The article by Prof Peter Dale Scott published on January 22, 2011, pointed to the shrinking of democracy and the military industrial complex which in recent developments characterizes US-NATO intervention in Ukraine as part of an unfolding global crisis.

***

I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency [the National Security Agency] and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”— Senator Frank Church (1975)

In recent years I have become more and more concerned with the interactions between three important and alarming trends in recent American history. The first is America’s increasing militarization, and above all its inclination, even obsession, to involve itself in needless and pernicious wars. The second, closely related, is the progressive shrinking of public politics and the rule of law as they are subordinated, even domestically, to the requirements of covert U.S. operations abroad.

The third, also closely related, is the important and increasingly deleterious impact on American history and the global extension of American power, of what I have called deep events. These events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, or 9/11, which repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, are mysterious to begin with, are embedded in ongoing covert processes, have consequences that enlarge covert government, and are subsequently covered up by systematic falsifications in media and internal government records.

One factor linking Dallas, Watergate, and 9/11, has been the involvement in all three deep events of personnel involved in America’s highest-level emergency planning, known since the 1980s as Continuity of Government (COG) planning, or more colloquially as “the Doomsday Project.” The implementation of COG plans on 9/11, or what I call Doomsday Power, was the culmination of three decades of such planning, and has resulted in the permanent militarization of the domestic United States, and the imposition at home of institutions and processes designed for domination abroad.

Writing about these deep events as they occurred over the decades, I have been interested in the interrelations among them. It is now possible to show how each was related both to those preceding it, and those which followed.

I would like in this essay to go further and propose a framework to analyze the on-going forces underlying all of the most important deep events, and how they have contributed to the political ascendance of what used to be called the military-industrial complex.  I hope to describe certain impersonal governing laws that determine the socio-dynamics of all large-scale societies (often called empires) that deploy their surplus of power to expand beyond their own borders and force their will on other peoples. This process of expansion generates predictable trends of behavior in the institutions of all such societies, and also in the individuals competing for advancement in those institutions. In America it has converted the military-industrial complex from a threat at the margins of the established civil order, to a pervasive force dominating that order.

President Eisenhower in his farewell address in 1961 warned that “We must guard against the unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex.”

With this framework I hope to persuade readers that in some respects our recent history is simpler than it appears on the surface and in the media. Our society, by its very economic successes and consequent expansion, has been breeding impersonal forces both outside and within itself that are changing it from a bottom-up elective democracy into a top-down empire. And among these forces are those that produce deep events.

I am far from alone in seeing this degradation of America’s policies and political processes. A similar pattern, reflecting the degradation of earlier empires, was described at length by the late Chalmers Johnson:

The evidence is building up that in the decade following the end of the Cold War, the United States largely abandoned a reliance on diplomacy, economic aid, international law, and multilateral institutions in carrying out its foreign policies and resorted much of the time to bluster, military force, and financial manipulation.

But my analysis goes beyond that of Johnson, Kevin Phillips, Andrew Bacevich, and other analysts, in proposing that three major deep events – Dallas, Watergate, and 9/11 – were not just part of this degradation of American democracy, but played a significant role in shaping it.

As author Michael Lind has observed, there have for a long time been two prevailing and different political cultures in America, underlying political differences in the American public, and even dividing different sectors of the American government.  One culture is predominantly egalitarian and democratic, working for the legal consolidation of human rights both at home and abroad. The other, less recognized but with deep historical roots, prioritizes and teaches the use of repressive violence against both domestic and Third World populations to maintain “order.”

To some extent these two mindsets are found in all societies. They correspond to two opposing modes of power and governance that were defined by Hannah Arendt as “persuasion through arguments” versus “coercion by force.” Arendt, following Thucydides, traced these to the common Greek way of handling domestic affairs, which was persuasion (πείθειν) as well as the common way of handling foreign affairs, which was force and violence (βία).”

Hannah Arendt

Writing amid the protests and riots of the 1960s, Arendt feared that traditional authority was at risk, threatened (in her eyes) by the contemporary “loss of tradition and of religion.” A half century later, I would argue that a far greater danger to social equilibrium comes now from those on the right who invoke authority in the name of tradition and religion. With America’s huge expansion into the enterprise of covertly dominating and exploiting the rest of the world, the open processes of persuasion, which have been America’s traditional ideal for handling domestic affairs, have increasingly tilted towards top-down violence.

This tilt towards violent or repressive power is defended rhetorically as a means to preserve social stability, but in fact it threatens it. As Kevin Phillips and others have demonstrated, empires built on violent or repressive power tend to rise and then fall, often with surprising rapidity.  Underlying the discussion in this essay is the thesis that repressive power is unstable, creating dialectical forces both within and outside its system. Externally, repressive power helps create its own enemies, as happened with Britain (in India), France (in Indochina) and the Netherlands (in Indonesia).

The Socio-dynamics of Repressive Power in Large-scale Societies

But more dangerous and destabilizing has been the conversion of those empires themselves, into hubristic mechanisms of war. The fall of Periclean Athens, which inspired Thucydides’ reflections, is a case in point. Thucydides described how Athens was undone by the overreaching greed (pleonexia) of its unnecessary Sicilian expedition, a folly presaging America’s follies in Vietnam and Iraq. Thucydides attributed the rise of this folly in the rapid change in Athens after the death of Pericles, and in particular to the rise of a rapacious oligarchy.  Paul Kennedy, Kevin Phillips, and Chalmers Johnson have described the recreation of this process in the Roman, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, and British empires.  Its recurrence again in recent American history corroborates that there is a self-propelling dynamic of power that becomes repressive.

It is useful to be reminded of the historical division between two cultures in America, which both underlay and predated the Civil War. But these two cultures have evolved and been reinforced by many factors. For example urbanization in America’s South and West worked for most of the 20th century to meld the two cultures, but after about 1980 the increasing disparity of wealth in America tended to separate them to an extent recalling the Gilded Age of the 19th century.

More importantly, postwar U.S. history has seen the institutions of domestic self-government steadily displaced by an array of new institutions, like the CIA and Pentagon, adapted first to the repressive dominance and control of foreign populations abroad, and now increasingly dominant domestically. The manipulative ethos of this repressive bureaucracy promotes and corrupts those who, in order to be promoted, internalize the culture of repressive dominance into a mindset.

