With Biden’s Support, Saudi Arabia Escalates Its War of Aggression in Yemen

March 23rd, 2022 by Daniel Larison

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The US-backed war on Yemen started seven years ago this week, and after all this time US policy is practically unchanged. The coalition bombing campaign has picked up again in recent months with 700 airstrikes in February alone, and according to the Yemen Data Project the bombing has been more intense during this period than at any point since 2018. 1,500 civilians have been killed or wounded in these attacks. Despite being far more destructive and killing many more people, including 91 people in a migrant detention center, these airstrikes have received no criticism from the US.

Instead of withholding military assistance from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as it should have done, the Biden administration has been rushing more jets, ships, and air defense interceptors to the governments that have been brutalizing the people of Yemen directly and through their armed proxies. The US also backed a one-sided UN Security Council resolution that named the Houthis as a terrorist group while ignoring the many atrocities committed by the coalition governments and their proxies. While the US condemns aggression in Ukraine, it continues to support it in Yemen.

Yemen’s humanitarian crisis continues to worsen because far too little has been done to halt the slide towards catastrophe. The UN has warned again that famine is spreading in the country. According to their estimate, there will be 161,000 people in famine conditions this year, and that figure is five times larger than it has been in the past. The World Food Program’s David Beasley commented on the projection, “These harrowing figures confirm that we are on a countdown to catastrophe in Yemen and we are almost out of time to avoid it.”

Two days after he said that, the UN aid drive for Yemen came up with a paltry $1.3 billion in donations, far short of the $4.27 billion that they were requesting. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have donated to these drives in the past to distract from their responsibility for the crisis, but this year they gave nothing. Yemen desperately needs more resources to stave off the worst-case scenario of widespread starvation, but more than that it needs an urgent effort to halt the fighting and lift the blockade. Even when there were no other major crises in the world, Yemen’s plight was badly neglected, and now it is being almost completely ignored.

To make matters worse, the war in Ukraine threatens to drive food prices much higher. In countries where tens of millions are already severely food insecure, including Yemen and Afghanistan, the effects of food shortages and rising global food prices will hit hardest. Yemen and Afghanistan were already facing some of the worst man-made famines before this because of economic warfare being waged against them, and this makes mass starvation even more likely.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE assume that they can extract more support from the US on account of higher energy prices, and the Biden administration has given them every reason to think that this will work. The US put no real pressure on either government over the last year, and Biden has signaled to these clients that he will give them practically anything they want. As usual, letting client states get away with murder just encourages them to make more demands and complain that they are being abandoned if they are not immediately satisfied. This is what comes of Biden’s so-called “back to basics” approach to the region, where the US remains deeply complicit in the crimes of its clients without using any of its leverage to get cooperation from them.

The war on Yemen is undoubtedly a war of aggression, but because it is waged by US client states with US backing it is not widely condemned in the same way as Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The only real difference between the two is that the Saudi coalition dresses up their aggression by claiming to be seeking to restore a deposed dictator as president, but that is a pitiful fig leaf for an unprovoked attack on a neighboring country. It certainly cannot justify the many thousands of airstrikes that have battered Yemen’s cities and villages and killed and injured tens of thousands of civilians. The people of Yemen have borne the brunt of the war for seven years, and they have done so mostly without the rest of the world paying them much attention.

The US has a special responsibility to bring this conflict to an end because our government has done so much to fuel and enable it, and time is of the essence in averting a major famine that this US-supported war is creating. The Biden administration has proven that it isn’t going to make more than a token effort on its own. It falls to the public and members of Congress to insist that the US use all the leverage that it has with these states to put a stop to this indefensible war.

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Daniel Larison is a contributing editor and weekly columnist for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

Featured image: WFP Provides Food Assistance to a Record 7 Million People In Yemen In August 2017. UN World Food Program. [Source: wfp.org]

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Sanctions Have Consequences

March 23rd, 2022 by JW Rich

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The DOJ Is Hiring Tort Lawyers to Defend HHS from Vaccine Injury Cases

March 23rd, 2022 by Emerald Robinson

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The Biden regime’s DOJ apparently needs to hire at least four new tort lawyers to help with vaccine injury cases against HHS — according to a new job posting on the federal government’s official hiring site USAJOBS.

The job posting is only open for a month —so they need them now.

Here’s the job description (italics are mine):

Trial attorneys in Office of Constitutional and Specialized Tort Litigation – Vaccine Litigation Staff – represent the interests of the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services in all cases filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (“Vaccine Act”). The cases involve claims of injury as a result of the receipt of vaccines covered by the Act. The position offers a unique experience in public service and involves trial practice. The legal and medical issues at stake in each case vary. Trial attorneys independently manage heavy caseloads, and while streamlined procedures are utilized, many cases involve complex scientific issues of causation that require employment of experts in medical fields such as pediatrics, neurology, immunology and epidemiology. In cases in which petitioners are found entitled to compensation, the litigation often requires retention and management of experts to develop an appropriate life care plan for the injured party — to include medical treatment, remedial care, rehabilitation, calculation of lost earnings, actuarial projections and structured settlements.

Attorneys appear frequently before the Office of Special Masters in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and also appear before the judges of the Court, as well as in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit when handling appeals. Responsibilities include factual and legal research, medical record review, brief writing, and working with expert witnesses to develop the defense of claims, as well as to address the life care needs of vaccine-injured petitioners. As the majority of cases are resolved through settlement, attorneys also engage regularly in settlement negotiations, including alternative dispute resolution, and drafting settlement memoranda and related documents. Due to a recent increase in cases filed under the Vaccine Act, the office is expanding to address the additional workload.

Notice that the candidates will need “top secret” security clearances to do their jobs. Now why would you need a top secret clearance to do vaccine injury settlements? My guess: the Biden regime will try to hide the roles of Dr. Fauci and Dr. Baric and DARPA/Moderna (and all the rest of them at the Pentagon and NIH) in creating COVID-19 by designating the obvious truth as classified information. It’s all bioweapons research after all.

That’s exactly how the U.S. government works.

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FDA Gives Green Light to Gene-Edited Cattle

March 23rd, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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While a lengthy approval process is typically necessary for gene-edited animals to enter the food market, the FDA streamlined the process for gene-edited cattle, allowing them to skirt the regular approval process

The FDA announced in March 2022 that Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle received a low-risk determination for marketing products, including food, made from their meat

This marks the FDA’s first low-risk determination for enforcement discretion for an intentional genomic alteration in an animal for food use

The animals have genes modified to make their coats shorter and slicker, which is intended to help them better withstand heat stress, allowing them to gain more weight and increase the efficiency of meat production

In 2019, Brazil stopped its plans to allow a herd of Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle after unexpected DNA changes were uncovered

Long-term safety studies have not been conducted, and experts are calling for long-term safety and toxicity studies

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In as little as two years, Americans could be biting into their first gene-edited burgers, courtesy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory clearance of gene-edited cattle.1 The animals, created by bioengineering company Recombinetics, have genes modified to make their coats shorter and slicker.

The genetic modification to their coats is intended to help them better withstand heat stress, allowing them to gain more weight and increase the efficiency of meat production2 — but at what cost? While a lengthy approval process is typically necessary for gene-edited animals to enter the food market, the FDA streamlined the process for gene-edited cattle, allowing them to skirt the regular approval process.

FDA Grants First ‘Low-Risk Determination’ for Gene-Edited Cattle

The FDA announced in March 2022 that Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle received a low-risk determination for marketing products, including food, made from their meat. “This is the FDA’s first low-risk determination for enforcement discretion for an IGA [intentional genomic alteration] in an animal for food use,” the FDA reported.3

The agency stated that the gene-edited beef cattle do not raise any safety concerns because the gene modifications result in the same genetic make-up seen in so-called “slick coat” cattle, which are conventionally bred. According to the FDA:4

“There are conventionally bred cattle with naturally-occurring mutations that result in the same extremely short, slick-hair coat. Reports in scientific literature indicate that cattle with this extremely short, slick-hair coat are potentially able to better withstand hot weather. Cattle that are comfortable in their environment are less likely to experience temperature-related stress and may result in improved food production.”

But are the conventionally bred cattle and the gene-edited cattle, known as PRLR-SLICK cattle, truly equivalent? The genomic alteration in the cattle is introduced using CRISPR, or Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat, gene-editing technology. CRISPR has been associated with unintended mutations that may not immediately be apparent, a concerning prospect since the genetic alterations are passed on to offspring.

The FDA, however, is allowing the technology to proceed anyway, stating that because it does not expect facilities producing PRLR-SLICK cattle using conventional techniques to register with them, it would not expect Recombinetics to do so either. They further state that food from both conventionally bred cattle and the gene-edited cattle is “the same,” based on data provided by Recombinetics:5

“The FDA reviewed genomic data and other information submitted by the product developer confirming that the IGA in genome-edited PRLR-SLICK cattle is equivalent to naturally occurring mutations that have arisen in several breeds of cattle as an adaptation to being raised in tropical or subtropical environments.

The data also confirmed that the IGA results in the same slick-hair trait as in cattle found in conventional agriculture. Further, the food from the cattle is the same as food from conventionally bred cattle that have the same slick-hair trait.”

Problems With CRISPR

CRISPR gene-editing technology brought science fiction to life with its ability to cut and paste DNA fragments, potentially eliminating serious inherited diseases. CRISPR-Cas9, in particular, has gotten scientists excited because,6 by modifying an enzyme called Cas9, the gene-editing capabilities are significantly improved.

To date, gene editing has been used to produce soybeans with altered fatty acid profiles, potatoes that take longer to turn brown and potatoes that remain fresher longer and do not produce carcinogens when fried. Other uses for gene-editing in foods include the creation of low-gluten wheat, mushrooms that don’t turn brown and tomatoes that can be produced in areas with shorter growing seasons.

Gene-edited foods have already been released into the food supply, but their safety is largely unknown, as gene editing isn’t a perfect science. Unintentional off-target edits could cause changes to plant DNA, with consequences that could include growth disturbances, exposure to plant diseases or the introduction of allergens or toxins.7

In animals, gene editing has led to unexpected side effects, including enlarged tongues and extra vertebrate.8,9 Often researchers don’t know the extent of a gene’s functions until they attempt to tweak it, and something like an extra vertebrate reveals itself. Speaking with Yale Insights, Dr. Greg Licholai, a biotech entrepreneur, explained some of the very real risks of CRISPR and other gene-editing technologies:10

“One of the biggest risks of CRISPR is what’s called gene drive, or genetic drive. What that means is that because you’re actually manipulating genes and those genes get incorporated into the genome, into the encyclopedia, basically, that sits within cells, potentially those genes can then be transferred on to other organisms.

And once they’re transferred on to other organisms, once they become part of the cycle, then those genes are in the environment.

That’s probably the biggest fear of CRISPR. Humans manipulating the genetic code, and those manipulations get passed on generation to generation to generation. We think we know what we’re doing, we think we’re measuring exactly what changes we’re doing to the genes, but there’s always the possibility that either we miss something or our technology can’t pick up on other changes that have been made that haven’t been directed by us.

And the fear then is that those changes lead to antibiotic resistance or other mutations that go out into the population and would be very difficult to control. Basically creating incurable diseases or other potential mutations that we wouldn’t really have control over.”

Brazil Scrapped Plans for Gene-Edited Cattle

It’s worth noting that, in 2019, Brazil stopped its plans to allow a herd of Recombinetics’ gene-edited cattle after unexpected DNA changes were uncovered. As with the FDA, Brazilian regulators had determined that Recombinetics could proceed without any special oversight, since their gene-editing involved modifying cattle with a naturally occurring trait.

In this case, instead of altering the cattle’s coats, Recombinetics was editing the cattle to be hornless — until something went wrong. Wired reported in 2019:11

“The company, Minnesota-based Recombinetics, started preparing shipments of sperm from one of their two gene-edited Holstein bulls, Buri. With it, breeders planned to create about 10 calves to prove the edit could be passed down, and to study their health for a few years while they lived in Brazil.

If it all went well, they’d try the edits in a more elite dairy stud (sorry, Buri) and move into the market. But now, WIRED has learned, those plans have been abruptly dropped.

Buri, it turns out, had more than just the hornlessness gene slipped into his genome. Part of the editing machinery, the piece of bacterial DNA that delivered the desired gene into Buri’s cells, called a plasmid, had accidentally gotten pasted into his genome. He was, in fact, part bacteria — a teeny tiny part, around 4,000 base pairs out of about 3 billion.”

Recombinetics had reportedly checked for unexpected alterations during the process, concluding in 2016 that none occurred. But, Tad Sonstegard, CEO of Recombinetics’ agriculture subsidiary, Acceligen, told Wired, “We weren’t looking for plasmid integrations. We should have.”12Recombinetics also asked the FDA to grant the gene-edited hornless cattle “generally recognized as safe” status in 2016, but the agency declined.

In 2017, the FDA announced it would begin classifying animals with edited or engineered DNA as drugs, prompting backlash from the biotech industry,13 which doesn’t want such foods labeled. Prior to this, in November 2015, the FDA approved AquaBounty salmon, which contains the DNA from two other fish, a growth-promoting gene from a Chinook salmon and a “promoter” gene from the eel-like ocean pout.

This genetic tweaking results in fish with always-on growth hormone, and because they grow so much faster than other salmon, they also require less food. The GE fish were first sold and eaten in Canada,14 but AquaBounty acquired a fish farm in Albany, Indiana, where eggs intended to grow the first GE salmon for human consumption in the U.S. arrived in May 2019.15

AquaBounty began harvesting the GE salmon in late 2020 and is in the process of building another facility in Pioneer, Ohio, which will have about eight times the output capacity of the Indiana farm.16They describe their next phase of growth as transitioning to a commercial production enterprise, even as the health and environmental consequences of consuming and producing these altered salmon — or other gene-edited foods — remain unknown.

Gene-Edited Cattle Coming to Supermarkets

The FDA’s decision to grant gene-edited cattle a low-risk determination marks the first time the FDA has used “enforcement discretion” for IGA in an animal for food use. However, it’s unlikely to be the last, paving the way for more gene-edited animals to quickly reach the U.S. food supply. In fact, Steven Solomon, director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, made it clear that he hopes more gene-edited animals for food production will soon be brought to the market:17

“[The] decision underscores our commitment to using a risk and science-based, data-driven process that focuses on safety to the animals containing intentional genomic alterations and safety to the people who eat the food produced by these animals. It also demonstrates our ability to identify low-risk IGAs that don’t raise concerns about safety, when used for food production.

We expect that our decision will encourage other developers to bring animal biotechnology products forward for the FDA’s risk determination in this rapidly developing field, paving the way for animals containing low-risk IGAs to more efficiently reach the marketplace.”

Recombinetics plans to have the gene-edited meat products available to “select customers in the global market soon” while general consumers will be able to purchase gene-edited meat in as soon as two years.18 The public, however, may not be thrilled with the idea, especially as many increasingly seek out real, whole foods in lieu of GMOs. One survey found only 32% of Americans are comfortable with GMOs in their food.19

It’s important to note, too, that long-term safety studies have not been conducted. The Center for Food Safety’s Jaydee Hanson is among those who stated the FDA should study gene-edited animals for several generations to look for problems.20

In an interview with GM Watch, Michael Antoniou, a London-based molecular geneticist, also explained that significant changes could occur due to genetic editing, in both agricultural and medical contexts, necessitating long-term safety and toxicity studies.21 For now the best way to avoid gene-edited foods, if you so choose, is to purchase organic and, even better, biodynamic foods.

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Notes

1, 2, 20 Drugs.com March 8, 2022

3, 4, 5, 17, 18 U.S. FDA March 7, 2022

6 Nature Methods 14, 547–548 (2017)

7 Washington Post August 11, 2018

8 Sci Rep. 2016; 6: 25029

9 The Wall Street Journal December 14, 2018

10 Yale Insights August 21, 2018

11, 12 Wired August 26, 2019

13 Pacific Standard November 1, 2018

14 BioGraphic February 13, 2018

15 UPI May 30, 2019

16 GlobalNewsWire January 11, 2022

19 GMO Answers

21 GM Watch June 1, 2017

Featured image is from Mercola

Selected Articles: Was the Azov Battalion Behind the Mariupol Theater Bombing? Or Was It Russia?

March 23rd, 2022 by Global Research News

Was the Azov Battalion Behind the Mariupol Theater Bombing? Or was it Russia?

By Eric Zuesse, March 23, 2022

How could the pro-Russian side have known about this in advance? If Russia had had any reason for bombing that theater, then the Ukrainian government’s account of the matter would be worth considering. But none of that is the case here. The breakaway republics had gotten advance warning from resident(s) in nearby Mariupol — maybe from relative(s)s of hostages being held in that theater.

F-15 Eagles from the 493rd Fighter Squadron at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England

Defense Giants Quietly Making Billions on Ukraine War

By Peter Bloom, March 23, 2022

Ahead of the conflict, top western arms companies were briefing investors about a likely boost to their profits. Gregory J Hayes, the chief executive of US defense giant Raytheon, stated on a January 25 earnings call.

Eight Years Ago: US-NATO Installed a Neo-Nazi Government in Ukraine

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 23, 2022

Confirmed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, key organizations in the Ukraine including the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda were generously supported by Washington: “We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. … We will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”

Why Ukraine is Important to Powerful People in Washington: Lara Logan Sets the Record Straight on Ukraine-Russia

By Alexandra Bruce, March 22, 2022

She explains that Ukraine is at the center of this cult of Globalists. It is the center of money-laundering for the oligarchs and their allies in the United States, it’s the center of the Russia Hoax and the Fake Impeachment.

Was Bombing of Mariupol Theater Staged by Ukrainian Azov Extremists to Trigger NATO Intervention?

By Max Blumenthal, March 22, 2022

Testimony by evacuated Mariupol residents and warnings of a false flag attack undermine the Ukrainian government’s claims about a Russian bombing of a local theater sheltering civilians.

Getting Away with Murder

By Philip Giraldi, March 22, 2022

A recent story illustrating just how deep the rot has penetrated the core of United States government and its institutions has predictably been given little coverage by the US mainstream media, but it is a tale that is appalling in its implications.

Zelensky’s Reckless Gamble

By Vasko Kohlmayer, March 22, 2022

What Zelensky is doing, in reality, is calling for is World War III. Such a war could very quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West. With both sides armed with thousands of nuclear warheads, this kind of conflict would result in a fathomless death toll and would almost certainly end the world as we know it.

CDC Removes Tens of Thousands of Deaths ‘Accidentally’ Attributed to COVID

By Megan Redshaw, March 22, 2022

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 14 removed tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of deaths it had attributed to children, blaming an algorithm for “accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”

Yemen: The Largest Humanitarian Crisis that No One Discusses

By Martin Armstrong, March 22, 2022

Yemen has been at war for the past seven years. A once great land of ancient trade, Yemen has become one of the poorest nations in the Arab world. Their GDP for 2021 was expected to reach only 26.9 billion USD. The World Bank estimated that over half of Yemen’s population lived in poverty prior to the pandemic, and that figure has now reached 71% to 78%.

2021 Amazon Deforestation Map Shows Devastating Impact of Ranching, Agriculture

By Maxwell Radwin, March 22, 2022

Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) found that around 1.9 million hectares (4.8 million acres) of the rainforest were lost last year, similar to annual forest loss rates in 2020 and 2019.

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‘Unthinkable’: Scientists Shocked as Polar Temperatures Soar 50 to 90 Degrees Above Normal

March 23rd, 2022 by Brett Wilkins

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Scientists expressed shock and alarm this weekend amid extreme high temperatures near both of the Earth’s poles—the latest signs of the accelerating planetary climate emergency.

Temperatures in parts of Antarctica were 50°F-90°F above normal in recent days, while earlier this week the mercury soared to over 50°F higher than average—close to the freezing mark—in areas of the Arctic.

Stefano Di Battista, an Antarctic climatologist, tweeted that such record-shattering heat near the South Pole was “unthinkable” and “impossible.”

“Antarctic climatology has been rewritten,” di Battista wrote.

The joint French-Italian Concordia research station in eastern Antarctica recorded an all-time high of 10°F on Friday. In contrast, high temperatures at the station this time in March average below -50°F.

Jonathan Wille, a researcher studying polar meteorology at Université Grenoble Alpes in France, told The Washington Post that “this event is completely unprecedented and upended our expectations about the Antarctic climate system.”

“This is when temperatures should be rapidly falling since the summer solstice in December,” Wille tweeted. “This is a Pacific Northwest 2021 heatwave kind of event,” he added, referring to the record-breaking event in which parts of Canada topped 120°F for the first time in recorded history. “Never supposed to happen.”

Walt Meier, a senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, told USA Today that “you don’t see the North and the South [poles] both melting at the same time” because “they are opposite seasons.”

“It’s definitely an unusual occurrence,” he added.

As Common Dreams has reported, the Arctic has been warming three times faster than the world as a whole, accelerating polar ice melt, ocean warming, and other manifestations of the climate emergency.

“Looking back over the last few decades, we can clearly see a trend in warming, particularly in the ‘cold season’ in the Arctic,” Ruth Mottram, a climate scientist with the Danish Meteorological Institute, told the Post. “It’s not surprising that warm air is busting through into the Arctic this year. In general, we expect to see more and more of these events in the future.”

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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Was the Azov Battalion Behind the Mariupol Theater Bombing? Or was it Russia?

March 23rd, 2022 by Eric Zuesse

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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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

First published on March 18, 2022

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On Wednesday, March 16th, Russia’s Tass news agency headlined “Azov battalion militants blow up Mariupol theater building — Defense Ministry”, and reported:

Militants of the Azov nationalist battalion blew up the Mariupol theater building, which they rigged with explosives earlier, Russian Defense Ministry announced Wednesday.

The Defense Ministry debunked Kiev’s accusations of an airstrike on the theater building, where civilians could have been held hostage.

“During daylight on March 16, Russian aviation carried out no missions involving strikes on ground targets within Mariupol limits. According to the verified information, militants of the Azov nationalist battalion carried out another bloody provocation by blowing up the rigged theater building,” the Ministry of Defense said.

The next day, CNN bannered “Survivors emerge from rubble of Mariupol theater bombed by Russia” and reported:

People sheltering in a theater in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol are emerging from the building after it was bombed, the former head of the Donetsk region said Thursday.

Hundreds of people were thought to have taken shelter in the theater amid the ongoing Russian siege of Mariupol.

CNN had not asked Russia’s Ministry of Defense to show them the evidence they had backing up the claim that “During daylight on March 16, Russian aviation carried out no missions involving strikes on ground targets within Mariupol limits.” Apparently, CNN was interested ONLY in information that was being supplied by Ukraine’s government. Of course, ‘reporting’ in that way is only propaganda — not journalism.

See the detailed and fully documented account of this matter, here, which persuades me that Tass got it right, and that CNN got it wrong. I have checked out all of its linked-to sources and found them to be not only extremely credible but some of them are thoroughly mainstream, such as Deutsche Welle (the German public broadcaster), Newsweek, The Nation, Stanford University, and Amnesty International.

Striking satellite imagery taken on Monday of the Mariupol Drama Theatre—hit by an air strike today. 1,200 civilians were sheltering in it. The image shows that the word “children” is written in Russian in large white letters in front of & behind the theatre. (Source: @Maxar)

One source in it that is not mainstream is a posting by the breakaway republics in Ukraine’s far-eastern Donbass region, and it’s an announcement, dated March 12th, that:

The second provocation Zelensky is preparing for pictures in Western media, after unsuccessful provocation with Maternity hospital, [is that]Ukrainian forces … got Mariupol women, children and old people into the Drama Theater building in order to show the whole world that [after it will be blown up] the place was bombed by the Russian Federation.. … Don’t be silent! We need to make more people know about this[preparation]!

How could the pro-Russian side have known about this in advance? If Russia had had any reason for bombing that theater, then the Ukrainian government’s account of the matter would be worth considering. But none of that is the case here. The breakaway republics had gotten advance warning from resident(s) in nearby Mariupol — maybe from relative(s)s of hostages being held in that theater.

That rounding-up of those Mariupol civilians did occur, and Mariupol is (and has always been) ruled by the government in Kiev — the government that The West has been and is arming; so, this slaughter of those civilians definitely was either carried out by the government there (Ukraine) OR ELSE by the invading Russian forces. The question is: whom to believe? However, if Russia’s forces did it, then WHY would the pro-Russian breakaway republics have warned on March 12th that this would be happening there? And WHY would Russia have selected that specific building to blow up? It had no military value, and only civilians were inside it. They had been inside it ever since March 12th.

Indeed: WHY would only civilians have been there? Why would no Ukrainian government forces (which control the city) have been there? What military purpose would have been served by doing this except to fool yet more people in The West to send to the Ukrainian government yet MORE weapons so they can kill the invading Russian troops?

That city is controlled by Ukraine’s Azov Battalion.

Mariupol happens to be a city just outside the Donbass breakaway region from Ukraine in Ukraine’s southeast, and its citizenry were publicly protesting against the February 2014 forced overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, for whom Mariupol’s residents had overwhelmingly voted in the latest Ukrainian Presidential election, which was in 2010.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration had hired Ukraine’s highly organized racist-fascist anti-Russian “Right Sector” and other far-right forces to prepare and lead the 2013 “Maidan” demonstrations against Yanukovych and subsequently to be appointed themselves to the top national-security positions in the new, U.S.-installed, post-coup Ukrainian government. Here is a video, on 9 May 2014, showing Mariupol residents protesting peacefully against the overthrow of their President, and being shot by the newly installed government’s police:

The pro-coup-regime (i.e., pro-U.S.) national Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post headlined “Avakov says 21 dead in Mariupol after clashes between police and separatists” and reported violent actions by the opponents of this new government:

Kremlin-backed “terrorists” kidnapped Mariupol police chief Valeriy Androshchuk during today’s firefight over the local police headquarters, said lawmaker Oleh Liashko on his Facebook page who is in the Donetsk Oblast city at the moment.

He “fought until the end” but “terrorists” took him from the “burning police station in a car that was cut off by a sports utility vehicle,” wrote Liashko. “The fighters stabbed the jeep driver with a knife and placed Androshchuk inside the car trunk and drove off in an unknown direction.”

Liashko was one of Ukraine’s leading far-right politicians and a strong backer of the U.S.-installed government; so, Liashko called the protesters “terrorists”; and, soon thereafter, the Ukrainian government officially introduced what they called an “Anti Terrorist Operation” in order to kill as many resisting people as possible anywhere in the country.

(To resist the coup-installed government was to be a ‘terrorist’.) This was virtually the beginning of Ukraine’s civil war. But, even earlier, on 2 May 2014, the new government’s murderous character was displayed in Odessa (in south-central Ukraine), where Right Sector forces trapped an unknown number of protesters in the Trade Unions Building — and burned them alive in it. The most heart-rending compendium of videos of that was shown here. This horrific event immediately sparked the protests throughout Ukraine’s southeast, which started on May 9th of 2014, which began the civil war.

So, it’s not surprising that, in the current battles, between the invading Russian soldiers and the soldiers of today’s Ukraine (the defenders of the U.S.-imposed Ukrainian regime), human shields are being used for protecting (‘shielding’) the latter (America’s proxy-forces in Ukraine).

The news-reports on March 17th, about the bombing of 1,200 civilians inside the Mariupol theater, was making a different use of the local civilians — not as human shields, but instead as victims of a false-flag attack by the Azov Battalion, in order to blame Russia so as to be able to receive yet more weapons from The West.

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

Why Ukraine is Important to Powerful People in Washington: Lara Logan Sets the Record Straight on Ukraine-Russia

March 22nd, 2022 by Alexandra Bruce

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In this short clip from an interview with Donna Fiducia and Doug Neuen of CowboyLogic.us, Lara Logan outlines her brutally honest perspective on why Ukraine is so important to people in power within the DC system.

She explains that Ukraine is at the center of this cult of Globalists. It is the center of money-laundering for the oligarchs and their allies in the United States, it’s the center of the Russia Hoax and the Fake Impeachment.

She says,

“The Open Society Foundation, through the National Endowment for Democracy and all of these other fake NGOs, that are nothing more than Brown Shirts and SS rolled into one were running their radical policy through the United States Embassy, through USAID, using our tax dollars to slit our own throats!

“Now they’re covering their own tracks in Ukraine, not just hiding the evidence of John Kerry’s son, Biden’s son, Nancy Pelosi’s son. Mitt Romney’s son, by the way, who’s as disgusting as the rest of them.

“Not only are they covering their tacks, hiding all the evidence of their involvement in ‘Russia collusion’, hiding the evidence of the bioweapons facilities that the US has been funding there and yes, some of that was left over from the Soviet days, some of that has been turning bioweapons facilities into public health facilities but that is again, not the whole truth, is again, not the whole story.

“They’re covering their tracks in Ukraine, they’re hiding evidence, they’re exploiting the Ukrainian people to do so, nobody is trying to de-escalate, they’ve got this moron as a leader, who was an entertainer, who was obviously selected, because he’s out there in stilletos and black leather pants, doing spoof videos for Dancing with the Stars and now we’re supposed to fawn at the altar of Zelenskyy…for crying in a bucket! Wake up, People!

“Yes, there is real suffering in Ukraine, there’s a real war going on, just as there were real issues being protested in the wake of George Floyd’s death but they’re being exploited by evil, horrible people who want to rule over all of us and enslave us. And if you don’t think that’s true, you think that’s a conspiracy theory, I’ve got no time for you.

“We are past the ninth mile, we’re sitting at the gates of Auschwitz and we’re arguing about whether the smoke coming out of the ovens is Climate Change. C’mon!”

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

China’s Role in Amplifying Southern Africa’s Extreme Uneven Development

March 22nd, 2022 by Prof. Patrick Bond

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First published on CADTM in June 2021.

Like so many regions of the world, the 14 ‘Southern African Development Community’ countries are grappling with the complex problem of Chinese state and corporate involvement in divergent societies, politics, economies and ecologies. There is enormous concern rising now about these relationships, in part because of a new chapter in the Cold War between Beijing and Washington, leaving Southern Africa torn, divided and subject to new forms of exploitation. After centuries of slavery, colonialism and imperialism, a degree of political independence was won between the 1960s-90s, with a terrible loss of life due to white supremicism. But since then, the region has still suffered from neo-colonialism, inter-imperial rivalries, sub-imperialism, neoliberalism, sustained patriarchy, resource-looting and now also the global climate meltdown and differential access to Covid-19 treatment and vaccines. China’s role is often an amplifier of these forms of oppression, but not always. It is vital to distinguish between functions that may assist the region in autonomous, sovereign self-development, on the one hand, and those that have negative implications for the region’s relationship to the world economy on the other. Social activists often provide guidelines to help make these distinctions, critiquing China for its amplification of the region’s extreme uneven development.

Introduction: Trends in Chinese-Southern African relations during economic crisis

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) region consists of Angola, Botswana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. What is the role of China in SADC, given not only massive recent investments, loans and trade relationships with these 14 countries, but also its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? After all, BRI’s reach is exceptionally ambitious, reaching as far off the beaten track as Southern Africa. Still, as of 2021, several SADC countries have not yet joined BRI: Mauritius, Lesotho, Eswatini, Botswana, Malawi and the DRC. And Eswatini’s long-standing Taiwan relations remain a source of growing tension with Beijing.

The main Chinese investments and loans in South Africa require unpacking because they are within the BRI, conceptually, but due to systemic corruption and ecological destruction, social resistance has arisen to the main projects. The ones discussed below are port expansion in Durban (already Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest), rail expansion to export coal from Limpopo province, an auto factory in Nelson Mandela Bay, the largest coal-fired power plant under construction in the world (Kusile), and the largest Special Economic Zone in South Africa (Musina-Makhado).

These projects were all begun during the 2010s with most continuing into the 2020s. Not only are they logical corollaries to the corporate/parastatal ‘Minerals-Energy Complex’ which exerts so much influence on local capital accumulation. They can also be understood as a function of a plenary talk at the World Economic Forum in early 2017, just before Donald Trump took power, in which Xi Jinping (2017) clarified his ideology: “We must remain committed to developing global free trade and investment, promote trade and investment liberalisation.”

In a 2015 talk, Xi had insisted on the merits of trade among his emerging-economy partners in the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa BRICS bloc. These economies must “boost the centripetal (unifying) force of BRICS nations through cooperation in innovation and production capacity to boost competitiveness” (Xi 2015). However, in reality, the supposed ‘centripetal’ economic strategy – i.e., that as the world turns, it becomes more tightly integrated – was increasingly centrifugal, given tendencies to deglobalisation that were underway already by 2007, the peak of internationally-integrated trade, finance and investment.

Well before Covid-19 disrupted the world economy, part of the reason for this process was China’s own tendencies to capitalist crisis, resulting in a ‘going-out’ process to displace its massive industrial overcapacity, but in a context of slower rates of trade, investment and cross-border financial flows. Chinese exports and imports both rose rapidly on three occasions: 2003-08, 2009-15 and 2020-21. Two global crashes help explain the subsequent 2009 and 2020 upticks, but remarkable here is the slowdown from 2014-20. Notwithstanding the current spike, as a share of GDP, China’s trade is so far below 2007’s peak level, that it is the world’s main driver of deglobalization.

Moreover, the trade that was occurring just before Covid-19 hit was increasingly disconnected from what are known as ‘value chains’: globally-integrated production systems. McKinsey Global Institute’s 2019 ‘global flows’ analysis confirmed, “…a smaller share of the goods rolling off the world’s assembly lines is now traded across borders. Between 2007 and 2017, exports declined from 28.1 to 22.5 percent of gross output in goods-producing value chains” (McKinsey 2019). The decline in trade intensity in these chains was also led by China, where gross exports as a share of gross output in goods fell from 18 percent to 10 percent from 2007-17.

The centripetal strategy expressed by Xi in 2017 was not taking hold. Instead, a centrifugal process entails ever-greater outward stress on a system as it turns, pushing an object away from the centre, potentially leading to its disintegration. Ironically, even before Covid-19 briefly wrecked the global economy in the first half of 2020 beginning in China, the decline in world trade/GDP ratios was led not only by China but the rest of BRICS group; i.e., the economies that once were considered by Goldman Sachs manager Jim O’Neil (2001) to be what he called the ‘building BRICS’ of 21st-century capitalism.

South Africa was hit especially hard by the decline in Chinese commodity imports (coal, platinum group metals, gold and iron ore are the main four). South African trade fell from 73 percent of GDP in 2007 to 58 percent in 2017, compared to a world trade/GDP decline over that period from 61 percent of GDP to 56 percent. All the BRICS witnessed reduced trade in much greater degrees than the global norm, and three spent parts of 2015–19 in recession: Brazil, Russia and South Africa. In 2020, only one (China) recorded positive GDP growth.

One classical symptom of economic crisis that since the early 2010s has emanated mainly from Chinese companies, is what can be termed the overaccumulation of capital, reflecting systemic overcapacity. China has over-invested in its plant, equipment and machinery, so much, that the ability to continue to generate growth is limited. This overaccumulation of capital is recognised by left-wing and right-wing economists alike.

For radical critics, overaccumulation has various symptoms. Given the intercapitalist competition within and between industries which leads to ever rising capital intensity and hence overproduction, there is a tendency for gluts to develop: high inventory levels, unused plant and equipment, excess capacity in commodity markets, idle labour and bubbling financial capital. Because profits are higher in the banking sector and stock markets, corporations that had been accumulating within the productive economy find it more lucrative to shift from reinvestment in fixed capital, into purchasing ‘fictitious capital’ (financial, paper assets) (Bond 2019).

Among orthodox economists, staff at the International Monetary Fund (IMF 2017a) studied Chinese capital overaccumulation and found that in major sectors – coal, steel, nonferrous metals, cement, chemicals and others where Chinese demand is between 30-60 percent of the world market – there exists at least one third overcapacity in production. And due to overindebtedness, a financial crisis can break out at any time, causing domestic and global growth to fall and worsening the living conditions of hundreds of millions of Chinese people.

In a subsequent analysis of Chinese companies that are so far in debt that they are considered ‘zombies,’ the IMF (2017b) advocated “phasing out the implicit support and making better use of resources that are currently going to zombie firms, overcapacity industries, and state-owned enterprises.” And in an economic review published in late 2020, the IMF (2020, 9) remarked on how the state’s Covid-19 financial aid “contributed to a further increase in already very high corporate debt and exacerbated existing structural problems by prolonging the economic life of non-viable and low-productivity firms, including SOEs, particularly in capital-intensive sectors with overcapacity.”

This is not surprising, according to sociologist Ho-fung Hung (2015): “Capital accumulation in China follows the same logic and suffers from the same contradictions of capitalist development in other parts of the world . . . [including] a typical overaccumulation crisis.” Well before Covid-19 amplified the country’s economic stresses, these conditions were becoming acute. According to political economist Xia Zhang (2017, 321-22), they reflect Chinese capitalism’s “restructuring as the result of overaccumulation. Often jointly with various representatives of Chinese capital, the Chinese state is compelled to reconfigure Chinese capitalism on a much larger spatial dimension so as to sustain the capital accumulation and expansion.”

One recent IMF survey of economic sectors suffering low capacity utilization confirmed how overcapacity was correlated to Chinese firms’ overseas Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) during the critical period of ‘going out,’ as such overseas activity is termed, during the mid-2010s:

The IMF economists observed,

  • China’s export-driven growth model until the mid-2010s gave companies incentives to constantly expand capacities in sectors where their comparative advantage led to ever greater international market shares, which in turn reinforced such comparative advantages. However, as growth began slowing down in China, capacity utilization started to decline, putting pressure on corporate profitability. With limited room for to grow domestically, Chinese companies had to seek new markets to relocate capital and keep the pace of expansion, the latter an important consideration for the SOEs as they were often tasked to support governments at all levels to meet the growth targets. Indeed, there seems to be a negative correlation between China’s overall capacity utilization index and the level of its overseas investment. (Ding et al 2021, 19)

Progressive activists understand this too. As articulated by the 2017 Hong Kong People’s Forum on BRICS and the BRI,

  • Instead of offering an alternative, the BRICS actually offer a continuation of neoliberalism. On top of BRICS there is also China’s new mega project, the BRI whose main purpose is to export China’s surplus capital, and in this process seek the cooperation and ‘mutual benefit’ of big foreign TNCs and regimes which are often authoritarian. The price of these investments is often borne by the working people and the ecological balance. (Borderless Hong Kong 2017)

From overaccumulation to a ‘New Scramble’ and resurgent geopolitical tensions

The economic crisis conditions are also playing out in a manner they have in past confrontations, in the late-19th century era of imperialism that led to World War I. Geopolitical influences are today being acutely felt, in the tug of war between West and East. There is enormous concern about whether Sino-African relationships will become the source of Western-African conficts, in part because of the way U.S. President Joe Biden is maintaining the intensity of the new Cold War between Beijing and Washington begun by his predecessor Barack Obama (2009-17) and continuing under Donald Trump (2017-21), leaving SADC countries torn, divided and subject to new forms of exploitation.

Under Trump, there was practically no effort to woo African countries – which he infamously termed s*&!-holes – to the U.S. side. But this will change under the Biden Administration, as the G7 meeting in June 2021 confirmed the West’s desire to establish a global ‘Build Back Better World’ alternative plan to the dirty BRI infrastructure. As Biden put it, the strategy “will collectively catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment for low- and middle-income countries in the coming years” through “a values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnership led by major democracies to help narrow the $40+ trillion infrastructure need in the developing world.”

These ‘democracies’ – the U.S., Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Canada – include the three main colonial and neo-colonial powers whose infrastructure investments since the 19th century invariably aimed to link ports – via railroads, roads and bridges – to mines and plantations, so as to better extract minerals and cash crops. Their Cornwall meeting in June 2021 did include as guests the two most important pro-Western leaders from Asia (India’s Narendra Modi) and Africa (South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa). But their attempts to achieve their main stated objective – i.e., to solve the Covid-19 catastrophe by gaining universal access to generic vaccines and treatments – were rebuffed.

The G7 includes one country – the U.S. – whose leader bowed to popular pressure by accepting (in principle) the idea that Covid-19 vaccines could be removed from World Trade Organization Intellectual Property restrictions during the continuing pandemic. While G7 leaders had over-ordered vaccines for their citizenry (in Canada’s case by a factor of five), the Indian and South African peoples were suffering higher rates of infection and more rapidly-buckling health systems than anywhere else on earth. That made no apparent difference at the G7 summit.

The original ‘Scramble for Africa’ – when the continent’s borders were carved – occurred in 1884-85 in a Berlin conference room, and divided peoples as a result of the whims of representatives from Britain, Portugal, France, Belgium and the host Germany. In the SADC region, each colonial power land-grabbed and to differing extents, each established settler-colonial white power over the inhabitants and nature. This Scramble represented not just colonial powers taking territories, but capitalism expanding voraciously during its own economic crisis.

According to Rosa Luxemburg, the German Communist leader who read about Namibia, the DRC and South Africa and then wrote The Accumulation of Capital in 1913,

  • Capitalism must therefore always and everywhere fight a battle of annihilation against every historical form of natural economy that it encounters… The most important of these productive forces is of course the land, its hidden mineral treasure, and its meadows, woods and water, and further the flocks of the primitive shepherd tribes. Since the primitive associations of the natives are the strongest protection for their social organisations and for their material bases of existence, capital must begin by planning for the systematic destruction and annihilation of all the non-capitalist social units which obstruct its development.

Is there a new Scramble for Africa now underway, as some describe the way not only the Western colonial powers, but also South Africa and China, behave in the region? As far as the BRI is concerned, it is undeniable that two serious problems with China’s strategy are emerging. First, tension with India is acute, due to BRI’s Kashmir link via Pakistan, close to the area where Delhi is repressing a political uprising and where Sino-Indian conflict in mid-2020 led to dozens of troops’ deaths, on both sides. The second, discussed below, is rising resistance to social, environmental, political and economic injustice, which though mainly directed against tyrannical governments (some supported by the West, some by China), also have roots in structural features of the China-Africa relationship, especially resource extraction.

Membership in the BRI is now taken for granted for those in proximity, with the exception of India, where the link from Pakistan’s Gwadar port to the western edge of China could make import of Middle East petroleum and other vital supplies much easier, and far less risky than the ocean route (what with its bottlenecks and geopolitical tensions). But India’s own agenda creates a competitive conflict that has not yet been resolved, in part because India began its own counter-BRI strategy, the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, in alliance with Japan in 2017.

Meanwhile, the West complains that as the BRI allows for China’s expansion, Beijing still does not play by ‘fair’ rules. Whether Obama, Trump or Biden, Washington attacks China’s currency (considered to be artificially low so as to make exports more competitive), Intellectual Property theft, generous subsidies to parastatal corporations and protected domestic markets. In turn, this leads to the thorny question of whether a new Cold War has begun, in which Africa will be a pawn, yet again.

While the Biden Administration will reverse some of the more irrational U.S.-China trade war provisions imposed by Trump, there are others in the realm of state security and Big Tech that will be continued. Some of Wall Street’s largest firms are extremely exposed in China through direct investment, supplier relations, Research & Development contracts (which earn the corporates massive royalties), and consumer markets. And Beijing still owns more than $1.1 trillion in Treasury Bills, although that holding has not increased since 2012.

In spite of these interconnections, geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea began rising in 2011 with Obama’s imperialist ‘pivot to Asia.’ This meant, wrote journalist John Pilger (2016),

  • almost two-thirds of US naval forces would be transferred to Asia and the Pacific by 2020. Today, more than 400 U.S. military bases encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and, above all, nuclear weapons. From Australia north through the Pacific to Japan, Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, says one US strategist, ‘the perfect noose’.

In addition, Eurasia is a testing ground because of increasing investments in Chinese infrastructure via the BRI. These are being funded in part by the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), centering on Russian-Chinese energy cooperation, and moving quickly without Washington’s membership thanks originally to Obama’s (impotent, incompetent) opposition. The situation became yet more dangerous due to Trump’s mercurial character, ruthless pragmatism, exceptionally thin skin, crude bullying behaviour and ability to polarise his own society and the world.

Even though in early 2021, Trump was replaced by a much smoother U.S. leader, Biden, further belligerence can be anticipated, including aspects of the trade war that relate to U.S. military interests, where Biden will more reliably represent the Military-Industrial Complex than did the erratic Trump.

In contrast to Trump, Obama pursued a dual strategy not only of enhancing the military theat to Beijing, but also of assimilating China into Western-dominated multilateralism, including much bigger roles (and higher voting shares) in the traditionally exploitative Bretton Woods Institutions. In 2014, Obama agreed with The Economist (2014) magazine’s editor, who interviewed him about “the key issue, whether China ends up inside that [multilateral financial] system or challenging it. That’s the really big issue of our times, I think.” Obama replied, “It is. And I think it’s important for the United States and Europe to continue to welcome China as a full partner in these international norms.”

In contrast to this rhetoric, Obama in 2015 dogmatically (and unsuccessfully) discouraged AIIB membership by fellow Western powers and the Bretton Woods Institutions. It was his most humiliating international defeat. But when it came to intensified trade liberalisation in the WTO, recapitalisation of the IMF under neoliberal rule, and destruction of the binding emissions reductions targets on Western powers that characterised the Kyoto Protocol, Obama’s strategy of bringing China and the other BRICS leaders inside was much more successful.

For such reasons, the role of these countries can be considered ‘subimperialist,’ in the original sense of the term, as defined by the Brazilian dependency theorist Ruy Mauro Marini (1972): “collaborating actively with imperialist expansion, assuming in this expansion the position of a key nation.”

This collaboration was expressed the day before Trump took office in early 2017, when instead of the New York real estate tycoon, it was Xi Jinping who went to the Davos World Economic Forum to commit to expanding global capitalism. In contrast to Trump’s protectionism and ‘America First’ rhetoric, Xi’s plenary talk clarified his ideology:

  • There was a time when China also had doubts about economic globalisation, and was not sure whether it should join the WTO. But we came to the conclusion that integration into the global economy is a historical trend… Any attempt to cut off the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries and people between economies, and channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible… We must remain committed to developing global free trade and investment, promote trade and investment liberalisation… We will expand market access for foreign investors, build high-standard pilot free trade zones, strengthen protection of property rights, and level the playing field… China will keep its door wide open and not close it. (Xi 2017)

Actually, not only did Xi effectively respond in kind to Trump’s tariffs by imposing countervailing tariffs, he also engineered a decline in the Chinese currency to below RMB7/$ in August 2019. And well before Trump, Xi proved his rhetoric of liberalisation was not matched by reality, for during six months starting in mid-2015, Beijing imposed stringent exchange controls, stock market circuit breakers and financial regulations to prevent two Chinese stock market collapses from spreading beyond the existing $5 trillion in losses. Moreover, within eighteen months of his Davos speech, Xi had authorized a set of trade restrictions on US products in retaliation for Trump’s protectionist tariffs. Channeling toxic waters of excessively chaotic capitalist globalisation back into economic purification systems is indeed possible, and necessary.

