin and Yanukovych governments are clearly not saints, the US government that carries on the charade of being so exceptionally virtuous and benevolent is even more clearly anything but.

What historically used to be the not so covert actions of the CIA and joint CIA-military operations throughout the world assassinating and triggering countless government overthrows and regime changes has undergone a not so hidden transformational shift to a covertly led, increasing US State Department role that funds and relies on Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s) with humanitarian window fronts to do its dirty work, craftily distancing and further obscuring any and all accountability and culpability in the growing destabilization of nations around the globe.

This shadowy transformation of US foreign policy has mirrored the development in recent decades of a slithering shadow elite that has formed a loose and informal neocon network of various linked organizations such as think tanks, NGO’s, private corporate sponsors and lobbyists acting as no bid contractors, university research grants, and various intertwined government and mainstream media organizations all designed to seal the cloak of secrecy and deception that permit the oligarchic global cabal to tighten its control, effectively conceal both its overt and covert misdeeds along with its enormous money laundering scam operation from all public scrutiny and accountability.

In recent months five billion dollars at taxpayers expense were invested and poured into Ukraine to topple the government to in effect, install and buy the current puppet regime. The systematically aggressive deployment of a widespread and pervasive strategy to turn every former outer Soviet nation-state against Moscow has been underway ever since the breakup of the Soviet Empire in 1991. One by one all the nations that comprised the former Iron Curtain are now solidly aligned with NATO, the European Union and the US-Western alliance complete with its ongoing schedule of anti-missile defense deployments providing the missile shield directly aimed at Russia along its border. Of course this has Russia reacting with its own missile shield deployment in what has once again ushered in a renewed arms race.

The intended US foreign policy in Eurasia is to cut off Russia from the rest of Europe and all its Central Asian neighbors, thereby weakening Russia’s geopolitical influence and economic power in the region. Once the US has Ukraine in its back pocket which of course this recent coup effectively secures, the gas pipelines that drive Europe’s dependency on Russia to supply 90% of its natural gas will quickly be eliminated and instead the oil and gas rich Ukraine can then be “groomed” as Europe’s new main supplier. So all that protesting since November in Ukraine calling for closer democratic ties to the West was a mere propagandist ploy designed to appear as though it was actually another impromptu, so called populist movement uprising (not unlike the other fake Arab spring neo-con job) ostensibly demanding more democratic freedom and civil liberties, sadly the very same rapidly disappearing freedom and liberties since 9/11 that have been usurped by US government tyranny and oppression in the militarized police state that has now come to firmly roost here in America.

Like a caged animal that for years has been backed into the corner and repeatedly prodded, Russia’s President Putin finally reacted in self-defense to this ever so thinly veiled US assault on his nation by invading Crimea, the part of Ukraine made up nearly entirely of fellow ethnic Russians under the guise of protecting his own people. But in actuality Putin’s so called defiantly offensive move into the Ukraine was a mere reactive gesture out of desperation directly caused by the rising US Empire hegemony and its imposing global, across-the-boards military, geo-political and economic dominance, purposefully designed to severely undercut and weaken Russia’s regional power and influence. In effect, it was Putin acting in self-defense in the face of the US’s full frontal assault on his nation. Yet predictably America is now gleefully leading the charge in its sanctimonious and self-righteous condemnation to impose immediate sanctions in order to swiftly punish Russia for its feeble, desperate attempt to defend itself from the US-led onslaught.

Meanwhile, under the radar it is the United States that has been the insidious and aggressive attacker of sovereign nations around the world, not Russia. It is the United States that has military occupiers waging covert wars in 134 nations around the world, not Russia. It is the United States that possesses over a thousand active military installations around the world on every inhabitable continent, not Russia. It is the United States that has made the world far more armed and dangerous today than any prior time in human history, supplying near twice as much arms including weapons of mass destruction to the rest of the world, not its next distant competitor Russia.

It is the United States that spends more money on its military than the rest of the world combined, not Russia. It is the United States that has murdered thirty million human beings waging nonstop wars around the world ever since World War II, not Russia. In actuality it is the American Empire that is the true enemy of the world, not Russia. Psychopathic lies of deception that constantly twist and distort the true reality are currently being used once again to maliciously demonize the US Empire’s next biggest foe Russia.

It is the covert manipulation of the United States that is center stage aggressively pushing the buttons and pulling the strings behind the Oz-like curtain, ready to be exposed as the true instigator of the resurging cold war now boiling over. But the pathology of US lies consistently used to cover up the systematic raping and plundering of this earth is about to be exposed for all the world to see like never before, and that it in fact is the United States that is the true world bully, serial nation-killer, serial mass murderer and brutal enemy of the rest of the world.

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

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


How convenient for western leaders that every time another country defies the West’s projection of power, the western media can agree on one thing: that the foreign government in question is led by a madman, a psychopath or a megalomaniac. 

At a drop of a hat, western leaders are absolved of guilt or even responsibility for the terrible events that unfold. The West remains virtuous, simply a victim of the world’s madmen. Nothing the West did was a provocation. Nothing they could have done would have averted the disaster.

The US may be the most powerful state on the planet by far, but its hands are apparently always tied by a deranged, implacable foe like Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Putin, we are told, is not advancing any rational – from his perspective – geopolitical or strategic interest by invading his neighbour, Ukraine. And so no concession could or should have been made because none would have prevented him from acting as he has.

The West, meaning foreign policy hawks in Washington, gets to decide when the timeline of events started, when the original sin occurred. The compliant western media give their blessing, and our hands are washed clean once again.

The subtext – always the subtext – is that something must be done to stop the “madman”. And because he is irrational and a megalomaniac, such action must never be framed in terms of concessions or compromise – that would be appeasement, after all. If every enemy is a new Hitler, no western leader will risk a comparison with Neville Chamberlain.

Instead, what is needed urgently, western politicians and media agree, is the projection – whether overtly or covertly – of yet more western power and force.

Unmitigated catastrophe

The US and British invasion of Iraq nearly two decades ago is a particularly pertinent and telling counterpoint to events in Ukraine.

Then, as now, the West was supposedly faced with a dangerous, irrational ruler who could not be made to see sense and was unwilling to compromise. Saddam Hussein, western leaders and their media insisted, had allied with his arch-enemies in al-Qaeda, the perpetrators of the Twin Towers attack of 9/11. He had weapons of mass destruction, and could launch them towards Europe in 45 minutes.

Except, none of that was true – not even the madman bit. Saddam was a hard, cold, calculating dictator who, like most dictators, kept himself in power through a reign of terror over his opponents.

Nonetheless, the western media faithfully amplified the tissue of evidence-free claims – and patent lies like that preposterous alliance with al-Qaeda – concocted in Washington and London to usher in the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.

United Nations inspectors could find no trace of stockpiles of Iraq’s former biological and chemical weapons arsenal. One, Scott Ritter, went unheard as he warned that any possessed by Saddam would have turned to “harmless goo” after many years of sanctions and inspections.

The improbable 45-minute claim, meanwhile, was not based on any kind of intelligence. It was lifted straight from a student’s speculations in a doctoral dissertation. Iraq’s invasion by the US and Britain was not only illegal, of course. It had horrifying consequences. It led to the likely deaths of around a million Iraqis, and spawned a terrifying new kind of nihilistic Islamism that destabilised much of the region.

Those interests, of course, were largely concealed because they were so ignoble, flagrantly violating the so-called “rules-based order” Washington claims to uphold. But despite being an unmitigated catastrophe, the US-led invasion of Iraq was no more “irrational” than Putin’s current invasion of Ukraine. Washington’s neoconservatives advanced what they regarded as US geopolitical interests and a strategic vision for the Middle East.

What the neoconservatives wanted was variously to control Iraq’s oil, to eliminate regional pockets of resistance to its own and its client Israel’s hegemony in the Middle East, and to expand the region as an economic market for US goods and weapons.

Saddam fell into the trap set for him because he was equally motivated by his own narrowly defined “rational” self-interest. He refused to admit he had no meaningful weapons systems left after the western sanctions and inspections regimes because he did not dare to look weak, either to his own population or to hostile neighbours like Iran.

The western media’s refusal to consider the real motivations on either side – the neoconservatives’ in Washington or Saddam’s in Iraq – made the 2003 invasion and the suffering that followed all the more inevitable.

Spheres of influence

The same predilection for the simple-minded “madman” narrative has once again pushed us squarely into another international crisis. And once again, it has served as a way to avoid examining the real background to, and reasons for, what is happening in Ukraine and wider eastern Europe.

Putin’s actions – though potentially no less disastrous than the US-led invasion of Iraq, and certainly as illegal – are also rooted in his own “rational” assessment of Russian geopolitical interests.

MEE

But unlike Washington’s reasons for invading Iraq, Putin’s grounds for threatening and now invading Ukraine were not concealed. He has been quite open and consistent about the rationale for years, even if western leaders ignored his speeches, and western media rarely cited anything more than his most tub-thumping, jingoistic soundbites.

Russia has realistic objections to the behaviour and bad faith of the US and Nato over the past three decades. Nato, we should remind ourselves, is primarily a creature of the Cold War, a vehicle for the West to project an aggressive military posture towards the former Soviet Union under the cover of a “defence” organisation.

But following the USSR’s dissolution in 1991, the western military alliance was not disbanded. Quite the reverse. It grew to absorb almost all of the former east European states that had belonged to the Soviet bloc and it made a new bogeyman of Russia. Western military budgets climbed year by year.

Russia expects a so-called “sphere of influence“, in the same way that the US demands one. What’s been going on instead for the best part of 30 years is that the US, as the world’s sole superpower, has expanded its own sphere of influence right up to Russia’s doorstep. Like Washington, Putin has the nuclear arsenal to back up his demands. To ignore either his claim for a sphere of influence or Russia’s ability to impose it by force if necessary is either hypocrisy or foolishness.

That too paved the path to the current invasion.

Cold war mentality

But Putin has other reasons – from his perspective – to act. He also wants to show the US that there is a price to be paid for Washington’s repeated broken promises on security arrangements in Europe. Russia dissolved its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, after the fall of the Soviet Union in a sign both of its weakness and its willingness to reorder its relations with its neighbours.

The US and the European Union had a chance to welcome Russia into the fold, and make it a partner in Europe’s security. Instead the Cold War mentality persisted even more in western capitals than in Moscow. The West’s military bureaucracies that need war, or at least the threat of it to justify their jobs and budgets, lobbied to keep Russia at arm’s length.

Meanwhile, eastern Europe became a large, and profitable, new market for western arms makers. That paved the path to this crisis too.

And finally, Putin has every incentive to deal more decisively with the eight-year festering wound of a civil war between anti-Russian, Ukrainian nationalists and ethnic Russian fighters from the Donbas region, in Ukraine’s east. Even before the current invasion, many thousands had died.

Ukrainian nationalists want entry into Nato so it is sucked into the Donbas bloodbath on their side – fuelling a war that could spiral out of control into a direct confrontation between Nato and Russia. Putin wants to show Nato and militant Ukrainians that will be no simple matter.

The invasion is intended as a shot across the bows to dissuade Nato from moving its high-wire act into Ukraine.

Western leaders were warned of all this by their own officials way back in 2008, as a leaked US diplomatic cable reveals: “Strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to Nato membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”

But even now, the West is undeterred. It is losing no time in pouring yet more weapons into Ukraine, further fuelling the fire.

Dangerous caricatures

None of this, of course, means Putin’s actions are virtuous, or even wise. But for some his invasion of Ukraine looks no more irrational or dangerous than Nato’s decades of provocative moves against a nuclear-armed Russia.

And here we get to the nub of the matter. The West alone defines what “rational” means – and on that basis, its enemies can always be dismissed as deranged and evil.

Western media propaganda only serves to deepen these trends in humanising, or otherwise, those caught up in events.

As the Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association observed at the weekend, much of the coverage has been blatantly racist, with western commentators noting with sympathy that those fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unlike apparently those displaced by western invasions of the Middle East, are “like us”, “civilised” and don’t “look like refugees”.

Similarly, there is a stark contrast between the celebratory reporting of a Ukrainian “resistance” making improvised bombs against the advancing Russian army and the media’s routine demonisation of Palestinians as “terrorists” for resisting Israel’s decades of occupation.

Equally, US global dominance means it dictates the military, political and diplomatic framework of international relations. Other countries, including potential rivals like Russia and China, have to operate within that framework.

That forces them to react more often than act. Which is why it is so critically important that the western media report on the events fully and honestly, not resort to easy tropes designed to turn foreign leaders into caricatures and their populations into heroes or villians.

If Putin is a madman, like Iraq’s Saddam, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders before him, then the only solution is the use of force to the bitter end.

In global power politics that potentially translates into a third European “World War”, the overthrow of Russia’s government, and Putin’s trial at The Hague or his execution. The “strait-jacket” strategy. Which is precisely the catastrophic destination towards which western leaders, aided by the media, have been pushing the region over the past three decades.

There are far less dangerous ways of resolving international crises than that – but not so long as we keep peddling the myth of the “madman” enemy.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from CovertAction Magazine

Did NATO Just Declare War on Russia?

March 4th, 2022 by Mike Whitney

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


“No matter who tries to stand in our way… they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history…. I hope that my words will be heard.” Vladimir Putin issues warning to any country that tries to stop Russia’s “Special Operation” in Ukraine​

In a move that can only be regarded as a major escalation, NATO officials announced on Friday that they would deploy troops from its Combat-Ready Response Force to support the Ukrainian regime in its war with Russia. The Alliance will also send additional weapons which will be used to blunt the Russian offensive that has already seized large parts of the country and obliterated most of Ukraine’s defensive capability.

It is impossible to overstate the gravity of NATO’s action which assigns such importance to preserving its ‘junta regime’ in Kiev that they would willingly pit NATO against a nuclear-armed Russia in what could become a much broader regional war. Clearly, the strategic objectives of this murky conflict go far beyond the mere control of an ethnically-divided, failed state situated between Europe and Asia. Ukraine is no longer just a geopolitical trophy for western elites, but a last-gasp effort for Washington to prove it still controls the levers of global power. Here’s the story from Reuters:

“NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday the alliance was deploying parts of its combat-ready response force and would continue to send weapons to Ukraine, including air defences, while saying that Russia was trying to topple the Ukrainian government.

“We see rhetoric, the messages, which is strongly indicating that the aim is to remove the democratically elected government in Kyiv,” he told a news conference following a virtual meeting of NATO leaders.
(“NATO allies to provide more weapons to Ukraine, Stoltenberg says”, Reuters)

Stoltenberg’s decision gives Russian president Vladimir Putin no choice but to locate and destroy whatever weapons or troops enter the country that could be used to kill or injure Russian servicemen. Naturally, the killing of NATO personnel could be used to further escalate the conflict plunging the region into a much wider and more violent conflagration. Here’s more from Stoltenberg’s press conference on Friday:

“Yesterday, NATO Allies activated our defense plans… on land, at sea, and in the air…. The United States, Canada and European Allies have deployed thousands more troops to the eastern part of the Alliance… We now have over 100 jets at high alert operating in over 30 different locations… and over 120 ships from the High North to the Mediterranean… including three strike carrier groups….

We have many planes operating in the eastern part of the Alliance (and) several Allies have partly already assigned troops and forces to the NATO Response Force.” Weapon support also includes “air defence systems…” (which could be used to enforce a no-fly zone.)

This is the most serious security crisis we have faced in Europe for decades….... It is about how Russia is actually challenging core values for security, and demanding that NATO should withdraw all forces and infrastructure from almost half of our members. And they have stated that if we don’t meet their demands, there will be “military-technical consequences.” So, we have to take this seriously. And that’s exactly why we are now deploying the NATO Response Force, for the first time in a collective defence context.” (NATO’s Virtual Summit, Feb 25, 2022)

Stoltenberg is right, Russia is challenging NATO’s core values on security, and demanding that Alliance roll back its forces and infrastructure from Russia’s doorstep. What Stoltenberg fails to mention is that NATO expansion poses an existential threat to Russia by placing missile sites, military bases and combat troops on its border. He also fails to mention that NATO expansion violates agreements (to which all of the NATO members are signatores) stipulating that all parties to the agreement will refrain from any action that could affect the security interests of the other members. In Istanbul (1999) and in Astana (2010), the US and the other 56 countries in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) signed documents “that contained interrelated principles to ensure the indivisibility of security.”

What that means in practical terms, is that nations cannot put military bases and missile sites in locations that pose a threat to other members. It means that parties must refrain from using their respective territories to carry out or assist armed aggression against other members. It means that parties are prohibited from acting in a manner that runs counter to the principles laid out in the treaty. It means that Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO if its membership poses a threat to Russian security.

So, yes, Russia is challenging NATO’s approach to security, mainly because NATO’s approach is built on the rubble of treaties that the member states already signed and approved but now refuse to honor because it doesn’t advance their geopolitical objectives.

Stoltenberg would like us all to believe that joining NATO should simply be a matter of personal choice (“Every nation has the right to choose its own security arrangements”) like choosing which flavor of ice cream one wants to eat. But that is not how leaders protect their countries from potential threats.

Those threats can only be mitigated when other nations agree that they “will NOT strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others.” That’s the bottom line and that is never going to change. National security is every leader’s highest priority and it always will be. Stoltenberg rejects this fundamental tenet of global security, and his rejection has paved the way to war. If you want to know who’s responsible for the war in Ukraine: Blame NATO. Here’s how Putin summed it up:

“Over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.

Why is this happening? Where did this insolent manner of talking down from the height of their exceptionalism, infallibility and all-permissiveness come from? What is the explanation for this contemptuous and disdainful attitude to our interests and absolutely legitimate demands?”

“For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty. It is the red line which we have spoken about on numerous occasions. They have crossed it.”(“Address by the President of the Russian Federation“, Kremlin, RU)

It’s worth noting, that Stoltenberg has been chosen to become Norway’s next Central Bank chief which illustrates the cozy relationship between the Big Money and the geopolitical machinations that invariably end in war. We can only wonder whether this risky gambit in Ukraine is actually an attempt to preserve a western financial system that is so thoroughly-marinated in corruption that its markets require monthly infusions of billions of dollars in digital cash to prevent a system-wide meltdown followed by a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar. By keeping Russia down, Stoltenberg’s backers might be hoping they can breathe new life into the rotting corpse of the imperial system. But whatever the reason may be, the deploying of NATO Combat-Ready Response Force greatly increases the chances of a miscalculation that could lead to disaster. Check out this short blurb from an article by Ulrich Kühn who points out the risks of current strategy:

“President Biden and other Western leaders have made it clear repeatedly that they would not send forces to Ukraine. ….That does not mean, however, that unintended actions by Russia… or by individual NATO member states could not spark a larger conflict that no one planned. During the next hours, days, and weeks, the risk of what strategists call “inadvertent escalation” will increase….

Another possible scenario for inadvertent escalation is linked to western calls for arming Ukrainian forces. A day before the Russian assault, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced, “the UK will shortly be providing a further package of military support to Ukraine. This will include lethal aid in the form of defensive weapons and non-lethal aid.” As morally justified such calls might sound in the current environment, the question remains: How will weapons be transferred to Ukraine, now that Russia has established air dominance over the country? They would almost certainly not be flown in but would have to be provided using land or sea routes. It would thus be in the interest of the Russian military to gain quick control over Ukraine’s western borders with NATO allies. Possible efforts by individual NATO member states to send additional military equipment via the Ukrainian land borders could be met with fierce Russian resistance and may lead to skirmishes between Russian and NATO personnel.”(The pathways of inadvertent escalation: Is a NATO-Russia war (now) possible?” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists)

So, what does this excerpt tell us?

It tells us that the foreign policy establishment has already “gamed-out” the developments we now see unfolding. NATO would like to lure Putin into attacking their supply-lines, so the action could be used to justify greater involvement in the conflict. In other words, what we’re seeing is a calculated effort to (incrementally) increase the probability of a war between Russia and NATO. There’s nothing that would please Uncle Sam more than to see Russia bogged down in bloody quagmire that further isolates Moscow from Europe and prevents the type of economic integration needed to draw the continents together into the world’s largest free trade zone. Washington wants to avoid that scenario at all cost. Check out this quote from Russian economist Sergie Glaziev:

“To maintain their world dominance, the (US) is provoking another war in Europe. A war is always good for America.They even call the Second World War which killed 50 million people in Europe and Russia, a good war. It was good for America because the US emerged from this war as the world’s leading power. The Cold War which ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union was also good for them. Now the US again wants to maintain its leadership at the expense of Europe. US leadership is being threatened by a rapidly rising China. The world today is shifting to yet another cycle, this time political. This cycle lasts centuries and is associated with the global institutions of regulatory economics.

We are now moving from the American cycle of capital accumulation to an Asian cycle. This is another crisis that is challenging US hegemony. To maintain their leading position in the face of competition with a rising China and other Asian countries Americans are starting a war in Europe. They want to weaken Europe, break up Russia, and subjugate the entire Eurasian continent. That is, instead of a development zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok, which is proposed by President Putin, the US wants to start a chaotic war on this territory, embroil all Europe in a war, devalue to European capital, write off its public debt, under the burden of which the US is already falling apart, write off what they owe to Europe and Russia, subjugate our economic space and establish control over resources of the giant Eurasian continent. They believe that this is the only way they can maintain their hegemony and beat China….

Russia and Ukraine are the victims of this war which is being fomented by the Americans. But Europe is also a victim because the war aims to target European welfare and to destabilize Europe. Americans expect the European capital and brain drain to America will continue. That’s why they are setting all of Europe on fire. It’s very strange that European leaders are going along with them.” (Watch this extraordinary 2014 Interview with Russian intellectual Sergei Glaziev that was posted at The Saker website nearly 10 years ago)

The deployment of NATO’s Combat-Ready Response Force provides more evidence that the Alliance is an aggressive and war-mongering​ organization which undermines European security and puts the entire world at risk. As America’s cat’s-paw on the continent, NATO invariably acts in Washington’s interests. With that is mind, we should expect to see a steady intensification of hostilities directed at Russia, all of which are designed to further divide the continents while tightening Washington’s grip on power.

Correction:

NATO troops will not operate within Ukraine but exclusively in NATO member states. This was not clear from NATO’s original communique. The question remains, however, is the providing of heavy weapons an act of war?

In my opinion, it would be quite easy for NATO to end the fighting by simply agreeing to make Ukraine permanently neutral, implementing the Minsk​ Protocol, and abandoning all plans to deploy nuclear missiles to Poland and Romania. Putin’s only demand is that NATO seriously address Russia’s legitimate security concerns.

*

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Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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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.

***

While Global Research does not normally publish articles pertaining to biblical texts or religious cults, the following 2 articles focus on how religious beliefs, concepts and symbols contained in the Book of Revelation (New Testament)  have been (mysteriously) alluded to by powerful Big Money actors.

“Biblical phrasing” is thereby used to provide “self-legitimation” (cognitive dissonance) to the enforcement of far-reaching Covid-19 actions of a criminal nature which derogate fundamental human rights. 

We bring to your attention the analysis of Peter Koenig, distinguished author and former senior economist with the World Bank followed by the incisive article of Michael Mustapich.

What is at stake is a controversial quotation in the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse of John, Revelation to John) in the New Testament which bears a canny resemblance to the restrictions imposed on the non-vaxxed, those who do not have the QR code or a vaccine embedded digital ID: 

[John stated that this beast] “causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name… his number is Six hundred threescore and six.”[666] (Revelation 13:16-18) emphasis added. 

M. Ch. Global Research, March 3, 2022

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Introduction

by Peter Koenig

The article below by Michael Mustapich was first published on 4 June 2021, in its Spanish version in TierraPura.org.

The article begins with a reference to the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, also known as The Apocalypse, To further enhance the point of the Apocalypse – or the Triumph of the Beast – it also refers to the Triumph’s predecessor, the “Mark of the Beast” which in the context of Covid crisis could be construed (according to the Mustapich) as the Covid or Green Passport (or the QR Code) referring to the forced, or coerced falsely called vaccination. 

See also – Triumph of the Beast vs. Triumph of the People. UN Agenda 2030 vs. Triumph of the People. 

The article by Mustapich then dives into the science behind what we call the SARS-Cov-2, or Covid-19 plandemic. It is scientifically understood and proven that Covid-19 and its many “derivatives” or “variants” all the way up to Omicron, have never been isolated or identified.

The Tierra.Pura article by Michael Mustapich describes what the false vaxxes inject into people’s body – a potentially highly deadly poison, Graphene Oxide, an electromagnetic (EM) substance that is extremely susceptible to EM ultrashort-waves, like 5G. Thus, graphene oxide may be used to manipulate the human brain – of those who are vaccinated.  According to Klaus Schwab, They then become “transhumans”.

See Klaus Schwab’s statement in the first 3 minutes of the video below .

Video: Towards Digital Tyranny with Peter Koenig

Click here to link to bitchute version

The Vaccine Contains Graphene Oxide

Interestingly, the chemical composition of the graphene oxide is 666. It is also symbolically and mystically referred to as the number of The Beast. Is this relevant? Remains to be ascertained.

The composition of graphene is that of a two-dimensional hexagon consisting of 6 carbon atoms. The carbon atom is composed of 6 neutrons, 6 protons and 6 electrons. 

Bill Gates’ Patent Number 060606. Digital Cryptocurrency Microchip “Using Body Activity Data”

Bill Gates was talking about a microchip — implanted or not under the skin — which bears the Patent Number 060606. Below is the patent filed by Bill Gates on behalf of Microsoft on June 20, 2019, published on March 26, 2020.

In any case, today it looks very much as if the personal ID or the original Bill Gates, and WEF supported, Agenda ID2020, will be integrated into the QR code technology. The QR code may well be in one form or another put under individuals’ skin. Chip-volunteers are already testing such under-the-skin options in Sweden.

The QR coding system has literally unlimited storage capacity for information about each citizen, so that a worldwide network of human, or eventually transhuman surveillance mechanism could be set up – following every step you take, every move you make, and every penny you spend and even the food you eat. It also will allow the system to block your bank account, if We the People do not stop it. Soon we will have only electronic, digital money. No more cash. We are totally controlled, enslaved and swamped by an all-digitized world.

A Profit Driven “Dark Cult” Managed by “Big Money

Indeed, at closer observation, it becomes increasingly clear that we are dealing with a “dark cult”, perhaps a Luciferian cult, directed and managed by an extraordinarily wealthy elite of financial oligarchs, who are the patrons of the pharmaceutical industry, the media and of those who keep the 193 UN member countries in check – all at once. This means, principally the mega-fund managers, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and Fidelity.

Their partnership is shareholder-interlinked, so as to control together assets of some US$ 20 to US$ 25 trillion which gives them a leverage power of more than US$ 100 trillion (2021 world GDP is estimated at US$ 90 trillion). With that power, they can move every government in the direction that suits them. Governments that may want to object or even bail out – as was the case on several occasions in Africa – are in great danger.

Manipulation, punishment and death for disobedience would be an easy feast. Like with every cult – especially dark and diabolical cults – they are vulnerable to people waking up. In the first place, for them to reach their goals, as a cult-rule, they have to divulge in whatever hidden way, what their plans are and what they are up to. They have quite successfully done this over the past several decades – see this.

The Crisis in Ukraine

What if the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is part of the globalist agenda, supposedly leading to Armageddon – or the Triumph of the Beast? All is possible in the warped world and minds of the diabolical masters, with the aim of total global control over Mother Earth, her resources and her inhabitants.

Is it a war that may lead to a World War III Scenario as part of the Apocalypse? In parallel with the vaxx pass agenda, a control instrument of the survivors? Thereby enhancing the population reductionist agenda of the globalists, synonymous with the WEF’s Great Reset?

Would the “Triumph of the Beast” be equal to the Great Reset?

When you own nothing but are happy? A sort of ultra-neoliberal “socialism”, where a small elite owns everything and provides the critters, or more literally the serfs, with the necessary amenities and food to survive? And all is digitally controlled, so no serf can exit the Matrix. Mind you, if he or she would try, the subject could be remotely “neutralized”.

Is that the world we are moving towards and the current hot conflict between Russia and Ukraine is playing right into it?

Incidentally, today, March 2, in an exceptional meeting under the auspices of the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly met on the Ukraine crisis (the first such special meeting since 1982) and condemned Russia as an unjustified aggressor by 141 votes, against four votes for Russia (Eritrea, Belarus, Syria, North Korea) with 35 abstentions including China. The text of the UN resolution deplores Russia’s “aggression against Ukraine” and requests an immediate withdrawal of all Russian troops from Ukraine’s territory. While the vote is not binding, it serves as a stark anti-Russia propaganda. 

So far it looks like it is but a local war and the entire western world is up in arms about it, screaming and yelling and propagating Russia-Russia-Russia slurs and condemnations, no matter whether they are substantiated or not. 

But is it really only regional? Australia and the UK have already openly committed they would send troops to help defend Ukraine. How many others will follow to please the decaying empire? Almost all EU countries have promised to send weaponry to Ukraine, including of course, the US.

Suddenly it could resemble a WWIII scenario – Escalation up to Nuclear Weapons?  

The United States adopted in 2002 under the Bush Administration’s doctrine of “pre-emptive” nuclear strike (2002 Nuclear Posture Review).

This is not a Russian policy. Should Washington decide that they are threatened, they could easily be the first to use a nuclear device on Russia. No doubt, Russia would immediately retaliate. And Bingo! There we go – a live WWIII scenario.

Let’s not forget, Washington needs one or several armed conflicts for their defense (war)-industry and simply for the US economy that depends to almost 60% on the American war machine and related industries and services. The 4-year Trump Administration has not given them a war. So, they are falling behind.

A little “False Flag”, accompanied by a worldwide media propaganda blitz and the entire (and entirely bought) UN system would support and justify Washington’s first nuclear hit.  

Let’s hope and pray from the bottom of our hearts in worldwide solidarity that this will not happen, that enough people will wake up to the danger and meditate for PEACE.

As has often been said, We, the People, are many – and they, the globalist commanders of The Reset, are few.

The Book of Revelations talks about several wars, one of them a Final One between East and West.

Is the  world currently in the fangs of cult-driven “decision makers”? 

Is it possible that this war currently in Ukraine and if Ursula Von der Leyen, President of the EU, has her way and will not only arm Ukraine with EU taxpayer’s money but also the opposition in Belarus – that this “conflict” may soon evolve into a “regional war” and from there…?

Could this potentially escalating war game be part of the “Mark of the Beast”, in the view of those who aim at a consolidated One World Order (OWO) leading perhaps by 2030 — target date for the UN Agenda 2030 — to an all-digitized, all-controlling world; with a fraction of today’s population, under the command-scepter of a few super-rich oligarchs, who are emotionless, and remote from human suffering?  

As more and more of their – the obscure cult’s – secrets and intentions come to the fore, We, the People, may evolve and gain a superior consciousness to overcome.

Time is fast running out.

Time to act NOW is of the essence.

With confidence trust and solidarity

VENCEREMOS!

***

Apocalypse, COVID Vaccine and the Mark of the Beast

by Michael Mustapich

For most of human history, civilization has been shaped by belief in gods and divine laws. The major religions have guided man’s morality, and their sacred scriptures were taken as the ultimate authority.

But with the degradation of religious institutions and the assumption of science as the new god, man lost contact with the divine, and atheism grew, fueled by disillusionment, rebellion against dogmas and the pursuit of limitless hedonism.

In a decadent society, what is presented as progressivism can only accelerate the fall of civilization. That is why the idea of returning to tradition is gaining momentum, and along with it the study of the sacred scriptures in search of answers.

The book of Revelations in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, also known as The Apocalypse, is attributed to St. John the Apostle and is considered to be prophetic in nature. It narrates his visions while he is imprisoned on the island of Patmos in Greece (1st century AD). It describes with images rich in symbolism the events accompanying the battle between Good and Evil and the Day of Judgment.

One of the parts circulating strongly on social networks for its possible connection to the Covid pandemic, vaccination and the restrictions imposed is the following:

“To all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, shall be given a mark on the right hand and on the forehead, and that no one may buy or sell except the one who has the mark and the number of the beast, or the number of his name…” (Revelation 13:16 ).

The Covid Passport, also known as Green Passport is already a reality, and is being imposed in the USA and the EU, and in other countries in the form of APP for cell phones or vaccination cards. Anyone who does not have it will not be able to travel, study, work or access shows, restaurants, cinemas….

But what is most disturbing in relation to this issue is what is associated with the vaccine….

“Here is wisdom. He who has understanding, let him calculate the number of the beast, and his number is 666” (Revelation 13:16).


Comment from Peter Koenig:

Bill Gates developed a kind of a micro-chip in the form of a tattoo with the patent number 060606 – it would eventually incorporate also his invention Agenda ID2020 – today in the form of an QR code with unlimited information storage capacity. Any reference to this patent has been “fact-checked” out by google and other “fact-checkers” – see for yourself. What they are actually “fact-checking” away is giving away “the fact”. It will tell you what you want to know. “Fact checking” is like “there is no smoke without a fire”.


Serious allegations by experts point out that the components of the Covid vaccine include graphene nanoparticles.

Graphene is a material, that has among other characteristics, biocompatibility, superconductivity and properties of acquiring electromagnetism that makes it attractive in the development of nanotechnology and neuroscience.

Numerous studies are applying it in nanoparticle form next to neurons to send and receive information. They have already managed to manipulate the behavior of living organisms in laboratory tests.


Comments from Peter Koenig:

See this Spanish “Fifth Columns” Doctors and researchers analyzing the mRNA Covid Injections – Graphene Oxide – and the Substances Impact on the Human Body; and this Video: Graphene Hydroxide in the mRNA Vaccine Vial: Assassination of Dr. Andreas Noack. Shortly after or even during producing this video, Dr. Noack was arrested and then mysteriously found dead in his apartment – indications of murder? See this)

See also these links: State of the Nation – Stealthy Global Depopulation Scheme, explained in details (text and video 12 min by Dr. Shankara Chetty of South Africa) Covid-19 Vaccine – a Highly Advanced Bioweapon for Mass Genocide and Graphene COVID Kill Shots: Let the Evidence Speak for Itself by Dr. Ariyana Love.


One of the driving forces behind the development of this technology is Bill Gates, funding several universities and companies, and it is also in line with the ambitions of the founder of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, in his desire to implement transhumanism (the symbiosis between human and machine).

Graphene nanoparticles have not only been found in the misnamed Covid vaccine, but also in the masks and swabs used for PCR tests.

The composition of graphene is that of a two-dimensional hexagon consisting of 6 carbon atoms.

The carbon atom is composed of 6 neutrons, 6 protons and 6 electrons?

Is it related to the number of the beast?

Is it part of an agenda to access total population control?

Is it connected to the numerous cases of magnetism found in people who had the vaccine?

Does 5G play a role in inducing or controlling these nanoparticles?


Comments from Peter Koenig:

See this: Video: Ex-Pfizer Chief Scientist Dr. Michael Yeadon: Mass Murder with Vaccine Passports/Top Up Vaccines


Unfortunately, those who dare to ask such questions today are considered eccentric or conspiracy theorists. There is no choice but to continue investigating, keeping alert so as not to fall into either the official version or those attractive conspiracy theories, although in the long run they end up being, as they often are, true.

The opinions and ideas expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily represent the position of Pure Earth. TP does not obtain a personal benefit or interest with these publications, but only seeks to inform and hopes that readers exercise discernment, broaden their minds and develop a critical and upright thinking.

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

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

I am starting to think I need to file a First Amendment lawsuit over that insane bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security on Feb. 7.

In case you’ve forgotten, that report – a public declaration of the federal government’s official view of terrorism – called the top terrorist threat to the United States:

false or misleading narratives, which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions.

Their words, not mine.

Trying to “undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” is now a terrorist act?

Then I’m a terrorist.

Especially since the bulletin specifically mentions COVID-19: there is widespread online proliferation of false or misleading narratives regarding unsubstantiated widespread election fraud and COVID-19.

There’s that word “misleading” again. As this White House has made clear, “misleading” facts are those that lead people to opinions of conclusions it doesn’t like.

SOURCE

No, no one has knocked on my door or threatened to arrest me.

But that does mean the government is not targeting me – along with other prominent Covid and vaccine skeptics. Per the bulletin, the Department of Homeland Security in 2021 expanded its evaluation of online activity as part of its efforts to assess and prevent acts of violence.

The government has other tools against people it classifies as terrorists too, including plenty of secret ones.

And remember, to be a terrorist under these terms, your speech simply has to potentially inspire acts of violence.”

Potentially.

If this isn’t a government effort to discourage lawful speech, I don’t know what is. The question is whether it is so broad and dangerous that I can prove it will have a chilling and unconstitutional effect on me (and other people) even if I do not know I am being targeted. It feels like a form of prior restraint, all the worse for being so broad.

Will courts agree? There may be only one way to find out.

And quickly, if I do it. The Rocket Docket in the Eastern District of Virginia feels like the place.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


The official US embassy website recently REMOVED all evidence of bio-labs in Ukraine. These bio-labs are funded and jointly operated by the US Department of Defense (DOD).

The laboratory documents were public knowledge up until February 25, 2022. These documents include important construction, financing and permit details for bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine. But now the US government is scrubbing these documents from the internet and becoming less transparent with this critical information.

This comes at a time when the world population is waking up to the reality of gain-of-function bioweapons research, lab leaks and predatory vaccine and diagnostics development. These bio-labs generate pathogens of pandemic potential that exploit human immune systems and are the foundation for which medical fraud, malpractice, vaccine-induced death and genocide originates.

Could the existence of these bioweapons’ labs have something to do with Russia’s “special military mission?” For years, Russia has accused the US of developing bioweapons near its borders. Are the Russians currently gathering evidence from these labs? What is the current status of these facilities?

The U.S. erected a vast network of bio-labs in Ukraine and is scrubbing details from the net

The US DOD funded at least 15 different bio-labs in Ukraine. These are not Chinese or Russian bio-labs. At least eight of these are bioweapons labs are operated exclusively by the US. These laboratories “consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern” to conduct “enhanced bio-security, bio-safety, and bio-surveillance measures” through “international research partnerships.” Each facility costs the US taxpayers anywhere from $1.8 to over $3 million. The DOD facilitated the permit process to allow Ukrainian scientists to work with pathogens of pandemic potential.

The US DOD works directly with Ukraine’s Ministry of Health, State Service of Ukraine for Food Safety and Consumer Protection, the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences and the Ministry of Defense. This network of bio-labs includes facilities in Odessa, Vinnytsia, Uzhgorod, Lviv, Kiev, Kherson, Ternopil, Crimea, Luhansk and two suspect facilities in Kharkiv and Mykolaiv.

In recent years, many of these labs have reached Bio-safety Level 2 status, allowing scientists to experiment with viruses and bacteria. Over the past two years, these laboratories, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, erected four more mobile laboratories to conduct epidemiological surveillance of the Ukrainian people. These laboratories are part of a multi-national working group that creates disease surveillance networks that “strengthen global health security.”

Up until February 25, 2022, the existence and details of these bioweapons labs were public knowledge. The US embassy had previously disclosed the locations and details of these laboratories in a series of PDF files online. On February 26, 2022, the official embassy website shut down the links to all 15 bioweapon laboratories. All the documents associated with these labs have been removed from the internet. If you click on any of the links, the PDF files are no longer available. Thankfully, these files have been archived and can still be accessed. What is the US embassy trying to hide?

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


While Global Research condemns Russia’s military incursion, the following report coupled with videos provides a factual and informative understanding of what is happening on the ground.

***

By the seventh day of the operation in Ukraine, the Russian military has changed its tactics, both in terms of conducting military actions and its attitude towards the civilian population.

Numerous unmanned reconnaissance vehicles of the Russian Armed Forces were observed in the skies over Ukraine. Rear and supply columns began to move with combat guards.

The movement of armored vehicles, both on the march and in urban areas with infantry on armor, was noted.

The presence of strike aircraft in the skies of Ukraine has increased.

Coordination and interaction between various units have intensified.

Artillery is used wherever possible. Additionally, the Russians began striking military facilities that they had apparently previously planned to seize relatively undamaged.

 

The reaction of Russian units to provocative actions on the part of civilians and especially members of the so-called territorial defense forces has also changed.

Kiev urges civilians to resist by forcefully throwing Molotov cocktails at vehicles, blocking roads and launching surprise attacks, approaching under the guise of peaceful intentions.

Until March 1, Russian servicemen had orders to avoid retaliating to provocations in every possible way.

Now, the order seems to have changed and Russian units started to act in accordance with the standards of behavior on enemy territory.

For example, on March 1, in response to an ambush by units of the territorial defense near Kherson, who attempted to throw Molotov cocktails at a Russian convoy, brutal retaliatory fire was opened on the enemy. Video records at least 10 dead.

The change in the tactics is attributed to the experience of the first five days of the conflict and the fact that combat generals and senior officers with extensive experience of combat operations in various regions were brought in to command.

The Ukrainian authorities refuse to provide evacuation assistance to their population. Residents in Kyiv are being given up to the mercy of fate. The railway station is jammed. Police and law enforcement forces are absent. Looting and chaos are on the rise.

Russian units are in no hurry to enter the capital. They are expanding the zones of control around it. Russian troops are now close to Brovary, where they have gained a foothold.

On March 1, Russian forces entrenched on the outskirts of Kharkiv, amid heavy missile and bombing strikes against key military infrastructure facilities.

There is intermittent exchange of fire in the outskirts. The city administration rejected negotiations on the opening of a humanitarian corridor. Units of nationalist battalions shoot at cars of civilians that try to leave the city.

DPR and Russian units completely surrounded Mariupol. Almost all of the neighboring settlements are under the control of “Eurasian Coalition” forces. The humanitarian corridors will be open until the end of March 2. After that, the final mopping up of the city is likely planned.

Fighting is going on in Volnovakha, the key stronghold of Kiev in Donbas. Ukrainian units are trying to provide cover for the withdrawal of their main forces from the region.

The DPR military officially confirmed that the headquarters of the Ukrainian Task Force “North” was completely destroyed. Almost all the officers were killed. The headquarters of the “East” task force was also destroyed.

LPR forces also enjoyed considerable success. As of March 2, Starobelsk and a number of nearby villages were liberated. Progress is being made towards Severodonetsk and Rubizhne. Svatovo has been blockaded. Russian troops reached Izyum and entrenched their attack positions.

Meanwhile, Russian forces are breaking through defenses near Vasilievka, the stronghold that covers Zaporizhia. Losses on all sides are reported.

These events came amid the complete takeover of the important regional center of Kherson. The administration is cooperating and doing its best to maintain a peaceful situation in the city with the help of the Russian Armed Forces. The disarmament of the members of the “territorial defense” began. The police, ambulance and emergency services are working as usual.

Russian forces are encircling Nikolaev city. As of March 2 morning, the city is already semi-enclosed. The Nikolayev – Krivoy Rog road is cut.