The egalitarian mindset is widely shared among Americans. But Washington today is securely in the hands of the global repressive dominance mindset, and a deepening of the military-industrial complex into what in my most recent book I call the American war machine. This transformation of America represents a major change in our society. When Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex in 1961 it was still a minority element in our political economy. Today it finances and dominates both parties, and indeed is now also financing threats to both parties from the right, as well as dominating our international policy. As a result, liberal Republicans are as scarce in the Republican Party today as Goldwater Republicans were scarce in that party back in 1960.

That change has been achieved partly by money, but partly as a result of deep events like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, and 9/11. As a rule, each of these deep events is attributed by our government and media to marginal outsiders, like Lee Harvey Oswald, or the nineteen alleged plane hijackers.

I have long been skeptical of these “lone nut” explanations, but recently my skepticism has advanced to another level. My research over four decades points to the conclusion that each of these deep events

1) was carried out, at least in part, by individuals in and out of government who shared and sought to promote this repressive mindset;

2) enhanced the power of the repressive mindset within the U.S. government;

3) formed another stage in a continuous narrative whose result has been a transformation of America, into a social system dominated from above, rather than governed from below.

Please note that I am talking about the result of this continuous narrative, not about its purpose. In saying that these deep events have contributed collectively to a major change in American society, I am not attributing them all to a single manipulative “secret team.” Rather I see them as flowing from the workings of repressive power itself, which (as history has shown many times) transforms both societies with surplus power and also the individuals exercising that surplus power.

We are conditioned to think that the open institutions of American governance could not possibly provide a milieu for plots like 9/11 against public order. But since World War Two covert U.S. agencies like the CIA have helped create an alternative world where power is exercised with minimal oversight, often at odds with public agencies’ proclaimed policy objectives of law and order, and often in conjunction with lawless and even criminal foreign and domestic elements.

The expansion of this covert world has occurred principally in Asia. There covert U.S. decisions were made to build up drug-financed armies in Burma, Thailand, and Laos, in a series of aggressive actions that by the 1960s involved America in a hot Indochina War. This war, like the related wars that ensued later in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan, was initiated by America for a mix of geostrategic and economic reasons, above all the desire to establish a dominant U.S. presence an important region of petroleum reserves.

Air America at Sam Thong, Laos, 1961

The country most deeply affected by the succession of Asian Wars has been America itself. Its expansive forces, backed by powerful interest groups, are now out of control, as our managers, like other empire managers before them, have “come to believe that there is nowhere within their domain – in our case, nowhere on earth – in which their presence is not crucial.”7

To illustrate this, loss of control, let us look for a moment at a milieu which I believe to have been an important factor in all of America’s major domestic deep events: the CIA’s ongoing interactions with the global drug connection.

Unaccountable Power: The CIA and the Return of the Global Drug Connection

Since World War Two the CIA has made systematic use of drug trafficking forces to increase its covert influence — first in Thailand and Burma, then in Laos and Vietnam, and most recently in Afghanistan.8 With America’s expansion overseas, we have seen more and more covert programs and agencies, all using drug traffickers to different and opposing ends.

In 2004 Time and USA Today ran major stories about two of the chief Afghan drug traffickers, Haji Juma Khan and Haji Bashir Noorzai, alleging that each was supporting al-Qaeda, and that Khan in particular “has helped al-Qaeda establish a smuggling network that is peddling Afghan heroin to buyers across the Middle East, Asia and Europe.”9 Later it was revealed that both traffickers were simultaneously CIA assets, and that Khan in particular was “paid a large amount of cash by the United States,” even while he was reportedly helping al-Qaeda to establish smuggling networks.10

There is no longer anything surprising in the news that large U.S. payments were made to a drug trafficker who was himself funding the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The arrangement is no more bizarre than the CIA’s performance during the U.S. “war on drugs” in Venezuela in the 1990s, when the CIA first set up an anti-drug unit in Venezuela, and then helped its chief, Gen. Ramon Guillén Davila, smuggle at least one ton of pure cocaine into Miami International Airport.11

It would be easy to conclude from these reports that the CIA and Pentagon intentionally use drugs to help finance the enemy networks that justify their overseas operations. Yet I doubt that such a cynical Machiavellian objective is ever consciously voiced by those responsible in Washington.

More likely, it is an inevitable consequence of the U.S. repressive style of conducting covert operations. Great emphasis is put on recruiting covert assets; and in unstable areas with weak governance, drug traffickers with their own ample funds and repressive networks are the most obvious candidates for recruitment by the CIA. The traffickers in turn are happy to become U.S. assets, because this status affords them at least a temporary immunity from U.S. prosecution.12

In a nutshell: I am describing a development that is not so much intentional, as a consequence of repressive dynamics. A related example would be the CIA’s recurring use of double agents, again for the reason just suggested. In the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, the chief planner was a double agent, Ali Mohammed, who surveyed the Embassy and reported to Osama bin Laden in 1993, just months after the FBI had ordered the Canadian RCMP to release him from detention.13 In the Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008, the scene was initially surveyed for the attackers by a DEA double agent, David Headley (alias Daood Sayed Gilani) whom “U.S. authorities sent … to work for them in Pakistan…despite a warning that he sympathized with radical Islamic groups.”14

David Headley in court

The central point is that expansion beyond a nation’s borders engenders a pattern of repressive power with predictable results — results that transcend the conscious intentions of anyone within that repressive power system. Newly formed and ill-supervised agencies spawn contradictory policies abroad, the net effect of which is usually both expansive and deleterious – not just to the targeted nation but also to America.

This is especially true of covert agencies, whose practice of secrecy means that controversial policies proliferate without either coordination or review. Asia in particular has been since 1945 the chief area where the CIA has ignored or overridden the policy directives of the State Department. As I document in American War Machine, CIA interventions in Asia, especially those that escalated into the Laotian, Vietnam, and Afghan wars, fostered an ongoing global CIA drug connection, or what I have called elsewhere a dark quadrant of unaccountable power.

This drug connection, richly endowed with huge resources and its own resources of illegal violence, has a major stake in both American interventions and above all unwinnable wars to aggravate the conditions of regional lawlessness that are needed for drug trafficking. Thus it makes perfect sense that the global drug connection has, as I believe, been an ongoing factor in the creation of an overseas American empire that most U.S. citizens never asked for. More specifically, the dark quadrant has contributed to all the major deep events – including Dallas, Watergate, and 9/11, that have helped militarize America and overshadow its public institutions.