The deglobalisation process illustrates the trend. As noted above, the trade/GDP ratio and share of output from global value chains were falling prior to Covid-10. So even as China continued to play the role of global leader in capital accumulation, becoming the largest economy in Purchasing Power Parity terms, the country’s GDP was estimated to rise at only around 6 percent in 2019, the lowest rate in 25 years, and 2020 growth was far lower due to Covid-19. Prior to the unsustainable late-2020 revival, the import shrinkage adversely affected African countries which had long become dependent upon Chinese purchasers of their commodities.

As a result, China’s internal economic contradictions are becoming more acute, in part because the national debt doubled from 150 percent of GDP in 2007 to more than 300 percent by 2018. In addition, the Chinese “elite who control the state sector seek capital flight, encroach on the private sector and foreign companies, and intensify their fights with one another,” explains Hung (2018, 162):

  • The post-2008 boom was driven by reckless investment expansion funded by a state-bank financial stimulus. This created a gigantic debt bubble no longer matched by commensurate expansion of the foreign-exchange reserve… The many redundant construction projects and infrastructure resulting from the debt-fueled economic rebound are not going to be profitable, at least not any time soon. The repayment and servicing of the debt is going to be challenging, and a major ticking time bomb of debt has formed. This overaccumulation crisis in the Chinese economy is the origin of the stock market meltdown and beginning of capital flight that drove the sharp devaluation of Chinese currency in 2015–16.

From late 2015, the Chinese imposed tighter exchange controls not only to prevent financial capital flight but also to confront overaccumulation with so-called Supply-Side Structural Reforms, so as to “guide the economy to a new normal.” Beijing had five strategies, namely, capacity reduction, housing inventory destocking, corporate deleveraging, reduction of corporate costs, and industrial upgrading with new infrastructure investment. The “three cuts, one reduction, and one improvement” was, according to a favourable World Bank staff review in 2018, “a departure from China’s traditional demand-side stimulus policies” (Chen and Lin, 2018).

The dilemma in coming years is whether the other contradictions in the Chinese economy, especially rising debt and the on-and-off trade war with the United States (potentially spilling into other economies trying to resist devaluation), will turn a managed process into the kind of capitalist anarchy that causes overaccumulation in the first place. If so, it will be ever more important to coordinate worker and community resistance to the devaluation process with international solidarity. What are currently tit-for-tat protectionist responses (often accompanied by right-wing xenophobic politics) must be transformed into a genuine globalisation of people, with the common objective of degrowth for the sake of socio-ecological sanity.

Civil, political, socio-economic and environmental factors

China has had a strong state for centuries, in spite of the era from 1839 to 1949 when first the British and French and then Japanese imperial powers invaded and occupied crucial parts of the country. In the past three decades, since the Tiananmen Square repression of 1989, many more human rights concerns – and social protests – have been expressed, with growing concern that Xi’s regime has taken its powers to extreme levels. Since the late 1970s, Beijing’s imposition of liberalising capitalist development – without democratisation – has entailed heightened authoritarianism, unprecedented levels of surveillance, repression of minorities especially in the Western provinces, rural land grabs in the context of an apartheid-like migrant labour system, selective prosecution of corruption, and the demise of the Iron Rice Bowl state welfare system.

Before the revolution led by Mao Tse Tung in 1949, rural China was fragmented, inefficient and repressive. His centralisation of agricultural production attempted to transform the peasantry, but led to mass starvation in 1959-61. Heavy industrial investment and strict planning allowed cities to capture surpluses, while the gap in society’s basic needs was met through an “iron rice bowl” welfare model that included state-company housing as well as schools and hospitals. Literacy improved from 20 to 83 percent of the population from 1952-78. The core system of labour control is ‘hukou’, whose parallels with apartheid’s migration constraints are notable. After liberalisation began, three hundred million rural workers moved to cities on a temporary registration basis. According to Kevin Lin (2015, 71),

  • The first generation [of migrant workers] were rural peasants who, pushed by rural poverty and pulled by the burgeoning urban economy, migrated to China’s urban centres in the 1980s. Their city wages were meagre but still higher than their rural incomes. For young women, factory work and urban life also brought a new sense of freedom. But the household registration system and their own rural roots meant that the first-generation migrant workers have been predisposed to eventually returning to their villages.
  • It is the family farm that lends the migrant worker away from home a substitute for the benefits he or she is not getting from urban work, as well as security in the event of dis-employment or unemployment or in old age, while this same worker helps supplement the otherwise unsustainably low incomes of the auxiliary family members engaged in underemployed farming of small plots for low returns. So long as substantial surplus labour remains in the countryside, the key structural conditions for this new half-worker half-cultivator family economic unit will prevail.

During an era in which millions of former Township and Village Enterprises have closed and there is no longer an Iron Rice Bowl, the ability of Beijing to maintain super-exploitative wages for the benefit of transnational corporate investors is partly based on the gendered dimension. As Julia Chuang (2016, 484) explains of rural gender relations,

  • In the sending community, women face a double bind: they are expected to support husbands who engage in precarious and high-risk migrations; and they are expected to negotiate with those husbands to channel a portion of remittance income to their aging parents, who lack access to welfare or social support.

The tasks are harder given how few resources Beijing allocates from its massive surpluses to social welfare. Among the world’s 40 wealthiest economies measured by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (2019), the Chinese share of social spending to GDP – like South Africa’s – is just 8 percent, far short of the OECD average of 22 percent. Only India, Indonesia and Mexico are lower in this peer group.

One result is rising social discontent. The last year that the Chinese government released statistics on protests was 2005, when there were 87,000. In recent years, according to Bin Sun (2019, 429), “More than 600 mass protests a day erupt in China, more than 200,000 a year. Of these, over 100,000 occur in rural areas, of which perhaps 65 percent are linked to residents’ loss of land… Chinese governments will repress religiously rooted resistance, tolerate economically motivated actions, and encourage nationalistically inspired demonstrations.”

Sometimes the protests are a good pressure-cooker indicator, leading to adjustments in state practices, including removal of officials seen to be hostile to communities or workers. In his book Responsive Authoritarianism in China: Land, Protest, and Policy Making, Christopher Heurlin (2016, 3) shows how Beijing “proactively monitors citizen opposition to state policies and selectively responds with policy changes when it gauges opposition to be particularly widespread.”

However, the exceptional advances in Beijing’s Social Credit surveillance system are now capable of not only predicting the location and timing of protests – through systematic monitoring of grievances expressed on China’s Facebook equivalent, Weibo – but also punishing activists. Although the U.S. agency Freedom House is not always reliable, what it terms the China Model of Internet Control is undeniable, and entails the Great Firewall, content removal, revoking access by users, manipulation of social media and high-tech surveillance, as well as violence, arrests and repression. One example, internet journalist Lu Yuyu, was a prolific analyst of labour and social protests. He and his partner Li Dingyu were arrested in 2016 on charges of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.” After jail beatings, Lu was sentenced in 2017 to four years in prison (Committee to Protect Journalists 2017).

Social Credit scoring was announced in 2014 as a way to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.” By late 2018, Beijing’s National Public Credit Information Centre revealed, Chinese courts banned would-be travellers from buying flights on 17.5 million occasions, and from buying train tickets 5.5 million times. The system’s roll out is scheduled for 2020. This is part of a general arsenal aimed at assuring totalitarian social control. As Wired magazine reported in 2019,

  • The Chinese government is already using new technologies to control its citizens in frightening ways. The internet is highly censored, and each person’s cell phone number and online activity is assigned a unique ID number tied to their real name. Facial-recognition technology is also increasingly widespread in China, with few restraints on how it can be used to track and surveil citizens. The most troubling abuses are being carried out in the western province of Xinjiang, where human rights groups and journalists say the Chinese government is detaining and surveilling millions of people from the minority Muslim Uyghur population on a nearly unprecedented scale. (Matsakis 2019)

Occupation and resident re-education camps are common especially in Xinjiang and Tibet, where minority ethnic nations have long demanded greater rights and self-rule. In November 2019, The New York Times (2019) published 403 pages of proof – the ‘Xinjiang Papers’ – from within the Chinese state, showing how after a train station attack by Islamic extremists in 2014, Xi ramped up the repression. He called for a ‘struggle against terrorism, infiltration, and separatism’ using the ‘organs of dictatorship,’ and showing ‘absolutely no mercy’ against those with ‘strong religious views,’ a process which began in earnest in 2017. Beijing’s répression of Hong Kong democracy protesters is playing out in the extraordinary activism now in process. The demonstrations are being watched closely by SADC activists since so many of the creative tactics being used to escape surveillance will be vital in a region whose authoritarian and democratic leaders have often stooped to illegal spying on the citizenry.

To illustrate, the confluence of Chinese elite interests and South African leaders was on display three times – in 2009, 2011 and 2014 – when the South African government denied or delayed a travel visa for the Dalai Lama, respectively for a peace conference, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu’s 80th birthday and a Nobel Peace Prize laureates’ workshop. On the final occasion, Beijing’s Foreign Ministry spokesman celebrated “the respect given by the South African government on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and the support given to China on this issue” (Reuters 2014). In 2015, the Foreign Ministry’s lead Africa official, Lin Songtian, complained that while Beijing was helping Jacob Zuma develop ten Special Economic Zones, the Dalai Lama “can’t just come and spoil this for you and we want a friendly atmosphere and environment for this to happen. We invest a lot of money in South Africa and we can’t allow him to come and spoil the good relations” (Mazibuko 2015).

The sovereignty of the South African state was also violated in late 2015, in the reversal of the appointment of finance minister Desmond van Rooyen, who was widely seen as a dangerously ill-equipped crony of Zuma. According to Business Day publisher Peter Bruce (2016): “I have reliably learnt that the Chinese were quick to make their displeasure known to Zuma. For one, their investment in Standard Bank took a big hit. Second, they’ve invested way too much political effort in South Africa to have an amateur mess it up. Their intervention was critical.” (Bruce saw this as a highly favourable development.)

In the other case of a widely-applauded Chinese intervention in the affairs of an African state, the November 2017 coup against Robert Mugabe followed major investments and then a fall-out. China had been invited to Zimbabwe for weapons sales and stakes in tobacco, infrastructure and mining, and its retail imports continue to deindustrialize Zimbabwean manufacturing. Mugabe’s successor Emmerson Mnangagwa had fought Rhodesian colonialism in the 1970s, and was one of Mugabe’s leading henchmen, rising to the vice presidency in 2014. But Mugabe fired him on November 6, signaling his wife Grace’s ruthless ascent. Mnangagwa’s fate was the catalyst for an emergency Beijing trip by his ally, army leader Constantino Chiwenga, for consultations with the Chinese army command. Mnangagwa received military training in China during Mao’s days (CNN 2017).

Beijing’s Global Times, which is often a source of official wisdom, was increasingly wary of Mugabe. According to a contributor, Wang Hongwi (2017) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,

  • Mnangagwa, a reformist, will abolish Mugabe’s faulty investment policy. In a country with a bankrupt economy, whoever takes office needs to launch economic reforms and open up to foreign investment… Chinese investment in Zimbabwe has also fallen victim to Mugabe’s policy and some projects were forced to close down or move to other countries in recent years, bringing huge losses.

Amongst the populace, Mnangagwa remains widely mistrusted due to his responsibility for (and refusal to acknowledge) 1982-85 ‘Gukhurahundi’ massacres of more than 20,000 people in the country’s western provinces (mostly members of the minority Ndebele ethnic group, whose handful of armed dissidents he termed “cockroaches” needing a dose of military ‘DDT’); his subversion of the 2008 presidential election which Mugabe initially lost; his subsequent heading of the Joint Operations Committee secretly running the country, sabotaging democratic initiatives; as well as for his close proximity – as then Defence Minister – to widespread diamond looting from 2008-16 (Bond 2017a).

In 2016, Mugabe himself complained of revenue shortfalls from diamond mining in eastern Zimbabwe’s Marange fields: “I don’t think we’ve exceeded US$2 billion or so, and yet we think that well over US$15 billion or more has been earned in that area.” In order for Mnangagwa to establish the main Marange joint venture – Sino Zimbabwe – with the notorious (and now apparently jailed) Chinese investor, Sam Pa, the army under Mnangagwa’s rule forcibly occupied the Marange fields. In November 2008, troops murdered several hundred small-scale artisanal miners there (Bond 2017a).

There have been many other instances of Chinese investors propping up African dictators, but in the SADC region, the case of Sam Pa’s relationship with Jose Eduardo Dos Santos stands out. According to respected commentator António Pereira, “Pa exploited this relationship to secure total control over construction projects in Angola. The construction of the new airport [Aeroporto Internacional de Angola] is a continuation of Pa’s, CIF’s and by extension, China’s monopoly on Angola construction projects” (Africa News 2018). He also worked with Beijing parastatal Sinopec to acquire Angolan oil fields. Pa was arrested in China in 2015 after apparently falling foul of anti-corruption prosecutions that took down high-ranking party and state officials. His current whereabouts are unknown.

These are examples of local socio-economic, civil and political, and environmental violations. The most dangerous, however, are in the ways China, South Africa and other high-emitting countries continue to create climate-crisis conditions in the SADC region. Weak regulation of HCFCs, toxins and plastic products are becoming a major problem, although China’s lead in solar and wind energy generation and decision to ban waste imports are positive signs.

The combination of socio-economic and environmental damage is also evident in mega-projects, which we take up next in a brief review of the five main cases of Chinese investments and loans in South Africa.

China’s controversial role in South African mega-projects

The five largest projects involving South Africa are illustrative of the problems described above, especially those that conjoin political corruption, maldistributed economic benefits, social dislocation and ecological damage. The two biggest current projects in South Africa entail export of coal on a new rail line, and expansion of Durban’s port – the ‘Presidential Infrastructure Coordinating Commission Strategic Integrated Projects’ 1 and 2.

Campaigns for reparations have been launched against Chinese vendors, especially in Transnet’s acquisition of rail equipment. They began to succeed in early 2018, due to blatant corruption in the state transport agency’s purchase of several hundred locomotives designated to export 18 billion tons of coal in what was then a $50 billion bulk rail upgrade project.

The Chinese connection also entailed a commitment by the China Development Bank in 2013 to provide $5 billion in credit to Transnet for its capital investments, a sum that would in part pay for China South Rail’s provision of locomotives. The purchase price also included $2.9 billion in ‘irregular expenditures’ apparently known to the firm’s CEO Zhou Qinghe ; these were corruption payments to the Gupta brothers via a Transnet official. Those brothers had notoriously ‘state captured’ the South African president at the time, Zuma, through his son Duduzane whom they had employed. As a result of the public outcry, Zuma was pushed out of power in early 2018, nearly a year and a half before his term ended (Bond 2020).

The second biggest mega-project in South Africa is the expansion of what is already the largest sub-Saharan African container terminal, costing $15 billion. In the first stage, a much smaller case of Gupta bribery occurred, again via Transnet, during the purchase of seven tandem-lift ship-to-shore cranes used mainly to import goods from East Asia. These were provided by Shanghai Zhenhua Heavy Industries (in partnership with Liebherr-International of Switzerland) and entailed an $8 million payoff to the Guptas as part of what were termed the ‘world’s most expensive cranes’ due to the markup and supplier profiteering (Amabhungane 2017).

The most important point about the Durban port expansion, however, is that it is firmly opposed – and regularly protested – by the main social movement in the area, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance due to the large-scale pollution and displacement (Bond 2017b).

Third, another major port city further down the Indian Ocean coast is the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality (formerly Port Elizabeth). It includes a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) with substantial tax benefits at the area known as Coega, and contains the largest single Chinese manufacturing investment in South Africa. The Beijing Automobile Industrial Corporation (BAIC) plant is co-financed by the South African state’s Industrial Development Corporation (IDC).

In mid-2018, the first semi-knock down Sport Utility Vehicle came off the BAIC assembly line, just a day before the BRICS Summit was to start in Sandton. The manufacturing plant cost nearly $1 billion (then R11 billion), and was the single largest Foreign Direct Investment in any of the main South African SEZs. In June 2018, Chinese Ambassador to South Africa Lin Songtian stated, “I’ve been to many developing countries and industrial development zones and the Coega SEZ is by far the best of them all” (Toussaint et al 2019).

However, in the subsequent year, the BAIC/IDC joint venture encountered many difficulties. The University of the Western Cape (Toussaint et al 2019) report on SEZs documented these:

  • Crises included inadequate Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise involvement, budget shortfalls for the start-up phase, differential labour laws, and delays in production, which played havoc with the image projected of a functional SOE partnership. As one report in the (partially Chinese-owned) Independentnewspaper chain confessed in 2019, “Serious doubts have been expressed in motor industry circles about the claims that the vehicle was manufactured in South Africa… Last September, the local media reported that the construction had been moving at a snail’s pace and all SMMEs had vacated the premises due to non-payment.”

Again, according to University of Western Cape analysts, one manifestation was local dissent:

  • Local journalist Max Matavire reported on extensive labour and small business protests against BAIC during construction, and titled a November 2019 article, “Overambitious production targets delay R11bn BAIC project,” since BAIC “has missed its deadline by two years because it failed to meet its own overambitious and unrealistic production targets set at the launch… Currently, they are producing 50 000 vehicles per year from the semi-knocked-down kits. This will increase to 100 000 a year when fully operational”… Inadequate pay at the factory was the source of further grievances, according to media reports. Workers demanded twice the R24/hour that they were earning in 2018, and were on strike for several weeks, for the second time. (Toussaint et al, 2019)

Finally, at what is potentially the biggest SEZ in South Africa – at the far northern tip of the country – there is a $10 billion China-funded metals-manufacturing facility planned in a corridor termed Musina-Mukhado. One smaller part of the SEZ is just 50 km from the Zimbabwean border post of Beit Bridge. But it is the rural Makhado section that Chinese entrepreneur Ning Yat Hoi and his Shenzhen Hoi Mor Resources Holding Company chose for an 8000 hectare project, bordering the main highway heading north. That part of the Musina-Makhado SEZ (MMSEZ) is the energy-metallurgical complex (hence sometimes termed EMSEZ).

President Cyril Ramaphosa had co-chaired the Forum on China-Africa China Cooperation in September 2018, and in addition to promoting the MMSEZ, he announced a further $1.1 billion (R16.5 billion) loan from the Bank of China for SEZs and industrial parks in South Africa (Mokone 2018). If approved, the MMSEZ will contain a coal washing plant (with the capacity to process 12 million tonnes per year); a coking plant (3 million tonnes); an iron plant (3 million tonnes); a stainless steel plant (3 million tonnes); a ferro manganese powder plant (1 million tonnes); a ferrochrome plant (3 million tonnes); a limestone plant (3 million tonnes); and most controversially, a 3300 MW coal-fired power plant.

The latter is not incorporated in South Africa’s official Nationally Determined Contributions to cutting emissions mandated in the Paris Climate Agreement, nor in the Energy Department’s Integrated Resource Plan for added capacity. Water to cool the plant is not immediately available, and will require an international transfer from deep aquifiers in water-starved western Zimbabwe and Botswana.

Even the company hired by the MMSEZ to conduct environmental analysis, Delta BEC (2020), admitted that in terms of greenhouse gases, “emission over the lifetime of the project will consume as much as 10 percent of the country’s carbon budget. The impact on the emission inventory of the country is therefore HIGH. The project cannot be implemented in the current regulatory confines.” Delta BEC suggested the environmental contradiction could be overcome with a carbon-capture-storage strategy for the vast CO2 emissions, although no such proven technology exists.

Pressures arose against Delta BEC in early 2021 as community consultations failed to win buy-in, so the main staffer quit in disgust. The provincial agency in charge of the project worked with Ning to scale down the project, displacing several components from Makhado and reducing the power plant to 1320MW. Still, environmental legal critiques, (white) conservationist opposition, and (black) community resistance facilitated by Earthlife South Africa remained intense.

Moreover, corruption is another concern in a part of South Africa, Limpopo Province, that has notorious legacies of state capture. Ning had spent much of 2017-18 defending himself in court and was even on the Interpol ‘Red List’ for theft. In 2015-17 he served as board chair of a mining company in Zimbabwe, ASA Resource Group, but was fired by the other directors and charged with $5 million in alleged graft. At a November 2018 London High Court hearing on the case, the judge ruled that there were credible allegations against Ning for “stealing money, a corrupt relationship between Mr Ning and the Chinese suppliers and an alleged tortious conspiracy between the Chinese directors. The pleadings are extensive.”

Investigative journalists at Amabhungane (South Africa’s leading reporters) identified many suspicious relations between Ning and South African officials. These included dereliction of duty by the South African Ministers of Trade and Industry responsible for giving Ning permission to operate that part of the MMSEZ, Rob Davies and Ebrahim Patel (Amabhungane 2020).

Still, the project would continue because, according to one reporter,

  • the concept of the MMSEZ was premised on extensive cross-border research to determine what commodities were crossing the Beit Bridge border with the top ten identified as being potential low-hanging fruit. The idea was that that instead of machinery and equipment being built in, say, Durban and shipped to a SADC country, it could far more advantageously be done in the MMSEZ (Ryan 2019).

In other words, the net benefit for South Africa was dubious, if the MMSEZ’s opening of new capacity in one part of the country simply shut down that capacity in another part, one where the tax rate was about twice as high. Indeed, the standard corporate tax rate for South African businesses was, in 1992 at the close of apartheid, 52 percent. It was reduced to 28 percent over the subsequent three decades and 27 percent in 2021. But still this was not sufficient to entice new investment by either local or foreign capital. The SEZ strategy is to lower the rate still further, to just 15 percent – the lowest corporate tax agreed by the G7 in 2021, to promote internationally.

In spite of the dilemmas associated with access to capital and to water, climate, and corruption, even the 2019 UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) special SEZ report unequivocally promoted the MMSEZ:

  • In Africa, intercontinental trade and economic cooperation through border SEZs is also high on the agenda. The MMSEZ of South Africa is strategically located along a principal north-south route into the Southern African Development Community and close to the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. It has been developed as part of greater regional plans to unlock investment and economic growth, and to encourage the development of skills and employment in the region (UNCTAD 2019: 160).

UNCTAD officials weren’t paying attention. There was a new truck route away from both Makhado and Musina, crossing Botswana in a northwesterly direction, avoiding the costly, inefficient northeasterly Zimbabwe border (Beitbridge) a few kilometers north of Musina. According to Africa trade analyst Diana Games:

  • In May 2021, the Kazungula Bridge across the Zambezi River linking Botswana and Zambia was opened by the presidents of the two countries. The construction of the bridge, which replaces the longstanding, slow ferry service across the river, means trucks on regional routes can now cross the river in a few hours, or less, rather than the previous three days to a week. It also means they can avoid using the biggest crossing between the ports and factories of South Africa and the rest of southern Africa, Beitbridge, which is also one of the most congested borders in Africa. A one-stop border post at the bridge will allow easier thoroughfare.

The diversion of traffic from this essential ‘Gateway to Africa’ truck route is a formidable deterrent to the MMSEZ’s overall rationale. In working through Ning’s firm, and emphasizing much closer ties to the Zimbabwean and South African governments – while suffering often frosty relations with Zambia – the Chinese economic diplomats and others in FOCAC who entertained such high hopes for the MMSEZ witnessed a string of profound disappointments.

Conclusion: Potentials for reviving positive Chinese-SADC relations

The adverse conditions Chine capital accumulation is encountering in the South African cases discussed above, and indeed across the region, are indisputable, and will continue to be contested. Yet many Southern Africans know a different face of China, not only that of the super-exploitative state and private firms now active in the region.

Many ask whether Chinese workers, peasants and progressives could one day, just as they did in 1949, wrest their society away from a self-destructive ruling class now controlling the economy and state? To be sure, China’s role in Africa has often been honorable, and there are many reasons to admire and offer return solidarity to those forces which have consistently sought liberatory allies in Africa.

Chinese socio-ecological-economic advances celebrated by progressives everywhere include:

  • China’s 1949 peasant-worker revolution and decolonisation – and later in the 1960s-70s, its crucial support for African anti-colonial struggles (especially Zimbabwe’s) and regional development aid (especially the Tanzania-Zambia railway);
  • China’s capacity for rapid pollution abatement and renewable energy dissemination (based partly on disregard for the West’s Intellectual Property);
  • China’s strength in maintaining international financial sovereignty through exchange controls and financial regulations (especially those imposed in 2015-16 to halt spreading stock market crashes into other markets);
  • China’s 2009-14 expansion of mass housing, services, recreational and transport innovations (especially the “Chongqing Model” of municipal development promoted by China’s neo-Maoist ‘New Left’);
  • China’s ongoing worker and peasant protests which are reputed to number more than 100 000 annually, in spite of often severe punishment;
  • Chinese internet users’ ability to avoid Beijing’s repressive surveillance systems (including ongoing democratic organising in Hong Kong).

There are also Zhou Enlai’s ‘Eight Principles’ for Chinese interrelations with Africa dating back more than 55 years. As the first Premier of China, Zhou listed principles for foreign aid during a trip to Africa in late 1963 and early 1964:

  • mutual benefit
  • no conditions attached
  • the no-interest or low-interest loans would not create a debt burden for the recipient country
  • to help the recipient nation develop its economy
  • not to create its dependence on China
  • to help the recipient country with projects that need less capital and quick returns
  • the aid in kind must be of high quality at the world market price to ensure that the technology can be learned and mastered by the locals
  • the Chinese experts and technicians working for the aid recipient country are treated equally with local ones, with no extra benefits to them (Shixue 2011).

While many such principles, innovations and aspirations are admired by SADC progressives, the pages above considered the more recent, generally négative aspects of China’s socio-economic and environmental advances. These include Chinese parastatal and corporate investments, financing and trade, as well as in China’s role in multilateralism and its geopolitical power in Africa. The conclusion, hence, is pessimistic regarding the relationship binding Chinese and SADC elites. Yet there are grounds for optimism regarding social resistances that in future may reconnect Southern African progressives with their Chinese counterparts.

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Patrick Bond, Professor, University of the Western Cape School of Government. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

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The Economist. 2014. An interview with the President. 2 August. https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2014/08/02/an-interview-with-the-president

The New York Times. 2019. The Xinjiang Papers. 16 November. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html

Toussaint, E., Mbangula, M. D’Sa, D. Thompson, L. and Bond, P. 2019. Shifting Sands of the Global Economic Status Quo. African Centre for Citizenship and Democracy Policy Paper #2/2 on South Africa’s Special Economic Zones in Global Socio-Economic Context. November. https://accede.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/ACCD percent20& percent20FES percent20Policy percent20Working percent20Paper percent20No.2-draft percent20version.pdf

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Zhang, X. (2017), Chinese Capitalism and the Maritime Silk Road, Geopolitics, 22, 2, 2017, pp.310-331, DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2017.128937

Featured image: “President Cyril Ramaphosa at 2018 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation” by GovernmentZA is licensed with CC BY-ND 2.0. 

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Was Bombing of Mariupol Theater Staged by Ukrainian Azov Extremists to Trigger NATO Intervention?

March 22nd, 2022 by Max Blumenthal

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Testimony by evacuated Mariupol residents and warnings of a false flag attack undermine the Ukrainian government’s claims about a Russian bombing of a local theater sheltering civilians.

Western media have reported that Russia’s military deliberately attacked the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama theater in Mariupol, Ukraine, claiming that it was filled with civilians and marked with signs reading “children” on its grounds.

The supposed bombing took place just as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed to US Congress for a no fly zone, fueling the chorus for direct military confrontation with Russia and apparently inspiring President Joseph Biden to brand Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, as a “war criminal.”

A closer look reveals that local residents in Mariupol had warned three days before the March 16 incident that the theater would be the site of a false flag attack launched by the openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which controlled the building and the territory around it.

Civilians that escaped the city through humanitarian corridors have testified that they were held by Azov as human shields in area, and that Azov fighters detonated parts of the theater as they retreated. Despite claims of a massive Russian airstrike that reduced the building to ashes, all civilians appear to have escaped with their lives.

Video of the attack on the theater remains unavailable at the time of publication; only photographs of the damaged structure can be viewed. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied conducting an airstrike on the theater, asserting that the site had no military value and that no sorties were flown in the area on March 16.

While the Russian military operation in Ukraine has triggered a humanitarian crisis in Mariupol, it is clear that Russia gained nothing by targeting the theater, and virtually guaranteed itself another public relations blow by targeting a building filled with civilians – including ethnic Russians.

Azov, on the other hand, stood to benefit from a dramatic and grisly attack blamed on Russia. In full retreat all around Mariupol and facing the possibility of brutal treatment at the hands of a Russian military hellbent on “de-Nazification,” its fighters’ only hope seemed to lie in triggering direct NATO intervention.

The same sense of desperation informed Zelensky’s carefully scripted address to Congress, in which he invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech and played a heavily produced video depicting civilian suffering to make the case for a no fly zone.

By instigating Western public outrage over grisly Russian war crimes, Ukraine’s government is clearly aiming to generate enough pressure to overcome the Biden administration’s reluctance to directly confront Russia’s military.

But Kiev’s most emotionally potent allegation so far – that Russia deliberately bombed innocent children cowering inside a theater – has been undercut by testimonies from Mariupol residents and a widely viewed Telegram message explicitly foreshadowing a false flag attack on the building.

Children undergo military training at a summer camp run by the Azov Battalion in 2015

Azov Battalion fighters grow desperate in Mariupol, plea for Western military intervention

The strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol has been held by the Azov Battalion since 2014. Since its seizure, it has served as a political and military base for the ultra-nationalist paramilitary as it launched assaults on pro-Russian separatists in the breakaway republic of Donetsk.

Gathered from the ranks of extreme right activists that provided protesters with street muscle during the 2013-14 Euromaidan coup, the Azov Battalion has been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard by the country’s Interior Ministry. It was founded by the openly fascist organizer Andriy Biletsky, who has vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen.”

With the Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel symbol emblazoned on their uniforms and flags, Azov fighters make no secret of their ideological goals. Despite having been identified by the FBI, US Congress, and its own fighters as a neo-Nazi unit, and implicated in an array of sordid human rights violations, Azov has collaborated openly with US and Canadian military trainers.

Having accused Azov of seeking to exterminate the ethnic Russians of Donbas, Putin has marked its base in Mariupol as the front line of his stated campaign to “de-Nazify” Ukraine. Since Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, the city become the site of ferocious urban fighting, with Russian special forces and Donetsk People’s Republic People’s Militia forces waging a block-by-block fight for control as artillery rained down on Azov positions.

On March 7, an Azov Battalion commander named Denis Prokopenko appeared on camera from Mariupol with an urgent message. Published on Azov’s official YouTube channel and delivered in English over the sound of occasional artillery launches, Prokopenko declared that the Russian military was carrying out a “genocide” against the population of Mariupol, which happens to be 40 percent ethnic Russian.

Prokopenko then demanded that Western nations “create a no fly zone over Ukraine support[ed] with the modern weapons.” It was clear from Prokopenko’s plea that Azov’s position was growing more dire by the day.

As Russia’s military rapidly degraded Azov positions throughout the second week of March 2022, Azov soldiers apparently directed elderly civilians as well as women and children into the wardrobe hall of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol.

A video filmed inside the dimly lit building on March 11 featured a local man claiming that one thousand civilians were trapped inside and demanding a humanitarian corridor to allow them to escape. Only a small group of civilians could be seen in the video, however.

“I’m begging you to stop all this, give us the corridor to get people out, to get out women, kids, the wounded…” a bespectacled narrator (seen below) declared in the video.

Azov soldier (L) appears on March 11 with a local man outside the Mariupol theater

Since Russia launched its invasion, Azov Battalion soldiers have been filmed preventing civilians from leaving Mariupol – even forcing men out of their cars and brutally assaulting them while they attempted to break through the paramilitary’s checkpoints. If testimony from many Mariupol residents was to be believed, Azov had used many of them as human shields.

Days before Mariupol theater incident, chilling warnings of a false flag “provocation”

On March 12, a chilling message appeared on the Telegram channel of Dmitriy Steshen, a correspondent reporting from Mariupol for the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.

According to Steshen, local residents told him an alleged Russian bombing of the Turkish-built Kanuni Sultan Suleyman mosque in Mariupol that day was a false flag intended to “drag Turkey into the war,” and warned that a false flag attack on the Mariupol Drama Theater was imminent.

The Telegram message read as follows:

“Look at what our readers from Mariupol sent us. If the information can be verified, it needs to be highlighted [for the media]:

‘Zelensky prepares two [false flag] provocations in Mariupol!!! One of the [false flag] provocation is against the citizens of Turkey, who hid in the mosque built by Akhmetov, and this provocation has already begun by the Ukrainian artillery gunners shelling the grounds of the mosque, from their positions at [Zinsteva] Balka in Nizhniaya [Lower] Kirvoka. Zelensky was unable to drag the EU, USA and UK into the war against the Russian Federation. Now, Zelensky is trying to drag Turkey into the war, pinning his hopes on the explosive emotional character and the love the faithful feel for their sacred shrines.

The second [false flag] provocation Zelensky is preparing for use by Western media, after unsuccessful provocation with the [Mariupol] maternity hospital, Ukrainian soldiers, together with the administration of the Drama Theater, gathered women, children, and the elderly from Mariupol in the Drama Theater building, so as to – given a good opportunity – detonate the building and then scream around the world that this was by the Russian Federation air force and that there should be an immediate ‘no fly zone’ over Ukraine.’”

Steshin’s message recounting the warnings from Mariupol residents has been seen by over 480,000 Telegram users. It is below and can also be viewed here.

On March 12, Western outlets like the Associated Press repeated Ukrainian government claims that the Turkish mosque in Mariupol had been shelled by Russia with 80 civilians inside, including children.

However, Turkish state media revealed that the Ukrainian government had misled Western reporters. The Kanuni Sultan Suleyman Mosque was not only fully intact, it had never been hit by Russian fire.

“Our mosque remained undamaged,” Ismail Hacioglu, head of the mosque’s association, told Turkey’s Andalou Agency on March 12.

Still filled with civilians, the Mariupol theater was next on somebody’s target list.

The Associated Press (top) relied entirely on Ukrainian government claims about the mosque in Mariupol, while Turkish media (bottom) interviewed the head of mosque. The contrast in coverage is revealing.

As Zelensky begs Congress for military intervention, news of a theater attack

Less than 48 hours after the debunked claims of a Russian attack on the mosque in Mariupol were introduced, humanitarian corridors finally opened up around the city. The flight of thousands of civilians toward Russian military positions further weakened the Azov Battalion, which was using Mariupol’s residents as collateral in its bid to compel a no fly zone.

On March 16, with his military collapsing under the Russian onslaught, the Ukrainian president and famed comedian-actor Zelensky appeared by video for a carefully scripted, elaborately produced presentation before an assembly of awestruck US members of Congress.

“I have a dream. These words are known to each of you today. I can say I have a need. I need to protect our sky,” Zelensky proclaimed. The Ukrainian president thus invoked the most famous words of America’s most revered antiwar activist, Martin Luther King Jr., to appeal for a no fly zone that would bring the nuclear-armed militaries of the US and Russia into direct confrontation.

Just hours after Zelensky’s address, news arrived directly from the Azov Battalion’s press department that Russia had bombed the theater in Mariupol.

With a monopoly over information from the scene of the supposed attack, with no other news outlets present, Azov’s press department disseminated photos of the destroyed building to media across the world.

The Azov Battalion’s watermark can be seen clearly in the lower right hand corner of the image below. Azov’s photo was republished by international outlets including Sky News, but with the paramilitary’s brand cropped out. When South China Morning Post ran the image, it removed the watermark and credited “Azov Battalion via AP.”

One of the most widely published images of the Donetsk Regional Academic Drama Theater was provided to international media by the Azov Battalion

Among the first English language media figures to convey the Ukrainian government’s narrative of the incident to a mass audience was Illia Ponomarenko, a Kiev-based, US-trained reporter who has managed to rack up over a million Twitter followers since Russia’s invasion began.

Ponomarenko happened to work for the Kyiv Independent, an outlet that has functioned as one of the most potent US information weapons in Ukraine. The paper had been set up with assistance from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US intelligence cut-out, and an “emergency grant” from its EU-funded cousin, the European Endowment for Democracy.

For his part, Ponomarenko has referred to the Azov Battalion as his “brothers in arms”, and boasted of “chilling out” with its fighters near “enemy lines.”

Seemingly swept up in the emotional maelstrom inspired by the news from Mariupol, President Joseph Biden blasted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, as a “war criminal,” a “murderous dictator,” and a “pure thug.”

Next, Human Rights Watch issued a hastily composed press releaseheadlined, “Mariupol Theater Hit By Russian Attack Sheltered Hundreds.” The billionaire-backed NGO acknowledged it had not interviewed any Mariupol residents after the attack, and provided no evidence to demonstrate Russian responsibility. Indeed, HRW’s lone source fingering Russia as the culprit was the Ukrainian governor of Donetsk.

Was Russia’s military so bloodthirsty – and politically self-destructive – that it had deliberately targeted a building that was known to be filled with children? Or had the Mariupol residents’ prediction of a false flag from four days before come true?

Suspicious signs, holes in the Ukrainian government’s narrative emerge

Though Azov boasts a sophisticated press unit which films its exploits in the field, and soldiers are publishing even the most banal video of themselves on social media, footage of the theater bombing was nowhere to be found.

Photos supplied by Azov to media in Ukraine and abroad invariably depict the bombed-out theater without any people in sight, living or dead.

One day before the bombing, on March 15, a group of military-aged men were photographed in front of the Mariupol theater. No women were visible anywhere in the image. The men can be seen placing pallets against the side of the building, ferrying large objects across the theater grounds, and cutting down a fir tree.

According to Human Rights Watch’s report on the theater incident, which contained no local testimony gathered after the attack, the men were “cook[ing] food on an open fire and collect[ing] water in buckets.”

As seen below, pallets and other objects were piled against the same area of the building hit by an explosive charge the following day.

While the theater appeared to have been heavily damaged – “they bombed the building to ashes,” claimed Ponomarenko – it turned out that not one person was killed by the blast.

“It’s a miracle,” the Kyiv Independent reporter chirped.

In a 7-minute-long March 17 package blending news and agitprop, ABC News claimed that all civilians had been saved from the theater, but that “hundreds were still missing.” Data on the modest-sized theater reproduced on its Ukrainian Wikipedia page puts its maximum seating capacity at 680, which raises questions about how “hundreds” could have fit in its basement.

Further, ABC claimed the theater had been hit by Russian artillery shelling, not an “air dropped Russian bomb” as Ponomarenko and many others have claimed.

Ukrainian media, meanwhile, has expressed confusion over the incident. The outlet 0629 has attempted to explain away the mysterious disappearance of the thousand civilians said to have been in the theater by claiming they were evacuated to the city of Zaporozhye a day before the supposed attack. “we are waiting for the official verified information and do not rush to conclusions,” the paper declared.

As Mariupol residents poured out of the city through the Russian military’s humanitarian corridors, testimonies began to emerge of ruthless Azov attacks on the fleeing civilians – and of a major deception at the local theater.

“When [Azov soldiers] were leaving, they destroyed the drama theater”

On March 17, a young woman delivered an eye-opening account of the situation inside Mariupol to ANNA, the Abkhazian Network News Agency.

“The Azov fighters were simply hiding behind us,” she told a reporter. “We were their human shields, that’s it. They were breaking everything, all around us, they were not letting us outside. We spent 15 days in a basement, with kids… They gave us no water, nothing.”

Describing how the Azov Battalion placed its tanks in front of local bomb shelters, the woman offered a revealing detail: “When they were leaving,” she said, referring to the Azov Battalion, “they destroyed the drama theatre. People with shrapnel were brought to us.”

Numerous evacuees echoed the woman’s testimony about Azov holding Mariupol civilians as hostages, and said they were targeted with gunfire as they escaped through humanitarian corridors.

“They burned everything,” an elderly woman recalled to Russian media. “They bombed [my] whole apartment…. They broke in and are sitting there, making Molotov cocktails. I wanted to come in, to take my things, but they told me: ‘No, you have no business here.’”

Asked by a reporter who attacked her and invaded her home, the woman replied, “Well, the Ukrainians, of course.”

A man intercepted by an ANNA reporter after escaping Mariupol fought back tears as he pointed back to the Ukrainian military’s positions. “Azov, those bitches… people tried to evacuate… Azov… they executed the people… the monsters, scum… they shot them up, entire buses.”

“The Ukrainian army was shooting us, shooting at people,” said another man who fled Mariupol. “Right at our house.”

“Ukraine didn’t let us leave the city, we were blocked,” another evacuee stated. “The Ukrainian military arrived and said, under no circumstances are you to leave the city if the Russian Federation opens a humanitarian corridor for you. We want to continue to use you as a human shield.”

The red line: lessons from Syria

Was the bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater of Mariupol a false flag attack executed by Azov extremists to trigger NATO intervention, as some local residents claimed? If so, it was hardly the first cynical deception deployed by Ukraine’s government to draw the West into the conflict, and was unlikely to be the last.

On March 16, the day of the incident at the theater, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that “we have real concerns that Russia could use a chemical weapon, another weapon of mass destruction.” In the next breath, Blinken pointed to Syria, where he claimed “we’ve seen them use or acquiesce to [chemical weapon] use.”

It was in Syria where the administration of President Barack Obama imposed its “red line” policy declaring that any chemical attack would automatically trigger a US military response. That policy set the stage for a series of incidents that appear to have been carried out by foreign backed Syrian opposition forces to compel the US to intervene against Damascus.

In the deadliest incident, hundreds of civilians were killed when sarin-filled rockets were fired – apparently from insurgent-controlled territory – at multiple sites in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta on August 21, 2013. After Obama blamed the Syrian government and prepared to launch strikes, dissenting administration officials leaked to the media that the intelligence blaming Damascus was in fact no “slam dunk,” a clear reference to the CIA’s pre-Iraq war fabrications. Journalist Seymour Hersh subsequently reported that the US had collected significant intelligence pointing to insurgent guilt in Ghouta. It was this information, Hersh reported, that convinced Obama to abandon his so-called “red line.”

Under President Donald Trump, the US attempted to revive the “red line” by bombing Syria over chemical weapons allegations in 2017 and 2018. But significant evidence in both cases points to staged incidents carried out by insurgents. In the case of the April 2017 incident in Khan Sheikhoun, Trump ignored intelligence and launched airstrikes on the Syrian military. And in the Damascus suburb of Douma the following year, OPCW investigators found no evidence of a chemical attack, but had their findings doctored and censored as US officials worked to pressure and co-opt the organization.

As a former US ambassador in the Middle East told journalist Charles Glass, “The ‘red line’ was an open invitation to a false-­flag operation.”

Dubious allegations of a Russian attack on the theater in Mariupol have failed to trigger the Biden administration’s red line. The question now is how far Ukraine’s government is willing to go to trigger the no fly zone it needs to hold off the imminent defeat of its military forces.

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The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

Getting Away with Murder

March 22nd, 2022 by Philip Giraldi

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***

So Russian President Vladimir Putin is a “thug and a murderous dictator.” That is the judgement of President of the United States Joe Biden, delivered directly to Putin during a phone conversation, and it is backed up by a unanimous vote in the US Senate endorsing Biden’s more recently expressed view that Putin is also a “war criminal.” And if anyone doubted the sheer malignancy of America’s legislators, the viewing of a televised appeal by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelinskyy calling for US intervention in his war was met with cheers, shouts of approval and a standing ovation not seen in this hemisphere since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited a Joint Congressional session in 2015. Unfortunately, in spite of all the euphoria, these comments, gestures and allegations are completely gratuitous, whether they are wholly or partly true or not, and they guarantee that a normal relationship between Russia and the United States is not likely to be reestablished no matter what the outcome to the current fighting in Ukraine.

If that is what diplomacy looks like in 2022 America then we are in serious trouble. The fact is that the US record for committing what are potentially war crimes dwarfs that of Russia or any other country with the sole exception of Israel. One only has to go through the list starting with Vietnam and continuing with Serbia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen to appreciate the places that have been on the receiving end of either covert actions or direct intervention by US armed forces or those of its close allies. Along the way, civilians have literally died in their millions as the Pax Americana has proven to be elusive in spite of a sprinkling of more than 1,000 United States military bases worldwide. Russia is a parvenu in comparison.

It is widely understood that the United States in the post-World War 2 world, shaped the new so-called international rules-based order to benefit itself, with the designation of the dollar as the world reserve currency for energy purchases, benefitting only Washington through the Treasury Department’s ability to print money without any commodity having real value to back it up. Combine that with de facto control over the international banking system and the US has been able to render itself bullet proof when it starts wars or commits other crimes. It does not accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in the Hague, has even blocked the travel of ICC investigators to the US, and has never been held accountable for any of its questionable activities.

The end of the cold war brought about some adjustments in the international order, but, for the US, it meant an initial drive to loot the resources of Russia under Boris Yeltsin followed by Bill Clinton’s breaking the promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev not to take advantage of the changed circumstances to expand NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact nations in Eastern Europe. The current situation with Ukraine is a consequence of that continuous interference in Russia’s legitimate sphere of influence, which culminated with the regime change engineered by Washington in Kiev in 2014.

The United States is often regarded by other countries as a rogue nation, precisely because it shows little respect for the vital interests of others and is willing to manipulate international institutions in support of political and social objectives that have little or nothing to do with actual national security. Its sanctions frequently bring suffering to ordinary people in the countries targeted without affecting decisions made by the leadership. And the sanctions themselves are often poorly conceived while also being factually challengeable. The US governing elite invariably covers its misbehavior with self-serving aphorisms like the rubbish peddled by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when she enthused how “If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” Yes indeed, she actually said that.

Worse still, the sustained flood of government inspired propaganda used to justify questionable actions has had the regrettable consequence of turning inward, leading to charges of “treason” directed against the few journalists and politicians who dare to challenge conventional wisdom. In the current Ukraine crisis, journalists like Tucker Carlson are under fire, as are former politicians like Tulsi Gabbard, for having committed the crime of opposing America’s deepening involvement in the fight against Russia. Indeed, the blacklisting of Russian music and books as well as foods and even vodka represent something pathological in the mainstream response to the fighting. Reliably left-wing Move-On has launched its own in-house “Creative Lab” (sic) to produce its own propaganda videos. It describes as a “debunked conspiracy theory” the Carlson claim, originally surfaced from the US government itself, that the “Biden administration was funding secret biolabs in Ukraine.” It is seeking to discredit Carlson’s “lies” which “are now fueling Putin’s relentless campaign of death and destruction in Ukraine.” It is “freedom fries” all over again.

A recent story illustrating just how deep the rot has penetrated the core of United States government and its institutions has predictably been given little coverage by the US mainstream media, but it is a tale that is appalling in its implications. The story involves a March 3rd Supreme Court ruling on a motion filed by accused terrorist Abu Zubaydah, who is currently a prisoner held in Guantanamo, though he has never actually been convicted of anything and is being nevertheless held “incommunicado for the rest of his life.” Abu Zubaydah maintained that he was tortured extensively by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at a secret prison in Poland as well as in Thailand and Cuba.

The CIA captured a wounded Abu Zubaydah, a Palestinian radical, in 2002 in Pakistan, and immediately acted on the belief that he was a leader of al-Qaeda. He was tortured for several years. The CIA “waterboarded Zubaydah at least 80 times, simulated live burials in coffins for hundreds of hours,” and brutalized him through sleep deprival. They also hung him by his wrists on hooks, beat him physically and he, as a result, lost one eye. A heavily redacted CIA 683 page torture report to the Senate released in 2014, which included some details of the standard practices in place at that time, mentioned Abu Zubaydah over 1,000 times.