The war in Ukraine from 2014 to the present has already become the bloodiest conflict in Europe in the last 77 years, surpassing all of the Yugoslav wars combined. Over the past six days, according to sources inside the conflicting parties, at least 2 730 personnel on the Russian and LDPR side and 11 150 on the Ukrainian side, including deserters, have been killed or missing.

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Ukraine: A Wider War Is in Prospect?

March 3rd, 2022 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


It looks like what began as a highly successful Russian military action is being turned into a clown act by the Kremlin civilians who are so anxious to show that Russia means well that they risk turning the Ukraine intervention into a farce that might end in a wider European conflict.

The Ukraine doesn’t have much of a military, but it has a powerful word that stops the Russian military in its tracks:  negotiation.

Zelensky uttered the word, and Putin stopped the invasion. 

The Kremlin fell for the trick a second time and sent negotiators to Gomel where Zelensky was again a no-show.  It is a curious situation when it is the country that is winning the war which is so anxious for negotiations. Indeed, neither Lavrov nor Putin can shut up about how willing they are to negotiate. A person might conclude that Russia is losing the war. Putin even felt obliged to assure Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett that Moscow remains open to talks with Kiev. As Israel is supporting the Ukrainian Nazis, you would think it would be Israel giving the reassurance. See this. 

Normally, halting an invasion provides the enemy with time to recover from the shock and reform lines.  Surely Shoygu knows this. Even worse, by delaying the outcome, it allows the hysterical and completely stupid West to widen the war by getting involved.

The US/NATO are beefing up their European deployments of troops and sending weapons to Ukraine. Stoltenberg is issuing threats he cannot back up.

A collection of Finnish idiots are trying to get a vote on Finland joining NATO, an act of insanity that Putin has already said would not be permitted. Germany has changed its mind and now says Germany is sending weapons to Ukraine.  Will Germany, US, NATO also change their minds about sending troops?  Every hour’s delay in Russia finishing the task gives the Western morons more chance to blunder into war.

As Union war criminal William Tecumseh Sherman said, “war is hell.” 

The Kremlin is trying to conduct war without the hell.  Consequently, the Nazi militias have ensconced themselves and their weapons systems amidst civilians.  As the Russian military is under orders not to fire into civilian areas, the conquest is stopped in its tracks.  

One can understand the Kremlin’s decision to spare civilians as once Ukraine is de-nazified, Russia hopes to have good relations with Ukraine. 

But the Kremlin is mistaken if it expects kudos for good intentions from the West. 

Whatever Russia does will be painted in the blackest terms.  Already the Ukrainian Nazi militias are being praised as “freedom fighters.”

The function of the Western media is to turn fiction into fact and lies into truth. 

The narrative of Russian war crimes was already established by the second day of the war.  Here is, for example, Bloomberg Evening Briefing Feb 25, but all the presstitutes say the same thing:

“The Russian invasion has been marked by indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and strikes on protected facilities such as hospitals, Amnesty International said. . . . Russians shelled a kindergarten and an orphanage.” 

Despite all the alleged attacks and indiscriminate shellings, Amnesty International can only get the kill list up to 140 people, and Bloomberg doesn’t say whether this is civilians only or includes soldiers and the neo-Nazi militias. So far it seems that the Russian invasion hasn’t killed as many people as one US strike on a children’s soccer game, or a wedding or funeral.

On the military front Russia is predominate, but on the propaganda front she is always outgunned.

The reason is that Russia always fails to take the initiative, instead remaining purely reactive.  Russia’s response to sanctions has so far been entirely feeble. 

Russia continues to supply Europe with energy when she can turn off the pipelines and shut down German industry.  But she does nothing as Germany announces arms support for Ukraine Nazi militias.

Russian assets are seized and Russia is evicted from the SWIFT clearing mechanism on which Russia (and China) still so foolishly rely, and Russia has not nationalized all Western investment in Russia.  One gets the feeling that Russia likes to be run over as long as it is not militarily. 

But even here Russia’s determination to show herself as so well-intentioned that she risks stalemate and a wider war makes one wonder if she even wants to win the war.  It is really quite astonishing how much Russia is hurt by words and how defensive words can make her.  

It was Machiavelli who said “it is better to be feared than loved.” 

If Russia were feared, the Finns would not be pushing to join NATO.

The Germans and French would not be sending weapons to the Ukraine Nazis.

The US would not dare personally sanction the President of Russia. 

If Ukraine develops into a wider war, much of the blame will reside in Russia’s reactive character and delay upon delay in using its superior force.

However Brutal Russia has to be, it is much better for Russia to reach a solution, because the price of delay can be much higher.  This is what delay has brought  us to:

“Putin Orders Russian Nuclear Forces to Be on Highest Alert”

Putin explains:

“Western countries are not only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic area. I’m speaking about the illegitimate sanctions that everyone is well aware of. However, the top officials of the leading NATO countries also make aggressive statements against our country as well.” See this.

Again, the moronic and arrogant West did not hear what Putin said:

“I would now like to say something very important for those who may be tempted to interfere in these developments from the outside. No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history. No matter how the events unfold, we are ready. All the necessary decisions in this regard have been taken. I hope that my words will be heard.”

The consequences will indeed “be such as you have never seen in your entire history.”

Wake up you insouciant fools in the Western populations. Your moronic “leaders” are about to lead you into suicide.

UPDATE: Ramzan Kadyrov, the  leader of the province of Chechnya commands some of Russia’s most feared combat units. He said Russia’s tactics are not working because they are too sluggish.  The West has armed Ukraine with a new generation heavy artillery and weapons, while Russia is not using its heavy artillery and weapons such as TOS. It seems that even when he goes to war, Putin really doesn’t want to use much force.

Now Turkey is saying that it will close Russia’s passage into and out of the Black Sea, another stupid NATO decision that escalates the conflict.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Supratim Barman


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.

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Besides providing lethal drone warfare technology to Ukraine and closing Bosphorus straits to warships, effectively blockading Russia’s Black Sea fleet and cutting it off from the Mediterranean fleet, Turkish President Erdogan has also reportedly introduced Syria’s battle-hardened militants to the Ukraine conflict.

During the neo-Ottoman Sultan’s official visit to Ukraine last month following the escalation of hostilities, selling and co-producing Turkish-made drones to Ukraine’s security forces was publicly discussed between the two delegations, but in secret negotiations between security officials of Turkey and Ukraine, Ankara also pledged to dispatch Syrian mercenaries to Ukraine.

Numerous brigades of neo-Nazis fighting alongside Ukraine’s security forces, specifically in the Russian-majority Donbas region, is a documented fact. But introducing Syrian militant groups to Ukraine’s proxy war is a new development that would further aggravate the already complex hybrid warfare in Ukraine.

The foremost reason several contingents of Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen forces are taking part in the Ukraine war alongside Russia’s security forces is to hunt down Kadyrov’s ideological rivals, the Islamic jihadists. Several contingents of Syrian militant groups had already left for Ukraine and were taking part in some of the most hard-fought battles against Russian security forces north of Kyiv and in Kharkiv and Mariupol and the rest were on their way, according to Turkish security officials who spoke with the correspondent on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak.

One of the principal reasons the Russian armored corps has lost so many tanks and armored personnel carriers during the week-long offensive is that Syrian mercenaries are especially skilled at using Javelin anti-tank weapons—which they dubbed “the Assad-tamer” during Syria’s decade-long conflict—as they were trained in the use of American-made TOW anti-tank munitions by Turkish security officials during the CIA’s Operation Timber Sycamore and the Pentagon’s $500 million train-and-equip programs to provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal weaponry to rebels battling the Syrian government at the training camps located at border regions of Turkey and Jordan.

Despite having immense firepower at its disposal that could readily turn the tide in conflicts as protracted as Syria’s proxy war, the Russian advance in Ukraine has been slower than expected according to most estimates because Kremlin is doing all it can to minimize collateral damage, particularly needless civilian losses in the former Soviet republic whose majority population is sympathetic to Russia.

So much so that on Tuesday, March 1, Russia even gave an advanced warning before striking Ukraine’s Security Service (SSU) headquarter and the main center for information and psychological operations in Kyiv to avoid civilian casualties. Thus far, Russian security forces have only targeted military installations and battalions of combatants posing an imminent danger to Russian troops.

Rather than mitigating suffering of Ukraine’s disenfranchised masses held hostage by the Volodymyr Zelensky-led oligarchy, the self-styled champions of human rights are doing all they can to lure Russia into their “bear trap project,” a term borrowed from the Soviet-Afghan War of the eighties when Western regimes used Pakistan’s security forces and generous funding from the oil-rich Gulf States for providing guerrilla warfare training and lethal weaponry to Afghan jihadists to “bleed the security forces” of former Soviet Union in the protracted war.

Of the $10 billion humanitarian and military assistance for Ukraine announced by the Biden administration, the top brass of the Pentagon is reportedly making preparations for allocating a significant portion of the funds for providing military training and arms to over half a million refugees who have fled Ukraine following the war.

The Machiavellian plan of NATO’s military strategists is to establish refugee settlements with the “humanitarian assistance” in the border regions of Ukraine’s neighboring countries Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, and then provide guerrilla warfare training and lethal arms to all able-bodied men of military age in order to “bleed Russia’s security forces” in the ensuing irregular warfare once Kyiv falls to advancing “40-mile-long” column of Russian tanks and heavy artillery from the north.

Western military-industrial complex is a flourishing industry. It not only sells armaments to “friendly regimes” but also provides “gainful employment” to myriad militant groups across the globe to destabilize adversaries.

As for NATO’s “gracious favor” of deciding not attempting to enforce no-fly zone over Ukraine, which is being propagated as a “concession to Russia” and “peaceful intentions” of the trans-Atlantic military alliance by the corporate media, it’s worth pointing out that no-fly zones could only be enforced against Third World countries, such as Gaddafi’s Libya or Saddam’s Iraq, whose air forces only had several dozen creaking old aircraft bought in scrap following the Second World War.

Though it stretches credulity, even if NATO decides to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, who is going to implement the impossible decision. If anything, Russia is now going to enforce no-fly zone for hostile aircraft in Ukraine’s airspace by deploying S-400 missile defense systems following the impending fall of Kyiv. Taking a backseat in the Ukraine conflict by the NATO powers isn’t a “goodwill gesture” to Russia, rather it’s an issue of lacking military capacity to confront resurgent Russia under Putin’s astute leadership.

How ironic that despite investing trillions of dollars over decades on their lethal military-industrial complex, all the global bullies could do is sow chaos and mayhem across the Third World but are left with no other choice than turning the proverbial other cheek when confronted with equal military powers, such as Russia and China.

Regarding the neo-Ottoman Sultan’s decision of introducing Syrian mercenaries as cannon fodder in the Ukraine conflict, it’s worth recalling that during the four years of the Trump presidency, Erdogan acted with impunity in regional conflicts, from Syria and Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, because he had forged a personal bonhomie with Donald Trump, as Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was a business partner of Erdogan’s son-in-law and former finance minister of Turkey Berat Albayrak, who was summarily dismissed from the ministry as soon as Trump lost the US presidential election in November 2020. Biden tightened the screws on Erdogan after being elected president, and now the “Turkish strongmen” is bending over backwards to reconcile with the Biden administration to regain his lost international prestige.

Besides mounting several military incursions into northern Syria and illegally occupying northwestern enclaves Idlib and Afrin and several strategic areas east of Euphrates, Erdogan also sent thousands of Syrian jihadists, drones and military hardware in support of the Tripoli government against eastern Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar’s military campaign in western Libya lasting from April 2019 to June 2020. After defeating Haftar’s forces in Tripoli, Turkish proxies had set their sights on Sirte but a peace process involving international mediators has since begun.

Similarly, during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan that lasted from September to November 2020, Armenia’s ambassador to Moscow alleged that Turkey had sent thousands of fighters from northern Syria to Azerbaijan. Armenia also accused that Turkish military experts had fought alongside Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, and that Turkey had provided drones and warplanes.

Two Syrian fighters, from Turkish-backed rebel groups in areas of northern Syria under Turkish control, told Reuters [1] in Oct. 2020 they were deploying to Azerbaijan in coordination with Ankara. “I didn’t want to go, but I don’t have any money. Life is very hard and poor,” said a fighter who had fought in Syria for Ahrar al-Sham, a jihadist group that Turkey has supported.

Both men said they had been told by their Syrian brigade commanders they would earn around $1,500 a month – a substantial income for Syria, where the economy and currency have collapsed, thanks to Washington’s sanction and for squatting over vast oil and gas reserves in eastern Syria in collaboration with Kurds.

The fighter said he had arranged his assignment with an official from the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) in Afrin, a region of northwest Syria seized by Turkey and its Syrian rebel allies. The other fighter, from the SNA-affiliated Jaish al-Nukhba militia, said he had been told thousands of Syrian militants were set to be deployed to Azerbaijan.

The irony is that almost all the militant groups that had fought against the Bashar al-Assad government during the decade-long conflict were Sunni jihadists, whereas Azerbaijan is an ethnically Turkic, Shiite-majority country. So practically, these jihadist mercenaries had fought in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict alongside their sworn enemies in Syria’s proxy war.

Rather than ideological convergence, Turkish support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, however, was about personal camaraderie between Erdogan and Ilham Aliyev, the longtime eccentric autocrat of Azerbaijan. Lacking grassroots support, Aliyev inherited the presidency from his father in 2003 and became a laughing stock when he appointed his trophy wife as the vice president of the country.

16% of Iran’s 83 million population is Azeri, which obviously sympathized with their co-religionists during the proxy war in Syria. Nevertheless, against the wishes and religious sentiments of the native Azeri people, Aliyev provided material support to jihadists in Syria at the behest of his Turkish patron Erdogan.

Regarding Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev’s support to Turkey-backed militants in Syria’s proxy war, a Bulgarian investigative reporter Dilyana Gaytandzhieva authored a report [2] for Bulgaria’s national newspaper Trud News in August 2017 which found that an Azerbaijan state airline company, Silk Way Airlines, regularly transported weapons to Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Turkey under diplomatic cover as part of the CIA covert program to supply weapons to militant groups in Syria. Gaytandzhieva documented 350 such “diplomatic flights” and was subsequently sacked from her job for uncovering the story.

Similarly, a joint investigation by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) uncovered [3] the Pentagon’s $2.2 billion arms pipeline to the Syrian militants.

It’s pertinent to note that $2.2 billion was earmarked only by Washington for training and arming the Syrian militants, and tens of billions of dollars worth [4] weapons and ammunition that the oil-rich Gulf States pumped into Syria’s proxy war have not been documented by anybody so far.

Notwithstanding, Turkish militarist policy of introducing Syrian mercenaries to the Ukraine war is the outcome of a long-running feud between two strongmen, Erdogan and Putin, who’ve previously crossed swords lending military support to opposing militant factions in Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh.

In order to please his NATO patrons, Erdogan even wanted to militarily intervene in the Afghanistan conflict by offering to secure Kabul airport following the announcement of withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan by the Biden administration, and by lending military support to ethnically Turkic Uzbek militants in the Northern Alliance.

Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum sojourning in Istanbul didn’t voluntarily return to Afghanistan endangering his life on the eve of evacuation of US forces. He was persuaded by his Turkish patron Erdogan to lead the first contingent of battle-hardened Syrian mercenaries who were ordered to prepare for their next assignment fighting for Northern Alliance comprising Uzbeks, Tajiks and Hazaras against the Pashtun-led Taliban in Afghanistan.

Besides Syrian militants, there are also a large number of Afghan refugees residing in Turkey who were detained during the last decade while fleeing the Afghan civil war to seek economic opportunities in Europe. It wouldn’t be surprising if Turkish security forces had made similar $1,500 a month offer to desperate Afghan refugees to fight alongside the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

In fact, Turkey’s former Chief of the General Staff and current Defense Minister Hulusi Akar visited Islamabad in August, likely sensing the mood in Islamabad as to how it would react to deployment of Turkish proxies in the Afghan civil war. But the precipitous fall of Kabul on August 15 was so sudden that only did it take most military strategists by surprise but also scuttled Turkish plans of sending proxies to buttress the Northern Alliance.

Being Islamists themselves and out of deference for Erdogan’s self-avowed credentials as the leader of the Islamic World, the diplo-Taliban subsequently requested Turkey to help the nascent government managing the Kabul airport. But the megalomaniac contemptuously shunned them as ragtag militants too far below the lofty stature of the neo-Ottoman Sultan and Washington’s NATO ally. Now Qatar and UAE are jostling for the strategically significant contract to run the airport.

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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] Turkey deploying Syrian fighters to help ally Azerbaijan

[2] Journalist Interrogated, Fired For Story Linking CIA And Syria Weapons Flights

[3] The Pentagon’s $2.2 billion Soviet arms pipeline to Syria

[4] Mark Curtis’ book review, Secret Affairs: How Britain Colluded with Radical Islam?

Featured image is from South Front

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


A motley crew of militant Ukrainian nationalists and pro-Western activists wanted to change their democratically elected government. Eight years on, the results look disappointing.

The events that transpired in Ukraine in 2013-14, dubbed the Euromaidan, still resonate in people’s memory. While each side in the conflict views them differently, it’s clear to all that the Ukraine once familiar to everyone has changed beyond recognition since then.

People’s revolution or coup d’état?  

The impetus for the dramatic events was the decision of the then-president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, to suspend the conclusion of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union and his subsequent failure to sign it during the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius. According to Ukraine’s prime minister at the time, Nikolai Azarov, Ukraine’s transition to European industry standards was to cost the country €150-160 billion. The question arises as to what the Ukrainian authorities were thinking during the long preparation of the agreement, but the decision had the effect of an exploding bomb.

On November 21, immediately after the announcement of this decision, Ukrainian blogger Mustafa Nayyem published a call to action on social networks: “We will meet at 22:30 under the Independence Monument. Dress warmly, bring umbrellas, tea, coffee, a good mood, and friends.” It was this that kicked off the Euromaidan. However, as subsequent events confirmed, the protest was not the initiative of an opposition blogger and a few students. Soon after the protests began, a number of political heavyweights got involved. On November 30, MP Irina Gerashchenko said on a talk show that riot police had used violence against the protesters and a Western journalist had been injured. Her political opponents suspected this was deliberate disinformation, as the real clashes between the police and the activists in the main city square started only the next day. Gerashchenko’s statements could have been a provocation meant to spark them. That having been said, radical nationalists had begun attacking police much earlier, in fact. According to some evidence, the first violent episodes occurred on November 23.

With the active support of the United States and EU member states, preparations for launching and organizing the protests, as well as deploying the media, began long before Viktor Yanukovich’s decision to postpone signing the agreement with the EU. The most notable outlet covering the Euromaidan was an internet channel called Hromadske.tv (Public TV), which received a $50,000 grant from the US Embassy in September 2013. Another $95,000 was added by the Embassy of the Netherlands. The former head of Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, Alexander Yakimenko, later reported that it was then that the volume of diplomatic mail increased, and fresh dollar banknotes began to appear on Kiev’s main square, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, which would go on to lend the revolution its name.

The West made no effort to hide its interest. Western politicians spoke openly on the Maidan, and EU diplomats attended speeches. Victoria Nuland, an official representative of the US State Department, was not only personally in the Maidan, but also discussed the appointment of the future rulers of Ukraine. She later acknowledged that the US had allocated $5 billion to Ukraine to “promote democracy.”

On February 20, 2014, events entered a decisive stage. In the morning, firearms began to be used on the Maidan, which led to the deaths of both protesters and police officers. Those events have never been investigated. Some reports claim that snipers from Georgia took part in the shooting of protesters. General Tristan Tsitelashvili, the former commander of Georgia’s elite Avaza unit, has stated that one of his former subordinates, Koba Nergadze, participated in the operation, along with Alexander Revazishvili. The former two men gave official testimony to Alexander Goroshinsky and Stefan Reshko, the lawyers representing former members of Ukraine’s Berkut special forces in Kiev’s Svyatoshinsky District Court. According to sources in the Georgian military, the orders were given to them by Brian Christopher Boyenger, a US Armed Forces officer. One of the snipers allegedly involved in the shootings told the BBC about the events, but the Western media paid little attention to their testimony.

On February 21, President Yanukovich, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, and Eric Fournier, Head of the Continental Europe Department of the French Foreign Ministry acting for the EU, along with representatives of the opposition, signed an agreement on settling the crisis in Ukraine. In particular, the document provided that “within 48 hours after signing this agreement, a special law will be adopted, signed, and promulgated that will restore the effect of the Constitution of Ukraine of 2004.” 

From that moment on, the coup d’état can be tracked literally minute by minute:

February 21, 4:40pm: the UNIAN news agency publishes information about the signing, which requires Yanukovich and the Verkhovna Rada, the parliament of Ukraine, to fulfill their obligations under the agreement by 4:40pm on February 23, 2014.

Night of February 21-22: Euromaidan activists occupy government buildings and the parliament.

22 February 2014, 12:29pm: The head of the Verkhovna Rada, Vladimir Rybak, is removed from office.

12:34pm: Alexander Turchinov is elected as chairman in his place.

1:08pm: The Verkhovna Rada assumes political responsibility for the situation in Ukraine.

5:11pm: The resolution ‘On the self-removal of the president of Ukraine from the exercise of constitutional powers’ is adopted.

23 February 2014, 12:36pm: A resolution is passed to assign the duties of the president to the chair of the Verkhovna Rada.

Though the deadline stipulated in the agreement for amending the constitution had not yet been reached, the EU recognized as legitimate the appointment of the chair of the Verkhovna Rada to be the acting president of Ukraine.

RT

Policeman hit by a firework ©  Olga Sukharevskaya, 2013

Who started the war and the repressions?  

Officially, the war in the Donbass began on April 13, 2014, when Turchinov announced the launch of an “antiterrorist operation,” following the Donetsk People’s Republic’s declaration of independence on April 7. The Lugansk People’s Republic declared independence on April 27, by which time Kiev’s operation was already underway.

In fact, Ukrainian forces were deployed to the Donbass in March 2014, long before these regions declared their independence. It’s true that the locals, protesting against the Euromaidan movement coming to power, started seizing government buildings. However, it was the Maidan activists who had used this tactic first, back in January 2014.

Meanwhile, people living in the pro-Russian southeastern regions of Ukraine simply organized protests at the weekend, hoping the new government would listen to them. Unlike their opponents, the 30 protesters who were burned alive in the Trade Unions Building in Odessa were not armed. It all came to light in ‘The Masks of the Revolution’ – a French documentary by Canal+ that the Ukrainian Embassy demanded be banned in Europe.

On May 9, 2014, Ukrainian tanks entered Mariupol city center, where unarmed people were marching in celebration of Victory Day in the Great Patriotic War. Later that day, there was a shootout in front of a local police station that involved the far-right Azov Battalion and resulted in casualties among policemen and civilians.

Even though the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights called for investigations, none have been conducted. On top of that, the repressions machine kicked into high gear, making prison sentences for anti-Euromaidan comments or likes on social media commonplace. A recent example is what happened to a Sumy Region local, who was convicted under Article 109 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for once liking a post on the Odnoklassniky (Classmates) social network that spoke of unity between Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. A couple of days ago, Deputy Head of National Police Alexander Fatsevich said “‘Russian world’ enthusiasts will be detained and brought to justice.” And, recently, the SBU charged prominent journalist Miroslava Berdnik, who recently had serious back surgery, with undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The daughter of the Ukraine Helsinki Group co-founder Oles Berdnik, she is a human rights activist staunchly following in her father’s footsteps. Miroslava Berdnik even addressed the Israeli Knesset, outlining the issues of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Ukraine.

The Kiev government is ignoring the concerns of international organizations and preventing Russian artists from performing in Ukraine, as well as banning Russian books and Russian and even Ukrainian TV channels. The forced Ukrainization continues despite all  resolutions passed by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Matilda Bogner, head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, has pointed out incidents involving online bullying, threats, intimidation, and incitement to violence against those who are against Ukrainization or “who expressed positive views about the Russian language or otherwise expressed opinions perceived as pro-Russian.” 

The infamous Myrotvorets (Peacekeeper) website that has collated the personal data of thousands of people, including EU and US nationals, remains operational. Recently, it added the President of Croatia Zoran Milanović and former head of the German navy Vice Admiral Kai-Achim Schönbach to its blacklist. But while high-profile figures in the Myrotvorets database have the means to ensure their own safety, people such as journalist Oles Buzina and head of the Joint Military Union of Ukraine Oleg Kalashnikov ended up dead.

Justification and spread of Nazism 

Due to the active participation in the Euromaidan protests of radical far-right ultra-nationalists, who inherited the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists’ (OUN) ideology dating back to World War II, today’s Ukraine condones support for Nazism. Despite the fact that the OUN was condemned by the European Parliament in its resolution of 25 February 2010 on the situation in Ukraine, in 2015, Kiev adopted a law ‘On the legal status and honoring of the memory of the fighters for the independence of Ukraine in the 20th century’. This law elevated the OUN and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), who were abettors of the Third Reich, to the status of fighters for Ukraine’s independence. Among the leaders of these organizations were Stepan Bandera, recruited by Nazi Germany’s military intelligence agency, Abwehr, for espionage, and Roman Shukhevych, a hauptmann of the German Shutzmannschaft 201 auxiliary police battalion and one of the commanders of the Nachtigall Battalion.

RT

Nazi symbols drawn by Euromaidan activists, graffity says «Death to police» ©  Olga Sukharevskaya, 2013

The Act of Restoration of the Ukrainian State, announced by the OUN on 30 June 1941, is considered an important date in today’s Ukraine. Article 3 of this act reads as follows“The newly formed Ukrainian state will work closely with the National-Socialist Greater Germany, under the leadership of its leader, Adolf Hitler, which is forming a new order in Europe and the world and is helping the Ukrainian people to free itself from Muscovite occupation.” 

Addressing the UN Security Council, Elena Berezhnaya, head of the Irina Berezhnaya Institute for Legal Policy and Social Protection, said that glorification of the SS Galicia Division has become common practice in Ukraine, as has the erection of monuments to commemorate Bandera and his supporters, and government funding of neo-Nazi groups under the guise of patriotic education of the youth.

Today’s neo-OUN has deeply infiltrated both Ukraine’s government and law enforcement structures. The George Washington Institute of Public Policy has published a report saying that the Hetman Petro Sahaidachny National Army Academy, Ukraine’s premier military training institution, which is supported by the US administration, has been home to the far-right group Centuria.

And the activities of Ukrainian nationalists are not limited to Ukraine’s territory – they are actively promoting Nazi ideas in Western countries too. According to US outlet Politico, the Azov Battalion – which is controlled by an ex-member of the Ukrainian Parliament, Andriy Biletsky – has established a link with the Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi group with official chapters operating in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. One of the Rise Above Movement’s founders, American white supremacist Robert Rundo was among those invited to attend a meeting with members of the battalion. The same article states that there is a connection between the same militia and Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist who killed 51 Muslims in an attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. It also reports that US Army veteran Craig Lang, who is wanted for the 2018 slaying of a Florida couple, had been active on the front line in eastern Ukraine, where he had fought on Kiev’s side.

As outlined in a new report published by the US-based Soufan Center, which focuses on global security challenges and foreign policy issues, “Ukraine has emerged as a hub in the broader network of transnational white supremacy extremism, attracting foreign fighters from all over the world. Where jihadis travel to fight in places like Syria, white supremacists now have their own theater in which to learn combat – Ukraine, where the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces has been raging since 2014, attracting fighters from around the globe who are fighting on both sides. Recent research shows that around 17,000 foreigners from 50 countries, including the United States, have gone to fight in that conflict.” 

However, the demand voiced by the US Congress that the Azov Battalion – which was incorporated into Ukraine’s National Guard in November 2014 – be officially placed on the US’ list of foreign terrorist organizations has not been met, and neither has the ban imposed on funding it and other Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia been implemented.

Economic failure amid militarization  

Ukraine’s military spending is now more than eight times higher than it was back in 2013, but the economy on the whole is in a deepening recession. In 2021, Ukrainian GDP stood at a record $195 billion (compared to $182 billion in 2013), but that was negated by inflation. When it came to certain goods, consumer inflation reached 11%, hitting a record high in the past three and a half years. The CEO of the CASE Ukraine think tank, Dmitry Boyarchuk, points out that, “in a number of areas, this growth is in name only: the prices on our exports were simply higher than the prices on our imports. But in terms of volume, our exports have been shrinking. We produce exactly as much as before, if not less, but we earned more because of the prices in the global markets.” 

At the same time, the debt has been growing. In 2013, Ukraine’s external debt amounted to $27.9 billion, but by the end of 2021,  it had reached $47.7 billion.

Ukraine has been gradually transforming from an industrial and agrarian country into a raw-materials supplier. In 2013, machine-building exports accounted for 18.9% ($12.9 billion), while, in 2017, they were down to 9.9% ($4.3 billion). The foreign trade structure for 2021 confirms this trend. Ukraine’s top exports last year were ferrous metals ($13.95 billion, up 81.4% compared to 2020), grains ($12.34 billion; +31.2%), and animal and vegetable fats and oils ($7.04 billion; + 22.5%). As for the imports, apart from energy resources, Kiev needs machines and equipment ($14.2 billion; +22.9%), as well as products of the chemical and related industries ($9.74 billion; +32.8%). It is ironic that the US ambassador said Ukraine must become an agrarian superpower. The “granary of the USSR,” as Ukraine was once known, is now importing more and more food. In 2021, it imported $8 billion worth of food products (+19% compared to 2020).

RT

A destroyed armored vehicle in Kiev ©  Olga Sukharevskaya, 2013

At the same time, we’re seeing deindustrialization. In 2014, the Lvov Bus Factory was closed, and, in 2018, bankruptcy proceedings were initiated over the Zaporozhskiy Automobile Building Plant. In 2016-2019, the Antonov aircraft manufacturer didn’t produce a single plane. In July 2021, the Nikolayev Shipyard – once a key part of the Soviet shipbuilding industry – was officially closed. Yuzhmash, a large aerospace and rocket factory, has been barely staying afloat since 2014. In 2013, 50,449 cars were manufactured in Ukraine, but, by 2021, the number had decreased to 7002.

Living standards are also falling. Utilities rates keep rising, and, as of now, the utilities debt has reached $3 billion, owing to International Monetary Fund (IMF) requirements. Ukrainian political analyst Vladimir Chemeris explains that “the tariffs will keep rising. Back in summer 2020, our government signed a memorandum with the IMF, agreeing that gas prices should be fully market-determined. Market price means higher price. The IMF also underlined this requirement time and time again, and our government agreed, hoping for more and more loans to at least pay off the previous ones.” 

Having terminated its gas supply contracts with Russia, Ukraine has had to deal with an energy crisis. On top of that, Kiev has to pay more for gas than even the EU countries. In October, gas prices across the EU ranged from €300 to €700, while, in Ukraine, it reached €1,100.

And so Ukrainians are leaving the country en masse. In 2020, 601,200 received EU residence permits. According to the Ptoukha Institute of Demography and Social Studies, in 2021, the number of migrant workers stood at 2.5 to 3 million people, while 1,068,000 Ukrainians obtained Russian citizenship in 2014-2021. In the first 10 months of 2021, the population outflow exceeded 600,000 – a record high in the past 11 years.

A survey carried out by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology shows that 64.7% of Ukrainian citizens believe things are going in the wrong direction. One in four Ukrainians and one in three young people want to move to a different country.  All in all, this can hardly be called a victory for the Euromaidan.

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Olga Sukharevskaya, a Ukrainian-born ex-diplomat and author

Featured image is from the author

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

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire declared an “all-out economic and financial war” against Russia for launching its military operation against Kiev last week. It is hoped that such an economic war will ‘punish’ Russia – but shortly after making his comment, Le Maire was quick to change his rhetoric after probably being given a stern warning from within the Champs-Élysées to not make bombastic comments that intensifies tensions and could actually lead to war between Russia and NATO.

Responding to Moscow’s decision to go to war with Ukraine, Washington and its closest allies have imposed a string of sanctions aimed against Russia’s central bank, government officials (including President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov), and barred some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payments system.

When describing the sanctions, Le Maire said they are proving to be “extremely effective.” However, it was his next comments that raised eyebrows as he told France Info radio that:

We’re waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia. We will cause the collapse of the Russian economy. The Russian people will also pay the price.”

This of course is extremely alarming as he effectively revealed the intention to impoverish more than 140 million Russian citizens without considering that Moscow has its own retaliatory measures that will also hurt the average European citizen. Le Maire later clarified to AFP that he had misspoken and that the term “war” was not compatible with France’s efforts to de-escalate tensions surrounding the Ukraine conflict, adding: “We are not in a battle against the Russian people.”

This ‘clarification’ was of course made after former Russian Prime Minister and President, Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the deputy Chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation, chillingly tweeted:

“Watch your tongue, gentlemen! And don’t forget that in human history, economic wars quite often turned into real ones.”

For this reason, the Kremlin said on Tuesday that it was placing temporary curbs on foreigners seeking to remove their investments from the country, thus stopping an investor exodus driven by the sanctions which are aimed at shutting out major banks from the international payments system and capital controls choking off money flows.

What the Europeans do not realize is that Moscow sees this current crisis as an existential battle for survival. When Putin announced on TV his “special military operation,” he warned:

“To anyone who would consider interfering from the outside – if you do, you will face consequences greater than any you have faced in history.”

Recirculating in western media after this statement was Putin’s comment in a 2018 documentary:

“…if someone decides to annihilate Russia, we have the legal right to respond. Yes, it will be a catastrophe for humanity and for the world. But I’m a citizen of Russia and its head of state. Why do we need a world without Russia in it?”

Returning to the situation in Ukraine, Putin said at a meeting with businessmen that there was no reason to destroy a system which they live in, unless Russia were to be excluded from it. If the Europeans wanted to destroy the Russian economy and impoverish millions of Russian citizens, it cannot be excluded that Moscow with a touch of a button can turn off the gas supplies and bring the entire continent’s industry and economy to a halt – while civilians freeze.

This of course would completely destroy the Russian economy at the same time, but from Moscow’s perspective, why would they continue providing energy to a bloc that has already declared an “all-out economic and financial war.” It is extremely curious that the EU believes that Moscow would not make any retaliatory measures, measures that would spell bad news for European citizens. This is especially critical as it seemingly appears that European leaders and decisionmakers are completely naïve to the responses and retaliations that Russia can make.

For now, gas to Europe from Russia via Ukraine is flowing at full capacity. This accounts for at least $1 billion a day to the Russian economy, and threatening to end this will likely be considered a casus belli. With Russia’s nuclear forces already on alert, it remains to be seen whether the EU will pursue an “all-out economic and financial war” against Russia.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from archyde.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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***

Everything Biden said about COVID vaccines was nonsense.

These are the points he made

“First, stay protected with vaccines and treatments. We know how incredibly effective vaccines are. If you’re vaccinated and boosted, you have the highest degree of protection.  …We will never give up on vaccinating more Americans. Now, I know parents with kids under 5 are eager to see a vaccine authorized for their children.  … If necessary, we’ll be able to deploy new vaccines within 100 days instead of many more months or years.  … And with 75% of adult Americans fully vaccinated and hospitalizations down by 77%, most Americans can remove their masks, return to work, stay in the classroom, and move forward safely.”

Actual data contradicts what Biden said. If COVID vaccines were really effective, then how can the nearly one million COVID deaths be explained with 75% percent of adults vaccinated? The US COVID death rate is incredibly high compared to other nations. Biden failed to acknowledge the many hundreds of thousands of Americans who have died or suffered serious illness from the COVID vaccines, not the infection.

No one who follows actual medical science and looks at the benefits and risks of vaccination would seriously question whether they or their children should get the shot.

The public needs to know about a CDC database that has not received media attention. Here is the story.

The less visible and accessible data are in the CDC Case Surveillance File. Here are the main key data points through the first week in February that sheds better light on the full and real extent of the pandemic.

Whereas the total deaths being reported in the press has been nearly 950,000, the CSF figure is almost 785,500. How is this explained? One possible explanation is that the CSF data are for accurately diagnosed cases and deaths definitely attributable to COVID. Perhaps the higher figure is linked to deaths with but not from COVID.

Of that total number of deaths, 425,726 happened in hospitals, and 79,988 in ICUs.

CSF indicates a total of 2,087,643 hospitalizations. That means that about 20% of hospitalized patients died.

This is a very high death rate and supports the fear among many people that being admitted into a hospital is a likely death outcome. This high COVID death rate is higher than for most stroke victims in most hospitals, about 15%. This is also the figure for heart attack victims in the best hospitals.

That high level of death suggests hospital protocols are not very effective. But the medical establishment has refused to seriously reexamine how late state COVID disease is managed. In particular, those who believe in the efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine would be in favor of using those generics for hospitalized COVID patients to save lives. And there is solid clinical evidence that both generics have been effective for seriously ill hospitalized COVID patients.

The current case number reported in the press is nearly 80 million, compared to about 61.3 million in the CSF. Why are there nearly 20 million fewer cases in the CSF data? Are the higher numbers for cases and deaths being over-reported and featured in the press in an attempt to maintain public fear so that people are motivated to get the jab? That seems likely.

Also, note that the CDC just announced that nearly 150 million Americans whose blood was tested for antibodies against the COVID virus were infected at some point. That huge number means that nearly half the population had obtained natural immunity that many medical research studies have shown more effective, safer, and longer-lasting than vaccine immunity.

Interestingly, blood testing was done on samples collected by commercial laboratories doing testing for other reasons. That means the privacy of millions of Americans was violated. Individuals would benefit from knowing whether they had achieved natural immunity. That information could have caused them to reject COVID vaccines.

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This article was originally published on America Out Loud.

Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles and podcasts on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades, and his Pandemic Blunder Newsletter is on Substack. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine.

As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers.  He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years.  He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors.

Featured image is an official White House photo/Facebook

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

***

When The Washington Post does a front page story on myriad heart problems plaguing people who recovered from COVID infection it is big news.  Cardiology practices across the country are being overwhelmed by post-COVID heart patients.  “Long” COVID has been getting increased attention.  Huge numbers of people are suffering long after getting through the initial infection.

What is important is the lack of attention to what research has found to be an important impact of spike proteins, namely micro blood clots.  Toxic spike proteins invade bodies from COVID infection and also the major COVID vaccines.  Those spike proteins can cause widespread micro blood clots.  They can impede oxygen getting to all organs and the brain, leading to myocarditis or heart inflammation, heart attacks and strokes, for example.

There is no attention in the Post story to either micro blood clots or whether COVID victims also were recipients of COVID vaccines.  There is a very high probability that recovered COVID victims succumbed to all the government coercion and propaganda and got the vaccine shots, even though they have natural immunity that the government has not given credit for.

Physicians also are likely seeing “COVID” patients who never had proven COVID infection but were vaccinated.  Surely there have been millions of Americans who might have been infected but were asymptomatic and did not have a positive test result.  They may assume they were infected!  And they very likely got vaccinated.  Physicians seeing these people who are complaining of long COVID symptoms may actually be seeing people suffering from vaccine impacts.

Key research study

Feeding the Post story was a new medical research article titled “Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19.”  The Post noted that one of the authors describes the pandemic as an earthquake. “When the earth stops shaking and the dust settles, we will have to be able to deal with the aftermath on heart and other organ systems,” he said.  “Governments around the world need to pay attention…We are not sufficiently prepared.”

But this study did not assess whether COVID vaccination played a role in heart problems.  The researchers compared more than 150,000 veterans who survived for at least 30 days after contracting COVID-19 with two groups of uninfected people: a group of more than five million people who used the VA medical system during the pandemic, and a similarly sized group that used the system in 2017, before SARS-CoV-2 was circulating.

The study found that there is a high risk of 20 diseases of the heart and blood vessels for at least a year after a COVID-19 diagnosis.  The rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease.  This was the case even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes.

Here are two illustrative findings: COVID victims were 52% more likely to have had a stroke than the contemporary control group, and risk of heart failure increased by 72%,

Long covid has clot cause

Medical research has found micro clots as the likely cause of “long” COVID.  Yet the mainstream media is ignoring this.

In October 2021 the material in this article discussed what was originally published in the journal Cardiovascular Diabetology in August 2021 titled “Inflammatory micro clots in blood of individuals suffering from Long COVID.”  The research was done at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.  Researchers found an overload of various inflammatory molecules, ‘trapped’ inside insoluble microscopic blood clots (micro clots), in the blood of individuals suffering from lingering symptoms associated with long COVID.

This important finding was made by Prof. Resia Pretorius, a researcher in the Department of Physiological Science at Stellenbosch University.

“We found high levels of various inflammatory molecules trapped in micro clots present in the blood of individuals with Long COVID.  Some of the trapped molecules contain clotting proteins such as fibrinogen, as well as alpha(2)-antiplasmin,” Pretorius explained.

The insolubility of the micro clots became apparent through specific analysis of blood plasma samples from both individuals with acute COVID and long COVID.  The researchers found that in both cases there was the same cardiovascular and clotting pathologies.  In other words, this research connects both conditions with micro blood clots.

The Guardian article

Though ignored in the US, this research was seen as a very important development in a January 2022 article in The Guardian with the heading “Could microclots help explain the mystery of long Covid?”  It was written by Resia Pretorius.  “My lab has found significant microclot formation in long Covid patients.  Unfortunately, these are missed in routine blood tests.” They are also missed by scan and imaging technologies.

Here are more excerpts from this article that was aimed at informing the world about the importance of micro clots.

“One of the biggest failures during the Covid-19 pandemic is our slow response in diagnosing and treating long Covid.  As many as 100 million people worldwide already suffer from long Covid.  That staggering number will eventually be much higher, if we take into account that diagnoses are still inadequate, and that we still do not know what the impact of Omicron and future variants will be.”

“Patients with long Covid complain of numerous symptoms, the main ones being recurring fatigue and brain fog, muscle weakness, being out of breath and having low oxygen levels, sleep difficulties and anxiety or depression.  Some patients are so sick that they cannot work or even walk a few steps.  There is possibly also an elevated risk of stroke and heart attacks.  One of the biggest sources of concern is that even mild and sometimes asymptomatic initial Covid-19 infection may lead to debilitating, long-term disability.”

“Since early 2020, we and other researchers have pointed out that acute Covid-19 is not only a lung disease, but actually significantly affects the vascular (blood flow) and coagulation (blood clotting) systems.”

“The presence of persistent microclots and hyperactivated platelets (also involved in clotting) perpetuates coagulation and vascular pathology, resulting in cells not getting enough oxygen in the tissues to sustain bodily functions (known as cellular hypoxia).  Widespread hypoxia may be central to the numerous reported debilitating symptoms.”

If COVID vaccines create the same type of micro blood clots, then the same health impacts would be expected!

And here is what long COVID victims need to know:

“So why can long Covid patients not go to their nearest clinic or health care practitioner to find treatment options?  Currently there are no general pathology tests readily available to diagnose these patients.  Desperately ill patients are told that their pathology test results are within normal/healthy ranges. Many are then told that their symptoms are possibly psychological and they should try meditation or exercise.  The main reason the traditional lab tests do not pick up any of the inflammatory molecules is that they are trapped inside the fibrinolytic-resistant microclots (visible under a fluorescence or bright-field microscope, as our research has shown). When the molecular content of the soluble part of the plasma is measured, the inflammatory molecules, including auto-antibodies, are simply missed.”