Doomsday Power and the Military Occupation of America

I have said that, underlying the surface of America’s major deep events, there has been a pattern of conflict between two mindsets – that of openness and that of repressive dominance – dating back to the Civil War and the Indian wars of the mid-nineteenth century (and before that to the American Revolution).15 But it would be wrong to conclude from this on-going pattern of conflict that there is nothing new in our current situation. On the contrary, America is in the midst of a new crisis arising from this very old antagonism.

Since World War Two, secrecy has been used to accumulate new covert bureaucratic powers under the guise of emergency planning for disasters, planning known inside and outside the government as the “Doomsday Project.” Known more recently (and misleadingly) as “Continuity of Government” (COG) planning, the Doomsday Project, under the guiding hands in the 1980s of Oliver North, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and others, became the vehicle on 9/11 for a significant change of government. This package of extreme repressive power accumulated under the guise of the Doomsday Project can be referred to as Doomsday Power. In concrete terms, the repressive power developed to control the rest of the world is now, to an unprecedented extent, treating America itself as an occupied territory.

What I mean by “doomsday power” is the package of repressive mechanisms (which I have discussed elsewhere under their official name of “continuity of government” or COG plans), that was prepared over two decades by the elite COG planning group, and then implemented beginning on 9/11. The package includes 1) warrantless surveillance, 2) warrantless detention, (including unprecedented abridgments of the right to habeas corpus), and 3) unprecedented steps towards the militarization of domestic security enforcement and shrinking of the posse comitatus acts.

One recent development of Doomsday power, for example, has been the deployment since 2008 of a U.S. Army Brigade Combat Team to be stationed permanently in the United States. A major part of its dedicated assignment is to be “called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control.”16 Many people seem to be unaware that Americans, together with this Brigade, have lived since 2002 under a U.S. Army Command called NORTHCOM.17 Yet if nothing is done to change the present course of events, historians may come some day to compare the stationing of this brigade in 2008 CE to the date, in 49 BCE, when Caesar, along with his legion, crossed the Rubicon.

And I believe that the forces that have worked for decades to create Doomsday power have, like the global drug connection, been involved in every one of the deep events, from Dallas to 9/11, that have helped bring us here.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Drugs Oil and War, The Road to 9/11, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War. His most recent book is American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection and the Road to Afghanistan. Peter Dale Scott is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

His website, which contains a wealth of his writings, is here.

Notes

1 Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 217. Cf. Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic (New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt, 2004).

2 Michael Lind, Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 143.

3 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), 93. Adapting Arendt’s distinction, Jonathan Schell made a Gandhian case in support of nonviolent persuasive or community power as a means of challenging top-down violent power and thus reforming the world. I developed this case myself in The Road to 9/11 (Jonathan Schell, The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People [New York: Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt, 2003], 227-31; Peter Dale Scott, Road to 9/11, 249-66, 269).

4 Kevin Phillips, Wealth and Democracy: A Political History of the American Rich (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 171-200.

5 Carl A. Huffman, Archytas of Tarentum: Pythagorean, philosopher, and mathematician king (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 207: “In Diodotus’ speech in the Mytilenian debate, wealth is particularly identified as producing arrogant “overreaching” (pleonexia –iii.45.4). Thus pleonexia seems to be associated with the abuse of power by either a tyrant or a wealthy oligarchy.”

6 Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987); Phillips, Wealth and Democracy; Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire.

7 Johnson, Blowback, 221.

8 Scott, American War Machine, 63-142, 239-53. The Karzai regime in Afghanistan is only the latest of CIA client governments to struggle to maintain itself with support from drug traffickers. Cf. Peter Dale Scott, “Can the US Pacify the Drug-Addicted War in Afghanistan? Opium, the CIA and the Karzai Administration”, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, April 5, 2010; Ryan Grim, “Karzai Releasing Scores Of Drug Traffickers In Afghanistan, WikiLeaks Cables Show,” Huffington Post, December 31, 2010.

9 Tim McGurk, Time, August 2, 2004; cf. USA Today, October 26, 2004.

10 James Risen, New York Times, December 11, 2010. Both traffickers were ultimately arrested by DEA officials: Noorzai in 2005, and Khan in 2008. The U.S. probably came to prefer Khan over Noorzai, because he was more closely allied to Abdul Wali Karzai, another drug trafficker and CIA asset, as well as a central figure in the power apparatus of his brother Hamid Karzai, the U.S. client president of Afghanistan.

11 Time, November 29, 1993; Scott, American War Machine, 14-15; Tim Weiner, New York Times, November 23, 1996.

12 It is too early to report the ultimate fate of Noorzai and Khan after their arrest and indictment by the United States. But it is clear that Guillén Davila’s arrest and indictment never led to conviction or imprisonment. On the contrary, he appears to have continued to enjoy CIA favor in Venezuela.  (Scott, American War Conspiracy, 14-15).

13 Scott, Road to 9/11, 152-58.

14 “D.E.A. Deployed Mumbai Plotter Despite Warning,” New York Times, November 8, 2009; cf. Scott, American War Machine, 246-47. In another essay I will develop the thesis that what I call surplus repressive power – power developed exclusively by one society for the repressive dominance of others — is doomed, in this and other ways, to encourage the proliferation of its enemies. My point here is a more modest and general one. Maybe save the sentence for the later work?

15 Cf. Peter Dale Scott, “Atrocity and its Discontents: U.S. Double-Mindedness About Massacre,” in Adam Jones, ed. Genocide, War Crimes and the West: Ending the Culture of Impunity (London: Zed Press, 2004).

16 “Brigade homeland tours start Oct. 1,” Army Times, September 30, 2008.

17 Scott, Road to 9/11, 241-42.

This article was first published in September 2014 following the launching of Obama’s bombing campaign against Syria and Iraq.

These are the US-NATO led wars which are upheld by the media as peace-keeping operations. Double standards with regard to the media’s coverage of the Ukraine crisis. 

***

Why does American policy abroad strengthens groups like ISIS.