Abu Zubaydah was seeking release from Guantanamo based on the fact that the United States, in torturing him, had committed a war crime. His lawyers were seeking to subpoena and interview former CIA contractors to determine what exactly occurred in Poland. The US is, by the way, a signatory on the UN Convention Against Torture. The Abu Zubaydah suit may initially have appeared to be a slam-dunk given what was already known about CIA torture. The brutality was incredible. For example, newly declassified documents that surfaced last week revealed how a prisoner at an Agency “black site” in Afghanistan was used as a training prop to teach inexperienced operatives how to torture other prisoners, leaving him with serious brain damage.

Even given that and much other evidence of both illegal activity and crimes against humanity, the Supreme Court case was instead derailed by what is referred to as the “state secrets privilege.” The court’s 6–3 ruling, written by Justice Stephen Breyer included “To assert the [state secrets] privilege, the Government must submit to the court a ‘formal claim of privilege, lodged by the head of the department which has control over the matter.’” That done, the court “should exercise its traditional reluctance to intrude upon the authority of the Executive in military and national security affairs.”

The court’s ruling thereby upheld a “state secrets” claim based on the fact that the Agency has never admitted that it had secret prisons in Poland to prevent Abu Zubaydah’s lawyers from seeking subpoenas on the two psychologists who created the CIA torture program or to use those insights to learn the details of the interrogations. The court also ruled against any attempt by Polish investigators to seek to obtain US government information about the possible crimes committed at the CIA “black site” in Poland.

So welcome to the land of the free and the home of the brave…where you can be tortured at the whim of a government official, imprisoned without ever being convicted of anything, and, when you seek redress from a court, you can be told that “Too bad, it’s a state secret even though the government has already admitted having engaged in a criminal practice.” And one should not ignore in passing a related issue, the savage persecution of journalist Julian Assange for having exposed US government crimes.

An article on the case in the Los Angeles Times, one of the few to appear, puts it this way: “the government may invoke the ‘state secrets’ privilege to block former US contractors from testifying about the now well-known waterboarding and torture of prisoners held at CIA sites in Poland. By a 6-3 vote, the justices said the US government can claim a privilege of secrecy even if there is no secret.” An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who observed the process added that “US courts are the only place in the world where everyone must pretend not to know basic facts about the CIA’s torture program. It is long past time to stop letting the CIA hide its crimes behind absurd claims of secrecy and national security harm.” Or one might observe that it’s called in the vernacular “Getting Away with Murder.”

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from TUR

Waltzing Toward Armageddon with the Merchants of Death

March 22nd, 2022 by Chris Hedges

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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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the CIA, the diplomats who played one country off against another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom.

In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism. 

That is why they have resurrected it.

The decision to spurn the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War is one of the most egregious crimes of the late 20th century. The danger of provoking Russia was universally understood with the collapse of the Soviet Union, including by political elites as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George F. Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

This provocation, a violation of a promise not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, has seen Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia inducted into the Western military alliance. This betrayal was compounded by a decision to station NATO troops, including thousands of US troops, in Eastern Europe, another violation of an agreement made by Washington with Moscow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps a cynical goal of the Western alliance, has now solidified an expanding and resurgent NATO and a rampant, uncontrollable militarism. The masters of war may be ecstatic, but the potential consequences, including a global conflagration, are terrifying.

Peace has been sacrificed for US global hegemony. It has been sacrificed for the billions in profits made by the arms industry. Peace could have seen state resources invested in people rather than systems of control. It could have allowed us to address the climate emergency. But we cry peace, peace, and there is no peace. Nations frantically rearm, threatening nuclear war. They prepare for the worst, ensuring that the worst will happen.

So what if the Amazon is reaching its final tipping point where trees will soon begin to die off en masse. So what if land ice and ice shelves are melting from below at a much faster rate than predicted. So what if temperatures soar, monster hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires devastate the earth. In the face of the gravest existential crisis to beset the human species, and most other species, the ruling elites stoke a conflict that is driving up the price of oil and turbocharging the fossil fuel extraction industry. It is collective madness.

The march towards protracted conflict with Russia and China will backfire. The desperate effort to counter the steady loss of economic dominance by the US will not be offset by military dominance. If Russia and China can create an alternative global financial system, one that does not use the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency, it will signal the collapse of the American empire. The dollar will plummet in value. Treasury bonds, used to fund America’s massive debt, will become largely worthless. The financial sanctions used to cripple Russia will be, I expect, the mechanism that slays us, if we don’t first immolate ourselves in thermonuclear war.

Washington plans to turn Ukraine into Chechnya or the old Afghanistan, when the Carter administration, under the influence of the Svengali-like National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, equipped and armed the radical jihadists that would morph into the Taliban and al Qaeda in the fight against the Soviets. It will not be good for Russia. It will not be good for the United States. It will not be good for Ukraine, as making Russia bleed will require rivers of Ukrainian blood. The decision to destroy the Russian economy, to turn the Ukrainian war into a quagmire for Russia and topple the regime of Vladimir Putin will open a Pandora’s box of evils. Massive social engineering — look at Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya or Vietnam — has its own centrifugal force. It destroys those who play God.

The Ukrainian war has silenced the last vestiges of the Left. Nearly everyone has giddily signed on for the great crusade against the latest embodiment of evil, Vladimir Putin, who, like all our enemies, has become the new Hitler. The United States will give $13.6 billion in military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, with the Biden administration authorizing on Saturday an additional $200 million in military assistance. The 5,000-strong EU rapid deployment force, the recruitment of all Eastern Europe, including Ukraine, into NATO, the reconfiguration of former Soviet Bloc militaries to NATO weapons and technology have all been fast tracked. Germany, for the first time since World War II, is massively rearming. It has lifted its ban on exporting weapons. Its new military budget is twice the amount of the old budget, with promises to raise the budget to more than 2 percent of GDP, which would move its military from the seventh largest in the world to the third-, behind China and the United States. NATO battlegroups are being doubled in size in the Baltic states to more than 6,000 troops. Battlegroups will be sent to Romania and Slovakia. Washington will double the number of U.S. troops stationed in Poland to 9,000. Sweden and Finland are considering dropping their neutral status to integrate with NATO.

This is a recipe for global war. History, as well as all the conflicts I covered as a war correspondent, have demonstrated that when military posturing begins, it often takes little to set the funeral pyre alight. One mistake. One overreach. One military gamble too many. One too many provocations. One act of desperation.

Russia’s threat to attack weapons convoys to Ukraine from the West; its air strike on a military base in western Ukraine, 12 miles from the Polish border, which is a staging area for foreign mercenaries; the statement by Polish President Andrzej Duda that the use of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical weapons, by Russia against Ukraine, would be a “game-changer” that could force NATO to rethink its decision to refrain from direct military intervention — all are ominous developments pushing the alliance closer to open warfare with Russia.

Once military forces are deployed, even if they are supposedly in a defensive posture, the bear trap is set. It takes very little to trigger the spring. The vast military bureaucracy, bound to alliances and international commitments, along with detailed plans and timetables, when it starts to roll forward, becomes unstoppable. It is propelled not by logic but by action and reaction, as Europe learned in two world wars.

The moral hypocrisy of the United States is staggering. The crimes Russia is carrying out in Ukraine are more than matched by the crimes committed by Washington in the Middle East over the last two decades, including the act of preemptive war, which under post-Nuremberg laws is a criminal act of aggression. Only rarely is this hypocrisy exposed as when USAmbassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the body: “We’ve seen videos of Russian forces moving exceptionally lethal weaponry into Ukraine, which has no place on the battlefield. That includes cluster munitions and vacuum bombs which are banned under the Geneva Convention.” Hours later, the official transcript of her remark was amended to tack on the words “if they are directed against civilians.” This is because the U.S., which like Russia never ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions treaty, regularly uses cluster munitions. It used them in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Iraq. It has provided them to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen. Russia has yet to come close to the tally of civilian deaths from cluster munitions delivered by the US military.

The Dr. Strangeloves, like zombies rising from the mass graves they created around the globe, are once again stoking new campaigns of industrial mass slaughter. No diplomacy. No attempt to address the legitimate grievances of our adversaries. No check on rampant militarism. No capacity to see the world from another perspective. No ability to comprehend reality outside the confines of the binary rubric of good and evil. No understanding of the debacles they orchestrated for decades. No capacity for pity or remorse.

Elliot Abrams worked in the Reagan administration when I was reporting from Central America. He covered up atrocities and massacres committed by the military regimes in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and by the US-backed Contra forces fighting the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. He viciously attacked reporters and human rights groups as communists or fifth columnists, calling us “un-American” and “unpatriotic.” He was convicted for lying to Congress about his role in the Iran-Contra affair. During the administration of George W. Bush, he lobbied for the invasion of Iraq and tried to orchestrate a U.S. coup in Venezuela to overthrowHugo Chávez.

“There will be no substitute for military strength, and we do not have enough,” writes Abrams for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow: “It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense. We will need more conventional strength in ships and planes. We will need to match the Chinese in advanced military technology, but at the other end of the spectrum, we may need many more tanks if we have to station thousands in Europe, as we did during the Cold War. (The total number of American tanks permanently stationed in Europe today is zero.) Persistent efforts to diminish even further the size of our nuclear arsenal or prevent its modernization were always bad ideas, but now, as China and Russia are modernizing their nuclear weaponry and appear to have no interest in negotiating new limits, such restraints should be completely abandoned. Our nuclear arsenal will need to be modernized and expanded so that we will never face the kinds of threats Putin is now making from a position of real nuclear inferiority.”

Putin played into the hands of the war industry. He gave the warmongers what they wanted. He fulfilled their wildest fantasies. There will be no impediments now on the march to Armageddon. Military budgets will soar. The oil will gush from the ground. The climate crisis will accelerate. China and Russia will form the new axis of evil. The poor will be abandoned. The roads across the earth will be clogged with desperate refugees. All dissent will be treason. The young will be sacrificed for the tired tropes of glory, honor, and country. The vulnerable will suffer and die. The only true patriots will be generals, war profiteers, opportunists, courtiers in the media and demagogues braying for more and more blood. The merchants of death rule like Olympian gods.  And we, cowed by fear, intoxicated by war, swept up in the collective hysteria, clamor for our own annihilation.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated show On Contact.

Featured image: “Raft of Doom” / Illustration by Mr. Fish

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

Biden Attempts to Blame Russia for Economic Woes

March 22nd, 2022 by Paul Antonopoulos

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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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

According to an article authored by The Guardian’s Washington DC Bureau Chief, David Smith, Joe Biden has a “cursed presidency” because he has had to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, the Russia-Ukraine War and rising energy prices. However, how many of these issues are of his own creation and will this affect the midterm elections?

Smith believes that this concoction of issues has the potential to affect the mood in American society. “Whatever the causes of inflation, history suggests that voters may punish him at the ballot box,” Smith wrote, adding: “all signs point to Republicans winning the House and possibly the Senate [in the upcoming midterm elections].”

Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, was quoted in the article as saying that “Biden has a cursed presidency.” He reiterated that Biden immediately faced the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of his presidency, saw inflation spiral out of control, and is now dealing with the Ukraine crisis, as well as rapid increases in energy prices – these issues will have serious repercussions at the ballot box.

The fact is though that energy prices began to rise long before Russia began its military operation in Ukraine. However, Biden attempts to attribute all the blame to Moscow. None-the-less, many Republicans took advantage of the situation to accuse the US leader of failing to deliver on his campaign promises and of attempting to deny the causes of the issue without correcting the mistake.

Although polls show most Americans support Biden’s actions regarding the situation in Ukraine, most voters will likely be influenced by the socio-economic situation in the US rather than the president’s policies towards Eastern Europe. Effectively, the article believes that the Democratic Party risks losing its majorities in both houses of Congress, which will then make it extremely difficult for the president to promote any initiatives.

The ban on oil and gas imports from Russia has hit the average American hard, which is affecting Biden at the polls. It is noted though that the Republicans who previously called for an energy embargo against Russia are now sharply criticizing the White House for raising fuel prices.

Biden restriced Russian hydrocarbon imports and released 30 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve to be put on the market to reduce prices and prevent supply disruptions. However, thus far, that measure has not helped and instead Biden continues to blame his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

“The decision today is not without cost here at home,” the American president said on March 8. “Putin’s war is already hurting American families at the gas pump.”

If social media is anything to go by, it appears that many Americans remember that inflation and energy prices were increasing before the Russian military entered Ukraine.

It is recalled that Biden tried to arrange video meetings with the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the UAE but was unsuccessful. American commentators are now discussing the emerging split between Washington and the Arab World. In fact, the Americans are so desperate to try and replace Russian energy that for the first time in years an American diplomat visited Caracas to meet Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Although it was promised that sanctions would be eased, Venezuela’s president put in place harsh conditions that the White House did not agree to.

With Biden failing to secure alternative energy sources, conservative commentators did not hold back their disdain. In one example, television host Tucker Carlson said that “Biden’s sanctions policy” was actually an economic “punishment for the American middle class” and “not Vladimir Putin.”

Compounding Biden’s problems is the fact that even the EU’s most important country Germany has made it clear that it is not ready to give up on Russian energy sources. For this reason, Americans are beginning to question why they could potentially end up suffering more so than the Europeans.

The American president had to admit that the upcoming midterm election “may be the most important off-year election in modern history.” If Democrats lose their majorities in the House and the Senate, he said, “the only thing I’ll have then is a veto pen.”

In the context of the Ukraine crisis, the president’s ratings have risen slightly: from 40% to 42.7%. But this is evidently not enough and it seems that all of Biden’s decisions has only benefited the Republicans. According to CNN data, among independent voters, Biden has one of the lowest ratings in history at a paltry 36%.

Falling living standards will surely affect the Democratic Party negatively in November’s election. As the price of gas is rapidly rising, many businesses are unlikely to survive. In this context, no amount of Russia blaming or deflecting will save Biden from facing the wrath of American voters.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from Pixabay

Zelensky’s Reckless Gamble

March 22nd, 2022 by Vasko Kohlmayer

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

“Meeting with Congress, Zelensky Asks for More Weapons and a No-Fly Zone” reads a recent headline from the New York Times.

It does not take great strategic acumen to realize that trying to put up a no-fly zone over Ukraine – whose airspace is now controlled by the Russians – would inevitably lead to a direct clash with the military assets of the Russian Federation.

Zelensky is thus, in effect, asking that the United States – as well as other NATO nations – enter into a shooting war in Russia.

What Zelensky is doing, in reality, is calling for is World War III. Such a war could very quickly escalate into a nuclear confrontation between Russia and the West. With both sides armed with thousands of nuclear warheads, this kind of conflict would result in a fathomless death toll and would almost certainly end the world as we know it.

Zelensky is effectively requesting that we commit suicide over Ukraine. It would be immense foolishness on our part to accommodate his ludicrous request given the fact that Ukraine is a poor, deeply corrupt country in which we have no vital national security interest.

We should not be at all surprised by Zelensky’s self-destructive recklessness and lack of judgment. He has demonstrated both of those in abundance ever since he took office, and now his people are paying a terrible price for his incompetence.

Conceited and foolish, Zelensky gave Putin the proverbial middle finger when the latter asked for accommodation and understanding. He even started talking about Ukraine obtaining its own nuclear weapons, replacing some of those it gave up in 1994 return for guarantees from Russia, the US, and Britain of Ukraine’s independence and existing borders in the Budapest Memorandum

Blinded by his own arrogance Zelensky completely misread Putin. So deep runs Zelensky’s naivete that he refused to believe that Putin would invade even though Russian armies stood assembled on his country’s borders, and he received reports from western intelligence services that an incursion was imminent. Rather than responsibly facing the gravity of the situation, the overconfident former comedian made light of those warnings.

When the incursion finally occurred, he was clearly surprised and shocked. His subsequent behavior further exposed his lack of judgment and puerility when in the days that followed, he bitterly complained that Biden and NATO were not coming to his aid. The inexperienced and gullible man that he is, he apparently believed that if his country was ever attacked, Western powers would promptly dispatch their militaries to fight the Russians in Ukraine, even though such military support was not explicitly promised in the Budapest Memorandum.

As a result of his wretched bungling, Zelensky’s country is now being wrecked. Tens of thousands of his fellow citizens have already lost their lives and millions have fled their homes.  Having wrecked his own country, Zelensky now wants to wreck the whole world by pulling the West into a nuclear war with Russia.

This foolhardiness is completely in character with his previous actions. In a way, his position now is rather understandable. Zelensky is now desperately trying to save his own skin and bury his mistakes in the rubble of a wider conflict. Even though Zelensky has shown himself to be utterly incompetent as a political leader, he remains a superb performer. A master comedian and entertainer, he surely knows how to work his audience.  (Watch, if willing, this clip from a 2016 performance in which Zelensky “plays” piano with his manhood.)

A consummate showman, after Russia’s invasion Zelensky embarked on a worldwide Zoom offensive in which he has been artfully tugging on the heartstrings of Western politicians and populations. So moving are his performances that even the official translators are reduced to tears. His presentations are complete with well-produced, emotionally moving videos depicting the suffering of his own people. Their suffering is indeed great, but it is Zelensky’s own incompetence that got them into their terrible predicament.

In one of the most brilliant PR campaigns in recent history, the hapless architect of this tragedy has managed to recast himself as a global hero. Rather than facing up to his own ineptitude, Zelensky now wants to set off a worldwide conflagration.

If we listen to this heedless and dangerous man and get involved in a shooting match with Russia, we may easily find ourselves paying the same – or worse – price than Zelensky’s own people are paying even as we speak. Given how tense things already are, the prospect of our cities turning into rubble beneath rising mushroom clouds no longer seems a distant possibility.

Zelensky is trying his best to nudge us toward this scenario. We must not take his insidious bait.

It is enough that Zelensky has ruined his own country. We must not let him ruin the rest of the planet as well.

*

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

Vasko Kohlmayer was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia. You can follow his writings by subscribing to his Substack newsletter ’Notes from the Twilight Zone’. He is the author of The West in Crisis: Civilizations and Their Death Drives.

Featured image is YouTube screengrab

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

Ukrainian Medic Apologises After Telling TV Interviewer He Ordered His Staff to Castrate Russian Soldiers

March 22nd, 2022 by Emily Brown

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg and Twitter at @crglobalization. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

A Ukrainian medic has apologised after claiming he ordered his staff to castrate any captured Russian soldiers following their occupation of the country.

Gennadiy Druzenko took on the role of a volunteer frontline medic after Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine last month, and he has since described himself as one of thousands of Ukrainians working to defend his country.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered men aged 18 to 60 to stay in the country to help fight against the war, with some receiving combat training while others take on tasks to further help protect Ukrainian fighters and artillery from the enemy.

Druzenko co-founded a mobile hospital in 2014, and over the past eight years some 500 doctors have been involved in the setup, which deploys civilian doctors and nurses in the conflict zone close to separatist republics.

While speaking about his ongoing work as a medic in a recent interview with Ukraine-24, the medic claimed he has ‘always been a great humanist’ and previously he held the belief that ‘if a man is wounded, he is no longer an enemy but a patient’.

The medic then implied his opinion had changed with the invasion, however, as he told the broadcaster that he had ‘very strict orders to castrate all [captured Russian] men, because they are cockroaches, not people’.

The Investigative Committee of Russia opened an investigation into Druzenko in the wake of the comments, but the medic has since taken to social media to apologise for what he said, assuring that the hospital ‘does not castrate anyone and is not going to’, and explaining that his words came from ’emotions’.

A statement shared on the hospital’s website explained Druzenko ‘made an emotional statement about the sterilisation of the invaders’ and claimed it was ‘prompted by threats against Gennady and his family personally’.

Druzenko apologises for comments (Gennadiy Druzenko/Facebook)

Druzenko apologises for comments (Gennadiy Druzenko/Facebook)

The statement added that his words were ‘taken out of context and propagated by Russian propaganda channels’, before assuring it ‘has not engaged, is not engaged and does not plan to sterilise Russian invaders, let alone captured Russian soldiers and officers’.

“Our mission is to save lives… The head of PDMS apologizes for his emotions, caused, again, by brutal threats to him and his family,” it continued.

Performing castrations on soldiers would violate the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits ‘violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture’.

*

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CDC Removes Tens of Thousands of Deaths ‘Accidentally’ Attributed to COVID

March 22nd, 2022 by Megan Redshaw

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***

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 14 removed tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of deaths it had attributed to children, blaming an algorithm for “accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on March 15 removed from its data tracker website tens of thousands of deaths linked to COVID-19, including nearly a quarter of the deaths the agency said had occurred among children.

In a statement to Reuters, the CDC said it made adjustments to the mortality data because the website’s algorithm was “accidentally counting deaths that were not COVID-19-related.”

“Data on deaths were adjusted after resolving a coding logic error,” the CDC’s website states. “This resulted in decreased death counts across all demographic categories.”

The agency also acknowledged COVID death data is not complete.

Prior to the adjustment on March 15, the CDC attributed 851,000 deaths to COVID, including 1,755 pediatric deaths, according to Kelley Krohnert, a Georgia resident who tracks CDC updates. After the change, COVID-related deaths dropped to 780,000.

The change resulted in the removal of 72,277 deaths previously reported across 26 states, including 416 pediatric deaths — a reduction of 24% to 1,341, the agency said.

The CDC’s COVID statistics, used to justify which age groups should receive vaccines, were used by U.S. health agencies to support the authorization of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for children 5 to 11 years old.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky referred to the tracker’s death total in November 2021, while pushing for an expert panel to advise her agency to recommend vaccination for all children 5 to 11 years old.

Children account for only 19% of all COVID cases, with .01% of childhood cases resulting in death, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

According to CNN, Moderna plans to report trial data in 2- to 5-year-olds in March and may seek authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration “if the data is supportive and subject to regulatory consultation.”

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during a March 13 episode of CBS’ “Face the Nation” said he expects to have a vaccine ready for children aged 6 months to 4 years old “potentially in May if it works.”

Johnson & Johnson has a late-stage trial of its vaccine for 12- to 17-year-olds but nothing for the younger group.

It is unknown whether the pharmaceutical giants will use the CDC’s most recent COVID numbers in their risk-benefit analysis presented to U.S. health agencies to determine whether the risks of COVID outweigh the potential risks of vaccines in children.

CDC ‘cherry-picks’ COVID data for the public

Dr. Meryl Nass, physician and member of the Children’s Health Defense scientific advisory committee on March 19 wrote that the CDC cherry-picks the data it presents to the public to push its “health policies.”

The agency hides most of what it has and then “blames its ‘outdated’ IT systems for the problems if it gets caught,” Nass said.

Nass explained:

“CDC is not a public health agency. It is a public propaganda agency that collects a massive amount of data. CDC marshals its huge data library to create presentations that support the current administration’s public health policies.  CDC also has state-of-the-art PR staff, as well as TV studios, and produces videos, radio spots and an enormous number of press releases that are distributed to the media. CDC hosts many journalists at its Atlanta headquarters. Free junkets successfully cultivate U.S. health reporters.”

Quoting a 2007 Senate oversight report on the CDC, Nass said the agency spends “millions of tax dollars for failed prevention efforts, international junkets and lavish facilities, but cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.”

‘Fact-checker’ claims no evidence COVID deaths have been overcounted

Health Feedback, a fact-checking initiative under the umbrella of Science Feedback, on March 1 said there “is no evidence COVID deaths have been overcounted,” and labeled posts stating otherwise as factually inaccurate, false and misleading.

Heath Feedback focuses on “correcting misinformation about vaccine safety,” and said it “reviewed multiple false claims” that COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths were inflated when “many public health experts believe that COVID-19 numbers are undercounted.”

Health Feedback also addressed death certificates listing COVID along with other health conditions, saying health conditions weaken a person’s resistance to disease and in “many such cases, a person with underlying health conditions wouldn’t have died at that time if it wasn’t for COVID-19.”

“This means that the cause of death is still COVID-19,” the website states.

Health Feedback did not acknowledge that deaths occurring when COVID and other health conditions are listed could be caused by underlying health conditions.

Health Feedback was established as part of the Vaccine Safety Net — a “global network of websites, created by the World Health Organization, that provides reliable information on vaccine safety.”

It also belongs to the International Fact-Checking Network, founded by the Poynter Institute and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, Facebook, the Omidyar Network and George Soros-owned nongovernmental organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy and Open Society Foundation.

To date, Health Feedback has not issued a correction to its fact-check reflecting the CDC’s new mortality data.

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

Featured image is from CHD

Yemen: The Largest Humanitarian Crisis that No One Discusses

March 22nd, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

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Yemen has been at war for the past seven years. A once great land of ancient trade, Yemen has become one of the poorest nations in the Arab world. Their GDP for 2021 was expected to reach only 26.9 billion USD. The World Bank estimated that over half of Yemen’s population lived in poverty prior to the pandemic, and that figure has now reached 71% to 78%.

The United Nations recently declared that 19 million people will go hungry in the coming months. Yemen is completely reliant on exports for basic necessities and 90% of its food supply is imported. One-third of imported wheat comes from Ukraine and Russia. The World Food Programme (WFP) said five million people are at “immediate risk” of slipping into famine-like conditions, and that their program needs $887.9 million to feed 13 million people over the next six months. Over 20.5 million people are without safe water as well.

Around 75% of the $14 billion donated to the nation came from the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and the European Commission. The World Bank expects inflation to reach 45% in Yemen this year but the rial is already worthless and the nation has yet to adopt a safe reserve currency.

I have yet to see a Yemeni flag or virtue signaling for the people living in this particular war-torn country as it is not part of the agenda. The media rarely reports on Yemen and most journalists likely would not be able to recognize Yemen’s flag. People are not driving around with “We Stand With Yemen” bumper stickers, and schools are not requiring children to make sense of this war. The public does not discuss or shed tears for the people of Yemen who live in unfathomable conditions because they are not a piece of the larger agenda and no one can profit off of their suffering at this time.

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CDC Removes One in Four Child Deaths Caused by COVID, Essentially Admitting It Overinflated the Numbers in the First Place

March 22nd, 2022 by Ethan Huff

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On March 15, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quietly removed tens of thousands of alleged Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) deaths from its data tracker website after claiming to have discovered an “error.”

Perhaps most notable was the removal of nearly a quarter of deaths listed in the under 18 years of age column, suggesting that the CDC has been lying about the risk of COVID among young people based on errant data.

“Data on deaths were adjusted after resolving a coding logic error,” the CDC is now claiming as an excuse. “This resulted in decreased death counts across all demographic categories.”

The CDC’s data tracker website relies on inputs from states and other jurisdictions that voluntarily report. It is more than likely wrong and wildly overinflated in order to push a scarier plandemic narrative.

Doctors and other jab-pushers have been relying on this false CDC data to make a case for mass Fauci Flu vaccination, particularly in young children. Rochelle Walensky, the current CDC head, routinely cites this false CDC data, including back in November when she pushed the CDC’s expert advisory to recommend COVID injections for all children aged 5-11.

According to Kelley Krohnert, a Georgia resident who has been tracking the CDC’s data updates, there used to be 1,755 child deaths from COVID listed on the agency’s website, along with approximately 851,000 deaths in other demographics. Now, there are suddenly 416 fewer child deaths listed, as well as 71,000 fewer other deaths listed.

The CDC said it previously adjusted the death count back in August as well “after the identification of a data discrepancy.” For some reason, the CDC cannot get its COVID death numbers to remain consistent and is constantly shifting them, usually to a much lower number.

“The update is an improvement, but it’s at least the third correction to this data, and still does not solve the issue,” Krohnert wrote in an email to the Epoch Times about the issue.

“It just highlights that people have been using a flawed source of data when discussing kids and COVID.”

CDC has been lying to the world about COVID deaths

The CDC also manages the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which some claim is a more reliable source of COVID death data. Many doctors rely on the NCHS instead of the data tracker website.

The NCHS tally is compiled from actual death certificates, and it currently lists about 921 deaths in children who were jabbed, and 966,000 deaths among people of other ages who were jabbed. Keep in mind, however, that even the death certificates were being fudged.

Back in January, a spokesperson from the group explained to the Times that the NCHS death count includes a tally of people who died with the Wuhan Flu, as well as people who supposedly died from it. This distinction is often ignored in official government numbers.

“COVID-19 was listed as the underlying cause, or the primary death cause, on about 90 percent of death certificates at the time,” reports explain.

In the CDC’s other data count, other things such as drowning were listed as “COVID” deaths. We saw this same thing early on in the plandemic when motorcycle deaths, for instance, were blamed on “COVID.”

In a social media post, Dr. Alasdair Munro, a clinical research fellow for pediatric infectious diseases at University Hospital Southampton, wrote that it is “slightly worrying that this data was being used widely in the U.S. to guide or advocate for policy.”

“It’s outrageous to quietly footnote such a consequential error,” added Jessica Adams, a former regulatory review officer at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

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Unsettled – Another Monsanto Roundup Case Heads to Trial

March 22nd, 2022 by Carey Gillam

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Three people suffering from cancer are set to face off against Monsanto in the latest courtroom battle over allegations that exposure to the company’s Roundup weed killer causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The trial will be the first to take place in the company’s former hometown, with jury selection set to start on March 24. (A previous trial in St. Louis was cancelled just hours before it was scheduled to begin due to a settlement agreement.)

The trial will focus on the complaints of three individuals: Robert Bird, an Iowa man who sprayed Roundup products routinely on a tree farm; Blake Buchan, a 39-year-old Georgia man who used Monsanto’s products to spray fence lines and other areas of two properties he maintained; and Ozie Parker, also of Georgia, who grew up helping out on his family farm, mixing and spraying Roundup weed killers on hundreds of acres for many years.

The plaintiffs allege that Monsanto was well aware of the risks of the active ingredient in its herbicides – a chemical called glyphosate – but hid the risks from consumers, failing to warn them despite scientific evidence showing the cancer-causing potential of the products.

Monsanto denies its products cause cancer, pointing to backing by the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulators around the world for the safety of the glyphosate-based herbicides.

The case is being overseen by St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Michael Mullen, and is expected to last about five weeks, according to court spokesman Jacob Long.

Germany’s Bayer AG bought Monsanto in 2018, but Monsanto has maintained a large presence in the St. Louis area, and lawyers for both sides have been arguing over whether or not the company’s long-standing philanthropic role there could be introduced as evidence of what Monsanto attorneys call the company’s “good character.”

Because the plaintiffs will be seeking to convince the jury that Monsanto was “malicious, evilly motivated” or otherwise engaged in other bad behavior, “Monsanto is entitled to put forth mitigating evidence supporting its good character,” according to a recent court filing.

Plaintiffs attorneys, for their part, have warned that if Monsanto tries to curry favor with jurors by speaking of its charitable contributions to the community, or similar acts, they will be entitled to lay out the company’s long history of involvement with such things as Agent Orange poisonings and PCB contamination of communities across the country.

In a separate court filing on Thursday, lawyers for Monsanto also asked the judge to bar the plaintiffs’ attorneys from engaging in “chicanery” by presenting what Monsanto said would be “inflammatory” or “confusing” information to jurors. Monsanto specifically said the judge should bar any suggestion that jurors should consider their verdict as sending a message to Monsanto or Bayer; or comparisons between Roundup and tobacco, among other things.

The plaintiffs are among more than 100,000 people in the United States who have sued Monsanto claiming that exposure to the company’s glyphosate-based herbicides caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma. They all additionally allege that Monsanto was well aware of the risks associated with its weed killers but tried to suppress or discredit information about the dangers.

There have been five trials held to date since international cancer scientists declared glyphosate to be a probable human carcinogen in 2015. Monsanto lost the first three trials and won the last two.

Bayer has settled several other cases that were scheduled to go to trial over the last few years.

And in 2020, the company said it would pay roughly $11 billion to settle about 100,0000 existing Roundup cancer claims, and later said it would set aside another $4.5 billion toward Roundup litigation liability.

Bayer also announced it would stop selling Roundup, and other herbicides made with the active ingredient glyphosate, to U.S. consumers by 2023.

Courtroom View Network has requested to livestream the trial proceedings and the parties are scheduled to meet with the judge on Monday to discuss the request.

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2021 Amazon Deforestation Map Shows Devastating Impact of Ranching, Agriculture

March 22nd, 2022 by Maxwell Radwin

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The Amazon lost millions of hectares of primary forest in 2021, mostly as the result of cattle ranching and other agricultural activities, a new report reveals.

Amazon Conservation’s Monitoring of the Andean Amazon Project (MAAP) found that around 1.9 million hectares (4.8 million acres) of the rainforest were lost last year, similar to annual forest loss rates in 2020 and 2019.

Most of the deforestation took place in Brazil, with Bolivia suffering the second-highest losses. Colombia and Peru also saw noticeable forest loss.

The results are based on University of Maryland satellite data that detect deforestation hotspots. The report compiled raw forest loss data to produce the 2021 hotspot map. Final annual data will come out later this year as additional analysis is done on more thorough satellite readings.

Most of the deforestation took place in Brazil, with Bolivia suffering the second-highest losses. (Image courtesy of MAAP)

Mapping the devastation

MAAP’s findings suggest that most deforestation in Brazil is happening along major roads through the eastern and southeastern states of Acre, Amazonas, Pará and Rondônia. These states are major hotspots for legal and illegal cattle ranching activity, as well as other agricultural production that relies on roads — most notably highways 163, 230, 319 and 364 — for moving goods in and out of the forest.

The report indicates that deforestation in Brazil isn’t happening in one massive wave but is instead chipping away along major roads in several parts of the country.

“We know from historical precedence that whenever you open up roads in these ecologically sensitive biomes, you’re literally opening routes for all kinds of illegal activities, including illegal deforestation but also land invasions of Indigenous land,” Adriana Abdenur, of Plataforma CIPÓ, a climate, governance and peace-building think tank in Latin America, told Mongabay.

She added,

“Whenever you see a road opening up previously pristine or even secondary forest, that’s generally a good predictor that a whole range of illegal activities are likely to take place in that area.”

Roads cutting through the Amazon. (Image courtesy of MAAP)

The maps for other parts of the Amazon biome, meanwhile, reveal other major drivers. In the Peruvian Amazon, for example, most primary forest loss didn’t occur along major roads but instead in a concentrated area where Mennonite settlements have been expanding.

Clearing by Mennonites is the new leading cause of deforestation in Peru, Mongabay reported last year. Since 2017, newly arriving colonies have cleared thousands of hectares of primary forest to set up farms and homes.

In the Bolivian Amazon, satellite readings show a more scattered pattern of deforestation throughout the southeastern Chiquitano dry forest. Unlike the moister parts of the biome in Brazil, the area is dry enough that farmers and ranchers lose control of fires more often, which then spread to primary forest.

Cattle ranching and small-scale subsistence agriculture are the main drivers of deforestation in Colombia. (Image courtesy of MAAP)

“You get a lot of ‘escaped’ fires,” said Matt Finer, the MAAP director and senior research specialist at Amazon Conservation. “You can really see the concentration of fire impacts in the dry forest of the southeast Bolivian Amazon.”

Another arc of deforestation, this one in the Colombian Amazon, has raised alarms among conservationists because much of it penetrates protected areas like Chiribiquete National Park, where more than 6,000 hectares (14,800 acres) of forest have been lost since 2018, MAAP estimates.

Cattle ranching and small-scale subsistence agriculture — often the result of land grabbing in and around protected areas — are the main drivers of deforestation in Colombia, Finer said.

Some silver linings

While MAAP’s report suggests deforestation rates didn’t improve last year and fire patterns suggest that future threats aren’t going away anytime soon, there are a few reasons to be hopeful about Amazon conservation in 2022 and beyond.

For example, the readings in Peru show significantly less deforestation in the Madre de Dios region than in years past. Historically, this region has struggled with illegal gold mining, logging and coca cultivation, among other deforestation drivers.

But in 2019, the Peruvian government launched Operation Mercury to eliminate illegal gold mining activities that were contributing to primary forest loss. In the most critical mining areas, deforestation decreased by around 90%, according to MAAP. In the broader region, it decreased by 78%.

Another positive takeaway is that most deforestation in the Amazon appears to be happening in the south, southeast and northwest parts of the biome, leaving a large, contiguous piece of forest in the central and northeast Amazon, which is holding the biome together, Finer said.

“This map really shows, on the positive, all the green that still represents the core Amazon that 50 years from now, will determine the state of the Amazon,” he said, “[depending on] how well we preserve that core.”

In addition to northeastern Brazil, much of that area falls within Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The MAAP team found Amazon deforestation in these countries was relatively low compared to other parts of the biome.

But Finer cautioned that even though deforestation in the northern Amazon may not be happening on the same scale, protecting the region from cattle ranching, agriculture and development is still critical.

“If we start building any of these cross-cutting roads — a road connecting Brazil with Peru — if that stuff starts to happen, if we start to lose the core Amazon, we’re in trouble,” he said.

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Featured image: Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Image courtesy of CIFOR/Flickr.

US Funding Biowar Research—An Absurd Claim, Right?

March 22nd, 2022 by Jon Rappoport

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US government spokespeople—falling all over themselves to insist America would never ever set up, own, or fund biowar research labs in the Ukraine—

And would never lie about the subject—

Insisting America’s track record is clean—

And its motives pure as the driven snow—

So that’s it, right? Case closed.

Well, how about this for track record:

The US sends bio/chem/nuclear war materials and tech to a foreign nation.

Then threatens to invade that nation because it possesses weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Inspectors travel to that nation.

The inspectors report they can’t find conclusive evidence of WMD.

The US invades that nation anyway. War.

“Well, we knew they had WMD because we sent WMD to them.”

How’s that for an insane situation and a war crime?

The foreign nation is of course Iraq. And George W Bush launched the war in 2003—with the approval of Congress.

If the federal government of that nation—AMERICA—told you, in 2022, ANYTHING about biowar labs or WMD, would you believe them?

Read on. Here is a strange twisted grotesque story of the US supplying WMD to Saddam Hussein. I wrote and published it in 2016.

Wherever the word “virus” appears or is implied, I now intend it to mean “serum containing many compounds, some of which are moderately toxic, but no proven viruses.”

Nevertheless, there’s plenty of other WMD. And by the way, one of the American suppliers? THE CDC. THE US CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL. You may have heard of them.

Here we go.

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In 1975, the US signed on to an international treaty banning the production, use, and stockpiling of biological weapons. Ditto for chemical weapons, in 1993. Another treaty.

Here’s a quote from the Washington Post (9/4/13), “When the US looked the other way on chemical weapons”: “…The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items…including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague…”

Between 1985 and 1989, a US 501C3 firm, American Type Culture Collection, sent Iraq up to 70 shipments of various biowar agents, including 21 strains of anthrax.

Between 1984 and 1989, the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) sent Iraq at least 80 different biowar agents, including botulinum toxoid, dengue virus, and West Nile antigen and antibody.

This information on the American Type Culture Collection and the CDC comes from a report, “Iraq’s Biological Weapons Program,” prepared by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS).

Then we have a comprehensive article by William Blum in the April 1998 Progressive called “Anthrax for Export.” Blum cites a 1994 Senate report confirming that, in this 1985-1989 time period, US shipments of anthrax and other biowar agents to Iraq were licensed by…drum roll, cymbal crash…the US Dept. of Commerce.

Blum quotes from the Senate report: “These biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the United Nations inspectors found and removed from the Iraqi biological warfare program.”

This 1994 Senate report also indicates that the US exported to Iraq the precursors for chemwar agents, actual plans for chemical and biowar production facilities, and chemical-warhead filling equipment. The exports continued until at least November 28, 1989.

Blum lists a few other biowar agents the US shipped to Iraq. Histoplasma Capsulatum, Brucella Melitensis, Clostridium Perfringens, Clostridium tetani—as well as E. coli, various genetic materials, human and bacterial DNA.

Blum also points out that a 1994 Pentagon report dismissed any connection between all these biowar agents and Gulf War Illness. But the researcher who headed up that study, Joshua Lederberg, was actually a director of the US firm that had provided the most biowar material to Iraq in the 1980s: the American Type Culture Collection.

Newsday revealed that the CEO of the American Type Culture Collection was a member of the US Dept. of Commerce’s Technical Advisory Committee. See, the Dept. of Commerce had to license and approve all those exports of biowar agents carried out by the American Type Culture Collection. Get the picture?

Now, as to other US companies which dealt biowar or chemwar agents to Iraq—all such sales having been approved by the US government—the names of these companies are contained in records of the 1992 Senate hearings, “United States Export Policy Toward Iraq Prior to Iraq’s Invasion of Kuwait,” Senate Report 102-996, Senate Committee on Banking Housing and Urban Affairs, 102d Congress, Second Session (October 27, 1992):

Mouse Master (Georgia), Sullaire Corp (Charlotte, North Carolina), Pure Aire (Charlotte, North Carolina), Posi Seal (Conn.), Union Carbide (Conn.), Evapco (Maryland), BDM Corp (Virginia), Spectra Physics (Calif.).

There are about a dozen more.

This also from the Blum article: “A larger number of American firms supplied Iraq with the specialized computers, lasers, testing and analyzing equipment, and other instruments and hardware vital to the manufacture of nuclear weapons, missiles, and delivery systems. Computers, in particular, play a key role in nuclear weapons development. Advanced computers make it feasible to avoid carrying out nuclear test explosions, thus preserving the program’s secrecy. The 1992 Senate hearings implicated [Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA — among others].”

Hewlett Packard said that the recipient of its shipments, Saad 16, was some sort of school in Iraq. But in 1990, the Wall St. Journal stated that Saad 16 was a “heavily fortified, state-of-the-art [Iraqi] complex for aircraft construction, missile design, and, almost certainly, nuclear-weapons research.”

If you review and think about all these WMD shipments from the US to Iraq, you understand there were many US officials and corporate employees who knew about them. Knew about them then, in the 1980s, and knew about them later, during 2 US wars in Iraq, when American soldiers were sent to Iraq, and could have been exposed to the bio/chem weapons.

And these officials and employees said nothing.

Officials at the CDC and the Dept. of Commerce said nothing. People at the American Type Culture Collection said nothing. People at the Pentagon and the CIA and the NSA said nothing. Presidents said nothing. Employees of the corporations who supplied germs and chemicals said nothing.

It’s clear that the US government shipped those bio/chem weapons to Iraq to aid it in its war against Iran. And yes, Iraq did use chemical weapons against Iran—and also against the Iraqi Kurds. Perhaps you remember that, much later, the US government repeated, over and over, “Saddam used chemical weapons against the Kurds, his own people,” as a reason for attacking Iraq.

So is there any limit beyond which the US government wouldn’t go to foment war, to wage war?

That’s a rhetorical question.

—end of my 2016 article—

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NOW, in 2022, when spokespeople proclaim the US government is innocent of all charges relating to bio/chem/nuclear WMD, we’re supposed to believe them?

Really?

And we’re supposed to have faith in the CDC concerning COVID—when the CDC was one of Saddam’s suppliers?

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China Sees Parallel Between Ukraine, Taiwan

March 22nd, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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The Chinese stance on developments around Ukraine was initially one-dimensional, namely, there is no conceivable comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan issues, as they are fundamentally different, because Taiwan is a part of China, whereas Ukraine is an independent country. Factually, that was a correct stance. 

However, there has been a shift lately toward acknowledging that the Eurasian tensions hold an analogy for Indo-Pacific region. The Chinese commentaries underline that the relentless expansion of the NATO in the post-Cold War era is the root cause of events unfolding over Ukraine. In the video call with President Biden in the weekend, President Xi Jinping implicitly touched on this aspect: 

“The US and NATO should also have dialogue with Russia to address the crux of the Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine… As two Chinese sayings go, ‘It takes two hands to clap.’ ‘He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off.’ It is imperative that the parties involved demonstrate political will and find a proper settlement in view of both immediate and long-term needs… An enduring solution would be for major countries to respect each other, reject the Cold War mentality, refrain from bloc confrontation, and build step by step a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture for the region and for the world…” 

In the spate of Chinese commentaries on Ukraine conflict, one report that catches attention for its incisiveness and insights is an interview in the Global Times entitled Russia-Ukraine conflict can be regarded as a ‘preview’ of US’ possible acts in Asia: Zheng Yongnian – NATO’s phantom. 

Zheng Yongnian is best known as an international authority on Chinese politics, political economy and the CCP. He opined categorically that NATO’s expansion will not stop and it will likely expand to Asia. 

In his view, the US is already putting in place “the prototype of an “Asian NATO” — referring to AUKUS, Quad, Five Eyes, Indo-Pacific Strategy, US moves vis-a-vis Vietnam and Singapore. Second, he said China should anticipate a Ukraine-style crisis taking place in “many countries and regions” in Asia and “the expansion of NATO will only stop when another bloc can compete with it and form a check and balance.” 

Third, while China’s economic openness and interdependence are its strong points, that may not prevent a war but can probably slow it down. He said bluntly: “Once fierce conflicts happen between China and the US, will the US kick China out of the SWIFT system as it did with Russia? My opinion is: 100 percent YES.” That said, China’s economy, deeply embedded in the West, can make the West feel real pain.

However, Zheng Yongnian also pointed out that it is not all black and white, either. One the one hand, while China and Europe have common interests and no geopolitical disputes, on the other hand, Europe’s current solidarity with the US is very fragile, as European interests are at risk in a longer term perspective and the EU itself is “at a particularly vulnerable moment.” 

Besides, a remilitarised Germany will cause uneasiness in the continent, especially for France, with geopolitical implications. Also, the spectre of nuclear proliferation haunts Europe now. It is no longer possible to rule out conflicts happening again within the Western civilisation. 

Interestingly, Zheng Yongnian also flagged that the geopolitical landscape of Asia may radically change if Japan, on the footfalls of Germany, also opts for remilitarisation. “This will impact on the entire East Asia, he warned.” 

The analysis is very profound and there is very little to add to it. China is wary that Washington is moving in the direction of creating a “Ukraine-like” strategic dilemma for Beijing apropos Taiwan. To be sure, China has been provoked by the abrasive remarks recently by Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, on the “key lessons” Beijing should draw out of the Ukraine conflict. 

The general listed them as the “solidarity of the global community” in opposing “an unprovoked attack on a neighbour” and “the onerous sanctions that have economically crippled Moscow”. Wilsbach threatened that if China behaves in the Russian way, “something more robust will happen.” 

In addition, he warned, China should also consider the opposition of regional countries, apart from the ravages of the war in human lives and treasure. It could not have been lost on Beijing that Wilsbach  shot straight from the hip just before Biden’s phone call to Xi Jinping. 

Against this backdrop, the speech by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng on Saturday at the Tsinghua University on the implication of the Ukraine developments for the Asia-Pacific region merits careful attention. 

These are the first authoritative remarks by a top Chinese official acknowledging that  “the Ukraine crisis provides a mirror for us to observe the situation in the Asia-Pacific. We cannot but ask, how can we prevent a crisis like this from happening in the Asia-Pacific?” They have followed immediately after the 2-hour long phone conversation between President Xi Jinping and President Biden.  