The same would hold true for vaccinated people with micro blood clots.

Autopsies find micro clots

The medical literature provides findings of micro blood clots from autopsies.  An article published in 2020 by Dr. Amy Rapkiewicz, the chairman of the department of pathology at NYU Langone Medical Center is important.  Describing the work in a news story was this: “The clotting was not only in the large vessels but also in the smaller vessels.  And this was dramatic, because though we might have expected it in the lungs, we found it in almost every organ that we looked at in our autopsy study,” the researcher said.

This too was noted in another news story: “We knew that clinical people were finding clots in these [COVID] patients,” she said. “So although I knew that that was going to be there, I didn’t expect it at the microscopic level to the degree that I saw it.”  Her autopsy study found blood clots in small vessels of the patients’ lungs, hearts, kidneys and livers.

In another news story this was noted in 2020 about research at Harvard University:

“Researchers also noted that patients with the novel coronavirus suffered many microscopic blood clots.  In a stark difference with lungs infected with the flu, the micro-clots were nine times as present in areas of the lungs that allow the passage of oxygen into the patient’s bloodstream while carbon dioxide is emitted.”

This is from the published medical study: “Histologic analysis of pulmonary vessels in patients with Covid-19 showed widespread thrombosis with microangiopathy.  Alveolar capillary microthrombi were 9 times as prevalent in patients with Covid-19 as in patients with influenza.”  In other words, micro blood clots were uniquely associated with COVID infection.

This is the title of a May 2020 medical article: “Pathophysiology of SARS-CoV-2: Targeting of endothelial cells renders a complex disease with thrombotic microangiopathy and aberrant immune response.  The Mount Sinai COVID-19 autopsy experience.”  Here is the summary of the findings; note the word micro:

“Autopsies were performed at the Mount Sinai Hospital on 67 COVID-19 positive patients and data from the clinical records were obtained from the Mount Sinai Data Warehouse.  The experimental design included a comprehensive microscopic examination carried out by a team of expert pathologists, along with transmission electron microscopy.”

“We report a comprehensive autopsy series of 67 COVID-19 positive patients revealing that this disease, so far conceptualized as a primarily respiratory viral illness, also causes endothelial dysfunction, a hypercoagulable state [an increased tendency to develop blood clots], and an imbalance of both the innate and adaptive immune responses.  Novel findings reported here include an endothelial phenotype of ACE2 in selected organs, which correlates with clotting abnormalities and thrombotic microangiopathy, addressing the prominent coagulopathy and neuropsychiatric symptoms.  Another original observation is that of macrophage activation syndrome, with hemophagocytosis and a hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis-like disorder, underlying the microangiopathy [disorder involving small blood vessels] and excessive cytokine release.”

Screenshot from ResearchGate

In other words, this study also found evidence of micro clots in COVID victims.

Micro clots caused by COVID vaccines

All the results on micro clots in COVID and long COVID victims should be seen as holding for the same type clots in vaccinated people.

The work of Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi is critical.  He has noted:

“immune and blood-related categories of risks from vaccines: (1) Clotting from the direct action of spike protein in the bloodstream; (2) Further clotting from the immune system attacking spike-producing endothelial cells.”  This too was said: “The RNA injected into your body [from vaccines] are going to enter the cells that line blood vessels.  He points to spiny spike protein that these cells will generate and protrude outwards to attract blood platelets and form micro-clots.  Days after vaccination, white blood cells known as lymphocytes as well as antibodies will begin to mount an attack against these cells.  If you dare to repeat this (get the second jab), “God help you” warns Dr Bhakdi.”  He warned about the blood clot side-effects months before the roll-out of the mRNA vaccines.

Canadian doctor blew the whistle about micro clots from vaccines

Months ago in July 2021 a brave and smart Canadian doctor, Charles Hoffe, went public with his findings on COVID vaccinated patients.  Using the d-dimer test of blood he found that 62% of hundreds of his vaccinated patients had high numbers indicating the presence of micro blood clots.  A d-dimer test measures the amount of degraded fibrin in the blood.

He did more than just release that finding.  He said that the use of mRNA vaccines would “kill most people through heart failure.”  This supports invoking vaccine shots as a cause of what is now being associated just with long COVID.

In plain language he said that the mRNA shots are programmed to turn a person’s body into a spike protein “factory,” and that over time these mass-produced spike proteins cause progressive blood clotting.

He said what other medical experts have expressed, namely that only 25 percent of the ‘vaccine’ injected into a person’s arm actually stays in your arm.  The other 75 percent is collected by your lymphatic system and literally fed into your circulation so these little packages of messenger RNA invade your body.  And in a single dose of Moderna ‘vaccine’ there are literally 40 trillion mRNA molecules.

Dr. Hoffe said that while these packages were designed by Big Pharma to be absorbed directly into people’s cells, the only place they can actually be absorbed is around the blood vessels and into capillary networks, which are the tiniest blood vessels where blood flow is slow and where genes are released.

“Your body then gets to work reading and then manufacturing trillions and trillions of these spike proteins,” he said.  “Each gene can produce many, many spike proteins. The body then recognizes these are foreign bodies so it makes antibodies against it so you are then protected against COVID.  That’s the idea.”

Now we know that this theory does not assure destruction of the virus or transmission of it, nor effective immunity.

Here is what you need to understand: Though the claim has long been that these spike proteins act as a deterrent to viral infection after being injected into a person’s body, the reality is that they actually become part of the cell wall of a person’s vascular endothelium or linings of the blood vessels.  In very small diameter blood vessels, the spikes have a big impact on blood flow.

Your blood vessels are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly.  After spike proteins invade your body the small blood vessels have these little spikey bits sticking out which impede blood flow and can cause clots.  And if you get a lot of clots, then your blood platelet count can greatly decrease, and this can lead to bleeding problems.

Dr. Hoffe says it is an inevitability that the vaccine injected will develop blood clots because as the vaccine-inserted spike proteins embed themselves within blood vessels and capillaries, blood platelets circulate around trying to fix the problem by creating increasingly more clots.

“So, when the platelet comes through the capillary it suddenly hits all these COVID spikes and it becomes absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form to block that vessel,” he writes.  Therefore, these spike proteins can predictably cause blood clots.  They are in your blood vessels (if mRNA ‘vaccinated’) so it is guaranteed.”

What must be remembered is that these blood clots are different than the “rare” ones spoken about by physicians that show up on CT scans and MRIs or even ultrasound images.  These are microscopic and do not show up on those tests; they can be detected using the d-dimer blood test, that is not routinely used.

Why some people do not get the clots is not entirely clear.  They may benefit from a very healthy vascular system.

“The most alarming part of this is that there are some parts of the body like the brain, spinal cord, heart and lungs which cannot [regenerate],” he said. “When those tissues are damaged by blood clots, they are permanently damaged.”  That is the deadly issue for understanding why there are huge numbers of vaccinated people who have suffered death or a broad array of serious health impacts from COVID vaccines.

Conclusions

The central medical thesis of this analysis is that micro clots are a condition in three groups: those infected by the COVID virus, those suffering from long COVID, and those who have received COVID mRNA vaccines.  The harmful health impacts in all three groups are extensive and myriad.  Ordinary medical testing does not find micro clots.  Most physicians seem oblivious to this blood disorder and its impacts on the body, including serious cardiac conditions and deaths.

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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. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums, etc.

This article was originally published on Pandemic Blunder Newsletter.

Dr. Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Pandemic Blunder and many articles and podcasts on the pandemic, worked on health issues for decades, and his Pandemic Blunder Newsletter is on Substack. As a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, he directed a medical research program between the colleges of engineering and medicine.

As a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, he directed major studies on health-related subjects; he testified at over 50 US Senate and House hearings and authored hundreds of articles and op-ed articles in major newspapers.  He has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years. 

He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and America’s Frontline Doctors and a regular contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

***

The New York Times, floundering in the deep waters of truth and desperately trying to stay afloat in the shallows by continuing its history of lying for its CIA masters, has just published a front page of propaganda worthy of the finest house organs of totalitarian regimes.  Right below its February 26, 2022 headline denouncing Russia and Putin as evil dogs pursuant to the American empire’s dictates concerning Ukraine, it posts an unflattering photo of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. sandwiched between American flags with the title of its hit piece, “A Kennedy’s Crusade Against Covid Vaccines Anguishes Family and Friends.”

Screenshot from the New York Times

It’s an exquisite juxtaposition: Putin as Hitler and Kennedy as a junior demon, suggestive of the relationship between C. S. Lewis’s Screwtape and his nephew Wormwood in The Screwtape Letters.  Evil personified.

The Times is big into anguish these days, not only for Nazis in Ukraine and upper class apartment hunters who can’t find a place for less than a few million, but for Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s family and friends.  It’s very touching.  That his sister, Kerry Kennedy, would harshly criticize him once again is genuinely pathetic, but of course she has to add how much she loves him, ostensibly to take the sting out of her inability to remain sisterly silent.

If he is so wrong about his work with Children’s Health Defense and his book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, rather than ripping him to the press, why doesn’t she or her siblings, who agree with her, write a comprehensive article or book refuting his facts?

They don’t because they can’t; so the next best thing is to criticize their brother to media glad for any way to disparage the Kennedys.  One senses a very weird masochistic family dynamic at work.

Kennedy’s siblings do not seem to understand why the media have been attacking him for years.  His stance on vaccines and Anthony Fauci are the cover story they use to criticize him, and his siblings don’t get it.  That their brother has become a major thorn in the side of the CIA escapes them, the CIA that has caused so much devastation to their family and the world.  The CIA that has been deeply involved in the global vaccine push, working with medical technocrats like Anthony Fauci, billionaires such as Bill Gates, the military, media, Big Pharma, the World Economic Forum, etc.  Calling your brother brilliant while ignoring his book’s searing, evidence-based indictment of the intelligence-run Covid-19 operation is more than sad, especially when doing so to The New York Times, the CIA’s paper of record together with The Washington Post.

Character assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is what the CIA and its media mouthpieces have been doing for years. This has become more and more necessary as they have realized the great growing danger he poses to their agenda. Calling him an anti-vaxxer, conspiracy theorist, and names far worse, is part of a concerted smear campaign to turn the public away from his message, which is multi-faceted and supported by deep research and impeccable logic. Like his father and uncle, he has become an irrepressibly eloquent opponent of the demonic forces intent on destroying the democratic dream.

The Times article by Adam Nagourney is a blatant hatchet job filled with sly jabs, innuendos, and ignorant lies.  As is par for the course, his hack piece completely avoids Kennedy’s arguments but relies on a form of social gossip that substitutes for logic and evidence.  He seems to have learned much from The National Enquirer and The New York Post’s “Page Six” whose styles the NY Times has emulated.

Nagourney tells the reader that RFK, Jr.’s work as the face of the vaccine resistance movement has “tested,” “rattled,” “anguished,” and “mystified” family, friends and his Hollywood crowd; that this man “of the often troubled life” …. “has effectively used his talent and one of the most prominent names in American political history as a platform for fueling resistance to vaccines that could save countless lives.”

Translation: Kennedy, a Hollywood hobnobber and former drug addict, is so mentally unbalanced that he will betray his family and friends and kill people with medical advice that runs counter to the truth.

No evidence is required to establish this “truth,” just Nagourney’s word and those of those he can get to say the same thing, in other words.  Such as:

His conduct ‘undercuts 50 years of public health vaccine practice, and he’s done it in a way I’ve never see [sic] anyone else do it,’ said Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. ‘He is among the most dangerous because of the credibility of who he is and what his family name has brought to this issue.’

Notice the implication:  that these experimental mRNA so-called vaccines have been around 50 years and Kennedy is against all vaccines, both of which are false.

Furthermore, Nagourney says RFK, Jr. not only “inveighs” against vaccines, especially Covid vaccinations, but has adopted other weird “unorthodox” views (implication: orthodox views are good) over the years.

One is his claim that Sirhan Sirhan did not kill his father Senator Robert F. Kennedy.  Nagourney might do a smidgen of research and discover that Kennedy is correct; but doing so would disrupt the flow of his ad hominem attack.  All serious writers on the case know that the senator was not shot by Sirhan; they know there are deep CIA connections to the assassination. The evidence conclusively proves, as the autopsy has shown, that Sirhan was in front of the senator when he fired his pistol but RFK was shot from the rear at very close range with all bullets entering his body from the rear.  Nagourney either knows nothing about the assassination or is dissembling the facts, which must be “unorthodox.”

Sounding like a U.S. government spokesmen telling the press something is true without an iota of evidence, he writes the following sentence as if it were true simply because he wrote it, while making sure not to mention the book’s title – The Real Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy – a brilliant, deeply researched and sourced book The Times will not review:

In a best-selling new book, he claimed that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who is President Biden’s top medical adviser for the coronavirus pandemic, and Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, were in cahoots with the pharmaceutical industry to profiteer off dangerous vaccines.

Notice Nagourney’s insidious method.  State RFK’s claim as if it’s false because Nagourney stated it, when in fact it is so abundantly true and backed up by massive evidence that if Nagourney dared to engage in actual journalism by checking Kennedy’s book he would discover it.  But his job is not to search for truth but to defile a man’s reputation. He accuses Kennedy of circulating false information on the coronavirus and the vaccines but of course doesn’t say what that is or why it is false.

His entire article is an ad hominem attack by statement with the author cunningly hidden behind deceitful objectivity.

He writes:

To the public distress of his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, Mr. Kennedy invoked Anne Frank, the young German-Dutch diarist who died in a Nazi prison camp, as he compared government measures for containing the pandemic with the Holocaust at that rally in Washington.

However, that is not what he said.  He said that during the Holocaust Anne Frank could hide for a while and others could flee out of Germany, but with the new “turnkey totalitarianism” being introduced today, which is technological, it will be harder to escape, for every aspect of life will be monitored by the authorities in a digital dystopia. Such a perspective is in no way unusual, for it is shared by many scholars of technology and only the most naïve would consider it eccentric. His point and words were twisted to serve others’ purposes and to paint him as an insensitive Holocaust denier.  Here’s what he said:

What we’re seeing today is what I call turnkey totalitarianism. They are putting in place all of these technological mechanisms for control we’ve never seen before. It’s been the ambition of every totalitarian state since the beginning of mankind to control every aspect of behavior, of conduct, of thought and to obliterate dissent. None of them have been able to do it. They didn’t have the technological capacity.

Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. I visited in 1962 East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died … but it was possible.

Yet his sister Kerry also ripped him for making a statement that was clearly true if you accept his argument about the technological lockdowns in progress.  You can disagree (I don’t) but to impugn his intentions and his words is really despicable, but Nagourney adds it to his ad hominem attacks, making sure to include his sister Kerry’s Tweet:

Bobby’s lies and fear-mongering yesterday were both sickening and repulsive. I strongly condemn him for his hateful rhetoric.

Nagourney: “ Even his most prominent critics say they do not doubt his sincerity, even as he has become one of the most prominent spreaders of misinformation on vaccines.”

Translation: RFK, Jr. means well but he’s deluded.

Big Daddy Fauci is introduced to tell the young whippersnapper the following after Kennedy delivered a briefing at The National Institutes of Health:

When it was over, Dr. Fauci walked Mr. Kennedy out of the conference room.

“I said, ‘Bobby, I’m sorry we didn’t come to any agreement here,’” he said. “‘Although I disagree factually with everything you are saying, I do understand and I respect that deep down you are really concerned about the safety of children.’ I said that in a very sincere way.”

Condescension and sincerity overflow as the “conspiracy theorist” patient is told by the good doctor that he means well but needs help.

Then, making sure to include The New York Times endlessly repeated CIA talking point, our no-nothing author writes:

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his uncle, in 1963, when Robert was 9, helped foster a modern culture of conspiracy theories. Now, many of the arguments that Mr. Kennedy has embraced — including that Dr. Fauci is part of a “historic coup d’état against Western democracy” — recall the theories of a secret assassin helping Lee Harvey Oswald from the grassy knoll in Dallas.

That it was the CIA that weaponized the use of the term “conspiracy theory” in a 1967 dispatch – #1035-960 – in order to disparage those questioning The Warren Commission and it’s cover-up of the CIA’s role in JFK’s assassination is another fact that our fair-minded scribe conveniently omits while insidiously implying that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK.  Yes, there are magic bullets and magical tricks used to make sure RFK, Jr. is seen as a “sincere” nutcase.

RFK, Jr. has been and is an astute critic of the CIA and all its machinations, including its involvement in the assassinations of his uncle JFK, his father Senator Robert F. Kennedy, its involvement in the COVID propaganda, and in its extensive deadly deeds and disinformation at home and abroad.  His critical siblings praise him for his great intelligence and political acumen but seem clueless themselves.  So they ally with the same media that have been stenographers for the CIA.  The Kennedy family may be very well known, but in these ways they are very typical of American families that are divided by those who know and those who don’t know who the real devils are.

But let me make two final points about this sickening piece of character assassination.

RFK, Jr. has spent decades as an environmental lawyer fighting the pollution of our air, earth, and water.  In other words, the pollution also of human beings who live in nature while nature lives in us. Some people know the outside and the inside are connected.  Yet Nagourney bemoans the tragic turn he took from such good work with the environment to such terrible work with Children’s Health Defense and vaccines. He writes:

The swerve in Mr. Kennedy’s career, from the environment to vaccines, is particularly startling because for many family members and other Kennedy associates, Robert Kennedy Jr. is the sibling who most recalls the level of charisma and political appeal of his late father.

Startling?  No, very consistent for one who can think.  There is an obvious link between the major corporate polluters of the outside environment and the major polluters of human bodies.  Big pharmaceutical, oil, chemical, agribusiness, military, etc. are an interrelated lot of criminal enterprises despoiling all life on earth.  Kennedy’s lifetime work has followed a natural trajectory and underlying it all is his critique of the CIA and its media accomplices, such as The New York Times.

Yes, those family and friends who say he’s brilliant are right, and he is following in his father’s footsteps in ways they do not grasp; for he is able to connect the dots, diagnose the patterns, and expose with facts the criminal syndicates that are destroying democracy and so many lives.

The reason The New York Times publishes hit pieces like this and does not review his recent books is because his critique of these nefarious forces has gained a large audience and as a result many people are awakening to the truths concealed by the likes of the paper of record” with its propaganda.

Hit pieces like Nagourney’s should cause anyone reading it intense “anguish.”  There is nothing “mystifying” about it.

It’s simply disgraceful and deceitful.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 


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

To order his book click the cover page.

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

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


The guilty can be devious in concealing their crimes, and their role in them.  The greater the crime, the more devious the strategy of deception.  The breaking of international law, and the breaching of convention, is a field replete with such figures.

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has presented a particularly odious grouping, a good number of them neoconservatives, a chance to hand wash and dry before the idol of international law.  Law breakers become defenders of oracular force, arguing for the territorial integrity of States and the sanctity of borders, and the importance of the UN Charter.

Reference can be made to Hitler’s invasions during the Second World War with a revoltingly casual disposition, a comparison that seeks to eclipse the role played by other gangster powers indifferent to the rule and letter of international comity.

Speculation can be had that the man in the Kremlin has gone mad, if he was ever sane to begin with.  As Jonathan Cook writes with customary accuracy, western leaders tend to find it convenient “that every time another country defies the West’s projection of power, the western media can agree on one thing: that the foreign government in question is led by a madman, a psychopath or a megalomaniac.”

It might well be said that the US-led Iraq invasion in 2003 was a product of its own mental disease, the product of ideological and evangelical madness, accompanied by a conviction that states could be forcibly pacified into a state of democracy.  Where there was no evidence of links between Baghdad and al-Qaeda operatives responsible for the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, it was simply made up.

The most brazen fiction in this regard was the claim that Iraq had the means to fire weapons of mass destruction at Europe within 45 minutes.  Showing that farce sometimes precedes tragedy, that assessment was cobbled from a doctoral dissertation.

When the invasion, and subsequent occupation of Iraq, led to sectarian murderousness and regional destabilisation, invigorating a new form of Islamicist zeal, the neocons were ready with their ragbag excuses.  In 2016, David Frum could offer the idiotic assessment that the “US-UK intervention offered Iraq a better future.  Whatever [the] West’s mistakes: sectarian war was a choice Iraqis made for themselves.” Such ungrateful savages.

On Fox News Sunday, this nonsense was far away in the mind of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  She could merely nod at the assertion by host Harris Faulkner that “when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime… I mean, I think we’re at just a real, basic, basic point there.”

Jaw-droppingly to those familiar with Rice’s war drumming in 2003, she agreed that the attack on Ukraine was “certainly against every principle of international law and international order.”  That explained why Washington was “throwing the book at [the Russians] now in terms of economic sanctions and punishments is also part of it.”  She also felt some comfort that Putin had “managed to unite NATO in ways that I didn’t think I would ever see again after the end of the Cold War.”

As Bush’s National Security Advisor, Rice was distinctly untroubled that her advice created a situation where international law would be grossly breached.  She was dismissive of the role played by UN weapons inspectors and their failed efforts in finding those elusive weapons of mass destruction and evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons,” she warned in 2002.  “But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

As the seedy conspiracy to undermine security in the Middle East and shred the UN Charter gathered place in 2002, those against any Iraq invasion were also denouncing opponents as traitors, or at the very least wobbly, on the issue of war.  Frum, writing in March 2003, was particularly bothered by conservatives against the war – the likes of Patrick Buchanan, Robert Novak, Thomas Fleming, and Llewellyn Rockwell.  Thankfully, they were “relatively few in number, but their ambitions are large.”  They favoured “a fearful policy of ignoring threats and appeasing enemies.”

In the Ukraine conflict, the trend has reasserted itself.  Neoconservatives are out to find those appeasing types on the Right – and everywhere else.  “Today,” rues Rod Dreher, “they’re denouncing us on the Right who oppose war with Russia as Neville Chamberlains.”  Conservatives are mocked for daring to understand why Russia might have an issue with NATO expansion, or suggest that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not, in the end, of vital interest to Washington.  “It’s Chamberlain’s folly,” comes the improbable claim from Matt Lewis of The Daily Beast, “delivered with a confident Churchillian swagger.”

A more revealing insight into neoconservative violence, the lust for force, and an almost admiring take on the way Putin has behaved, can be gathered in John Bolton’s recent assessment of the invasion.  Bolton, it should be remembered, detests the United Nations and was, just to show that President George W. Bush had a sense of humour, made US ambassador to it.  For him, international law is less a reality than a guide ignored when power considerations are at play – an almost Putinesque view.

Almost approvingly, he writes in The Economist of the need to “pay attention to what adversaries say.”  He recalls Putin’s remark about the Soviet Union’s disintegration as being the 20th century’s greatest catastrophe.  He notes those efforts to reverse the trend: the use of invasions, annexations and the creation of independent states, and the adoption of “less kinetic means to bring states like Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan into closer Russian orbits.”

With a touch of delight, Bolton sees that “the aggressive use of military force is back in style.  The ‘rule-based international order’ just took a direct hit, not that it was ever as sturdy as imagined in elite salons and academic cloisters.”  And with that, the war trumpet sounds.  “World peace is not at hand.  Rhetoric and virtue-signalling are no substitute for new strategic thinking and higher defence budgets.”  In this equation, the UN Charter is truly doomed.

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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: At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.” (Source: Consortiumnews)

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the western public has been carpet bombed with the claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is some sort of unhinged madman. This notion is being feverishly spread by the establishment and those in its pay: the political class, the media and the commentariat, career diplomats and technocrats as well as those connected to the security and intelligence communities.

The most remarkable thing about the Mad Vlad claim is that it is obviously false.

Whatever Vladimir Putin may be, he is certainly no madman. This much should be obvious to everyone with eyes to see.

A former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin is a wily person of demonstrated ability. After all, he managed to bring control and order to a vast country which was largely in disarray when he took over at the age of 48. He adroitly managed to keep himself in power for over two decades while navigating and overcoming a number of crises and challenges along the way. Through it all, he has shown himself to be intelligent, steel-willed, calculating, shrewd, self-controlled, determined and patient.

These are hardly the qualities of a lunatic.

We have dealt with Putin for 22 years and during that whole time no one seriously suggested or maintained that he was crazy. Quite to the contrary, for almost a decade after his ascent he was viewed as a capable man of considerable talents.

For years the Western establishment considered Putin a “man with whom we could do business.” He was seen as “liberal, humane, and decent European.” He was described as a person of “’alert, controlled poise’ and ‘well-briefed acuity,’ who was open to anything, even Russia joining NATO.”

And yet less than a week ago, on the day he invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin was nearly unanimously declared – contrary to all evidence of the past twenty years – a “madman” by members of the Western establishment.

The question is, why did they decide to suddenly gaslight and brainwash people with such a patent lie that so obviously contravenes reality?

Here is the answer: They did this to hide and conceal the gargantuan blunder they have committed over Ukraine.

By convincing the public that Putin is a madman, they can portray his move on Ukraine as an irrational, unexpected, impulsive and unjustifiable act of an unbalanced mind.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. Putin’s move was not irrational, impulsive or unjustifiable. And it was certainly not unexpected.

For years Putin had warned that inclusion of Ukraine in NATO was a red line for Russia. It should not be difficult to understand his position. It is not unreasonable for Russia to object to the presence of what it perceives to be a hostile military alliance on its border with a country that has historically been either part of Russia or within its sphere of influence. Russia does not want to allow such a threat to its security for similar reasons the United States would not allow Russia to build a military base in Cuba.

In their drive to implement a New World Order, however, Western globalists have been dismissive of Russia’s security concerns. Russia continued its strenuous objections and warned that if they were not taken seriously, they would take the necessary action to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The last time Russia made this clear was in November of last year.

This is how Wikipedia describes this occasion:

“On 30 November 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that an expansion of NATO’s presence in Ukraine, especially the deployment of any long-range missiles capable of striking Russian cities or missile defence systems similar to those in Romania and Poland, would be a “red line” issue for Russia. Putin asked U.S. President Joe Biden for legal guarantees that NATO would not expand eastward or put “weapons systems that threaten us in close vicinity to Russian territory.”

Do you want to know what kind of response Putin received to his legitimate security concerns? It was given by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. This is what he told Putin:

“It’s only Ukraine and 30 NATO allies that decide when Ukraine is ready to join NATO. Russia has no veto, Russia has no say, and Russia has no right to establish a sphere of influence to try to control their neighbors.”

Do you get the insult and the humiliation of this response? Not only the pompous globalist Stoltenberg refused to address Russia security fears, he implied that pip-squeak countries like North Macedonia, Portugal – who happened to be members of NATO – have a greater say than Russia in whether a large country that it borders joins the alliance.

Having ridden roughshod over their populations for nearly two years with their lockdown and vaccine regime, the Western globalists grew arrogant, overbearing and overconfident. They lost touch with reality and assumed that everyone would submit to their chicanery in the same way that their own docile populations went along with their random edicts and mandates.

Putin, however, would not bend to the globalist chicanery and did exactly what he had kept warning about for years if Russian concerns were not adequately addressed: He invaded Ukraine to stop NATO’s expansion into the country with which he shares nearly 1000 kilometres of border, and which once hosted Russia’s capital.

The invasion of Ukraine was a pre-announced, rational act of a strongman who felt increasingly encircled and threatened by what he deems to be an antagonistic military bloc.

Putin’s move came as a great shock to the Western elites who could have not imagined someone standing up to them in such a bold way. They were completely unprepared for the obvious and went into panic mode as they realized how many innocent lives could be lost to their incompetence and pomposity.

As the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Putin exposed the globalists’ hubris and ineptitude. As the Russian military advanced speedily through the vast expanses of that land, the shocked elitists were nowhere to be seen. It was only the heart-breaking bravery of the Ukrainian people that saved them from complete exposure and humiliation.

And it is at this juncture that their patently absurd “Putin is a madman” misinformation play comes in.

The “Putin is a madman” canard is meant to shift the blame in the eyes of the public for the Ukrainian tragedy on the allegedly irrational act of a “crazy” man rather than assigning it to the right people: the overbearing, domineering, arrogant Western globalists who treated the legitimate security concerns of a great nuclear power with contempt.

In Putin they encountered reality in the form of an unyielding cunning strongman who would not yield to their edicts and hollow pronouncements in the submissive way they were used to from their own badgered populations.

They were in for a rude awakening. For two years the pompous globalists had been enriching themselves while tormenting peoples of the world with their useless and destructive lockdowns and dangerous and largely ineffective injections. If you think this is a harsh exaggeration, please read this from Yahoo News:

“Lockdowns during the first COVID-19 wave in the spring of 2020 only reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% in the U.S. and Europe, according to a Johns Hopkins University meta-analysis of several studies. “While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted,” the researchers wrote. “In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.” The researchers – Johns Hopkins University economics professor Steve Hanke, Lund University economics professor Lars Jonung, and special advisor at Copenhagen’s Center for Political Studies Jonas Herby – analyzed the effects of lockdown measures such as school shutdowns, business closures, and mask mandates on COVID-19 deaths.”

While the people suffered under their nonsensical edicts, the globalists kept accumulating untold riches. Consider this headline from CNN: “As millions fell into poverty during the pandemic, billionaires’ wealth soared.”

Greedy for ever more money, the globalists sought to pull Ukraine into their World Order so they could suck out money from it to line up their own pockets even further. They have been shown the way by none other than Globalist-in-Chief Joe Biden whose family has already siphoned millions of dollars out of Ukraine via his son Hunter. It is fully in character that Biden is also a Covidista par excellence who forced millions of unwilling Americans to take the Covid injections by pressuring employers to institute illegal mandates.

Now the globalists’ arrogance and ruthlessness got us into the Ukrainian crisis where we face the possibility of nuclear war.

The clever guys that they always are, the wreckers who got us into this mess have already managed to blame it all on the Mad Vlad.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Last Friday, I expressed my increasing concern, echoing those of world leaders and citizens of the world alike, over the events unfolding in Ukraine.

Today, I wish to announce that I have decided to proceed with opening an investigation into the Situation in Ukraine, as rapidly as possible.

Ukraine is not a State Party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (“ICC” or the “Court”), so cannot itself refer the situation to my Office. But it has twice exercised its prerogatives to legally accept the Court’s jurisdiction over alleged crimes under the Rome Statute occurring on its territory, should the Court choose to exercise it. The first declaration lodged by the Government of Ukraine accepted ICC jurisdiction with respect to alleged crimes committed on Ukrainian territory from 21 November 2013 to 22 February 2014. The second declaration extended this time period on an open-ended basis to encompass ongoing alleged crimes committed throughout the territory of Ukraine from 20 February 2014 onwards.

I have reviewed the Office’s conclusions arising from the preliminary examination of the Situation in Ukraine, and have confirmed that there is a reasonable basis to proceed with opening an investigation. In particular, I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine in relation to the events already assessed during the preliminary examination by the Office. Given the expansion of the conflict in recent days, it is my intention that this investigation will also encompass any new alleged crimes falling within the jurisdiction of my Office that are committed by any party to the conflict on any part of the territory of Ukraine.

I have already tasked my team to explore all evidence preservation opportunities. The next step is to proceed with the process of seeking and obtaining authorisation from the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court to open an investigation. An alternative route set out in the Statute that could further expedite matters would be for an ICC State Party to refer the situation to my Office, which would allow us to actively and immediately proceed with the Office’s independent and objective investigations.

I will also be asking for the support of all States Parties and the international community as a whole as my Office sets about its investigations.  I will be calling for additional budgetary support, for voluntary contributions to support all our situations, and for the loan of gratis personnel. The importance and urgency of our mission is too serious to be held hostage to lack of means.

I will continue to closely follow developments on the ground in Ukraine, and again call for restraint and strict adherence to the applicable rules of international humanitarian law.

If anyone has information relevant to the Situation, this can be submitted to my Office via: [email protected].

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Featured image is from ICC

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Racism Thrives in Western Liberal Europe and Ukraine

March 3rd, 2022 by Steven Sahiounie

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***

Black Lives Matter, except on the Polish-Ukraine border. In a blatant show of racism, African students fleeing the fighting in Ukraine were refused entry into Poland because of the color of their skin. It would appear that Europe might be western and a liberal democracy, but they also have a serious problem with racism.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has called on Poland to let in all people who are trying to flee Ukraine, saying they “have the same right to safe passage under U.N. convention, and the color of their passport or their skin should make no difference.”

Emily, a 24-year-old medical student from Kenya, told the Guardian that she was able to reach a hotel in Warsaw only to be refused a room because she was Black. She was told by hotel staff the rooms were only for Ukrainians.

Isaac, a Nigerian man trying to get into Poland, told the BBC that Polish border staff told him they were “not tending to Africans“.

“They stopped us at the border and told us that Blacks were not allowed. But we could see White people going through,” said Moustapha Bagui Sylla, a student from Guinea told France24. He said he fled his university residence in Kharkiv as soon as the bombing began.

“They won’t let Africans in. Blacks without European passports cannot cross the border (…). They’re pushing us back just because we’re Black!” said Michael, a Nigerian student to France24. “We’re all human,” he added. “They should not discriminate against us because of the colour of our skin.”

How people look, the color of their skin and hair, as well as the language they speak, and where their grandparents came from are all sources of racism, and the western liberal media has a problem with racism as well.

On Saturday, David Sakvarelidze, Ukraine’s former deputy general prosecutor, spoke to the BBC, suggesting that it was harder for him to watch white people fleeing conflict.

“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed,” he said.

NBC News correspondent Kelly Cobiella also came under fire from fellow journalists after she stated on air that “these are not refugees from Syria, these are refugees from Ukraine… They’re Christian, they’re white, they’re very similar.”

Racism turned to genocide in the case of the Armenian Genocide, the first time that term was used, when the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1916 killed 1.5 million Armenians and Syrian Christians. Later, Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party used the Armenian Genocide as an example to follow when killing Jews and others in Europe.

Russian President Putin has accused Ukraine of Genocide in the Donbas region. Just days before Putin gave the order to enter Ukraine the new German leader Olaf Scholz stated publically that Putin’s accusation was “ridiculous”.

Christian Amanpour of CNN interviewed Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center on February 23.  Trenin commented that Olaf Scholz’s very undiplomatic ridicule of Putin’s accusation of Genocide may have been a contributing factor leading Putin to giving the final order to enter Ukraine.

According to Trenin,

“…the inefficiency of the Minsk process, the Germans, the French, and the Americans failing to convince Minsk — to convince Kyiv to fulfill Minsk, the chance remark by the German chancellor about genocide in Donbas being ridiculous, and the comment by President Zelensky of Ukraine that maybe it’s time to revisit the non-nuclear status of Ukraine. Those things, I think, may have been the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back.”

Genocide is a very powerful accusation.  The Azov Battalion is one of several Nazi (White Supremacist) militias operating in Ukraine and officially integrated into the Ukrainian Army.  The UN has accused them of war crimes.  Russia has filed a report with the United Nations alleging that Ukraine’s military has committed “crimes” against residents of the eastern Donbas region, according to documents viewed by the Wall Street Journal.

In 2014, a civil war broke out in the Donbas region of Donetsk and Lugansk. Residents there were made up of ethnic Russians who speak Russian. More than 14,000 people have lost their lives in seven years of conflict in Donbas.  The Ukrainians had arms, militias and were allowed and encouraged by the central government in Kyiv to target and kill the Russians living in Ukraine.  This is called ethnic cleansing, and was part of the President Volodymr Zelensky government policy.  Mass graves, destroyed homes and racism from 2014 to 2022 evolved into a full scale war.

If the Zelensky government was the western, liberal democracy that the US, EU and NATO claimed they are, then why didn’t they ever eradicate the Azov Battalion, and the others like it?  Why was the Donbas allowed to suffer and fester under the stench of ethnic cleansing?

Black lives matter and Russian lives matter.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist, and Chief editor of MidEastDiscourse News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from @AM_Friedman/Twitter

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


With a determination and cruelty reminiscent of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, the forces that have lined up to manufacture a sensationalist narrative about Russian figure skater Kamilia Valieva, and all of Russia’s athletes in general, have succeeded in destroying her as a human being on every knowable level of her identity.  At least, for the present time. These forces brandishing their pitchforks impugned her personal integrity by accusing her of cheating, criticized her failure to withstand their unrelenting pressure and posting of humiliating photographs, shunned her as a legitimate Olympic athlete (Team USA walked out in protest as she was about to perform), and insulted both her coach Eteri Tutberidze and her native country of Russia.

So many aspects of this incident are beyond troubling in moral and ethical terms, but one unexplored subject can reveal a deeper malaise suffered by the sports and political elites who engineered this fiasco.  It is the two-headed monster of self-perpetuating envy, and the loss of the feelings for beauty and innocence.  Common sense, reason, and the suspicious and unprofessional handling of the details of the possible doping by Valieva point to a carefully-timed set-up in order to manipulate the relative standings of the figure skaters.  Kamila Valieva did nothing wrong and broke no rules; it is the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that bent their own rules and guidelines for this type of situation.

But perhaps the loss of the feeling for beauty and innocence is not entirely disconnected from the lack of moral integrity in Western double standards when Russia is concerned. In Russian Orthodoxy religious understandings, national mentality, beauty, and the good are manifestations of each other. Attacks on all things Russian – from denying the Soviet Union’s contribution to the eradication of fascism to attributing to Russians an almost genetic propensity for cheating and lying,[i] to allegations of widespread doping in sports– are designed to strip Russia of any moral authority.  These attacks aim to vilify the country and its people as eternally corrupt and unworthy. It would follow then that Russia does not deserve to be treated as an equal, and it cannot have legitimate security concerns and national interests. Readers can note how often “moral inequivalence” is cited when comparable actions on the part of the West and Russia are discussed.  However, genuine ethics and beauty go hand in hand.

International actors have separated along predictable lines: those who demonize Russia at every turn opine that, of course Valieva “cheated” because she is Russian, while those taking a more reasonable approach argue to wait until all the evidence has been examined.  This same divide is playing out in the immediate aftermath of Pres. Vladimir Putin’s recognition on February 21, 2022 of the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk: Russia’s detractors in the U.S. and European Union are already blaming Russia for a genocide playing out that Russia did not create, while those countries such as China and Serbia manifest an understanding of why Russia carefully made its decision: Draginja Vlk of the Belgrade City Parliament noted that the step Russia took  “‘will help prevent further escalation of conflict and save the people from the danger they are in,’ referring to tens of thousands of refugees currently pouring into Russia.”[ii]

Image on the right: Valieva at the 2019–20 Junior Grand Prix Final (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

One does not have to be an expert on figure skating to recognize the artistic beauty, even fairy-tale-like otherworldliness of this youngest athlete in the Beijing Olympics of 2022 that suffuse each moment of Valieva’s performances.  Her breathtaking, seemingly effortless movements on the ice, combine with a childlike innocence free of the dirt of the world that the “experienced” among us have lost—these qualities have left her admirers spellbound.  Valieva’s artistry and light-as-a-feather physical skills are extraordinary: an NBC Sports commentator noted during Valieva’s short program at the European Figure Skating Championships of 2022, “a talent like this comes along once in a lifetime.”[iii] The same commentator several seconds later called Valieva’s performance “magical.”[iv]

Journalist Finian Cunningham, who refers to Valieva’s skating skills as “sublime, balletic talent,” also points out, “Kamila is a victim of Western media pushing a narrative to justify confrontation against Russia.”[v]  Cunningham continues: “This is nothing short of a campaign to incite conflict in Ukraine against Russia, a conflict that would then serve to justify hitting Russia with economic sanctions, axing the Nord Stream 2 gas project and piling on international opprobrium. The United States is using the crisis over Ukraine to revive Cold War divisions between Russia and the rest of Europe.”[vi]

To be sure, the superb routines of medal-winners Anna Shcherbakova and Alexandra Trusova deserve all the recognition these fine athletes received.  But their awards and accolades should not come at the expense of the ruination of their teammate Valieva.  Just as the Ukrainian government’s ongoing, yet empty promises of peace should not stop the rescuing of the population of Donetsk and Lugansk from the annihilation these people face.

For the envious elites, it is precisely Valieva’s otherworldly beauty and innocence, especially when connected with Russianness, that must be destroyed.  Cunningham notes, “Such a beauty could not be tolerated for it destroyed the US media campaign to otherwise demonize Russia and instill enmity towards that nation.”[vii]  They detest the Russianness that manifests sheer joy and freedom from their control, at the same time envying the culture that could provide such fertile soil for beauty to flourish.  How, they say, can a nation of barbarians and Untermenschen grow such magnificent flowers?  Ultimately, they want to banish the “alien” country that dares to remind them of what they have lost—the feelings for beauty and innocence.  Because beauty is both an aesthetic and spiritual category in which perception of something outside the self can resurrect the human being, it also encompasses feelings for one’s homeland, its flag, and its national anthem.  Perhaps this tearing away of these sources of pride and inspiration for Russian Olympic athletes are part of the carefully curated humiliation imposed on Russia as a result of dubious charges of doping, both individual and institutional.

The circulation of suspicions about institutionalized doping in Russia began after the success of the 2014 Sochi Olympic Games. These were followed a documentary by Hajo Seppelt that exposed some Russian athletes who had used prohibited substances, which initiated two investigations of the matter led by Richard McLaren and later Denis Oswald. Seppelt’s documentary and McLaren’s report rely on the  testimony of only three people: the former head of the Moscow Laboratory Grigory Rodchenkov (the chief culprit under investigation in Russia for providing athletes with doping cocktails) and two whistleblowers, Vitaly Stepanov (an official at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency–RUSADA) and his wife Yuliya (who was disqualified for using performance enhancing substances supplied by her husband).  All three now reside in the US.

Many accusations and moral outrage followed in the media, resulting in various bans and restrictions on Russian athletes. While violations by some athletes did in fact occur, and Russian authorities admitted to serious flaws in the work of RUSADA (headed at that time by Grigory Rodchenkov), statistical data from WADA itself show that Russian violations are not exceptional, while relevant reports provide little evidence to justify the level of hysteria and unprecedented discrimination against clean Russian athletes.

WADA’s 2016 report (curiously removed from WADA’s page) discloses the ten nationalities with the highest number of Anti-Doping Rule Violations[viii]:

In the current doping accusation at the Beijing Olympic Games, the timing of the news of the banned substance found in Valieva’s Sample A test is suspicious.  One recalls that the U.S.-supported coup of Ukraine took place during the Sochi Olympics of 2014.  Is the Valieva event being used as a distraction from the U.S. / NATO’s attempts to better control Ukraine?  Clearly one goal is to attempt to discredit Russia—Russia cheats in sports, Russia wants to invade Ukraine, etc.  This discrediting matters to the U.S. for reasons of attaining economic dominance in oil and natural gas, and specifically concerning the Nordstream II pipeline connecting Russia and Germany.  The project was initiated, not by Russia, but by German and European investors.  The U.S. aims to block Nordstream because it will bring Germany /Europe and Russia closer together.  Thus if Russia is made to look villainous enough, as the logic goes, the Europeans will be too embarrassed to continue Nordstream and will buy US natural gas (the U.S. Department of Energy’s “molecules of freedom”) instead.