Thirteen years ago [in relation to date of publication], a draft dodger from Texas stood on a pile of rubble in New York City and promised, “The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” Of course, the people who flew the planes into the World Trade Center could not hear anybody, as their remains were buried in the rubble beneath Bush’s feet. And our government’s extraordinary relationship with one of the world’s last and most brutal absolute monarchies ensured that any accomplices still in the U.S. were quickly flown home to Saudi Arabia before the crime could be investigated. In 2003, Bush meekly complied with Al-Qaeda’s most concrete demand, that he withdraw U.S. forces from military bases in Saudi Arabia.

A month after September 11, Donald Rumsfeld stood at a podium in front of a $2 billion B-2 bomber at Whiteman AFB in Missouri and addressed the aircrews of the 509th Bomber Wing, before they took off across the world to wreak misdirected vengeance on the people of Afghanistan. Rumsfeld told them, “We have two choices. Either we change the way we live, or we must change the way they live. We choose the latter. And you are the ones who will help achieve that goal.”

Since then, the United States has launched more than 94,000 air strikes, mostly on Afghanistan and Iraq, but also on Libya, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Rumsfeld’s plan has undoubtedly achieved his goal of changing the way people live in those countries, killing a million of them and reducing tens of millions more to lives of disability, disfigurement, dislocation, grief and poverty.

A sophisticated propaganda campaign has politically justified 13 years of systematic U.S. war crimes, exploiting the only too human failing that George Orwell examined in his 1945 essay, “Notes on Nationalism.” As Orwell wrote, “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” Orwell listed “torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations,imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians.” The U.S. has committed all these atrocities in the past 13 years, and Americans have responded exactly as the “nationalists” Orwell described.

But some of the horrors of the U.S. invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan found their way into the conscience of millions of newly war-wise Americans, and President Obama was elected on a “peace” platform and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. To the deep disappointment of his former supporters, Obama has overseen the largest military budget since WWII; an eight-fold increase in drone strikes; special forces operations in at least 134 countries, twice as many as under Bush; and a massive increase in the special forces night raids or “manhunts” originally launched by Rumsfeld in Iraq in 2003, which increased from 20 in Afghanistan in May 2009 to 1,000 per month by April 2011, killing the wrong people most of the time according to senior officers.

Like Eisenhower after Korea and other Presidents after Vietnam, Obama turned to methods of regime change and power projection that would avoid the political liabilities of sending young Americans to invade other countries.  But the innovations of Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war have only spread America’s post-9/11 empire of chaos farther and wider, from Ukraine to Libya to the seas around China. Covert wars are no secret to their victims, and the consequences can be just as dire. The U.S. dropped more tonnage of bombs in its secret war on Cambodia than it dropped on Japan in WWII. As Cambodia imploded in an orgy of genocide, the CIA’s director of operations explained that Khmer Rouge recruiting “has been most effective among refugees subjected to B-52 strikes.”

As Western politicians and media breathlessly follow the escalation of U.S. bombing in Iraq, they neglect to mention, or maybe haven’t even heard as Orwell suggested, that Obama has already launched more than 24,000 air strikes, mostly in Afghanistan, with the same results as in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Iraq, killing thousands of people and making implacable enemies of millions more. These air strikes are an integral component of Obama’s covert war doctrine, but they are only covert in the sense that they are unreported.

In Libya, the U.S. and its NATO allies launched 7,700 air strikes in a war that killed at least 25,000 people and plunged the country into endless chaos. NATO’s illusory and short-lived success in Libya led to airlifts of weapons and fighters to Turkey, where British special forces provided training and the CIA infiltrated fighters into Syria to try and duplicate the overthrow and butchering of Gaddafi.

The sobering experience of watching a CIA operation in Afghanistan in the 1980s lead to the crime of the new century in New York on September 11 should have led U.S. officials to reject new alliances with Islamist jihadis. But the Obama doctrine embraced the use of Islamist militias to destabilize Libya, providing them with weapons, equipment, training and air support. Leadership on the ground came from Qatar’s mercenary “special forces,” many of whom areveterans of the Pakistani military and its ISI intelligence agency, which works with the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan. These Qatari special forces are part of the Libyan template that was transposed onto Syria, where they embedded with the al-Nusra Front. They and/or their Turkish allies probably trained al-Nusra in the use of chemical weapons for the “false flag” attack that almost triggered another U.S. bombing campaign in 2013.

With U.S. support, Qatar spent $3 billion and flew 70 planeloads of weapons to Turkey to support its proxies in Syria, while its regional rival Saudi Arabia sent volunteers and convicts, and paid for weapons shipments from Croatia to Jordan. Wealthy Gulf Arabs paid up to $2,000 per day to hardened mercenaries from the Balkans and elsewhere. As first al-Nusra and then ISIS established themselves as the dominant rebel group, they absorbed the bulk of the fighters and weapons that the U.S. and its allies poured into the country.

The chaos that Obama’s doctrine of covert and proxy war has wreaked in Libya, Syria and Iraq should be a reminder of one of the obvious but unlearned lessons of September 11, that creating and arming groups of religious fanatics as proxies to fight secular enemies has huge potential for blowback and unintended consequences as they gain power and escape external control.  Once these forces were unleashed in Syria, where they had limited local support but powerful external backers, the stage was set for a long and bloody conflict.  But the U.S. and its allies, the U.K., France, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were so committed that they schemed to undermine Kofi Annan’s 2012 peace plan and pledged ever more support, funding and weapons to the rebels as the conflict escalated into a full-blown civil war.

The current view of ISIS (or ISIL or IS) in Western media and political debate is distorted by a dangerous confluence of interests between Western propaganda and ISIS’ own public relations in playing up its strength and its atrocities. On the other hand, when the U.S. and its allies downplayed the role of ISIS in Syria and pretended to be funding and arming only “moderate” forces, this allowed ISIS to quietly gain strength and eliminate its rivals. So Western propaganda has effectively helped ISIS at every turn.

This reckless pattern in Western propaganda extends back to the origins of ISIS. When the original leader of its precursor, Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the “terrorist mastermind” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was crowned as America’s new public enemy in Iraq in 2004, U.S. military intelligence officers explained his propaganda value to Adrian Blomfield of the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph as follows:

We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq… Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable to latch on to, and we got one.