Le Yucheng took note that the Asia-Pacific is in “promising situation” today — an anchor of peace and stability, an engine for growth and a “pace-setter” for development. The region faces two choices between building “an open and inclusive family for win-win cooperation or go for small blocs based on the Cold War mentality and group confrontation.” 

Le Yucheng explained this binary choice as between: “peace and not undermining regional tranquility; so-called absolute security and common security; mutual respect and wanton interference in others’ internal affairs; and, unity and cooperation versus division and confrontation. Without doubt, he was sounding alert about the Us’ so-called Indo-Pacific strategy. 

Le Yucheng underscored that the India-Pacific strategy characterised by acts of provocation, formation of “closed and exclusive small circles or groups”, and fragmentation and bloc-based division can only lead to a situation “as dangerous as the NATO strategy of eastward expansion in Europe… (which) would bring unimaginable consequences, and ultimately push the Asia-Pacific over the edge of an abyss.” He underscored the criticality of the regional states pursuing “independent, balanced and prudent foreign policies” that dovetail with the process of regional integration. 

The parallels between the situations around Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, are being discussed explicitly in the Chinese commentaries and articulation — while the US “squeezed Russia’s strategic space” through NATO expansion and simultaneously incited Kiev to confront Russia, when it comes to Taiwan too, Washington is instigating the secessionist forces in the island upgrading arms sales to provoke Beijing. 

Of course, the US has refrained from direct intervention in Ukraine, as Russia is not only a military power but also a nuclear power. The big question is whether China will arrive at a conclusion that its best opportunity “to solve its internal Taiwan question” lies in confronting the US at the present juncture when “the US is short of confidence and needs to bluster to embolden itself” and when the NATO’s hands are full in Eurasia and it is unlikely that the US’ allies in the Asia-Pacific will want to intervene in Taiwan. 

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Featured image: On the evening of 18 March, President Xi Jinping (R) had a video call with US President Joe Biden at the request of the latter. (Source: Indian Punchline)

Inflation in America: End the Fed and Get More Doritos

March 22nd, 2022 by Rep. Ron Paul

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The US government’s Consumer Price Index indicates prices have increased 7.9 percent in the last year. While this statistic shows the highest rate of increase in forty years, it still understates the amount prices have increased, in part because the statistic is manipulated to minimize reported price increases.

A stealth form of inflation is “shrinkflation.” Shrinkflation occurs when businesses reduce the size of a product so its price can stay the same. For example, Frito-Lay recently began putting fewer chips in a bag of Doritos, reducing the weight of a bag about five percent from 9.75 ounces to 9.25 ounces in the process. Of course, charging the same for less is a type of price increase.

This week the Federal Reserve increased the interest rate by .25 percent. This increase, it said, is a step in combating inflation. The Fed also announced that it plans to raise rates six more times this year. However, even if the Fed follows through on this plan, rates will only increase from near zero to around 1.9 percent. This is unlikely to effectively combat inflation. The Fed also indicated a commitment to reducing its almost nine trillion dollars balance sheet, although its official statement did not specify details such as when the Federal Reserve would start reducing holdings.

The Federal Reserve is facing a dilemma of its own making. Continuing to keep rates low will cause a dollar crisis. A dollar crisis then can lead to a major economic meltdown worse than the Great Depression. However, if the Fed were to increase rates to anything close to where they would be in a free market, that would dramatically increase the federal government’s debt payments burden.

The only reason Congress’s reckless spending and the Fed’s reckless monetary policy have not yet caused a major economic crisis is the dollar’s world reserve currency status. One of the pillars of the dollar’s status is the use of the dollar in the international oil market. The “petrodollar,” though, may soon be replaced. Saudi Arabia is considering selling some oil for Chinese yuan instead of US dollars. India is considering using Russian rubles and Indian Rupees instead of US dollars in trade with Russia, including for the purchase of Russian oil. This will help get around US sanctions. Concerns about the stability of the US economy, combined with increasing resentment of our foreign policy, will cause other countries to abandon the dollar.

Economic instability can lead to political instability, violence, and an increase in support for authoritarian movements. A way to avoid this is for those of us who know the truth to spread the ideas of liberty. When a critical mass of people demands fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government, the politicians will comply.

To put an end to the welfare-warfare state, Congress can drastically reduce the military budget, end all corporate welfare, and shut down all unconstitutional cabinet departments. The savings can be used to pay down debt and to support those truly dependent on government programs while responsibility for providing assistance returns to local institutions and private charities.

Congress should also restore a sound monetary policy by auditing, then ending, the Fed, as well as by repealing both legal tender laws and capital gains taxes on precious metals and cryptocurrencies. Ending the era of the welfare-warfare state and fiat currency can lead to a transition to a new era of liberty, peace, prosperity — and full bags of Doritos.

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Selected Articles: The Ukraine-Russia Negotiations Are Effectively Dead: Ukraine’s Refusal to “Denazify”

March 22nd, 2022 by Global Research News

The Ukraine-Russia Negotiations Are Effectively Dead: Ukraine’s Refusal to “Denazify”

By Eric Zuesse, March 21, 2022

In order to be able to understand why the U.S. Government and its propaganda agencies downplay, or even outright deny, the overwhelming evidence that the post-2013 Ukrainian government is racist-fascist, or “nazi,” the strong connection between the post-WWII U.S. Government and nazism will need to become acknowledged and understood, because that connection is an essential part of today’s U.S.-Ukraine relationship, and helps explain the almost joined-at-the-hip relationship that exists, between post-regime-change-in-Ukraine, and America.

Eleven Years Ago: The US-NATO-Israel Sponsored Al Qaeda Insurgency in Syria. Who Was Behind the 2011 “Protest Movement”?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 21, 2022

Ten years since the beginning of the war on Syria in March 2011, so-called “progressives” have supported the so-called “opposition”, which is largely made up of Al Qaeda affiliated mercenaries.  A US-NATO led war of aggression is portrayed as a “civil war”. President Bashar Al Assad is casually described as a dictator who is killing his own people. The millions of deaths resulting from US-NATO led wars are not an object of concern.

Fires Rage within Canada’s Ukrainian Community as Professor Attacks the Myth of Holodomor

By Matthew Ehret-Kump, March 21, 2022

University of Alberta Assistant Professor Dougal MacDonald raised hell on November 20, 2019 by writing in a personal Facebook post that the 1932-33 genocide of Ukrainians referred to as Holodomor was a “myth fabricated by Hitlerites”.

Iran: How to Circumvent Sanctions – Now and in the Future

By Peter Koenig and Press TV, March 21, 2022

According to Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi, the greatest foreign policy achievement of the country in recent years has been the disgraceful failure of the United States’ maximum pressure policy in the face of the Iranian people’s resistance.

Interpreting Pakistani Prime Minister Khan’s Praise for Indian Foreign Policy

By Andrew Korybko, March 21, 2022

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan unexpectedly praised rival India’s foreign policy towards Russia during a rally on Sunday ahead of a scheduled no-confidence motion later this week that some observers suspect is secretly orchestrated by the US. He said that “I salute India today. It has an independent foreign policy. India is a member of Quad alliance which also has United States as a member. But it is importing oil from Russia which is facing sanctions. It calls itself neutral. India has a foreign policy dedicated to its people.” These surprising remarks deserve to be interpreted.

Swapping Russia’s S-300 Air Defense System From One NATO Member State to Another

By Nauman Sadiq, March 21, 2022

In a significantly escalatory move, potentially giving Russia justifiable pretext to mount an incursion in Slovakia, Bratislava appears to have struck a deal with NATO for transferring its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine in return for Netherlands and Germany delivering three Patriot missile systems to Slovakia.

Zelensky Causes Outrage in Israel After Comparing Russia’s Military Operation to the Holocaust

By Paul Antonopoulos, March 21, 2022

The American Conservative magazine criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been on an embarrassing public relations campaign after being called out in Israel for historical revisionism relating to the Holocaust, attempting to elicit a disingenuous emotional response from the West, and demonstrating the illiberalism of Ukraine by banning political opposition parties.

What Mothers Should Know About COVID and COVID-19 Vaccine for Children

By Barbara Loe Fisher, March 21, 2022

Public health officials want doctors to give the mRNA vaccine, which forces the body’s cells to manufacture the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, to the most vulnerable age group, the tiny babies and young children under 5 years old, whose immune systems and brains are not yet fully developed.

Propaganda 101: Ukraine 2022

By Colin Todhunter, March 21, 2022

The invasion of Ukraine by Russia did not happen out of the blue. It is not the result of the machinations of a power-hungry madman hellbent on taking over Europe, a notion that mainstream commentators have for a number of years tried to embed in the psyche of the Western public.

India Should Quit Quad Now!

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, March 21, 2022

The gravity of the situation is sinking in, finally. That is the message coming out of the Cabinet Committee on Security meeting convened by PM Modi on Sunday “to review India’s security preparedness, and the prevailing global scenario in the context of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine,” where he was briefed “on latest developments and different aspects of India’s security preparedness in the border areas as well as in the maritime and air domain.” 

Zelensky Says WWIII Assured if Negotiations with Russia Break Down

By Zero Hedge, March 21, 2022

Zelensky’s comments come as Turkey claims Moscow and Kiev are close to an agreement on key points – despite the Kremlin turning to “more destructive artillery” after revealing it used hypersonic “Kinzhal” missiles at least twice on Ukrainian targets.

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Fires Rage within Canada’s Ukrainian Community as Professor Attacks the Myth of Holodomor

March 21st, 2022 by Matthew Ehret-Kump

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University of Alberta Assistant Professor Dougal MacDonald raised hell on November 20, 2019 by writing in a personal Facebook post that the 1932-33 genocide of Ukrainians referred to as Holodomor was a “myth fabricated by Hitlerites”.

If such remarks were made in most nations today, it wouldn’t be such a big deal (as only 16 nations have chosen to recognize this event as an act of genocide rather than the tragic act of nature which MacDonald and countless eminent scholars maintain.)

Canada is not however “most nations”, but has rather had the misfortune of hosting some of the most virulent groups of rabid ultra-right wing Ukrainian fascists who were transplanted into the Prairies and west coast by Anglo-American intelligence networks in the wake of WWII.

Today, many of these 2nd and 3rd generation Banderites control powerful institutions like the Ukrainian Congress of Canada (UCC) and have bred such confused and dangerous ideologues as Canada’s own Deputy Prime Minister (and leading Rhodes Scholar) Chrystia Freeland who sees no shame in her grandfather’s leading role as a Nazi collaborator in WW2 or in holding up right wing flags associated with the fascist Organization for Ukrainian Nationalists at a recent rally in Toronto.

Acting from the epicenter of this fascist nexus in Alberta, Professor MacDonald has courageously decided that “enough is enough” writing on the topic of the famine which Ukrainian fascists have mis-labelled a “genocide targeting Ukrainian nationalism”. In his controversial facebook post, MacDonald wrote that “it was the Hitlerite Nazis who created the famine myth in 1933 to discredit the Soviet Union, the enemy they most feared.  The Nazis wrote front page stories in German newspapers, which were then taken up by the reactionary British press.”

Within his very useful writings, there is something vital which Professor MacDonald fails to bring up.

The British Hand Behind Holodomor (and Nazism)

For those who are not aware, the two figures most responsible for the “on the ground evidence” of Holodomor were two journalists named Gareth Jones and Malcolm Muggeridge. By looking at these two figures, we should not be surprised to find ourselves bumping into the highest echelons of a British think tank named the Round Table, which acted as the guiding hand behind the rise of Nazism.

Both Jones and Muggeridge were deployed to Ukraine for several weeks in 1933 and their reports of controlled famine were the primary kindling for the anti-Russian fires which fueled the rise of Nazism which British Imperialists then hoped would lead to a German-Russian war of annihilation.

Jones’ entry into the Round Table’s sphere of influence occurred early in his years at Trinity College Cambridge when he led the Cambridge League of Nations Union promoting an end to nation states under supranational government.

The League of Nations was the brainchild of the Lloyd George government which was installed through a coup run by the Alfred Milner Round Table group which overthrew Herbert Asquith’s government in 1916 in order to steer the 1919 Treaty of Versailles in the hopes of designing the post-war world. Lloyd George’s entire cabinet was staffed with Round Table leaders from Lord Milner’s Kindergarten such as Leo Amery, Lionel Curtis, Lord Lothian and F.S. Oliver. It was also at that Paris venue, that the group created the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) with an American branch staffed with Rhodes Scholars set up in 1921 named the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

It is important to keep in mind that the CFR which so disfigured 20th century history was never American, but always followed the mandate set out in 1877 by Cecil Rhodes:

“Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire…”

After American nationalist resistance proved fatal for the post-WWI global governance agenda, plans for a new war between fascism and communism was put into motion. While fascist governments were installed in Spain, Italy and Germany as “solutions” to the financial woes of the 1920s (and as fascist coups were planned in the USA, Canada, UK and France), Gareth Jones was recruited to become Lloyd George’s private secretary on January 1, 1930.

In 1931, Jones’ training as a perception manager for the empire took him to New York where he served as personal assistant to the infamous Ivy Lee. Ivy Lee was a founding member of the Council on Foreign Relations (AKA: The American branch of the Round Table) and worked with Edward Bernays as the head of public relations for the Rockefeller Family, IG Farben and Westinghouse, Charles Lindberg and other fascists who had supported Hitler throughout the war and arranged the failed 1934 coup in America which was exposed by General Smedley Butler.

Upon returning to his old post under Lloyd George in England, Jones became the first journalist to fly with Hitler and Goebbels upon the Fuhrer’s overthrow of Gen. von Schleicher in January 1933. After this, Jones was deployed to Russia, slipping covertly into Ukraine in March 1933 alongside another British Agent named Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge was the son of Fabian Society co-founder Henry Muggeridge and married the niece of Fabian leader Beatrice Webb. My recent paper What is the Fabian Society and To What End was it Created features a fuller picture of the dual role played by the Round Table/Rhodes Scholar networks of Oxford and the Fabian Society networks of the London School of Economics in jointly infiltrating all aspects of modern society with the single objective of undoing the American revolution and earlier 15th century golden renaissance.

Together, Jones and Muggeridge’s “on-the-ground” reports were published in the Manchester Guardian, Nazi press, and William Randolph Hearst press machine. When Hearst began publicizing Holodomor, he had already become a devout Hitlerite. Professor MacDonald notes that “in September 1934, multi-millionaire William Randolph Hearst, the leading U.S. publisher of the ‘yellow press’ and an open supporter of Nazism, met with Hitler and Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels in Berlin and signed a cash deal to promote a positive image of the Nazis in the U.S. The Hearst papers soon carried columns paid for by Hitler, Goering and Mussolini.”

Gareth Jones’ life was cut short in China in 1935 for reasons we may never know.

A Return to Professor MacDonald’s Battle

What we do know is that his anti-Soviet propaganda has fed a monster which an allied victory in 1945 was not able to destroy. This monster has grown throughout the post WWII years to reach incredible heights of power in Ukraine, the USA and Canada which brings us back to our current story.

In his controversial remarks professor MacDonald asked how could such a myth continue to be perpetuated for 70 years after the defeat of fascism to the extent that Canada has passed bills which recognize Holodomor memorial days? Here, the professor noted the Anglo-American operation to transplant leading SS war criminals into Canada saying:

 “In Canada, former Nazi collaborators and their spawn have long led the phony Holodomor campaign. After the Second World War, Canada became a haven for Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis and killed their own citizens to serve Nazi aims. Once in Canada and with the help of the Canadian state, these war criminals built reactionary domestic organizations (e.g. the UCC) which persist to this day. These organizations displaced already-established progressive Ukrainian organizations. Some collaborators achieved high positions, for example, Waffen SS member Petro Savaryn served as VP of the national PC Party and was Chancellor of the University of Alberta for four years.”

Of course the Ukrainian Student Association has demanded the Professor be fired saying in an open letter “we call upon the University of Alberta to immediately reprimand and terminate Dougal MacDonald for anti-Ukrainian hate speech and denial of Holodomor”.The UCC has organized vast pressure on the University to bend the knee resulting in public denunciations of MacDonald’s assertions by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney who condemned “western, supposedly-progressive voices who were complicit in one of history’s great cover ups”. Meanwhile the University’s dean has denounced MacDonald’s claims.

Yet, in spite of this pressure, 46 University of Alberta teachers have rallied support for Professor MacDonald signing a letter endorsing his right to free expression. Meanwhile the University itself appears to fear the public relations disaster which an expulsion could cause (and perhaps there is a fear that additional scandal would only put a spotlight on the myth of Holodomor which may cause more people to discover the ugly truth of Canada’s Nazi problem).

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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 .

Featured image: Starved peasants on a street in Kharkiv, 1933. In Famine in the Soviet Ukraine, 1932–1933: a memorial exhibition, Widener Library, Harvard University. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard College Library: Distributed by Harvard University Press, 1986. Procyk, Oksana. Heretz, Leonid. Mace, James E. (James Earnest). ISBN: 0674294262. Page 35. Initially published in Muss Russland Hungern? [Must Russia Starve?], published by Wilhelm Braumüller, Wien [Vienna] 1935. (Licensed under the public domain)

The Ukraine-Russia Negotiations Are Effectively Dead: Ukraine’s Refusal to “Denazify”

March 21st, 2022 by Eric Zuesse

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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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

On March 18th, I headlined “How the Western Press Handles the Ukrainian Government’s Nazism,” but didn’t, at the time, know that what is blocking a peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia, is, in fact, Russia’s demand, and Ukraine’s refusal, for Ukraine’s government to ‘denazify’.

In other words: the Western press’s handling of that very question, of whether Ukraine’s government has a ‘nazi problem’, was actually crucial to enabling a peace-settlement to be reached. The war goes on — and will continue now to go on, because of  that impasse in the negotiations.

Later on March 18th, Reuters headlined “Russian official sees progress with Ukraine on neutrality, not on ‘denazification’”, and reported that the official who represents Russia in those negotiations,

Vladimir Medinsky said the two countries were “halfway there” on the question of Ukraine adopting neutral status.

“On denazification, the situation is quite strange because our Ukrainian colleagues on the other side of the table consider there are no Nazi formations in Ukraine and this is not an issue in modern Ukraine,” he said.

Subsequently, on March 20th, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria interviewed Zelensky, who described as “laughable” and “a joke” and “I cannot take these statements seriously”, any allegations that there are “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine’s government, and he went on to say that Putin must be divorced from reality, and in “an information bubble,” to be alleging otherwise. So: Zelensky and Putin cannot come to agreement about that, and this means that Russia now will have no other way possible (if any exists) to win this war than militarily, by a forced regime-change in Ukraine; it simply cannot be done by means of negotiation. The negotiations are now effectively dead.

Of course, in Russian newsmedia, the allegation commonly is presented that “Nazis” — the term which refers actually to the political Party that Adolf Hitler led — are running Ukraine’s government.

Ukraine’s government refuses to accept that.

However, the position to be documented here is not supporting either side in that debate, but instead a third position, which is this: Just as the term “fascism” refers to the might-makes-right ideology of Mussolini’s party in Italy, and “Fascism” refers to that Party itself, the term “nazism” refers to the racist-fascist ideology of Hitler’s party in Germany, and “Nazism” refers to that Party itself. Ukraine’s government does not have any “Nazis” in it, but is, in fact — as will be documented below, via the links to the sources — actually controlled by “nazis” (lower-case “N”, not the Party) and these people have threatened assassination against Ukraine’s President Zelensky if he ever fails to continue supporting and arming them.

Here, therefore, is the evidence regarding the actual facts behind this impasse in the negotiations, as I had presented on March 18th — and anyone who doubts the truth of any linked allegation in it will immediately see the documentation for it there just by clicking onto that link:

The evidence is undenied and undeniable that, ever since the U.S. government’s coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the Ukrainian government hates and wants to destroy Russians, very much like Adolf Hitler’s Nazis did during WW II. Seven examples of that evidence are provided in:

The commonest way of reality-denial on this matter is that the post-coup Ukrainian government has Jews within its ranks and avoids perpetrating any anti-Jewish atrocities (the U.S. government wouldn’t be supporting them otherwise, and they know it), but Obama didn’t install this regime in order to produce an anti-Jewish government on Russia’s border just a 7-minute missile-flight away from nuking Moscow; he did it in order to install an anti-Russian government there — one that could join NATO and then have U.S. nuclear missiles placed there.

Hitler himself even commonly used the phrase “Judeo-Bolshevism” in order to suggest that the Satanic attributes he assigned to Jews extended to the Soviet Union itself. However, whereas the original (German variety of) nazism was mainly against Jews and only secondarily against Russians, the Ukrainian variety, which Obama installed, is mainly (and sometimes even exclusively) against Russians.

And sometimes that hatred has been expressed by the Obama-installed regime’s hired Ukrainian thugs herding terrified peaceful pro-Russian demonstrators into a building and then burning them alive there. The U.S. press virtually ignored it, but there it is, plain as day.

Anyone who denies that Ukraine’s government ever since February 2014 has been, and is, nazi is denying what is clearly shown to be the case, by an overwhelming body of evidence.

However, because of the extremely heavy propaganda in the U.S.-and-allied world against Russians, Hitler’s hatred of Russians is ignored, and the U.S. government’s hatred of Russians is only broadcast, spread around the world, not exposed to the public as being the propaganda that it is.

Consequently, ONLY Hitler’s hatred of Jews — who were, indeed, his top target to destroy — defines “Nazism” in The West. (This is why even racist-fascist Jews, or “Zionists,” are not being referred-to as “nazis” — which they are: Jewish racist-fascists. The underlying false assumption there is that no Jew CAN BE a racist fascist; and though this assumption is plain stupid — and even racistly so — it is virtually universally believed to be true, at least in the U.S.-and-allied countries.)

Hitler’s OTHER racisms (especially against Russians and other “Slavs”) are virtually ignored, because those are “inconvenient truths,” not to be discussed (despite Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa” to capture the Soviet Union in order to expand Germans’ Lebensraum and kill and enslave all “Slavs”), and most people choose to believe only what is convenient for them to believe (what is fashionable to believe) — even if it is demonstrably false.

In order to be able to understand why the U.S. Government and its propaganda agencies downplay, or even outright deny, the overwhelming evidence that the post-2013 Ukrainian government is racist-fascist, or “nazi,” the strong connection between the post-WW-II U.S. Government and nazism will need to become acknowledged and understood, because that connection is an essential part of today’s U.S.-Ukraine relationship, and helps explain the almost joined-at-the-hip relationship that exists, between post-regime-change-in-Ukraine, and America.

This American connection to Hitler’s racist fascism goes way beyond overtly racist U.S. organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan, which have only an internal-U.S. focus on “White Supremacy.” The connection in the case of Ukraine focuses instead on U.S. foreign policies. America adopted nazism virtually as soon as U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on 12 April 1945, and remains essentially nazi to the present day. Though the cover-story was ‘anti-communism’, the reality was U.S. global imperialism, and it secretly continued on even after the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact mirror to America’s NATO military alliance, all ended in 1991. Post-coup Ukraine’s nazism is an expression of this.

The only two nations that reliably vote at the U.N. against any resolution that condemns any sort of racism, including “Nazism” (and these resolutions spell that with the initial-cap “N”; and, therefore, to vote against the resolution is implicitly endorsing even specifically Hitler’s own Nazi Party, not merely the ideology of racist fascism) are the United States, and Ukraine. America’s allied nations (such as UK, France, and Israel) generally abstain from those votes, but some of them vote in favor of those resolutions — they do express their opposition to all forms of racism.

Only America and Ukraine vote consistently AGAINST those resolutions. Sometimes, America gives, as its reason, for voting against the resolution, that it wants to show its support for Ukraine.

The first such vote at the U.N. occurred just months after the regime-change in Ukraine, and was taken on 21 November 2014. I headlined about it, at the time, “U.S. Among Only 3 Countries at U.N. Officially Backing Nazism & Holocaust-Denial; Israel Parts Company from Them; Germany Abstains”, and reported that the three countries were U.S., Ukraine, and Canada, and that “Samantha Power, the U.S. Representative at the U.N., gave as her reason for voting against the resolution, its unacceptability to the Government of Ukraine.” After the 16 November 2017 U.S. vote for nazism, I headlined “Trump Continues Obama’s Support of Nazism. U.S. Votes Against UN Resolution Condemning Nazism”. The latest such vote occurred on 16 December 2021, and Craig Murray headlined about it, “Protecting the Nazis: The Extraordinary Vote of Ukraine and the USA”.

Clearly, all media that deny the nazism of the post-regime-change Ukrainian government are ignoring reality; and the U.S. Government simply ignores reality. After all: none of these U.N. resolutions so much as even just MENTIONS Ukraine. But the U.S.-installed Ukraine nonetheless refuses to vote FOR any such resolution; and the U.S. delegation doesn’t want Ukraine to be the ONLY delegation voting against it. (Sometimes, our delegation explains its vote as being a vote for ‘freedom of speech,’ but these resolutions aren’t about any “speech”; they are about bigotryof all sorts, and about violence that’s used in support of it. So: ever since the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine, the U.S. is now OVERTLY nazi, because Ukraine, after the regime-change, is ruled by U.S.-installed nazis; and they became immediately installed in the new government’s top ‘national security’ posts, and every elected leader in Ukraine now knows that to oppose their (those nazis’) demands would lead to the Ukrainian official’s overthrow and even to the person’s possible assassination by Ukraine’s nazi forces. History is important in order to understand this.

The Soviet Union lost 26 million dead from World War II; China lost 20 million; Germany lost 6 million;  Poland lost 6 million; Japan lost 3 million; but America lost only 419,400.

After the War, Truman’s America instituted its Marshall Plan to rebuild anti-Soviet European countries’ economies so as ultimately to conquer both China and the Soviet Union — those had been two of FDR America’s key allies which were essential to winning the anti-fascist war that the anti-fascist FDR and his allies had waged against fascism.

Also, Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s chief intelligence officer in his “Operation Barbarossa” invasion against the Soviet Union, was immediately hired by President Truman’s people in 1945-6, in order to set up West Germany’s new foreign-intelligence operation against the Soviet Union, and for Gehlen to advise on the creation of a replacement of FDR’s OSS.

When FDR’s OSS became replaced by Truman’s CIA in 1947, Gehlen helped to establish his friend, the rabidly anti-Russian (and anti-Semitic) Allen Dulles as its leader. Truman’s people had secretly brought Gehlen to stay at Fort Hood for nearly a year during 1945-6, where he conferred privately with Allen Dulles and six other top Truman people. Gehlen’s personal objectives were two: Protect the O.D.E.S.S.A (Organization of Veterans of the SS); and get the U.S. to continue Germany’s war to conquer Russia.

“The only intelligence provided by the Gehlen net to the United States was intelligence selected specifically to worsen East-West tensions and increase the possibility of military conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.”

Gehlen achieved both of his objectives. Then, in 1949, Truman established his anti-Soviet military alliance, NATO. Six years later, in 1955, the Soviet Union created its NATO-mirror organization, the Warsaw Pact, as their response to America’s hostility.

President Truman rejected his predecessor Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s foreign policies and personnel, and replaced them so as to bring into the U.S. many high Nazis, such as Gehlen, and such as their rocket designer Werner von Braun, and many who were far less famous.

So, given that Ukraine’s current government is nazi-dominated, and so is America’s (all being of the modernized liberal form of racist-fascism, not Hitler’s original blatantly anti-Jewish type), how do Western news-media deal with this reality?

On March 5th, NBC News headlined “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t”, and opined that:

Of the many distortions manufactured by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify Russia’s assault on Ukraine, perhaps the most bizarre is his claim that the action was taken to “denazify” the country and its leadership. In making his case for entering his neighbor’s territory with armored tanks and fighter jets, Putin has stated that the move was undertaken “to protect people” who have been “subjected to bullying and genocide,” and that Russia “will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.”

On its face, Putin’s smear is absurd, not least because Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is Jewish and has said that members of his family were killed during World War II. There is also no evidence of recent mass killings or ethnic purges taking place in Ukraine. Moreover, labeling enemies Nazis is a common political ploy in Russia, especially from a leader who favors disinformation campaigns and wants to stir up feelings of national vengeance against a WWII foe to justify conquest.

But even though Putin is engaging in propaganda, it’s also true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi problem — both past and present. Putin’s destructive actions — among them the devastation of Jewish communities — make clear that he’s lying when he says his goal is to ensure anyone’s welfare.

That phrase “devastation of Jewish communities” is linked to this from the 1 March 2022 The Atlantic:

“What Putin’s ‘Denazification’ of Ukraine Really Looks Like: Fleeing Russia’s onslaught, a rabbi leads children from Odessa’s Jewish community through the Carpathian Mountains.”

It’s linked to the yotube video, “Rabbi Refael Kruskal: Farewell to Odessa Central Synagogue (2/25/22)”.

The article interviews “Rabbi Refael Kruskal, the vice president of the Jewish community in Odessa.” The youtube has viewer-comments such as “Heartbreaking” and “I pray that the Rabbi and his community stay safe. However ,rather than hoping to return ‘home’, perhaps he should now realize that the only true home he has is Israel.”

However, neither the magazine’s article nor that video provides any evidence that under Russian control, there would be more anti-Semitism in Odessa, or more governmental support of anti-Semitism there, than now exists. Both the article and the video are designed to elicit contempt against Russians, but zero evidence is being provided to support the unquestioned and unstated underlying assumption that Russia is anti-Semitic nazi — like the Nazi Party (the very same Party that had perpetrated Operation Barbarossa) — and that Ukraine is not.

Here is the reality regarding nazism in Odessa; and this nazism, being so publicly displayed on 2 May 2014 there, and which apparently was considered acceptable to Rabbi Kruskal and did not cause him to flee, was quite clearly anti-Russian, and was far less (if at all) anti-Semitic.

It’s titled

“How the thugs killed Odessa inhabitants in the Trade Unions House – the details of bloody scenario”.

For some ‘mysterious’ reason, many of the videos that were shown and linked-to there were subsequently removed from the Web, though nobody questions their authenticity, nor the reality that they had so clearly displayed.

For example, my own article about that burning-alive of the peaceful anti-coup demonstrators there was likewise based upon those videos, and I had carefully vetted each one before I would add it to my article; so, I know that this was news-reporting at the time, not any mere spreading of anybody’s propaganda.

These were videos taken there by many bystanders, and all of them show the same event from different standpoints, at different stages in the trapping-and-burning-alive of these victims. On 15 May 2014, the first article was published identifying whom the massacre’s masterminds were (all of whom were officials in the U.S.-appointed junta). (For persons wanting the most complete visual and audio recording of these events: here — amazingly still present at youtube — is Part 1 of the most complete video compilation and explanation of the sequence of events there. Part 2 shows that the event started with hooded Right Sector thugs pretending to be protesters and being accompanied to the extermination site accompanied and advised by leaders of the police. The victims had no idea that these people — then with their masks off — were their enemies until they were trapped.)

Western propaganda (such as from NBC and from The Atlantic magazine) isn’t making clear whether Rabbi Kruskal fled Odessa because there is now a full-fledged war there, or instead because he thinks that Russians are more anti-Semitic than Ukrainians are. But the propaganda-usage of his story is definitely being presented as-if his account somehow constitutes a ‘disproof’ of the actually undeniable nazism that America’s coup in Ukraine has installed to control that country.

The propagandists obviously think that America’s public won’t even notice that no evidence is actually provided to confirm that impression. But is the American public really that stupid — not even to notice that? (Of course, we are inundated with anti-Russian-government, pro-Ukrainian-government, propaganda, which contrasts starkly against the reality.)

Fufrthermore, clearly, Zelensky himself, who is also a Jew, is at least as unconcerned about that massacre in Odessa, when he describes as as “laughable” and “a joke” and “I cannot take these statements seriously”, any allegations that there are “neo-Nazis” in Ukraine’s government 

The liar in this matter is not Putin; it is such propagandists as have been exposed here.

To see the evidence that Zelensky knows that he could very likely be assassinated if he publicly acknowledges that his government is, in fact, controlled by ‘nazis’, click here.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: U.S. allies in Ukraine, with NATO, Azov Battalion and neo-Nazi flags. Photo by russia-insider.com

„Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.“

March 21st, 2022 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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Verehrte Leserin, verehrter Leser, bitte sehen Sie mir die Überschrift des Artikels nach: Auch ich habe einen riesigen Schrecken bekommen, als ich dieser Tage in den Nachrichten hörte, dass westliche Kräfte in Erwägung ziehen, als Folge des Krieges in der Ukraine die Werke beziehungsweise Bücher des bedeutenden russischen Schriftstellers Fjodor Michailowitsch Dostojewski zu verbrennen. Als Deutschem drängt sich unwillkürlich die Parallele zur dunklen Vergangenheit des Hitler-Faschismus auf. Auch damals begann es peu à peu – und endete in einem Kulturbruch. Diese deutsche Geschichte darf sich nicht wiederholen! Verstehen Sie meinen Kommentar deshalb als einen Hilferuf und eine Mahnung an alle Mitbürger, dass die Vernunft vor der öffentlichen Meinung niemals kapitulieren darf.

Ressentiments gegen alles Russische

Die seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg „gepflegten“ Ressentiments gegen Russland, alle russischen Präsidenten und russischen Bürger brechen seit Wochen aus dem Mund westlicher Politiker und westlicher Massenmedien ganz offen und in einer Schärfe aus, die einem den Atem nimmt. Ich werde die unglaublichen Sanktionen, Maßnahmen und Vorschläge nicht im Einzelnen aufzählen; sie können inzwischen in allen Medien nachgelesen werden.

Der in der Überschrift zitierte Satz Heinrich Heines stammt aus seiner Tragödie „Almansor“.  Sie wurde 1823 veröffentlicht und uraufgeführt. Dort äußert sich ein gewisser Hassan zu der Verbrennung von 5000 Büchern islamischer Theologie im Jahre 1499 folgendermaßen:

„Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.“ (1)

Dieser Satz wurde später als prophetische Äußerung Heinrich Heines im Hinblick auf die Bücherverbrennung 1933 in Deutschland gedeutet.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Noten 

1. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almansor…(Heine)

Featured image is from Penguin Random House

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“Where You Burn Books, You End Up Also Burning People.”

March 21st, 2022 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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Dear reader, please forgive me for the title of this article: I, too, got a huge fright when I heard on the news these days that Western forces are considering burning the works or books of the important Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. As a German, a parallel to the dark past of Hitler’s fascism involuntarily suggests itself. Back then, too, it began peu à peu – and ended in a cultural rupture. This German history must not be repeated! Therefore, please understand my comment as a cry for help and a reminder to all fellow citizens that reason must never capitulate to public opinion.

Resentment against everything Russian

The resentment against Russia, all Russian presidents and Russian citizens that has been “cultivated” since the Second World War has been erupting for weeks from the mouths of Western politicians and Western mass media quite openly and with a ferocity that takes one’s breath away. I will not list the unbelievable sanctions, measures and proposals in detail; they can be read in all media by now.

The sentence by Heinrich Heine quoted in the headline comes from his tragedy “Almansor”.  It was published and premiered in 1823. There, a certain Hassan comments on the burning of 5000 books of Islamic theology in 1499 as follows:

“That was a prelude only, where you burn books, you end up also burning people.” (1)

This sentence was later interpreted as a prophetic statement by Heinrich Heine with regard to the burning of books in Germany in 1933.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almansor…(Heine)

Featured image is from Penguin Random House

Iran: How to Circumvent Sanctions – Now and in the Future

March 21st, 2022 by Peter Koenig

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***

Background

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi says the first priority of his administration during the Persian New Year is boosting employment and creating new jobs.

He made the remarks in his New Year message aired live from the Grand Mosque of the southwestern Iranian port city of Khorramshahr on Sunday evening.

“My first Nowruz message as the servant of the public is the message of round-the-clock and incessant work to build a powerful and advanced Iran,” he said.

“No nation and no country has achieved anything without intensive work and the maximum use of human and natural resources. The New Year and the new century should be the beginning of a new era of productive, useful, fruitful, and progressive work for all of us,” the president added.

“During the current year, God willing, the issue of employment will be our first and foremost issue,” Iran’s president said, adding that unemployment is the root cause of all economic and social plights. As a result, he noted, supporting domestic production is at the top of his administration’s agenda.

Raeisi noted that during the seven-month lapsed since his administration was inaugurated, it has proven the he is determined to do what he says.

“We said that with the help of God and people, we would contain the coronavirus [pandemic], [and] thank God, it was done,” Iran’s president said.

He added,

“We said that the country and the economy would not be left in limbo pending [the conclusion] of the JCPOA [Iran’s deal with world powers]. Everybody saw that while engaging in negotiations [with other parties to the JCPOA] and taking advantage of political and legal means to dealing with the crime of sanctions, we also put our focus on thwarting sanctions.”

Washington says its “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran has been an “abject failure.”

He pointed to the emerging signs of economic growth and stability as well as a significant increase in the volume of foreign trade and non-oil exports under his administration, saying, “We increased trade with our neighbors for the benefit of the people.”

“We said that we will set the production wheel in motion, [and] official statistics, released up to the end of the third quarter even show that economic growth has reached above 5%,” Iran’s chief executive said.

“We said that we will not trade the interests and security of the people with anything, [and] everyone saw that we gave priority to boosting the country’s defense, missile, and space capabilities, because the country’s security is a priority,” he added.

Raeisi also said the balance in the country’s foreign policy has been restored through an active diplomacy pursued under his leadership.

According to the president, the greatest foreign policy achievement of the country in recent years has been the disgraceful failure of the United States’ maximum pressure policy in the face of the Iranian people’s resistance.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raeisi says Washington’s policy of maximum pressure has failed to achieve its goals.

Back in 2018, the administration of the former US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and re-imposed the anti-Iran sanctions that were lifted under the accord while piling on with new ones. He said he was adopting a “maximum pressure” policy to force Tehran to negotiate a new deal.

In spite of his fierce criticisms of the “failed maximum pressure” campaign pursued by his predecessor, Biden has not only kept all the sanctions imposed under Trump but has also added new ones as well.

“We began running the country in the right direction. We do not see the fate of the nation in the hands of foreigners,” Raeisi stressed.

He noted that his administration did away with polarization, which he said undermines the nation’s strength, and instead demonstrated that the power of the [operations in the military] field is in line and parallel to the power of diplomacy.

“We used foreign relations in the service of [the country’s] economy, and that is the meaning of a transform-seeking and justice-oriented administration,” he added.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Iranian president wished for the new Iranian year to be the end of the coronavirus pandemic around the world and also an end to wars in every corner of the world.

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PressTV: What would be possible ways to neutralize sanctions, regardless of the result of negotiations in Vienna [IAEA Nuclear Negotiations – ongoing]?

Peter Koenig: Thank you.

Please let me begin, if I may, with a quote from President Ebrahim Raeisi, after referring to Iran’s spectacular 5% growth, when he said: “that we will not trade the interests and security of the people with anything, [and] everyone saw that we gave priority to boosting the country’s defense, missile, and space capabilities, because the country’s security is a priority.”

This is crucial. Iran’s Security. Must be a priority. This refers not just to military and geopolitical security, but also to economic security.

To neutralize sanctions current and potential future ones – it is important that Iran fully orient herself towards the East, towards China and Russia, in essence towards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – of which Iran is now a full-fledged member. And away from the West.

Remember, I have said this before – the SCO comprises about half of the world population, in other words a huge market – and controls about 30% or more of the world’s GDP.

There is no need to continue depending on the West, the US and her allies or better, her vassals, the Europeans. They will always do what the Anglo-American empire dictates, because they are afraid themselves of sanctions.

The current case – the war between Ukraine and Russia – speaks for itself. The US dictates the sanctions for Russia and the European Union has to follow suit – or else. What is the result?

It’s a kind of economic suicide for the West; more for the Europeans than for the US. But also, the US suffers more from their imposed sanctions than does Russia. Because, Russia has gradually detached herself from the dollar-euro – economy, and oriented her trade and geopolitical relations towards the east, China and the SCO.

Of course, unplugging one’s economy from the west, from the dollar-euro hegemony, is a process – it doesn’t happen from one day to the next.

But Iran has already begun. In my opinion, it has to be continued immediately and fervently and carried out persistently. In that sense, in achieving economic independence – Russia may be an example. The current US-EU sanction regime hurt Europa and the US more than they hurt Russia, especially in what energy supply is concerned.

PTV: Also, considering the energy crisis in Europe, there may be possibilities for Iran to supply natural gas to Europe

PK: Of course, there may be possibilities. But knowing what we know about Europe, the US and sanctions, my recommendation is to abstain from supplying Europe with energy. There will be the day – when they are told that now Iran needs to be sanctioned, and all the contracts you, Iran, sign now, would be canceled, or simply disregarded, invalidated. And as you know, this is not new for Iran, the cancelation of contracts due to sanctions.

There is no reliance on Europe, nor, of course, as you know on the US.

A good example is the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is practically finished. Yet, Germany is being told not to buy Russian gas. However, Germany depends to about 50% of Russian hydrocarbons. Now what will happen – of course they go begging around the world, to fill the gap, possibly at much higher prices than the gas supply from Russia.

The Saudis have already said they would rather sell to China in Yuan. And they have categorically refused President Biden’s request to increase their oil production.

One must add, the Russian gas supply has always been reliable. Whatever the geopolitical differences, so far Russia has always maintained her contractual agreements and obligations.

Under the circumstances, Russia has already successfully diverted the supplies destined for Germany to China.

Another important factor is – the currency in which such contracts would be established, either in US dollars or in euros, the little brother of the dollar.

To the extent possible, Iran may want to stay away from these fiat currencies. These are also the currencies with which sanctions are dished out. So, its not a good idea to deal with these currencies. The Chinese Yuan – which will be rolled out still this year as a digital international payment mode, is much-much safer. –

The Yuan is backed by a solid Chinese economy. The US-dollar and the Euro are backed by nothing – literally by nothing – not even by trust.

PTV: And finally, the possibilities of developing relations with countries that they themselves are already under US sanctions

PK: Like what countries? – If you are thinking of the East bloc, like the members of the SCO, like China and Russia, yes, of course. They soon will have their own international payment system – actually it already functions between some countries, for example between China and India its already established – and that is SANCTION-FREE!!!

So, again, to stay away as much as possible from US sanctions:

  • do not trade in US-dollars or in Euros
  • stay away from dealing with the US and Europe – also do NOT keep your reserves in western countries – see what happened to Russia?

Half of Russia’s reserves, stored in London and NYC and possibly some other western countries, have been confiscated – in other words: stolen.

Keep you reserves in your own treasury or in an SCO country, where they are not accessible to the west – where they are safe from western sanctions.

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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).

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

No Room for Legal Discussion About Russian Special Operation – China

March 21st, 2022 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

The western media is trying to turn the conflict in Ukraine into a legal discussion, putting “violators of international law” on one side and “defenders of justice and legality” on the other. Obviously, this type of narrative is extremely problematic, considering that the very “illegality” of the Russian intervention in the conflict is questionable, but this is not the main point of the matter. From the moment the West claims that Russia is acting illegally, it automatically implies that the entire international society must necessarily take a stand in favor of the Ukrainian side, which has generated great controversy.

As expected, the country most affected by this pro-Ukraine position requirement is China. As the second richest country in the world, equipped with enormous political, military, and diplomatic potential and maintaining friendly relations with Russia, China is a key point in the conflict, as its stance, if placed in favor of Kiev, could make Moscow diplomatically weak. This type of conduct is not typical of Chinese foreign policy, however, which is strongly marked by the defense of neutrality and the principle of non-intervention, which has led Beijing to avoid pronouncements on which side is right or wrong in the conflict, limiting its participation to mediation of diplomatic dialogue and increased economic cooperation with Russia, which is being sanctioned by the West.

Western leaders, however, insist on not respecting the Chinese diplomatic tradition and demand a stance totally in favor of the Ukrainian government, rejecting any form of neutrality. Recently, during a press conference NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg commented on the Chinese position stating that

“China should join the rest of the world in strongly condemning the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia (…) China has an obligation as a member of the UN Security Council to actually support and uphold international law and the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of the international law so we call on [China] to clearly condemn the invasion and not support Russia”.

Stoltenberg’s unkind words – which literally demanded a violation of every ideological and strategic principle of Beijing’s foreign policy – did not go unnoticed by Chinese diplomats. A spokesperson for the Chinese mission to the EU spoke about the case saying: Chinese people can fully relate to the pains and sufferings of other countries because we will never forget who had bombed our embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We need no lecture on justice from the abuser of international law (…)

“As a Cold War remnant and the world’s largest military alliance, NATO continues to expand its geographical scope and range of operations. What kind of role has it played in world peace and stability? NATO needs to have good reflection”.

The spokesperson’s words were very incisive, remembering that NATO is an organization with a vast history of violations of international law. The invasion of Yugoslavia, during which the Chinese embassy in the country was bombed, is a sad and important mark in the history of international relations, which will not be so easily forgotten. At that time, the Western military alliance was trying to demonstrate its power and assert its role as “global police” in the then newly born unipolar world order. The western attack on Yugoslavia ignored all the norms of international law and human rights, creating one of the biggest humanitarian crises ever seen on European soil – just in the name of asserting the alliance’s global power. Shortly thereafter, the same scenario was repeated in Iraq, creating a real illegal “custom” in international society according to which invasions could occur with impunity, provided they were carried out by NATO.

Since then, many jurists have tried to “theorize” this supposed “right” on the part of NATO to attack other countries, as seen in ideas such as the “anticipatory self-defense”, which literally legitimized Western military action against target countries in order to “prevent” future attacks by these countries on Western states – even if there was no material evidence that such threats were real. Now, if the Ukrainian case is analyzed according to the very principles of Western legal theories, there is, therefore, no illegitimacy in the Russian Operation, considering that there was vast evidence that Kiev planned to invade the Donbass and massacre the local population. Moscow acted preemptively in defense of third parties – the only “problem” for Western jurists is that this right is apparently unique to NATO.

In other words, NATO has vastly disturbed international law structures in recent decades, creating a state of chaos in global society. In the same way, international jurists came to consider “legal” everything that is done by the Western alliance, while seeing as “illegal” even the legitimate maneuvers of non-aligned countries. This is why there is no room for this kind of discussion in the Ukrainian issue. The case cannot be understood or resolved consulting legal experts because the current trend is to see everything done by non-NATO countries as “illegal”. In addition, it is necessary to remember that international law has failed to prevent the escalation of the conflict. If the international courts had punished Kiev for its crimes in the Donbass, Moscow would not have started the Operation.

So, there is no problem in the Chinese stance in abdicating any discussions on legality or illegality of the Russian actions. Beijing understands that even if there were illegality in the Operation (which does not seem to be the case), there would be no legitimacy for NATO to accuse this, considering the organization’s crimes. In fact, this type of neutral position is the most lucid to be taken by the parties not involved in the conflict, as it is the most consistent with the universal principle of non-intervention.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Interpreting Pakistani Prime Minister Khan’s Praise for Indian Foreign Policy

March 21st, 2022 by Andrew Korybko

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Has Our Society Forgotten the Extreme Horror of Nuclear Weapons?

March 21st, 2022 by Dr. Philip Webber

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***

The repeated euphemistic phraseology of ‘nuclear deterrence’, or of a ‘nuclear umbrella’, has lulled most people into a false sense of safety and security.