The manufactured uproar over Russia’s athletes may ultimately serve as a distraction from the U.S.-NATO / Russia disputes over global security concerns and Russia’s demands that the West guarantee no further enlargement of NATO to the east.  Surely this crisis supports the concepts of a more limited government (rather than the bloat accompanying systems with hundreds of military bases abroad and zeal for interfering in the affairs of foreign countries), disbandment of NATO, lowering of taxes on the American people, and attending to their healthcare, educational, and infrastructure-related needs?

The available evidence suggests that the anti-doping “system” does not work, allowing for politicization of competition and persecution of innocent athletes.  Possible conclusions arise:

  • Why not eliminate anti-doping protocols altogether? The playing field will never be totally level, since human beings are different. Allow athletes to make their own choices about their bodies and the drugs they use or don’t use.
  • Why not disqualify an athlete from the Olympics for life upon a verified (samples A and B) first test of drug use?Apply the principle of zero tolerance, with no exceptions.
  • Have the Olympic Games run their course, and should they be ended?Should a new international sports structure be established to replace the current, clearly biased Olympic Games?  The beauty, fairness, and innocence of the Games has been irretrievably lost.

Arguably the two most Russophobic geographical areas of the world are the U.S. and Western Europe (including the UK).[ix]  In this regard, it is perhaps not surprising that just at the peak of Valieva’s brilliance at the Beijing Olympics, “Two days later the teen’s life was turned into a nightmare after she was unmasked by the little known British media outlet Inside the Games.[x]  It is no coincidence that historically these parts of the world have coveted, often violently, Russia’s natural resources and boundless expanses. Wealthy economically, they have nevertheless become impoverished culturally.  If Europe is, as Dostoevsky famously put it, a “precious cemetery,” how can the U.S. be described?  In its drive for supremacy in all areas and utilitarian worldview, the U.S. privileges function over form.  The concept of beauty and inspiration gained from beautiful things has been forgotten and almost lost.

In architecture, for example, typical schools and public buildings can resemble state prisons.[xi] Russian writer Vladimir Soloukhin remarked on the necessity for beauty for the health of a culture and civilization in a Nobel Symposium lecture titled “Civilization and Landscape,” presented in Göteborg, Sweden on September 12, 1978.  According to Soloukhin, and supported in the essay by his thorough research on the topic, a lack of inspiration can deaden a civilization’s feelings for beauty and understanding of beautiful things in general. He argues convincingly that “people preoccupied with only economic or political considerations may lack one simple criterion: “How will it look?  How will it look today and, moreover, how will it look tomorrow?”[xii] Highly-esteemed medievalist and culturologist Dmitry Likhachev similarly devoted a large body of his writings to articulating connections among beauty, spirituality, and the moral-ethical values of a country.

What happens to a nation that has lost its understanding of beauty?  Soloukhin notes in the lecture, “A feeling for one’s native surroundings has always entered and still enters into a concept as important as love for one’s homeland, along with a feeling for the history of one’s own country and people.”[xiii] We can imagine how distraught Team Russia at the Beijing Olympics felt at not being able to see their country’s flag or hear the Russian national anthem.  These are deeply-rooted and significant symbols underscoring their team’s connection to a particular country and particular culture.

While not intending to tarnish all the people of these two areas of the world, we reasonably suggest that leaders in sports and politics do not arise in a vacuum.  They are perfect products of their cultural environments—and media brainwashing.  If persecution of others and twisting of narratives is how these individuals and groups approach competition, what does this indicate about their countries of origin? Soloukhin reminds us, “Beauty lives in a person’s soul and engenders his or her physical need for it, akin to that for eating and drinking.”[xiv] Have these countries lost their soul, their feelings for beauty and innocence?

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Dr. Valeria Z. Nollan is professor emerita of Russian studies at Rhodes College.  Between 1985-the present she has made over thirty extended research trips to the Soviet Union and Russia.  Her current project is a new biography of Sergei Rachmaninoff.

Dr. Alexandra G. Kostina is associate professor of Russian studies at Rhodes College.  A linguist and folklorist, she hails from Novgorod, Russia and travels extensively to international locations for her research.

Notes

[i] See Stephen Cohen’s discussion, which includes a reference to former DNI James Clapper’s statement: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/06/27/stephen_f_cohen_us_intel_services_running_an_operation_to_destroy_trump_since_2015.html#:~:text=What%20Clapper%20said%20about%20Russians%2C%20that%20they%20are,%5Babout%20almost%20any%20other%20group%5D%2C%20and%20nobody%20protested

[ii] https://sputniknews.com/20220222/world-reacts-to-russia-recognizing-the-independence-of-donbass-republics–1093252130.html

[iii] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFuxhi45ZbM&t=45s

[iv] Ibid.

[v] https://sputniknews.com/20220219/wests-war-propaganda-skating-on-thin-ice-1093179468.html

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid.

[viii] https://www.oyetimes.com/views/columns/214946-doping-in-athletics-falsely-vilifying-russia.  Consortium News also made use of this pie chart on WADA’s website in an article dated August 11, 2016, but for some inexplicable reason the pie chart is no longer available on the WADA site.  See https://consortiumnews.com/2016/08/11/a-rush-to-judgment-on-russian-doping/

[ix] See Guy Mettan’s Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria (Clarity Press, 2017).

[x] https://sputniknews.com/20220217/observers-teenage-skater-valieva-came-under-unprecedented-pressure-of-hostility–wild-speculations-1093123491.html.  See also https://sputniknews.com/20220216/physicist-claims-against-valieva–russia-null-until-b-sample-test-conducted-in-skaters-presence-1093082967.html

[xi] See James Howard Kunstler, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ&t=920s

[xii] Vladimir Soloukhin, A Time to Gather Stones [Vremia sobirat’ kamni), trans. Valerie Z. Nollan (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993), 233.

[xiii] Ibid., 230.

[xiv] Ibid., 232.

Featured image: Kamilia Valieva (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

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A whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud during Pfizer’s COVID vaccine trials is moving forward, after a district court judge unsealed the complaint, including 400 pages of exhibits.

Brook Jackson in January 2021 sued Pfizer and two companies the drugmaker contracted with to work on the trials: Ventavia Research Group and ICON PLC.

Jackson worked for Ventavia for a brief period in 2020 before being fired after she filed a complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over alleged improprieties she observed during the vaccine trials.

She also gave The BMJ a cache of internal company documents, photos and recordings highlighting alleged wrongdoing by Ventavia.

Jackson filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont Division, under the False Claims Act. The lawsuit includes several charges of fraud and retaliation on the part of both Ventavia and Pfizer.

The complaint remained under seal until Feb. 10, when U.S. District Court Judge Michael Truncale ordered it unsealed.

Pfizer ‘deliberately withheld crucial information’ about vaccine’s safety

According to Jackson’s lawsuit, Pfizer, Ventavia and ICON “deliberately withheld crucial information from the United States that calls the safety and efficacy of their vaccine into question.”

The lawsuit states:

“Defendants concealed violations of both their clinical trial protocol and federal regulations, including falsification of clinical trial documents.

“Due to [the] Defendants’ scheme, millions of Americans have received a misbranded vaccination which is potentially not as effective as represented.”

The core allegations of Jackson’s lawsuit include claims against Ventavia and Pfizer of:

  • Making or using false records or statements to cause claims to be paid.
  • Presentation of false and/or fraudulent claims.
  • Making or using false records or statements material to false and/or fraudulent claims.
  • Retaliation.

For instance, Jackson alleges:

“From 2020 to the present, Defendants [Ventavia and Pfizer] knowingly made, used, or caused to be made or used, false records or statements that were material to false and/or fraudulent claims paid or approved by the United States [Department of Defense, or DoD]. These false records or statements include the clinical trial protocol Pfizer submitted to the United States and the falsified source documents and data behind Defendants’ trial results and EUA application.

“By creating and carrying out their fraudulent schemes, Defendants knowingly and repeatedly violated … the False Claims Act. Defendants’ false records were material to Pfizer’s claims for payment for the vaccine at issue. The United States DoD would not have paid Pfizer if it knew that the clinical trial protocol was not complied with by Defendants, because the protocol violations call the integrity and validity of both the entire clinical trial and Pfizer’s EUA into question.

“Defendants’ false records also went to the very essence of the bargain the United States contracted for. DoD contracted to purchase vaccines found effective by a valid clinical trial conducted according to the protocol submitted by Pfizer. The integrity of the entire clinical trial was compromised by the trial protocol violations, false source documents, and the false data that resulted, which calls the vaccine’s EUA into question. Had the United States DoD known of Defendants’ false records, it would not have paid Pfizer.

“Defendants’ use, or causation of use, of material false records was a foreseeable factor in the United States DoD’s loss and a consequence of Defendants’ schemes. By virtue of Defendants’ actions, the United States DoD has suffered actual damages and is entitled to recover treble damages plus a civil monetary penalty for each false and/or fraudulent claim.”

Jackson is requesting damages, including back pay, in addition to reinstatement of her position with Ventavia.

Ventavia, which describes itself as the largest privately owned clinical research company in Texas, operated several sites where clinical trials were taking place on behalf of Pfizer.

Jackson, a regional director for Ventavia, was hired by the company when Pfizer contracted with it to conduct its phase 3 vaccine trial.

Jackson, who possessed over 15 years’ worth of experience working with clinical trials, “repeatedly informed her superiors of poor laboratory management, patient safety concerns and data integrity issues” during the approximately two weeks she was employed by Ventavia.

On Sept. 25, 2020, Jackson emailed the FDA, listing a dozen concerns she said she had witnessed. These included:

  • Lack of timely follow-up for patients who experienced adverse events from the trial.
  • Protocol deviations that went unreported.
  • Retaliation against and targeting of Ventavia employees who reported such problems.
  • Trial participants being placed in a hallway after injection and not being monitored by clinical staff.
  • Vaccines not being stored at proper temperatures.
  • Wrongly labeled laboratory specimens.

Jackson provided documents indicating falsified data, blind trial failures and awareness on the part of at least one Ventavia executive that members of the company’s staff were “falsifying data.”

Jackson’s documents also provided evidence of administrators who had “no training” or medical certifications, or who provided “very little oversight” during the trials.

Several internal company emails would be copied to a Pfizer official, who would respond to some of the correspondence.

The documentation provided by Jackson also demonstrated that she had discussed with Ventavia executives the possibility of the FDA conducting an unannounced inspection. The executives were described as “dreading” such a possibility.

According to Jackson, she received an acknowledgment email from the FDA and a follow-up phone call from an FDA inspector, but no further communication.

Ventavia fired her within hours of her contacting the FDA.

Ventavia executive on Pfizer vaccine trial: ‘cleanup on aisle five’

As reported by investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, a recording of a Ventavia executive revealed the individual in question referred to the problems with the vaccine trial as “cleanup on aisle five” and that this same executive pressed Jackson as to whether she had revealed information to outsiders.

This led Jackson to contact The BMJ, which in November 2021 published an article based on the evidence she had provided highlighting Ventavia’s repeated failures.

Journalist Paul Thacker, who had previously investigated financial ties between “Big Pharma” and physicians for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, wrote The BMJ article.

In November 2020, Ventavia appeared to have confirmed its knowledge of problems that occurred with the vaccine trial, and claimed that it would conduct an investigation.

Nevertheless, Pfizer continued its relationship with Ventavia, hiring it as a research subcontractor for at least four other trials, including trialing the COVID vaccine for children, young adults, pregnant women and the safety of a booster dose.

The FDA, despite knowledge of the allegations against Pfizer and Ventavia, went ahead and granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, including for children 5 to 11 years old.

The FDA in August 2021 stated that it inspected only nine of the trial’s 153 sites. None of Ventavia’s sites were included. (A 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General found the FDA inspected only 1% of clinical trial sites).

Ventavia went on the offensive against Jackson, claiming that:

“Ms. Jackson worked for us for only 18 days and, as a result, did not complete the requisite training for the role for which she was hired. We are confident in our practices and procedures in conducting clinical trials, and, should her case move forward, we will respond to the litigation accordingly.”

Ventavia later, in a Feb. 11 statement, modified its claims about Jackson, writing:

“Although Jackson was hired to oversee certain sites and aspects of clinical trials, she was only employed with Ventavia for 18 days, and, as a result, did not have the longevity with the company to complete the training for the role for which she was hired.”

However, according to Thacker, “[s]everal documents show that Jackson worked on Pfizer’s clinical trial.” These documents include a clinical trial delegation log which lists Jackson as a participant.

Also, according to Thacker, dozens of media organizations also failed to issue retractions of their reports which alleged Jackson had no direct involvement with the vaccine trials.

Jackson threatened to file a separate defamation lawsuit against Ventavia over its characterization of her employment.

The BMJ, in turn, was targeted for publishing the report. Facebook throttled the report and issued warnings to its users not to share it, following a report by one of the company’s contracted “fact checkers,” Lead Stories, claiming the report would not “disqualify” the overall trial of the Pfizer vaccine.

Lead Stories went so far as to describe The BMJ as a “blog.”

The BMJ said that it is “considering all available options” in terms of a potential legal claim against Facebook, which recently admitted in a court of law that its “fact checks” are “pure opinion.”

Feds won’t intervene in whistleblower case … for now

The documents pertaining to Jackson’s lawsuit were released after U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys declined to intervene on her behalf in the case.

The DOJ filed a “notice of election to decline intervention,” asking the court to get “written consent” in the event the parties to the lawsuit wish to dismiss or settle the case.

The government also reserved the right to intervene at a later date.

Neither the DOJ lawyers nor the FDA offered an explanation for why the DOJ chose not to intervene.

Jackson said that she was not surprised the federal government opted not to intervene, but expressed her “total disappointment,” adding that “[w]e’re going to pursue the case without the help of the government.”

While Jackson has stated her belief that the likelihood of her case succeeding is low, she also said that “[i]t’s just a chance I have to take. I just feel like somebody has to be held accountable.”

Ventavia also remarked upon the government’s refusal to intervene. Lauren Foreman, the company’s director of business development and communications, wrote in an email to Just the News, “[w]e are gratified the government has declined the case.”

Jackson apparently lost her original Texas-based lawyers in October 2021, but was able to attain new legal representation in December 2021, headed by Los Angeles-based attorney Robert Barnes.

The federal government’s refusal to intervene comes in contrast to the FDA welcoming Pfizer’s offer to intervene in a Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the agency.. A federal judge ruled Pfizer must disclose redacted versions of nearly 400,000 pages of documents pertaining to its issuance of an EUA for the Pfizer vaccine.

The FDA claimed it could not release the documents at a fast enough rate to meet the demands of the court or the plaintiffs in the case.

Pfizer then asked the court to intervene, ostensibly to “help” the FDA with the process of releasing the documents.

A federal court rejected Pfizer’s bid to intervene.

Pfizer lobbies to limit False Claims Act

Jackson’s primary lawsuit against Pfizer, Ventavia and ICON pertains to the False Claims Act — a piece of legislation dating back to the Civil War which rewards whistleblowers who file anti-fraud lawsuits against contractors on behalf of the government.

The law, originally enacted in response to defense contractor fraud during the Civil War, has to date returned $67 billion to the U.S. government.

While the False Claims Act has been in place since the Civil War, it was significantly eroded by a 2016 Supreme Court decision, Universal Health Services v. United States, which found a lawsuit filed under the False Claims Act could be dismissed if the contractor in question continued to be paid by the government.

This resulted in a series of federal court decisions in which fraud cases were dismissed, while the DOJ, via its 2018 Granston Memo, instructed government attorneys to reject more False Claims Act lawsuits.

In the two years that followed, dismissals of False Claims Act cases indeed increased.

The decision significantly expanded the scope of a legal principle known as “materiality.” As interpreted by the court, if the government continued paying a contractor despite the contractor’s fraudulent activity, then the fraud was not considered “material” to the contract.

The issue of materiality is a core component of Jackson’s lawsuit against Ventavia, Pfizer and ICON.

Proposed legislation, the False Claims Amendments Act of 2021, which was introduced in Congress in July 2021, would again bolster the law, strengthening the original law’s anti-retaliation provisions by installing new safeguards against industry-level blacklisting of whistleblowers seeking employment.

The proposed act also would adjust the materiality standard to include instances where government payments have continued despite knowledge of fraud.

This could affect Pfizer, which has contracts with the U.S. government to provide COVID vaccines.

The bill passed through committee by a 15-7 vote and was added to the Senate’s legislative calendar on Nov. 16, 2021. However, no action has been taken since.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Pfizer hired a well-connected lobbyist, Hazen Marshall, and the law firm Williams & Jensen to lobby against the False Claims Amendments Act of 2021, as previously reported by The Defender.

Notably, under the terms of a 2009 settlement, Pfizer paid $2.3 billion in fines — the largest healthcare fraud settlement in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — in a False Claims Act case stemming from allegations of illegal marketing of off-label products not approved by the FDA.

Pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Merck have also been forced to pay multimillion-dollar settlements resulting from False Claims Act cases.

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Athens, Greece.

Featured image is from CHD

Dangerous Crossroads: A World War III Scenario at the Height of the Corona Crisis

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 02, 2022

Unprecedented in World history, this diabolical project affecting more than 7 billion people Worldwide was implemented simultaneously and concurrently in the course of the last two years with the planning and strategic deployment of US, NATO and military allied forces against Russia and China.

Pfizer Withdraws EUA Application for COVID Shot in India After Regulator Asks for Independent Safety Study

By Rishma Parpia, March 02, 2022

Pfizer was the first pharmaceutical company to apply for an EUA to distribute a COVID biologic in India in 2021. However, India’s regulatory agency approved two other COVID vaccines that are more cost effective: AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s experimental AZD1222 vaccine and the locally-manufactured BBV152 (“Covaxin”) vaccine by Bharat Biotech.

The Pandemic Has Proven Democracy Is an Illusion

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 02, 2022

As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pulled out all the stops to quash the trucker protest against vaccine mandates, without ever having actually listened to their complaints, a truth emerged, clear as day. Democracy has been an illusion.

Ukraine and the Broader Context of US-NATO Led Wars

By Gavin OReilly, March 02, 2022

Since early last Thursday, in what has seemingly finally brought an end to the two-year long COVID-19 corporate media narrative, a Russian military intervention in neighbouring Ukraine, launched in response to almost nine years of NATO provocations following Kiev coming under the rule of the successive pro-Western governments.

A No-fly Zone in Ukraine Will Backfire

By Aris Roussinos, March 02, 2022

As the Biden administration’s spokeperson Jen Psaki very sensibly observed last night in her attempt to persuade journalists to tone down their rhetoric, a No-Fly Zone “would essentially mean the US military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes. That is definitely escalatory. That would potentially put us in a place where we’re in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the President wants to do.”

Follow the Money: US Sanctions, Will Russia Be Able to Bypass Western Economic Warfare?

By Pepe Escobar, March 02, 2022

About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

EU Plans to Send Fighter Jets to Ukraine Fall Apart

By Dave DeCamp, March 02, 2022

The plan announced Monday by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel was meant to give Ukraine old Russian-made MiG-29 and Su-24 fighter jets, which Ukraine’s pilots are already trained to fly. Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia were reportedly lined up to transfer the planes, but officials from each country denied the plan.

The State of Our Nation: In the U.S. “Things Are Getting Worse, Not Better”

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, March 02, 2022

Let me tell you about the state of our nation: things are getting worse, not better. Easily distracted by wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis and conveniently diverted by news cycles that change every few days, Americans remain oblivious to the many governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms.

International Criminal Justice Bares Its Colonial Fangs

By Robin Philpot, March 02, 2022

The inhuman manner in which the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) treats Rwandans who have been acquitted or who have been freed after serving their sentences obliges us to reexamine totally the body created by the UN Security Council in late 1994 (it is now known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, also referred to as the IRMCT or the Mechanism).

Who Gains from a War in Europe? U.S. Targets Supply of Russian Gas to Europe

By Manuel Raposo, March 02, 2022

At this moment, the events in Ukraine are shrouded in the cloud of smoke that characterizes war propaganda. Official positions, rather than clarifying facts and reporting the progress of negotiations, aim to crush their opponents’ arguments and convince public opinion to back one side of the dispute. To understand the role of each of the adversaries, what each of them wants, and how far they can go, we must explore the origins of what is now an extreme conflict.

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Last January, the Minister of Health in the province of Ontario, Christine Elliott, put out a letter to the College of Physicians and Surgeons (CPSO). She indicated that the expression of measures of treatment for the COVID-19 illness practiced and promoted by some doctors that lie outside of what is allowed under the rules of the World Health Organization (WHO) and Health Canada given the danger of the pandemic was “unacceptable.”

She would urge the CPSO to consider all options to remedy the situation involving such “dissident doctors” including the removal of their license to practice medicine.

Global Research had an opportunity to interview such doctors to hear their side of the story.

They will explain their problems with WHO/Health Canada standards for treating COVID-19, and the price of defying the norm.

The doctors in the interview are Dr Patrick Phillips and Dr Sam Dubé.

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Everyone Loses in the Conflict Over Ukraine

March 2nd, 2022 by Ralph Nader

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


When two scorpions are in a bottle, they both lose. This is the preventable danger that is growing daily with no end game in sight between the two nuclear superpowers led by dictator Vladimir Putin and de facto sole decider Joe Biden.

Putin’s first argument is Washington invented the model of aggressive, illegal invasions, and destruction of distant countries, that never threatened U.S. security.

Millions have died, been injured, and sickened in defenseless countries attacked by U.S. armed forces. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney killed over a million innocent Iraqis and devastated the country in so many ways that scholars called it a “sociocide.”

Putin’s second argument is that Russia is being threatened on its sensitive western border which had been invaded twice by Germany and caused the loss of 50 million Russian lives.

Soon after the Soviet Union collapsed the West’s military alliance against Russia began moving east. Under Bill Clinton, NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) signed up Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999, leading to major arms sales by the U.S. giant munitions corporations.

More recently, Putin sees U.S. soldiers in these countries, ever closer U.S. missile launchers, U.S.-led joint naval exercises in the Baltic Sea, and intimations that Ukraine and Georgia could soon join NATO. Imagine if the Russians were to have such a military presence around the U.S. borders.

Even often hawkish New York Times columnists – Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens – made this point this week about the brazen U.S. history of military hypocrisy while tearing into Putin. Stephens brought up the Monroe Doctrine over the entire Western Hemisphere in raising repeatedly the question, “Who are We?”

The chess game between Russia and the West has become more deadly with Putin’s military moves followed by immediate Western sanctions against some Russian banks and oligarchs close to Putin.

Travel bans and freezing the completion of the second major natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany are in place with promises of much more severe economic retaliation by Biden.

These sanctions can become a two-way street. Western Europe needs Russian oil and gas, Russian wheat, and essential Russian minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel.

Sanctions against Russia will soon boomerang in terms of higher oil and gas prices for Europeans and Americans, more inflation, worsening supply chains, and the dreaded “economic uncertainty” afflicting stock markets and consumer spending.

The corporate global economy gave us interdependence on other nations instead of domestic self-reliance under the framework of corporate-managed free trade agreements.

So how many billions of dollars in costs and a weakened economy will Joe Biden tolerate as the price of anti-Putin sanctions that will blowback on the American people?

How much suffering will he tolerate being inflicted on the long-suffering Russian people? What will be the impact on the civilian population of more severe sanctions? And who is he to talk as if he doesn’t have to be authorized by Congress to go further into this state of belligerence, short of sending soldiers, which he said he would not do?

Is Congress to be left as a cheerleader, washing its hands of its constitutional oversight and foreign policy duties?

Also, watch Republicans and Democrats in Congress unify to whoop through more money for the bloated military budget as pointed out by military analyst, Michael Klare.

What energy will be left for Biden’s pending “Build Back Better” infrastructure, social safety net, and climate crisis legislation?

In recent weeks, the State Department said it recognizes Russia’s legitimate security concerns but not its expansionism. Well, what is wrong with a ceasefire followed by support for a treaty “guaranteeing neutrality for Ukraine similar to the enforced neutrality for Austria since the Cold War’s early years,” as Nation publisher and Russia specialist Katrina Vanden Heuvel urged. (See: Katrina vanden Heuvel’s Washington Post article and her recent Nation piece).

Putin, unable to get over the breakup of the Soviet Union probably has imperial ambitions to dominate in Russia’s backyard. Biden has inherited and accepted the U.S. Empire’s ambitions in many other nation’s backyards.

Events have polarized this conflict over Ukraine which is not a security interest for the U.S., into two dominant egos – Putin and Biden – neither of whom want to appear weak or to back down.

This is a dangerous recipe for an out-of-control escalation, much as it was in the lead-up to World War I. Neither the people nor the parliaments mattered then as seems to be the case today.

Putin isn’t likely to make a cost-benefit assessment of each day’s militarism. But Biden better do so. Otherwise, he will be managed by Putin’s daily moves, instead of insisting on serious negotiations.

The Minsk II Peace Accords of February 2015 brokered by Germany, France, and the United Nations, that Russia and Ukraine agreed to before falling apart due to disagreements over who should take the first steps still makes for a useful framework.

It is too late to revisit the accords to stop the invasion but it should be proposed to introduce a climate for waging peace.

Already, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has spoken about an increase in cyberattacks and ransomware demands in her state in recent weeks.

Has Biden put that rising certainty in his self-described decades-long foreign policy expertise?

Watch out for what you can’t stop, Joe.

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Pfizer, Inc. has withdrawn its emergency use authorization (EUA) application for its experimental BNT162b2 (also known as “Comirnaty”) messenger RNA (mRNA) COVID-19 biologic (developed in collaboration with Germany’s BioNTech) in India.1

Pfizer was the first pharmaceutical company to apply for an EUA to distribute a COVID biologic in India in 2021. However, India’s regulatory agency approved two other COVID vaccines that are more cost effective: AstraZeneca/Oxford University’s experimental AZD1222 vaccine and the locally-manufactured BBV152 (“Covaxin”) vaccine by Bharat Biotech.2

During Pfizer’s meeting with India’s drug regulatory agency, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), the pharmaceutical decided to withdraw its application after the regulator requested a local trial on the vaccine’s safety and immunogenicity specifically for Indians.3

After a meeting with Pfizer officials, CDSCO said, “After detailed deliberation, the committee has not recommended grant of permission for emergency use in the country at this stage.”4

Pfizer Refused to Conduct Local Safety Trial for Its COVID Biologic Before Being Denied EUA in India

In order for the CDSCO to grant Pfizer an EUA for BNT162b2, the drugmaker was required to conduct a local clinical trial in India to determine if the vaccine is safe and generates an adequate immune response in its citizens.5

Vinod K. Paul, head of India’s government panel on vaccine strategy said that all foreign developed vaccines have to undergo a “bridging trial” in India in order to receive approval. A “bridging trial” is required to determine the immune response and safety record of the vaccine in population with a different genetic makeup than in Western nations.6

Pfizer applied for an exemption from India’s “bridging trial” requirement by citing that it has received EUA approvals in other countries based on clinical trials conducted in the United States and Germany. Although there are provisions under India’s law to waive the requirements of “bridging trials” in certain circumstances, India’s regulatory agency decided not to waive the requirement for BNT162b2.7

The CDSCO’s website states:

The firm presented its proposal for emergency use authorization of COVID19 mRNA Vaccine BNT162b before the committee. The committee noted that incidents of palsy, anaphylaxis and other SAE’s have been reported during post marketing and the causality of the events with the vaccine is being investigated. Further, the firm has not proposed any plan to generate safety and immunogenicity data in Indian population. After detailed deliberation, the committee has not recommended for grant of permission for emergency use in the country at this stage.8

Since BNT162b2 must be stored at a low temperature of minus 94 Fahrenheit, Indian Health Ministry officials said that the biologic is not the best option for the country given that it requires expensive freezers that are not readily available in India.9

Currently, a local pharmaceutical company in India known as Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories is conducting a “bridging trial” for Russia’s COVID vaccine called Sputnik Light (a component of Sputnik V) developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, which is expected to be approved for EUA in India.10

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Notes

1 CNBC. Pfizer withdraws application for emergency use of its Covid-19 vaccine in India. Feb. 5, 2022.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Deutsche Welle. India: Pfizer withdraws COVID vaccine application for emergency use. Feb. 5, 2022.

5 Das K. Pfizer drops India vaccine application after regulator seeks local trial. Reuters Feb. 5, 2022.

6 Deutsche Welle. India: Pfizer withdraws COVID vaccine application for emergency use. Feb. 5, 2022.

7 Das K. Pfizer drops India vaccine application after regulator seeks local trial. Reuters Feb. 5, 2022.

8 Central Drugs Standard Control Organization. Recommendations of the SEC meeting to examine COVID-19 related proposal under accelerated approval process made in its 141st meeting held on 03.02.2021 at CDSCO, HQ New Delhi. Feb. 3, 2022.

9 Deutsche Welle. India: Pfizer withdraws COVID vaccine application for emergency use. Feb. 5, 2022.

10 Das K. Pfizer drops India vaccine application after regulator seeks local trial. Reuters Feb. 5, 2022.

Featured image is from TVR

The Pandemic Has Proven Democracy Is an Illusion

March 2nd, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pulled out all the stops to quash the trucker protest against vaccine mandates, it became clear that democracy has been an illusion

For many years, the technocratic elite, with their global authoritarianism goals, have infiltrated governments around the world and pushed for surveillance and national security tools intended to suppress dissent

A key part of that dissent-crushing system is the surveillance apparatus that has been erected. While sold as a tool to hunt down dangerous criminals, its primary purpose is to stifle dissent among peaceful, law-abiding citizens. Financial warfare — banning people from using financial services — is another

Dissent is also stifled by applying criminal terms to those who disagree with the narrative. Case in point: “Anti-vaxxers” and anyone who disagrees with pandemic measures are now labeled domestic terrorists or domestic extremists. Using terms of criminality allows those in power to justify the use of unconstitutional repression and punishment

The U.S. must repeal both the Patriot Act and the new biopreparedness initiative, or else all privacy and freedom will be destroyed

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As Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pulled out all the stops to quash the trucker protest against vaccine mandates, without ever having actually listened to their complaints, a truth emerged, clear as day. Democracy has been an illusion. That’s the conclusion drawn by Canadian journalist Matthew Ehret in a February 18, 2022, Strategic Culture article.1

“Who would have thought that Canada would ever be a spark plug for a freedom movement against tyranny?” Ehret asks.

“Countless thousands of patriots have driven across the country to bunker down in Ottawa in peace and high festive spirits which I had to see with my own eyes to believe demanding something so simple and un-tainted by ideology: freedom to work, provide for families and a respect for basic rights as laid out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms …

Mainstream media and political hacks have been working overtime to paint the Freedom convoy that converged on Ottawa on January 29 as an ‘insurrectionist movement’ full of ‘white supremacists,’ ‘Russian stooges,’ and ‘Nazis’ out to ‘overthrow the government.’

Even the Bank of England’s former governor (and World Economic Forum Trustee) Mark Carney chimed in on February 7 stating that ‘this is sedition’ and that ‘those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law’ …

Faced with an organic civil rights movement of blue-collar truckers, farmers and tens of thousands of supporters who have convened on Canada’s capital to demand a restoration of their basic freedoms, the current Liberal government has failed to show even an ounce of humanity or capacity to negotiate.

This shouldn’t be a surprise for those who have seen the hypocrisy of neo-liberal ‘rules-based’ order ideologues in action over the past few years who are quick to celebrate the ‘liberty’ of citizens of Ukraine, Hong Kong, or Xinjiang when the outcome benefits the geopolitical aims of detached technocrats hungry for global hegemony.

The moment genuine self-organized labor movements arise demanding basic rights be recognized, then the masks come off and the rage of tyrants show their true faces.”

Tyrants Are Showing Their True Colors

As reported by Ehret, the Deep State of Canada is now using the Emergency Measures Act to do precisely what Carney called for, namely identify and punish anyone who dares stand up for freedom.

The Act grants extraordinary powers to the banking industry to search people’s social media accounts and private bank records, and to seize the bank accounts of anyone suspected of supporting the Freedom Convoy, either in spirit or through online donations, including cryptocurrencies.

Victims will have no recourse, as the banks have been given full legal protection from lawsuits by those whose lives they destroy. Business owners in Canada who support freedom can also have their insurance policies canceled, and truckers can lose their drivers’ licenses, either temporarily or permanently.

Still, the protesters did not give up. If anything, the threats appeared to have had the opposite effect. According to Ehret, the protestors were “renewing their commitments to remain in place,” which they did until Trudeau sent in police2 to arrest protestors and tow their trucks.

While Trudeau remained dictatorial until the truckers had been cleared from the Parliament area, the political establishment, on the other hand, showed signs of cracking. Two Liberal Party members, MP Joel Lightbound and MP Yves Robillard broke with party ranks, calling for an end to the unpopular and unnecessary COVID measures.3 Then, finally, in a surprise turnabout, Trudeau buckled February 23, 2022, and said he would revoke the Emergencies Act he’d invoked earlier.4

On a global scale, the silence of leaders of democracies and republics around the world is as informative as Trudeau’s power grab. By now, we would have expected leaders of the U.S., the U.K., France and any number of others, to have stepped up to the microphone to denounce the Canadian government’s actions.

But they haven’t, and that tells you everything you need to know about where they stand on the issues of democracy and freedom. Worse, some have vocalized support for Trudeau’s dictatorial actions.

In a February 10, 2022, tweet, Juliette Kayyem, former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under U.S. President Obama and a frequent CNN commentator, suggested the Canadian regime ought to slash the truckers’ tires, empty their gas tanks, arrest the drivers, move the trucks, cancel their insurance, suspend their drivers’ licenses and prohibit their recertification in the future. In her own words, “I will not run out of ways to make this hurt.”5

The Illusion of Liberal Democracy Has Collapsed

As noted by Ehret, while we don’t yet know how it will end, one thing we can be sure of is that “the illusion of liberal democracy … has collapsed.”6 That doesn’t mean the globalist cabal will pack up their briefcases and retire. No, they’re going to fight to stay in power until the bitter end.

But the hill they’re standing on is getting steeper and slipperier by the day. Everyone can see that they’re saying one thing and doing the complete opposite. You can’t lay claim to being a defender of democracy, freedom and equal rights for all while simultaneously declaring peaceful citizens the enemy of the state. It’s just not credible. As noted by historically left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald:7

“When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored.

Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.

When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government’s use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging …

That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable. But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited.

That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression.

Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West’s official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.

The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny.”

The Dangers of Majority Despotism

As explained by Greenwald, the premise of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights is that “majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme.” “Despotism” means government in which a single entity rules with absolute power. Usually, this entity is an individual, but despotism can also arise out of majority rule.

It’s interesting to note that while the Founding Fathers probably had no term for what we now know as the psychology of “mass formation,” they were clearly aware of the dangers posed by an irrational majority.

As noted by Greenwald, “the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact.”

For example, even if a majority of people agree that certain ideas and views should be criminalized, the Bill of Rights prohibits it. The Bill of Rights also prohibits the abolishment of religious freedom, even if a majority were to support it. Likewise, “life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if 9 out of 10 citizens favor doing so.”

The Founding Fathers were clever enough to realize that majority rule can easily become just as destructively despotic as any dictatorship. Hence, they ensured that individual freedoms were enshrined in such a way that even if you’re the last person in the country who wants to practice religion, you have the right to do so. The majority cannot take that away from you.

Waking Up to Reality as It Is

Greenwald goes on to explain how the signs of tyranny in the West have been evident for well over a decade. We just weren’t paying attention. Only now, as we stare tyranny in the face first-hand, are we starting to really see it for what it is:

“The decade-long repression of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, standing alone, demonstrates how grave neoliberal attacks on dissent have become. Many are aware of key parts of this repression … but have forgotten or, due to media malfeasance, never knew several of the most extreme aspects.

While the Obama DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holder failed to find evidence of criminality after convening a years-long Grand Jury investigation, the then-Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), succeeded in pressuring financial services companies such as MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Bank of America to terminate WikiLeaks’ accounts and thus banish them from the financial system, choking off their ability to receive funds from supporters or pay their bills.

Lieberman and his neocon allies also pressured Amazon to remove WikiLeaks from its hosting services, causing the whistleblower group to be temporarily offline.

All of that succeeded in crippling WikiLeaks’ ability to operate despite being charged with no crime: indeed, as the DOJ admitted, it could not prove that the group committed any crimes, yet this extra-legal punishment was nonetheless meted out.

Those tactics pioneered against WikiLeaks — excluding dissenters from the financial system and coercing tech companies to deny them internet access without a whiff of due process — have now become standard weapons. Trudeau’s government seizes and freezes bank accounts with no judicial process.

The ‘charity’ fundraising site GoFundMe first blocked the millions of dollars raised for the truckers and announced it would redirect those funds to other charities, then refunded the donations when people pointed out, rightly, that their original plan amounted to a form of stealing. When an alternative fundraising site, GiveSendGo, raised millions more for the truckers, Canadian courts blocked its distribution.”

Greenwald also highlights how American politicians have pressured Big Tech monopolies and the financial system to act as a joint censorship arm of government. Blocking people and companies from being able to use servers and financial transaction services have been key strategies to silence critical voices.

Why Assange Was Targeted

According to Greenwald, Assange’s capture was precipitated by his denouncement of the Spanish government’s violence against citizens of Catalonia in 2017 and 2019. Catalonia wanted autonomy from the Madrid-based Spanish government, and the government responded with shocking force.

“Spain treated the activists not as domestic protesters exercising their civic rights but as terrorists, seditionists and insurrectionists,” Greenwald writes. “Violence was used to sweep up Catalans in mass arrests, and their leaders were charged with terrorism and sedition and given lengthy prison sentences.”

Assange did not actually express support for Catalonian independence. He objected to the Spanish government’s violent assault on civil liberties. This was why Ecuador rescinded Assange’s asylum and handed him over to British authorities in April 2020. Since then, Assange has been held in a high-security prison in Belmarsh, even though he’s never been convicted of a crime.

“All of this reflects, and stems from, a clear and growing Western intolerance for dissent,” Greenwald writes.8 “This last decade of history is crucial to understand the dissent-eliminating framework that has been constructed and implemented in the West. This framework has culminated, thus far, with the stunning multi-pronged attacks on Canadian truckers by the Trudeau government.

But it has been a long time in the making, and it is inevitable that it will find still-more extreme expressions. It is, after all, based in the central recognition that there is mass, widespread anger and even hatred toward the neoliberal ruling class throughout the West.”

Surveillance Apparatus Was Created to Crush Dissent

In response to the growing anger against the ruling class, the technocratic cabal has “opted for force, a system that crushes all forms of dissent as soon as they emerge in anything resembling an effective, meaningful or potent form,” Greenwald notes.

A key part of that dissent-crushing system is the surveillance apparatus that has been erected all around us.9 While sold as a tool to hunt down dangerous criminals, we’ve come to realize that rarely is the system ever used to go after true criminals. Instead, it’s used to identify people who disagree with a given narrative. Its primary purpose is to stifle dissent among citizens.

As noted by the ACLU,10 while most Americans think the Patriot Act’s surveillance powers are there to facilitate the identification and roundup of terrorists, it “actually turns regular citizens into suspects.” Dissent is also stifled by applying criminal terms to those who disagree with the narrative. Case in point: “Anti-vaxxers” and anyone who disagrees with pandemic measures are now labeled domestic terrorists or domestic extremists. As noted by Greenwald:

“Applying terms of criminality renders justifiable any subsequent acts of repression: we are trained to accept that core liberties are forfeited upon the commission of crimes. What is most notable, though, is that this alleged criminality is not adjudicated through judicial proceedings — with all the accompanying protections of judges, juries, rules of evidence and requirements of due process — but simply by decree …

Few things are more dangerous than a political leader who convinces themselves that they are so benevolent and well-intentioned that anything they do is inherently justified in light of their noble character and their enlightened ends …

Within the logical world where one is convinced that they really are fighting a white nationalist, fascistic, insurrectionary global movement to overthrow liberal democracy, then all the weapons we were long taught to view as despotic suddenly become ennobled …

And it is through this self-glorifying tale which Western neoliberals are telling themselves that they have become exactly what they shrilly insist they are battling.”

We Must Repeal the Patriot Act and Pandemic Powers

In September 2021, the White House announced a $65 billion biopreparedness initiative as part of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan.11 As I’ve explained in many previous articles, Build Back Better is part and parcel of The Great Reset, which in turn is a technocrat-led attempt to implement global authoritarianism. As reported by Biospace:12

“The first goal is to transform medical defense, including an improvement and expansion of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics against known threats, and lay the groundwork for unknown pathogens … Secondly, the plan calls for ensuring ‘situational awareness’ regarding infectious disease threats. This includes early warning and real-time monitoring of these viral threats.”

In a nutshell, what this biopreparedness initiative entails is more invasive biosurveillance — meaning, the monitoring of your internal biology. Right now, claims that government wants to monitor people down to their body chemistry will earn you the title of paranoid conspiracy theorist, yet the writing is on the wall. That’s where we’re headed, even if we’re not there yet.

I believe the U.S. must repeal both the Patriot Act and the biopreparedness initiative, or else all privacy and freedom will be destroyed.

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Notes

1, 3, 6 Strategic Culture February 16, 2022

2 The New York Times February 19, 2022

4 Washington Examiner February 23, 2022

5 Fox News February 10, 2022

7, 8 Glenn Greenwald Substack February 21, 2022

9 EFF.org October 26, 2016

10 ACLU Surveillance Under the Patriot Act

11, 12 Biospace September 7, 2021

Featured image: Edmonton police are among the city employees fighting against COVID-19 shot mandates. (Source: Kaytoo / Shutterstock.com)

Ukraine and the Broader Context of US-NATO Led Wars

March 2nd, 2022 by Gavin OReilly

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Since early last Thursday, in what has seemingly finally brought an end to the two-year long COVID-19 corporate media narrative, a Russian military intervention in neighbouring Ukraine, launched in response to almost nine years of NATO provocations following Kiev coming under the rule of the successive pro-Western governments of Petro Poroshenko and Voldymyr Zelensky since the 2014 Euromaidan colour revolution, has dominated media headlines worldwide –with Moscow coming in for levels of global condemnation not seen since the Cold War.

US President Joe Biden, in tandem with the other G7 members, immediately announced wide-ranging sanctions targeting the Russian economy, President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen banned Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik News across the EU’s 27 member states, and in the wake of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s earlier suspension of the proposed Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia, following Moscow’s formal recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk’s People’s Republics last Monday, more than 140 staff were laid off by the pipeline’s Swiss-based operator Nord Stream 2 AG in the wake of wider sanctions following the Russian intervention, with the company considering an outright declaration of bankruptcy altogether.