After Zarqawi’s death in 2006, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was rebranded as the Islamic State of Iraq, but it continued to fulfill the same function in U.S. propaganda, helping to paint the Iraqi Resistance as dangerous, bloodthirsty religious fanatics rather than people legitimately and bravely resisting the illegal invasion and occupation of their country. The Bush administration claimed that ISI was responsible for 15% of violent incidents in Iraq, but this was debunked by aCongressional Research Service investigation in 2007, which held ISI responsible for only 2% of violent incidents. Of course, all such analyses completely ignored the far greater violence of U.S. air-strikes, night-raids and other uses of excessive and indiscriminate force in Iraq, as well as the the root cause of all the violence, the U.S. invasion and occupation itself.

As the Western- and Arab royalist-backed proxy war took hold in Syria in 2012, the rump of ISI, which had been reduced to as few as 1,000 men under arms in Iraq, found a new lease on life. In March 2013, when rebels led by the al-Nusra Front captured Raqqa, a provincial capital with a population of 220,000, ISIS took control of the provincial and local government.  Raqqa was once the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate that stretched from North Africa to Central Asia in the ninth century, so it serves both a symbolic and practical role as the capital of ISIS’s new caliphate or Islamic State.

Now that ISIS is once again fighting in Iraq as well as Syria, we have come full circle and Western propaganda and ISIS itself have again found common cause in exaggerating its strength and highlighting its brutality. But its true role in Iraq and its relationship with other Resistance forces there is ambiguous. The gains of Resistance forces, now spearheaded by ISIS, are the result of a political crisis that has been brewing ever since the U.S. invasion. The sectarian Maliki government politically and economically marginalized the mainly Sunni Arab areas of northern and western Iraq, and its security forces have dealt with dissent and political demands from these areas with utter brutality.

Part of the U.S. response to resistance in Iraq was to recruit, train and direct Iraqi death squads, mostly from the Badr Brigades Shia militia. It unleashed these forces in a reign of terror in Baghdad in 2005 and 2006, torturing and killing tens of thousands of mainly Sunni Arab men and boys and ethnically cleansing most of the city. Deputy Interior Minister and Badr Brigade commander Adnan al-Asadi, who oversaw that campaign, remains in office today and has run the Interior Ministry while the formal position of Interior Minister has remained vacant for years on end. The forces he commands, originally called the Special Police, were rebranded the National Police after their al-Jadiriyah torture center was exposed in November 2005, and then rebranded again as the Federal Police, but these are the same forces that have terrorized Sunni Arabs and other minorities and dissidents in Iraq since the darkest days of the U.S. occupation.  The Interior Ministry has responded to the current crisis with a new upsurge in death squad activity.

During the Arab Spring in 2011, Iraqis took to the streets, held rallies and set up protest camps like their counterparts across the Arab world to protest their repressive, sectarian government. They were met by security forces sealing off public squares, arrests, beatings, torture, snipers firing from roof-tops and U.S. helicopters flying over to dump garbage on a protest camp in a square in Mosul.

A new round of protests broke out on December 21st 2012 after security forces raided the home of a popular Sunni politician, Finance Minister Rafi al-Issawi, and arrested his staff and bodyguards. Dr. al-Issawi was the director of Fallujah Hospital during the two U.S. Marine massacres in 2004 and a vocal opponent of Prime Minister Maliki, and he had already survived an assassination attempt a year earlier. Three weeks after the arrest of his bodyguards, he survived another bomb attack.

Within two weeks, protests shut down major highways near Fallujah and Ramadi, and spread to at least 13 other cities, from Nasiriyah in the south to Kirkuk in the north, while tribal delegations from all over the country traveled to Fallujah and Ramadi to support the main protests. Government security forces responded with typical brutality, opening fire on protesters in Mosul and Fallujah. On January 25, they killed seven protesters and wounded 70 in Fallujah. Tribal leaders in Anbar issued a joint declaration that they would launch jihad against government forces if the killers were not brought to justice, but protests remained mainly peaceful, even as government forces killed more protesters.

In March 2013, Dr. Issawi and Izz al-Din al-Dawla, the Minister of Agriculture, resigned from the government, and Bunyan al-Obeidi, a protest leader in Kirkuk, was killed by a government death squad. In April, after an Army officer was killed in Hawija, near Kirkuk, the government besieged Hawijaand at least 56 people were killed in armed clashes between the residents and government forces.  Peaceful protests gradually gave way to armed resistance across the north and west of Iraq. The government banned 10 satellite TV channels, including Al-Jazeera, to censor news of the uprising. In May 2013, the UN reported the highest monthly death toll in Iraq in 5 years, with hundreds of people killed. By the end of the year, the UN estimated that 7,818 civilians and over 1,000 Army and Interior Ministry troops had been killed.

On Dec. 28, 2013, government forces raided the home of Ahmed al-Alwani, a Member of Parliament from Ramadi, killing his brother and 5 of his guards. Two days later, the government sent in Federal Police commandos to destroy the Ramadi protest camp, and 10 protesters and three police commandos were killed. Forty Sunni members of Parliament resigned, and a general tribal uprising forced Army and Interior Ministry forces to withdraw from Fallujah and Ramadi.

Over the next few days, hundreds of ISIS fighters appeared in Fallujah, Ramadi and around Anbar province, and formed a sometimes uneasy alliance with other Iraqi resistance groups and tribal leaders. As in Syria, they have come to dominate and lead the uprising that has swept through western and northern Iraq in the past nine months. ISIS’ main allies have been secular ex-Baathist military officers, still under the umbrella of the Baath Party and formally headed by General Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, now aged 72; and tribal leaders led by Ali Hatem al-Suleiman of Anbar’s Dulaim tribe and the Anbar Tribes Revolutionary Council. Douri eventually announced a split with ISIS in July 2014 after it launched an ethnic cleansing campaign against Christians in Mosul, but this has only led to a few localized clashes between ISIS and other resistance forces.

Suleiman has claimed that ISIS fighters make up only 5-7% of Resistance fighters in Iraq, and that the resistance could oust ISIS from regions it controls. But he has said it will not do so until government forces withdraw from northern and western Iraq and a political transition grants civil and political rights denied to the people of these regions. Another tribal leader from Anbar, Abu Muhammad al-Zubaai, echoed Suleiman’s claims in an interview two weeks ago. Zubaai told the BBC’s Jim Muir, “We don’t want guns from the Americans, we want a real political solution, which the U.S. should impose on those people it installed in the Green Zone. The IS problem would end. If they guarantee us this solution, we’ll guarantee to get rid of IS.”