Reacting to Western support for Ukraine as Russian forces invaded, President Putin announced an increase in the alert level of their nuclear weapons. [1]  Many commentators expressed shock, assuming that ‘the world had moved on’ from such threats. But they forgot – or did not know – that there are already over 900 Russian, and an equivalent number of US, long-range warheads kept ready to fire at a few minutes’ notice. [2]  This has been the situation since the end of the Cold War, three decades ago. It is a highly risky situation that has been criticised even by many senior military and political figures. [3]  Indeed, UK and French nuclear weapons can also be made ready to fire with some 15 minutes’ notice in a crisis. [4]

The reality is that ‘nuclear deterrence’ threatens death and destruction on such an extreme scale that it is hard to imagine. This is no accident – a detonation above a city is chosen to maximise the lethal blast and fire radius.

SGR has extensively documented the risks, impacts and dangers of the deployment and use of nuclear weapons using the latest data from scientific studies. [5]

For example, the use of just one typical nuclear weapon [6] airburst over a major city would overwhelm any possible medical capacity with injuries including severe burns and radiation sickness. [7]  In this scenario, the casualty count could quickly climb to more than a million people. A larger weapon – such as routinely deployed by Russia or the USA – could kill and injure considerably more. [8]

Indeed, the use of no more than 100 nuclear weapons would be completely disastrous for all humanity in terms of death, injury, radiation releases and widespread ecosystem impacts. Nuclear fireballs would create huge ‘firestorms’, injecting smoke high into the atmosphere sharply reducing sunlight and creating a ten-year ‘nuclear winter’. This would bring about mass starvation and societal collapse as crops failed in unseasonal frosts and darkness. [9]

In 1985, the leaders of the USA and the Soviet Union agreed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought”. [10]  This was affirmed by the leaders of the five largest nuclear weapons nations – Russia, the USA, China, France and the UK – as recently as January this year. [11]  They are right. All the detailed military simulations of nuclear conflict come to the same conclusion – no one can ‘win’. All sides, bystanders and the global environment would be destroyed.

But the clear implication is ignored – that nuclear weapons are rationally unusable. Any use of a nuclear weapon would be disastrous in humanitarian and political terms and would quickly escalate, ending human civilisation. Having large numbers of unusable weapons makes no sense, but this is the policy pursued by the nuclear weapons nations who are all developing new nuclear weapons. Some states – such as the UK – are even increasing their warhead numbers. [12]

Putin seems to regard his latest nuclear threat as ensuring that he can conduct attacks using conventional weapons without direct retaliation from NATO, under his ‘nuclear umbrella’. This is an example of how nuclear deterrence can be used to facilitate conflict, leading to murderous acts and a humanitarian crisis.

With the war evolving in Ukraine, and as casualties mount, it is again time for organisations such as SGR and the wider peace and environmental movements to make it clear that any possession of nuclear weapons – and acceptance of ‘nuclear deterrence’ – is dangerous and irresponsible. There is no such thing as ‘limited’ nuclear weapons use, it would only lead to global catastrophe. We must take urgent action to publicise the genocidal, ecocidal, and suicidal risk posed by nuclear weapons before they are used by accident, due to equipment failure, or by an unbalanced political leader in a time of extreme tension. We must make the case that the nuclear weapons states should join the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons because it sets out a clear framework to negotiate and verifiably reduce numbers of nuclear weapons to zero. [13]  This would bring about the ultimate goal first set out in the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty – the elimination of all nuclear weapons.

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Dr Philip Webber is Chair of SGR, and has written on the threat from nuclear weapons for 40 years, including London After the Bomb (1982) and Nuclear Weapons: a beginner’s guide to the threats (2021).

Notes

[1] BBC News (2022). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60547473

[2] SGR (2021). https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/nuclear-weapons-beginner-s-guide-threats

[3] See, for example: Global Zero (2015). https://www.globalzero.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report_0.pdf

[4] UK Parliament (2006). https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmdfence/986/6031402.htm

[5] SGR (2022). https://www.sgr.org.uk/projects/nuclear-weapons-threat-main-outputs ; SGR (2021) – as note 2.

[6] I refer here to a weapon with an explosive power or ‘yield’ equivalent to about 100 kilotonnes of TNT. Many warheads are much larger.

[7] ICAN (2022). https://www.icanw.org/report_no_place_to_hide_nuclear_weapons_and_the_collapse_of_health_care_systems

[8] SGR (2021) – as note 2.

[9] A nuclear winter would follow the use of 100 ‘small’ (about 15 kilotonne) detonations. SGR (2021) – as note 2.

[10] Ronald Reagan Presidential Library (1985). https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/joint-soviet-united-states-statement-summit-meeting-geneva

[11] The White House (2022). https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/01/03/p5-statement-on-preventing-nuclear-war-and-avoiding-arms-races/

[12] Federation of American Scientists (2022). https://fas.org/issues/nuclear-weapons/status-world-nuclear-forces/

[13] ICAN (2021). https://www.icanw.org/the_treaty

Swapping Russia’s S-300 Air Defense System From One NATO Member State to Another

March 21st, 2022 by Nauman Sadiq

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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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

In a significantly escalatory move, potentially giving Russia justifiable pretext to mount an incursion in Slovakia, Bratislava appears to have struck a deal with NATO for transferring its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine in return for Netherlands and Germany delivering three Patriot missile systems to Slovakia.

Although NATO has provided thousands of anti-aircraft MANPADS to Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias, those are portable surface-to-air missiles, whereas S-300 air defense system, equivalent in capabilities to American Patriots, is a large and advanced system that constitutes a nation’s backbone of air defense capabilities.

The Kremlin would definitely view any potential move involving transferring S-300 batteries to Ukraine with as much alarm as it viewed the scuttled Polish deal of transferring its entire MiG-29 fleet of 28 aircraft to Ukraine in return for American F-16 fighter jets.

The Dutch government said [1] Friday, March 18, it would send a Patriot missile defense system to Sliac, Slovakia, as part of NATO moves to strengthen air defenses in Eastern Europe. “The worsened safety situation in Europe as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes this contribution necessary,” Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said in a statement. Germany was also sending two Patriot missile systems to Slovakia, the statement added.

Along with the Patriot batteries, the Dutch will also send [2] a small contingent of 150-200 troops, who would operate and also train Slovak forces in operating the American air defense system, as the forces of Slovakia as well as Ukraine are only trained to operate Russian-made military equipment, which many NATO countries that are former Soviet states possess.

Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Politico [3]:

“The U.S. was working with allies to send more S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine. The country has had the S-300 for years, so troops should require little-to-no training on how to operate the Soviet-era anti-aircraft equipment. CNN reported that Slovakia had preliminarily agreed to transfer their S-300s to Ukraine.

“A Western diplomat familiar with Ukraine’s requests said Kyiv specifically has asked the U.S. and allies for more Stingers and Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems, Javelins and other anti-tank weapons, ground-based mobile air-defense systems, armed drones, long-range anti-ship missiles, off-the-shelf electronic warfare capabilities, and satellite navigation and communications jamming equipment.

“To further help, there is a push to get Eastern European allies to send new air defense systems to Ukraine that the U.S. doesn’t have. At the top of the list are mobile, Russian-made missile systems such as the SA-8 and S-300. Like the S-300, Ukraine also possesses SA-8s. The SA-8 is a mobile, short-range air defense system still in the warehouses of Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. The larger, long-range S-300 is still in use by Bulgaria, Greece and Slovakia.

“Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s trip to Europe this week will include not only NATO headquarters in Brussels, but also stops in Bulgaria and Slovakia — countries that own S-300s and SA-8s — before heading back to Washington.”

Previously, Slovakia’s defense minister said Thursday, March 17, that the country was willing to give Ukraine its S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems if it receives a “proper replacement.” Speaking at a press conference in Slovakia alongside US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said Slovakia was discussing the S-300s [4] with the US and Ukraine. “We’re willing to do so immediately when we have a proper replacement. The only strategic air defense system that we have in Slovakia is S-300 system,” he added.

Lloyd Austin declined to say whether the United States might be willing to fill the gap. “I don’t have any announcements for you this afternoon. These are things that we will continue to work with all of our allies on. And certainly, this is not just a US issue. It’s a NATO issue,” Austin said while diplomatically evading confirming the barter deal for which he had traveled all the way from Washington to Eastern Europe.

NATO member Slovakia has one battery of the S-300 air defense system, inherited from the Soviet era after the break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Following the Slovakia visit, Lloyd Austin also visited Bulgaria on Friday, March 18. Bulgaria has S-300 systems, but the country made it clear it had no plans to send any to Ukraine.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev prudently said [5] that any arms supplies to Ukraine were equivalent to the country being dragged into war. Ultimately, he said, such an issue should be decided by the parliament. He also said that Bulgaria needed its S-300 for its own air defense, particularly for the Kozlodui nuclear power plant.

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

The $800 million will mean more than $2 billion in the US military assistance has gone to Ukraine since Biden entered office in Jan. 2021, as the Biden administration had previously pledged $200 million days before announcing the $800 million package, $350 million were disbursed immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and the administration provided $650 million [6] in military assistance to Ukraine during Biden’s first year in office. In addition, the European Union pledged to commit nearly 500 million euros for its own military aid package.

The United States and its allies have reportedly infused [7] over $3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan coup. Recently, the Congress announced [8] $1.5 trillion package for funding the federal government through September, boosting national defense coffers to $782 billion, about a 6 percent increase.

On top of the hefty budget increase, the package is set to deliver $13.6 billion in emergency funding to help Ukraine, nearly twice the assistance package initially proposed, including $3 billion for US forces and $3.5 billion for military equipment to Ukraine, plus more than $4 billion for US humanitarian efforts.

In an explosive scoop, the Sunday Times reported [9] on March 4 that defense contractors were recruiting former military veterans for covert operations in Ukraine for a whopping $2,000 a day:

“The job is not without risk but, at almost $60,000 a month, the pay is good. Applicants must have at least five years of military experience in Eastern Europe, be skilled in reconnaissance, be able to conduct rescue operations with little to no support and know their way around Soviet-era weaponry.”

Russian media alleged [10] that the United States security agencies had launched a large-scale recruitment program to send private military contractors to Ukraine, including professionally trained mercenaries of Academi, formerly Blackwater, Cubic and Dyn Corporation.

Russia’s Defense Ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov warned that foreign mercenaries in Ukraine would not be considered prisoners of war if detained in line with international humanitarian law, rather they could expect criminal prosecution at best.

In fact, private military contractors in close co-ordination and consultation with covert operators from CIA and Western intelligence agencies are not only training Ukraine’s military and allied neo-Nazi militias in the use of caches of MANPADS and anti-armor munitions provided by the US, Germany and the rest of European nations as a military assistance to Ukraine but are also directing the whole defense strategy of Ukraine by taking active part in combat operations in some of the most hard fought battles against Russia’s security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas.

In order to create an “international legion” comprising foreign mercenaries, Kyiv lifted visa requirements for anyone willing to fight. “Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country, please come over,” Ukrainian President Zelensky pleaded at a recent press conference, adding “We will give you weapons.”

Ukraine has already declared martial law and a general mobilization of its populace. Those policies include conscription for men aged 18-60 and the confiscation of civilian vehicles and structures, while Ukrainian convicts with military experience are being released from prison to back up the war effort.

In a show of solidarity with Ukraine, several European nations recently announced they would not only not criminalize but rather expedite citizens joining the NATO’s war effort in Ukraine.

United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said she supported individuals from the UK who might want to go to Ukraine to join an international force to fight. She told the BBC [11] it was up to people to make their own decisions, but argued it was a battle for democracy. She said Ukrainians were fighting for freedom, “not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe.”

Favoring providing lethal weapons only instead of deploying British mercenaries as cannon fodder in Ukraine’s proxy war, Defense Secretary Ben Wallace took a nuanced approach and said Ukraine would instead be supported to “fight every street with every piece of equipment we can get to them.”

Buzzfeed News revealed [12] on Feb. 27 thousands of foreign fighters had flocked to Ukraine since Russia’s war against the country began in 2014. While most of them had been Russians and citizens of other former Soviet republics, hundreds had come from the European Union.

“This is the beginning of a war against Europe, against European structures, against democracy, against basic human rights, against a global order of law, rules, and peaceful coexistence,” Ukrainian President Zelensky said in a statement announcing a decree on the creation of a foreign legion. “Anyone who wants to join the defense of Ukraine, Europe, and the world can come and fight side by side with the Ukrainians against the Russian war criminals.”

The news of an official foreign unit was met with excitement by members of the Georgia National Legion, an English-speaking force of volunteers with Western military experience who train Ukrainian troops and sometimes deploy to the front line with the country’s marines. “This is what we have waited for. It’s very good,” Levan Pipia, a legion soldier and Georgian army veteran of the 2008 war with Russia, told BuzzFeed New.

In an exclusive report [13] on March 8, Reuters noted although the US and UK governments had nominally discouraged citizens from travelling to Ukraine to combat Russian forces, others, such as Canada or Germany, had cleared the way for citizens to get involved.

Despite formal directive by the UK government urging citizens against traveling to Ukraine, Reuters spilled the beans that among those who had arrived to fight for Ukraine were dozens of former soldiers from the British Army’s elite Parachute Regiment, according to an ex-soldier from the regiment. Hundreds more would soon follow, he said.

Often referred to as the Paras, the regiment has in recent years served in Afghanistan and Iraq. “They’re all highly trained, and have seen active service on numerous occasions,” the ex-soldier from the regiment said. The Ukraine crisis will give them purpose, camaraderie and “a chance to do what they’re good at: fight.”

With a vast mobilization of Ukrainian men underway, the country has plenty of volunteer fighters. But there is a shortage of specialists who know how to use Javelin and NLAW anti-tank missiles, which professional soldiers train for months to use properly.

Anthony Capone, a wealthy healthcare entrepreneur in New York City, said he was providing funding for hundreds of ex-soldiers and paramedics who wanted to go to Ukraine. Capone added he was only funding ex-soldiers whose military credentials he could verify, or paramedics who currently worked in an emergency trauma setting. About 60% of those who had been in touch were American and 30% European.

*

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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] Dutch, Germans to Send 3 Patriot Missile Defense Systems to Slovakia

[2] The Dutch will send a contingent of 150-200 troops with Patriots

[3] US sends Switchblade drones to Ukraine

[4] Slovakia Says It Will Give Ukraine S-300 If It Gets Replacement

[5] Russia says will attack Slovakia’s S-300 missile supplies to Ukraine

[6] Biden provided $650 million military aid to Ukraine in 2021

[7] US provided over $3 billion in arms to Ukraine since 2014

[8] $13.6 billion military and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine

[9] Western mercenaries offered $2,000 a day to fight Putin

[10] Mercenaries of Academi, Cubic, and Dyn Corporation fighting in Ukraine

[11] Liz Truss said she supported individuals who might want to go to Ukraine

[12] Thousands of foreign fighters have flocked to Ukraine

[13] Ukraine offers purpose and camaraderie to mercenaries

Featured image: Slovak S-300PMU TELs, ready to launch (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

What Mothers Should Know About COVID and COVID-19 Vaccine for Children

March 21st, 2022 by Barbara Loe Fisher

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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***

Public health officials want doctors to give the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine to the most vulnerable age group, tiny babies and young children under 5 years old

It is the fastest development and mass administration of an experimental vaccine to healthy humans in history, and the first vaccine to be distributed and recommended for mass use under an Emergency Use Authorization

In June 2020, Congress completely shielded vaccine manufacturers and anyone administering the COVID vaccine from product liability and malpractice lawsuits in civil court

Studies have shown that most healthy infants and children with COVID disease either have no symptoms or much milder symptoms than adults, which last about a week

As of February 4, 2022, there were over 1.1 million adverse event reports following COVID-19 vaccinations filed with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)

You have the moral right and must have the legal right to gather information, consult with a health professional and follow your gut instincts when making a decision about whether or not your child should get vaccinated — without being coerced or sanctioned by anyone for the decision you make

*

On March 11, 2022, CDC researchers released results of a small study in children 5 to 15 years old, who had received two doses of the Pfizer mRNA COVID vaccine. The study’s conclusion, which included many caveats, was that there was reduction of COVID disease in just 31% of children aged 5 to 11 years compared to 59% in children 12 to 15 years old.

Despite questionable disease risk reduction from their own data, the recommendation was that all children as young as 5 years old should get the vaccine.1

Even though fathers are spending more time sharing the raising of children with mothers today,2national surveys show that women with minor children still remain the primary child care givers in America.3,4

The ones who usually take children to doctors, mothers on the front line are soon expected to make decisions about giving babies as young as 6 months old the new genetically engineered Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine when the FDA predictably approves it for emergency use this spring.5,6

Public health officials want doctors to give the mRNA vaccine, which forces the body’s cells to manufacture the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, to the most vulnerable age group,7 the tiny babies and young children under 5 years old, whose immune systems and brains are not yet fully developed.8,9,10 It is an age group that mothers historically have been the most responsible for nurturing and protecting from harm.

Fastest Development of An Experimental Shot in History

The targeting of infants and toddlers for COVID vaccination comes two years after the U.S. government declared a coronavirus public health emergency in January 202011 and then gave Pfizer and six other drug companies $9 billion to manufacture a coronavirus vaccine at warp speed.12

Most vaccines take at least 10 years to go through the development and testing licensing process before being approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for distribution.13

Pfizer spent just 248 days testing their experimental COVID vaccine using a never-before licensed technology, which injects synthetic mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles into the body to induce cells to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and become — in the words of the World Economic Forum — “vaccine production plants.”14,15

In December 2020, the FDA granted Pfizer and its German corporation partner BioNTech, an Emergency Use Authorization — or EUA — to release the unlicensed mRNA vaccine for use by every person over 16 years old.16,17 That EUA was quickly followed six months later by one for children as young as 12,18 then five months later with authorization for children as young as 5.19

It is the fastest development and mass administration of an experimental vaccine to healthy humans in history,20 and the first vaccine to be distributed and recommended for mass use under an Emergency Use Authorization.21 Although the FDA fully licensed Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine in August 2021 as “safe, pure and potent” for 16-year-olds,22 it still is not officially licensed for children younger than that.

FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization Comes With Big Assumptions

By February 2022, only about 55% of children over age 12 in America had gotten two doses of the Pfizer COVID vaccine, while just 30% of 5- to 11-year-olds had received at least one dose.23

Perhaps mothers are not impressed with the dodgy rationale FDA officials used to justify handing Pfizer an EUA using vague language with large assumptions like it is “reasonable to believe” the vaccine “may be effective” and “reasonable to conclude based on the totality of the scientific evidence available” that the “known and potential benefits … outweigh the known and potential risks of the vaccine.”24

Those kinds of sweeping caveats clearly demonstrate that an EUA allows a lower standard for scientific evidence of the product’s safety and effectiveness than full licensure.25 In fact, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the Pfizer COVID vaccine is still an investigational product, still experimental whenever it is given to a child under 16 years old.26,27

So far, parents in America are split down the middle when it comes to the idea of giving young children Pfizer’s new COVID-19 vaccine. Half of parents28 are uncomfortable with injecting synthetic mRNA coated in lipid nanoparticles into the cells of their child’s body, which is supposed to prevent a bad case of COVID disease — but not necessarily prevent their child from being infected with the virus and transmitting it to others.29,30

With researchers finding that many SARS-CoV-2 infections in young children are asymptomatic and go undetected,31 and with evidence that natural immunity from infection is broad and persistent,32,33parents are asking legitimate questions about why their young children are candidates for this vaccine.

A recent survey found that half of parents were worried about (1) whether the vaccine has been studied long enough in children; (2) whether there are long term side effects; (3) whether the vaccine’s experimental mRNA technology is safe; (4) whether the vaccines work, and (5) the effect of short-term side effects.34

Research published in February 2022 revealed that one-third of parents say they will “wait and see” before vaccinating a child under 5 years old and 26% say they will “definitely not” allow their infant or toddler to receive the COVID vaccine.35

With the majority of parents worried about whether Pfizer’s COVID vaccine carries unacceptable risks, is effective, or is necessary for their child, what kind of information about COVID disease and the vaccine is being given to mothers taking children to pediatricians around the country?

Are Moms Being Given Complete Information About COVID Shots?

Is the information accurate and complete? Are pediatricians treating mothers with respect and allowing them to exercise voluntary informed consent to COVID vaccination on behalf of a minor child, or are mothers being threatened and punished if they say, “no thanks?”36 How many doctors plan to deny medical care to children when their mothers decline the COVID vaccine?

A 2020 study reported that more than half of U.S. pediatricians refuse to care for a child if their mothers decline to give the child even one of the four dozen doses of other vaccines CDC officials insist all children must get before age 6.37,38,39,40

To stop mothers from being able to exercise informed consent to vaccination on behalf of their children, medical trade associations have lobbied state legislatures to pass laws giving doctors permission to extract consent for any type of vaccination from children as young as 11 years old without the knowledge of their parents41 and, in 2020, the District of Columbia was the first to pass that kind of law.42,43

Five states (Alabama, Oregon, South Carolina, North Carolina and Rhode Island) have passed laws to give doctors the power to persuade children between 14 and 16 years old to get COVID vaccine without telling parents.44

If you cringe thinking about whether your 11-year-old or teenager is intellectually, psychologically and emotionally equipped to accurately weigh the potential benefits and risks of a vaccine and resist the pressure from a doctor telling them what to do,45 you are not alone.

As a co-founder of the charitable National Vaccine Information Center established in 1982 to prevent vaccine injuries and deaths through public education,46 I have never been more concerned about a new vaccine the government wants doctors to give to every infant and child.

As a mother of three and now a grandmother, as a college-educated woman who completely trusted my pediatrician when I took my healthy 2.5-year-old son for a DPT shot in 1980 and then watched him suffer a convulsion, collapse and brain inflammation reaction that put him in a special education classroom,47 I urge all mothers to become fully informed about the SARS-CoV-2 infection and the COVID-19 vaccine before making a vaccination decision for a child of any age.

All Vaccines Come With Two Risks

Vaccines are pharmaceutical products that come with two risks: a risk the vaccine will cause a reaction that could cause harm, and a risk the vaccine will fail to protect against infection and transmission of a disease that could cause harm.

Because we are all individuals born with different genes and environmental influences, the risks for disease complications or vaccine complications can be greater for some, depending upon genetic, epigenetic, environmental and other biological factors unique to the individual.48,49,50,51

If the risks of COVID vaccination turn out to be 100% for your child — whether it is because the vaccine causes a severe reaction or fails to prevent severe complications of the disease — you should know that in June 2020, Congress completely shielded vaccine manufacturers and anyone administering the COVID vaccine from product liability and malpractice lawsuits in civil court.52,53 So whatever happens, you will be on your own.

At the National Vaccine information Center, we do not make vaccine use recommendations, but we do defend without compromise the human right to exercise voluntary, informed consent to medical risk-taking.54 You have the moral right and should have the legal right to accept or refuse a vaccine for yourself or your minor child without being sanctioned in any way.55

This commentary offers an overview of COVID disease and the vaccine, with a focus on the genetically engineered messenger mRNA COVID vaccine manufactured by Pfizer being recommended for children by federal government officials and medical trade associations in the U.S. I encourage you to check out the library of over 200 live-linked references anchoring this commentary on NVIC.org to verify the content and do your own research.

Most Coronaviruses Cause Mild Symptoms Like the Common Cold

Coronaviruses are a group of diverse, single stranded RNA viruses that have been around for thousands of years and infect animals, as well as humans.

Coronaviruses usually cause mild respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms like those of the common cold,56 with the exception of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that emerged in China in 2002, and the coronavirus causing Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) identified in Jordan and Saudi Arabia in 2012 – both of which had high mortality rates.57

About 20% of cold or flu-like upper respiratory infections each year are caused by coronaviruses and there is evidence that many people already have at least partial natural immunity to common coronavirus infections.

Some researchers think this may be one reason why the current SARS-CoV-2 infection is asymptomatic or mild for most healthy children and many adults,58 and why COVID-19 tests can generate false positive results because the tests pick up evidence of previous coronavirus infections.59,60

Controversy Over Origins of COVID, Shot Effectiveness, Safety

Since early 2020, public health officials have insisted that the SARS-CoV-2 virus spontaneously jumped into a human out of a bat at a wet food market in China and the only way to end the pandemic is to lock down, mask up, and require everyone to be vaccinated.61,62,63,64,65,66 There are prominent scientists, doctors, ethicists, attorneys, lawmakers and journalists around the world, who disagree with that view. They point out there is compelling evidence:

  • that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was created in a lab and top health officials did not want the public to know about it;67,68,69,70
  • that fast tracked mRNA COVID vaccines have not been thoroughly tested by drug companies, which have failed to release all the clinical trial data, and both the companies and public health officials are downplaying serious vaccine-related reactions and deaths;71,72,73,74,75,76,77
  • that the most widely-used mRNA COVID manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna may prevent serious disease complications, but vaccinated people can still get infected with and transmit the new coronavirus to other people,78 and any temporary protection from COVID disease wanes quickly after vaccination;79
  • that the SARS-CoV-2 infection is mostly asymptomatic or mild in healthy children and young adults80 and that naturally acquired immunity is equal to or broader and longer lasting than COVID vaccine acquired artificial immunity;81,82,83,84 and
  • that governments have done more harm than good by locking down societies and creating masking and vaccine mandates;85,86,87,88,89,90,91

Here are four questions you need to keep in mind when you are making a COVID-19 vaccine decision for your minor child:

1. HOW SERIOUS IS COVID-19 DISEASE IN CHILDREN?

By February 2022, the new coronavirus had evolved from the original alpha variant that human populations had no immunological experience with, to the more transmissible and severe Delta variant that emerged in the summer of 2021, to the Omicron variant that became dominant in late 2021.92

Omicron is highly contagious but causes fewer complications and hospitalizations than Delta,93 and there is speculation that the fact so many people have developed various degrees of natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is one reason why hospitalizations and deaths are coming down in the U.S.94,95

As of February 14, 2022, COVID-19 death rates reported by states in the previous seven days ranged from 0.26 to about 1.5 deaths per 100,000 people.96

To put the worst case 1.5 COVID-related deaths per 100,000 people rate into perspective, the annual death rate for some of the leading causes of death in the U.S. in 2014 were: 193 deaths per 100,000 for heart disease; 186 per 100,000 for cancer; 46 per 100,000 for chronic respiratory disease; 24 per 100,000 for diabetes; 15 per 100,000 for drug overdoses.97

Severe COVID Most Likely in Chronically Ill People Over 65

At the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, it became obvious that most of the serious complications of COVID-19 disease leading to hospitalizations and death do not occur in children or healthy young adults, but in people over age 65, especially if they have one or more chronic health problems.

In 2020, researchers projected that about 45 percent of the U.S. adult population was at increased risk for complications from SARS-CoV-2 infections because of underlying heart or respiratory disease, diabetes, hypertension and cancer.98

One big study sponsored by the CDC looked at the connection between underlying medical conditions and severe illness among more than 500,000 adults with COVID-19 admitted to 800 US hospitals in 2020 and 2021. Researchers found that 95 percent of adult COVID patients had at least one underlying poor health condition like high blood pressure and obesity.99 The strongest risk factors for death were obesity, anxiety and fear disorders, and diabetes with complications.

Children with chronic health problems are also at risk for COVID disease complications. The CDC states on its website that, “In the United States, more than 40% of school-aged children and adolescents have at least one chronic health condition, such as asthma, obesity, other physical conditions, and behavior/learning problems.”100

Most Serious COVID-19 Occurs in Chronically Ill Children

A large cross-sectional study funded by the CDC examined the health records of more than 43,000 patients under the age of 18 with a COVID diagnosis who visited the emergency room or were admitted to 900 US hospitals in 2020 or January 2021.101

The median age of child COVID patients was 12 years old. Researchers found that about 29 percent of the child COVID patients had underlying chronic conditions like asthma; obesity; and neurodevelopmental, depressive, anxiety and fear-related disorders.

The strongest risk factors for hospitalization were type 1 diabetes and obesity. The strongest risk factors for severe COVID illness were type 1 diabetes and congenital cardiac and circulatory problems. Prematurity was a risk factor for severe COVID illness in children under two years old.102Those with a COVID diagnosis represented only about 1% of all children who visited an emergency room or were admitted to the hospital.

More than 81% of COVID related deaths in the U.S. have occurred in seniors over age 65 and deaths in that age group are 80 times higher than for people between 18 and 29.103 The COVID case fatality rate for children by February 2022 was measured at less than one percent in the U.S.104

Healthy Infants and Children Usually Have No or Mild Symptoms

Studies have shown that most healthy infants and children with COVID disease either have no symptoms or much milder symptoms than adults, which last about a week.105 COVID disease symptoms in the majority of healthy children are similar to a cold or flu-like illness and range from fever, sore throat, fatigue and body aches to runny nose and congestion, headache, cough, nausea and diarrhea.

As with most respiratory diseases, pneumonia is always a risk and, clearly, risks for COVID complications are higher for children with certain types of underlying chronic disease.106

Severe complications of COVID-19 disease in some individuals appear to involve a hyper-inflammatory response by the immune system to infection with SARS-CoV-2. This can lead to cytokine storm involving elevated levels of circulating cytokines and immune-cell hyperactivation that can lead to severe respiratory distress and death if the inflammation does not resolve.107

There is a condition called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) that has been reported rarely, and obese children are most at risk. Symptoms include a prolonged fever, unusual fatigue, vomiting and diarrhea, red skin rash, abdominal pain, red lips and eyes and swollen hands or feet.108

Children With COVID at Very Low Risk of Hospitalization, Death

While the majority of people diagnosed with COVID disease have mild to moderate symptoms, about 10 to 15% become severely ill and five percent become critically ill. Most recover in two to three weeks, but researchers estimate about one in five may have symptoms for five or more weeks and one in 10 people will have symptoms that last for 12 weeks or longer.109

Symptoms of “long Covid,” can include fatigue, shortness of breath, muscle pain, joint pain, headache, cough, chest pain, altered smell and taste, diarrhea, difficulty thinking clearly, memory loss, anxiety and sleep disorders. About four percent of children may experience “long Covid” symptoms like fatigue, headache and loss of smell and the majority recover within eight weeks.110

If infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, healthy children have a very low risk of being hospitalized or dying. A U.S. state data report published by the American Academy of Pediatrics on February 3, 2022 found that out of about 1.2 million COVID-related hospitalizations, only 3% were children. Out of 821,369 reported COVID deaths in the U.S., 828 of those deaths or .01% were in children.111

2. ARE THERE WAYS TO PREVENT OR TREAT COVID COMPLICATIONS?

One of the great tragedies of the coronavirus pandemic over the past two years has been that very few drugs and effective medical protocols have been approved by the government to help people prevent or recover from the SARS-CoV-2 infection.

About 95 percent of the public funds appropriated by the U.S. and other governments to fund the global response to the coronavirus pandemic were given to multi-national drug companies to develop and deliver vaccines, while only five percent was spent on exploring therapies to treat COVID disease.112 There are still very few FDA-approved drugs or therapies available for doctors to treat COVID disease.

Most of the anti-viral COVID drugs approved by the FDA under an EUA are very expensive,113,114,115and there are unanswered questions about risks and whether they work very well.116,117,118,119 In early 2020, practicing physicians searching for ways to help people with COVID began repurposing already licensed drugs for off-label use, a common practice that has been allowed under FDA law for many years.120

Some Doctors Use Repurposed Licensed Drugs to Treat COVID

Some of the more affordable licensed drugs that have been repurposed by physicians to treat COVID over the past two years include the Nobel award winning anti-parasitic, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory drug Ivermectin.121,122,123,124,125,126

Vitamins, minerals and supplements that have been used to help prevent or address COVID complications include the Vitamins D,127,128 C,129 and B complex;130 magnesium;131 quercetin;132,133melatonin,134 curcumin,135 zinc,136 NAC,137 probiotics,138 Omega 3s,139 glutathione140 and aspirin.141

As with all drugs and supplements, it is important to have a knowledgeable doctor direct treatment in the appropriate doses and for the right length of time, because what may work and is safe at one stage of the disease may not be during another stage.

The Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCCA)142 and World Council for Health143 are two groups of doctors who have developed COVID-19 treatment protocols that are not endorsed by government health officials but are being used by a number of health professionals around the world to treat adults and children with COVID.

High Mortality Rate for COVID Patients Hospitalized in US

With an average 38 percent mortality rate for seriously ill COVID patients admitted to U.S. hospitals in 2020,144 and with COVID patients who are put on a ventilator experiencing a 45 to 85 percent mortality rate,145,146,147 it is no wonder independent doctors have been exploring options for reducing COVID complications and keeping patients out of hospitals.

Yet, these doctors are being criticized by public health officials discouraging the use of repurposed licensed drugs like ivermectin148 and over-the-counter supplements149 that peer reviewed studies have shown either prevent severe disease and improve, or have the potential to improve, survival.150

Medical boards in some states are trying remove the medical licenses from those doctors,151 and it can be difficult to find a doctor in the U.S. willing to depart from the few government approved medical protocols for treating COVID.152 The National Institutes of Health warns that:153

“Research hasn’t clearly shown that any dietary supplement helps prevent COVID-19 or can decrease the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Only vaccines and medications can prevent COVID-19 and treat its symptoms.”

No Drugs Specifically Approved to Treat Children With COVID

The only guidelines published by the Centers for Disease Control for treatment of children with COVID are dated December 2020 and state, “Currently, there are no drugs specifically approved by the FDA for treatment of COVID-19 in children.”154

NIH has a child treatment guide, which states that “Most children with SARS-CoV-2 infection will not require any specific therapy” and “There are limited data on the pathogenesis and clinical spectrum of COVID-19 disease in children.” It goes on to say that:

“There are no pediatric data from placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials and limited data from observational studies to inform the development of pediatric-specific recommendations for the treatment of COVID-19.”155

After lockdowns and forced masking and a year that saw many Americans subjected to mandatory COVID vaccination to enter public spaces and keep their jobs, it is very sad that government officials have done so little to investigate and approve therapies to address COVID disease.

One political explanation is that under FDA regulations, drug companies cannot receive emergency use authorization to distribute fast tracked experimental vaccines (or drugs) if there are “adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”156

3. HOW EFFECTIVE IS PFIZER’S COVID VACCINE?

After the coronavirus pandemic was declared by public health officials in early 2020 and governments asked drug companies to fast track development of experimental COVID vaccines, the FDA issued guidelines assuring the companies that vaccine trials would only have to demonstrate “at least 50%” efficacy in preventing severe COVID-19 disease.

There was no requirement for companies to prove their COVID vaccines prevent infection and transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.157,158 Perhaps that is one reason why the vaccines are called COVID vaccines and not SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.

But the general public did not and still does not understand the difference. That is because for more than a century, people have been carefully taught to believe that a vaccine produces artificial immunity in the body to prevent transmission of contagious diseases to other people.159

CDC Changed Definition of ‘Vaccine’ and ‘Vaccination’

CDC officials frequently have referred to vaccines as “immunizations.”160 But in 2021, the CDC suddenly changed its definition of “vaccine” from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”161

The Merriam Webster Dictionary also changed its definition of “vaccine” to eliminate the concept that a vaccine stimulates “immunity” and replaced it with the concept that vaccines create an “immune response.”162

Up until now, the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” have been synonymous with creating “artificial immunity” in humans and animals.163

The rewriting of that definition to admit that vaccines cannot be presumed to confer immunity — only modify the person’s immune response — is stunning because mandatory vaccination laws historically have been based on the common belief that all infants and children must get vaccinated to create “herd immunity” and prevent the transmission of contagious diseases within a community.164,165

If the definition of “vaccine” and “vaccination” no longer includes the concept of immunity,166 then the definitions of vaccine “efficacy” and “effectiveness” have been forever changed as well.167,168

Public Misled That Shots Prevent Infection and Transmission

To obtain the EUA in late 2020, Pfizer published clinical trial data involving about 43,000 participants over age 16, with more than 21,000 of them injected with the company’s experimental mRNA COVID vaccine. Pfizer said the data showed that two doses of the vaccine achieved a 95% efficacy for preventing severe COVID disease.169,170

Most mainstream media reports publicizing the Pfizer clinical trial results misled the public into believing that a 95 percent “efficacy” rate meant the vaccine reliably prevented SARS-CoV-2 infection.171 Americans obeying mask mandates put into place before the vaccine was released, assumed that they would be able to ditch the mask and stop social distancing once they got vaccinated.172

But in early 2021 when CDC officials did not back away from mask mandates for vaccinated persons, people started suspecting something was wrong about that assumption. Fully vaccinated people were told to keep the masks on and socially distance like unvaccinated people.173

The logical question was: Why do fully vaccinated people have to worry about getting infected or infecting other people?

The answer to that question became obvious when study after study published in the medical literature since December 2020 showed that two or three doses of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine do not reliably prevent symptomatic or asymptomatic infection and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the vaccine has a very short shelf life for protection against COVID disease, waning within a few months of vaccination.174,175,176

While that reality sets in, studies are revealing that naturally acquired immunity from the new coronavirus infection is broad and long-lasting,177,178,179,180,181 perhaps two years or more.182

More COVID Booster Shots or Annual Re-Vaccination?

In fact, within four months of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine being approved by FDA for distribution, in April 2021 the company’s CEO called for a third shot — a booster dose — and suggested it was possible vaccinated people would have to get revaccinated every year.183

Seven months later, the FDA dutifully approved the Pfizer booster shot for emergency use by everyone over 18 years old,184 and on January 3, 2022, expanded the EUA to allow a third booster shot for children as young as 12 years old.185 Now there is talk about a fourth booster shot.186 And the Pfizer CEO is once again calling for annual COVID vaccinations in the future.187

On February 1, 2022, Pfizer applied for an EUA to give its COVID vaccine to infants and young children between 6 months and 5 years old.188

But, within 10 days, the request was suddenly withdrawn after indications that two 3-microgram doses of the vaccine did not prevent COVID disease symptoms in that age group and a third dose would be required to demonstrate efficacy.189,190

4. HOW REACTIVE IS THE VACCINE AND ARE THERE SERIOUS RISKS?

After the FDA gave emergency use permission to Pfizer in December 2020 to distribute their COVID vaccine, the nonprofit group Public Health and Medical Professionals for Transparency filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the FDA to immediately release 450,000 pages of Pfizer vaccine testing data that the agency relied upon to grant the EUA.

FDA officials refused the request, claiming it would take them 75 years to release all the trial data to the public. A lawsuit was filed and, on Jan 6, 2022, a Texas federal judge ordered the FDA to release 55,000 pages every 30 days until all the requested pages were made public.191

The need for full public disclosure was reinforced by an allegation by a whistleblower, who had worked for a subcontractor involved in the first COVID vaccine clinical trial Pfizer conducted in 2020. She charged that there were serious irregularities in the trial, including falsification of data, lack of monitoring of trial participants after vaccination and failure to immediately follow up of patients who experienced adverse events.192

Questions About Vaccine Safety Testing, Lack of Transparency

Pfizer has been haunted by questions about what it does and does not know about the reactivity and long-term side effects of its COVID vaccine ever since the FDA granted emergency use authorization after only nine months of testing.193,194,195

To demonstrate safety, drug companies historically have been required to first test the experimental vaccine for toxicity in animals, followed up by Phase 1 and 2 human clinical trials to test the vaccine on a few hundred volunteers for detection of common side effects; then progress to Phase 3 trials that involve thousands of people to further identify potential serious reactions.196

Although Pfizer did publish a few small animal studies testing its mRNA COVID vaccine on mice, rats and monkeys, most of the focus was on showing the vaccine was effective, not that it was safe.197,198,199,200

To speed up the COVID vaccine testing process, FDA allowed Pfizer and other drug companies to conduct some of the animal and human clinical studies simultaneously, instead of sequentially.201,202

To further accelerate approval, FDA also allowed companies to provide testing data from previous research on other types of experimental mRNA vaccines as preliminary proof that COVID mRNA vaccines were effective and safe, even though those other mRNA vaccines were never licensed.203

Majority in Pfizer Clinical Trials Had Adverse Events

In December 2020, Pfizer published results of a Phase 2/3 randomized saline placebo controlled human clinical trial in a bid to be the first company to obtain Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA to distribute a COVID vaccine for mass use.

The company tested two 30 microgram doses of the vaccine given 21 days apart to about 21,700 healthy volunteers aged 16 and older who had not been previously diagnosed with COVID, and followed them up for between seven days and several months after the second dose to identify common and serious adverse events.204

The majority of vaccinated participants experienced a local or systemic reaction, with younger people more often reporting side effects like pain at the injection site, headache, fatigue, fever and swollen lymph glands that occurred more often after the second dose and lasted for several days but then resolved, according to Pfizer.

The few serious adverse events recorded after vaccination in the trial, such as cardiac arrythmia and a death from cardiac arrest, were dismissed by investigators as unrelated to the vaccine.205

In 2021, Pfizer published results of Phase 2/3 clinical trials testing two 30 microgram doses of its COVID vaccine on about 1,100 healthy 12- to 15-year-olds,206 and another one that tested two 10 microgram doses on about 1,500 healthy 5- to 11-year-olds, who had never been diagnosed with COVID.207

The children were followed up for seven days, one month and six months. For the 5- to 11-year-old children in the Phase 2/3 clinical trial who got the Pfizer COVID vaccine, researchers reduced the dose from 30 micrograms to 10 micrograms in an effort to lower the incidence of systemic reactions like fever.

On the CDC website in a summary of Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine reactions and adverse events, the CDC states that within seven days of vaccination over 90% of study participants aged 12 to 15 years reported at least one local or systemic reaction and among child study participants aged 5 to 11 years old, about 86% reported at least one local reaction and about 66% reported at least one systemic reaction like fever, chills, fatigue, headache, new or worsened muscle pain or swollen lymph nodes.208

Pfizer Unblinded Shot Trials, Vaccinated Placebo Participants

Although Pfizer says it plans to follow up clinical trial participants of all ages for two years, by March 2021 the company had unblinded the study and offered the COVID vaccine to placebo participants, which scientifically compromises evaluations and comparisons of long-term health problems in vaccinated versus unvaccinated participants.209,210 The unblinding of a clinical trial while follow up of participants is ongoing has never been done before — it is unprecedented.211

In those Phase 2/3 trials, including a six-month follow-up trial,212 and from anecdotal experiences reported by those who have gotten the Pfizer vaccine,213 it is obvious that the mRNA COVID vaccine is quite reactive.

The majority of vaccinated people, especially if they are younger and after receiving a second dose,214 experience acute reactions like injection site pain, fever, headache, fatigue, swollen lymph glands and body discomfort sometimes severe enough to require a day or two of recovery, which can include needing to stay home from work.215

One CDC official commented early on that, “People should be prepared to have pain” following vaccination, suggesting that pain is a sign that “It’s your body building an immune response to the protein that is mimicking the disease.”216

Other doctors point out that strong reaction symptoms like high fevers, chills, headache, joint and muscle aching, and disabling fatigue are evidence of an inflammatory response mounted by the innate immune system and that antibodies are later generated by the adaptive part of the immune system.217,218 It has long been recognized that strong reactions to pharmaceutical products can be a reason to exercise caution, especially with repeat doses.219,220,221,222,223

Blood, Cardiac and Brain Disorders After Pfizer COVID Shots

Since the Pfizer vaccine was released under an EUA, there have been serious blood, cardiac and brain disorders reported in the medical literature, and also by people who have received the vaccine.224,225,226,227

Among the more serious are immune thrombocytopenic purpura,228 which causes internal bleeding because the immune system attacks platelets and the blood cannot clot; heart inflammation that can cause a variety of cardiac problems;229 and immune mediated inflammatory neurological disorders230,231 like Guillain Barre Syndrome,232 Bell’s Palsy233 and Acute Disseminated Encephalomyelitis.234,235

CDC officials have acknowledged only two major serious reactions related to Comirnaty vaccine: (1) anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction also known as shock that has symptoms like trouble breathing, swelling of the tongue and throat, hives and drop in blood pressure;236,237 and (2) heart inflammation, which is commonly diagnosed as myocarditis or pericarditis with symptoms like chest pain, fast beating, fluttering or pounding heart and shortness of breath.238

Inflammation of the Heart Reported After Pfizer COVID Shots

Inflammation of the heart is not a trivial complication, whether it is caused by an infection or a vaccine. Myocarditis is inflammation of the cardiac muscle and is more often seen in infants and teenagers, but can occur at any age, especially after a viral infection.239

Myocarditis and pericarditis, which is inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart, are thought to be largely immune-mediated and in serious cases, can lead to heart rhythm disorders, heart damage, heart failure and death.

Every year, heart disease kills nearly 660,000 Americans — 1 in 4. It is the leading cause of death in the United States among men and women of all races, costing the nation $363 billion a year.240Myocarditis is a known complication of smallpox vaccine241 and has been reported after influenza vaccine242 and now is being reported after the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines.243,244

A controlled study using large national healthcare databases from the US Department of Veterans Affairs found that individuals who had acute COVID-19 disease are at increased risk of many types of cardiovascular problems, including myocarditis and pericarditis; heart rhythm disorders; heart failure; ischemic and non-ischemic heart disease that can cause stroke and thromboembolic disease, or deep vein thrombosis involving blood clots.245

Although researchers said the greatest risk for COVID-related heart inflammation was in unvaccinated persons, the myocarditis risks were increased even for vaccinated people who got COVID.

A descriptive study conducted by CDC researchers analyzed reports to the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database from December 2020 to August 2021 and found that crude reporting rates of myocarditis within seven days of mRNA vaccinations were higher than expected across multiple age groups and in both women and men.246

The rates of myocarditis cases were highest after the second dose in adolescent males, with about 70 cases of myocarditis reported per million doses of the Pfizer COVID vaccine in 12 to 15 year old males and about 106 myocarditis cases per million doses in males 16 to 17 years old. Most myocarditis symptoms appeared to occur and resolve more quickly after vaccination than after viral illness.

Still, the researchers admitted that, “the risks and outcomes of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are unclear.”

Blood Clotting and Blood Vessel Disorders After Shots

Blood clotting and blood vessel disorders have also been reported after receiving Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine. One self-controlled case series study looked at patient records of 29 million people vaccinated in England and hospitalized between December 2020 and April 2021.

Nine million patients in the health records database got the Pfizer vaccine and researchers discovered an increased risk for blood clotting and blood vessel disorders within 15 to 21 days of vaccination that can lead to death.247

The conclusion was that after receiving the Pfizer COVID mRNA vaccine, there are increased risks for arterial thromboembolism, which is a blood clot in an artery that stops the flow of blood to an organ or another part of the body;248 and for ischemic stroke, which is when a blood clot cuts off blood supply to the brain and brain cells begin to die within minutes;249 and for cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), which is when a blood clot forms in the brain’s venous sinuses and prevents blood from draining out of the brain.250

The researchers pointed out that these blood clotting and blood vessel disorders also are complications of SARS-CoV-2 infections and occur more frequently in seriously ill patients testing positive for COVID than after COVID vaccination.