Of course, the obvious reaction to these sanctions by onlookers familiar to the actions of the US-NATO hegemony would be to ask why nothing similar was carried out when allied states were carrying out war crimes, such as Israel’s Summer 2014 bombardment of Gaza, leading to the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians over the space of seven weeks, or Saudi Arabia’s now seven year long war and blockade against neighbouring Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab Peninsula, and one which has now suffered the largest Cholera outbreak in recorded history and a famine resulting in the deaths of more than 85,000 children owing to Riyadh’s Western-backed actions – with perhaps the most demonstrable display of this hypocrisy being Monday’s declaration by football world governing body FIFA that Russia would be suspended from the upcoming 2022 World Cup, due to be held in a country that has played a key role in the now eleven year long Western proxy war against Syria resulting in an estimated 350,000 deaths – Qatar.

In 2009, following a refusal by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to allow US-allied Doha to build a pipeline through his country, one which would have undermined his relationship with key ally Russia, a plan was quickly hatched by the US,Britain, Saudi Arabia and Israel to instigate a violent coup in the Arab Republic in order to remove Assad’s government and replace it with a Western-friendly leadership.

In March 2011, one month after a similar Western-orchestrated regime change operation took hold in Libya, the CIA’s Timber Sycamore initiative would see Salafist terrorists groups, armed, funded and trained by the West and its allies, launch a brutal terrorist campaign against Damascus – one that would see vast swathes of the secular nation coming under their control, resulting in the ethnic cleansing of groups such as Christians and Shia Muslims.

In June 2013, Iran and Hezbollah intervened at the request of the Syrian government, with Tehran knowing that the toppling of Assad’s rule would embolden the regime change lobby to quickly place the Islamic Republic in its sights, an intervention that played a key role in defending the Arab Republic from NATO-backed terrorist groups, though what would perhaps be the most decisive factor in turning the tide in Damascus’ favour would come in September 2015 – an air campaign launched by Russia against the terrorist groups, again at the official request of Damascus, and which ensured that eleven years on, the government of Bashar al-Assad still remains in place.

Russia Bad, Qatar Good – FIFA’s Hypocrisy

This is not to discount the devastation inflicted on Syria since 2011 however, with thousands killed and billions of pounds worth of damage caused to vital Syrian infrastructure – devastation that Qatar, via its funding and arming of the terrorists who carried it out, played a key part in, though in stark contrast to the wide-ranging sanctions imposed in the Western response to the Russian intervention in Ukraine, has been rewarded with the hosting of a prestigious sporting tournament instead.

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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.

Featured image is from South Front

Playing with Fire in Ukraine

March 2nd, 2022 by Eric Margolis

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Having been a soldier and correspondent in 14 wars, I’m trying to see through the inevitable fog of war that beclouds the current conflict in Ukraine.

This is no easy task. Moscow has done a poor job of explaining its position and scared the hell out of everyone with its nuclear alert.

Western media has championed the cause of Ukraine in a totally one-sided manner. So, we have plucky David v. evil Goliath. Never mind that civil war between Ukrainian nationalists, militant rightists and the Kiev regime has been flaring for 14 years.

Russia, which ruled Ukraine with a few pauses since the 1700’s, sought to rapidly overthrow the western-backed Ukrainian nationalist government in Kiev by launching what the French calls ‘un coup de main’, a lightening attack to seize Ukraine’s centers of power.

But this effort did not work out. Ukrainian government forces, secretly armed with the latest anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons by the Western powers, blunted Moscow’s initial attacks. I strongly suspect the presence of US and/or British Special Forces. More heavy offensives appear to be on the way. An initial attack on the key port of Odessa quickly petered out.

Did the Russian soldiers lack enthusiasm? Hard to say at this point. Many were reportedly loathe to attack their Ukrainian ‘brothers.’ This conflict was not popular in Mother Russia.

We have not yet seen any eruption of ever-mighty Russian nationalism that was so powerful in World War II. Nor the pure racial-religious hatred seen in the crushing of Chechen independence in 1990. In that gruesome conflict, Russia destroyed the Chechen capitol and many towns across Chechnya. But the fierce Chechen were Muslims, not fellow Orthodox Slavs.

So far, Russian forces, whose doctrine calls for massive artillery use, have been sparing in their use of big guns and rocket batteries. Much more is very likely to come. The Russian Air Force and Black Sea Fleet have also been notably absent. Perhaps President Vladimir Putin has sought to keep the Ukraine conflict to a low-key punitive action.

But many other dangers are evident. Turkey says it will adhere to the important 1936 Montreux Convention that limits the entry of warships into the Black Sea. The US Navy plans a very aggressive campaign against Russia in the Black Sea – and around Vladivostok in the North Pacific. Will Turkey bar the US Navy from that inland sea?

Regarding the nuclear scare. President Putin has previously stated that because of Russia’s reductions in its conventional forces it would henceforth rely increasingly on tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. Anyone who attacked Russia could expect at least a limited nuclear riposte.

Western politicians have had a field day denouncing the ‘barbarity” (Boris Johnson’s words) of Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. This is shameless bunkum. British pilots and mechanics have kept the Saudi air forces pounding Yemen’s cities and villages. The US Air Force and Navy have destroyed many of Iraq, Libya’s and Syria’s urban areas, notably Falluja, Aleppo and Mosul. Israel’s US-supplied air force flattened parts of Gaza.

Our side is not without sin.

The western powers need to abate their righteous jeremiads against Russia and work to find a face-saving way for Russia out of this dangerous morass. France has made a good start. By contrast, Germany has again shown its total lack of independent policy.

As much as we feel sympathy for Ukraine, we must also remember that Russia remains a great power of sorts and needs to be shown a clear exit from this mess. America must not be carried away by glee at Russia’s discomfort and try to complete the destruction of the once mighty Soviet Union into an eastern Yugoslavia.

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A quem interessa a guerra na Europa?

March 2nd, 2022 by Manuel Raposo

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.


Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Neste momento, os acontecimentos na Ucrânia estão envoltos pela nuvem de fumo que caracteriza a propaganda de guerra. As posições oficiais destinam-se não a esclarecer os factos e o andamento das negociações, mas a anular os argumentos adversários e a cativar a opinião pública para um dos lados da contenda. É preciso ir às origens do conflito, agora extremado, para se perceber o papel de cada um dos contendores, o que cada um deles pretende e até onde pode ir.

Antecedentes

Nos anos mais recentes, tudo começou com dois propósitos partilhados pela UE e pelos EUA. Um é a expansão económica da UE (capitaneada pelas suas maiores potências, designadamente a Alemanha) para leste. A chamada Parceria Oriental visava atrair para a órbita europeia países tão distintos como a Geórgia, a Arménia, o Azerbaijão, a Moldávia, a Bielorrússia ou a Ucrânia todos nas fronteiras sul e ocidental da Rússia.

Outro propósito é a expansão militar do bloco ocidental, de que a NATO é o instrumento, no sentido de completar o cerco às fronteiras da Rússia. E é sobretudo aqui que o interesse dos EUA como potência hegemónica, no caso em apreço, leva ao casamento com as ambições económicas da UE.

Um revés

No que toca à Ucrânia, a Parceria Oriental sofreu um revés com a proposta pela Rússia de vantagens económicas ao então governo de Kiev que neutralizou os avanços europeus. A resposta da UE e dos EUA foi o golpe de estado de 2014, apoiado em milícias fascistas ucranianas, que colocou no poder um presidente “colaborante”, a que se seguiu uma perseguição sangrenta da população de origem russa. Em resposta, a região de Donbass, na fronteira com a Rússia e de população russa, não aceitou a autoridade do novo regime reaccionário de Kiev e constitui-se em duas, assim designadas, repúblicas populares (Lugansk e Donetsk), com o apoio de Moscovo.

Acordos por cumprir

O fim das hostilidades militares foi estabelecido pelos acordos de Minsk, supervisionados pela OSCE, em que a Ucrânia se comprometia a aprovar um regime de autonomia para aquelas repúblicas, dentro do estado ucraniano. Ora, nem o regime ucraniano, nem a OSCE, nem, ainda menos, a UE e os EUA aceitaram cumprir o acordo. Pelo contrário, a Ucrânia tem vindo a ser armada e instruída para resolver pela força a resistência das duas repúblicas, acoimadas de “separatistas”.

As reclamações da Rússia

E é aqui que se pode encontrar uma das origens próximas da escalada a que se assiste. A Rússia percebeu que o esmagamento das repúblicas do Donbass seria o prenúncio da integração da Ucrânia na NATO e da colocação de tropas e armamento em mais uma das suas fronteiras, com a agravante de lhe condicionar o acesso ao Mar Negro. Por isso as exigências da Rússia se centram numa negociação com os EUA (e, por inerência, a NATO) de um acordo de segurança que trave a expansão para leste das potências ocidentais e estabeleça termos de coexistência duradouros.

A quem interessa o clima de guerra

Os esforços do presidente francês e do chanceler alemão no sentido de se obter um acordo político que ponha água na fervura, por muito incipientes que sejam, não agradam nada aos EUA que receiam ver a UE adoptar uma posição de meio termo entre russos e norte-americanos. A campanha de Biden tem procurado, por isso, anular todas as vias de negociação que não sejam as que ele próprio promove. Inclusive, os EUA contrariam as afirmações dos próprios dirigentes ucranianos que apelam ao apaziguamento e criticam o dramatismo posto na propaganda ocidental. Por várias vezes, a “invasão” da Ucrânia foi dada como “iminente” (com data marcada e tudo…), coisa que só se compreende em quem quer à força acirrar um clima de guerra. A última declaração do patético Biden, dia 18, é disso mais um exemplo.

Estratégia e negócio

Este clima de guerra “iminente” interessa em exclusivo aos EUA. Em dois sentidos. Um, que se pode chamar de natureza estratégia e que consiste em manter a Rússia debaixo de pressão política e militar, ao mesmo tempo que subordina mais ainda a UE aos desígnios políticos norte-americanos. O fantasma antigo de que “Vêm aí os russos!”, não só atira o odioso da situação para cima da Rússia, como coloca naturalmente as populações europeias na defensiva e receptivas à “ajuda protectora” dos EUA e da NATO.

Um segundo sentido é de pura guerra económica. Os EUA querem a todo o transe vender o seu gás de xisto, que se acumula sem clientela à medida da produção, e para isso nada melhor do que estragar o negócio do gás natural russo que abastece, desde há décadas, meia Europa. Isto seria de dupla vantagem para os EUA: fazer bom dinheiro (ainda por cima o gás norte-americano é muito mais caro que o russo) e manter a Europa numa maior dependência económica face ao “aliado” transatlântico.

“Libertar” a Europa

Políticos e comentadores repetem a cada passo o argumento de “libertar” a Alemanha e a Europa da dependência energética face à Rússia. Mas todos eles acham natural a dependência face aos EUA. Não vêem sequer que, dependência por dependência, a Alemanha e a UE têm muito mais capacidade para lidar em pé de igualdade com a Rússia, cuja força económica é ainda débil, do que para competir com o poderio económico-político-militar dos EUA. E é esta perspectiva de alforria — mesmo remota, considerando a ligação umbilical do imperialismo europeu ao imperialismo ianque — que põe em alerta o poder norte-americano e o leva a boicotar qualquer iniciativa que vá nesse sentido.

À semelhança do Iraque

As declarações recentes das autoridades norte-americanas lembram o tom que precedeu a invasão do Iraque: fim da diplomacia, “provas inquestionáveis” dos serviços secretos, anulação das tentativas negociais feitas por países terceiros — tudo no sentido de demonstrar que só resta a força militar.

Tudo leva a crer, portanto, que o plano dos EUA — com o acólito de sempre, chame-se ele Blair ou Boris — será levar tão longe quanto possível o conflito com a Rússia, provocando-a até ao ponto de a forçar a uma intervenção militar. Seria a situação ideal para mostrar ao mundo quão “diabólico” é Putin e para anular as veleidades europeias de se conduzir por uma política própria e procurar entendimentos com a Rússia.

Condições diferentes 

As condições contudo são diferentes das de 2003. O teatro do conflito é a Europa e não o Iraque, o adversário é a Rússia e não um exército debilitado, os danos colaterais afectariam não o Médio Oriente mas os próprios aliados dos EUA.

Por outro lado, as declarações de Merkel, quando Trump mostrou a face, de que os EUA não eram de confiança e de que Europa teria de tratar de si própria não descansaram o poder norte-americano, porque valem para além do mandato de Trump. O mesmo com a afirmação do actual chanceler Scholz, depois de conferenciar com Putin, de que a segurança europeia não pode ser conseguida contra a Rússia — coisa que choca com os planos dos EUA e da NATO. Trata-se de meras declarações, é certo, mas elas mostram que a conflitualidade própria das potências imperialistas tende a vir ao de cima sempre que se abre uma crise de grande dimensão, como é o caso.

Guerra por procuração, mais uma

Para os EUA, a solução será então subcontratar a provocação: empurrar o exército ucraniano (onde as milícias fascistas têm forte presença) contra as repúblicas do Donbass, submetendo as populações russas a violências como as que foram cometidas em 2014. É o que está a acontecer com o municiamento das forças ucranianas e com o incentivo para que ataquem as posições adversárias em Lugansk e Donetsk.

Enquanto lançam alertas constantes acerca das provocações que os russos estariam a preparar para justificar uma invasão, os serviços secretos dos EUA não estão certamente parados — e é legítimo pensar, com a prática que se lhes conhece, que estejam eles mesmos a montar as provocações que sirvam os seus propósitos.

Que esperam os EUA ganhar?

Nem os ucranianos nem os europeus estão interessados numa guerra em casa ou à porta de casa, que contribuiria para afundar o Continente numa crise de dimensões incalculáveis. Apenas os EUA podem ver vantagem em tal situação. Que esperam eles ganhar com isso?

  • Juntar pretextos para agravar as sanções económicas contra a Rússia, convocando toda a Europa a participar na campanha, como faz com Cuba, Venezuela ou Irão.
  • Condicionar os movimentos políticos e os negócios da Rússia na Europa e, por essa via, bloquear a influência do bloco Rússia-China no Ocidente, nomeadamente a expansão da Nova Rota da Seda.
  • Resignar os europeus a aceitarem o reforço da NATO, pagando eles para isso, e a porem de lado as ambições de “independência estratégica” — ideia que colide com a dependência face aos EUA — de que timidamente têm falado alemães e franceses.
  • Cavar ainda mais fundo a trincheira que separa a troika imperialista da aliança China-Rússia, na perspectiva de que o futuro há-de trazer mais conflitos e de maior gravidade.

Contra a NATO

A solicitude do presidente da República e do governo português em seguir as determinações dos EUA e da NATO, sem laivo de distanciamento; o pronto envio de militares para zonas de conflito; a campanha mediática a alimentar o clima de guerra e a diabolizar os russos — repetem a prática que tem pautado o comportamento das autoridades portuguesas desde sempre.

Mas merece particular lembrança o desgraçado exemplo da cimeira das Lajes, que antecedeu o ataque ao Iraque em 2003, responsável pela destruição do país, por centenas de milhares de mortos e por milhões de refugiados. Mais recentemente, a retirada do Afeganistão trouxe à luz do dia o descalabro causado por vinte anos de ocupação em que tropas portuguesas estiveram também envolvidas.

De pouco servem as lamúrias sobre o que deveria ter sido feito e não foi — a questão está no envolvimento, como serviçais, nas aventuras guerreiras dos EUA. É por aí que tem de se começar: tem todo o sentido e toda a actualidade renovar uma campanha de opinião pública pela retirada de Portugal da NATO e pela dissolução da Aliança que não deixe as autoridades portuguesas de mãos livres.

Novos confrontos no horizonte

Entrámos numa época em que se contam espingardas. A euforia da globalização, do livre comércio e do mais festivo liberalismo deu o que tinha a dar. O recuo das grandes potências para os seus redutos nacionais, o proteccionismo com que resguardam as suas economias e a frenética busca de alianças que levam a cabo são sinais de que chegou ao fim quer a expansão económica das últimas décadas, quer a coexistência, aparentemente pacífica, que a acompanhou.

Agora é altura de as potências reunirem forças e formarem blocos. São os preparativos para um confronto de escala global que decida quem vai ter a supremacia no mercado mundial.

É neste confronto concreto que a esquerda tem de desempenhar o seu papel próprio — começando pela denúncia dos propósitos hegemonistas e guerreiros do imperialismo, atacando os governos e os meios de informação que os sustentam, e esforçando-se por criar um movimento de opinião que lance as bases de uma corrente política independente, de base popular. Se o conseguir, dará um importante contributo para que os movimentos de protesto disseminados pelo mundo passem da dispersão e do defensismo em que se encontram para uma progressiva convergência de esforços e uma postura ofensiva.

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Abolish Violent and Corrupt Police Forces

March 2nd, 2022 by Michael J. Talmo

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All over this world police forces physically abuse, rob, and kill innocent people on a daily basis. These appalling facts have been brought to light through court cases, news reports, videos, civil rights groups, special government commissions, scientific studies, and even other cops. Nevertheless, politicians continue to call for more police to fight a plethora of social ills while police departments continue to hide the brutality of their fellow officers behind the proverbial “blue wall of silence.”

How brutal the police are depends on the country. Some places are worse than others. But data reported by CNN in a June 2020 article shows that cops in my country, the US, are among the worst.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury For Economic Policy under Ronald Reagan and former associate editor of the “Wall Street Journal” summed it up best in a 2013 article:

“At the state and local level every American faces brutal armed psychopaths known as the police.The ‘law and order’ conservatives and the ‘compassionate’ liberals stand silent while police psychopaths brutalize children and grand mothers, murder double amputees in wheelchairs, break into the wrong homes, murder the family dogs, and terrify the occupants, pointing their automatic assault weapons in the faces of small children…If a person Googles ‘police brutality videos, he will discover that there are more videos that can be watched in a lifetime.”

Dr. Roberts isn’t exaggerating. Here are some examples:

March 14, 2005: a five-year-old girl was arrested and handcuffed by three cops for throwing a tantrum at her school in St. Petersburg, Fla. The whole disgusting incident along with the child’s screams were captured on video. If you acted up in class when I went to school you were sent to the principal’s office, given detention, or your parents were called. This and similar acts of child abuse are not unique events as reported in a 2013 article published in Mother Jones.

November 22, 2014: Tamir Rice, age 12 was killed by policeman Timothy Loehmann in Cleveland Ohio. Loehmann and training officer Frank Garmback were responding to a call about a guy pointing a gun at people. Turns out the weapon was a pellet gun and was tucked in Rice’s waistband when the cops pulled up, Loehmann got out the car and shot the kid. As the video shows, there was no reason for the cop to draw his gun. Loehman was fired, but no charges were brought against him. It also turned out that Loehmann had previously resigned from another police department rather than get fired. The other police department was going to fire him because he lacked the emotional stability to be a police officer. In June 2020, the peer review journal Nature reported that “officers who are fired for misconduct are frequently rehired.” Obviously, a practice that needs to end.

Cops Shooting family dogs has become an epidemic according to a 2019 article in Counterpunch and it doesn’t have to be a vicious dog. Friendly dogs, and even little dogs are all fair game. For example, a sheriff’s deputy shot a chihuahua, a tiny dog that usually weighs less than five pounds, for barking too much. The dog survived, but her jaw was shattered and had to eat out of a feeding tube. This story was also reported in the Washington Post. In this case the cop was fired, but usually nothing happens because cops can claim, as they do with humans, that they felt threatened so they had to shoot and the courts have upheld this nonsensical reasoning. Why do cops think that their safety is more important than the safety of the public? Imagine if firefighters thought this way and refused to rescue people from burning buildings.

July 5, 2011: Kelly Thomas, a homeless man diagnosed with schizophrenia, was beaten to death by three cops in Fullerton, CA. It was later described as “one of the worst beatings in (US) history.” The bones in Thomas’ face were broken, he choked on his own blood, and compression of the thorax made it impossible for him to breathe normally which deprived his brain of oxygen. He died five days later. The cops were charged with second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter—they were found not guilty in spite of a video of the beating which can be watched on CNN’s website.

Just the facts

A 2016 study in the American Journal of Public Health reported that each year 100,000 people are treated in hospital emergency departments for nonfatal injuries inflicted by police and from 2005-2012, 1,552 people were killed by police in 16 states alone. But as reported by the BBC back in 2016, “Official data on the number of people killed by the police turns out to be remarkably unreliable.” And grossly underreported according to a 2021 study published in The Lancet.

Armies and other factions like constables, slave patrols in the South, the Texas Rangers etc. have always performed some police actions over the centuries. But the first modern police force as we know it today, the “Bobbies,” were created in England by Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850) in 1829. Bobbie is a nickname for Robert. In 1838 my country created the first police force in Boston MA. In 1845 New York City created the NYPD. Today, virtually every recognized country has a police force.

The US has the world’s third largest police force behind China and India. There are over over 900,000 cops in about 18,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. And that’s not even counting the several hundred thousand civilian personnel who also work in these agencies.

We have municipal police, county police, state police, federal police, transit police, college campus police, elementary, middle and high school police, and housing police. We have cops patrolling in cars, vans, trucks, and helicopters. We have cops on motorcycles, on horseback, on boats, on bicycles, and on foot. But do our gargantuan in-your-face-all-over-the-place police forces reduce crime?

For a one year period, 1972-1973, a study on the effectiveness of police presence reducing crime was conducted in Kansas City, Missouri. It was called the “Kansas City preventive patrol experiment.” The study can be read in detail here. It involved three different police beats in the city. One area received the normal level of police patrols, in another police patrols were doubled—sometimes tripled. In the third area routine police patrols were eliminated entirely. Officers only went into the area when called. Result: no difference in crime rates in any of the three sections of the city. The presence of police and the lack of police didn’t matter.

A November 2021 study by Washington University School of Law concluded:

“Day-to-day policing has remarkably little to do with crime, despite public perception to the contrary. The vast majority of police time is spent on noncriminal functions such as health, transportation, and public order…A recent survey of several cities who self-reported time spent by police revealed that only four percent of police time was spent working on violent crime. The bulk of police time was spent on calls about noncriminal matters…Most individuals who commit offenses are never held accountable for the crimes they commit.”

If cops spend so little time fighting crime why do we have so many of them? Why are cops at road construction sites just standing around or sitting in their cars? Why are cops used to direct traffic—especially on quieter streets? An elderly retired person with a handheld sign could do this. Why do cops usually show up for medical emergencies? Why are SWAT teams, originally created in the 1960s to handle violent crisis situations like like hostage taking and mass shootings, breaking into homes and businesses (no-knock raids) to bust up poker games, terrorize doctors for practicing alternative medicine, crack down on unlicensed barber shops, and serve petty warrants? SWAT raids have skyrocketed from around 3,000 per year in 1980 to as many as 80,000 a year in 2015.

The way I see it, one of the reasons for cops doing things that civilians could be doing and enforcing victimless crime laws is that we have too many cops so they have to invent stuff for them to do in order to justify their phony baloney jobs. But the main reason is to hide their true nature.

What the police really are

The police are first and foremost a standing army—they are professional soldiers.

It doesn’t matter if a cop is black or white, male or female. Once they put on that badge race and gender disappear. They become automatons of the state—trained to obey and trained to kill. The problem isn’t, as some argue, that there aren’t enough minority and women officers, or that not enough policemen come from the communities they work in, or that their education and training is inadequate: the problem is the police force itself. Like all professional soldiers, cops develop an us vs them mentality. Due to power that they wield which places them above and separate from the people, they become ticking time bombs waiting to explode.

Cops have always been brutal, corrupt, and oppressive. Anyone who doesn’t know this is either ignorant of history or delusional. To believe that a few reforms will stop police forces from behaving like every standing army that has ever existed throughout history is magical thinking.

In many ways our modern police forces are like the Praetorian Guard of the ancient Roman Empire. Praetorian Guardsmen didn’t fight in wars like the regular army nor endure its hardships. Instead, they were the Emperor’s private henchmen, carrying out whatever whims he dictated. But eventually the Emperors also feared them. During their 300 year reign of terror they assassinated 13 Roman Emperors and in some cases auctioned off the imperial throne to the highest bidder. The power of the Emperor depended on their good will.

In the same way, today’s cops enforce a litany of unjust laws and regulations that serve the interests of corrupt politicians and the special interest groups that finance them. Policemen are the hired thugs of the rich and powerful who rule this world. Wealthy people have always needed large military/police forces to protect what they have from the have-nots.

Police forces do not serve the interests of the poor and middle-class. Performing some protective functions doesn’t change the fact that their real purpose is to stifle dissent, to keep us in line, not to protect us. In cases like Warren v. District of Columbia, 1981 and Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 2005, the courts ruled that the police are under no obligation to protect anyone. “…the duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large.” For individual citizens, “no specific legal duty exists.”

My country’s Founding Fathers knew what it was like to be oppressed by a standing army which is why many of them were opposed to creating one. In addition to the great principles of liberty enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers also listed their grievances against the King of England which includes condemnation of the British troops who occupied the colonies. It states:

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance…He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws…For quartering large bodies of troops among us: For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:”

Sounds a like our modern police forces doesn’t it?

There are some who argue that the police aren’t soldiers and thus are not a standing army. In the 2011 case of Mitchell v. City of Henderson in Nevada, police demanded that Mitchell allow them to use his home for a stakeout regarding domestic violence at a neighbor’s house. Mitchell refused and the police broke down his door, abused him and his dog, and arrested him and his father. The Mitchells rightly argued that the police violated the Third Amendment to the US Constitution which prohibits the quartering of soldiers without the owner’s consent. But Federal District Judge Andrew Gordon ruled that policemen are not soldiers and thus did not violate the Third Amendment.

Judge Gordon’s ruling is beyond absurd. Most cops wear uniforms, they have military ranks like sergeant and captain, and since the 1990s have been armed to the teeth with military equipment supplied free of charge by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. This kind of militarization doesn’t only apply to American cops, but to police forces worldwide. In addition to tanks, attack drones, grenade launchers, etc., modern police in many parts of the world are clad in an array of body armor that makes them look like Mutant Ninja Turtles. So, obviously, the police are soldiers. A standing army is a standing army no matter what you call it. No amount of Orwellian “DoubleSpeak” can change the obvious.

In 1776, American Founding Father Samuel Adams (1722-1802) warned us about “DoubleSpeak” long before George Orwell (1903-1950) did in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four:

“How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!”

Reforming the police won’t work

Better police training and putting limits on their power will save lives. There is no doubt about that.

One of the biggest problems with American cops is that they are trained to shoot first and ask questions later. According to a 2015 article in the Daily Kos, one of the architects of this mentality is Dr. William J. Lewinski, a psychologist and founder of Force Science Institute who trains police forces nationwide. He also charges a thousand dollars an hour to appear in court as an expert witness for cops who kill people. The Daily Kos reported that he will justify police killing people even if they were unarmed and even if they were shot in the back.

The ideology of people like Lewinski has caused the death of countless innocent people, such as 14-year-old Valentina Orellana-Peralta last December in a Los Angeles, CA clothing store. The New York Post reported that LAPD cops accidentally killed Valentina because a guy was running amok in the store assaulting customers with a bicycle lock. That’s all he had. Instead of just disarming the guy, the stupid cops open fire killing the guy which was completely unnecessary. And even more tragic, a stray bullet hit Valentina in the chest while she and her mother were hiding in a dressing room.

In contrast, here is a 2011 video of British police disarming a man with a machete without guns and without killing him.

 

Another problem with the police is that they are rarely punished for abusing and killing people as reported in a January 2021 article by the American Bar Association and an August 2020 report by Amnesty International. The reasons for this are police unions along with disastrous court rulings and state laws that give them way too much leeway as well as special rights like “qualified immunity.” Under this US Supreme Court concoction cops and other government agents are shielded from liability even when they break the law.

Do away with qualified immunity and limit police unions to negotiating better pay, medical, and pension benefits only. Federal and state laws need to be passed that will put cops in jail for 10-20 years without parole if they physically abuse or accidentally kill someone. If they intentionally murder someone they should get life in prison without parole.

If a cop even verbally abuses someone they should lose their job. And any cop who arrests or threatens a citizen for filming him or her should go to prison for at least 10 years. Don’t forget, cops have always abused people. But it is only since cell phone cameras that so many of their egregious acts of tyranny have been exposed for all the world to see.

And ponder this: Why do we call policemen “officer?” Does that make the rest of us privates? It would seem so. As is the case in the military, we are not permitted to disobey the officer, strike the officer, talk back to the officer, or to question the officer’s authority. If we do, we can be arrested, beaten, jailed, and executed. This must be changed. We must do away with laws like resisting arrest and eluding which allows the police to trump up charges. We also need to demilitarize them and take away their army surplus equipment and weapons of war.

In spite of all I just said, reforming the police won’t work because putting restraints on them goes out the window when they are weaponized against the people and execute their primary function: oppressing and terrorizing the civilian population. This danger will always remain as long as police forces exist.

Since COVID-19 none of us are safe

Traditionally, police forces have been used to control poor people and slaves and to target minority groups for abuse and harassment. But since COVID-19 all bets are off. It’s open season on everyone. Under the New World Order if globalists like Klaus Schwab get their way all of us will be poor and slaves. To quote Schwab’s 2015 World Economic Forum video:

“You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.”

In his 2007 Oscar-nominated documentary film “Sicko” which compared America’s broken for-profit healthcare system with other countries, Michael Moore showed how Europeans went out and protested when they didn’t like something. Moore declared that unlike the US, European governments were afraid of the people. How wrong he was. European governments merely blunted the sword of tyranny. But with COVID-19 it has been sharpened and police all over Europe have bared their sadistic fangs as can be seen here, here, and here.

There is an alternative

Are there alternatives to modern police forces? The answer is yes. The first step is to realize that there are too many police and too many laws. We need to get rid of all the unnecessary laws that clutter our statutes books, clog our courts, overcrowd our prisons, and ruin our economy. Since too many cops are violent personalities to begin with, the more power they have and the more laws they enforce, the more violent confrontations with civilians will occur. This is even more blatantly obvious today due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

Take Australia where COVID restrictions have been particularly draconian. Here is a video of a cop choking a woman on the street for not wearing a mask. Here is another video of a man being pinned to the ground by a whole gang of cops for not wearing a mask. Brave, aren’t they?

And let’s not forget about what happened last month in Canada after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act against the trucker protest in Ottawa. Videos of police abusing protesters can be seen here and here. Without a standing army, Trudeau probably would have had to back off and end the vaccine mandates.

So, why not replace modern police forces with a citizen police force–a militia that serves for 30 days and then rotates back into their regular jobs. It would be like jury duty. But service would be voluntary and rigorous training would be provided so police academies would remain. But the training methods would have to change to better serve the public, such as emphasizing peaceful resolution rather than arrest and punishment for every petty offense. And a big part of their training should be to refuse to obey any orders or laws that are illegal and or unconstitutional. They shouldn’t be carrying guns nor walk around in body armor, but have access to them if needed as is the case with the Bobbies in England along with other countries where the police don’t carry guns.

A small squad of full time detectives could remain as well as county sheriffs with a small staff to investigate and handle murders, robberies, and other types of crimes like arson and fraud. But they cannot be used by politicians to stifle dissent so it is important that their numbers be kept small and what they can and cannot do clearly defined.

A militia has always been considered inferior to professional full time soldiers. But since cops deal with civilians and don’t fight in wars, a militia would be far superior when it comes to law enforcement. They are also less likely to develop the us vs them mentality of professional soldiers, get drunk with power, nor blindly obey oppressive orders.

When large groups of people exercise their First Amendment rights to peacefully protest against government polices they should just be there to keep things peaceful rather than obey the orders of government officials. If rioting occurs the National Guard which is mostly made up of part time soldiers can handle it.

Other situations that involve domestic violence, people with mental health issues, homelessness, and substance abuse could be handled by “trained professional emergency response teams.” As reported in a 2020 article in Detroit Michigan’s WDIV Local 4 News. Unlike cops, who are trained to arrest and punish, these trained professionals would get people the help and protection that they need.

However, since some people can’t handle having any kind of power even for a little while, the laws and controls I mentioned previously still need to be put in place.

The Preamble of my country’s Constitution says that one of its purposes is to “establish Justice.” One of the ways to do this is to replace full time state and federal prosecutors with private lawyers who, like a citizen police force, would serve for 30 days and then rotate back into their regular practice. This would avoid the cozy relationship full time prosecutors have with cops and would put the emphasis on justice instead of winning cases to get ahead politically. And in Grand Jury proceedings defense attorneys should always be allowed to participate. Under the current closed system prosecutors can manipulate jurors to the point where, as the saying goes, it’s possible to “indict a ham sandwich.”

For those who think what I’m suggesting wouldn’t work, step back and look at the big picture. Don’t get locked into the idea that there is only one way to do things. I know how difficult this can be. Lots of people have family and friends who are cops myself included. I grew up with positive images of cops as portrayed on television like Sheriff Andy Taylor, Officer Joe Bolton, and officers Reed and Malloy of Adam-12. Then there are the movies that idealize violent rogue cops like Dirty Harry. All of these factors along with believing that the cops are there to protect them combined with constant media hype about the fear of crime makes juries unwilling to convict cops even when the crimes they commit are captured on video. Don’t give in to fear and prejudice folks. Don’t hero worship cops. See them for what they really are.

Never forget

More than anything else, COVID-19 has demonstrated that the biggest mistake this planet ever made was creating standing armies to function as police forces. They have become a cancer on democracy, a festering sore that is eating away our freedom, a putrid mass of corruption that sees the public as mere objects to be pushed around, abused, and exploited.

Obviously, there are good policemen out there who save lives and don’t abuse their authority. But I have come to the inescapable conclusion that the existence of a massive standing army that has nothing better to do than harass people for the most minor infractions and that stands ready to enforce any law no matter how unjust is inherently evil. Such a military institution must have a dehumanizing and brutalizing effect on all who participate in it. No one’s life, liberty or property is safe as long as these horrible armies exist.

But understand this: in an imperfect world such as ours there are no ideal solutions—there are only choices between lesser evils. No matter how hard we try, we can’t get rid of all the idiots and psychopaths in power. All we can do is minimize the damage that they can inflict. But they will always be with us, lurking in the shadows, spinning their spider web of deceit, always trying to get around protecting the rights of the people, waiting for the right moment, the right opportunity to strike. We must always keep a watchful eye on them and never let down our guard if we want to maintain our freedom.

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Michael J Talmo has been a professional writer for over 40 years and is strongly committed to the protection of civil liberties. He also did three music videos on COVID-19. The Masker Mash, COVID Vaccine Man, and The Corona Globalists. He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is by The Democracy Fund/Bob/Facebook

A No-fly Zone in Ukraine Will Backfire

March 2nd, 2022 by Aris Roussinos

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


In their desire to show solidarity with the embattled Ukrainians, the war in Ukraine has led some British commentators to slip the bounds of rationality — and none more so than the Chair of the Commons Defence Select Committee, Tobias Ellwood.

In a 2am tweet yesterday, Ellwood claimed:

“Pleased to see powerful voices joining my call for a humanitarian partial or total NO FLY ZONE. What scale of war crimes, what numbers of civilian deaths must we witness — before Nato, the most powerful military alliance in the world, is tasked to intervene?”

While wars are not won by manic late-night tweets, they can nevertheless create much damage, in this case the risk of significantly escalating the conflict through creating unrealistic expectations among the British media class about what should be done, and among the Ukrainians about what will be done.

As the Biden administration’s spokeperson Jen Psaki very sensibly observed last night in her attempt to persuade journalists to tone down their rhetoric, a No-Fly Zone “would essentially mean the US military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes. That is definitely escalatory. That would potentially put us in a place where we’re in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the President wants to do.”

As Psaki continued:

“We are not going to have a military war with Russia with US troops. And [Biden] thinks it’s vitally important… to be direct with the public about that.”

Aside from dramatically increasing the risk of a nuclear exchange with Russia, the idea of a No-Fly Zone is a non-starter for many reasons. Even if it did not cause Russia to heighten its preparedness for a nuclear strike against us — which is surely reason enough — shooting down Russian jets would make Nato a military party to the conflict in a way that could soon spiral out of control. This ought to go without saying, but apparently it is now necessary to explain to Britain’s political class in very simple terms.

If Nato jets are flying from airbases in Central and Southeastern Europe to shoot down Russian aircraft, not only would the jets become military targets for Russia’s air defences, but those bases would themselves then become likely targets for Russian military retaliation, along with the basing locations of Nato air defence systems covering Western Ukraine. For all their diplomatic support of Ukraine and their supply of vital munitions to Ukrainian forces, countries such as Poland, Romania and Bulgaria will naturally shy away from a course of action likely to lead to Russian air and missile strikes on their own territory.

When advocates of a No-Fly Zone in Syria demanded such a course of action, it was before Russia entered the Syrian war, when Syrian airbases could reasonably be put out-of-action by long-range missile strikes without any serious risk of retaliation. This is not the case with the Ukraine war: is Ellwood seriously advocating that we strike the airbases in Russia and Belarus from which Russian aircraft are deployed? If so, then he should be explicit about what he is calling for, and the consequences that will ensue.

In any case, Russia has so far refrained from utilising its vast air superiority against Ukraine, for the possible reasons outlined in this excellent RUSI essay; namely, the lack of guided munitions to strike targets without causing widespread civilian deaths, the poor coordination of Russian air defence systems deployed in Ukraine which may cause jets to be downed by friendly fire, and the relative inexperience of Russian pilots when faced with competent opponents.

Monday was the first day in which Russian jets were visible in the conflict, flying close air support missions over the Kharkiv front. The only meaningful Russian air activity so far has been the use of helicopters to land airborne forces at the Hostomel airbase outside Kyiv in the war’s opening phase, to create a staging ground or potential bridgehead for the coming assault on the capital, and the limited use of attack helicopters to destroy Ukrainian ground positions and vehicles moving along the roads in convoy.

Instead, the most dreadful Russian bombardments of the war so far have been by ground-based artillery and long-range missile systems against the besieged city of Kharkiv on Monday and yesterday, causing great destruction and terrible civilian casualties among the city’s mostly Russian-speaking population, as well as on Ukrainian military installations elsewhere in the country.

The Russian way of war is based on heavy artillery barrages to soften up defences for a ground assault, unlike the Western approach in which aerial bombardment has become the dominant tool. A No-Fly Zone would do nothing to prevent this outcome, though rhetoric demanding one may well play a role in encouraging Russian decision-makers to intensify their artillery bombardment in search of a swift and overwhelming victory — one which would cause vast numbers of civilian casualties.

Our aim at this point should be to dissuade Putin as far as we can from deploying the artillery assets he has so far barely used, not in encouraging him to go all out before a Western response can realistically be organised. We do not want Putin to turn Kyiv into Nineties Grozny or Aleppo, and over-promising and under-delivering military support is an almost guaranteed way to speed up this outcome.

Perhaps Ellwood and others have had their expectations of what is possible or desirable raised by the NATO No-Fly Zone against Libya in 2011. Cautiously agreed to by Russia at the UN Security Council, it swiftly evolved into a close air support campaign against Libyan ground forces which allowed the rebels to defeat Gaddafi  — an outcome which enraged Putin, and shaped his attitude to the following Syrian conflict.

But Gaddafi’s decrepit Libya is not Putin’s Russia and such a campaign is simply not achievable. Does Ellwood want us to strike Russian tanks and artillery in Ukraine? Again, he should be honest about what he is calling for and about what the Russian response would look like.

We should sigh with relief that Johnson yesterday uled out the No-Fly Zone idea that America has already dismissed, telling a Ukrainian journalist, with painful but realistic frankness, that “Unfortunately the implication of a [No-Fly Zone] is that the UK would be engaged in shooting down Russian planes … and be in direct combat” with Russia, and with consequences “truly difficult to control.”

Britain, and other Nato countries are already doing about as much as we can, by supplying Ukraine with the munitions making the Russian advance so costly, and by imposing great financial and diplomatic costs on Russia for Putin’s invasion. Beyond this, there is little more we can do other than encourage Russia towards meaningful negotiations before Kyiv is encircled and Ukraine’s bargaining hand is dramatically weakened.

Unless he has genuinely taken leave of his senses, Ellwood’s “hold me back!” posturing is possible purely because he knows the course of action he is calling for is already out of the question. He can raise the stakes in this dangerous and irresponsible manner because it wins him attention for the forthcoming Tory leadership contest, and because there are no negative consequences for him doing so.

That must change: the risk of escalation is too great for this rhetoric to be permitted at so dangerous a moment for Britain and Europe. The Conservative party must get a grip on Ellwood and others’ irresponsible late-night interventions in an already fevered online discourse: the whip has been withdrawn for far less.

Nothing good will come of such insane talk, for Britain, or most acutely, for the Ukrainians seemingly about to suffer a devastating campaign of artillery bombardment. Raising their expectations with false hopes at this stage of the war will not help them. But raising Russia’s threat calculus may harm them a great deal, at a time when Putin seems already poised to take his gloves off after a so-far half-hearted campaign. That is too great a price to pay for Ellwood’s desire to raise his profile — and the party needs to step in soon.

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Aris Roussinos is a former war reporter and a contributing editor at UnHerd.

Featured image is from UnHerd

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We are at a dangerous crossroads. What is happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III Scenario. The use of nuclear weapons are contemplated.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.

Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


So a congregation of NATO’s top brass ensconced in their echo chambers target the Russian Central Bank with sanctions and expect what? Cookies?

What they got instead was Russia’s deterrence forces bumped up to “a special regime of duty” – which means the Northern and Pacific fleets, the Long-Range Aviation Command, strategic bombers and the entire Russian nuclear apparatus on maximum alert.

One Pentagon general very quickly did the basic math on that, and mere minutes later, a Ukrainian delegation was dispatched to conduct negotiations with Russia in an undisclosed location in Gomel, Belarus.

Meanwhile, in the vassal realms, the German government was busy “setting limits to warmongers like Putin” – quite a rich undertaking considering that Berlin never set any such limits for western warmongers who bombed Yugoslavia, invaded Iraq, or destroyed Libya in complete violation of international law.

While openly proclaiming their desire to “stop the development of Russian industry,” damage its economy, and “ruin Russia” – echoing American edicts on Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela and others in the Global South – the Germans could not possibly recognize a new categorical imperative.

They were finally liberated from their WWII culpability complex by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Germany is finally free to support and weaponize neo-Nazis out in the open all over again – now of the Ukrainian Azov battalion variety.

To get the hang of how these NATO sanctions will “ruin Russia,” I asked for the succinct analysis of one of the most competent economic minds on the planet, Michael Hudson, author, among others, of a revised edition of the must-read Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.

Hudson remarked how he is “simply numbed over the near-atomic escalation of the US.” On the confiscation of Russian foreign reserves and cut-off from SWIFT, the main point is “it will take some time for Russia to put in a new system, with China. The result will end dollarization for good, as countries threatened with ‘democracy’ or displaying diplomatic independence will be afraid to use US banks.”