Zubaai described a clash at Garma, near Fallujah, that killed 16 ISIS fighters, but added, “We had to choose between a comprehensive confrontation with IS, or ceding control of that area and keeping a low profile. We decided to stand down because we are not ready to fight IS in the current circumstances—who would we be fighting for?  On the daily bombing of Fallujah and other cities by the Iraqi air force, with heavy civilian casualties, Zubaai said, “Our biggest concern now is a political solution. A security solution will achieve nothing.  The bombing has to stop.”

These tribal leaders claim to represent 90% of Sunni-majority tribes in Iraq. They have tried to approach U.S. officials, but without any response. Zubaai sees the options facing the U.S. as a stark choice between solidly supporting a genuine political transition and fueling an out-of-control spiral of violence, “If things stay the same, a new generation will emerge, beyond the control of the U.S. or Iran or Syria-hundreds of thousands of young men will join up with IS.”

President Obama’s bombing campaign to support a repressive, sectarian government and Kurdish separatists will reduce more Iraqi cities to rubble, kill thousands more civilians and turn ISIS into the unstoppable monster that Zubaai predicts. But, as he says, the President still has another choice. He can provide full diplomatic and political support for a legitimate political transition in Iraq that would honor the civil and political rights of all Iraqis.  This could begin to solve the long-running political crisis caused by the U.S. invasion, which has led millions of Iraqis to see an alliance with ISIS as a lesser evil than submission to the brutal U.S.- and Iranian-backed regime in the Green Zone.

Like the crisis in Iraq, every part of the current crisis in U.S. foreign policy is amenable to serious diplomacy.  We are on the verge of a diplomatic solution to the phony crisis over Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program.  There is global consensus on ending the Israeli occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with only the United States clinging to its effective support for a territorial expansion that the world will never recognize. The framework for a peace process in Syria was agreed on in Geneva on June 30, 2012, more than two years ago, but stalled as the U.S. and its allies reintroduced their precondition that President Assad must resign first. The coup regime in Ukraine and its Western backers may finally be ready to accept long-standing Russian proposalsfor a political and diplomatic resolution based on regional autonomy and international neutrality.  And ISIS’s allies in Iraq are offering to “get rid of” it in exchange only for the basic civil and political rights that the U.S. promised them when it invaded their country.

But as Robert Parry noted recently, there’s an “old woman who swallowed a fly” quality to neoconservative U.S. foreign policy.  The proposed solution to any U.S. foreign-policy failure is always some kind of escalation, invariably leading to an even more dangerous crisis.  Instead of developing more rational policy goals in response to their overreaching and failures, neoconservative policymakers instead keep doubling down to take on more powerful adversaries and risk even greater disasters.  Thus a failed CIA coup in 1996 and the impending collapse of the UN sanctions regime led to the invasion and destruction of Iraq; the U.S. defeat in Iraq led to targeting Syria and Iran; and Russia’s role in Syria led to a U.S.-led coup in Ukraine and a U.S.-Russian confrontation that has raised the specter of nuclear war: “There was an old lady who swallowed a horse. She died of course.”

The U.S. propaganda system presents Americans with a looking-glass view of the world, in which our “shining city on a hill” is a bastion of peace, democracy and prosperity, while the rest of the world is a dreadful mess riven by endless crises and insoluble problems. The dirty little secret that our propaganda system cannot mention is that the current crises are all deeply rooted in U.S. policy. At this point in our history, most of those roots lead back to the fateful decision to respond to a mass murder in New York City with 94,000 air strikes, an opportunistic global military expansion and a doubling of the military budget. So Zubaai’s plea for Iraq echoes through the larger crisis in U.S. foreign policy, “Our biggest concern now is a political solution. A security solution will achieve nothing. The bombing has to stop.”

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

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

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

***

“The Controversies in Canada” will be the object of a followup article by Professor Anthony Hall

***

In late February the international news cycle moved between two very important focuses. One addressed controversies in Canada. The other continues to highlight events unfolding primarily in Russia, Ukraine, and the USA. While different in many ways, both stories have many-faceted worldwide implications.  

Both involve configurations of power and intrigue that overlap in crucial ways. Both involve conflicts with profound life-and-death implications. Both conflicts highlight that humanity and our civilizational inheritances are at a crossroads.

At this parting of the ways, the most well-travelled autobahn looming up ahead points towards tyrannies far more extreme than anything we have known in history so far.

Whatever highway we follow, it seems there is no escaping the onslaught of new forms of aggressive warfare that are fast pushing humanity into a jagged collision with high-tech weaponry capable of unprecedented destruction.  To say we are living in dangerous times is a gross understatement.

Will humanity be subjected to even greater extremes of outright militarization? Will we continue to be assaulted by a novel array of overt and covert tactics aimed at radically re-engineering society as well as the very genetic attributes of the human genome? Will human beings continue to be reconfigured to advance the conditions of our decline into submissive enslavement? Will we continue to be subject to litanies of media lies, strategies of behavior modification, and unregulated medical experiments aimed at merging our biological persons with aspects of digital technology?

See this and this.

Some common themes wind through the convoluted array of unregulated assaults that menace humanity’s very survival in anything like the God-given form we inherited from nature. Powerful enemy forces are exploiting for their own self-interested advantage, our credulousness, naivety, and susceptibility to programs of mind control. The goal of the master class, it seems, is to modify our behavior so we can be better integrated into a world of pervasive robotization.

Enslavement With the Help of Digital IDs Combined with Cashless Transactions

Right now in the Western countries’ onslaughts of psychological warfare are integral to the military showdown initiated in Eurasia.

While experts in “perception management” are using the media to lure the public into single-minded condemnation of Russia, our attention is being drawn away from stunning revelations coming to light in our midst.

The disclosures underway illuminate the role of COVID Officialdom in forcing on us through mandates and other coercive techniques, highly lethal and injurious medical procedures. These procedures have been purposely designed to induce pathogenic outcomes and depopulation agendas. Throughout Europe and North America, dramatic increases in all-cause rates of death are being reported especially by life insurance companies and funeral homes.

One result is that Pfizer and Moderna investors are “running for the exit.” Former BlackRock investment advisor, Edward Dowd, has sounded the alarm on Moderna and Pfizer “as sinking ships that investors need to abandon.”

See this.

The bad news for the vaccine companies and their notoriously negligent regulators is compounded by the fact that their indemnification is threatened.