Over 1 Million COVID Vaccine Reaction Reports Filed

As of February 4, 2022, there were over 1.1 million adverse event reports following COVID-19 vaccinations filed with the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System known as VAERS that was created under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986.251,252,253,254

COVID vaccine-related reaction reports represent more than 50 percent of the nearly two million total adverse event reports that have been made to VAERS for all federally recommended vaccines since the vaccine reaction reporting system became operational in 1990. It is estimated that only between one and 10% of vaccine adverse events that occur in the U.S. are reported to VAERS.255,256

Using MedAlerts, an independent search engine for VAERS established in 2003, I conducted a search the first week in February 2022 and found that about 624,000 of the COVID vaccine adverse event reports were associated with the Pfizer Comirnaty vaccine,257 including over 130,000 events categorized as “serious,”258 and about 15,500 deaths.259,260

A portion of these reports have been filed by residents of other countries who have received the Pfizer COVID vaccine, and federal health officials warn that there is no proof of causation for any given vaccine adverse event report filed with VAERS.261

If your doctor refuses to report a serious health problem following vaccination to VAERS that you or your child have suffered, go to NVIC.org to learn how you can report it yourself.

Strong Inflammatory Responses Associated With mRNA Shots

What is it about the Pfizer mRNA vaccine that makes it so reactive? Because the Comirnaty vaccine was fast-tracked to licensure and all animal and human clinical trial data have not been fully released to the public, there has been speculation about the potential biological mechanisms for vaccine induced inflammatory disorders affecting the heart vessels and brain and other parts of the body.

The main concern about the Comirnaty vaccine’s reactivity is centered on the fact it uses a new mRNA technology platform that pushes synthetic mRNA coated with lipid nanoparticles into the body’s cells to force cells to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. This is the first mRNA vaccine injected into humans on a mass basis and the first one using a lipid nanoparticle delivery system.262

A search of the medical literature and mainstream media articles quickly reveals that two years before Pfizer and Moderna got an EUA to distribute their mRNA vaccines, academic researchers warned of potential safety issues with the platform, like local and systemic inflammation; stimulation of hyper-inflammatory immune responses causing chronic inflammation and autoimmunity;263 and the presence of extracellular RNA that may cause edema and the formation of blood clots.264

The lipid nanoparticles that coat the synthetic mRNA in COVID vaccines can be highly inflammatory, as one recent study in mice demonstrated.265,266 This is the first human vaccine to include lipid nanoparticles and there are outstanding questions about biodistribution in the body and if they can accumulate in different organs of the body like the liver, spleen, lungs, kidneys and perhaps crosses the blood brain barrier.267,268,269,270,271

There has been a debate about whether lipid nanoparticle coated mRNA that provokes cells to generate the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein ends up in the ovaries and could potentially affect fertility, with one of the inventors of mRNA technology and other scientists saying it could happen and other scientists saying it cannot.272,273

At the same time there is an investigation going on in Europe about menstrual irregularities and spontaneous bleeding in menopausal women who have gotten mRNA vaccines.274,275

There are also questions about antibody dependent enhancement (ADE),276,277 which could make certain people who already have coronavirus antibodies because they got vaccinated or had a previous infection more susceptible to severe COVID disease if they are infected or re-infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Public health officials disagree that COVID vaccine can cause antibody dependent enhancement, maintaining that vaccinated people who get COVID have milder, not more severe, disease.278

Questions About Few Contraindications, Long Term Safety

There are questions about the almost total absence of contraindications, which means reasons not to give the Comirnaty vaccine, and recommendations to give another dose after a previous reaction.279 Then there is the lack of published evidence for the blanket recommendation that it is safe to give Comirnaty vaccine at the same time with all other government recommended vaccines.280,281

At the end of the day, the biggest safety concern about Pfizer’s mRNA vaccine being given to children is that it just has not been studied long enough to determine if it will negatively affect the long term health of children.

Eminent scientists and doctors in the U.S. and around the world have been challenging official narratives about COVID and COVID-19 vaccines and asking all the right questions.282,283 A U.S. senator has held panel discussions on Capitol Hill to give a voice to these scientists and to those who have been injured by COVID vaccines or have had their informed consent rights violated.284

Americans all across the country have been defending civil liberties and informed consent rights in many different kinds of public forums, even as they face censorship and abuse from those who are trying to silence the public conversation about vaccination, health and autonomy.285,286

Concern About COVID Vaccine Mandates for Infants and Children

In closing, it is important to remember that the COVID-19 vaccine is the 17th vaccine U.S. health officials now direct doctors to give to children as young as five years old.287 When the FDA gives Pfizer the green light to distribute Comirnaty to children younger than that, the vaccine will be given to six-month old babies.

After 40 years of monitoring the science, policy, law and ethics of vaccination, my greatest concern is that this new vaccine eventually will be mandated for all infants and children, just like almost all vaccines that industry has created in the past century have been mandated.

We are responsible for protecting our children from harm, our children, who are now the most chronically ill and disabled children in the history of our nation.

Two in five children between six and 17 years old suffer with some kind of inflammatory immune or brain disorder like asthma, diabetes and epilepsy,288 and 1 child in 6 is developmentally delayed,289but there are no credible explanations coming from public health officials for why so many of our children are growing up sick and disabled and face a lifetime of chronic poor health.

Debate About Vaccination Is More Than 200 Years Old

Before the current public debate about COVID vaccine, there have been public debates about the wisdom of giving children many other vaccines that were very reactive. I joined with parents of DPT vaccine injured children to launch the modern vaccine safety and informed consent movement in 1982 because we wanted the toxic, highly inflammatory whole cell pertussis vaccine that had harmed our children taken off the market.290,291

We followed mothers and fathers in the 19th century, who protested the reactivity of the smallpox vaccine.292,293

Our activism in the late 20th century was followed by parents speaking out in the early 1990s about what happened to their children after being given the first genetically engineered vaccine for hepatitis B,294,295,296 followed by young mothers and fathers in the early 21st century once again asking government, industry and the medical establishment to expand knowledge about vaccine side effects and who is at highest risk.297,298,299

The charged debates about flawed vaccine science and the violation of the human rights inherent in mandatory vaccination laws have not changed in two hundred years. The fact that the debate about vaccination will not go away — no matter how much money and political power is thrown at it to make it go away — only confirms the universal need for it.

Moral and Legal Right to Make Voluntary Vaccination Decisions

As a mother, you have the moral right and must have the legal right to gather as much information as you can about COVID disease and the COVID vaccine, consult with a trusted health professional, and then follow your conscience and your gut instincts when making a decision about whether or not your child should get vaccinated — without being coerced or sanctioned by anyone for the decision you make.300

If you want to work in your state to protect your legal right to make a voluntary decision about vaccination, go to NVICAdvocacy.org and become a registered user of the free NVIC Advocacy Portal so you can stay informed about good or bad vaccine bills moving in your state and take action.

Last year, after NVIC worked with families across the country to successfully hold back state COVID vaccine mandates after the federal government issued strict vaccine mandates for both federal and private company employees, about 20 states passed laws in some way prohibiting COVID vaccine mandates or vaccine passports.

Not one state legislature passed a law mandating the COVID vaccine, even as Governors and local state officials in a few states enacted COVID vaccine mandates without getting legislature approval.301

Sign up for NVIC’s texting service and get NVIC’s weekly journal newspaper — The Vaccine Reaction — in your email box to stay up to date on breaking news.302 Read and download vaccine education information from NVIC.org and share it with your friends, family, legislators and thought leaders in your community.

Be the one who never has to say you did not do today what you could have done to change tomorrow. It’s your health, your family, your choice. And our mission continues: No forced vaccination. Not in America.

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Video: Never Broadcast Channel 4 News Report from 1998: “Challenging Existence of HIV ‘Virus'”

March 21st, 2022 by Channel Four

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The challenge to the existence of HIV was made public on the first day of the 1998 Geneva World AIDS Conference. 

A team of international scientists presented their conclusions. HIV has never been identified and there’s no proof that such a virus exists.

Watch the video below.

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Washington DOH Found 358,193 Vaccine Breakthrough Cases

March 21st, 2022 by Informed Choice Washington

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The WA State Department of Health states in their SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Breakthrough Surveillance and Case Information report dated February 16, 2022:

The criteria for identifying vaccine breakthrough cases include a positive lab test (either a PCR test or an antigen test) at least 14 days after a person received their last recommended dose of an authorized COVID-19 vaccine.

We wait 14 days because some people could get COVID-19 soon after vaccination when their body hasn’t had enough time yet to build full protection. These infections are not considered vaccine breakthrough cases because they could have been exposed before they were vaccinated. It typically takes about two weeks after the final dose of vaccine for the body to build a high level of protection against the disease.

The first COVID-19 vaccines were administered in Washington in mid-December 2020, so we started our surveillance for people who meet these case criteria during the week that began on January 17, 2021.

From January 17 [2021] – February 05, 2022:

• 358,193 SARS-CoV-2 vaccine breakthrough cases have been identified in Washington State. Of these breakthrough cases:
– 19% reported symptoms
– 2% were hospitalized
– 0.4% died of COVID-related illness

[bold emphasis added]

Key points for reflection:

  • 358,193 lab-identified “breakthrough cases”, with 2% hospitalizations and 0.4% deaths are staggering and represent vaccine failure.
  • In order to fully understand the impact of the shots on an individual’s risk from SARS-CoV-2, more data is needed to be shared with the public. We need:
    • the number of breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in those who have received one, two, three, four, and more injections but who were diagnosed before the 14 day window had passed since the last dose.
  • By claiming none of the COVID-19 cases occurring inside of the 14-day window are “breakthrough” cases, they are artificially increasing the rates of infection in the “non-vaccinated” group.
  • Under the DOH’s criteria, an individual diagnosed with COVID-19 who is beyond 14 days from their second dose, but has been recommended a third dose, is not considered a “breakthrough case.” They are considered a “non-vaccinated” case. Some hospitals and clinics only have “vaccinated” and “unknown” status on their forms. Someone with three shots could technically be marked as “unknown” using this criteria.
  • By not examining the number and severity of cases of COVID-19 in those who have had 1 or more shots in various windows of time, the DOH is not able to properly determine if the shot increases risk of infection, or increases risk of severity, hospitalization, or death within those windows.
  • Is DOH collecting data on the rates of non-COVID hospitalizations and deaths in the vaccinated? Deaths due to heart attack, stroke, autoimmune disease, etc?
  • In order to fully understand the impact of the shots on an individual’s risk of harm, proper data must be gathered. It is estimated that the underreporting factor for COVID shots to VAERS is between 6.5 (CDC claim) and 40 (independent evaluation) .
  • Why is the DOH not collecting numbers of breakthrough cases among those with natural immunity? Why aren’t they collecting the severity of the breakthrough illness? Hospitalization rates and deaths among those with natural immunity who have a breakthrough case?
  • If DOH truly wants to protect the public moving forward, they will gather and report ALL the data so that individuals can decide which is safest and most effective for themselves and their families. More than 150 studies on natural immunity are showing it is superior. Why is this mentioned nowhere on taxpayer funded “health” department websites?

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CJPME Statement on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

March 21st, 2022 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

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When the United Nations first established this Day against racism, they decided to mark it on the anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre of 1960, when South African police killed 69 people during a peaceful demonstration against apartheid laws. Although South Africa’s system of Apartheid has long since ended, groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have recently concluded that Israel also practices apartheid against the Palestinians.

The parallels of injustice are clear, but sadly the government of Canada has responded to each situation in radically different ways. While many Canadians are proud of the role that Canada took to oppose apartheid in South Africa, Canada today refuses to take any action against apartheid in Israel, and is completely unwilling to even engage with the work of human rights organizations on the ground. Instead, Canada has grown closer in its bilateral ties with the Israeli regime, and has condemned activists who speak out against Israel’s racist policies. This is not something that we can be proud of, but reveals a profound double standard in Canada’s foreign policy.

This moment also provides an opportunity to reflect on Canada’s refugee policies, and the ways that we tend to respond differently to different populations. We have seen Canada extend its arms to unlimited Ukrainian refugees who are fleeing Russian aggression, showing tremendous empathy and compassion. This is completely necessary and commendable. But the question must be asked: why have we been unable to extend the same support to refugees from outside of Europe, including from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq or Palestine? Surely, we have the capacity to welcome any asylum-seekers fleeing conflict and strife, regardless of where they come from.

Underlining this problem is the fact that Canada’s refugee assistance measures are prioritizing Ukrainian nationals, while excluding foreign workers, students, or undocumented people from other countries who were living in Ukraine. There should be no distinction in our assistance to refugees, all of whom are fleeing the same war.

We know well that these struggles against racism and discrimination are not happening in isolation, and that are movements must be intersectional and connected. CJPME expresses its solidarity with all movements for racial justice, including Black Lives Matter, Indigenous land defenders, and migrant workers.

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An Unprecedented Wave Of Brazen Gasoline Thefts Is Unlike Anything We Have Ever Seen Before

March 21st, 2022 by Michael Snyder

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***

If we are seeing this much criminal activity already, what will happen when the price of gasoline really spirals out of control?  I had heard that gasoline thefts were happening around the nation, but I had no idea how bad things really were until I started looking into it.  From coast to coast, gas stations are being targeted, and this is often being done by organized groups.  In other cases, criminals are going to private homes and are actually drilling directly into gas tanks in order to steal gasoline.  What we are witnessing is quite frightening, and it is yet another sign of how far our society has fallen.

Let me start by discussing an incident in a state that isn’t normally known for high crime.  According to CNN, this week at least 15 criminals worked together to steal almost 400 gallons of gas from a station in North Carolina…

Nearly 400 gallons of gas were stolen from a North Carolina gas station this week, CNN reported.

More than 15 cars pulled up and filled up their tanks after business hours after someone used a special device allowing them to bypass the payment system. Over the course of about 45 minutes, $1,600 worth of gas was stolen from the Bizzy Bee Grocery Store and Gas Station in High Point, said owner Hardik Patel.

This sort of organized activity reminds me of the shoplifting mobs that we have seen around the country in recent months.

When the owner of the station was asked about this crime, he told CNN that he has “never seen something like this”…

“I’ve been in business for 15 years and owned other gas stations. I have never seen something like this,” Patel told CNN. “It wasn’t free, they were stealing.”

Sadly, that wasn’t just an isolated incident.

In fact, this sort of thing is now happening all over the nation.  If you doubt this, just go to Google News and type in “gasoline theft.”

Down in Texas, a group of very brazen thieves just stole over 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel from a station in Houston…

The manager of a family-owned gas station in Houston, Texas, says thieves targeted the business’s diesel fuel on four days last week, stealing more than 1,000 gallons. The thefts allegedly occurred on consecutive days in which the national gas price average repeatedly broke all-time highs.

According to the station manager, a “dark-colored van” would literally sit directly over the underground storage containers and siphon off hundreds of gallons…

Thayil said a dark-colored van was seen parking over the underground storage containers on the dates of March 8-10 — days in which the national average price for a gallon of gas broke all-time records — and siphoned 360 gallons each day.

“They hit us like the days we were paying like a real premium on the diesel fuel,” Thayil told the outlet. “Altogether it was about $5,000.”

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing.

I hope that you are prepared for “the new normal.”

To me, incidents where criminals actually go to private homes and drill holes in gas tanks are even more chilling.  Here is one example that just happened in Pennsylvania…

A woman in Allentown, Pennsylvania, who did not want to be identified, says she and her neighbor were victims of a recent theft.

She says someone drilled a hole right into her gas tank. Home security video captured the alleged thief walking around her car with a drill and a five-gallon bucket.

Previously, criminals would siphon gas to steal fuel. But newer vehicles now have an anti-rollover valve, so thieves are now drilling right into the tank.

You may have a difficult time believing that this is actually happening in the United States of America.

But it is.

In Atlanta, police say that one man was “behind a series of costly gasoline thefts across the city”…

Police in Atlanta said they arrested a man believed to be behind a series of costly gasoline thefts across the city.

It was a story FOX 5 first reported on Tuesday. Social media has been buzzing for the last few days about someone stealing gasoline out of tanks, but not by siphoning it out, but rather drilling a hole in the bottom of the tank and letting it drain out, leaving behind thousands of dollars’ worth of damage in the process.

As the price of gasoline continues to go up, this will probably encourage even more theft.

And it will also make it more costly for ordinary American families to heat their homes.

Not too long ago, one of my readers sent me an email in which she detailed how much her heating costs have gone up just since January…

“I received an oil delivery on Friday, March 7. I got 159 gallons @ $4.59 a gal. and it my ticket was $728.00. I got a delivery on Jan 12 for 161.5 gal. and the price was $3.39 and my ticket was $548.94.”

That is nuts.

But of course this is just the beginning.  We have entered a full-blown global energy crisis, and we are going to see things in the months ahead that are going to be absolutely unprecedented.

Sadly, one survey just found that rising costs are already a “significant source of stress” for 87 percent of U.S. adults…

According to the data, compiled after the APA surveyed 3,012 U.S. adults between Feb. 7-14, 87% of respondents cited rising costs of everyday items, including gas and groceries, as a “significant source of stress.” The same percentage said their mental health has been greatly impacted by “a constant stream of crises over the last two years.”

It has been estimated that rising energy prices will cost the average American family an extra $2,000 this year alone.

That is a lot of money.

I wish that I had better news for you.

I really do.

But the factors that are causing this energy crisis are not going away any time soon.

The best that we can hope for is a quick ceasefire in Ukraine.  In the short term, that would definitely help.

In the long term, we need to realize that our world is headed into a full-blown economic meltdown.

Decades of incredibly bad decisions have brought us to this point, and the current crop of global leaders is about the worst we have ever seen.

So anyone that is waiting for some sort of miraculous turnaround is going to be waiting for a very, very long time.

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Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. He has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  

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What Do Chinese Citizens Say About Ukraine?

March 21st, 2022 by Maria Fe Celi

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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.

The history of this war must be understood. 

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Contexto Chino is our bi-weekly column where we interview Maria Fe Celi, Peruvian political analyst in Shanghai, to discuss Chinese culture and current affairs from a Latin American perspective. For this edition, we discuss how the Russia-Ukraine conflict has been talked about by both citizens and the government in China.  

Kawsachun News: The conflict in Ukraine has been raging for three weeks now, how have the Chinese government and people been responding to these developments?

Maria Fe Celi: Chinese people and the Chinese government are two different things on this issue. Among Chinese people there’s been huge energetic support for Russia, there was even a movement among people to buy all the Russian products from online shops in China and everything sold out very quickly.

People have been bringing up the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy during the war in Yugoslavia (3 dead, 20 injured). The United States said it was a mistake, but Chinese people never forgave NATO for that. There is also a belief that if Russia is sanctioned today then it could happen to China tomorrow, so people believe they should support Russia now.

However, the government has been sticking to its long-held foreign policy and maintained its neutrality, but that doesn’t mean that it’s been ignoring the issue. China always supports upholding the territorial integrity of countries. As they built good relations with Russia, they never recognized Crimea as Russian, China still recognizes it as part of Ukraine. The Chinese government has also been vocal about recognizing the legitimacy of Russia’s security concerns. China has always opposed the escalation of armed conflict and that’s why they voted neutral at the UN on the question of the Ukraine conflict. They oppose the use of military intervention and also the use of sanctions. This has been China’s position with regard to every conflict that has come before this too.

China, while maintaining its neutrality, has emphasized that the principal motivation for the crisis is NATO expansionism and its inability to recognize the legitimacy of Russia’s demands. This is a much more nuanced position than that taken in the West where they just say ‘Putin is crazy’ and ‘he wants to invade the whole of Europe’.

China has also been denouncing the biolabs in Ukraine where it seems that the US has been developing biological weapons. Since the start of the pandemic, China has suspected that the origin of the virus could be in the US military lab in Fort Detrick. They’ve always insisted that Fort Detrick should be investigated just as Wuhan was. The US has recognized that these labs in Ukraine exist, but say that they’re not for biological weapons.

Xi Jinping has been speaking to France and Germany and has tried to get them to take a bigger role in achieving a peaceful solution because after all, Europe is the most affected by this conflict. China is emerging as the ideal candidate to broker a solution to this conflict, but we don’t know what will happen.

KN: Russia is mass adopting China’s UnionPay after Visa and Mastercard pulled out. What is UnionPay and can it be sanctioned?

MFC: UnionPay is a payment system used for credit and debit cards, basically the Chinese version of Visa. However, in China, most people pay for everything electronically on WeChat and Alipay, so maybe Russia can now be the best growth market for them. UnionPay was already present in Russia and its cards are accepted by most ATMs there and around the world, so the transition is not difficult, and it means the Russian banking system won’t just collapse. The sanctions have also left the Russian market open for Chinese consumer goods now that Western companies have pulled out. For the Chinese companies that don’t have business in the US, this is a huge opportunity for them to move in and scoop up the Russian market. This will also help accelerate the de-dollarization of the global economy, and for this transition period, China is well-placed to help fill the gaps while Russia develops its own self-sufficiency, which Lavrov says is their aim.

KN: Has the Ukraine conflict changed Chinese discussions about Taiwan?

MFC: At the beginning of the conflict, a lot of Taiwan separatists were mobilizing to express support for Ukraine and this generated a lot of mockery on social media even within Taiwan. Remember that only a minority of Taiwanese people want independence, the majority support the status quo as long as they continue to benefit it from it. Most Taiwanese people know that separating from China would be an economic catastrophe for them. People there are still culturally Chinese, and it’s a very pragmatic society, so they have no desire to separate. Taiwan’s elites don’t want that either. The attempts to make comparisons between Ukraine and Taiwan haven’t been successful for anything other than generating a few joking memes, people aren’t comparing the two issues.

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The Hubris of Modern Medicine Caused Billions to be Injected with “Hidden Genes” in the mRNA Sequences in COVID-19 Vaccines. It’s Time We Tell Them We Know.

March 21st, 2022 by Dr. James Lyons-Weiler

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***

Parts of cryptic genetic code lead to proteins that are almost certainly expressed by cells in the vaccinated along with Spike – with unknown effects. No one has any idea what to do about it now.

The past two years have led to a disastrous plummet in the public’s trust of “public health”. According to Dr. Vinay Prasad, the causes include

  • Flip-flopping on masks within six weeks – and Fauci admitted to lying, for evidently no reason (cloth masks are not used by medical professionals);
  • Masking two year olds, evicting families from airplanes over a two-year old not handling masking;
  • Hypocrisy caught in photos on videos on the importance of masking;
  • Blood clots due to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, downplayed at first, and then merely demoted;
  • Booster mandates, objected to by Gruber & Kraus who resigned over the fact that booster mandates were needed in site of the science showing no long-term benefits;
  • Terrible studies on masks and on health outcomes in kids with COVID-19 compared to vaccination;
  • Financial conflicts of interests throughout public health implicating epidemiologists doing studies to support specific policies. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s history of receiving $400,000 from Carnival Cruise before his appointment.

To these recently pointed to by Dr. Vinay Prasad, I will add:

  • Allowing incorrect and inaccurate calculations of mRNA vaccine efficacy;
  • Implementation of a woefully flawed application of RT-PCR for COVID-19 testing, while reporting zero false positives;
  • Implementing unrealistic and futile control policies re: outdoor events and outdoor dining;
  • Denying instead of addressing the PCR false positive problem;
  • Unwarranted claims on the tissue fates of the spike protein;
  • Silence on the findings of insertion of mRNA spike-encoded reverse transcribed DNA in human cells;
  • Locking down the US and the resulting data showing lockdowns had no effect on the virus;
  • Promotion of studies that claim to show that vaccine-induced immunity is superior to natural immunity;
  • Reliance on non-peer-review “preprints”
  • Reliance on flawed and fraudulent studies allegedly showing no efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine
  • Reliance on late-COVID-19 studies of treatment options that are not highly profitable;
  • Denial of the science on early treatment with options that are not highly profitable;
  • Implementation of the remdesivir treatment protocol based on an interim analysis published as a press release;
  • The implementation of perverse incentives for COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths after starving hospitals of cash via the 3-month lockdown;
  • Whistleblowers that stepped forward (to Del Bigtree and the Highwire team) reporting willful miscoding of deceased patients with COVID-19;
  • Interference with public discourse via pressure on social media outlets to allow only discussions that match the official narrative;
  • Acting as though the deaths and adverse events reported to VAERS and other systems are not caused by the vaccines.

As if those are not reason enough…

Now we have yet another reason to no trust public health. The public health agenda caused billions of people around the planet to be injected with the spike-protein encoding RNAs without first determining whether other parts of the RNA might be read as other proteins.

I first reported that the complementary sequence to the Pfizer full-length mRNA sequence encodes a complete and uninterrupted open reading frame – the full length of the sequence.

Now, a peer-reviewed paper from The University of Cambridge has asked “Are There Hidden Genes in DNA/RNA Vaccines?”

The authors reported:

“Eleven small overlapping ORFs (27-87 residues long) were discovered using NCBI ORFfinder on the wild-type spike protein sequence, and eight small ORFs (26-52 residues long) were found to overlap the Pfizer BNT162b2 vaccine mRNA sequence. Notably, the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine mRNA sequence displayed no overlapping sequences on the positive sense strand – only on the negative sense strand…”

They presume there is not issue with the ORFs on the negative sense strand, apparently unaware of the studies that show the mRNA is, in fact, incorporated into the tissue of fast-dividing cells.

Proteins not found in the human genome expressed by human cells with lead to cytotoxic t-cells attacking them and initiative cell death. Therefore, cellular damage and organ damage will occur due to these unintended, preventable proteins translated by the protein-producing machinery of our cells.

Read the paper’s conclusions. Clearly, these steps should have been done before unleashing this biologic on the human population:

Although the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 spike protein nucleotide sequence has been found to code for translated overlapping genes, ORF detection predictions on the sequences of two mRNA vaccines reveal that codon optimization has the potential to disrupt non-specific translation. Additional overlapping ORFs can arise during codon optimization; thus, the final sequences should nevertheless be scrutinized for their protein-coding potential. In the case of DNA vaccines and viral vectors, the negative-sense strand should also be checked for its protein-coding potential. Additionally, as variants of concern become known and vaccines are altered to include them, the spontaneous generation of ORFs should be re-assessed. Many precautionary steps have been taken to ensure the safety and efficacy of the mRNA vaccines, including nucleoside modification to reduce inflammatory responses and 5’-capping and polyadenylation tail length optimization to increase mRNA stability and translation… Thus, the inclusion of additional steps to ensure that vaccine sequences code solely for the intended protein may also lead to better health and safety outcomes. Measures to check for other adverse effects on host cells, such as those resulting from potential interactions of vaccine nucleotide sequences with host RNAs or proteins, or the host microbiome may be increase efficacy and safety as well..⁠. More in-depth investigation of these delivery methods may reveal aspects that should be further refined to safeguard against unintended side effects.

It is utterly unacceptable that Moderna and Pfizer did not catch this, and it is similarly unacceptable that FDA and CDC organizations such a VRBPAC and ACIP did not catch this.

There is no plan to update the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines to disrupt these open reading frames – or to remove the unsafe epitopes that can lead to autoimmunity against proteins, including many of those in our immune systems.

It’s time we take the bad news that the public knows, and understands how the rush to vaccines was not even close to “science”, but instead was mayhem.

Consider giving a gift subscription of Popular Rationalism to public health personnel in your state. Perhaps your state epidemiologist. Or someone who sits on your State or County Board of Public Health. They will receive these articles directly in their inbox. And you can email them and tell them that you’re giving them the gift of advanced warning that the public will not rest until those who have made a debacle of science and disturbed the peace in our society via lies and fraud are held directly, and personally, accountable.

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Commercial Defrauding of Uncle Sam—Biggest Booming Business

March 21st, 2022 by Ralph Nader

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***

The biggest business in America is stealing and defrauding the federal government, Uncle Sam and you the taxpayers. In terms of sheer stolen dollars, the total amount is greater than the annual sales of Amazon and Walmart over the past two years.

Before getting to the real big stuff, start with how much was stolen or not delivered by the contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just in one program, John Sopko—Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR), estimated that $30 billion of the $100 billion repairs project was purloined. Despite his many damning reports on what was also wasted—like the $40 million natural gas-powered fueling station (there were no natural gas-powered cars in Afghanistan)—no one was indicted, no one was fired, no one missed a promotion. This is according to author Andrew Cockburn, who interviewed Spoko extensively for his new book The Spoils of War: Power, Profit and the American War Machine. In fact, Cockburn writes: “They were giving bonuses to people for stealing our money.”

Of the $360 billion in annual billing fraud by the health care industry, over $100 billion is fraud on Medicare and Medicaid.

Turning to the $6 trillion appropriated (without reversing the tax cuts by Trump on the super-rich) by both Trump and Biden since March 2020, government investigators and the media are seeing staggering thefts and frauds. Money was stolen outright by fake companies and fraudulent applications, or taken by profitable companies, law firms and others that these programs were never intended to benefit.

One estimate has the trillion dollar Paycheck Protection Program delivering only 25 percent to the people for whom it was intended. Even people like the notorious anti-taxer Grover Norquist, who is loaded with corporate donations, applied for and got a bundle of tax dollars.

From the beginning I called members of Congress to caution them to draft very tight language in the giant rescue and infrastructure programs in order to foresee and forestall the predictable giant heist. There were some provisions—expanding enforcement budgets and inserting certain general review obligations on government agencies. But it was massively too little and too late— and utterly inadequate for the volume of coming robberies.

Corporate lobbyists were already swarming over Capitol Hill to get their bailouts, grants, sweetheart contracts and other benefits. The airlines got about $50 billion in bailouts, for example, after they had bought back $45 billion of their own stock from passenger revenues.

The mass media was also largely inattentive, spending far more time on the friction between politicians in Congress than the burning of taxpayer dollars. The Inspectors General attached to each federal agency were timid, under-budgeted and had weak authority.  Moreover, several Inspectors General positions were vacant.

Professor Malcolm Sparrow at Harvard has shown how there are specific, proven ways to prevent thefts and frauds on government programs. Effective criminal law enforcement authority, adequate enforcement budgets and plenty of investigators and auditors with higher level political support are crucial.

Neither Congress nor the White House have met this challenge of titanic corruption which should become a major campaign subject in the coming elections. Apart from a few perfunctory hearings, Congress has not held the high profile intense hearings that grab public attention—in part because both Parties have culpability, though the GOP is worse.

Biden spoke briefly this month about this thievery in his State of the Union address and promised a chief prosecutor for pandemic fraud.  This is a little late. And where was the mention of adequate budget and authority? Professor Sparrow recommends that the enforcement budgets for commercial crimes have to be at least one percent of the estimated theft/fraud. The Biden oversight isn’t a tenth of that measure.

Finally, The Washington Post and The New York Times have started to investigate. The findings of their lengthy features are predictably staggering, especially regarding the Small Business Administration (SBA) which dispatched $343 billion in PPP loans over a 14 day period!

As recounted in the NY Times article by David Farenthold, a free for all robbery spree took hold.  The SBA made classic, foreseeable blunders. First, it subcontracted out, without due diligence, to so-called nonprofits, the job of distributing and monitoring the expenditures, giving them 15 percent of the overall disbursements to, for example, children feeding programs. The blunder not only is an inappropriate delegation of governmental powers, but it also creates a perverse incentive for the overseer to shovel out money to subcontractors.

Biden’s Department of Agriculture arrogantly turned down Farenthold’s request to interview officials there. This is another sign of unpreparedness, enabled by a Congress that astonishingly let the Department “waive rules that had been put in place after previous scandals to make sure states watched the watchdogs,” wrote Farenthold. (See “F.B.I. Sees ‘Massive Fraud’ in Groups’ Food Programs for Needy Children”.)

A longer expose appeared in The Washington Post by Tony Romm with the headline “’Immense Fraud’ Creates Immense Task for Washington As It Tries to Tighten Scrutiny of $6 Trillion in Emergency Coronavirus Spending”.

Romm’s examples are about sheer theft. A person pleaded guilty who somehow got $4 million and spend chunks of it buying a Porsche, a Mercedes and a BMW. A man was sentenced to prison for obtaining $800,000 for a business that did not exist. Fake or shell companies getting grants and unpayable loans illustrate that the guardrails were non-existent in thousands of cases.

So minimal are the prosecutorial initiatives that the commercial criminals are still actively seeking huge sums in grants, loans, direct payments and other forms of emergency assistance.

The SBA’s diligent Inspector General, Hannibal “Mike” Ware, has been producing report after report, incurring the hatred of Trump and his then-SBA Administrator, and still not convincing Congress that without more enforcement funds, the corporate crime wave will prosper unabated. Even so, Romm points to evidence that dozens of criminal fraud cases were preventable with some more diligence from the SBA. It isn’t reassuring that Romm reported that SBA officials turned down interview requests by the Post.

Recent efforts by a long-culpable Congress and a long-neglectful Presidency are not close to catching up with current robberies, not to mention any chance of retrieving stolen monies. Ever since I requested in 1971 that President Richard Nixon set up a commission on corporate crime, the federal government has remained obstinately indifferent to the sheer scale of ‘crime in the suites.” Consider the looted military contracting budget and the global level of corporate tax evasions up against the tepid responses from Washington. Too much discretion was delegated to the state and local governments without strict criteria. One New York Republican-controlled municipality is about to spend $12 million to renovate a baseball stadium.

Without a tradition of Congress requiring annual compliance reports from federal agencies, which would require securing regular data feedback flows, the government will continue to be caught flat-footed.

Why should the three working days a week Congress, with no skin in the game, really care? If it isn’t the unorganized taxpayers paying for these massive thefts, the next generation of Americans will get the tab. Especially since the solons on Capitol Hill have refused to rescind the huge Trump tax escapes for the wealthy and giant corporations that have ballooned the federal deficit.

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India Should Quit Quad Now!

March 21st, 2022 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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Japan’s Concern for Ukraine: Crocodile Tears?

March 21st, 2022 by Dr. Brian Victoria

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Zelensky Says WWIII Assured if Negotiations with Russia Break Down

March 21st, 2022 by Zero Hedge

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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.

The history of this war must be understood. 

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that he’s “ready for negotiations” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but that if they break down, it will lead to World War III.

“I’m ready for negotiations with him. I was ready for the last two years. And I think that without negotiations we cannot end this war,” Zelensky told CNN‘s Fareed Zakaria.

“I think that we have to use any format, any chance in order to have a possibility of negotiating, possibility of talking to Putin. But if these attempts fail, that would mean that this is a third World War.“

“You cannot reverse this situation anymore. You cannot demand from Ukraine to recognize some territories as intended for conflicts, and these compromises are simply wrong.”

Zelensky’s comments come as Turkey claims Moscow and Kiev are close to an agreement on key points – despite the Kremlin turning to “more destructive artillery” after revealing it used hypersonic “Kinzhal” missiles at least twice on Ukrainian targets.

In a Saturday video message, Zelensky called for talks “without delay,” warning that Russia would suffer “huge” losses if they don’t come to the table.

“We have always insisted on negotiations. We have always offered dialogue, offered solutions for peace,” he said. “And I want everyone to hear me now, especially in Moscow. It’s time to meet. Time to talk. It is time to restore territorial integrity and justice for Ukraine.“

Ukraine’s priorities are: “The end of the war, security guarantees, sovereignty, restoration of territorial integrity, real guarantees for our country, real protection for our country.”

Russia’s priorities – laid out in a call with Turkey last week – consist of two categories of demands; Ukraine must remain neutral and not apply to join Nato, a point Zelensky has already conceded. Ukraine would also need to undergo a disarmament process to ensure it isn’t a threat to Russia, as well as ‘de-Nazify’ its armed forces.

The second category of Russian demands is where more difficulty will lie, according to top Turkish government adviser Ibrahim Kalin, and will require face-to-face negotiations between Putin and Zelensky.

Mr Kalin was much less specific about these issues, saying simply that they involved the status of Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, parts of which have already broken away from Ukraine and stressed their Russianness, and the status of Crimea.

Although Mr Kalin didn’t go into detail, the assumption is that Russia will demand that the Ukrainian government should give up territory in eastern Ukraine. That will be deeply contentious. -BBC

On Sunday, Zelensky told CNN that if Ukraine “were a NATO member, a war wouldn’t have started.”

“I’d like to receive security guarantees for my country, for my people. If NATO members are ready to see us in the alliance, then do it immediately. Because people are dying on a daily basis,” he continued, adding that he’s been grateful for NATO’s aid since the invasion began.

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Selected Articles: This Is the End of Free Speech Online

March 21st, 2022 by Global Research News

Dear Readers,

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

Meanwhile, PDF versions are still available for purchase.

Thank you for your valuable support.

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This Is the End of Free Speech Online

By Fraser Myers, March 20, 2022

This week the long-awaited Online Safety Bill was published, which aims to make the UK the ‘safest place to be online in the world’ – in other words, the country with the most strictly regulated and censored internet of any liberal democracy. This mammoth piece of legislation was five years in the making, and those five years show. The bill is vast in scope, and terrifying in its implications for free speech.

A Fourth Booster Program Will Kill 20 American Citizens and Will Maim 2,500 via Car Accidents on the Way to the Doctor’s Office

By Dr. James Lyons-Weiler, March 21, 2022

Math says that about 2,500 people will have to seek medical attention for mild and serious injuries from car accidents if 216 million people travel to the doctor’s office to receive the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Propaganda Machine at Work: Aussie Media Desperately Trying to Dissociate Cardiovascular Injuries from COVID Vaccines

By Ramon Tomey, March 21, 2022

Australian media outlets are trying to dissociate the cardiovascular injuries suffered by vaccinated people from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, linking them instead to “genetic mutations.”

Video: “The Criminalization of War” is The Avenue to Reaching World Peace

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 21, 2022

Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theatre operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

Video: Covid-19: Engineered Destruction of Civil Society: Prof Michel Chossudovsky

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Caroline Mailloux, March 20, 2022

Destabilizing the social, political and economic structure of 190 sovereign countries cannot constitute  a “solution” to combating the virus. But that was the imposed “solution” which was implemented in several stages from the very outset of the corona crisis in January 2020.  It’s the destruction of people’s  lives. It is the destabilization of civil society.

Nazification and Denazification in Our Own Times

By Prof. Anthony J. Hall, March 20, 2022

Indeed, honest and balanced reports of all aspects of the conflict are few and far between. Instead we in the so-called “West” are delivered onslaughts of anti-Russian hysteria written and spoken by the propagandists charged to keep the business of war booming.

“Sudden Death of Corona Crisis” Versus “Sudden War with Ukraine”

By Peter Koenig, March 20, 2022

From one day to the next, a sudden change of priorities – of official UN and government, as well as media priorities, that is. Covid is out and war is in. And we, the people, are to believe it. Everything changed. Corona, held our breath for the last two years, suddenly it disappears, as if it never happened, and makes place to a war, practically overnight. A war that risks to escalate – they say – into a nuclear war. And a war where Russia attacks Ukraine and may use nuclear weapons, thereby prompt NATO to retaliate also with nuclear missiles – and bingo, we have WWIII.

Ukraine Crisis: Transcript of Leaked Nuland-Pyatt Call. “F**k the EU”

By Victoria Nuland, Geoffrey Pyatt, and Jonathan Marcus, March 20, 2022

This leaked telephone exchange was originally published online. It was reported by several media including the BBC in February 2014.  This conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt confirms unequivocally that Washington was involved in a Ukraine “regime change” operation in February 2014.

“COVID-19 shots’ effects on fertility, targeting children with social pressure and coercion to get jabbed”: Robert Malone and Candace Owens Interview

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 20, 2022

In this nearly four-hour discussion with Candace Owens, Malone touches on the global narrative that’s intent on hunting down physicians and taking away their licenses for providing early COVID-19 treatment and how Bill Gates and Big Tech have succeeded in creating monopolies and gained control of information.

Former BlackRock Advisor Tells RFK, Jr.: ‘FDA is in on the cover-up’

By David Marks, March 20, 2022

In an interview with former BlackRock advisor Edward Dowd on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dowd discussed why they believe COVID vaccine makers committed fraud, and government agencies know it.

“Sleeping With the Enemy”: Washington Asks Turkey (NATO’s Heavy Weight) to Deliver Russia’s State of the Art S-400 Air Defense System to Ukraine to Defend itself against Russia

By Nauman Sadiq, March 20, 2022

Slovakia’s defense minister said Thursday, March 17, that the country was willing to give Ukraine its S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems if it receives a “proper replacement.” At a press conference in Slovakia with US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said Slovakia was discussing the S-300s with the US and Ukraine.

The U.S. Has Killed More Than 20 Million People in 37 “Victim Nations” Since World War II

By James A. Lucas, March 20, 2022

After the catastrophic attacks of September 11 2001 monumental sorrow and a feeling of desperate and understandable anger began to permeate the American psyche. A few people at that time attempted to promote a balanced perspective by pointing out that the United States had also been responsible for causing those same feelings in people in other nations, but they produced hardly a ripple.

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A Fourth Booster Program Will Kill 20 American Citizens and Will Maim 2,500 via Car Accidents on the Way to the Doctor’s Office

March 21st, 2022 by Dr. James Lyons-Weiler

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There are over 38,000 fatal car accidents in the US each year. There are about 411 billion car trips per year.

There are 216 million Americans who are “fully vaccinated”.

If all 216 million vaccinating Americans travel to the doctor’s office to take a fourth COVID-19 vaccine, the risk of dying on the way is

(38,000/411,000,000,000)*216,000,000 = 19.97 people who will die.

There are 4,800,000 car accidents that lead to the need for medical care each year.

Math says that about 2,500 people will have to seek medical attention for mild and serious injuries from car accidents if 216 million people travel to the doctor’s office to receive the fourth dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.

Dr. Vinay Prasad discusses the report being cited to support a fourth dose.

The efficacy measure? Prevalence of sore throats.

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Propaganda Machine at Work: Aussie Media Desperately Trying to Dissociate Cardiovascular Injuries from COVID Vaccines

March 21st, 2022 by Ramon Tomey

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Australian media outlets are trying to dissociate the cardiovascular injuries suffered by vaccinated people from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines, linking them instead to “genetic mutations.”

One reporter, Gabriella Rogers of Nine News, tackled this issue in one of her stories. She featured the tale of Sydney resident Liza Stearn, who experienced spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD). The condition involves a small tearing in the coronary artery, which causes a blood clot to develop.

The 41-year-old Stearn suffered a heart attack in 2015, but managed to survive. She told Rogers that it required “lots of CPR for apparently over 40 minutes” and “seven shocks of the defibrillator” before she stabilized. While Stearn did not experience any chest pain, she experienced warning signs such as a fainting feeling and a cold sweat.

According to the Nine News health reporter, a study done in the U.S. identified “genetic mutations” that weaken the collagens that make up blood vessels. She added that while SCAD causes about 25 percent of heart attacks in women below the age of 50, men are also susceptible to the condition.

Dr. Robert Graham of the New South Wales-based Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute (VCCRI) shared a case of another SCAD patient he encountered. The SCAD patient from Melbourne who was just under 40 years old had suffered from a severe heart attack.

“We’ve got some very interesting families now where we think we absolutely nailed the gene that’s causing [SCAD],” said Graham. He also described the U.S. study that attributed SCAD to genetic mutations as “still early” and meant “for a very small number of patients.” Still, Graham said it needs to be replicated.

Rogers mentioned that the VCCRI is “casting the net wider” by taking gene samples from a list of 400 SCAD patients and using sophisticated techniques to determine other mutations responsible for the condition.

“Experts say finding an underlying cause of the condition is crucial, as up to 30 percent of cases are likely to have another heart attack,” she added.

Is SCAD the new name for damage caused by the spike protein vaccines?

The timing of the Nine News report about Stearn coincides with the emergence of reports about COVID-19 vaccine damage. The shots have been found to cause the formation of clots in the blood vessels, mainly attributed to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein used in them. (Related: BIOWEAPON: New study reveals spike protein in coronavirus vaccines responsible for adverse reactions.)

Texas cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough pointed this out during his conversation with Del Bigtree of “The HighWire.” He said: “Everyone understands these blood clots in the body are a bad thing. The spike protein is incontrovertible; it causes blood clotting. Every single study shows that the spike protein damages endothelial cells.”

“People have a hard time figuring out – is it the virus with the spike protein, or the spike protein alone? Can it damage things? Just the spike protein alone. Does it damage cells? Does it damage the heart? Does it cause blood clotting? The answer is yes.”

McCullough mentioned how the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the COVID-19 vaccine travels throughout the entire body, damaging different organs. “The spike protein, after vaccination, is traveling in the body in what’s called exosomes or small phospholipid packets. [They] move in the body independently.”

The cardiologist also cited findings by long-haul COVID specialist Dr. Bruce Patterson, who guested in the former’s program “The McCullough Report.” He told Bigtree: “I asked Bruce what [he was] seeing, [and] he said: ‘I’m seeing the S1 and S2 [segments] in vaccinated people for as long as I can observe them – months.’” According to Patterson’s best estimate, the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein would most likely stay for “more than a year.”

Watch this video about SCAD and how COVID-19 vaccines play a role in the condition.

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Video: “The Criminalization of War” is The Avenue to Reaching World Peace

March 21st, 2022 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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***

This article was first published on March 22m 2018.

The world is at a very dangerous crossroads. The crisis in Ukraine could lead us into World War III scenario.

***

The US administration has embarked upon the ultimate war crime, a Worldwide military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. 

The Pentagon’s global military design is one of world conquest. 

This military deployment of US-NATO forces is occurring in several regions of the world simultaneously, resulting in millions of civilian deaths and countless atrocities. 

Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theatre operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

In turn, Israel in liaison with the US, is threatening Iran with nuclear weapons. And the U.S. and its allies are threatening, Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.  

Under a global military agenda, the actions undertaken by the Western military alliance (U.S.-NATO-Israel) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ukraine are coordinated at the highest levels of the military hierarchy.  

In turn, military undertakings are closely coordinated with a process of economic warfare which consists not only in imposing sanctions on sovereign countries but also in deliberate acts of destabilization of financial and currencies markets, with a view to undermining the enemies’ national economies.

Michel Chossudovsky’s presentation at the Putrajaya International Conference: New World Order, Recipe for War or Peace, March 2015, outlines the need to “criminalize war”

The Criminalization of War

What is at stake is a global criminal undertaking in defiance of international law. In the words of the late William Rockler:

The United States has discarded pretensions to international legality and decency, and embarked on a course of raw imperialism run amok.” (William Rockler, Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor)

We will recall that the architect of Nuremberg, Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg Prosecutor Robert Jackson said with some hesitation:

“We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well.”

Does this historical statement apply to President Donald Trump and his European political cohorts?
The US-NATO led war applied Worlwide is a criminal undertaking under the disguise of counter-terrorism. It violates the Nuremberg Charter, the US constitution and the UN charter. According to former chief Nuremberg prosector Benjamin Ferencz, in relation to the 2003 invasion of Iraq:

“a prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity — that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.”

Moreover, the evidence amply confirms that the United States of America is a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” and that the campaign against the Islamic State is a smokescreen used by the US and its allies to justify in the eyes of public opinion its global war of conquest.

Under Nuremberg the “Global War on Terrorism” is a criminal undertaking.

The Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War

Following in the footsteps of Nuremberg, the objective of the December 2005 Kuala Lumpur initiative led by Tun Mahathir Mohamad was to criminalize war and eventually abolish war.