This, Hudson says, leads us to “the great question: whether Europe and the Dollar Bloc can buy Russian raw materials – cobalt, palladium, etc, and whether China will join Russia in a minerals boycott.”

Hudson is adamant that

“Russia’s Central Bank, of course, has foreign bank assets in order to intervene in exchange markets to defend its currency from fluctuations. The ruble has plunged. There will be new exchange rates. Yet it’s up to Russia to decide whether to sell its wheat to West Asia, that needs it; or to stop selling gas to Europe via Ukraine, now that the US can grab it.”

About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

I’m going to de-dollarize myself

So the US itself, in another massive strategic blunder, will speed up de-dollarization. As the managing director of Bocom International Hong Hao told the Global Times, with energy trade between Europe and Russia de-dollarized, “that will be the beginning of the disintegration of dollar hegemony.”

It’s a refrain the US administration was quietly hearing last week from some of its own largest multinational banks, including notables like JPMorgan and Citigroup.

A Bloomberg article sums up their collective fears:

“Booting Russia from the critical global system – which handles 42 million messages a day and serves as a lifeline to some of the world’s biggest financial institutions – could backfire, sending inflation higher, pushing Russia closer to China, and shielding financial transactions from scrutiny by the west. It might also encourage the development of a SWIFT alternative that could eventually damage the supremacy of the US dollar.”

Those with IQs over 50 in the European Union (EU) must have understood that Russia simply could not be totally excluded from SWIFT, but maybe only a few of its banks: after all, European traders depend on Russian energy.

From Moscow’s point of view, that’s a minor issue. A number of Russian banks are already connected to China’s CIPS system. For instance, if someone wants to buy Russian oil and gas with CIPS, payment must be in the Chinese yuan currency. CIPS is independent of SWIFT.

Additionally, Moscow already linked its SPFS payment system not only to China but also to India and member nations of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). SPFS already links to approximately 400 banks.

With more Russian companies using SPFS and CIPS, even before they merge, and other maneuvers to bypass SWIFT, such as barter trade – largely used by sanctioned Iran – and agent banks, Russia could make up for at least 50 percent in trade losses.

The key fact is that the flight from the US-dominated western financial system is now irreversible across Eurasia – and that will proceed in tandem with the internationalization of the yuan.

Russia has its own bag of tricks

Meanwhile, we’re not even talking yet about Russian retaliation for these sanctions. Former President Dmitry Medvedev already gave a hint: everything, from exiting all nuclear arms deals with the US to freezing the assets of western companies in Russia, is on the table.

So what does the “Empire of Lies” want? (Putin terminology, on Monday’s meeting in Moscow to discuss the response to sanctions.)

In an essay published this morning,  titled America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century: the MIC, OGAM and FIRE conquer NATO, Michael Hudson makes a series of crucial points, starting with how “NATO has become Europe’s foreign policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.”

He outlines the three oligarchies in control of US foreign policy:

First is the military-industrial complex, which Ray McGovern memorably coined as MICIMATT (military industrial Congressional intelligence media academia think tank).

Hudson defines their economy base as “monopoly rent, obtained above all from its arms sales to NATO, to West Asian oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus.”

Second is the oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM). Their aim is “to maximize the price of energy and raw materials so as to maximize natural resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major US priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany threatened to link the western European and Russian economies together.”

Third is the “symbiotic” Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which Hudson defines as “the counterpart to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents.”

As he describes these three rentier sectors that completely dominate post-industrial finance capitalism at the heart of the western system, Hudson notes how “Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (namely, the Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).”

Hudson shows how “the most pressing US strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices. In addition to creating profits and stock market gains for US companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy.”

He warns how food prices will rise “headed by wheat.” (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.) From a Global South perspective, that’s a disaster: “This will squeeze many West Asian and Global South food-deficient countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.”

As for blocking Russian raw materials exports, “this threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel, aluminum.”

And that leads us, once again, to the heart of the matter: “The long-term dream of the US new Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its managerial kleptocracy seeking to cash in their privatizations in western stock markets.”

That’s not going to happen. Hudson clearly sees how “the most enormous unintended consequence of US foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and countries along the Belt and Road initiative.”

Let’s confiscate some technology

Now compare all of the above with the perspective of a central European business tycoon with vast interests, east and west, and who treasures his discretion.

In an email exchange, the business tycoon posed serious questions about the Russian Central Bank support for its national currency, the ruble,

“which according to US planning is being destroyed by the west through sanctions and currency wolf packs who are exposing themselves by selling rubles short. There is really almost no amount of money that can beat the dollar manipulators against the ruble. A 20 percent interest rate will kill the Russian economy unnecessarily.”

The businessman argues that the chief effect of the rate hike “would be to support imports that should not be imported. The fall of the ruble is thus favorable to Russia in terms of self-sufficiency. As import prices rise, these goods should start to be produced domestically. I would just let the ruble fall to find its own level which will for a while be lower than natural forces would permit as the US will be driving it lower through sanctions and short selling manipulation in this form of economic war against Russia.”

But that seems to tell only part of the story. Arguably, the lethal weapon in Russia’s arsenal of responses has been identified by the head of the Center for Economic Research of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements (IGSO), Vasily Koltashov: the key is to confiscate technology – as in Russia ceasing to recognize US rights to patents.

In what he qualifies as “liberating American intellectual property,” Koltashov calls for passing a Russian law on “friendly and unfriendly states. If a country turns out to be on the unfriendly list, then we can start copying its technologies in pharmaceuticals, industry, manufacturing, electronics, medicine. It can be anything – from simple details to chemical compositions.” This would require amendments to the Russian constitution.

Koltashov maintains that “one of the foundations of success of American industry was copying of foreign patents for inventions.” Now, Russia could use “China’s extensive know-how with its latest technological production processes for copying western products: the release of American intellectual property will cause damage to the United States to the amount of $10 trillion, only in the first stage. It will be a disaster for them.”

As it stands, the strategic stupidity of the EU beggars belief. China is ready to grab all Russian natural resources – with Europe left as a pitiful hostage of the oceans and of wild speculators. It looks like a total EU-Russia split is ahead – with little trade left and zero diplomacy.

Now listen to the sound of champagne popping all across the MICIMATT.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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

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Ukraine’s willingness to engage in a war with Washington’s blessing, has industry analysts worried that the conflict could impact the global chip industry and exacerbate current chip shortages. The US government has warned that the global chip supply chain remained weak.

According to research firm Techcet, Ukraine supplies more than 90 percent of America’s semiconductor-grade neon – a gas integral to the lasers used for microchips.

Russia also supplies 35 percent of the US’s palladium supply, a rare metal often used to manufacture semiconductors.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said “the semiconductor industry has a diverse set of key materials and gases, so we do not believe there are immediate supply disruption risks related to Russia and Ukraine,” but the long-term impact of the war remains unclear.

If the conflict continues, it could place pressure on an already struggling supply chain as the demand for microchips has increased across the board. Companies are increasingly seeing a demand for AI used in machine learning training, and the market is predicted to grow at over 50 percent annually across all computing categories for the next few years.

US Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo highlighted that the median inventory of chips fell from 40 days in 2019 to less than five days in 2022 with manufacturing running at more than 90 percent utilization.

There is already a shortage of legacy logic chips used in automobiles and medical devices as well as analog chips used in power management, image sensors, radio frequency and other applications. The war in Ukraine could greatly impact the shortage.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


An EU plan to send fighter jets to Ukraine appears to be falling apart as each country that was reportedly going to deliver the planes is now denying involvement.

The plan announced Monday by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrel was meant to give Ukraine old Russian-made MiG-29 and Su-24 fighter jets, which Ukraine’s pilots are already trained to fly. Poland, Bulgaria, and Slovakia were reportedly lined up to transfer the planes, but officials from each country denied the plan.

“Slovakia will not provide fighter jets to Ukraine,” the Slovak Foreign Ministry told Newsweek on Tuesday. Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov said Monday that Bulgaria doesn’t have enough warplanes to guard its own airspace, let alone enough to send to Ukraine.

On Monday, Ukraine’s parliament claimed Poland planned on giving Ukraine MiG-29 fighters, but Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki denied the plans. “Poland doesn’t have such plans,” Mateusz said on Tuesday.

An unnamed EU diplomat told Politico that some EU countries were “outraged” after Borrel announced that the bloc would be giving Ukraine warplanes since his announcement came shortly after Russia’s nuclear forces were put on high alert.

“Making such announcements on the same day that Russian President Vladimir Putin announced to put his nuclear deterrence force on ‘high alert’ risks to escalate the situation further,” the diplomat said.

While the EU isn’t sending fighter jets, the US and its European allies have been busy pledging to send new weapons to Ukraine, including Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles. Ukraine has asked for the Western powers to establish a “no-fly zone,” but the request has been ruled out by the US and NATO since it would mean direct military confrontation with Russia.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


At this moment, the events in Ukraine are shrouded in the cloud of smoke that characterizes war propaganda. Official positions, rather than clarifying facts and reporting the progress of negotiations, aim to crush their opponents’ arguments and convince public opinion to back one side of the dispute.

To understand the role of each of the adversaries, what each of them wants, and how far they can go, we must explore the origins of what is now an extreme conflict.

Background

Most recently, it all started with two goals shared by the European Union and the United States. One is the economic expansion of the EU (led by its major powers, particularly Germany) to the east. The so-called Eastern Partnership aimed to draw into the European orbit countries as diverse as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine – all on Russia’s southern and western borders.

A second purpose is military expansion of the Western bloc, using NATO to complete the encirclement of Russia’s borders. And it is especially here that the interest of the U.S. as the hegemonic power, in this case, has led to a marriage with the economic ambitions of the EU.

A setback

When it comes to Ukraine, the Eastern Partnership suffered a setback when Russia offered economic advantages to the then-Kiev government which thwarted European advances. The EU and U.S. response was the 2014 coup d’état, backed by Ukrainian fascist militias, which brought a “collaborating” president to power, followed by a bloody persecution of the Russian-origin population.

In response, the Russian-populated Donbass region on the border with Russia refused to accept the authority of the new reactionary regime in Kiev. Instead, movements within Lugansk and Donetsk formed themselves into two, what they called “people’s republics” – Lugansk and Donetsk, with Moscow’s support.

Unfulfilled agreements

Following the Minsk agreements, supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), military hostilities ceased. Ukraine (Kiev) committed itself to establishing a regime of autonomy for those republics within the Ukrainian state. However, neither the Ukrainian regime, nor the OSCE, nor even less the EU and the U.S., agreed to abide by the agreement. On the contrary, Ukraine has been armed and instructed to repress the resistance of the two republics, which have been branded as “separatists.”

Russia’s complaints

This is where one of the immediate origins of the escalation we are witnessing can be found. Russia perceived that the crushing of the Donbass Republics would signal the integration of Ukraine into NATO and the placement of troops and weapons on one more of its borders, with the aggravating factor of limiting its access to the Black Sea. This is why Russia’s demands center on negotiating a security agreement with the U.S. (and, inherently, NATO) that will halt the expansion of Western powers to the east and establish lasting terms of coexistence.

Who will benefit from a climate of war?

The efforts of the French president and the German chancellor to reach a conciliatory political agreement with Russia, however incipient, are not at all to the liking of the U.S. government, which fears that the EU will adopt a halfway position between the Russians and the U.S.

Biden’s campaign has therefore sought to quash all avenues for negotiation other than those he himself promotes. The U.S. even contradicted the statements of the Ukrainian leaders themselves, who called for appeasement and criticized the exaggeration of the Western propaganda. Several times, the “invasion” of the Ukraine has been said to be “imminent” (with a set date and everything), something that only makes sense for those who want to exacerbate a climate of war by force. The latest statement by the pathetic Biden, on Feb. 18, is yet another example of this.

Strategy and business

This climate of “imminent” war serves the interests of the U.S. alone. In two senses. One, which can be called strategic in nature, consists in keeping Russia under political and military pressure, while further subordinating the EU to U.S. political designs. The old specter of “the Russians are coming!” not only throws the blame for the tension on Russia, but naturally puts the European populations on the defensive and receptive to “protective aid” from the U.S. and NATO.

A second dimension is pure economic warfare. The U.S. wants to sell its fracked shale gas, which is accumulating without customers as production increases, and nothing could accomplish this better than ruining the Russian natural gas business that has supplied half of Europe for decades. This would be of double advantage to the U.S.: It makes good money (moreover, U.S. gas is much more expensive than Russian gas) and keeps Europe in a greater economic dependence on its transatlantic “ally.”

‘Liberating’ Europe

Politicians and commentators repeat at every turn the argument of “freeing” Germany and Europe from energy dependence on Russia. But they all take dependence on the U.S. for granted. They do not even see that, comparing the two dependencies, Germany and the EU are much better able to deal on an equal footing with Russia, whose economic strength is still weak, than to compete with the economic-political-military might of the U.S.

And it is this prospect of liberation – even a remote one, considering the umbilical link of European imperialism to Yankee imperialism – that puts U.S. power on alert and leads it to sabotage any initiative that goes in that direction.

Similar to Iraq

The recent declarations by the U.S. authorities recall the tone that preceded the invasion of Iraq: end of diplomacy, “unquestionable evidence” from the secret services, cancellation of the negotiation attempts made by third countries – all in order to demonstrate that the only remaining option is military force.

Everything leads one to believe, therefore, that the U.S. plan – with the usual henchman, be he Tony Blair or Boris Johnson – will be to take the conflict with Russia as far as possible, provoking it to the point of forcing it into military intervention. This would be the ideal situation to show the world just how “evil” Putin is and to quash any European attempts to conduct its own policy and seek compromises with Russia.

Different conditions 

The conditions, however, are different from those of 2003. The theater of the conflict is Europe and not Iraq, the adversary is Russia and not a weakened [Iraqi] army, collateral damage would affect not the Middle East but the U.S.’s own allies.

On the other hand, Merkel’s statements, when Trump showed his face, that the U.S. could not be trusted and that Europe would have to take care of itself, did not relax U.S. power, because the statements hold good beyond Trump’s term.

The same with current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s statement, after conferring with Putin, that European security cannot be achieved against Russia – something that clashes with U.S. and NATO plans. These are mere statements, to be sure, but they show that the typical conflict between imperialist powers tends to come to the fore whenever a major crisis arises, as in this case.

Another proxy war

For the U.S., the solution then will be to subcontract the provocation: to push the Ukrainian army (where fascist militias have a strong presence) against the Donbass republics, subjecting the Russian populations to violence like that committed in 2014. This is what is happening with the weaponizing of Ukrainian forces and encouraging them to attack opposing positions in Lugansk and Donetsk.

While issuing constant warnings about the provocations that the Russians are allegedly preparing, in order to justify an invasion, the U.S. intelligence services are certainly not standing still – and it is legitimate to think, given their known practice, that they are themselves mounting the provocations that serve their purposes.

What does U.S. hope to gain?

Neither the Ukrainians nor the Europeans have any interest in a war at home or on their doorstep, which would contribute to plunging the Continent into a crisis of incalculable dimensions. Only the U.S. can see advantage in such a situation. What do they expect to gain from it?

  • To add pretexts for tightening economic sanctions against Russia, calling on all of Europe to join the campaign, just as they did with Cuba, Venezuela or Iran.
  • To constrain Russia’s political movements and business dealings in Europe and thereby block the influence of the Russia-China alliance in the West, including the expansion of the New Silk Road.
  • Resign Europeans to accept and pay for the strengthening of NATO, and to put aside ambitions of “strategic independence” – an idea that clashes with dependence on the U.S. – which the Germans and the French have been timidly talking about.
  • To dig even deeper the trench that separates the imperialist troika (U.S.-EU-Japan) from the China-Russia alliance, with the perspective that the future will bring more and more serious conflicts.

Against NATO

The willingness of the President of the Republic and the Portuguese government to follow the orders of the U.S. and NATO, without a trace of distancing; the prompt sending of military personnel to conflict zones; the media campaign to feed the climate of war and demonize the Russians – all repeat the practice that has always guided the behavior of the Portuguese authorities.

But the unfortunate example of the Lajes summit – which preceded the attack on Iraq in 2003 that was responsible for the destruction of the country, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and millions of refugees – deserves a special mention. More recently, the withdrawal from Afghanistan brought to light the debacle caused by 20 years of occupation in which Portuguese troops were also involved.

Whining about what should have been done, but wasn’t, is of little use – the issue is the involvement, as servants, in the war adventures of the United States. This is where we have to start: It makes perfect sense and is entirely up to date to renew a public opinion campaign for Portugal’s withdrawal from NATO and for the dissolution of the Alliance, which will leave the Portuguese authorities with their hands tied.

New confrontations on the horizon

We have entered an era in which the world is arming for war, taking a balance of forces. The euphoria of globalization, free trade, and the most festive liberalism has come to an end. The retreat of the great powers to their national strongholds, the protectionism with which they shield their economies, and their frantic search for alliances are signs that both the economic expansion of the past decades and the seemingly peaceful coexistence that accompanied it have come to an end.

Now is the time that world powers join forces and form blocs. These are preparations for a confrontation on a global scale to decide who will have supremacy in the world market.

It is in this concrete confrontation that the left has to play its distinct role – starting by denouncing the hegemonic and rlike goals of imperialism, attacking the governments and the media that support them, and striving to create a movement of opinion that lays the foundations of an independent, people-based political current. If it succeeds, it will make an important contribution so that the protest movements spread throughout the world move from the dispersion and defensiveness in which they find themselves to a progressive convergence of efforts and an offensive posture.

*

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Raposo is editor of the Portuguese website jornalmudardevida.net, which published this article on Feb. 20.

Translation by John Catalinotto.

Featured image is from Mudar Devida

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


The Black Alliance for Peace emphatically declares that the conflict in the Ukraine emerges from the ceaseless and single-minded drive of the U.S., NATO, and the European Union for global economic and political dominance.

The genesis of the current crisis, as BAP has previously asserted, is in the 2014 US-backed coup of Ukraine’s democratically elected government – and in the determination of the U.S./EU/NATO “axis of domination” to convert Ukraine into a heavily-militarized NATO member nation, lurking on the border of the Russian Federation.

NATO’s expansion has been a well-known security concern for Russia since 1999, when Bill Clinton inaugurated the official process of growing NATO’s membership to include former nations of the Warsaw Pact. Today, as the conflict escalates, NATO’s expansion has become an existential threat to African people and all oppressed and colonized people around the world. For peace to arrive in the region and in the world, the expansion of this “axis of domination” must be halted and NATO must be dismantled.

But what is peace? For BAP, peace is not merely the absence of conflict. Peace means the achievement, through popular struggle and self-defense, of a world liberated from militarism and nuclear proliferation, imperialism and unjust war, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Indeed, the resurgence and celebration of Nazism in the Ukraine, as well as in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, represents a global consolidation of white supremacy as part of the project of imperialism. This consolidation also appears through invocations of and appeals to white, “civilized” nations and peoples and the entrenchment of an unabashedly racist pan-European world. Peace also means dismantling a military-industrial complex that is clearly profiting from endless war and intervention and reinvesting bloated “defense” budgets into education, health and child care, housing, and the battle against global warming. We need to dismantle NATO for the same reasons we need to abolish the police: both serve the interests of capital and empire at the expense of the global working classes.

The Black Alliance for Peace is mindful of the loss of life in Ukraine, but also in Somalia, Yemen, and every nation suffering under NATO wars of domination. We offer our unwavering solidarity with the people of these places. As BAP Coordinating Committee member Rafiki Morris  argues:

“Our concern for the people of Ukraine must be added to our overarching concern for those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya; coups in Egypt, Honduras, Ukraine, Bolivia, Brazil;  subversion in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba; coups across the African continent with soldiers trained by AFRICOM.”

We note, for example, that as the U.S. condemned the military actions of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, its armed drones bombed Somalia. Moreover, as Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean were abandoned and mistreated in the Ukraine, the 200th deportation flight of the Biden administration sent 129 Haitians to Port-au-Prince, adding to the 21,000 already deported in one year.

To secure the interests of the Russian and Ukrainian people, there must be good faith negotiations between the Russian Federation, representatives of the peoples of Donbas, and the U.S.  The EU and the U.S. must end their continuous shipments of arms and other “lethal aid” to Ukraine. Ukraine and Russia must enter into serious discussions with the peoples of the Donbas in order to determine if the Minsk agreement, which was  unanimously approved by the United Nations Security Council in 2015, is still applicable.  And NATO must be disbanded.

A cloud of confusion has settled on many people, as the lusty calls for war with Russia grow louder and the propagandistic appeals to patriotism, racial nationalism, and the defense of “white civilization” intensify. For BAP, there is no confusion. The conflict in the Ukraine has only exposed the hypocrisy and contradictions of imperialism, war, and militarism – and the demand for peace means to fight against U.S. imperialism and the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination.

On this strategic focus, BAP says once again that there will be No Compromise and No Retreat!

*

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The Hypocrisy and Immorality of Sanctions

March 2nd, 2022 by Kim Petersen

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


“I friggin’ hate war,” stammered Nicole, clenching her fists.

“Doesn’t everyone hate war?” asked Hiro.

He meant it as a rhetorical question. But Nicole retorted, “No. Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon and other weapon manufacturers like, er … looove war. Wall Street loves war. Blackwater, or whatever they are called now, love war. And so do the mercenaries.”

Hiro hadn’t meant “everyone” to literally mean “everyone.” But he knew his wording was imprecise.

“But one thing should come out of the Russia-Ukraine war… er” Nicole caught herself and reformulated her statement: “At least, one really good thing that is.”

Hiro stroked the three-day stubble on his chin and pondered what his clever blonde friend sitting at the opposite end of the fading chesterfield had stated.

“Hmm, okay, I give. What is the one really good thing?”

“It is as simple as what is good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Hiro tilted his head slightly to the right. “Not sure what you mean. If the Russians can invade another country, then everyone else can, too? But that’s not a good thing. Besides, the US already invades whichever country they want as long as that country can’t really fight back.”

“No. That’s not it. Look, if the world, ah …, I mean the US, Europe, and Japan are going to sanction Russia for warring, then by all rights, any country that attacks another country without UN Security Council approval should also be sanctioned.”

“Fat chance of that happening,” said Hiro. “That would mean Ukraine should have been sanctioned for shelling Donbass. The US and Turkey should be sanctioned for invading Syria. Israel would be in a permanent state of being sanctioned.”

“Exactly,” responded Nicole. “The world, er, US, EU, UK, and Japan will expose themselves as massive hypocrites if they continue to war.”

“But they already are hypocrites based on their actions against Russia and lack of action against other countries doing the same thing,” said Hiro, rubbing his chin again. “And the US only plays by its own rules. The ICC is for the US to ignore. The World Court is the same. The Rule of Law means law for the others, not for the US.”

“True,” nodded Nicole, brushing back with her hand a shock of hair that had cascaded over one eye.

“And the western media will twist the meanings and omit whatever info it so chooses,” added Hiro.

“True again, but people are starting to clue in. More and more people know the corporate media lies. Independent media is expanding. And hardly anyone watches friggin’ CNN these days. Joe Rogan blows them all out of the water.”

“And just look what happened to Joe,” grumbled Hiro.

“Hiroyuki, it doesn’t matter much because millions of people are listening to Joe and not his cancel culture critics.”

Hiro flinched imperceptibly. He preferred the shortened form of his name. It sounded to him more heroic.

“But isn’t this all whataboutism?”

“Maybe so,” said Nicole. “But more so, it is about the equality of nations, and the UN says this is the foundation of the Rule of Law.”

“Anyway, sanctions unless approved by the Security Council are illegal. So all the countries sanctioning Russia now are breaking international law,” said Hiro pushing his glasses back on his nose bridge.

“Right again.”

“And didn’t Madeleine Albright say it was okay to kill half-a-million Iraqi kids with sanctions?” asked Hiro.

“Yes, she did. What a scandalous moment of truth it was.”

“And doesn’t Foreign Affairs magazine call them sanctions-of-mass-destruction, the deadliest WMD?”

“Yep,” agreed Nicole, “And then there is the argument that sanctions are a declaration of war. Most definitely it is economic warfare.”

“So because the US has been sanctioning Russia since before the invasion of Ukraine, it has been at war with Russia the whole time, not to mention with China, Iran, North Korea, and so on.”

Nicole rolled her eyes. “Don’t forget Cuba. Sixty years of friggin’ sanctions. And why doesn’t the media tell us about all that?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Hiro answered anyway: “Because we are not part of that mainstream.”

*

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Kim Petersen is a scuba diver and former co-editor of the Dissident Voice newsletter. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Twitter: @kimpetersen.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

 

 

 


Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


Jimmy Carter’s National Security Council adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously bragged about having induced a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 by supporting Islamic fundamentalists with the goal of “giving the Soviets their Vietnam.”

The collateral damage of the war—the destruction of Afghanistan and growth of al-Qaeda—was inconsequential to the “grand chess-master,”[1] who told a reporter:

“what is more important to the history of the world? 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?”

Brzezinski died in May 2017, but his spirit lives on in the Biden administration which appears to have followed his blueprint, substituting Afghanistan with Ukraine.

Its strategy appears to have been to induce a Russian invasion of Ukraine with the goal of bogging Russia down into a quagmire while crippling its economy through sanctions that hold the prospect of bringing Vladimir Putin down.

The task is particularly urgent given

a) the growing geopolitical alliance between Russia and China which threatens to end the era of U.S. unipolar power definitively;

b) the growing financial crisis in the U.S. and West and prospect of economic decline or collapse.

Putin has been hated by the U.S. since he began to take back Russian control over Russia’s economy following a decade of privatization under his predecessor Boris Yeltsin that resulted in plunder by foreign capitalists and oligarchs tied to the West.

In February 2007, Putin gave a speech in Munich denouncing U.S. hyper-militarism, disdain for international law and its attitude of “might makes right,” which, he said, had left the rest of the world afraid.

Praised before in The New York Times as a “sober westernizing leader,” Putin subsequently became Public U.S. Enemy #1—a status enhanced when he confronted U.S. backed forces in Syria and saved the country from the fate of Libya and Iraq.[2]

Poking the Russian Bear One Too Many Times

The U.S. media leaves the impression that Putin invaded Ukraine based on his own diabolical whims, leaving out the entire back story.

Future historians will recognize that the U.S. provoked the current war by:

(1) Refusing to abide by Putin’s legitimate demand that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) not be expanded to Ukraine or anywhere further to Russia’s border—going against a promise made in 1990 by U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.”

Infographic: How NATO Expanded Eastwards | Statista

Source: statista.com

John J. Marsheimer of the University of Chicago noted that “my sense is that Putin…would not have invaded Ukraine if the Biden administration had given a written guarantee not to expand NATO into Ukraine,” and pledged to stop arming and training Ukraine’s military, which Biden refused to do.[3]

(2) Supporting the Maidan Coup and Ukraine’s War on Eastern Ukraine.

In February 2014, the Obama administration supported the Maidan Square insurrection that resulted in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych after he spurned an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan that came with conditions detrimental to Ukraine. The post-coup regime—led by billionaire Petro Poroshenko who has been indicted on treason charges—triggered a conflict with Russia when they invaded Donetsk and Luhansk provinces with U.S. backing after they voted to secede.

(3) Supporting Ukraine as it violated the Minsk peace ceasefire protocols.

On Monday February 21, Russia reported that it had captured a Ukrainian soldier and killed five others after they crossed into Russian territory in Rostov, just over the border with Ukraine. Several hundred American mercenaries were reported to have arrived in Ukraine that week.

A group of men in clothing Description automatically generated with low confidence

American mercenary in Donbass [Source: wprost.pl]

Photojournalist Patrick Lancaster provided photographic evidence of Ukrainian army shelling of a school in the Donbass in violation of the Minsk peace agreements signed by both Ukraine and Russia.

Lancaster’s report is corroborated by Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) maps, which show that shelings violating ceasefire arrangements indeed were carried out mostly by the Ukrainian government.

Map Description automatically generated

Source: consortiumnews.com

A resident of the Kyivsky district of the city of Donetsk whom Lancaster interviewed, Zoya Tumanova, said that the Ukrainians had shelled her village often since 2015 and burned half of it down. She asked Lancaster: “when will it end, when will Putin come? When will he come to save us?”

Tumanova’s viewpoint contradicts the Biden administration’s narrative about the origins of the war, which unfortunately has been embraced by all ends of the political spectrum in the U.S.[4]

Map Description automatically generated

Map showing Ukrainian troops concentrations on Eastern Ukraine’s border on eve of Russian invasion of February 24th, 2022. According to the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Ukraine had massed 122,000 troops on the border with Donbass, which was a direct threat to Russia. [Source: consortiumnews.com]

Mother of All Sanctions—Shutting Down Russia’s Economy

On Monday, the Biden administration announced an expansion of economic sanctions designed to “immobilize Russian central bank assets that are held in the U.S.” and which targeted the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund that is run by a close ally of Putin.

The Biden administration also announced on Monday that, with numerous other countries, it was removing some Russian banks from the Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) financial messaging system, barring them from transaction.

Robert Menendez (D-NJ) called this “the mother of all sanctions.”

After the Russian invasion last Thursday, the Biden administration had imposed asset freezes on Russian government officials and banks and equity restrictions on critical Russian mining, transportation and logistics firms. Russian military and industrial companies were further blocked from buying critical technology such as advanced computer chips.

Senior Biden administration officials noted that as a result of the sanctions, the value of Russia’s ruble had already fallen more than 30 percent over the weekend and that Russia’s central bank more than doubled its interest rate to try to mitigate the fallout.

They also predicted that inflation would soon spike and economic activity would contract as Russia’s currency lost value and the country was cut off from its currency reserves.

George Lopez, a sanctions expert at Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs, stated that “everyone in the economic sphere, the banking sphere knows we’re in new territory—a coordinated shutdown of a country’s economy with the strongest arrow being in the heart of the banking sector.”

Overextending and Unbalancing Russia

The purpose behind the sanctions was made explicit in a 2019 report issued by the Rand Corporation, the leading Pentagon think-tank, entitled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia,” which assessed how encouraging domestic protests, providing lethal aid to Ukraine and undermining Russia’s image abroad might weaken and destabilize the country.

The project’s researchers, headed by James F. Dobbins, the former U.S. Ambassador to the European Union (1991-1993) who installed Hamid Karzai as the puppet leader of Afghanistan at the 2001 Bonn conference, found that “economic cost-imposing measures” such as sanctions held particularly high likelihood of success and would “degrade Russia’s economy,” particularly if advanced with other countries.

Regime change could be achieved when the Russian population blamed Putin for their hardships and mounted a rebellion against him.

Punishment Rather Than Diplomacy

In late January, two senior Biden administration officials warned Putin that if he invaded Ukraine, harsh sanctions “would lead to an atrophying of Russia’s productive capacity over time. It would deny Russia the ability to diversify its economy.”

The goal of punishing Russia rather than averting conflict was apparent on February 26 when Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky opted out of negotiations over neutral status with Russia and kept Ukraine fighting, possibly under U.S. pressure. (The State Department signaled opposition to a meeting between Putin and Zelensky to discuss a ceasefire)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholtz at this time was pressured to a) prevent the Nordstream 2 pipeline from becoming operational and b) to send Kyiv 500 “Stinger” anti-aircraft missiles in violation of Germany’s earlier pledge to hold back any lethal military aid.

The U.S. also began providing Stingers—the key weapon supplied to the Afghan mujahidin to fight the Soviets in the 1980s—while the White House was asking Congress to approve a $6.4 billion aid package to Ukraine.

A picture containing sky, outdoor, road, plane Description automatically generated

Ukrainian soldiers move U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger missiles and the other military assistance shipped from Lithuania to Boryspil Airport in Kyiv on February 13. [Source: marketwatch.com]

Original Sanctions Based on Fraud

When sanctions were first applied under the Magnitsky Act in 2012, Vladimir Putin called them a “provocation” designed to “undermine the future of American-Russian relations.” He also said that they were “shortsighted and dangerous” and an “overt interference into our internal affairs.”

The Magnitsky Act was named after Sergei Magnitsky, who died in a Russian prison after allegedly trying to expose a $230 million tax scam targeting the company of an American hedge-fund investor in Russia, William F. Browder.

The grandson of former Communist Party chairman Earl Browder, Browder was convicted in Russian court of failing to pay 552 million rubles in taxes ($16 million) and illegally buying up shares in Gazprom (Russian natural gas company), for which he was sentenced in absentia to nine years in prison.

He provided financial support to Maryland’s Democratic Party Senator Ben Cardin, the original sponsor of the Magnitsky Act, through Ziff Brothers, which gave over $1 million to Democratic Party candidates in the 2016 election (Browder made stock trades for Ziff in Moscow and was using it to try to purchase shares of Gazprom).

That the sanctions policy was based on fraud was evident in the fact that Magnitsky specialized in off-shoring money and was a suspect in the $230 million tax scam, which Browder may have himself initiated.[5]

Sergei Magnitsky and William F. Browder [Source: rt.com]

Will Putin Go the Way of the Soviets?

For all the blustery talk—Biden said he was intent on turning Putin into a “pariah” and “imposing severe costs on the Russian economy” through sanctions—Russia as of this writing is still able to sell Europe natural gas, with energy payments being exempted from the economic sanctions.

Global oil prices of $100 per barrel continue to produce large revenues.

The Putin government has planned to cushion the blow from the sanctions by building a “fortress economy” capable of producing vital goods domestically and which has amassed a huge foreign currency reserve, a lot of which Putin still has access to.

Russia’s military advantage in Ukraine is considerable compared with Afghanistan in the 1980s. Russia shares a border with Ukraine, has a major military base in the Crimea, and can count on the support of local allies and at least 15,000 separatist fighters in Donetsk.

In just five days, Russian troops have destroyed a dam blocking water into Crimea and established a land bridge between Crimea and Donbass, taken control of the area around Chernobyl, captured most of the city of Kherson at the mouth of the Dnieper River in the southeast and have begun to advance into the capital, Kyiv.

Satellite image of a 17 mile long Russian convoy heading in the direction of Kyiv

Russian convoy en route to Kyiv. [Source: bbc.com]

Map showing whole country. Updated 28 Feb

Russian convoy en route to Kyiv. [Source: bbc.com]

The war, however, may yet devolve into a quagmire if Ukrainian nationalist forces continue to stand up.

But if the Pentagon’s prediction of a Russian victory holds true, then the Russians will have vanquished the ghost of Zbigniew Brzezinski and thwarted the diabolical schemes of his heirs.

*

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

Notes

  1. Brzezinski was author of the book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 

  2. New York Times quotes from Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018), 19. 
  3. In a September meeting with Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky at the White house, Biden instead pledged his “support for Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations” and American support for Ukraine’s “being completely integrated in Europe,” (ie. NATO expansion). 
  4. The supposed radical firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), for example, rallied behind the Biden policy, tweeting: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is indefensible. The U.S. is right to impose targeted sanctions on Putin & his oligarchs.” Bernie Sanders (D-VT) who also supported the institution of “serious sanctions” directed against Russia, said this: “”Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine is an indefensible violation of international law, regardless of whatever false pretext he offers. There has always been a diplomatic solution to this situation. Tragically, Putin appears intent on rejecting it.” However, as John Mersheimer pointed out, it was the Biden administration that rejected diplomacy by refusing to agree to halt NATO expansion in accordance with U.S. promises made 30 years earlier, or stop arms shipments to Ukraine. Former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul called for censorship of viewpoints that challenged the official narrative of unfettered Russian aggression, tweeting: “there is a time and place for hearing two sides of an issue. This tragic moment in European history is not one of them. Do not give false equivalency to voices of evil and voices of good.” 
  5. This section is drawn from Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Trying to Unbalance Russia: The Fraudulent Origins and Impact of US Sanctions on Russia” In Sanctions as War: Anti-Imperialist Perspectives on American Geo-economic Strategy, ed. Stuart Davis and Immanel Ness (Netherlands: Brill, 2021), chapter 17. 

Featured image is from intellinews.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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Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization.

***

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”—Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Let me tell you about the state of our nation: things are getting worse, not better.

Easily distracted by wall-to-wall news coverage of the latest crisis and conveniently diverted by news cycles that change every few days, Americans remain oblivious to the many governmental abuses that are still wreaking havoc on our freedoms: police shootings of unarmed individuals, invasive surveillance, roadside blood draws, roadside strip searches, SWAT team raids gone awry, the military industrial complex’s costly wars, pork barrel spending, pre-crime laws, civil asset forfeiture, fusion centers, militarization, armed drones, smart policing carried out by AI robots, courts that march in lockstep with the police state, schools that function as indoctrination centers, and bureaucrats that keep the Deep State in power.

These are dangerous times for America and the world.

Yet while you may hear plenty about the dangers posed by Russia and COVID-19 in President Biden’s State of the Union address, it’s still the U.S. government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life.

Consider for yourself.

Americans have little protection against police abuse. The police and other government agents have been generally empowered to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later. What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you’re talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies with their secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities.

Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. Indeed, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. While the courts continue to disagree over the exact nature of the rights protected by the Second Amendment, the government itself has made its position extremely clear. When it comes to gun rights in particular, and the rights of the citizenry overall, the U.S. government has adopted a “do what I say, not what I do” mindset. Nowhere is this double standard more evident than in the government’s attempts to arm itself to the teeth, all the while viewing as suspect anyone who dares to legally own a gun, let alone use one in self-defense. Indeed, while it still technically remains legal to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at, and killed.

Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the children’s constitutional rights and those of their parents, is at the heart of almost every debate over educational programming, school discipline, and the extent to which parents have any say over their children’s wellbeing in and out of school.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police forces. With local police agencies acquiring military-grade weaponry, training and equipment better suited for the battlefield, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts patrolled by a standing military army.

Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. The debate over bodily integrity covers broad territory, ranging from abortion and euthanasia to forced blood draws, biometric surveillance and basic healthcare. Forced vaccinations, forced cavity searches, forced colonoscopies, forced blood draws, forced breath-alcohol tests, forced DNA extractions, forced eye scans, forced inclusion in biometric databases: these are just a few ways in which Americans continue to be reminded that we have no control over what happens to our bodies during an encounter with government officials.

Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans’ phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.

Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered the age of authoritarianism, where all citizens are suspects, security trumps freedom, and so-called elected officials represent the interests of the corporate power elite. This topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America’s new normal.

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government’s agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

I haven’t even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

This steady slide towards tyranny, meted out by militarized local and federal police and legalistic bureaucrats, has been carried forward by each successive president over the past seventy-plus years regardless of their political affiliation.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Big government has grown bigger, and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.

We are walking a dangerous path right now.

Having allowed the government to expand and exceed our reach, we find ourselves on the losing end of a tug-of-war over control of our country and our lives. And for as long as we let them, government officials will continue to trample on our rights, always justifying their actions as being for the good of the people.

Yet the government can only go as far as “we the people” allow. Therein lies the problem.

The pickle we find ourselves in speaks volumes about the nature of the government beast we have been saddled with and how it views the rights and sovereignty of “we the people.”

Now you don’t hear a lot about sovereignty anymore. Sovereignty is a dusty, antiquated term that harkens back to an age when kings and emperors ruled with absolute power over a populace that had no rights. Americans turned the idea of sovereignty on its head when they declared their independence from Great Britain and rejected the absolute authority of King George III. In doing so, Americans claimed for themselves the right to self-government and established themselves as the ultimate authority and power.

In other words, in America, “we the people”— sovereign citizens—call the shots.

So when the government acts, it is supposed to do so at our bidding and on our behalf, because we are the rulers.

That’s not exactly how it turned out, though, is it?

In the 200-plus years since we boldly embarked on this experiment in self-government, we have been steadily losing ground to the government’s brazen power grabs, foisted upon us in the so-called name of national security.

We have relinquished control over the most intimate aspects of our lives to government officials who, while they may occupy seats of authority, are neither wiser, smarter, more in tune with our needs, more knowledgeable about our problems, nor more aware of what is really in our best interests.

The government has knocked us off our rightful throne. It has usurped our rightful authority. It has staged the ultimate coup. Its agents no longer even pretend that they answer to “we the people.”

Worst of all, “we the people” have become desensitized to this constant undermining of our freedoms.

How do we reconcile the Founders’ vision of the government as an entity whose only purpose is to serve the people with the police state’s insistence that the government is the supreme authority, that its power trumps that of the people themselves, and that it may exercise that power in any way it sees fit (that includes government agents crashing through doors, mass arrests, ethnic cleansing, racial profiling, indefinite detentions without due process, and internment camps)?

They cannot be reconciled. They are polar opposites.

We are fast approaching a moment of reckoning where we will be forced to choose between the vision of what America was intended to be (a model for self-governance where power is vested in the people) and the reality of what it has become (a police state where power is vested in the government).

We are repeating the mistakes of history—namely, allowing a totalitarian state to reign over us.

Former concentration camp inmate Hannah Arendt warned against this when she wrote:

“No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination.”

So where does that leave us?

Aldous Huxley predicted that eventually the government would find a way of:

“making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”

The answer? Get un-brainwashed. Stop allowing yourself to be distracted and diverted.

Learn your rights. Stand up for the founding principles.

Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

Most of all, do these things today.

Ultimately, I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we need to shift the center of power back to “we the people.”

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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.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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America Defeats Germany for the Third Time in a Century

March 2nd, 2022 by Prof Michael Hudson

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My old boss Herman Kahn, with whom I worked at the Hudson Institute in the 1970s, had a set speech that he would give at public meetings. He said that back in high school in Los Angeles, his teachers would say what most liberals were saying in the 1940s and 50s: “Wars never solved anything.” It was as if they never changed anything – and therefore shouldn’t be fought.

Herman disagreed, and made lists of all sorts of things that wars had solved in world history, or at least changed. He was right, and of course that is the aim of both sides in today’s New Cold War confrontation in Ukraine.

The question to ask is what today’s New Cold War is trying to change or “solve.” To answer this question, it helps to ask who initiates the war. There always are two sides – the attacker and the attacked. The attacker intends certain consequences, and the attacked looks for unintended consequences of which they can take advantage. In this case, both sides have their dueling sets of intended consequences and special interests.

The active military force and aggression since 1991 has been the United States. Rejecting mutual disarmament of the Warsaw Pact countries and NATO, there was no “peace dividend.” Instead, the U.S. policy executed by the Clinton and subsequent administrations to wage a new military expansion via NATO has paid a 30-year dividend in the form of shifting the foreign policy of Western Europe and other American allies out of their domestic political sphere into their own U.S.-oriented “national security” blob (the word for special interests that must not be named). NATO has become Europe’s foreign-policy-making body, even to the point of dominating domestic economic interests.

The recent prodding of Russia by expanding Ukrainian anti-Russian ethnic violence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maiden regime was aimed at (and has succeeded in) forcing a showdown in response the fear by U.S. interests that they are losing their economic and political hold on their NATO allies and other Dollar Area satellites as these countries have seen their major opportunities for gain to lie in increasing trade and investment with China and Russia.