The companies and their regulators can be sued if it can be demonstrated that they have lied about their products. Indeed, they have lied on an epic scale and continue to do so. The evidence is clear that the inadequately-tested medical injections advertised as “safe and effective” are no such thing. Now there are headlines proclaiming, “Pfizer and Moderna are modern versions of Enron.”

See this and this. 

As blanket coverage of the Ukrainian conflict dominates the media, the next stage in the insidious COVID con is being executed with blitzkrieg speed. The objective is to rush humanity into a privatized system of universalized and standardized Digital ID before most people have an opportunity to get informed on the fuller implications.

The growing contingent of people devoted to principled non-compliance to the myriad COVID frauds must resist allowing the COVID hucksters to advance their diabolical agenda. The COVID con men and women must be forced to back away from their attempt at making sweeping appropriations and instrumentalizations of yet more elements of our private information. We need to hold the line against slick kleptocrats seeking total control of everything through digital invasion and theft of the little that remains of our personal realms.

Included in the Digital ID con job is the creation of a new type of One World digital currency presently being rushed into existence by the private central banks holding membership in the Swiss-based Bank of International Settlements (BIS). This process is being pushed ahead in partnership with the dystopian World Economic Forum (WEF).

Recently Klaus Schwab, the WEF’s founder, bragged that more than one-half of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Canadian cabinet is infiltrated with WEF insiders. Chrystia Freeland, the Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, is one of them.

In fact Freeland is currently a prominent member of the WEF’s governing body of trustees. As shall become clear, Freeland is emblematic of the abundant conflicts-of-interest and round-the-clock lies that have come to characterize the Liberal Party during the time of Trudeau’s denigration of public office in Canada.

See this, this, this and this. 

A pervasive system of social credit scoring is taking shape with the rush to entrench in many jurisdictions a transnational system of Digital IDs. The other necessary element is our willingness to go along with the creation of a single digital currency. The new system requires the consolidation of a One World megabank that is meant as a key element in the so-called Great Reset.

The advancement of a system of total surveillance and total control requires the termination of all cash transactions. Hence our insistence on continuing the conduct of business through the circulation of cash must be an expression of our principled non-compliance.

The merger of Digital ID together with the replacement of cash transactions would give central authorities the ability to cut off our “freedoms,” including, for instance, even our capacity to buy food. The entrapment of people in digital enclosures would put the vast majority of humans in a virtual penitentiary of unmitigated top-down authority.

See this.

A Matter of Life or Death for Russia

The creation of a social credit dystopia is being pushed rapidly forward under the cover of wall-to-wall coverage devoted to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine. According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian troops are intervening with the goal of “demilitarizing and denazifying Ukraine.”

It is also thought that Putin intends to dismantle about fifteen US biological warfare labs. The Pentagon sponsors of these “research facilities” for mass murder would have us believe they are engaged in a “Biologic Threat Reduction Program.”

In his memorable speech of 24 Feb., Putin claims that the Russian mission in Ukraine, “is not a plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory.” The Russian government asserts that its actions in Ukraine are necessary for the protection of the Russian Mother Country. Over many years Putin has been stressing the themes that the Russian Armed Forces are now acting upon.

The explanation of this military operation as an act of self-defense depends on a historical analysis highlighting the decades-long campaign to strangle Russia in a boa constrictor’s grip of NATO’s aggressive militarism. The core agreements enabling the end of the Cold War have been violated by the patterns of NATO’s expansion since 1991.

NATO has been ingesting former Soviet republics into a US-backed militarized zone of organized anti-Russia zealotry. As Putin warned again and again over recent years, the US goal of transforming Ukraine into yet another militarized enemy of Moscow established a “red line,” a “matter of life or death” for Russia.

See this.

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

Dr. Anthony Hall is editor in chief of the American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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

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

***

Unlike many who seem to believe that freedom of movement (since 2020 extinguished in the EU) must mean an end to national borders, I have only felt that borders should be recognised as the product of political will and history. 

In the entrance to the museum at the Invalides in Paris there is a quote attributed to Charles de Gaulle,

“France was made with the sword.”

The idea that anywhere in Europe especially borders are natural or that they are defined by some innate qualities is absurd.[1]

However, following the principles first proposed in international law (by the British, speaking through their ventriloquist Woodrow Wilson) that nations were to be recognised based on ethnic or language “self-determination”, the only peoples permitted to exercise such political will were granted their “patent” by the British Empire after the Great War. This was consistent with British policy of dismembering all its competitors, e.g. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The October Revolution seemed to offer Britain and its US partner the opportunity to redesign the Russian Empire too.

In order to defeat those forces, a brutal war had to be waged and the system of soviet republics was created both to endow many non-Russian populations with elements of self-determination and to defend the territorial integrity of the Russian Revolution.[2]

We know that Ukraine emerged as a modern state in this context. War, civil war, and negotiation created a state out of the eastern remnants of Austria-Hungary, Poland and Russia. Such configurations have always benefitted British (today Anglo-American) imperial interests. Precisely those qualities were to promote the use of Ukraine against Russia, in the way Croatia has been used against Serbia but on a far greater scale.

British objectives have always been to use “cultural” weapons to create or maintain internally fragmented states which can be manipulated through federal structures dependent upon external arms and finance. All of the white dominions of the British Empire were created as federations ruled from above.[3]

There was clearly legitimate fear among those who supported nationalism in the US that the British would subvert the federal system to their advantage, especially during the Civil War. In fact they obtained this goal in 1913 and consolidated it by 1918 through the “Bank of England” model of public-private partnership.[4] But that is another story.

A major source of confusion in the debate about Ukraine and Russia’s incursion is the question of Ukrainian sovereignty, on which a wide range of people oppose Russia’s actions because it should not attack a sovereign state (naively drawing on the prohibitions of the UN Charter).

Moreover, the claim that Russia should not have violated Ukrainian sovereignty is based on the erroneous belief that Ukraine was invaded. This assertion is based on ignorance. Quite aside from the international-law issues posed by the sovereign claims of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), and hence whether they could exert sovereign rights to conclude treaties and hence invite military aid, there is the long-standing original threat and active aggression of NATO in and through Ukraine’s governments.