Let us recall the fundamental principles contained in the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War under the helm of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, the fourth and longest serving prime minister of Malaysia.

“Killings in war are as criminal as the killings within societies in times of peace. 

Since killings in peace time are subject to the domestic law of crime, killings in war must likewise be subject to the international law of crimes.

This should be so irrespective of whether these killings in war are authorized or permitted by domestic law.” (See full text of the Kuala Lumpur Initiative below)

Since the adoption of the KL Initiative to Criminalize war in December 2005, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (KLWCT) has passed two important  judgements:

against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al for war crimes in Iraq,

and against the State of Israel on charges of genocide against the people of Palestine.

More than ever the Kuala Lumpur Initiative launched almost ten years ago in December 2005 by Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad should be widely understood and applied.

What is at stake is the universal recognition of the value of human life, solidarity and understanding between nationalities, ethnic groups and religions, as well as respect for national sovereignty.

These are preconditions for World peace. As outline in the Kuala Lumpur declaration: “peace is the essential condition for the survival and well-being of the human race”.

In contrast to these broad principles which define human values, the US military and financial establishment and its allies are intent upon destroying and destabilizing sovereign countries as part of an imperial agenda, through acts of war and economic plunder, the end result of which is the transformation of sovereign nations into open economic territories, under the jurisdiction of US approved proxy regimes.

To no avail, since 2008, both presidents Obama and Trump have followed in the footsteps of George W. Bush. Together with America’s NATO allies, they have not only supported terrorist organizations, they have covertly supported terrorist insurgencies, waged an extensive bombing campaigns against Libya (2011), Syria, Yemen and Iraq (2014-), drone attacks and targeted assassinations against Pakistan (2004-) among other military-intelligence operations.

Under the Kuala Lumpur Initiative to Criminalize War which was adopted under the helm of Tun Mahathir,

“All national leaders who initiate aggression must be subjected to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.”

Let us be crystal clear: Consistent with Nuremberg, the above statement applies to president Donald Trump and the heads of State and heads of government of NATO countries which endorsed the extensive carpet bombing operations directed against Libya, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, resulting in the death of countless civilians.

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“Prisons are Big Business”: The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Global Economy

March 20th, 2022 by Linda Evans

Editor’s Note: From our archives. This was one of the first articles published by Global Research on October 18,  2001

***

Over 1.8 million people are currently behind bars in the United States. This represents the highest per capita incarceration rate in the history of the world. In 1995 alone, 150 new U.S. prisons were built and filled.

This monumental commitment to lock up a sizeable percentage of the population is an integral part of the globalization of capital. Several strands converge at ” the end of the Cold War, changing relations between labor and capital on an international scale, domestic economic decline, racism, the U.S. role as policeman of the world, and growth of the international drug economy ” creating a booming prison/industrial complex. And the prison/industrial complex is rapidly becoming an essential component of the U.S. economy.

Prisons are Big Business

Like the military/industrial complex, the prison/industrial complex is an interweaving of private business and government interests. Its twofold purpose is profit and social control. Its public rationale is the fight against crime.

Not so long ago, communism was “the enemy” and communists were demonized as a way of justifying gargantuan military expenditures. Now, fear of crime and the demonization of criminals serve a similar ideological purpose: to justify the use of tax dollars for the repression and incarceration of a growing percentage of our population. The omnipresent media blitz about serial killers, missing children, and “random violence” feeds our fear. In reality, however, most of the “criminals” we lock up are poor people who commit nonviolent crimes out of economic need. Violence occurs in less than 14% of all reported crime, and injuries occur in just 3%. In California, the top three charges for those entering prison are: possession of a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance for sale, and robbery. Violent crimes like murder, rape, manslaughter and kidnapping don’t even make the top ten.

Like fear of communism during the Cold War, fear of crime is a great selling tool for a dubious product.

As with the building and maintenance of weapons and armies, the building and maintenance of prisons are big business. Investment houses, construction companies, architects, and support services such as food, medical, transportation and furniture, all stand to profit by prison expansion. A burgeoning “specialty item” industry sells fencing, handcuffs, drug detectors, protective vests, and other security devices to prisons.

As the Cold War winds down and the Crime War heats up, defense industry giants like Westinghouse are re-tooling and lobbying Washington for their share of the domestic law enforcement market. “Night Enforcer” goggles used in the Gulf War, electronic “Hot Wire” fencing (“so hot NATO chose it for high-risk installations”), and other equipment once used by the military, are now being marketed to the criminal justice system.

Communication companies like AT&T, Sprint, and MCI are getting into the act as well — gouging prisoners with exorbitant phone calling rates, often six times the normal long distance charge. Smaller firms like Correctional Communications Corp., dedicated solely to the prison phone business, provide computerized prison phone systems — fully equipped for systematic surveillance. They win government contracts by offering to “kick back” some of the profits to the government agency awarding the contract. These companies are reaping huge profits at the expense of prisoners and their families; prisoners are often effectively cut off from communication due to the excessive cost of phone calls.

One of the fastest growing sectors of the prison/industrial complex is private corrections companies. Investment firm Smith Barney is a part owner of a prison in Florida. American Express and General Electric have invested in private prison construction in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Correctional Corporation Of America, one of the largest private prison owners, already operates internationally, with 48 facilities in 11 states, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Under contract by government to run jails and prisons, and paid a fixed sum per prisoner, the profit motive mandates that these firms operate as cheaply and efficiently as possible. This means lower wages for staff, no unions, and fewer services for prisoners. Private contracts also mean less public scrutiny. Prison owners are raking in billions by cutting corners which harm prisoners. Substandard diets, extreme overcrowding, and abuses by poorly trained personnel have all been documented and can be expected in these institutions which are unabashedly about making money.

Prisons are also a leading rural growth industry. With traditional agriculture being pushed aside by agribusiness, many rural American communities are facing hard times. Economically depressed areas are falling over each other to secure a prison facility of their own. Prisons are seen as a source of jobs — in construction, local vendors and prison staff — as well as a source of tax revenues. An average prison has a staff of several hundred employees and an annual payroll of several million dollars.

Like any industry, the prison economy needs raw materials. In this case the raw materials are prisoners. The prison/industrial complex can grow only if more and more people are incarcerated — even if crime rates drop. “Three Strikes” and Mandatory Minimums (harsh, fixed sentences without parole) are two examples of the legal superstructure quickly being put in place to guarantee that the prison population will grow and grow and grow.

Labor And the Flight of Capital

The growth of the prison/industrial complex is inextricably tied to the fortunes of labor. Ever since the onset of the Reagan-Bush years in 1980, workers in the United States have been under siege. Aggressive union busting, corporate deregulation, and especially the flight of capital in search of cheaper labor markets, have been crucial factors in the downward plight of American workers.

One wave of capital flight occurred in the 1970s. Manufacturing such as textiles in the Northeast moved south to South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama non-union states where wages were low. During the 1980s, many more industries (steel, auto, etc.) closed up shop moving on to the “more competitive atmospheres” of Mexico, Brazil, or Taiwan where wages were a mere fraction of those in the U.S., and environmental, health and safety standards were much lower. Most seriously hurt by these plant closures and layoffs were African-Americans and other semiskilled workers in urban centers who lost their decent paying industrial jobs.

Into the gaping economic hole left by the exodus of jobs from U.S. cities has rushed another economy — the drug economy.

The War on Drugs

The “War on Drugs,” launched by President Reagan in the mid-eighties, has been fought on interlocking international and domestic fronts.

At the international level, the war on drugs has been both a cynical cover-up of U.S. government involvement in the drug trade, as well as justification for U.S. military intervention and control in the Third World.

Over the last 50 years, the primary goal of U.S. foreign policy (and the military/industrial complex) has been to fight communism and protect corporate interests. To this end, the U.S. government has, with regularity, formed strategic alliances with drug dealers throughout the world. At the conclusion of World War II, the OSS (precursor to the CIA) allied itself with heroin traders on the docks of Marseille in an effort to wrest power away from communist dock workers. During the Vietnam war, the CIA aided the heroin producing Hmong tribesmen in the Golden Triangle area. In return for cooperation with the U.S. government’s war against the Vietcong and other national liberation forces, the CIA flew local heroin out of Southeast Asia and into America. It’s no accident that heroin addiction in the U.S. rose exponentially in the 1960s.

Nor is it an accident that cocaine began to proliferate in the United States during the 1980s. Central America is the strategic halfway point for air travel between Colombia and the United States. The Contra War against Sandinista Nicaragua, as well as the war against the national liberation forces in El Salvador, was largely about control of this critical area. When Congress cut off support for the Contras, Oliver North and friends found other ways to fund the Contra re-supply operations — in part through drug dealing. Planes loaded with arms for the Contras took-off from the southern United States, offloaded their weapons on private landing strips in Honduras, then loaded up with cocaine for the return trip.

A 1996 exposé by the San Jose Mercury News documented CIA involvement in a Nicaraguan drug ring which poured thousands of kilos of cocaine into Los Angeles’ African-American neighborhoods in the 1980s. Drug boss, Danilo Blandon, now an informant for the DEA, acknowledged under oath the drugs- for-weapons deals with the CIA-sponsored Contras.

U.S. military presence in Central and Latin America has not stopped drug traffic. But it has influenced aspects of the drug trade, and is a powerful force of social control in the region. U.S. military intervention — whether in propping up dictators or squashing peasant uprisings — now operates under cover of the righteous war against drugs and “narco-terrorism.”

In Mexico, for example, U.S. military aid supposedly earmarked for the drug war is being used to arm Mexican troops in the southern part of the country. The drug trade, however (production, transfer, and distribution points) is all in the north. The “drug war money” is being used primarily to fight against the Zapatista rebels in the southern state of Chiapas who are demanding land reform and economic policy changes which are diametrically opposed to the transnational corporate agenda.

In the Colombian jungles of Cartagena de Chaira, coca has become the only viable commercial crop. In 1996, 30,000 farmers blocked roads and airstrips to prevent crop spraying from aircraft. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) one of the oldest guerrilla organizations in Latin America, held 60 government soldiers hostage for nine months — demanding that the military leave the jungle, that social services be increased, and that alternative crops be made available to farmers. And given the notorious involvement of Colombia’s highest officials with the powerful drug cartels, it is not surprising that most U.S. “drug war” military aid actually goes to fighting the guerrillas.

One result of the international war on drugs has been the internationalization of the U.S. prison population. For the most part, it’s the low level “mules” carrying drugs into this country who are captured and incarcerated in ever-increasing numbers. At least 25% of inmates in the federal prison system today will be subject to deportation when their sentences are completed.

Here at home, the war on drugs has been a war on poor people. Particularly poor, urban, African-American men and women. It’s well documented that police enforcement of the new, harsh drug laws have been focused on low- level dealers in communities of color. Arrests of African-Americans have been about five times higher than arrests of whites, although whites and African- Americans use drugs at about the same rate. And, African-Americans have been imprisoned in numbers even more disproportionate than their relative arrest rates. It is estimated that in 1994, on any given day, one out of every 128 U.S. adults was incarcerated, while one out of every 17 African-American adult males was incarcerated.

The differential in sentencing for powder and crack cocaine is one glaring example of institutionalized racism. About 90% of crack arrests are of African-Americans, while 75% of powder cocaine arrests are of whites. Under federal law, it takes only five grams of crack cocaine to trigger a five-year mandatory minimum sentence. But it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine — 100 times as much — to trigger this same sentence. This flagrant injustice was highlighted by a 1996 nationwide federal prison rebellion when Congress refused to enact changes in sentencing laws that would equalize penalties.

Statistics show that police repression and mass incarceration are not curbing the drug trade. Dealers are forced to move, turf is reshuffled, already vulnerable families are broken up. But the demand for drugs still exists, as do huge profits for high-level dealers in this fifty billion-dollar international industry.

>From one point of view, the war on drugs could actually be seen as a pre- emptive strike. The state’s repressive apparatus working overtime. Put poor people away before they get angry. Incarcerate those at the bottom, the helpless, the hopeless, before they demand change. What drugs don’t damage — in terms of intact communities, the ability to take action, to organize — the war on drugs and mass imprisonment will surely destroy.

The crack down on drugs has not stopped drug use. But it has taken thousands of unemployed (and potentially angry and rebellious) young men and women off the streets. And it has created a mushrooming prison population.

Prison Labor

An American worker who once upon a time made $8/hour, loses his job when the company relocates to Thailand where workers are paid only $2/day. Unemployed, and alienated from a society indifferent to his needs, he becomes involved in the drug economy or some other outlawed means of survival. He is arrested, put in prison, and put to work. His new salary: 22 cents/hour.

>From worker to unemployed to criminal to convict laborer, the cycle has come full circle. And the only victor is big business.

For private business, prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No unemployment insurance or workers’ compensation to pay. No language problem, as in a foreign country. New leviathan prisons are being built with thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria’s Secret. All at a fraction of the cost of “free labor.”

Prisoners can be forced to work for pennies because they have no rights. Even the 14th Amendment to the Constitution which abolished slavery, excludes prisoners from its protections.

And, more and more, prisons are charging inmates for basic necessities from medical care, to toilet paper, to use of the law library. Many states are now charging “room and board.” Berks County prison in Pennsylvania is charging inmates $10 per day to be there. California has similar legislation pending. So, while government cannot (yet) actually require inmates to work at private industry jobs for less than minimum wage, they are forced to by necessity.

Some prison enterprises are state run. Inmates working at UNICOR (the federal prison industry corporation) make recycled furniture and work 40 hours a week for about $40 per month. The Oregon Prison Industries produces a line of “Prison Blues” blue jeans. An ad in their catalogue shows a handsome prison inmate saying, “I say we should make bell-bottoms. They say I’ve been in here too long.”

Bizarre, but true…

Prison industries are often directly competing with private industry. Small furniture manufacturers around the country complain that they are being driven out of business by UNICOR which pays 23 cents/hour and has the inside track on government contracts. In another case, U.S. Technologies sold its electronics plant in Austin, Texas, leaving its 150 workers unemployed. Six week later, the electronics plant reopened in a nearby prison.

Welcome to the New World Order

The proliferation of prisons in the United States is one piece of a puzzle called the globalization of capital.

Since the end of the Cold War, capitalism has gone on an international business offensive. No longer impeded by an alternative socialist economy or the threat of national liberation movements supported by the Soviet Union or China, transnational corporations see the world as their oyster. Agencies such as the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, bolstered by agreements like NAFTA and GATT are putting more and more power into the hands of transnational corporations by putting the squeeze on national governments. The primary mechanism of control is debt. For decades, developing countries have depended on foreign loans, resulting in increasing vulnerability to the transnational corporate strategy for the global economy. Access to international credit and aid is given only if governments agree to certain conditions known as “structural adjustment.”

In a nutshell, structural adjustment requires cuts in social services, privatization of state-run industry, repeal of agreements with labor about working conditions and minimum wage, conversion of multi-use farm lands into cash crop agriculture for export, and the dismantling of trade laws which protect local economies. Under structural adjustment, police and military expenditures are the only government spending that is encouraged. The sovereignty of nations is compromised when, as in the case of Vietnam, trade sanctions are threatened unless the government allows Camel cigarettes to litter the countryside with billboards, or promises to spend millions in the U.S.- orchestrated crackdown on drugs.

The basic transnational corporate philosophy is this: the world is a single market; natural resources are to be exploited; people are consumers; anything which hinders profit is to be routed out and destroyed. The results of this philosophy in action are that while economies are growing, so is poverty, so is ecological destruction, so are sweatshops and child labor. Across the globe, wages are plummeting, indigenous people are being forced off their lands, rivers are becoming industrial dumping grounds, and forests are being obliterated. Massive regional starvation and “World Bank riots” are becoming more frequent throughout the Third World.

All over the world, more and more people are being forced into illegal activity for their own survival as traditional cultures and social structures are destroyed. Inevitably, crime and imprisonment rates are on the rise. And the United States law enforcement establishment is in the forefront, domestically and internationally, in providing state-of-the-art repression.

Within the United States, structural adjustment (sometimes known as Contract With America) takes the form of welfare and social service cuts, continued massive military spending, and skyrocketing prison spending. Walk through any poor urban neighborhood: school systems are crumbling, after school programs, libraries, parks and drug treatment centers are closed. But you will see more police stations and more cops. Often, the only “social service” available to poor young people is jail.

The dismantling of social programs, and the growing dominance of the right- wing agenda in U.S. politics has been made possible, at least in part, by the successful repression of the civil rights and liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. Many of the leaders — Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and many others — were assassinated. Others, like Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, Leonard Peltier, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, have been locked up. Over 150 political leaders from the black liberation struggle, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and other resistence efforts are still in prison. Many are serving sentences ranging from 40 to 90 years. Oppressed communities have been robbed of radical political leadership which might have led an opposition movement. We are reaping the results.

The number of people in U.S. prisons has more than tripled in the past 17 years — from 500,000 in 1980 to 1.8 million in 1997. Today, more than five million people are behind bars, on parole, probation, or under other supervision by the criminal justice system. The state of California now spends more on prisons than on higher education, and over the past decade has built 19 prisons and only one branch university.

Add to this, the fact that increasing numbers of women are being locked up. Between 1980 and 1994, the number of women in prison increased five-fold. Many of these women are mothers — leaving future generations growing up in foster homes or on the streets.

What is to be done?

Prisons are not reducing crime. But they are fracturing already vulnerable families and communities.

Poor people of color are being locked up in grossly disproportionate numbers, primarily for non-violent crimes. But Americans are not feeling safer.

As “criminals” become scapegoats for our floundering economy and our deteriorating social structure, even the guise of rehabilitation is quickly disappearing from our penal philosophy. After all: rehabilitate for what? To go back into an economy which has no jobs? To go back into a community which has no hope? As education and other prison programs are cut back, or in most cases eliminated altogether, prisons are becoming vast, over-crowded, holding tanks. Or worse: factories behind bars.

And, prison labor is undercutting wages –something which hurts all working and poor Americans. It’s a situation which can only occur because organized labor is divided and weak and has not kept step with organized capital.

While capital has globalized, labor has not. While the transnationals truly are fashioning our planet into a global village, there is still little communication or cooperation between workers around the world. Only an internationally linked labor movement can effectively challenge the power of the transnational corporations.

There have been some wonderful, shining instances of international worker solidarity. In the early 1980s, 3M workers in South Africa walked out in support of striking 3M workers in New Jersey. Recently, longshore workers in Denmark, Spain, Sweden and several other countries closed down ports around the world in solidarity with striking Liverpool dockers. The company was forced to negotiate. When Renault closed its plant in Belgium, 100,000 demonstrated in Brussels, pressuring the French and Belgium governments to condemn the plant closure and compel its reopening.

Here in the U.S., there is a glimmer of hope as the AFL-CIO has voted in some new, more progressive leadership. We’ll see how that shapes up, and whether the last 50 years of anti-communist, bread-and-butter American unionism is really a thing of the past.

What is certain is that resistance to the transnational corporate agenda is growing around the globe:

In 1996, the people of Bougainville, a small New Guinea island, organized a secessionist rebellion, protesting the dislocations and ecological destruction caused by corporate mining on the island. When the government hired mercenaries from South Africa to train local troops in counterinsurgency warfare, the army rebelled, threw out the mercenaries, and deposed the Prime Minister.

A one day General Strike shut down Haiti in January 1997. Strikers demanded the suspension of negotiations between the Prime Minister and the International Monetary Fund/World Bank. They protested the austerity measures imposed by the IMF and WB which would mean laying off 7,000 government workers and the privatization of the electric and telephone companies.

In Nigeria, the Ogoni people conducted a protracted eight year struggle against Shell Oil. Acid rain, and hundreds of oil spills and gas flares were turning the once fertile countryside into a near wasteland. Their peaceful demonstrations, election boycotts, and pleas for international solidarity were met with violent government repression and the eventual execution of Ogoni writer-leader Ken Saro Wiwa.

In France, a month-long General Strike united millions of workers who protested privatization, a government worker pay freeze, and cutbacks in social services. Telephone, airline, power, postal, education, health care and metal workers all joined together, bringing business to a standstill. The right-wing Chirac government was forced to make minor concessions before being voted out for a new “socialist” administration.

At the Oak Park Heights Correctional Facility in Minnesota, 150 prisoners went on strike in March 1997, demanding to be paid the minimum wage. Although they lost a litigation battle to attain this right, their strike gained attention and support from several local labor unions.

Just as the prison/industrial complex is becoming increasingly central to the growth of the U.S. economy, prisoners are a crucial part of building effective opposition to the transnational corporate agenda. Because of their enforced invisibility, powerlessness, and isolation, it’s far too common for prisoners to be left out of the equation of international solidarity. Yet, opposing the expansion of the prison/industrial complex, and supporting the rights and basic humanity of prisoners, may be the only way we can stave off the consolidation of a police state that represses us all — where you or a friend or family member may yourself end up behind bars.

Clearly, the only alternative that will match the power of global of capital is an internationalization of human solidarity. Because, truly, we are all in this together.

“International solidarity is not an act of charity. It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.”

Linda Evans is a former anti-imperialist political prisoner. She was locked up for 16 years due to her political actions opposing racism and U.S. military intervention around the world. While in prison, she organized AIDS education for prisoners and participated in anti-racism work. Her sentence was commuted by President Clinton and she was released on January 20, 2001. Since her release, Linda has been speaking at college campuses and community groups about political prisoners and the prison-industrial complex.

Eve Goldberg is a writer, filmmaker and political activist. She is currently involved in the campaigns for global peace as well as support to U.S. political prisoners.

Linda and Eve wrote this article while Linda was still incarcerated. Linda Evans was doing research while in prison and was in touch with Global Research during her incarceration.

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Israel’s Links to Ukraine’s Thriving Neo-Nazi Movement?

March 20th, 2022 by Robert Inlakesh

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Although there is no concrete evidence of a direct Israeli government link with the Azov Battalion or other neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, there are clearly Israeli citizens who are directly aiding them.

Western media have attempted to all but deny the existence of neo-Nazis in Ukraine, alleging that Russia’s goal to de-Nazify Kiev is not possible because Ukraine’s president is Jewish. But what is to be made of an Israeli Jew openly calling himself the co-founder of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion?

Kiev’s infamous Azov Battalion, officially part of the National Guard of Ukraine, has been widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitary force. It has also been connected with foreign white supremacist organizations. In addition to this, the far-right, neo-Nazi and white-nationalist members in its ranks have even been criticized by the likes of Human Rights Watch and the United Nations for human rights abuses.

Despite the well-documented history of racially motivated crimes and attacks on Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community, the battalion has been indirectly and continually armed by Western powers.

In June 2015 the United States and Canada banned the support and/or training of Azov by their forces, specifically citing its neo-Nazi connections. However, the following year the U.S. lifted its ban owing to pressure from the Pentagon. In 2019, The Nation magazine published an article in which it was stated that “[p]ost-Maidan Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces.” All of which is to say that Azov can conclusively be labeled neo-Nazi. This may be why reports are now emerging of White Supremacists and far-Right militia members flocking to Ukraine, to fight alongside extremist forces in the country.

Israeli support of and involvement in the Azov Battalion

Prior to Azov becoming an integrated part of the Ukrainian military, the group was funded primarily by Ukrainian oligarchs, the most well known of whom was Igor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky is of Jewish heritage and is an Israeli citizen and well-known billionaire businessman. Despite his being a Jewish Israeli, he had no problem pouring money into neo-Nazi volunteer militias such as the Azov and Aidar, among other far-right groups that feature elements hostile to Jewish people.

Although the Jewish president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is often held up by mainstream Western media as proof that there is no problem with neo-Nazis in Ukraine, he himself received financial backing from the same oligarch – Igor Kolomoisky – who was financing neo-Nazis. Zelenskyy’s presidential bid in 2019, which saw him win 73% of the vote, was successful on the basis that he was running in order to combat corruption and create peace in the country but, as the leaked documents known as the Pandora Papers revealed, he himself was storing funds in offshore bank accounts. Zelenskyy’s campaign was at the time boosted and bankrolled by the Israeli-Ukrainian-Cypriot billionaire Kolomoisky – who was himself accused of stealing $5.5 billion from his own bank.

It may come as a shock, but there are actually many Israeli Jews who fight with ultra-nationalist Ukrainian groups and who coordinate closely with, or even belong to, neo-Nazi groups such as Azov. Konstantyn Batozsky, for example, who stated that he worked as a political consultant in Donetsk for the Azov Battalion between 2014-15, even defended Azov members who had tattoos of Nazi symbols.

“They were soccer hooligans and wanted attention, so yeah, I was shocked when I saw guys with swastika tattoos,” Batozsky said of Azov Battalion members he personally got to know. He then followed that statement by saying. “But I talked with them all the time about being Jewish and they had nothing negative to say. They had no anti-Jewish ideology.” Another Jewish Israeli, Daniel Kovzhun, claims that “there were Orthodox Jews in Azov,” which he claims came down to all members being Ukrainian nationalists and therefore Jewishness was not an issue.

Muslims however, seem to be a major issue for the Azov Battalion. The Islamophobia present not only in Azov, but also in the National Guard of Ukraine, came through strongly on social media as the official National Guard site glorified the Azov Battalion as they dipped their bullets in pig fat. The video was directed at Muslim soldiers from Chechnya who are fighting on the side of Russia and were described as “orcs” by the National Guard on Twitter. In the video, one of the Azov fighters can be heard saying: “Dear Muslim brothers, in our country, you will not go to heaven.” It is a belief shared by some white supremacists that if they kill a Muslim with a bullet coated in pig fat, the Muslim will not enter heaven.

Although little is published about this fact in English, according to the BBC, an Israeli-Ukrainian named Natan Khazin claims to have co-founded the Azov Battalion. In an interview conducted by BBC Ukraine in 2018, which attempted to downplay the claims of rising antisemitism in Ukraine, Khazin is quoted as saying: “I can say that, despite the difficult situation in Ukraine and the war, the level of antisemitism is not growing. Someone in the West simply does not understand the real state of things in Ukraine in this area.”

In The Forward, a Jewish news outlet, Khazin is described as a “yarmulke-wearing … veteran of the Israel Defense Forces and an ordained rabbi.” The description continues:

[He is] representative of many young Ukrainian Jews who are Zionist, religiously observant and at the same time strong Ukrainian patriots. Some of them refer to themselves humorously as Zhido-Banderists — a fusion of the pejorative term for “Jew” with the name Stepan Bandera, leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which fought for Ukrainian independence during World War II. The organization’s forces also participated in the massacre of Jews, so the term Zhido-Banderist is self-consciously ironic.”

During an interview, published in a condensed form by The Forward, Khazin is asked, “If it isn’t confidential, where did you serve [while  in the Israeli military]?” He answers:  “In the Gaza Strip. I know what it’s like to move down a street with people shooting, throwing stones or burning objects.”

All the above examples of Israelis actively collaborating with known neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine are of private Israeli citizens and there is no direct connection to the Israeli government. However, the Israeli government itself seems to have participated, much like the United States and other NATO nations, in supplying weapons to the Ukrainian military, which is considered by some as a form of indirectly arming the Azov Battalion and other ultra-right elements. In 2018, more than 40 human rights activists filed a petition with the Israeli High Court, in which they argued that the Israeli weapons were being sent to serve those who espouse neo-Nazi beliefs. They cited “evidence that the right-wing Azov militia, whose members are part of Ukraine’s armed forces, and are supported by the country’s ministry of internal affairs,” were using the weapons, according to a report published in Haaretz.

Although there is no concrete evidence of a direct Israeli government link with the Azov Battalion or other neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine, there are clearly Israeli citizens who are directly aiding them. There are, however, reports that claim that Israeli forces have directly trained the Azov Battalion and Azov has been shown to possess Israeli-made weapons. When such a connection between neo-Nazi groups and Israeli Jews in Ukraine clearly exists, this in of itself should call into question the sincerity of Western media’s attempt to use President Zelenskyy’s Jewish identity in order to push to the side claims that there are hardline neo-Nazi elements inside Ukraine. Furthermore, these groups are clearly able to coexist beside Israeli citizens, so long as those Jewish Israelis are themselves Ukrainian nationalists. This is not to say that anti-Semitism does not exist in these groups, however.

Israeli far-right alignment in Europe

The propensity for right-wing Israelis to align themselves with right-wing Europeans has long been clear, and this propensity has even meant allying themselves with groups accused of antisemitism. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – a right wing German party condemned by World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder as being “a disgrace for Germany,” and frequently accused of antisemitism – has strong links to Israel. Interestly, figures regarded as being from the far-right – such as Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Nigel Farage, and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán – are all on record as being pro-Israeli and have made efforts to align themselves with the Jewish State. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also made it clear that he would meet and align himself with figures accused of antisemitism, such as Orbán.

Netanyahu tried hard to cement Israel’s alliance with the Visegrad bloc — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic — which Foreign Policy magazine described as forming “a common entity imbued with hostility to the values of the Enlightenment, to human rights, to the concept of a nation as a community of citizens, to the principle of equality, and, generally speaking, to foreigners.” Of course, when it comes to Israeli government endeavors, there is a pragmatic incentive for Israel, and such alliances with the far-right should not be taken as a purely love-bond relationship. But the fact that these relationships have existed, and continue to exist, should indicate that right-wing Israelis can readily coexist with the European far-right.

As for white supremacists in the United States, there are many who openly align themselves with Israel. One such example is White Nationalist leader Richard Spencer, who is an open supporter of Israel and came out in 2018 to back Israel’s Nation State Bill, which affirmed that  “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” The bill was widely pegged as racist and Spencer said of it that he has “great admiration for Israel’s Nation-State Law. Jews are, once again, at the vanguard, rethinking politics and sovereignty for the future, showing a path forward for Europeans.” Israel’s system of racial supremacy is viewed with great admiration by many white supremacists, who seek to model their own system along similar lines, according to people like Richard Spencer.

This sort of mentality, which aligns Israel and the Western far-right, cannot simply be ignored and demonstrates why it is not necessarily a valid point to say that the presence of Jewish individuals in Ukraine’s fight against Russia debunks the claims of neo-Nazi elements existing. As is demonstrated above, these groups not only exist in spite of Jewish individuals being present, but in some cases even feature Israeli Jews in their ranks.

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Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the occupied Palestinian territories and hosts the show ‘Palestine Files’. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’. Follow him on Twitter @falasteen47

Nazification and Denazification in Our Own Times

March 20th, 2022 by Prof. Anthony J. Hall

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There are enormous implications that flow from President Vladimir Putin’s alleged assertion that the Russian government intends to “denazify” Ukraine as part of the process of its “demilitarization.” So far, however, these implications have yet to been seriously addressed by the mainstream media. 

Indeed, honest and balanced reports of all aspects of the conflict are few and far between. Instead we in the so-called “West” are delivered onslaughts of anti-Russian hysteria written and spoken by the propagandists charged to keep the business of war booming. Amidst the journalistic demands for blood and more blood come many variations on the absurd meme that Putin is entirely to blame, that “Putin is the Hitler of the 21st Century.”

 

See this.

There is a failure to put this controversy into anything like its true historical context. The incentives are great on the side of the United States and its NATO accomplices to hide and misrepresent their own roles in creating the conditions for the current conflict.

The Russian leader’s emphasis on the denazification of Ukraine brings forward a corrupted version of the core clash in the Second World War. The outcome of WWII was ultimately decided in the Russian and Ukrainian heartland where the Soviet Armed Forces landed the decisive blows that fatally crippled the National Socialist Army of Adolph Hitler. This blow to the Third Reich was accompanied by the sacrifice of the lives of over 25,000,000  soldiers and civilians on the Soviet-side of the conflict.

When the issue of denazification is raised outside the propagandistic framework of the Putin-as-Hitler meme, the matter is usually dismissed as ridiculous or outright delusional. The most common response is that the Ukraine could not host prominent Nazi factions because the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, is himself Jewish.

This kind of simple-minded reductionism is unworthy of the very important topic of nazification and denazification at this momentous juncture in human history.

New Depths of Profanity

These days many authorities are prone to maliciously smear their own political opponents as “neo-Nazis” or “White supremacists” or people who “stand with the swastika.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is one of those politicians who regularly exhibits careless resorts to some of the weaponized terms of our time. He takes the obscenities of wedge politics to new depths of profanity not seen so far from any previous Canadian prime minister.

On the eve of Putin’s declaration that his government was going to intervene in Ukraine, Trudeau extravagantly accused Canadian Truckers as well as members of Canada’s Official Opposition Party that they “stand with the swastika.” When Trudeau introduced this allegation into the Canadian Parliament, he himself was deeply engaged in supporting and encouraging Nazi factions within the Ukrainian government.

In 2014 the neo-Nazi elements that have long been integral to Ukranian nationalism were brought into the government and embedded in important roles in policing, the Armed Forces and national security. This nazification of the Ukrainian government, a process continuing to this day, was carried out in a US-led government regime change identified with demonstrations at Kiev’s Maidan Square.

See this and this.

With the oversight of Victoria Nuland, US President Barack Obama’s designate, the puppet regime was based on the integration of neo-Nazi factions with a powerful class of oligarchs.

Its most influential member, by far, was Igor Kolomoisky who managed to seize control of major natural gas reserves in Ukraine. In this capacity he paid Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son, to sit on the Board of Burisma Holdings. After buying up TV stations, Kolomoisky also funded one of his more popular actors, Volymyr Zelensky, in the performer’s successful run in 2019 for the Ukrainian presidency. Along the way Kolomoisky helped finance neo-Nazi fighting forces including the Azov, Aidar and Dnipro Battalions.

See this.

Those fascistic forces in Ukraine have also received resources and moral backing from the leadership of many Western countries including that of Canada, one of NATO’s original members.

Justin Trudeau and his Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, are prominent among those that have supported  “fascistic elements” of Ukrainian nationalism, a position that has a significant vote-rich constituency of Canadian citizens.

The private fortunes of the oligarchs typically started with their appropriation of large chunks of state wealth as the Soviet Union disintegrated. This new oligarchical class came to power in the early 1990s under the Russian presidency of Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin’s replacement, Vladimir Putin, navigated his way to domination of the Russian government by many tactics, both fair and foul. These tactics included Putin’s strategic navigation between oligarchical friends and foes.

As World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab points out, Vladimir Putin passed through the same WEF Young Leaders program as, for instance, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.

See this.

Putin, however, seems to have moved away from the globalist and corporatist preoccupations of the Davos School to a more aggressively nationalist strategy for guiding his own country into the twenty-first century. This journey is part of the process that gave rise to the present clash of competing forces situating humanity on the abyss of global war.

See this.

Ukraine as an Vehicle of Animosity to Russia

Joe Biden came to presidential power in the United States as a key beneficiary and participant in a very elaborate campaign of high-echelon dirty tricks. The objective of this campaign was to discredit US President Donald Trump by fabricating a lie, including through the fabrication of documents, that he was some sort of Russian agent under the thumb of President Putin.

Inside and outside the White House, Biden was a key US operative in the project of shaping the government of Ukraine as a major strategic liability for Russia. Biden’s role in helping shape Ukraine as an instrument of US animosity towards Russia was recorded in many ways, including in the corrupt business dealings in Kiev of his wayward son, Hunter.

In an essay entitled, “Uncle Sam’s Nazi Warriors,” Mike Whitney addresses the latest turn in now-President Joe Biden’s involvements in Ukraine. Whitney highlights the inconsistencies in the Biden administration’s domestic and foreign policies. Whitney writes,

“Readers should take a minute to savor Washington’s duplicity… While the Biden administration and the entire MSM was denouncing the January 6 [US Capitol] protestors as “racists” and “white supremacists”, the US government was busy arming and training “white crusader” Nazis to carry out its war on Russia….. these are not your garden-variety, right-wing militants. These are full-fledged, battle-hardened Nazi storm troopers that have engaged in all-manner of illegal and sadistic activities including “the mass killing of prisoners, the concealment of corpses in mass graves and the systematic use of physical and psychological torture techniques.”

See this.

Whitney’s citation comes from the analysis presented by Msgr. Carlo Maria Viganò on the background and context of the Russia-Ukraine Crisis. The analysis includes a well documented section on “Neo-Nazi and Extremist Movements in Ukraine.” Prominent among the highlighted groups is the Azov Battalion, a paramilitary organization that has been officially integrated into the National Guard of the Ukrainian Army.

See this.

The primary symbol of the Azov Battalion is the SS symbol. This SS emblem is proudly brandished as part of the military apparatus of the Ukrainian government. The Azov Battalion has played a prominent role in the virtual civil war since 2015 pitting many thousands of self-identifying Russian Ukrainians, mostly in eastern Ukraine including prominently the Donbass and Lugansk region.

The Russian government recognized the independence of these regions prior to President Putin’s decision to simultaneously demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. Another major aspect of the Russian Armed Forces’ current assignment in Ukraine is to seize and dismantle about 30 bioweapons laboratories built and maintained by the US Pentagon. This initiative is turning out to have broad-ranging implications for the prospects of war and peace in the international community.

The Invention and Manipulation of Enemies

At the highest levels of command and control there are many keys to asserting and maintaining top-down power over subordinates. One of the keys to maintaining pre-eminence in the exercise of power is in developing the capacity to invent enemies and to control their imagery and activities through covert means.

Especially since the introduction of a specious interpretation of the events of 9/11, the resort to the illusions of false flag “terrorism” have become a crucial element in the exercise of power at the highest levels. More recently the manufactured COVID crisis demonstrated a new twist on old techniques in the scientific engineering of fear to grab and maintain new forms of imperial dominance.

The most important battleground of all, is the theatre of the human mind where beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours have become the main prize for the conquistadors of psychological warfare. In extending the legacy of MK-Ultra, Operation Mockingbird and other initiatives in thought control, the CIA seems well embarked in using the Ukrainian cauldron as a means of inventing and manipulating new enemies to demonize and fight against.

Much like some al-Qaeda operatives were CIA recruited, financed and trained in the USA, the CIA is currently involved in a similar scheme in training the Azov Battalion and attending intelligence operatives at military installations in the southern United States. These parallels figure prominently in Whitney Webb’s essay, “Ukraine and the New al-Qaeda.”

See this.

Webb suspects that the CIA has been pulling strings behind the scenes to push Putin over a major “Red Line,” including the announcement by the Ukrainian President of his government’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons.

See this.

In Webb’s view, the CIA’s plan might well be to train and finance yet another proxy force of insurgents to be manipulated in order to gain advantages in various arenas of mental, military and cultural conflict. Webb speculates that “this latest escalation of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has merely served as the opening act for the newest iteration of the seemingly endless ‘War on Terror.’”

The road to the Global War on Terror began in the 1980s with the US government’s decision to recruit, arm, train and finance a Muslim Army to overthrow the Soviet-backed puppet regime in Afghanistan. The creation of al-Qaeda was part of this anti-Soviet strategy. After the defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were deployed in 2001 as primary patsies associated in the media with the false flag operation of 9/11.

It is entirely conceivable that after another contrived false flag event, the Azov Battalion could be pressed into transnational roles similar to those earlier performed by the CIA’s al-Qaeda creation or its subsequent replacement, ISIS.

Whitney’s expectation that that the real culprits of 9/11 are planning something like a reiteration of the events engineered to initiate the Global War on Terror are echoed by Patrick Lawrence in Consortium. Where once al-Qaeda was the set up as a vehicle of Deep State deception, now it is “the Nazi militias that infest the Ukraine’s National Guard that the US arms and trains.”

See this.

Are the Governments that Back Nazi Fighting Units in Ukraine Affected by Their Willingness to Support Nazi Fascism?

What were its intentions when the US government moved its embassy from Kiev to Kviv several days before Putin declared his intentions to intervene with Russian boots on the ground of Ukraine? Eric Zuesse points out that Kyiv was the “the Ukrainian city that was the most ardently pro-Hitler during WW II.”

See this.

In 1941 in Kviv, the local leader of Stepan Bandera’s Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists declared, prematurely as it turned out, the independence of a Ukrainian state allied with Nazi Germany.  The US establishment of a new embassy in a location where Ukrainian nationalism most clearly coincides with the Nazi dimension of Ukrainian history, is highly suggestive.

Most recently the Azov Battalion has been making news on several fronts including for its role in opposing the attempt by Russian Armed Forces to evacuate Russian-speakers from the Mariupol area.

See this.

The Azov group also gets much attention for its efforts to recruit members internationally, a project related to its hosting of a military training camp for children. This project, which includes the goal of encouraging young people to imbibe the philosophy of National Socialism, is pushed forward in violation of UN Conventions.

See this.

Taking his lead from neocon politician Chrystia Freeland and from US politicians like Senator John McCain, Trudeau allowed Canadian soldiers to train fascist units including the Azov Battalion and the Right Sector. The fascist militarism of Ukraine’s Right Sector is expressed in a Canadian branch that sometimes takes part in Ukrainian-Canadian jamborees and such.

As Yves Engler has observed “Alongside the U.S., Canada also funds, equips, and trains the neo-Nazi–infiltrated National Police of Ukraine.”

See this.

Shortly after he acquired the job of Canadian PM in 2015, Trudeau showed interest in developing diplomatic relations with Svoboda, the Ukrainian “Social-Nationalist” political party. The reversal of the National Socialist label is not accidental. In 2016 and 2019 Canada’s Prime Minister met with Svoboda leader, Andriy Parubiy. Parubiy is a political ally of Oleh Tyahnybok who has made no secret of his pro-Nazi convictions.”

See this and this.

The impact of Ukrainian fascism on Canada and other NATO countries should not be understated. Prof. Michel Chossudovsky has addressed these larger existential questions in 2014 when he observed the effect of on the backers of Neo-Nazism in Ukraine. He wrote,

“Supporting Neo-Nazism in any country in the world, from my standpoint, is an act of complicity, particularly in the Ukraine where the Neo-Nazi parties have a long history and where the forefathers were involved in atrocities directed at the Ukrainian population but also at the Jewish community in the Ukraine.”

In the Canadian context the Canadian government’s flirtation with Ukrainian-style Nazism seems to be reflected in the disgraceful treatment of the Canadian Truckers’ movement still seeking an end to mandated injections. The Trudeau Liberals’ actions showed up in the decision to subject peaceful protesters to police brutality, to seize bank accounts without an ounce of due process, and to criminalize under dubious circumstances the members of the Coutts 13.

Chossudovsky concluded with some apt remarks highlighting the contemporary role of corporate rule and financial privatization in our own times by pointing attention to the conditions surrounding Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in the 1930s. Chossudovsky explained,

“The United States supported German conglomerates during World War II and the privatization program launched by Adolph Hitler in 1933 was, in some regards, similar to that adopted in the UK under Margaret Thatcher. The first thing they did was to privatize the railways, and then they privatized the banks and they privatized heavy industry, so that, in effect, the thrust of the Nazi economy in the course of the 1930s was not the state; it was the private sector and it was a profit-driven military agenda.”

See this.

Prof. Chossudovsky’s concluding comments help put in context the role of US-based mercenary soldier businesses in the current conflict. The corporate belligerents preparing to send troops into Ukraine Academi (formerly Blackwater) as well as Cubic and the Dyn Corporation.

 

The UN General Assembly’s December 2021 Motion: “Combating the Glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism”.

On December 16, 2021, two months before the intervention by the Russian government, a motion was passed “combating the glorification of Nazism and neo-Nazism.” Section 5 of the motion included

“Expresses deep concern about the glorification, in any form, of the Nazi movement, neo-Nazism and former members of the Waffen SS organization, including by erecting monuments and memorials….. as well as by the renaming of streets glorifying them.”

See this.

Tellingly, only the USA and Ukraine voted against the resolution. Canada and the EU were among 49 polities to abstain. Supporting the resolution were 130 countries.

We need much more sage and sober discussion concerning the meaning of nazification and denazification in our own times.

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Dr. Anthony Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

 

“Sudden Death of Corona Crisis” Versus “Sudden War with Ukraine”

March 20th, 2022 by Peter Koenig

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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.

The history of this war must be understood.

The bombing and shelling led by Ukraine’s Armed Forces directed against the people of Donbass started eight years ago, resulting in the destruction of residential areas and more than 10,000 civilian casualties.

A  bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

 

From one day to the next, a sudden change of priorities – of official UN and government, as well as media priorities, that is. Covid is out and war is in. And we, the people, are to believe it. Everything changed. Corona, held our breath for the last two years, suddenly it disappears, as if it never happened, and makes place to a war, practically overnight. A war that risks to escalate – they say – into a nuclear war. And a war where Russia attacks Ukraine and may use nuclear weapons, thereby prompt NATO to retaliate also with nuclear missiles – and bingo, we have WWIII. This a scenario that western media paint.

“A Russian war of aggression.” That’s the common western narrative. The villain has suddenly shifted from covid to Russia.

Nobody seems to ask how and why?

Hardly anybody seems to ask for the motives, the background and the history preceding this war.

It’s the media again that dictates global, or at least western, beliefs.

Klaus Schwab – WEF – has coined several statements denigrating humanity’s intelligence, such as

“You will own nothing and you will be happy”, or a more recent one,

“It’s not the Big Fish eating the Small Fish; but the Fast One swallowing the Slow One.”

It shows a certain disdain against humanity.

Does he have a point, as long as much of humanity is still asleep, is slumbering away in illusions, that the status quo is happiness – living in some kind of cognitive dissonance?

Waking up is not easy under the tremendous western billion-and-billion-dollar funded media lie-propaganda. We, with access to alternative media, should help those, who are still living on Cloud Nine, so they may also see the light.

In fact, I strongly believe, it is our moral obligation to do so. Not only to help them, but to help the world to become a better place, a place of togetherness, of solidarity – a place in the LIGHT.

Yes, we shall prevail, over Klaus Schwab and those whose tool, the WEF, he represents

Parenthesis: My Meeting with Andean Peasant Farmer 

The other day I had an interesting conversation with a man, a peasant farmer from Peru’s Andean mountains. He didn’t know much about world affairs, and then asked me some questions about a war in Europe….

With my usual enthusiasm I tried to explain West versus East. He listened carefully, and then he said,

“I‘m so sorry for these people. They are in the dark and would like to see the light, but don’t know how. They feed on our hatred. That’s energy for them. The more we hate them and their actions, the more they thrive – as they cannot see the light. If we are compassionate and feel pity for them, and actually like them – we take away their energy that keeps them in darkness, and may help them see and ascend to the light. Some may not make it – but others will.”

He closed by saying, “the energy that we send around the world with love instead of hate, has an enormous power we can’t see and we don’t know where and when it strikes. But it will never be lost.”

Then he shook my hand and went his way.

This brief interlude left me in awe. It brought to mind The Eagles “Hotel California”, the lyrics of which tell a hidden story, depicting the dark forces trying to govern us. This wise man was perhaps a Shaman – with vibes swinging on a different dimension of consciousness. What a challenge for most of us. But not unsurmountable.

To vibrate on a higher level, loving instead of hating, we also need to know and understand what is happening, open our eyes and ears and be aware that Big Interests want to dominate us. Once we understand this, we become free of fear and may follow the Wise Man’s advice.

The Current War Scare in Ukraine. Spreading Fear

Does anybody believe that the current war scare replacing the covid scare, is a coincidence?