To understand just what U.S. aims and interests are threatened, it is necessary to understand U.S. politics and “the blob,” that is, the government central planning that cannot be explained by looking at ostensibly democratic politics. This is not the politics of U.S. senators and representatives representing their congressional voting districts or states.

America’s Three Oligarchies in Control of U.S. Foreign Policy

It is more realistic to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas (and mining) complex, and the banking and real estate complex than in terms of the political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives do not represent their states and districts as much as the economic and financial interests of their major political campaign contributors. A Venn diagram would show that in today’s post-Citizens United world, U.S. politicians represent their campaign contributors, not voters. And these contributors fall basically into three main blocs.

Credits:360b/Shutterstock By Fabian Res /Flickr; F-16 drops MK82 bombs (USAF photo); Child victim of attack in which MK82 bomb built by Lockheed Martin was dropped on his school bus Aug. 9, 2018. (VOA/Screengrab)

Three main oligarchic groups that have bought control of the Senate and Congress to put their own policy makers in the State Department and Defense Department. First is the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) – arms manufacturers such as Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, have broadly diversified their factories and employment in nearly every state, and especially in the Congressional districts where key Congressional committee heads are elected. Their economic base is monopoly rent, obtained above all from their arms sales to NATO, to Near Eastern oil exporters and to other countries with a balance-of-payments surplus. Stocks for these companies soared immediately upon news of the Russian attack, leading a two-day stock-market surge as investors recognized that war in a world of cost-plus “Pentagon capitalism” (as Seymour Melman described it) will provide a guaranteed national-security umbrella for monopoly profits for war industries. Senators and Congressional representatives from California and Washington traditionally have represented the MIC, along with the solid pro-military South. The past week’s military escalation promises soaring arms sales to NATO and other U.S. allies, enriching the actual constituents of these politicians. Germany quickly agreed to raise is arms spending to over 2% of GDP.

The second major oligarchic bloc is the rent-extracting oil and gas sector, joined by mining (OGAM), riding America’s special tax favoritism granted to companies emptying natural resources out of the ground and putting them mostly into the atmosphere, oceans and water supply. Like the banking and real estate sector seeking to maximize economic rent and maximizing capital gains for housing and other assets, the aim of this OGAM sector is to maximize the price of its energy and raw materials so as to maximize its natural-resource rent. Monopolizing the Dollar Area’s oil market and isolating it from Russian oil and gas has been a major U.S. priority for over a year now, as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline threatened to link the Western European and Russian economies more tightly together.

Nord Stream 2 (Source: InfoBrics)

If oil, gas and mining operations are not situated in every U.S. voting district, at least their investors are. Senators from Texas and other Western oil-producing and mining states are the leading OGAM lobbyists, and the State Department has a heavy oil-sector influence providing a national-security umbrella for the sector’s special tax breaks. The ancillary political aim is to ignore and reject environmental drives to replace oil, gas and coal with alternative sources of energy. The Biden administration accordingly has backed the expansion of offshore drilling, supported the Canadian pipeline to the world’s dirtiest petroleum source in the Athabasca tar sands, and celebrated the revival of U.S. fracking.

The foreign-policy extension is to prevent foreign countries not leaving control of their oil, gas and mining to U.S. OGAM companies from competing in world markets with U.S. suppliers. Isolating Russia (and Iran) from Western markets will reduce the supply of oil and gas, pushing up prices and corporate profits accordingly.

The third major oligarchic group is the symbiotic Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, which is the modern finance-capitalist successor to Europe’s old post-feudal landed aristocracy living by land rents. With most housing in today’s world having become owner-occupied (although with sharply rising rates of absentee landlordship since the post-2008 wave of Obama Evictions), land rent is paid largely to the banking sector in the form of mortgage interest and debt amortization (on rising debt/equity ratios as bank lending inflates housing prices). About 80 percent of U.S. and British bank loans are to the real estate sector, inflating land prices to create capital gains – which are effectively tax-exempt for absentee owners.

This Wall Street-centered banking and real estate bloc is even more broadly based on a district-by-district basis than the MIC. Its New York senator from Wall Street, Chuck Schumer, heads the Senate, long supported by Delaware’s former Senator from the credit-card industry Joe Biden, and Connecticut’s senators from the insurance sector centered in that state. Domestically, the aim of this sector is to maximize land rent and the “capital’ gains resulting from rising land rent. Internationally, the FIRE sector’s aim is to privatize foreign economies (above all to secure the privilege of credit creation in U.S. hands), so as to turn government infrastructure and public utilities into rent-seeking monopolies to provide basic services (such as health care, education, transportation, communications and information technology) at maximum prices instead of at subsidized prices to reduce the cost of living and doing business. And Wall Street always has been closely merged with the oil and gas industry (viz. the Rockefeller-dominated Citigroup and Chase Manhattan banking conglomerates).

The FIRE, MIC and OGAM sectors are the three rentier sectors that dominate today’s post-industrial finance capitalism. Their mutual fortunes have soared as MIC and OGAM stocks have increased. And moves to exclude Russia from the Western financial system (and partially now from SWIFT), coupled with the adverse effects of isolating European economies from Russian energy, promise to spur an inflow into dollarized financial securities

As mentioned at the outset, it is more helpful to view U.S. economic and foreign policy in terms of the complexes based on these three rentier sectors than in terms of the political policy of Republicans and Democrats. The key senators and congressional representatives are not representing their states and districts as much as the economic and financial interests of their major donors. That is why neither manufacturing nor agriculture play the dominant role in U.S. foreign policy today. The convergence of the policy aims of America’s three dominant rentier groups overwhelms the interests of labor and even of industrial capital beyond the MIC. That convergence is the defining characteristic of today’s post-industrial finance capitalism. It is basically a reversion to economic rent-seeking, which is independent of the politics of labor and industrial capital.

The dynamic that needs to be traced today is why this oligarchic blob has found its interest in prodding Russia into what Russia evidently viewed as a do-or-die stance to resist the increasingly violent attacks on Ukraine’s eastern Russian-speaking provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the broader Western threats against Russia.

The Rentier “Blob’s” Expected Consequences of the New Cold War

As President Biden explained, the current U.S.-orchestrated military escalation (“Prodding the Bear”) is not really about Ukraine. Biden promised at the outset that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demanding for over a year that Germany prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from supplying its industry and housing with low-priced gas and turn to the much higher-priced U.S. suppliers.

U.S. officials first tried to stop construction of the pipeline from being completed. Firms aiding in its construction were sanctioned, but finally Russia itself completed the pipeline. U.S. pressure then turned on the traditionally pliant German politicians, claiming that Germany and the rest of Europe faced a National Security threat from Russia turning off the gas, presumably to extract some political or economic concessions. No specific Russian demands could be thought up, and so their nature was left obscure and blob-like. Germany refused to authorize Nord Stream 2 from officially going into operation.

A major aim of today’s New Cold War is to monopolize the market for U.S. shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG). Already under Donald Trump’s administration, Angela Merkel was bullied into promising to spend $1 billion building new port facilities for U.S. tanker ships to unload natural gas for German use. The Democratic election victory in November 2020, followed by Ms. Merkel’s retirement from Germany’s political scene, led to cancellation of this port investment, leaving Germany really without much alternative to importing Russian gas to heat its homes, power its electric utilities, and to provide raw material for its fertilizer industry and hence the maintenance of its farm productivity.

So the most pressing U.S. strategic aim of NATO confrontation with Russia is soaring oil and gas prices, above all to the detriment of Germany. In addition to creating profits and stock-market gains for U.S. oil companies, higher energy prices will take much of the steam out of the German economy. That looms as the third time in a century that the United States has defeated Germany – each time increasing its control over a German economy increasingly dependent on the United States for imports and policy leadership, with NATO being the effective check against any domestic nationalist resistance.

Higher gasoline, heating and other energy prices also will hurt U.S. consumers and those of other nations (especially Global South energy-deficit economies) and leave less of the U.S. family budget for spending on domestic goods and services. This could squeeze marginalized homeowners and investors, leading to further concentration of absentee ownership of housing and commercial property in the United States, along with buyouts of distressed real estate owners in other countries faced with soaring heating and energy costs. But that is deemed collateral damage by the post-industrial blob.

Food prices also will rise, headed by wheat. (Russia and Ukraine account for 25 percent of world wheat exports.) This will squeeze many Near Eastern and Global South food-deficit countries, worsening their balance of payments and threatening foreign debt defaults.

Russian raw-materials exports may be blocked by Russia in response to the currency and SWIFT sanctions. This threatens to cause breaks in supply chains for key materials, including cobalt, palladium, nickel and aluminum (the production of which consumes much electricity as its major cost – which will make that metal more expensive). If China decides to see itself as the next nation being threatened and joins Russia in a common protest against the U.S. trade and financial warfare, the Western economies are in for a serious shock.

The long-term dream of U.S. New Cold Warriors is to break up Russia, or at least to restore its Yeltsin/Harvard Boys managerial kleptocracy, with oligarchs seeking to cash in their privatizations in Western stock markets. OGAM still dreams of buying majority control of Yukos and Gazprom. Wall Street would love to recreate a Russian stock market boom. And MIC investors at happily anticipating the prospect of selling more weapons to help bring all this about.

Russia’s Intentions to Benefit from America’s Unintended Consequences

What does Russia want? Most immediately, to remove the neo-Nazi anti-Russian core that the Maidan massacre and coup put in place in 2014. Ukraine is to be neutralized, which to Russia means basically pro-Russian, dominated by Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. The aim is to prevent Ukraine from becoming a staging ground of U.S.-orchestrated anti-Russian moves a la Chechnya and Georgia.

Russia’s longer-term aim is to pry Europe away from NATO and U.S. dominance – and in the process, create with China a new multipolar world order centered on an economically integrated Eurasia. The aim is to dissolve NATO altogether, and then to promote the broad disarmament and denuclearization policies that Russia has been pushing for. Not only will this cut back foreign purchases of U.S. arms, but it may end up leading to sanctions against future U.S. military adventurism. That would leave America with less ability to fund its military operations as de-dollarization accelerates.

Now that it should be obvious to any informed observer that (1) NATO’s purpose is aggression, not defense, and (2) there is no further territory for it to conquer from the remains of the old Soviet Union, what does Europe get out of continued membership? It is obvious that Russia never again will invade Europe. It has nothing to gain – and had nothing to gain by fighting Ukraine, except to roll back NATO’s proxy expansion into that country and the NATO-backed attacks on Novorossiya.

Will European nationalist leaders (the left is largely pro-US) ask why their countries should pay for U.S. arms that only put them in danger, pay higher prices for U.S. LNG and energy, pay more for grain and Russian-produced raw materials, all while losing the option of making export sales and profits on peaceful investment in Russia – and perhaps losing China as well?

The U.S. confiscation of Russian monetary reserves, following the recent theft of Afghanistan’s reserves (and England’s seizure of Venezuela’s gold stocks held there) threatens every country’s adherence to the Dollar Standard, and hence the dollar’s role as the vehicle for foreign-exchange savings by the world’s central banks. This will accelerate the international de-dollarization process already started by Russia and China relying on mutual holdings of each other’s currencies.

Over the longer term, Russia is likely to join China in forming an alternative to the U.S.-dominated IMF and World Bank. Russia’s announcement that it wants to arrest the Ukrainian Nazis and hold a war crimes trial seems to imply an alternative to the Hague court will be established following Russia’s military victory in Ukraine. Only a new international court could try war criminals extending from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi leadership all the way up to U.S. officials responsible for crimes against humanity as defined by the Nuremberg laws.

I expect Russia to withdraw this week. I can’t imagine that it has any intention of expending resources and lives on occupation. Its first task was to stop the attack on the Russian-speaking eastern provinces and to protect Crimea. Its second task was to wipe out the neo-Nazi military forces, capturing their leaders if possible and bringing them to trial for war crimes — and then proceeding up the ladder to their U.S. sponsors, NED etc.

It is of course possible that Europe will break away. In that case, Russia will turn toward China and its fellow SCO members. Europe will suffer severe supply chain issues, commodity-price inflation, and budget squeezes for its population and governments.

Did the American Blob Actually Think Through the Consequences of NATO’s War?

It is almost black humor to look at U.S. attempts to convince China that it should join the United States in denouncing Russia’s moves into Ukraine. The most enormous unintended consequence of U.S. foreign policy has been to drive Russia and China together, along with Iran, Central Asia and other countries along the Belt and Road initiative.

Russia dreamed of creating a new world order, but it was U.S. adventurism that has driven the world into an entirely new order – one that looks to be dominated by China as the default winner now that the European economy is essentially torn apart and America is left with what it has grabbed from Russia and Afghanistan, but without the ability to gain future support.

And everything that I have written above may already be obsolete as Russia and the U.S. have gone on atomic alert. My only hope is that Putin and Biden can agree that if Russia hydrogen bombs Britain and Brussels, that there will be a devil’s (not gentleman’s) agreement not to bomb each other.

With such talk I’m brought back to my discussions with Herman Kahn 50 years ago. He became quite unpopular for writing Thinking about the Unthinkable, meaning atomic war. As he was parodied in Dr. Strangelove, he did indeed say that there would indeed be survivors. But he added that for himself, he hoped to be right under the atom bomb, because it was not a world in which he wanted to survive.

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Seven Fake News Stories Coming Out of Ukraine

By Kit Knightly, March 01, 2022

In just the last 48 hours dozens of stories, images, narratives and videos have circulated as being taken from the fighting in Ukraine, a huge percentage of which are fake. Now, some of it could be attributed to misunderstandings, mistaken identity, misattribution…but many and most are likely deliberate deceptions designed to provoke a response. Let’s dive right in.

‘Deceitful Activities’: US Expands Its Intelligence and Military Presence in the UK

By Richard Norton-Taylor, March 01, 2022

Upgrading US air bases in the UK would enable Washington to intercept international communications and launch military strikes from Britain more quickly and with more devastating effect. This is what is taking place at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, the US National Security Agency’s biggest surveillance facility outside America, the US bomber base at Fairford in Gloucestershire, and the CIA base at Croughton in Northamptonshire.

Ukraine’s “Neo-Nazi Summer Camp”. Military Training for Young Children

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 01, 2022

Unknown to most Americans, the US government is channeling financial support, weapons and training to a Neo-Nazi entity –which is part of The Ukraine National Guard– The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов). Canada and Britain have confirmed that they also are providing support to the National Guard.

Will Ukraine See the Light, Restore its Sovereignty. Negotiations are the Solution

By Peter Koenig, March 01, 2022

President Putin had numerous times proposed talks, negotiations and set out Russia’s conditions, the first and simplest one is NO NATO base in Ukraine. The current US Biden Administration as well as all the previous ones have rejected that simple condition.

Western Reporting: News from Nowhere

By Stephen Sefton, March 01, 2022

In Ukraine, the massive deceit has been to ignore NATO country governments’ support for a fascist regime subordinate to followers of Nazism attacking its own Ukrainian citizens since 2014 with around 14,000 deaths, tens of thousands of wounded and hundreds of thousands people displaced.

The European Commission President Announces that the EU Is Joining the War Against Russia

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, March 01, 2022

The  European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced that, despite Putin’s warning, the EU is going to finance the purchase and delivery of weapons to Ukraine.  She also said the EU is going to include Belarus, which is not involved in the fighting, in the sanctions, because it is a Russian ally. She says the EU wants to ban Russian media because they don’t keep to the official war narrative. 

Democracy Is Shedding Its Skin

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, March 01, 2022

Excessive and moderate brutality is making its mark on our age, as it has in previous periods of our history. An epidemic of greed for power and brutality in politics and business repeatedly leads to catastrophes such as war and terror that kill millions of people, similar to the plague of the Middle Ages.

The History of Eugenics and the New World Order

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, March 01, 2022

After a eugenics-driven attempt at a new world order was aborted during WWII, Sir Julian Huxley (the grandson of Darwin’s bulldog and himself a life long member and even president of the British Eugenics Society) spearheads a re-organization of the British imperial grand strategy with the intent of repackaging eugenics under a new name but with the same effects as those outlined by Hitler earlier.

COVID Jab Deadlier Than COVID for Anyone Under 80

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 01, 2022

According to a cost-benefit analysis by Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., and independent researcher Kathy Dopp, the COVID jab is deadlier than COVID-19 itself for anyone under the age of 80. The cost-benefit analysis looked at publicly available official data from the U.S. and U.K. for all age groups, and compared all-cause mortality to the risk of dying from COVID-19.

One in 25 Germans Sought Medical Attention Due to Vaccine Injury

By Free West Media, March 01, 2022

While the war in Ukraine is raging, explosive information is also coming to the fore about vaccine injury. The German health insurance company BKK ProVita has published a report about side effects after the Corona jab.

Ukraine and the Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”: The Attack Was Launched by NATO Eight Years Ago.

By Manlio Dinucci, March 01, 2022

Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU is banning the Russian news agency Sputnik and the Russia Today channel so that “they can no longer spread their lies to justify Putin’s war with their toxic disinformation in Europe”.

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The inhuman manner in which the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) treats Rwandans who have been acquitted or who have been freed after serving their sentences obliges us to reexamine totally the body created by the UN Security Council in late 1994 (it is now known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, also referred to as the IRMCT or the Mechanism).

As in the time of penal colonies, the UN ships acquitted or freed Rwandans from one African country to another, where they are often held under house arrest with no travel documents, no hope of joining their families, and constantly in fear of being extradited to Rwanda or to some ‘Devil’s Island.’

How has this come to pass? Why has the UN not transferred them to The Hague where the UN International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court are located? Has the UN created its own system of judicial apartheid?

The eight Rwandans in Niger—and others

Eight Rwandans—Zigiranyirazo Protais, Nzuwonemeye François-Xavier, Nteziryayo Alphonse, Muvunyi Tharcisse, Ntagerura André, Nsengiyumva Anatole, Mugiraneza Prosper, and Sagahutu Innocent—including three acquitted and five freed after serving sentences, have spent more than two months under house arrest in Niamey, Niger. They are now awaiting transfer back to Arusha, Tanzania, where they will join former Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Jérôme Bicmamumpaka, another acquitted man who had refused to leave Arusha, Tanzania, where he has resided since being taken into the care of the ICTR Registry.

The eight in Niger had agreed under pressure to be transferred from Arusha to Niamey (the capital and largest city of Niger) on December 5, 2021, with the promise of obtaining permanent residence status, travel and identity documents (which Rwanda refused to provide) and a semblance of freedom.

Some had spent up to 25 years in Arusha, awaiting trial or after being acquitted or freed. They were also waiting to get permission to join their families in France, Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, or Denmark. Their wait has been in vain. These countries that constantly lecture others about justice and human rights, are now refusing to respect the rulings of a tribunal they had backed both financially and diplomatically.

At the same time, five other Rwandans living in Mali and freed after serving sentences imposed by the ICTR were recently informed that their residency permit in Mali would not be renewed. They too have become stateless and vulnerable to extradition to Rwanda or to transfer to another country, not of their choice.

Victor’s justice from the get-go

The loftiest of principles were invoked when the UN created the tribunal. Madeleine Albright, then United States Ambassador to the UN and future Secretary of State, declared that the new international court “will be no victor’s tribunal. The only victor that will prevail in this endeavor will be the truth.” Louise Arbour, chief prosecutor from 1996 to 1999, echoed her.

Yet it was victor’s justice from the very beginning. The reason is that the regime of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), victor of the war in 1994, held, and still holds, the power to indict people simply because it controls the facts and the territory where the alleged crimes took place.

The UN Security Council invested the chief prosecutor with the power to indict, arrest and prosecute suspects. Yet their power was more mirage than fact. To establish charges against people or prepare a defense, the prosecutor or defense counsel had to have the approval of the masters of Kigali.

The power given to those who determine who will be indicted should never be underestimated. In Rwanda, that power was effectively handed over to those who won the war. Inevitably, the only people indicted were the enemies of the victorious army. As Ramsay Clark pointed out, “it really is war by other means and it is very cruel.”

The RPF government made it very easy for witnesses for the prosecution to appear before the tribunal in Arusha. This gave rise to many cases of perjury. Defense witnesses on the other hand were very reticent to appear in court or file affidavits for fear of reprisals against them and their families by the Rwandan authorities.

This made it virtually impossible to indict military leaders of the RPF. The most serious crime attributed to the party, and specifically to Paul Kagame, was the shooting down of the plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994. Both presidents were killed. That assassination also killed the Arusha Peace Accord of August 1993 when the army of the RPF immediately resumed the war.

As early as 2000, Arbour’s successor as chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, declared that if it proved to be true that the RPF shot down the Rwandan president’s plane, the history of the Rwandan genocide had to be rewritten.

No RPF member has ever been indicted and any attempts to investigate the RPF have been either thwarted or abandoned.

To her credit, Arbour confirmed in 2016 that the ICTR worked like a victor’s tribunal. The Kagame government, she said to the Globe and Mail, “could turn on and off the co-operative tap at will, depending whether they were pleased or not with the work that was being done … The office of the prosecutor was sitting right in the middle of the country, where allegedly some of the leadership elements had to be investigated … That’s not, frankly, very doable.” The tribunal was “constantly in a conflictual position vis-à-vis President Kagame.” She added that the nothing could be done “without the full co-operation of the [Rwandan] government.”

Former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (second from left, front row) addresses the staff of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Official United Nations photo/Flickr.

Where do the acquitted and freed people go?

In the rush to create the tribunal in 1994-95, the planners, mainly Americans, failed to ask the most basic questions. This becomes evident in the case of the acquitted and freed Rwandans. Justice was obviously not the concern of those who set up the ICTR.

Where would those sentenced serve their time? The fact is that they have been sent to different African countries far away from their families. Then they have been transferred to other countries depending on the internal political situation of the host country. But never to The Hague, the headquarters of international justice.

What was to be done with the acquitted and wrongly accused? Did they even foresee the possibility? Where would they go? Who would provide the necessary identity documents? Who would indemnify them in case they were wrongly accused? Had the planners of the tribunal decided that there would be no acquittals?

Where would those freed after serving their sentences live?

Sacrificed to imperialist strategy

Twenty-eight years after the Rwandan tragedy, Canada, France, Belgium, the UK and the US maintain strong diplomatic and trade relations with the Rwandan regime. They turn a blind eye to all the devastating reports about its involvement in extra- and intra-territorial executions, disappearances, arbitrary imprisonment, and military incursions in other countries.

Does the establishment of good relations with the victors of the 1994 war grant them the right to flout the decisions of the ICTR even though they had been its most ardent supporters? Or is this just further proof that international criminal justice is no more than an instrument to advance the interests of major imperial powers?

If any doubts persist, David Scheffer, former US Ambassador for War Crimes Issues, provides an insight into how the tribunal was perceived in Washington:

[T]he tribunal was a potent judicial tool, and I had enough support from President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and other top officials in Washington to wield it like a battering ram in the execution of US and NATO policy.

The problems raised by an international criminal court did not begin in the 1990s. Former US Attorney General Ramsay Clark observed:

There would be no UN had it been implied in any way in the Charter that there would be a criminal tribunal. If it had been put in directly, the meeting would have been over. People would have packed their bags in Washington before the San Francisco meeting and left. The United States would have been the first to leave. Power does not like to be judged and if it has the power, it won’t be.

A ‘special’ regime for Africans?

The late Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former UN Secretary-General, admitted that he was responsible for putting the ICTR in Arusha and not in The Hague. He also admitted that it was a mistake in a 2002 interview he granted me. It was an error agreed upon by the members of the Security Council who therefore bear responsibility for the error.

When asked what the tribunal would do with the defendants, the people sentenced, and the acquitted, Boutros-Ghali replied,

“None of us, jurists included had given any thought to the parallel and paralegal aspects, such as political and material questions. So we convict somebody. Where is he to serve his sentence? Who is responsible for overseeing his imprisonment? Why? None of this has been studied seriously.”

The acquitted and freed Rwandans are thus paying for a serious error and gaping flaws in the ICTR that have been known since the tribunal began its work. It has created a sort of judicial apartheid for Africans characterized by a new form of penal colonization.

It is never too late to repair past errors. Through the Mechanism, the UN must take charge of the Rwandans acquitted, freed or still serving their sentences.

The UN must protect them from the whims of the imperial powers and their allies and ensure they are in safety and stability.

Finally, the UN must also see to it that the countries where their families live respect the decisions rendered by the ICTR, and not just those they agree with. Selectivity is the opposite of equality, which is the mother of justice.

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This article was originally published on Canadian Dimension.

Robin Philpot is the publisher of Baraka Books, a Québec-based English-language book publisher specialized in creative and political non-fiction, history and historical fiction, and fiction.

Featured image is by Rick Bajornas/United Nations/Flickr

 

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Upgrading US air bases in the UK would enable Washington to intercept international communications and launch military strikes from Britain more quickly and with more devastating effect.

This is what is taking place at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire, the US National Security Agency’s biggest surveillance facility outside America, the US bomber base at Fairford in Gloucestershire, and the CIA base at Croughton in Northamptonshire.

All three bases are misleadingly described as Royal Air Force stations. While in theory the British government could veto US operations from these bases, the amount of money Washington continues to spend on them makes clear it does not expect any objections.

In its latest spending package, the US has earmarked $40 million to expand Menwith Hill, $300 million to Fairford and an undisclosed sum to Croughton. The figures on Menwith Hill and Fairford were given in response to a parliamentary question from the Labour MP Alex Sobel.

They are part of a £2.8 billion project to upgrade US military and intelligence-gathering bases in Britain. This includes expanding the US air force station at Lakenheath in Suffolk to enable American F-35 fighter/bombers to be based there.

GCHQ’s listening post in Cyprus, a facility whose product is shared with US intelligence agencies, is also being upgraded.

‘Concealed from your parliament’

The moves come as a former US intelligence officer based at Menwith Hill has accused US and British officials of carrying out “deceitful” activities at the base. In a conflict the base could be a “significant military target”, he says.

The warnings have come from Lee Baker, a former NSA satellite engineer and cryptologist in correspondence with a campaign group, the Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign (MHAC).

“I have found both the leadership of the National Security Agency and that of Menwith Hill Station (American and British) to be very deceitful and disloyal to their own respective citizens”, he says.

“They have certainly been concealed from your parliament, and thus your citizens as well.”

He calls for more accountability and “public awareness of the deceitful activities within the vast American Intelligence Complex at Menwith Hill”.

He adds that although those activities “are NOT [his emphasis] entirely unknown to your potential adversaries…they have certainly been concealed from your parliament, and thus your citizens as well”.

If the question, adds Baker, “is, do the intelligence activities at Menwith Hill Station, by the United States of America, in support of their unique and specific ‘Intelligence, Political or Economic’ goals, make that entire region a significant Military Target, the answer is yes”.

Directed against the British

Baker also makes it clear, in a memo to Martin Schweiger of the MHAC, that the US does not share with Britain some of the intelligence it collects from the base. Some of that intelligence could be used to target British citizens, he says.

“I am absolutely certain”, Baker continues, “that not all of the American intelligence collection activities at Menwith Hill Station have been or ever will be fully shared with the British government.”

“The US does not share with Britain some of the intelligence it collects from the base.”

He adds:

“Additionally it is absolutely possible, if not probable, that some intelligence collection activities directed against the British themselves, have been or will be conducted from British soil at Menwith Hill Station”.

Baker describes his comments as “merely my unclassified opinion” based on his experience of 36 years in the NSA.

He also says that he participated in operations that “actually thwarted several real-world threats to both the British and American people…some very bad players in the world would love to see NSA and GCHQ be totally wiped off the map”.

Gagging order

Baker’s suggestion that GCHQ and US intelligence bases in Britain are used to serve American rather than British interests was made clear in a GCHQ staff manual of 1994 I reported some years ago.

The manual told GCHQ staff that the agency’s contribution must be “of sufficient scale and of the right kind to make a continuation of the Sigint [signals intelligence] alliance worthwhile to our partners”.

It admitted: “This may entail on occasion the applying of UK resources to the meeting of US requirements.”

Baker’s concerns about the lack of accountability and scrutiny of this close US-UK intelligence relationship reflect those made by Dennis Mitchell, a senior cryptanalyst who resigned in 1984 in protest against the banning of trade unions at GCHQ.

GCHQ’s product is intelligence, he said. He added: “Intelligence imparts power; power which may be used to withstand a threat, or to apply one; to avert an ill, to bestow a benefit – or to exploit”.

The only real watchdog, said Mitchell, was the workforce. “It is they on whom the general public must rely if errors of judgment, excessive zeal or malpractices are to be averted in a department which has considerable discretion.”

Mitchell told the then cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong:

“I have arrived at the point at which I either make my concerns public, which means breaking the Official Secrets Act, or I fail to discharge my responsibilities to account for actions which I believe would be considered unacceptable by the general public were it aware of them.”

He was immediately served with a court gagging order preventing him from disclosing anything about his work at GCHQ.

Covert drone strikes

MPs rarely dip their toes into the realm of security and intelligence. Although in recent years it has questioned failures by MI5 and MI6, even the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee, which meets in secret, has been loath to question the activities of GCHQ.

Menwith Hill has been expanding significantly with new radomes – “golf balls” housing surveillance satellite ground stations – and there are plans to construct what is described as a large “communications container compound” there.

The Menwith Hill Accountability Campaign noted in a recent report that according to documents  from whistleblowers, programmes developed at Menwith Hill have been used to support British and American troops in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and as part of covert missions in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, and Lebanon.

It refers to leaked documents identifying Menwith Hill as providing intelligence used in “a significant number of capture kill operations”, including targeting information for US covert drone strikes.

Kept under wraps

What the British government allows the CIA and other US agencies to get up to in “RAF” Croughton is also kept under wraps.

Alba MP Kenny MacAskill last month asked the government what role RAF Croughton had in “facilitating US drone operations in the Middle East; and how that base is linked to the US military facility at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti”.

The defence minister, James Heappey, replied:

“RAF Crougton is part of a worldwide US Defence Communications network, and the base supports a variety of communications activity. For operational security reasons and as a matter of policy, neither the Ministry of Defence nor the US Department of Defense publicly discuss specifics concerning military operations or classified communications regardless of unit, platform or asset.”

Heappey added:

“Any details of US intelligence personnel are classified. It is Government practice not to disclose the information of personnel working in intelligence roles to protect national security.”

Anne Sacoolas, who claimed diplomatic immunity after she was charged over the death of a young motorcyclist, Harry Dunn, outside the Croughton base, has been described as being an American intelligence officer.

Forward base Fairford

At least activities at “RAF” Fairford are more visible. Assigned to both Nato and the US air force, it has one of the longest runways in Europe. It has been the forward base for American long-range B52 and Stealth bombers for operations throughout the Middle East (as has Diego Garcia, the “British Indian Ocean Overseas Territory”).

It was recently announced that a British consortium had been appointed as a “delivery partner” by the MoD’s Defence Infrastructure Organisation on the US Visiting Forces Infrastructure Programme at Fairford and Menwith Hill.

The programme, which will last for five years, includes a B52 bomber maintenance hangar, weapons storage, a mobile air base, and a facility for rapid repairs to aircraft damage. The population of the base is expected to increase from about 500 to more than 1,000.

Lindis Percy, co-founder of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases (CAAB UK) told Declassified: “It is clear that the UK government has no say or control of what happens on these bases.”

She added: “Through persistence and determination by many people over the years, we now know it is because there is little meaningful accountability or public scrutiny and the democratic process to bring before Parliament to decide important issues does not happen.”

It is time parliament and civil society groups confronted the secrecy surrounding military and intelligence-gathering operations that are playing an increasingly significant but hidden role in the way the British government conducts both domestic and foreign policies.

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Richard is a British editor, journalist and playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.

Featured image: A B-52 Stratofortress arrives at RAF Fairford in 2018. (Photo: USAF / Ted Daigle)

Thoughts on the Endgame in Ukraine

March 1st, 2022 by Tony Kevin

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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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


As my time in Russia draws towards an end – just three days to go before I start the long journey home, after over three weeks here already – I want to share with readers of my Facebook page a few wrap-up thoughts. I know I will be trolled for this by people including some who in other respects I like and admire, but I will block them. I honestly don’t care any more – angry and ill-informed words no longer affect me.

By coincidence I have been travelling in northwestern Russia during the past tumultuous three weeks in world history: in the cradle of modern Russia, visiting important sites in Russia’s history as a nation-state and in her cultural heritage – Pskov, Pushkinskie Gory, and the major cities Saint Petersburg and Moscow. My evident growing physical weakness as a sole traveller of advanced years forced me to cancel more ambitious plans to visit Volgograd and Samara.

While I was here, the crisis in Ukraine and in East-West relations generally has escalated towards the current crunch moment in Kiev and Kharkov, which I hope and expect will find peaceful resolution within the next few days.

I was here under a special guest visa to give lectures in the Moscow Diplomatic Academy and the St Petersburg University of the Humanities and Social Sciences. I travelled at my own expense and according to my own plans.

It has been uniquely bizarre to watch from here, as someone who now feels personally very comfortable in Russia after three independent visits in 2016, 2018 and 2019, how Western elites have finally become so entrapped in their own false information warfare narrative on Ukraine that they can no longer see what is real and under their very noses: Russian military power, her determination, her moral strength that comes from knowing she is in the right.

After eight years of standing by and watching helplessly the vicious Ukronazi-driven cruelty towards the four million people of Donbass, and the Ukronazi intimidation of their many cowed and silent sympathisers across the rest of Ukraine, Russia finally acted on 24 February 2022. For Russians, this had been a running sore over eight years since the Maidan Square coup in Kiev in 2014, instigated by the United States.

The vicious artillery war started by the new President Poroshenko in May 2014 against the rebel mini states Donetsk and Lugansk went completely unreported in the West. What did western mainstream media editors think: that the great and proud cities of Donetsk and Lugansk with their four million Russian-speaking people and their memories of heroic defiance of Nazi invaders in 1941-45 were muddy little villages of no importance? And that their people’s sufferings did not matter in the larger scheme of things? 13,000 dead here, over 100,000 homeless refugees from bombed-out apartment buildings and houses? And every few days, more lethal shells randomly raining down on these cities and villages? Data carefully recorded by OSCE peace monitors, but not a word about this in Western media. Ever. Not even now. Not a word either in Western media about the growing infiltration and embedment in the Ukrainian National Army and national administration of people who can accurately only be defined as Ukronazis – people who glory and commemorate with statues, flags and torchlight parades of angry young head-shaven men, the crimes committed by their grandfathers during and after WW2 – by people like like Bandera who allied with Hitler in pursuit of their nationalist dreams, who seized the opportunity to murder Jews, Poles, political opponents, anyone who stood in the way of their mad dream of a cohesive Ukrainian-speaking Ukraine with all other human elements removed or suppressed. They reject Ukraine’s rich cultural heritage as the cradle of Russian Christianity and civilisation: they reject the rich diversity of today’s multicultural Ukraine, with its Greeks, Jews, Tatars, Turks, Romanians, Hungarians, Moldovans – and above all its native Russian speakers, making up at least half or more of the population.

Since 2014, with American help and money, Ukraine has been refashioned as a nationalistic state, a deadly weapon aimed against Russia. The Ukronazis, never spoken about on the West, have been given an easy road towards power. Other elements in the national makeup have been intimidated and suppressed as a Ukrainian national identity has been imposed on a multicultural people. The message from nationalists has been – become part of our dream of Ukraine, or leave. We have no use for you, this is our land now.

The Russian Orthodox Church was penetrated and turned against the church centre in Moscow. A tragic schism has taken place.

Terrible events – above all, the torching by Ukronazis of the Odessa Trades Union Building in April 2014, and the burning to death of 45 peaceful protesters who had taken refuge inside – drove home the deterrent message of suppression of human rights. Do not resist us, you will pay with your lives.

And the heroism of the people of Lugansk and Donetsk in saying no to such cruelty, in taking up arms to defend their vision of their homeland after Poroshenko in May 2014 ordered an all-out military assault on them – all this went unreported in the West.

For eight long years the Russian government tried to make the Minsk Accords peace process work. Kiev prevaricated and sneered, as the shells continued to rain down death on the rebel regions. And as the US and NATO pumped more and more weapons and instructors in terrorism and sabotage into Ukraine.

Finally in December last year, Russia had had enough. Putin tried to propose ambitious new principles for relations with the West, most importantly a pledge that Ukraine would never join NATO and the withdrawal of NATO weapons from Russia’s borders. All to no avail. The West prevaricated, cherry-picked and sneered at Russia’s peace proposals.

The west remains mired in its fantasy world of big bad aggressor Putin ruling his unhappy country with an iron fist. How totally untrue this narrative is, as I have tried to relate in my two books on Russia in 2017 and 2019.

Now, the real world of bombs and bullets, and the Western false narrative world of selective indignation and pointless ‘how does it feel’ fact-free journalism, finally have come together in jarring dissonance in Ukraine.

Colleagues Joe Lauria, Alexander Mercouris, Mark Sleboda, Scott Ritter and I spoke about this together in the excellent Consortium News panel broadcast on 25 Feb. We discussed the already blurring history of how this latest escalation began: on 18 February, with stepped up Ukrainian Army artillery shelling and advance to the line of contact with Donetsk and Lugansk with 60,000 battle-ready soldiers. With on 20 February the rebel leaders’ final desperate appeal to Russia for protection against a coming genocidal onslaught on them. With the Russian Government’s historic decision on 21 February to guarantee their military protection. Yet even then the shelling continued, and there was wild new talk from Kiev of acquiring their own nuclear deterrent weapons.

Finally, patience ended in Moscow. Something snapped. On 24 February, Putin announced the beginning of a limited special military operation to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine. Finally, there was no other way to lance the boil. NATO was determined to go on weaponising Ukraine against Russia. The Nazi-influenced regime in Kiev was determined to go on creating an anti-Russian national identity. Left unchecked, the strategic situation could only get worse in coming years. It had become a matter of Russia’s national survival.

Now, heavy city-destroying weapons were flooding into Ukraine from the US: Biden’s final provocative act of foolish irresponsibility. US and UK teams had come in, to train the Ukrainian Army in sabotage and terrorism: just as in Syria.

And the Western disinformation system now kicked into high gear its existing narrative settings, the fantasies of poor little democratic Ukraine under unprovoked – unprovoked! – attack by its big neighbour.

On 24 February, Putin carefully set out in the NSC the limits on the special operation: no attacks on Ukrainian civilians, US-supplied military systems the priority targets. Soldiers would be safe if they surrendered or remained in barracks. Ukronazi criminals would be brought to justice. Russia would cooperate with a new government made up of decent Ukrainians who had quietly endured suppression for the past eight years.

Our panel’s general view was that the war has gone well for Russia, with mercifully few casualties on either side. We considered that the real world will prevail in Kiev over the West’s fantasy world, and quite soon too.

Yesterday morning – it came out in TASS and on the President’s website late last night, but I watched and read it yesterday morning – came Putin’s stunning public denunciation on day two of the war, of the Ukronazis’ intent to use the army which they have infiltrated and civilians in Kiev and Kharkov residential areas as human shields in a Nazi style last stand. Putin said that foreign mainly American consultants are there advising them in such tactics. He said that the disciplined Russian Army would not let itself be put in the position of murderers of people who are in effect part of Russia’s family. He called on responsible Kiev army elements to defy their fanatical embedded commissars, to lay down arms and provide interlocutors for ending the fighting honourably.

I will leave Moscow to fly home on 2 March, with three days in Phuket to transition before getting home to family peace and obscurity on 7 March. Irony alert – a prophet has no honour in his own country: certainly not in Australia. Our national broadcaster ABC is running neck to neck with the BBC, the Guardian and the Economist in purveying inane and at times hysterical false narratives about Ukraine, Russia and Putin. It seems that our media believe – they certainly claim – that the people are rising up in Russia and Putin’s dictatorship will fall soon. They ignore facts that do not fit this stupidity. Which is now more real to them than reality.

Three days ago, after my essay on what was actually happening in Ukraine was published in Pearls and Irritations, ABC News interviewed me for fifteen minutes. They used none of my words, because these clashed with their fantasy narrative of the heroic democratic Ukrainian people rising up as one against, or bravely fleeing in their cars from, the brutal Russian invaders in tanks crushing all before them. It has quickly became a war of false or misrepresented horror memes and facile ‘how does it feel’ ‘war journalism’. Truth could not be allowed to interfere with the consolidating false narrative.

I have again been deplatformed by ABC. I am used to this now. It is a mark of a fearful lackey country that is too scared to stand up to Washington’s Russophobe narrative, no matter how implausible it has become.

Here in Moscow and St Petersburg I have seen in these past weeks people relaxed and getting on with their normal lives. No differences from my three previous visits, except a well founded natural anxiety and prudence about COVID risks is evident. People trust Putin and his National Security Council team to manage the Ukraine crisis. Yes, there were little symbolic demonstrations in Moscow and Saint Petersburg by a few dissident intelligentsia, but they gained no public purchase. Nor were the participants victimised.

Having said that, I have no doubt that the midnight candles are burning bright in the Kremlin as the NSC manage the crisis. It is very big, and what Putin said yesterday on new Ukronazi human shield tactics in Kiev and how Russia would respond was remarkable in its bluntness and emotional intensity.

Kiev and Kharkov are not Fallujah or Stalingrad, thank God. The Russian Army is not going to incinerate its own relatives and friends in these great, essentially Russian, cities. There will be a negotiated solution in coming days. There could be false flag operations before that, in which Ukronazis may kill people and try to blame the deaths on the Russian Army. Ukronazi artillery shells may hit residential buildings and kill people and Russia will be blamed, and the West will believe it, because it fits the universal narrative. Remember Douma in Syria. There is talk of White Helmets here, among the foreign advisers.

It will come to an end. Russia has already won the military war. The groundwork for denazification is being laid: there will be trials. As for the information war, this will go on, it has a life of its own. Prospects for Detente with the West have been set back, maybe for decades. Many including myself will grieve over this. But that is another big story to tell. I will end here.

What was done, had to be done. There was no alternative course of action left for Russia.

Tony Kevin is a former Australian career diplomat (1968-1998) who held diplomatic postings and ambassadorships in Moscow, UN New York, Poland and Cambodia. Since retiring from foreign service, he has been an active advocate for change in areas such as Australian asylum-seeker policy, border protection, and climate change.

He has written several books inspired by his career and life experiences, including A Certain Maritime Incident (Scribe 2004) which won the ACT Book of the Year Award and the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Multicultural Writing in 2005; Walking the Camino (Scribe 2007), winner of the ACT Book of the Year Award 2008; Crunch Time (Scribe 2009), and Reluctant Rescuers (self-published 2012).

In 2012 Tony Kevin was awarded an Emeritus Fellowship at Australian National University, Canberra, for his four books.

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Tony Kevin, former Australian diplomat.

Featured image is from SouthFront

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.

.


 

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


 

Wars are never a solution to resolve a conflict. They only escalate misery and the killing of innocent people. But the West should not hypocritically forget when it condemns Russia, that it accepted, even supported, or at best, remained silent, when the US directly or via proxy invaded and devastated — unprovoked – Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Yugoslavia, Haiti, Somalia, Vietnam and many more…

One might argue that Russia is fighting for self-preservation, after 8 years of relentless US/NATO-led western aggressions since February 22, 2014 (the US-organized Maidan coup and massacre against a democratically-elected Ukrainian president and his regime), with steady threats of establishing yet another NATO base on Moscow’s doorsteps.

 War is not the Solution. But What is? Negotiations

President Putin had numerous times proposed talks, negotiations and set out Russia’s conditions, the first and simplest one is NO NATO base in Ukraine. The current US Biden Administration as well as all the previous ones have rejected that simple condition.

Just imagine, Russia setting up a military base in Mexico or in a Central American Country or, God forbid, in the Caribbean!

What has the West done for Ukraine other than organized the bloody Maidan Color Revolution in February 2014? Nothing.

The West never had an interest in Ukraine other than using and abusing this richest of all former Soviet Republics for its own Western/NATO purposes. Building one or several NATO bases on Ukraine’s grounds to get closer to Moscow’s doorsteps and exploiting the countries enormously rich natural resources and her fertile agricultural land.

Maybe this latest crisis will be the trigger for Ukraine’s true leaders to see the light and depart from its ties to NATO and assert its political independence.

After eight years of western abuse, stopping and reflecting may yield plenty of not even far-fetched reasons for such a move.

Not for nothing Ukraine was called the Soviet Union’s Bred Basket.

In addition to making Ukraine as a key NATO base in front of Russia’s doorsteps, Ukraine may also be useful for Europe’s food supply and territory for minerals and other natural resources exploitation.

Belonging to “The West” seemed to be an easy sell to the Kiev government, embedded by Nazi elements.

With the future prospective to become a European Union member, and, in the meantime being protected by NATO from evil Russia.

Since the Maidan coup, the vast majority of Ukrainians got poorer and poorer and more and more indebted, and so did the entire Ukraine, and ever increasingly dependent on western lies and promises, thereby losing ever more of her sovereignty.

For eight years the West has used Ukraine to provoke Russia, to threaten Russia, and within Ukraine, especially the eastern Donbas Region, the Donetsk (pop. 2.0 million) and Luhansk (pop. 1.5 million) Provinces, representing about 8% of Ukraine’s total population (41.65 million, 2021). More than 90% of the Donbas population is Russian.

 

Ever since the 2014 western planned and executed Maidan coup – remember Mme. Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State …”F*ck the EU”? – Donbas declared independence from the Nazi-dominated Kiev government. The region’s independence was however not recognized by anyone, until on 22 February 2022, when President Putin passed a Resolution through Duma (the Russian Parliament) to officially recognize the Donbas region as independent from the Kiev Government.

This was ultimately a move to save lives. The western NATO countries armed Ukraine and provided them with “technical military advisors”. All for the west’s own purpose, none to help the Ukrainian population that was cut off by Russia, after having allowed and facilitated the western led Maidan coup in February 2014. Russia’s intervention was a natural consequence to Kiev’s missile and rockets aggression on the Donbass region that resulted in several casualties.

After numerous warnings and failed attempts to dialogue with Kiev, Russia launched its ‘special military operation’ with the stated aim to “demilitarize” Ukraine on February 24. It means primarily, no NATO base, EVER. No western military intervention in Ukraine. Period.

The western-funded Kiev puppet government did not comply and was not interested in a dialogue. To the contrary, its unprovoked aggressions towards Donbas escalated to the point, where a Russian action was necessary to hopefully prevent an all-out war.

Similarly, in May 2020 western / NATO organized infiltrations in Belarus attempted, but failed, to prevent President Alexander Lukashenko from running again for reelection. The idea was to replace Lukashenko with a pro-western leader to gain access to Belarus for yet another NATO base at Russia’s doorstep. Despite all the high-paid propaganda through corrupted western news media several months of attempts and protests failed. President Lukashenko was reelected in August 2020.

In Ukraine, western aggression through the Nazi-led puppet Kiev Government amassed some 150,000 Kiev-Ukrainian troops at the eastern Russian and Donbass border. But western media reported only on the Russian response to post some 100,000 troops in the area, to be prepared, if necessary for an intervention in the Russian populated Donbas area.

“Recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and ratification of treaties on friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance should stop the slaughter, the death of our citizens and compatriots living there,” the speaker of the lower house, Mr. Vyacheslav Volodin, wrote in his Telegram channel.

The Kiev shelling of Donbas targets continued after Moscow’s declaring recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), had caused at least four deaths and many injured, plus destruction of the infrastructure. It was a stark provocation of the Bear.

Clearly, without Russia’s intervention, the situation for Donbas was fast becoming a humanitarian crisis.

This was the moment the West was waiting for to scream about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, as usual, of course, without providing any precedents to this event. The western anti-Russia lie-propaganda was and still is – now ever more – running on overdrive and on steroids.

An entire western sanctions program has been put in place, led of course, as always by Washington, the zombie-empire, followed by its European puppets, who seemed rather wanting to commit suicide, than recognizing that it is high time to see reality and ally with the east, with Eurasia, the huge contiguous continent, where the future lays.

The sanctions are sheer propaganda for the ignorant western population. For example, blocking President Putin’s and Foreign Minister Lavrov’s assets in the west. It’s ridiculous to even think that they have assets in the west. Or to block them from traveling to the US. Why would they want to travel to the heartland of their aggressors?

The latest sanction is – which is still being considered at the time of this writing – taking Russia off SWFT. SWIFT is the privately out of Belgium managed international monetary transfer program. If the west is hesitant to make that decision, it is for their own interests. For example, how would Russia be able and willing to settle outstanding obligations to western creditors or suppliers?

Russia has longstanding and close relationships with China and with other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which controls about 30% of the world’s GDP. Other than that, foreseeing this type of ultimate western “sanctions” aggression, Russia has fully dedollarized her economy and reserves.

Russia’s central bank has reoriented her economic activities towards the east, primarily China and the SCO; and in a larger sense throughout Eurasia, comprising about 55 million km2 – with some 70% of the world’s population and controlling about two-thirds of the world’s GDP. In addition, Eurasian countries are the first beneficiaries of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). See this.

One of the most incredible sanctions, includes the stop or non-acceptance by Germany under pressure from Washington, of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia to Germany which is close to 70% dependent on Russian gas for her energy requirements.

Incredible, because Germany accepts the imposition of such Washington / NATO imposed sanctions.

Germany may suffer at least temporary energy shortages and eventually be supplied with gas from the US at about double the price and from possibly other sources.

 

Russia, on the other hand has plenty of takers for her gas, not least China, with whom there are already vast energy trade agreements in place.

Back to the Ukraine conflict, President Putin has offered and maintains his offer to negotiate and talk with Ukraine’s leadership.

As reported by RT (26 February), the latest news is that after having first declined the Russian offer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday (25.2.2022) that he was ready to sit down for talks with Russia in order to end hostilities between the countries.

The same day, President Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that Moscow was ready to hold talks in Minsk, Belarus. He later claimed that the Ukrainian side first offered to move the meeting to Warsaw, Poland, and then stopped responding.

Russian-Ukrainian relations went downhill after the 2014 coup in Kiev. The Russian leader said Moscow aims to defend the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as to carry out “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine. President Putin further asserted that Ukraine must never join NATO, whose military infrastructure Moscow sees as a threat..

An interesting and logical thought is – what if a sovereign thinking, forward looking Kiev Government would decide to “surrender” – meaning to rejoin the Russian orbit?

After all, it is obvious that being associated with the east and being an ally of Russia, offers almost an illimited array of opportunities for growth and development, for recovery after the 8 years under the wests exploitative knell. The west would and could never offer Ukraine anything of the sort.

Just considering the measures and actions, including military, Russia is taking to protect Donbas from western-led Kiev aggressions, an enlightened Ukrainian Government might opt for the promising future associating with Russia and Eurasia, with the opportunity to benefit from the Belt and Road, rather than with an almost dead empire and its European allies.

Just a thought to reflect about which will also be to the benefit of the European Project which is being undermined by Washington.

A peaceful solution with a bright future.

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

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

Western Reporting: News from Nowhere

March 1st, 2022 by Stephen Sefton

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There are three main senses in which practically no foreign affairs reporting by Western news media and NGOs is ever about the country ostensibly the subject of their reports. First, almost invariably the reporting is so selective and biased as to be in effect a fictional account of some notional place barely recognizable as the country in question. Secondly, any particular report is always and principally intended to serve the much larger false narrative of Western superiority and benevolence. Thirdly, the reports generally depend on some great comprehensive deceit offering false plausibility to other minor, more detailed untruths.

In Ukraine, the massive deceit has been to ignore NATO country governments’ support for a fascist regime subordinate to followers of Nazism attacking its own Ukrainian citizens since 2014 with around 14,000 deaths, tens of thousands of wounded and hundreds of thousands people displaced. Those same NATO country governments destroyed Libya and almost destroyed Syria, falsely accusing those countries’ leaders of “killing their own people”. In Latin America, the catch-all big lie is that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are incompetent brutal dictatorships, when in fact their people-focused policies put to shame the desperate social reality prevalent in the countries of US allies like Colombia, Guatemala, Haiti, or Honduras.

This reality is self-evident to anyone trying to report faithfully from any of the countries targeted as enemies by the ruling elites of North America and Europe, the respective government leaders they control and, too, their pscychological warfare media and NGO apparatus. Western media and NGOs systematically mislead their populations about international affairs based on three fundamental presuppostions:

  • North American and European countries are highly morally principled
  • The majority world generally benefits from Western good intentions
  • Governments opposed to the West are bad and deserve to punished

Thus, accounts published in NATO country psychological warfare outlets like the New York Times, the Guardian, El País, Le Monde, Deutsche Welle, France 24, the BBC, CNN and so on and on, have barely anything to do with the region or country on which they feign to be reporting. Their role is to misinform Western populations about world events, criminalizing foreign governments so as to consolidate political support for North American and European crimes against the majority world. Domestically, their role is to suppress any trace of popular dissent threatening Western ruling elites’ power and control. Since at least the Iraq war, this inverse relationship has been very clear. Overseas, Western power and influence decline: at home, economic and political repression increase.

While events in Ukraine and elsewhere currently dominate global news, long standing Western aggression against smaller countries like, in Latin America, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela continues. Typical recent coverage of that aggression in the case of Nicaragua demonstrates how the negation of basic reporting integrity renders Western media and NGO accounts of foreign affairs practically worthless. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government has been under comprehensive assault from Western media and NGOs ever since taking office in January 2007.

Its president, Daniel Ortega has won election after election with massive majorities. Prior to 2018 Nicaragua stood out in the region for its achievements reducing poverty, its economic growth and its political and social stability. Unable to win power with popular support via elections, the US and EU funded opposition promoted a failed coup attempt in 2018 during which opposition militants and thugs with firearms burned down public buildings, businesses and private homes and even preschools. They killed over 20 police officers wounding 400 officers.

They installed roadblocks as bases from which to terrorize local people, demanding money, searching and stealing people’s personal effects, assaulting government supporters, abusing women and girls.Those responsible for organizing that violent failed coup attempt tried to repeat it around last year’s elections. Before they could do so they were arrested and put on trial. As usual, reporting of this reality by Western media, NGOs and institutions inverted what happened, casting the traitorous opposition criminals as innocent and peaceful while portraying the Nicaraguan government as brutal and illegitimate. That mendacious inversion has facilitated every kind of false account of subsequent events.

So, for example, most recently, the New York Times reports the Nicaraguan authorities’ closure of six private universities for failing to satisfy regulatory requirements as if the government is shutting down the country’s private university sector as a whole. The NYT omits that Nicaragua has over 50 universities, the great majority of which are private and the authorities immediately set up three new public universities to guarantee good quality university education for the affected students with lower fees and more scholarships. Likewise, the NYT reports that hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans now live in Costa Rica, without explaining that this has been the case for decades rather than being any kind recent migratory phenomenon, as their report implies.

Practically all Western media reporting on Nicaragua deploys this kind of systematic deceit, sourcing their reports exclusively on Nicaragua’s plentiful opposition media outlets, almost all of which are funded directly or indirectly by US and allied governments. The most notorious of these outlets is Confidencial, which, despite receiving US government funding, is invariably described in Western reporting as being independent. North American and European NGOs and institutions collude in this bad faith reporting, reinforcing the deceitful Western consensus, especially around human rights related issues.

For example, people interested in environmental or indigenous peoples’ issues will look to NGOs like the Oakland Institute or Mongabay for trustworthy reporting. Both these organizations receive large donations from corporate owned funders. The Oakland Institute has been funded by the Howard Buffet Foundation specifically to report on Nicaragua. Mongabay, although a non profit entity, is itself a corporation whose president and chief executive officer is paid US$234,000 a year. Its income reached over US$4 million in 2020 dropping to US$2.4 million the following year. Mongabay has received numerous donations of over US$100,000 from bodies like the Walton Family Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), for example.

The role of these NGOs reporting on Nicaragua is thoroughly dishonest. Nicaragua has the most innovative and advanced system of indigenous people’s self government anywhere. Distorting this reality, the Oakland Institute has been shown to have claimed falsely that cattle farming for beef exports was the cause of murderous conflicts on indigenous peoples lands. Likewise, Mongabay has claimed government policy in Nicaragua incites invasion of indigenous peoples’ lands despite elected indigenous peoples leaders themselves contradicting that falsehood. This kind of false reporting by media and NGOs feeds into US controlled institutions like the Organization of American States or UN human rights bodies, rendering worthless those influential institutions’ own reports.

Writers like Cory Morningstar and Whitney Webb have explained in detail the underlying rationale for this systematic legitimization of falsehood by Western controlled international institutions, media and NGOs.The relentless psychological warfare offensive undermines national governments, promoting the predatory corporate driven social and environmental agenda aimed at privatizing nature itself and imposing relentless digital control on all aspects of human life. Western media outlets, NGOs and institutions avow transparency and accountability but that too is a contemptible, cynical lie. Anyone challenging the false consensus is either attacked or suppressed.

Corporate NGOs like Mongabay or major institutions like the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights never engage well informed challenges publicly. In part, this clear ethical failure stems from fear of having their falsity and bad faith exposed, but linked to that is a deeply anti-democratic determination to prevent a wider public from having the chance to make up their own minds based on broadly sourced information. The test of good faith for any information is whether the reporting outlet is honest in declaring its own bias and interests and at least acknowledges competing information sources. Western foreign affairs reporting outlets almost invariably fail that test, consistently and comprehensively, reducing themselves to pathetic instruments of psychological warfare.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from TCS

Ucraina: l’attacco lo lanciò la Nato otto anni fa

March 1st, 2022 by Manlio Dinucci

La commissaria Ursula von der Leyen ha annunciato che la Ue mette al bando l’agenzia di stampa russa Sputnik e il canale Russia Today così che «non possano più diffondere le loro menzogne per giustificare la guerra di Putin con la loro disinformazione tossica in Europa». La Ue instaura così ufficialmente l’orwelliano Ministero della Verità, che cancellando la memoria riscrive la storia. Viene messo fuorilegge chiunque non ripete la Verità trasmessa dalla Voce dell’America, agenzia ufficiale del governo Usa, che accusa la Russia di «orribile attacco completamente ingiustificato e non provocato contro l’Ucraina». Mettendomi fuorilegge, riporto qui in estrema sintesi la storia degli ultimi trent’anni cancellata dalla memoria.

Nel 1991, mentre terminava la guerra fredda con il dissolvimento del Patto di Varsavia e della stessa Unione Sovietica, gli Stati uniti scatenavano nel Golfo la prima guerra del dopo guerra fredda, annunciando al mondo che «non esiste alcun sostituto alla leadership degli Stati uniti, rimasti il solo Stato con una forza e una influenza globali». Tre anni dopo, nel 1994, la Nato sotto comando Usa effettuava in Bosnia la sua prima azione diretta di guerra e nel 1999 attaccava la Jugoslavia: per 78 giorni, decollando soprattutto dalle basi italiane, 1.100 aerei effettuano 38 mila sortite, sganciando 23 mila bombe e missili che distruggevano in Serbia ponti e industrie, provocando vittime soprattutto tra i civili.

Mentre demoliva con la guerra la Jugoslavia, la Nato, tradendo la promessa fatta alla Russia di «non allargarsi di un pollice ad Est», iniziava la sua espansione ad Est sempre più a ridosso della Russia, che l’avrebbe portata in vent’anni a estendersi da 16 a 30 membri, incorporando paesi dell’ex Patto di Varsavia, dell’ex Urss e della ex Jugoslavia, preparandosi a includere ufficialmente anche Ucraina, Georgia e Bosnia Erzegovina, di fatto già nella Nato (il manifesto, Che cos’è e perché è pericoloso l’allargamento a Est della Nato, 22 febbraio 2022), Passando di guerra in guerra, Usa e Nato attaccavano e invadevano l’Afghanistan nel 2001 e l’Iraq nel 2003, demolivano con la guerra lo Stato libico nel 2011 e iniziavano tramite l’Isis la stessa operazione in Siria, in parte bloccata quattro anni dopo dall’intervento russo. Solo in Iraq, le due guerre e l’embargo uccidevano direttamente circa 2 milioni di persone, tra cui mezzo milione di bambini.

Nel febbraio 2014 la Nato, che dal 1991 si era impadronita di posti chiave in Ucraina, effettuava tramite formazioni neonaziste appositamente addestrate e armate, il colpo di stato che rovesciava il presidente dell’Ucraina regolarmente eletto. Esso era orchestrato in base a una precisa strategia: attaccare le popolazioni russe di Ucraina per provocare la risposta della Russia e aprire così una profonda frattura in Europa. Quando i russi di Crimea decidevano con il referendum di rientrare nella Russia di cui prima facevano parte, e i russi del Donbass (bombardati da Kiev anche col fosforo bianco) si trinceravano nelle due repubbliche, iniziava contro la Russia la escalation bellica della Nato. La sosteneva la Ue, in cui 21 dei 27 paesi membri appartengono alla Nato sotto comando Usa.

In questi otto anni, forze e basi Usa-Nato con capacità di attacco nucleare sono state dislocate in Europa ancora più a ridosso della Russia, ignorando i ripetuti avvertimenti di Mosca. Il 15 dicembre 2021 la Federazione Russa ha consegnato agli Stati Uniti d’America un articolato progetto di Trattato per disinnescare questa esplosiva situazione (il manifesto, «Mossa aggressiva» russa: Mosca propone la pace, 21 dicembre 2021). Non solo è stato anch’esso respinto ma, contemporaneamente, è cominciato lo schieramento di forze ucraine, di fatto sotto comando Usa-Nato, per un attacco su larga scala ai russi del Donbass. Da qui la decisione di Mosca di porre un alt alla escalation aggressiva Usa.Nato con l’operazione militare in Ucraina.

Manifestare contro la guerra cancellando la storia, significa contribuire consapevolmente o no alla frenetica campagna Usa-Nato-Ue che bolla la Russia quale pericoloso nemico, che spacca l’Europa per disegni imperiali di potere, trascinandoci alla catastrofe.

Manlio Dinucci

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.


 

The  European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced that, despite Putin’s warning, the EU is going to finance the purchase and delivery of weapons to Ukraine.  She also said the EU is going to include Belarus, which is not involved in the fighting, in the sanctions, because it is a Russian ally. She says the EU wants to ban Russian media because they don’t keep to the official war narrative. 

So, the European Commission president announces that the EU is joining the war on the side of the Ukrainian Nazis, and Washington’s  UN Ambassador accuses Putin of escalating the war. 

We see here the results of Putin’s far too many years of keeping his patience with the West.  The West has grown accustomed to imposing punishment upon punishment on Russia with no consequences to itself.  Now suddenly there are consequences, and it is all Putin’s fault.

I have warned for a number of years that the policy of patience would fail in the end because the West would keep pushing until it blundered across a red line. That has now occurred, and the consequences will be far more serious than if Russia had put her foot down long ago.

Russophobic morons accuse me of being pro-Russian because I provide objective analysis instead of joining in the mindless denunciations.  I am the one who saw nuclear war coming because of the mistaken policies of both sides.  It is the Western Russophobes and the naive Russian trust in negotiations that have misfired.  Unfortunately, it is my analysis that is proving to be correct. I can’t say I am happy about it.

UPDATE: It is stunning that no one in the Western leadership or media understood that Russia was serious about her security concern. Whether the West regarded the Kremlin’s concern as warranted or not, everything should have been done to reassure Russia. Instead, the opposite was done.  Stoltenberg said “if the Kremlin’s aim is to have less NATO on its borders, it will only get more NATO.” What an arrogantly stupid thing to say.  This reckless statement is made by the secretary general of NATO. He should have been instantly removed from office. 

I pointed out 8 days ago that this extremely aggressive response to a sincere security concern of a major military power would have very serious consequences. It convinced the Kremlin that Russia’s security concern could not be settled by negotiation. It was Stoltenberg who set the Russians on the course of invasion.

The West no longer has any Russian experts. The West has people directly or indirectly on the military/security complex’s payroll who do nothing but excoriate Russia. The West has zero ability to see the other side. Moreover, the West to show its inclusiveness appoints females as  defense ministers, national security advisers and heads of European Commission. The women have to show they are as tough as men and consequently make even worse decisions.  

Indeed, we are on the point of ceasing to exist simply because the Western World is not capable of making a sensible decision. 

The West has done nothing but stir the flames of war and now is close to being consumed in these flames.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.


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.

Die Demokratie häutet sich

March 1st, 2022 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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Seit wir Kenntnisse über den Menschen haben, wissen wir, dass der Mensch stets nach einem besseren Leben strebt, nach Frieden und Freiheit. Im Vordergrund steht der Friede: kein Krieg, keine Gewalt. Und so lange der Bürger schweigt, sich von der Obrigkeit alles gefallen lässt, die Steuern zahlt und zur vorgeschriebenen Zeit ins Militär einrückt, leben wir in gewisser Weise in einer stillen Diktatur.

Sobald der Bürger aber seine Ängstlichkeit abwirft und den Kadavergehorsam aufgibt, das heißt, den Regierenden nicht mehr blindlings gehorcht, sondern den Mut aufbringt, sich seines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen und auf seinen gesunden Menschenverstand zu vertrauen und dann auch noch seine Freiheitsrechte einfordert und gegen jegliche Unterwerfung und Tyrannei aufbegehrt, wird aus der stillen Diktatur oder Demokratie ohne jede Hemmung ganz schnell eine offene Diktatur oder Tyrannei — wie das Beispiel Kanada zeigt.

Wer bisher Probleme damit hatte, dass Leo N. Tolstoj bereits vor über 100 Jahren die regierenden Politiker unter anderem als „die grausamsten“ Menschen bezeichnete, die häufig herrschen, den wird das Beispiel Justin Trudeau oder auch der Umgang der australischen Regierung mit dem Tennisstar Novak Djokovic eines Besseren belehren. Auch stellt sich die Frage, wo der weltweite Aufschrei der regierenden Politiker anderer Demokratien und ihre Distanzierung vom brutalen Vorgehen der kanadischen Regierung gegen ihre Bürger bleiben? Oder will es sich keiner mit dem Kollegen Justin Trudeau — wie viele andere westliche Politiker ein Zögling von Klaus Schwabs Davoser Kaderschmiede — verderben?

Das Problem beginnt damit, dass freie Bürger anderen Menschen die Macht über ihr Leben geben. So werden in der westlichen Welt alle vier bis fünf Jahre korrupte Politiker in hohe Regierungsämter gewählt und die Bürger schauen zu ihnen auf wie Kinder zu respektablen Autoritäten. Doch die Politiker verbinden mit dieser Zuschreibung umgehend Herrschaftsansprüche, schaffen ein Verhältnis der Über- und Unterordnung und setzen gegenüber den Bürgern ihren Willen durch — präziser gesagt: den Willen oder die Anweisungen ihrer Auftraggeber, einer finsteren globalen Finanz-„Elite“.

Hoffnungsschimmer nach Friedrich Schiller:„Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht!“

Der freie Mensch, der sich gemäß Naturrecht seiner Menschennatur bewusst ist und sich von keinem anderen Wesen unterjochen lässt, wird sein Recht auf Widerstand gegen die Tyrannei wahrnehmen. Das Naturrecht, das dem Menschen allein schon deshalb zusteht, weil er Mensch ist, sagt, dass es etwas gibt, was von Natur aus recht ist. Freiheit, Gleichheit und Brüderlichkeit sowie körperliche Unversehrtheit und Unantastbarkeit der menschlichen Würde müssen unveräußerliche Grundlage einer freiheitlichen Gesellschaftsordnung sein. Alle Bürger sind dazu aufgerufen, den „alten Urstand der Natur“ wiederherzustellen! So Friedrich Schiller in der Rütli-Szene seines letzten Dramas „Wilhelm Tell“.

Der Mensch, der aufsteht, hat nichts gegen den Machthaber. Der Mensch in der Revolte hat sich der Umgestaltung, der Veränderung verschrieben. Er kämpft um eine gerechtere Ordnung, ein gerechteres Zusammenleben der Menschen untereinander. Er hat nichts gegen den Machthaber, er tut ihm nichts. Er kämpft nur um sein Recht, während die andere Seite — in der ganzen Geschichte — immer brutal handelt, ohne jedes Mitgefühl. Nimmt der Mensch sein individuelles und kollektives Recht auf Widerstand nicht in Anspruch, könnte das Beispiel Kanadas in der westlichen Welt Schule machen.

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This article was originally published on Rubikon.

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Rubikon

Democracy Is Shedding Its Skin

March 1st, 2022 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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No one will deny the progress of civilization; but the problem of violence and its taming has not yet been resolved by mankind.

Excessive and moderate brutality is making its mark on our age, as it has in previous periods of our history. 

An epidemic of greed for power and brutality in politics and business repeatedly leads to catastrophes such as war and terror that kill millions of people, similar to the plague of the Middle Ages.

Not only the events of the past 120 years with two world wars and countless other wars, but also the events of the last two years in relation to the so-called “corona pandemic” have given us a thorough visual lesson on the historical significance of power and violence.

A new cautionary tale is the social upheaval that is happening before our very eyes in Canada under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau: a democracy or “silent dictatorship” is rapidly becoming open despotism. And this is because the citizens no longer blindly obey the government like subjects, but demand their freedom and exercise their right to resist tyranny.

Don’t give power to anyone!

We have knowledge of humanity, and we know that human beings will always strive for a better life, for peace and freedom.

The focus is on peace: no war, no violence.

And as long as citizens remain silent, accept and puts up with everything imposed by the authorities, who pays taxes and enlists in the military at the prescribed time, we live in a certain way in a silent dictatorship.

But as soon as the citizen throws off his timidity and gives up his acceptance and obedience, that is, he no longer blindly obeys those in government, but has the courage to use his own understanding and trust in his common sense and then also demands his freedom rights and against everyone else.

When subjugation and tyranny is the object of rebellion, the silent dictatorship or fake democracy without any inhibitions very quickly turns into an open dictatorship or tyranny — as the example of Canada shows.

Anyone who has had problems with the fact that Leo N. Tolstoy, more than 100 years ago, described the ruling politicians as “the most cruel” people who often rule, will be reminded of the example of Justin Trudeau or the Australian government’s handling of tennis star Novak Teach Djokovic otherwise.

The question also arises as to where is the worldwide outcry of the governing politicians of other democracies and their distancing themselves from the brutal actions of the Canadian government against their citizens are staying?

Or does no one want to get on with his colleague Justin Trudeau — like many other Western politicians, a pupil of Klaus Schwab’s Davos cadre factory?

The problem begins with free citizens giving other people power over their lives.

In the western world, for example, corrupt politicians are elected to high government offices every four to five years and the citizens look up to them as children look up to respectable authorities.

But the politicians immediately associate this attribution with claims to power, create a relationship of superiority and subordination and enforce their will on the citizens — more precisely: the will or the instructions of their clients, a sinister global financial “elite”.

A glimmer of hope after Friedrich Schiller: “No, a border has tyrannical power!”

The free man, conscious of his human nature according to natural law and unwilling to be subjugated by any other being, will exercise his right to resist tyranny.

Natural law, which man is entitled to because he is human, says that there is something that is by nature in indelibly right.

Freedom, equality and fraternity as well as bodily integrity and the inviolability of human dignity must be the inalienable basis of a free social order.

All citizens are called upon to restore the “ancient state of nature”! So Friedrich Schiller in the Rütli scene of his last drama “Wilhelm Tell”.

The man who stands up has nothing against the ruler.

The man in revolt has dedicated himself to transformation, to change.

He fights for a fairer order, a fairer coexistence between people.

He has nothing against the ruler, he does nothing to him.

He’s just fighting for his rights, while the other side – throughout the whole story – always acts brutally, without any sympathy.

If people do not claim their individual and collective rights to resist, Canada’s example could set a precedent in the western world.

Translation and editing by Global Research

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This article was originally published in German on Rubikon.

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Rubikon

Why Is Putin in Ukraine?

March 1st, 2022 by Renee Parsons

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

 


Despite brave words from western leaders, there is no doubt that the current old world globalist order is at a crossroads.

With its organized planetary bioweapon attack meant to usher in the Great Reset, the World Economic Forum’s ideology is now shattered as Russia has refused to abide by the old neo-con rules of US economic and military hegemony. With the birth of a new geo-political order, Russia’s pre-emptive strike as a response to Ukraine, heavily armed by NATO and US weapons as military escalation increased, the balance of power has irrevocably shifted.

With elements of a mini-replay of WWII with the Russians pitted against the Nazis, WW III may have begun but not yet in the most horrific way that had been anticipated. ‘The west’ led by the US and UK, using Ukraine as their whipping boy, believed it their God-given right to militarily and economically harass Russia, to challenge their right to exist as a free and unfettered nation of the world. Those days are forever over.

As expected, while the American corporate media proves itself genetically incapable of presenting an accurate picture of what is happening in Ukraine, Americans are no more able to have a rational thought about Russia or its president Vladimir Putin than their demonizing about Donald Trump.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, Americans have been unable to think for themselves as they continue to follow the prescribed script exactly as the discredited globalists dictate reality. Their impressions remain deeply ingrained and embedded that no amount of logic or rational facts can reach beyond an illogic hatred or a willingness to consider any other position. Given that Americans choose to remain ‘stuck’ in a baseless posture, they are forever lost to mature, intellectual, analytical reasoning.

The fact is that the Russian-Ukraine border dispute is no business of the US or any other government. As former US Rep. Tulsi Gabbard put it ‘all this could have been avoided if the Biden Administration had acknowledged Russia’s legitimate border security requests.

On February 24, Putin announced a ‘special operation’ to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine with the intent to target and disable Ukraine’s military infrastructure, that the civilian population was not in danger (and remain able to leave the country) and that there is no intention to ‘occupy’ Ukraine but that NATO will not be allowed to establish military installations that threaten the Russian border.

Putin recently acknowledged the long time request for self-declared independence establishing the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk as he formally accepted their return to Russia. That declaration immediately conferred  military protection which allowed the Russian military to act in their defense.

Russia is being portrayed as if they are taking significant losses when in truth they have not yet committed a full strength Russian Army to the struggle. Russia is conducting the war with precision strikes not as the Pentagon which would totally irrevocably destroy every inch of Ukraine and its populated cities; to take every structure, every water plant, every electrical tower, every sign of civilization and culture to the ground. Putin is pursuing a strategy of encircling the adversary rather than wiping them out in one attack; it’s called a Siege. Putin’s goal is to take Ukraine intact and to create a functioning country that does not bully its neighbor.

Since 2014, when the Obama Administration provided the diplomatic muscle to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych who resisted EU and NATO membership, Russia had sought a security agreement that would protect its ancestral borders. He was attempting to ensure the earlier promise to Gorbachev that there would be no NATO move to the east. As former Eastern Block and Baltic countries were admitted to NATO, Ukraine remained neutral and non-militarized.

After the coup, the Azov Brigade, descendants of Nazi leftovers from WW II who remained in Ukraine after the war, took over the Kiev government as it sought to eliminate the indigenous Russian-speaking population by inflicting a steady barrage of violence and conflict with continued artillery and mortar shelling of schools in the Donbass province killing 14,000 people (UN estimate) including an estimated fifty victims who were trapped inside a locked union hall in Odessa. The people of Odessa recently celebrated the arrival of Russian forces in Ukraine by hoisting and cheering the Russian Flag.

In the intervening years since the 2014 coup, the US thumbed its nose as if it owned the world, its supremacy unparalleled as it dared any country to challenge its dominance. As events in Ukraine intensified, there has also been a history of US and UK naval destroyers repeatedly  traversing the Black Sea for no reason other than as a deliberate provocation and to intimidate Russia as they sail in violation of Russian sovereignty within ten nautical miles of its borders as if daring a military response.

Also of some urgency is confirmation that the US Embassy in Ukraine is home to as many as fifteen US-sponsored bioweapon labs under the Pentagon’s Biologic Threat Reduction Program which has a $2.1 Billion budget.

For a complete report on more than you ever wanted to know about the US bioweapon labs in Georgia and Ukraine, scroll down for “Pentagon Biolabs Spread Disease in Ukraine.”

Any inquiring mind might ask why would the US Pentagon choose to establish numerous bioweapon labs and conduct bioweapon experiments at obscure locations like the Ukraine and Georgia other than for that very reason.  They are obscure locations with an expendably insignificant population.  They are locations where few people know or care what experiments are being conducted or whether leaks are occurring or if any of the labs are conducting the highly controversial ‘gain of function’ experiment as at Wuhan, China.

Putin’s option has been to take the action he did to protect Russia’s history and sovereignty or to kneel before Klaus Schwab and relinquish every notion of a Russian nation just as the Biden Administration chose to open its southern border to any terrorists with an agenda other than getting a job.

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

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

The History of Eugenics and the New World Order

March 1st, 2022 by Matthew Ehret-Kump

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In this presentation delivered to the Day 6 proceedings of the Coronavirus Grand Jury hearing organized by Dr. Reiner Fullmich and his team of international lawyers, Canadian Patriot Review Editor-in-Chief Matthew Ehret was asked to deliver remarks elucidating the origins of the quasi-science of eugenics, and its role in mis-shaping the 20th century.

This exercise required a brief overview of

1) how the Malthusian science of population control as it arose in response to the spread of republican concepts of humanity and freedom in the late 18th century,

2) how Charles Darwin himself (under the control of Thomas Huxley) took his ideas directly from Malthus’ Essay on Population, and 3) how this in turn expressed itself in Francis Galton’s “new science” of eugenics.

It may be hard to believe but Galton himself had stated in 1904 that his new science (a repackaged Malthusianism) was always designed to be a new macro religion shaping the worldview of a new post-Christian managerial elite:

“[Eugenics] must be introduced into the national conscience, like a new religion. It has, indeed, strong claims to become an orthodox religious, tenet of the future, for eugenics co-operate with the workings of nature by securing that humanity shall be represented by the fittest races…. I see no impossibility in Eugenics becoming a religious dogma among mankind.”

After a eugenics-driven attempt at a new world order was aborted during WWII, Sir Julian Huxley (the grandson of Darwin’s bulldog and himself a life long member and even president of the British Eugenics Society) spearheads a re-organization of the British imperial grand strategy with the intent of repackaging eugenics under a new name but with the same effects as those outlined by Hitler earlier. This was most clearly outlined in Julian’s 1946 manifesto for UNESCO where he said:

“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”

What form did this repackaging of eugenics take in the post WWII era?

To answer this, we must review what organizations, and policies Julian set into motion, that derailed that positive momentum of history which had been lain by Franklin Roosevelt, and revived by John F Kennedy, Enrico Mattei, Charles de Gaulle and other great statesmen throughout the 1960s.

One disclaimer for those confused by the claims that Julian Huxley played a role in the establishment of the World Health Organization: While Julian created UNESCO serving as its first Director General from 1946-48, and openly played a key role in setting up the World Federation of Mental Health in 1948 alongside a group of Tavistock psychiatrists, his back channel role in establishing the World Health Organization has been obscured from public records making it difficult to establish smoking gun evidence on this particular point.

This presentation used research published in Matt Ehret’s 3 part trilogy which features extensive information which the short space of the live presentation did not permit be discussed.

Part 1: How the Unthinkable Became Thinkable: Eric Lander, Julian Huxley and the Awakening of Sleeping Monsters

Part 2: Eugenics, The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Clash of Two Systems

Part 3: From Russell and Hilbert to Wiener and Harari: The Disturbing Origins of Cybernetics and Transhumanism

Listen to the full 4 hour event here.

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This article was originally published on The Canadian Patriot.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , and Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow. He is author of the ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series and Clash of the Two Americas. In 2019 he co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TCP

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.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

 


It should come as no surprise that many observers, from various political perspectives, are beginning to note that there is something seriously disconnected in the fumbling foreign policy of the United States. The evacuation failure in Afghanistan shattered the already waning self-confidence of the American political elite and the continuing on-again off-again negotiations that were by design intended to go nowhere with Iran and Russia provide no evidence that anyone in the White House is really focused on protecting American interests. Now we have an actual shooting war in Ukraine as a result, a conflict that might easily escalate if Washington continues to send the wrong signals to Moscow.

To cite only one example of how outside influences distort policy, in a phone call on February 9th, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett advised President Joe Biden not to enter into any non-proliferation agreement with Iran. Biden was non-committal even though it is an actual American interest to come to an agreement, but instead he indicated that as far as the US is concerned, Israel could exercise “freedom of action” when dealing with the Iranians. With that concession has ended in all probability the only possible diplomatic success that the Administration might have been able to point to.

The Biden Administration’s by default global security policy is currently reduced to what some critics have described as “encirclement and containment.” That is why an overstretched US military is being tasked with creating ever more bases worldwide in an effort to counter perceived “enemies” who often are only exercising their own national sovereignty and right to security within their own zones of influence. Ironically, when nations balk at submitting to Washington’s control, they are frequently described as “aggressors” and “anti-democratic,” the language that has most particularly been used relating to Russia. The Biden policy, such as it actually exists, appears to be a throwback to the playing field in 1991-2 when the Soviet empire collapsed. It is all about maintaining the old American dream of complete global dominance coupled with liberal interventionism, but this time around the US lacks both the resources and the national will to continue in the effort. Hopefully the White House will understand that to do nothing is better than to make empty threats.

Meanwhile, as the situation continues to erode, it is becoming more and more obvious that the twin crises that have been developing over Ukraine and Taiwan are “Made in Washington” and are somewhat inexplicable as the US does not have a compelling national interest that would justify threats to “leave on the table” military options as a possible response. The Administration has yet again responded to Russian moves by initiating devastating sanctions. But Russia also has unconventional weapons in its arsenal. It can, for starters, shift focus away from Ukraine by intervening much more actively in support of Syria and Iran in the Middle East, disrupting feeble American attempts to manage that region to benefit Israel.

According to economists, Russia has also been effectively sanction-proofing its economy and is capable of selective reverse-sanctioning of countries that support an American initiative with any enthusiasm. Such a response would likely hurt the Europeans much more than it would damage the leadership in the Kremlin. Barring Russian gas from Europe by shutting down Nord Stream 2 would, for example, permit increased sales to China and elsewhere in Asia and would inflict more pain on the Europeans than on Moscow. Shipping US supplied liquid gas to Europe would, for example, cost more than twice the going rate being offered by the Kremlin and would also be less reliable. The European NATO members are clearly nervous and not fully behind the US agenda on Ukraine, largely because there is the legitimate concern that any and possibly all options being considered by Washington could easily produce missteps that would escalate into a nuclear exchange that would be catastrophic for all parties involved.

Apart from the real immediate danger to be derived from the fighting currently taking place in Ukraine, the real long-term damage is strategic. The Joe Biden Administration has adroitly maneuvered itself into a corner while America’s two principal adversaries Russia and China have drawn closer together to form something like a defensive as well as economic relationship that will be dedicated to reducing and eventually eliminating Washington’s assumed role as the global hegemon and rules enforcer.

In a recent article in the New Yorker foreign affairs commentator Robin Wright, who might reasonably described as a “hawk,” declares the new development to be “Russia and China Unveil[ing] a Pact Against America and the West.” And she is not alone in ringing the alarm bell, with former Donald Trump National Security Council (NSC) Russia watcher Anita Hill warning that the Kremlin’s intention is to force the United States out of Europe while former NSC Ukrainian expert Alexander Vindman is advising that military force be used to deter Russia now before it is too late.

Wright provides the most serious analysis of the new developments. She argues that “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, the two most powerful autocrats, challenge the current political and military order.” She describes how, in a meeting between the two leaders before the Beijing Olympics, they cited an “agreement that also challenges the United States as a global power, NATO as a cornerstone of international security, and liberal democracy as a model for the world.” They pledged that there would be “No ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” and a written statement that was subsequently produced declared that “Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose color revolutions, and will increase cooperation.” Wright notes that there is considerable strength behind the agreement, “As two nuclear-armed countries that span Europe and Asia, the more muscular alignment between Russia and China could be a game changer militarily and diplomatically.” One might add that China now has the world’s largest economy and Russia has a highly developed military deploying new hypersonic missiles that would give it the advantage in any conflict with NATO and the US. Both Russia and China, if attacked, would also benefit because they would be fighting close to their bases on interior lines.

And, of course, not everyone agrees that nudging the United States out of its self-proclaimed hegemonic role would be a bad thing. Former British diplomat Alastair Crooke argues that there will be perpetual state of crisis in the international order until a new system emerges from the status quo that ended the Cold War, and it would be minus the United States as the semi-official transnational rules maker and arbiter. He observes that “The crux of Russia’s complaints about its eroding security have little to do with Ukraine per se but are rooted in the Washington hawks’ obsession with Russia, and their desire to cut Putin (and Russia) down to size – an aim which has been the hallmark of US policy since the Yeltsin years. The Victoria Nuland clique could never accept Russia rising to become a significant power in Europe – possibly eclipsing the US control over Europe.”

What is happening in Europe and Asia should all come down to a very simple realization about the limits of power: America has no business in risking a nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine or with China over Taiwan. The United States has been fighting much of the world for over two decades, impoverishing itself and killing millions in avoidable wars starting with Iraq and Afghanistan. The US government is cynically exploiting memories of old Cold War enemy Russia to create a false narrative that goes something like this: “If we don’t stop them over there, they will be in New Jersey next week.” It is all nonsense. And besides, who made the US the sole arbiter of international relations? It is past time Americans started asking what kind of international order is it that lets the United States determine what other nations can and cannot do.

Worst of all, the bloodshed in Ukraine has all been unnecessary. A little real diplomacy with honest negotiators weighing up real interests could easily have come to acceptable solutions for all parties involved.

It is indeed ironic that the burning desire to go to war with Russia demonstrated in the New York Times and Washington Post as well as on Capitol Hill has in fact created a real formidable enemy, tying Russia and China together in an alliance due to their frustration at dealing with a Biden Administration that never seems to know what it is doing or where it wants to go.

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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].