Or is there something else behind it? A sophisticated plan? Pursuing the same goal as Covid – the pursuit of UN Agenda 2030?

What we need to understand: In geopolitics there are no “coincidences”, only plans and strategies – and short, medium and long-erm objectives. So, Covid never exited the world arena and the war didn’t suddenly enter it.

According to Manlio Dinucci,

“the strategic plan of the United States against Russia was elaborated three years ago by the Rand Corporation (the manifesto, Rand Corp: how to bring down Russia, May 21, 2019)”. See this for details.

Both Covid and war are – it appears – instruments for reaching the same objective; multiple purpose instruments, on the one hand to continue spreading fear – actually increasing the fear and panic level of people with a “nuclear scare”, fearful people can be manipulated easier.

And on the other, with the war bringing in a new strategy to hide the real agenda of the darkness-soaked oligarchs, who want to completely subdue the world population and Mother Earth with all her resources.

Yes, let’s not forget, we are sorry about them and we don’t hate them. We just have to be aware what their plan may be.

While all eyes are riveted on Ukraine and the “bad Russians”, the WHO is preparing a special all controlling agenda, that would give the WHO the power over all UN member countries on anything concerning health actually overriding nations sovereignty. We know this as a fact – annihilating the hilarious “fact-checkers”. See this and this.

The light is gradually forging her way into the world arena, the People’s Arena.

US Bio-Labs in Ukraine

By now we know that Ukraine has some 30 US-funded bio-weapon labs, almost all of them category 3-danger / risk level. (All was vehemently denied by the US governments and western media.)

The denial lies were confirmed by multiple fact-checkers. Until a few days ago, when the lies rather abruptly were contradicted by the very State Department.

A few days ago, Senator Marco Rubio from Florida, called Victoria Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State to testifying in front of a Senate Committee about the more than two dozen bio-labs in Ukraine. To most listeners’ surprise, Madame Nuland, THE expert on the Ukraine conflict, admitted to Senator Rubio that the US funded indeed “research labs” in the Ukraine, and that the US was afraid they might get into the hands of the Russian aggressors.

Ms. Nuland was instrumental in engineering the Maidan Coup on 22 February 2014 in Kiev, together with US Ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt (see this Nuland- Pyatt telephone transcript by BBC):

Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Pyatt: Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

Nuland: My understanding from that call – but you tell me – was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a… three-plus-one conversation or three-plus-two with you. Is that not how you understood it?

Pyatt: No. I think… I mean that’s what he proposed but I think, just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko has been the top dog, he’s going to take a while to show up for whatever meeting they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point, so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

 Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

Nuland: OK… one more wrinkle for you Geoff. [A click can be heard] I can’t remember if I told you this, or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman [United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs] this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry did I write you that this morning?

Nuland: OK. He’s now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.

More on The Bio Labs

The sudden admission after the weeks-long “fact-checked” denials is hysterical. Victoria Nuland underlined her story by saying that Russia lies, of course as always, and Washington, therefore, has to consider actions to disarm these labs. Hours earlier, the fact that these labs existed, disappeared from the internet.

For details of the Senate Rubio-Nuland hearing see this transcript of Fox News analyst, Tucker Carlson, of 9 March 2022 and this actual Tucker Carlson video analysis.

This debunks all the fake “fact-checkers”.

The Kiev-planned Donbas offensive

On 9 March 2022, Tass allegedly released a news bulletin, asserting that the Russian Defense Ministry got hold of a Secret Plan concocted and issued by the Commander of the Ukrainian National Guard Colonel General Nikolay Balan, on January 22, 2022. – The Kiev Government apparently had planned an attack on the Donbas area in early March 2022, on the People’s Republics Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (PRL). See this for details.

Allegedly, based on this information, President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, apparently decided on 24 February to intervene in Ukraine, primarily to save the about 4.1 million mostly Russian-origin inhabitants from yet another Kiev assault.

In the 8 years since the western US / NATO / EU organized Maidan coup on 22 February 2014, close to 14,000 Donbas citizens were killed by Kiev aggressions. Some 2 million have fled Donbas, mostly for Russia.

It might be assumed that the WEF and its handlers – whom, as we should not forget have a much larger agenda, namely the UN Agenda 2030 – had “organized” the document to prompt the timely Russian invasion, thus, coinciding with the apparent disappearance of covid. Yet, given Mr. Putin’s intelligence background and savvy, Russia most likely new independently of the so-called “leaked” secret document about the impending Kiev attack on the Donbas Republics.

Russia has three stated goals with her intervention in Ukraine, (i) demilitarize Ukraine and make her into a neutral nation; (ii) denazification of Ukraine, and (iii) obtain a tangible commitment by the west, that NATO would never enter Ukraine, and, furthermore, that NATO should pull back to the geographic lines before 1997. This was part of an agreement by the “allied forces” vis-à-is the new Russia, at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and later confirmed by the Minsk Agreement of 5 September 2014.

The Agreement was never adhered to. See this map with NATO in 1998 and in 2022.

Now, western and world media “warn” of a nuclear war, literally a WWIII Scenario. True, this could happen, but unlikely provoked by Russia.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the western empire, including Europe, risks an imminent collapse. During the onset of this collapse, the empire may act like a dying beast, lashing around, pulling with it down the drain, as much as possible. This might happen, but I’m positive it won’t. There is too much at stake. The devastation of at least a good portion of Europe.

The risk of a WWIII may be further reduced, as a massive war, a nuclear war, might run out of hand and interfere with the Agenda 2030 – when the major goals of the Great reset ought to be completed. Let me repeat them:

i) massive depopulation – yes, a WWIII would contribute to this goal, but would also destroy crucial, uncalcuable and vital infrastructure the surviving elite might need to further their cause;

ii)  gigantic capital and assets transfers from the lower and middle class and especially from small and medium-size enterprises’ bankruptcies to the top, creating widespread unemployment, misery, famine and death; and

iii) digitization of everything. This includes the end of cash and the ascent of fully digitized money, monetary transactions and commerce; implementation of Bill Gates Agenda ID2020, in the form of the QR-code which already today is everywhere. It has literally infiltrated itself in people’s daily lives, and nobody seems to specially care.

The QR-code is poison. It has literally unlimited data storage capacity. Since it covers your bank account, your health records, your criminal record, your every step you take, it will allow total surveillance of everybody’s every move they make. 

Bad behavior may be punished by closing down or (temporarily) blocking your bank account. Total surveillance could remotely “neutralize” undesired and / or unnecessary subjects, as robots and AI may gradually take over – first manual jobs, then increasingly intellectual jobs – eliminating humans and transhumans – unnecessary eaters. 

Sounds brutal?

Yes, but that’s the plan. The Great Reset.

Will they achieve it? – Think positive and they won’t. Human dynamics and spiritual capacity, as well as solidarity and sovereign thinking — and foremost believing in mankind’s potential to move into the LIGHT and vibrate on a higher consciousness, one that doesn’t hate, but love, and aspires cooperation, worldwide – in a non-globalized format of nation-states’ sovereignty and, foremost, local money – cash not digital.

Remember the story of the Andean wise man – about Love, Compassion and Peace?

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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)

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

Ukraine Crisis: Transcript of Leaked Nuland-Pyatt Call. “F**k the EU”

March 20th, 2022 by Victoria Nuland

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This leaked telephone exchange was originally published online. It was reported by several media including the BBC in February 2014.  This conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt confirms unequivocally that Washington was involved in a Ukraine “regime change” operation in February 2014.

Below is the transcript with comments by BBC’s Jonathan Marcus

“An apparently bugged phone conversation in which a senior US diplomat disparages the EU over the Ukraine crisis has been posted online. The alleged conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, appeared on YouTube on Thursday. It is not clearly when the alleged conversation took place.

Here is a transcript, with analysis by BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus:

[Warning: This transcript contains swearing.]

Voice thought to be Nuland’s: What do you think?

Jonathan Marcus: At the outset it should be clear that this is a fragment of what may well be a larger phone conversation. But the US has not denied its veracity and has been quick to point a finger at the Russian authorities for being behind its interception and leak.

Voice thought to be Pyatt’s: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here. Especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister and you’ve seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now so we’re trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I’m very glad that he said what he said in response.

Jonathan Marcus: The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that “ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future”. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals. Russian spokesmen have insisted that the US is meddling in Ukraine’s affairs – no more than Moscow, the cynic might say – but Washington clearly has its own game-plan. The clear purpose in leaking this conversation is to embarrass Washington and for audiences susceptible to Moscow’s message to portray the US as interfering in Ukraine’s domestic affairs.

Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

Pyatt: Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

Nuland: My understanding from that call – but you tell me – was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a… three-plus-one conversation or three-plus-two with you. Is that not how you understood it?

Pyatt: No. I think… I mean that’s what he proposed but I think, just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko has been the top dog, he’s going to take a while to show up for whatever meeting they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point, so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.

Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

Nuland: OK… one more wrinkle for you Geoff. [A click can be heard] I can’t remember if I told you this, or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman [United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs] this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry did I write you that this morning?

Jonathan Marcus: An intriguing insight into the foreign policy process with work going on at a number of levels: Various officials attempting to marshal the Ukrainian opposition; efforts to get the UN to play an active role in bolstering a deal; and (as you can see below) the big guns waiting in the wings – US Vice-President Joe Biden clearly being lined up to give private words of encouragement at the appropriate moment.

Pyatt: Yeah I saw that.

Nuland: OK. He’s now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.

Jonathan Marcus: Not for the first time in an international crisis, the US expresses frustration at the EU’s efforts. Washington and Brussels have not been completely in step during the Ukraine crisis. The EU is divided and to some extent hesitant about picking a fight with Moscow. It certainly cannot win a short-term battle for Ukraine’s affections with Moscow – it just does not have the cash inducements available. The EU has sought to play a longer game; banking on its attraction over time. But the US clearly is determined to take a much more activist role.

Pyatt: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. And again the fact that this is out there right now, I’m still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych (garbled) that. In the meantime there’s a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now and I’m sure there’s a lively argument going on in that group at this point. But anyway we could land jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep… we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden’s willing.

Pyatt: OK. Great. Thanks.

Jonathan Marcus: Overall this is a damaging episode between Washington and Moscow. Nobody really emerges with any credit. The US is clearly much more involved in trying to broker a deal in Ukraine than it publicly lets on. There is some embarrassment too for the Americans given the ease with which their communications were hacked. But is the interception and leaking of communications really the way Russia wants to conduct its foreign policy ? Goodness – after Wikileaks, Edward Snowden and the like could the Russian government be joining the radical apostles of open government? I doubt it. Though given some of the comments from Vladimir Putin’s adviser on Ukraine Sergei Glazyev – for example his interview with the Kommersant-Ukraine newspaper the other day – you don’t need your own listening station to be clear about Russia’s intentions. Russia he said “must interfere in Ukraine” and the authorities there should use force against the demonstrators.

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Why Die for Biden?

March 20th, 2022 by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

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As you would expect from brain-dead Biden and the people controlling him, American policy has been moving in the wrong direction. Whatever you think about the situation in the Ukraine, one thing is obvious. It’s a crisis. Shouldn’t we try to stay out of danger? Instead, the US has led the way in imposing drastic economic sanctions on Russia, backing Putin into the wall. What if he gets desperate and uses atomic weapons? This could result in the end of civilized life on our planet. Is this what Americans want?

The danger isn’t just something I and other critics of American policy have conjured up.

President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday [March 5] that Western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would lead to catastrophic consequences for the world. . . “These sanctions that are being imposed are akin to a declaration of war but thank God it has not come to that,” Putin said, speaking to a group of flight attendants at an Aeroflot training centre near Moscow. He said any attempt by another power to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would be considered by Russia to be a step into the military conflict.

The neocon warmongers brush this danger aside. They say that “we” have to do something to defend the Ukraine from an unprovoked Russian attack. But this totally distorts what is happening there. The Ukrainian government started things by moving against Donbass, a territory that declared independence and is allied with Russia. According to the Ukrainian government, the Ukrainians can secede from Russia but people can’t secede from the Ukraine. As Rick Rozoff pointed out in an article on February 2,

Two-thirds of Ukrainian army servicemen have been amassed along the Donbas contact line, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) militia, said on Thursday.

“Another three brigades are on their way [to Donbas], which is 20,000 to 25,000 troops more. The total number will reach 150,000, not to mention the nationalists. This is about two-thirds of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ personnel,” Basurin said on the Rossiya 1 television channel (VGTRK) on Thursday.

The Ukrainian troops are stationed along the 320-kilometer front line, he said…. The situation in Donbass has reached a critical mark in the past week due to Ukraine’s aggressive actions, Donetsk People’s Republic representative at the Minsk talks, DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova said on Thursday.

But the provocative actions against Russia go much further back. Vasko Kohlmayer gives an excellent account of these and highlights the danger of nuclear war that reckless American policy has caused:

The war drums are, of course, beating for US involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

“Declare a NoFlyZone over Ukraine,” tweeted Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.).

Lindsey Graham, a powerful US Senator, went so far as to publicly advocate the assassination of the Russian head of state. Tweeted he:

Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military? The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country—and the world—a great service.

Such brazen incitement to murder by a highly positioned US official could be construed as a war act by the other side.

Watching the mounting hysteria, we can be certain that the beating of the war drums is going to become only louder in the days ahead…. Before the situation escalates into a nuclear Armageddon, ordinary people would do well to ask themselves whether we have any dog in this fight.

And if we do, what is the size of this dog? Is it big enough to run the risk of nuclear annihilation?

Until last week, most Americans knew almost nothing about Ukraine. If you asked them what is its capital or major river, you would get no response…. What triggered Putin was the globalists’ push to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep in Ukraine. The globalists wanted to make it part of their New World Order which they use to prettily enrich themselves.

Joe Biden’s family has been at it for years already. They pulled millions from that land through the President’s son Hunter in one of the most brazen and shameless schemes of influence peddling in American history…. If Trudeau, Biden and their friends want us to go to war with Russia, they must explain to common people how exactly it is in their vital interest that Ukraine join NATO.

Until they give us a good reason, we should say NO to the war in Ukraine.

The Russians have made it amply clear what they want. They want a neutral Ukraine that is free of NATO. This is a reasonable demand. To start World War III over this would be an act of most regrettable foolishness.

Is there anything we can do to deescalate the situation? The greatest congressman in American history, Dr. Ron Paul, has the answer. American should end its encirclement of Russia and disband NATO. Let’s look at his vital message to us:

When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense.

Explaining my “no” vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time:

NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary…. This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution.

Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts unrelated to our national interest …

Unfortunately, as we have seen this past week, my fears have come true. One does not need to approve of Russia’s military actions to analyze its stated motivation: NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to see crossed. As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn’t have to happen this way. There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep. There is no way to argue that we are any safer for it.

NATO itself was a huge mistake…. I believe as strongly today as I did back in my 2008 House Floor speech that, “NATO should be disbanded, not expanded.” In the meantime, expansion should be off the table. The risks do not outweigh the benefits!

The same people who imposed covid tyranny on us now want us to risk war with Russia. Let’s stop them before it’s too late.

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Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, and editor of LewRockwell.com.

Featured image is from Mises Wire

Iraq War Lesson: ‘Preventative Wars’ Are Illegal Wars, Period.

March 20th, 2022 by Daniel Larison

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This week marks the 19th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and in the last two decades there has been no serious American reckoning with the magnitude of the crime that our government and its allies committed. 

The invasion was an unprovoked war of aggression in flagrant violation of the U.N. Charter, and it led to decades of violence and instability whose effects continue to plague the region until today. The war was also one of the biggest strategic errors of modern U.S. history, but it is insufficient to acknowledge the war as a “mistake” and leave it at that. The U.S. still presents itself as a defender of international order, but in 2003 it broke the most important rule that prohibits the use of force except for self-defense.

For the last 20 years, the U.S. has treated the sovereignty of many states as conditional, reserving the right to attack others when it so chooses. If we should learn anything from U.S. wars in this century, it is that aggression against other states is always wrong and it erodes the protections under international law that help to maintain peace and security. No matter the pretext or rationalization, no state has the right to attack another. Supposedly good intentions are no justification.

The lesson of the Iraq war is not only that the U.S. should stay out of the regime change business, but also that the U.S. should renounce preventive warfare once and for all.

The 2003 invasion was responsible for inflicting and unleashing violence that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, injured countless more, and displaced millions. The instability created by the invasion also contributed to the emergence of the Islamic State and the conflict in Syria. The people of Iraq will be living with the war’s effects for decades to come, and we need to remember that they are the ones who suffered and lost the most from the reckless decision of our government. While most Americans quickly forget about these policies, our government’s destructive actions have lasting consequences for tens of millions of people. Those actions will be remembered generations from now.

Because our government wields so much power, it is essential that it learns to use force sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. This means that the U.S. must not threaten other states with attack to compel them to make concessions, and it must under no circumstances initiate hostilities against another state. The U.S. should not act as an international vigilante seeking to bludgeon so-called “rogue” states into submission. The most important thing the U.S. can do to uphold international order is to adhere to it in its own conduct. Routine U.S. violations of international law serve to undermine it and invite others to treat it with the same contempt.

Preventive war cannot be defensive, and it cannot be just. The Bush administration deceptively branded the attack on Iraq as “pre-emption,” but there was no imminent threat to pre-empt. The Iraq war was sold to the public by stoking the irrational fear of some possible future threat that was never going to materialize. Even if the remote threat had been real, it still would not have justified the invasion.

This is directly relevant to the ongoing debate over the possible use of force against Iran’s nuclear facilities. While the nuclear deal may soon be revived for the next few years, the danger that the U.S. might resort to military action to “solve” the problem will not be completely gone. There are still many American advocates for military action even now, and it is possible they could find a receptive audience in a future administration. If the nuclear deal collapses sooner rather than later, there will almost certainly be a pressure campaign in favor of an attack. That makes it important to emphasize that any such attack would be illegal and outrageous. Military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities can’t be justified as self-defense, especially since Iran possesses no nuclear weapons program. There is no legitimate basis for the U.S. or any other state to launch attacks on targets inside Iran.

Rejecting aggressive warfare has implications for other areas of U.S. foreign policy as well. If the U.S. refuses to start wars, it should also refuse to arm and support other states that launch illegal attacks in neighboring countries. Even when client governments dress up that aggression as “self-defense,” the U.S. should not provide them with any weapons or military assistance so long as they are striking at their neighbors. That would mean cutting off support to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over their aggression in Yemen, and it would also mean no support for Israel while their government launches attacks against targets in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. should both refrain from aggression and stop enabling the aggression of others.

If the use of force is restricted only to self-defense, that implies that the U.S. should also renounce waging wars for ostensibly humanitarian reasons. This is not only because humanitarian interventions often fail to meet the criteria for just war, but also because the U.S. does not have the authority on its own or as part of a group of states to decide that the prohibition on the use of force can be disregarded whenever it sees fit.

It was fashionable after the 1999 U.S./NATO intervention in Kosovo to describe that war as “illegal but legitimate,” but if the prohibition means anything it can’t be violated like that. If NATO is to be a truly defensive alliance, it shouldn’t be used as a platform for wars that have nothing to do with the defense of its members.

It is commonplace for politicians and policymakers to say that they believe war should be a last resort, but in practice far too many Americans rush to support military options whether they make any sense or not. Despite being citizens of the most powerful country in the world, many of our leaders encourage us to be frightened of minuscule and manageable dangers on the other side of the world. If we would have a foreign policy that isn’t defined by constant warfare and fearmongering, Americans will have to learn not to be so easily alarmed.

The United States is extraordinarily secure from physical attack, so the instances when the U.S. needs to use force to defend itself will be very rare. An integral part of not going abroad in search of monsters to destroy is to refuse to concoct excuses for taking military action against states that don’t and usually can’t threaten our country.

What the Iraq War experience taught us is that the United States needs to take advantage of its natural security, and be willing to fight only when our country or one of our treaty allies comes under attack. The temptation to start or join wars unrelated to self-defense will always be present, and that is why it is imperative that we as Americans learn from the folly of the last twenty years.

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Featured image: Coffins of dead U.S. soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware in 2006. (U.S. government photo)

“COVID-19 shots’ effects on fertility, targeting children with social pressure and coercion to get jabbed”: Robert Malone and Candace Owens Interview

March 20th, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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Dr. Robert Malone discusses COVID-19 shots’ effects on fertility and targeting children with social pressure and coercion to get jabbed

In this nearly four-hour discussion with Candace Owens, Malone touches on the global narrative that’s intent on hunting down physicians and taking away their licenses for providing early COVID-19 treatment and how Bill Gates and Big Tech have succeeded in creating monopolies and gained control of information

Malone describes three Department of Defense (DOD) whistleblowers who datamined the DOD health database, revealing disturbing increases in rates of miscarriage, cancer, neurological disease and stillbirths since COVID-19 jabs rolled out

Malone is dedicated to speaking out because he wants to protect future generations; he’s concerned about the pandemic response’s effects on children, stating that public policies have had a particularly strong adverse effect on the young

If people reconnect and come together once again for a real greater good, Malone believes we can avoid a Great Reset and instead experience a Great Awakening

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I hope you enjoy this two-part interview of two intellectual giants by Candace Owens with Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA and DNA vaccine core platform technology.1 They discuss some of the most important issues facing humanity today. In their nearly four-hour discussion, they touch on everything from COVID-19 shots’ effects on fertility to the “red line” that’s been crossed — referring to targeting children with social pressure and coercion to get jabbed.

Malone has been thrust into the spotlight for speaking out about the risks of COVID-19 shots, with his words going viral before quickly being erased from YouTube and Twitter. It doesn’t matter if what he’s saying is true; if it creates “vaccine hesitancy,” it will be censored. Toward that end, Malone has been targeted by the media and labeled an “anti-vaxxer,” which is ironic since he’s received COVID-19 shots.

That fact should make it all the more apparent that he’s speaking out not due to a predetermined agenda or because he’s getting rich — to the contrary, his reputation is constantly under attack — but because he believes it’s the right thing to do, and he feels morally obliged to help anyone he can.

COVID-19 Shots Are Affecting Fertility

Anecdotal reports of alterations in women’s menstrual cycles following COVID-19 shots have poured in around the globe. Changes include heavier and more painful periods2 and changes in menses length, as well as unexpected breakthrough bleeding or spotting among women on long-acting contraception or those who are postmenopausal and haven’t had a period in years or even decades.3

Health officials have tried to brush off the reports, and doctors have told women that it’s just a result of stress — something dubbed “hysteria” in earlier times. Upon hearing that so many women’s concerns were brushed off as hysteria, Malone said:4

“Is this the 1950s? Have I just gone back a century? This whole thing that women are being histrionic is so mid-century. But that’s how they rolled it out. And it’s not just younger women. It’s post-menopausal women that start having menstruation. That’s another big one, which is, for pathologists, which is part of my background, that’s a red flag for cancer.”

Sure enough, a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology in January 2022 — funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women’s Health — confirmed an association between menstrual cycle length and COVID-19 shots.5

Pfizer’s biodistribution study, which was used to determine where the injected substances go in the body, also showed the COVID spike protein from the shots accumulated in “quite high concentrations” in the ovaries.6

A Japanese biodistribution study for Pfizer’s jab also found that vaccine particles move from the injection site to the blood, after which circulating spike proteins are free to travel throughout the body, including to the ovaries, liver, neurological tissues and other organs.7 Malone explained:8

“The thing that drives menstruation is the ovary. We know that the lipids — the synthetic, positively charged fats that wrap the RNA to get it to slip into cells — have never been administered to humans before. We know from the Pfizer data package that came out of Japan that these lipids go to the ovary … your children, your girls are born with all the eggs that they will ever have in their entire lives.

And we don’t know yet what the reproductive harm is going to be, but we do know that in young women, reproductive age women, we are seeing this phenotype, this characteristic.

And not only am I very worried about it, I did testimony — as did many others — with the Orthodox Jewish community … they made the determination and sent out a formal statement to their community that these vaccines should not be used in children and strongly discourage their use in adults.

And one of the reasons is they are very focused on reproductive health. What we’re talking about is a deep issue that is not treatable at all … I think we can say this with confidence that if we’re having menstrual irregularities, we are having alterations in fertility.”

DOD Whistleblowers Warn of Spike in Adverse Events

Thomas Renz, a lawyer that Malone knows personally, had three Department of Defense (DOD) whistleblowers come forward. They had datamined the DOD health database, which Malone states is one of the best in the U.S.9

They looked through data from 2015 to 2020, establishing a baseline of the number of cases of miscarriage, cancer, neurological disease and stillbirths. Then, they compared it to 2021, after the COVID-19 shots rolled out. Renz showed Malone some of the disturbing data:10

“I just skimmed the data. Thomas had his laptop open and showed me some of the things that are popping up. They pulled a massive amount of data out of the DOD databases and then did a whistleblower complaint. Ron Johnson has now extended Senate protection to them formally as whistleblowers.

So they came to Thomas Renz with this information, and from what I saw — now this is preliminary, we haven’t dissected it yet — but at the top level, I thought it was mind-blowing. The information about miscarriages, the information about cancers, which is validating what Ryan Cole has been concerned about, neurologic disease and the stillbirths is there.

And apparently, according to Thomas, these brave whistleblowers have captured examples and information, with the cardiac events, for instance, of the Department of Defense — whoever is doing this, the data management — is actually going in and deleting cases, manipulating the database.”

Owens also saw the data and said the lowest category increase was 248%, while others increased by 1,000%. “It’s not subtle,” Malone said.11

Experts Raise Cancer Concerns

Dr. Ryan Cole, the Mayo Clinic-trained, triple-boarded pathologist who Malone referred to, has stated that he’s seeing potential cancer-causing changes, including decreases in receptors that keep cancer in check, and other adverse events post-shot:12

“I’m seeing countless adverse reactions … it’s really post-vaccine immunodeficiency syndrome … I’m seeing a marked increase in herpetic family viruses, human papilloma viruses in the post vaccinated. I’m seeing a marked uptick in a laboratory setting from what I see year over year of an increase of usually quiescent diseases.

In addition to that — and correlation is not causation — but in the last six months I have seen — you know, I read a fair amount of women’s health biopsies —about a 10- to 20-fold increase of uterine cancer compared to what I see on an annual basis.

Now we know that the CD8 cells are one of our T-cells to keep our cancers in check. I am seeing early signals … what I’m seeing is an early signal in the laboratory setting that post vaccinated patients are having diseases that we normally don’t see at rates that are already early considerably alarming.”

In addition to the effects on the ovaries, the Japanese study found vaccine deposits were found in bone marrow, raising additional cancer concerns, Malone says:13

“Bone marrow is really sensitive to local environments … and produces a whole lot of different types of cells that are involved in bone metabolism. This is something that matters a lot to women, particularly as they move through menopause — bone density. I

So there are cells that regulate bone remodeling and bone density that come from your bone marrow. Much of your blood elements come from stem cells that sit in your bone marrow. Red cells and white cells.

There are many types of cancer that can occur when those stem cell populations that live in your bone marrow get changed so that they lose their normal controls on growth. So that’s really what cancer is. So lymphoma, leukemia, chronic myelogenous leukemia, all these things, are all bone marrow cancer diseases.”

The Silencing of Mass Formation Psychosis

If you’ve heard the term “mass formation psychosis” recently, it’s likely because Malone mentioned it on an episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” December 31, 2021, which was viewed by more than 50 million people.14 January 2, 2022, mass formation psychosis reached a value of 100 on Google Trends,15 which means it had reached peak popularity, after previously being practically unheard of.

The technocrats quickly took action, manipulating search results and populating Google with propaganda to discredit Malone and the mass formation psychosis theory — even though Mattias Desmet, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Ghent in Belgium, who has 126 publications to his name,16 has been studying it for many years, and the phenomenon actually dates back over 100 years.

Those under the spell of mass formation psychosis obsessively focus on a failure of the normal world or a particular event or person, who becomes the focus of the attention and can effectively control the masses.

Mass formation can occur in a society with feelings of social isolation and free-floating anxiety among a large number of people, and provides a coherent explanation of why so many people have fallen victim to the unbelievable lies and propaganda of the mainstream COVID-19 narrative. The phenomenon leads to totalitarian thinking and, eventually, to totalitarian states, but as Malone told Owens, fortunately about one-third of people are resistant to it.

Speaking Out to Save Children

Malone is dedicated to speaking out because he wants to protect future generations. He’s concerned about the pandemic response’s effects on children, stating that public policies have had a particularly strong adverse effect on the young.

He called COVID-19 injection mandates “completely unjustified” for children17 and recommends that youths who have received COVID-19 injections have their hearts checked for damage,18 given the real risk of myocarditis and heart damage. Mask mandates in schools have also interfered with children’s psychological health, and Malone believes they’re causing developmental delays in children.

Further, a bill has now been introduced in California that would allow 12-year-olds to consent to COVID-19 shots, which Malone presents as another way the government is enforcing control where it doesn’t belong:19

“In terms of kids, moms and dads have to take ownership … it’s your job, it’s my job to protect the kids, and don’t let the government get in the middle of your family. That’s another thing that has been so wrong here, how we’ve allowed the government to insert itself into the family, and that has got to stop …

What we’ve learned is that children are being subjected to intense social pressure and pressure by their school teachers. So technically in the clinical research world, we call this coercion. Just like giving out ice cream to take jabs is enticement …

They’re seeking to create a situation in which children are going to be subjected to coercion by their school teachers and their peers to take an unlicensed medical product that they don’t need to take because they are not at risk from the disease, and which has real risks of causing them harm. That’s, to be blunt, where we’re at. What do I say to parents? I say get informed.”

Will There Be a Great Reset or a Great Awakening?

We’re at the point now where all media is being manipulated and information is being controlled. “There’s a school of thought,” Malone said, “that this happened long ago with the rise of the Rockefellers, and the perversion of the entire medical enterprise and medical schools.”20

In the immediacy, people who have been harmed by COVID-19 shots are being called crazy by their friends and family. Those who have banded together with other victims on social media, forming groups to share their experiences that even many doctors continue to deny, have also been shut down, their pages deleted. “It’s the ultimate gaslighting,” Malone said.21

He and Owens touch on much more in the interview, from the global narrative that’s intent on hunting down physicians and taking away their licenses for providing early COVID-19 treatment to how Bill Gates and Big Tech have succeeded in creating monopolies and gained control of information.

Malone, however, wants to empower people with information and tools to think so they can make their own decisions about the world around them. If that occurs, and people reconnect and come together once again for a real greater good, he believes we can avoid a Great Reset and instead experience a Great Awakening:22

“There’s the Great Reset, which is often tied to this language of ‘build back better,’ because that’s the approved language from the World Economic Forum. So there’s this Great Reset toward a world where we own nothing and we’re happy … and we’re told what to do and we do it.

And there’s the Great Awakening, where it could be a renaissance. If we use the metaphor of Europe in the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s, moving from a dark age into a renaissance … there was a period of intense explosion when people got intellectually engaged …

If we allow ourselves to start thinking again and engaging with the world and engaging with each other, could we get to a point where we have a Great Awakening instead of a Great Reset? Where we become committed to each other and to a life of the mind and the body? I think that is a possibility. I don’t think that we’re too far gone.”

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Notes

1 Trial Site News May 30, 2021

2 Boston University September 9, 2021

3 NPR August 9, 2021

4 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part I February 3, 2022, 13:46

5 Obstetrics & Gynecology: January 5, 2022 – Volume – Issue – 10.1097

6 Children’s Health Defense June 3, 2021

7 Rights and Freedoms, Confidential Pfizer Research Document

8 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part I February 3, 2022, 27:47

9, 10 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part I February 3, 2022, 18:48

11 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part I February 3, 2022, 21:32

12 Verve Times August 29, 2021

13 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part I February 3, 2022, 24:07

14 Church Militant January 11, 2022

15 Google Trends, mass formation psychosis

16 University of Ghent, Professor Mattias Desmet, Academic Bibliography

17 YouTube, Senator Ron Johnson January 25, 2022, 10:51

18 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part 2 February 2, 2022, 30:31

19 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part 2 February 2, 2022, 56:00, 1:42

20 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part 2 February 2, 2022, 55:07

21 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part 2 February 2, 2022, 1:34

22 Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part 2 February 2, 2022, 2:04

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Former BlackRock Advisor Tells RFK, Jr.: ‘FDA is in on the cover-up’

March 20th, 2022 by David Marks

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In an interview with former BlackRock advisor Edward Dowd on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dowd discussed why they believe COVID vaccine makers committed fraud, and government agencies know it.

In an interview with former BlackRock advisor Edward Dowd on “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast,” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dowd discussed the financial and moral implications of fraudulent data from the COVID-19 vaccine trials.

Dowd, a managing director with BlackRock from 2002 to 2012, said, “what tipped me off to the fraud” was when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it wouldn’t release the trial data for 75 years. He knew something wasn’t right.

Dowd told Kennedy:

“The FDA is in on the cover-up, something went down. The other tip for me was in November of last year, a friend of mine from the biotech industry discovered that Pfizer had failed their all-cause mortality endpoint. And that was not available to us when this fanfare occurred in November of 2020, when they all got excited about 95% efficacy.”

Dowd concluded, “the FDA didn’t really look at this clinical trial data” yet rushed it through due to political pressure or “maybe straight-up bribes,” but either way, he said, the vaccines should have never been approved.

Kennedy and Dowd discussed how the trial numbers were skewed to make it seem the vaccines were effective when the real data showed otherwise.

Kennedy said:

“What it really means is you have to give 22,000 vaccines to prevent one COVID death. And if you’re gonna give 22,000 vaccines, you better make sure that the vaccines don’t kill anybody. Because if they kill one person, you’ve canceled out any benefit.”

Kennedy described how the vaccine makers manipulated the data and the news to maximize profits. He asked Dowd why he thinks there will be consequences.

Dowd said:

“I think there’s enough proof for people to investigate fraud in the clinical data and the FDA’s complicity in this … The tragic part of this is we had to wait for real-world evidence. And the real-world evidence is so awful that there’s gonna be a public outcry. And even though the mainstream media is not participating with this yet, they will. You can’t hide this anymore.”

Dowd also told Kennedy, “investors are slowly waking up to the fact that something is not right” and some are selling their shares in Pfizer and Moderna.

He also said that when the insurance industry awakens to the fraud, there will be greater consequences:

“There’s an industry that’s been defrauded. It’s the insurance industry. They are currently paying for excess deaths due to a product that kills. And they’re gonna be paying for years of disability from vaccine injuries. I don’t think they’re gonna put up with that once they realize what’s happened.”

Kennedy described how the insurance industry has ignored the autism epidemic and the general degradation of health in the U.S. He asked Dowd to explain why insurance industry executives would react any differently to illness and death caused by COVID vaccines.

Dowd said:

“The insurance industry didn’t price this, this is the problem. So it’s such a catastrophic number and the injuries that are gonna be created for years, they’re gonna hurt their capitalization over time… you’ve been seeing a problem that’s been going on for years, but it was in different, smaller areas — but now they bit off more than they can chew. They just poisoned 220 million Americans. This is literally a bridge too far.”

Kennedy and Dowd discussed why the false narrative surrounding COVID is about to crumble.

Kennedy commented on people’s reluctance to doubt the medical profession and the pharmaceutical industry:

“The big pushback you get, at least that I get, when I try to explain to loved ones and family and friends — they say, ‘We don’t believe it. There’s a million doctors out there, and you’re saying that they’re all involved in a conspiracy? That they all know that they’re giving this poison to people and that they’re killing them? There’s no way that’s happening.’

“And what I say is, the doctors don’t know — they believe what the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and FDA tell them. All sorts of information. Very few of them are actually reading the peer-reviewed publications.

“We’re thinking independently and questioning the authorities.”

Watch the full interview here.

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The Covid-19 Vaccine: How Can They Explain Any of this Data?

March 20th, 2022 by Steve Kirsch

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I have over 50 pieces of data that is simply impossible to explain if the vaccines are safe and effective. I’ll be adding them to this article over time, so check back for the latest. I’ll post the most recent additions at the top to make this easy.

I’m starting with just one item right now which is the only item you need to know to stop the vaccine mandates. It is so important, I wanted to push it out now.

Why doctors say nothing

Because the medical boards threaten to take away their license if they say anything publicly or privately against the vaccine.

In California, doctors used to write exemptions for the vaccine and mask wearing. The medical boards got a list of those doctors and contacted them.

After that, no more exemptions got written.

To test this someone called up hundreds of physicians saying their child had a severe anaphylactic reaction after the first shot and nearly died and they wanted to see if the doctor would write an exemption for the child. They all said no.

UK government data shows the vaccines make things worse. We were misled.

This is data from an unimpeachable source: the UK government in its week 32 to 35 report for 2021. Look at the rates per 100,000 for doubly vaxxed vs. unvaccinated people for age ranges 40 to 80. Yup, you are more likely to be infected if you are vaccinated in each sub-range within 40 to 80. So there is no age confounding on this data. It’s simply impossible to explain. It shows why vaccine mandates are making you more susceptible to infection for people 40 to 80, not better.

Show this chart to your blue pill friends and ask them to explain why the vaccine should be mandated. Here’s what one reader wrote:

I actually shared a similar report with my cardiologist yesterday. When he just looked at me, saying nothing, I said, “Well, at least the NHS in the UK is being honest about the vaccines.” People will do what they’re going to do, I just pray that most will wake up!

Here’s the most recent data (March 17, 2022 from page 45) and it is much worse:

There is simply no way to explain this data if the vaccine works as is claimed. In the footnote, they use what is known as a handwaving argument which is speculation based on zero data. For example, they say there could be more cases for vaccinated people because they test more often (really? whereas the data to back that up?).

They can hand-wave all they want and it doesn’t change the facts.

For example, in Santa Clara County they did of freedom of information act request and found that vaccinated and unvaccinated first responders had effectively the same rate of infections. In other words, it wasn’t protecting people where I live either.

What is most telling are the huge population studies, for example, in 145 countries showing that almost without exception, the more you vaccinate, the higher the cases and deaths. Funny, the UK government never cites any studies at all that challenge the narrative. There are plenty and over a dozen are listed in Incriminating Evidence.

We have all been victims of a massive fraud.

But the whole point of mandates was that it would protect you from getting sick so you wouldn’t infect others. Clearly, the mandates make you more likely to get sick. This is opposite what you were told. Everyone should be outraged at this.

The same UK report claims a death benefit, but that’s only if you ignore all the deaths caused by the vaccine. If you include those, it’s negative as well.

In South Korea, COVID cases are through the roof but nearly everyone is vaccinated

Here’s a quote from Alex Berenson’s article:

On Thursday, South Korea reported 600,000 new Covid infections – the equivalent of more than 4 million in the United States. In a single day.

Since they are all vaccinated, how is that possible?

The mRNA shots have negative efficacy against Omicron infection within months – meaning that vaccinated people are more likely to become infected. Data from Canada, Britain, Scotland, the United States, and other countries all agree on this point. I’m not sure anyone serious even argues it anymore.

In New Zealand, for example, unvaccinated people now have even lower infection rates than those who have received boosters:

Why the deception?

One reader asked “why would our authorities mislead us?” The answer is simple: everyone believed Tony Fauci when he chose to focus on the vaccine and completely discredit early treatment. At that point, it was too big to fail since every world leader supported the vaccine. When the data showed the vaccine was unsafe and ineffective (the data showed it killed over 100,000 Americans), they had to cover up their mistake or nobody would ever trust them again. The medical community isn’t speaking up because they will have their licenses revoked. The press won’t say anything because America will never trust them again. Same for Congress, the NIH, CDC, and FDA. The FDA and CDC looked the other way at the safety signals because the vaccine was too big to fail: it HAD to work in order to end the pandemic.

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Data Scientist Files Internal Appeal of Bank of Canada’s Mandatory Vaccination Policy

March 20th, 2022 by Ontario Civil Liberties Association

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Dr. Joseph Hickey, a data scientist at the Bank of Canada (Canada’s central bank) was placed on unpaid leave without benefits by his employer in November 2021, for declining to receive injections of a COVID-19 vaccine [See also: OCLA blog post, media article 1, media article 2].

On March 16, 2022, Dr. Hickey submitted an internal appeal of the Bank’s decision. His 766-page submission describes and cites the scientific evidence that demonstrates there are many medical reasons for declining vaccination, including that:

  • There was no emergency that caused large amounts of deaths in Canada in 2020-2021 that would justify vaccinating the entire population;
  • There is no reliable evidence that the COVID-19 vaccine products provide any health benefit;
  • Vaccine products injected via intramuscular routes are in-effect physiologically incapable of preventing infection and transmission of respiratory illnesses;
  • There is autopsy, surveillance, and statistical evidence of grave dangers of COVID-19 vaccine products;
  • There are more than 1000 peer-reviewed articles providing evidence of harm from COVID-19 vaccine products;
  • There is a significantly increased risk of dangerous heart inflammation following injection with a COVID-19 vaccine product, especially for younger males, and this danger is heightened for those who engage in strenuous physical activity;
  • Natural immunity provides robust and sufficient protection against respiratory illnesses; and
  • It is a fundamental principle of medicine that individual assessment of risk is a personal and confidential choice and the decision to receive or not receive a medical intervention must be made with free and informed consent.

A copy of the submission can be read at the link here. The sections containing the scientific and medical submissions begin on pg. 14, and can be navigated using the “bookmarks” in the PDF file (in the left column in Adobe PDF reader).

Excerpts from the submission:

Click here to read the submission.

Hickey’s submission also contains sections describing:

  • his religious and human rights (age & sex) grounds for accommodation (section 3);
  • Canadian caselaw demonstrating that the vaccine mandates violate the Charter rights to freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, and life, liberty, and security of the person, and other legal principles (section 4).

Joseph Hickey is also the (volunteer) Executive Director of the Ontario Civil Liberties Association (OCLA).

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Canadian and US Activists Reject Media Cold War Propaganda Against Russia

March 20th, 2022 by Prof. Charles McKelvey

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More than 230 peace activists in Canada and the United States came together on March 14 for a Zoom webinar on the Ukraine crisis. In addition, the Facebook live stream had 184 views with many more expected with the replay. Organized by the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War (Canada), the exchange was co-sponsored by United National Anti-War Coalition (US), Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice (Canada), Mobilization Against War and Occupation (Canada), Orinoco Tribune (Venezuela), the International Action Center (US) the International Manifesto Group (Canada) and the Regina Peace Council (Canada). The Canada Files was the media sponsor. The panel was bilingual, English and French, with simultaneous translation. The webinar title was: The Ukraine Crisis: What Is the Cause, Russia or US/NATO?

The five panelists were in agreement that the mainstream media were engaging in hysterical demonization of Russia, confusing the people concerning the causes of the conflict.  They expressed the need for developing an anti-war movement and for expanding the alternative media.  They expressed concern for a growing censorship and silencing of persons, organizations, and ideas that defend Russia.

Danny Haiphong (US), a contributor to Black Agenda Report in the USA and co-editor of Friends of Socialist China, stressed that Russia is not our enemy, and that it is important to listen to the Russian perspective in seeking to understand the conflict.  From the Russian perspective, one sees the historic aggressive opposition of Western imperialism to the Russian Revolution and the Soviet Union; and the expansion of NATO, following the fall of the Soviet Union, to the east and to the Russian border.  Haiphong noted that Russia had persistently made clear the unacceptability of the incorporation of Ukraine into NATO and the violence, since 2014, against the Russian population in the Donbass region.  NATO, he maintained, is the source of endless imperialist wars, and NATO must be eliminated.

Arnold August, a Montreal-based author, journalist, a columnist for Trabajadores (Cuba), a Contributing Editor for The Canada Files, and member of the International Manifesto Group, observed that we all hope that the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will come to fruition, but the governments of Canada and the United States are sabotaging the negotiations, ignoring those European voices saying that it was a mistake to promise NATO to Ukraine.  August maintained that “false flags” are part of American DNA; that is to say, the United States has a long history of disseminating false stories to justify itself imperialist intervention. This began with the USS Maine, and its has continued with respect to Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.  The media goes to great lengths to disseminate false flags, as can be seen in the distorted story of a supposed Russian attack of a hospital. August exposed the real story that is ignored by the mainstream media, Ottawa and Washington: the hospital had neither patients nor medical staff but was occupied by the fascist Aznov battalion of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Sara Flounders (US), Co-Director of the International Action Center in New York City and a contributing editor of Workers’ World, stressed the need to put forth clear and unifying demands, in order to effectively overcome challenges confronting the mobilization of the people in response to the dangerous imperialist war in Ukraine.  She proposes: “US/NATO Out of Ukraine;” “Stop the US war on Ukraine;” “NATO Out;” “Disband NATO;” and “Disband the US/NATO War Machine.”

Flounders maintains that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NATO war machine has been used to enforce capitalist relations, and to this end, NATO has been involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.  In the case of Russia, NATO has been encircling Russia with the intention of dismembering it, as NATO did with Yugoslavia.  NATO seeks to enable U.S. control over Russian raw materials, and with the goal of eliminating Russia’s alliances with anti-imperialist governments of the world.  The campaign against Russia has included the de facto incorporation of Ukraine into NATO.

Flounders declared that economic sanctions are an act of war.  More than forty countries have had economic sanctions imposed, constituting one/third of the world’s population.  Imperialism launches military and economic war against nations that refuse to comply with the dictates of Washington.

Flounders projected that the governments of the world are going to increasingly refuse to accept the US/NATO War against Ukraine and Russia, because it is against their economic interests.  US/NATO wars serve only the interests of U.S. corporations.

Ken Stone, Treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop The War and Executive Member of the Syria Solidarity Movement, noted that Canadian support for Ukrainian President Zelensky is a great act of hypocrisy, because for 100 years, Canada has been interfering in Ukrainian affairs; initially as an ally of British imperialism, and later as an ally of U.S. imperialism.

Stone observed that NATO has expanded to the east since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian military operation of February 24 responds to 100 years of Western interventions and to post-Soviet NATO expansions.  Canada, the United States, and NATO should be blamed for the war, not Russia.

Ali Yerevani, political editor of Fire This Time newspaper, was a participant in the 1979 Iranian Revolution.  He addressed the need to respond to imperialist propaganda, which falsely claims that the Russian military action was unprovoked, and that Ukraine is a democracy, while it overlooks the role of fascism in the opposition to Russia.  The mainstream media script, he declared, has been written by the U.S. Department of State.  We must understand, he maintained, that Russia had no alternative to the military operation, taking into account the de facto incorporation of Ukraine into NATO and the violence against the Russian population in the eastern region of Ukraine.

In his closing remarks, Arnold August observed that since the pandemic the world has changed. Neoliberal capitalism today demonstrates that it is unable to respond to the most basic human problems, such as health services; meanwhile, China demonstrates a capacity to manage the pandemic and to expand its economy in a sustainable form.  A multipolar world is further emerging, with some countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Russia, China, and Iran being important centers, while the US leashes out by striving to maintain its world domination. This explains in part its most recent aggressive policy toward Russia to weaken it, thus provoking the current crisis.

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Published originally in Spanish on March 16, 2022 in Trabajadores, the Cuban trade union daily. 

Charles McKelvey is a U.S. writer who has travelled extensively to Cuba.  His Substack column defends Cuban and Chinese socialism and other anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions and movements of the world. 

Featured image is from Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War