The recognition of sovereignty does not outweigh the right of self-defense.[5] The fact that the Russian Federation has not engaged in military retaliation for multiple violations of its territory does not mean that it has waived or forfeited those territorial rights.[6]

That is the ultimate premise upon which most of the critique and attack on Russian military action has been based. There is a principle of English common law by which the convention of traversing private property can create a prescriptive easement – a right of way – which the titular owner of the property can no longer obstruct.[7] Title must be actively and conspicuously asserted to remain enforceable. This is augmented by the concept of adverse possession whereby a party may assert title to land occupied for a given period and have that title sustained against the original owner by virtue of that owner’s failure or neglect to challenge the possession. In other words, there is no such thing as absolute title: it must always be effectively asserted.

Common law, while not necessarily enshrined in statutes, can be seen as an expression of the underlying social and psychological conventions prevailing in a regime. Although a nation-state would not appear comparable with a private home or farm, the material beliefs held and practiced in daily life do shape the prejudices of those who debate politics and political concepts. That is what makes this kind of law “common” – as opposed to the details of statutes or treaties.

The Anglo-American view of sovereignty is implemented by people for whom such fluid ideas of property, title and boundaries are conventional. This can be seen throughout the 19th and 20th centuries in every aspect of international-law practice. Even the so-called international judiciary has been formed or deformed by such assumptions, with some contradictory concessions to continental jurisprudence. The extremes to which disputes in Britain and the US lead to litigation are also an indication of the operational instability of legal conventions and norms – and of the level of aggression in everyday violation of whatever norms may be created by statute or courts.

NATO often appears absurd because its continental European bureaucrats utter pronouncements wholly at odds with their own cultural and legal traditions in order to articulate the policies generated by their Anglo-American principals. On the other hand this is part of the Anglo-American sleight of hand– : framing their imperial designs in the alien terms of continental European politics. No amount of fealty or obsequy can conceal the fact that neither Stoltenberg nor Von der Leyen are natural “common law” politicians.[8] That is one reason their insincerity is so blatant.

They both try to present essentially Anglo-American imperial objectives as if they were continental peninsular. Their statements are incredulous and can be dismissed on their face. The real issue –– which they are employed to conceal –- is the anti-Russian policy of the Anglo-American Empire. To rectify the name of this policy and the actions derived from it would openly deny any pretense of sovereignty in occupied Germany and the vassal monarchies that comprise the core of NATO[9].

So to return to the debate about the war in Central Europe that began in 2014 and that has only now been taken seriously by the mass hypnotised in the West because of Russia’s military response in the Ukraine, the issues ought to be described in the way the antagonists actually see them and not using the distorted language of professional propagandists.

The world has been at war no later than when behind the pretext of a constructive “emergency of international concern” an asset of the Anglo-American international organisation cartel presented the fictive requirements for a global state of martial law.[10] Let us call it what it is. Martial law is imposed for a state of war. The enemy in this case was the world’s ordinary population– the 99% some would say. As I wrote two years ago, the WHO exercised implied authority to empower the Anglo-American Empire to commence a global counter-insurgency.[11] Like similar counter-insurgency wars fought by that Empire, the focus of operations has been the global drug-weapons-energy cartel. This cartel is managed by the espionage organisations and organised criminal gangs shielded by US-UK forces and those of their closest allies.[12]

Under these conditions of global counter-insurgency, the Anglo-American Empire has intensified its operations (war) against its historical enemies/competitors Russia and China. The guiding principle by which this war is fought in the saturation propaganda of the biggest psychological operation since the founding of the Roman Catholic Church can be stated simply: Use it or lose it. There are no human rights, civil rights or sovereign rights which the Anglo-American Empire is obliged to respect. The only rights anyone has are those that the person or nation actually exercises. That exercise must be “open and notorious” (the words comes from common law meaning generally known and as such undeniable).

Beginning in March 2020 most of the world’s citizenry was tricked and bullied into surrendering all their natural rights.[13] Now, two years later, they are finding just how difficult it is to counter adverse possession of all they surrendered under martial law. At the same time, “astute” observers have failed to take seriously the trespass of NATO and other forces of the Anglo-American Empire’s cartels. They have willfully ignored the conspicuous assertion of sovereign rights and privileges by Russia (and China). They have downplayed or ignored – when not apologising for – the violations committed since 1991 (at least).

The Russian Federation, pursuant to the decisions of its highest legislative and executive bodies, ordered deployment of military force to actively and conspicuously assert its sovereign rights against a government controlling a territory adjacent to it which has collaborated in attacks on its territory and people, violating those sovereign rights. Thus,consistent with the more general (as opposed to Anglo-American) concepts of international law, it is engaged in the right to self-defense. This claim is not diminished or forfeited either by failure to so act earlier or by the refusal of the opposing party to acknowledge violations committed.

The end of the military operations by forces of the Russian Federation in Ukraine can only be considered in the context of a resolution (dare anyone say “end”) of the world war commenced by the Anglo-American Empire in 2020. Threats by agents and assets of that regime to continue guerrilla war against Russia in Ukraine only amplify the necessity of grasping the Russian actions in Ukraine as a response to Anglo-American aggression. Until the subjects of that Empire are capable of grasping that and accepting responsibility for that aggression (not only against Russia) and reasserting those human rights they forfeited to their criminal oligarchs two years ago, (not only) central Europe will remain a very messy place indeed.

*

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

Notes

[1] The cultural historian Morse Peckham was fond of saying that “man does not live by bread alone, but mainly by platitudes.” Historically Ukraine has been a “bread basket”. Germany has certainly been able to turn much of its arable land into fields of biomass because Western domination of the Ukrainian economy permits importation of cheap grain from Ukrainian fields. Many of the strategic goals of Unternehmen Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union) lay in Ukraine: grain, oil, access to the Black Sea, etc. historically, the West has only paid lip service to Ukrainian sovereignty.

[2] In his address to the Russian people on 21 February 2022 (available in full on C-Span) Vladimir Putin credited Lenin with the creation of the Ukraine as a republic. He argued that this—as part of Lenin’s policy for the nationalities issue—was intended to assure Bolshevik control over Russia. Putin presents himself as an opponent of the Soviet Union hence he considers such a policy negative and a violation of Russian sovereignty. However Lenin was not immune to the problems of suppressing foreign intervention in the Russian civil war—of which the US was a part with troops in Russia until 1921. Lenin had to accommodate both the Wilsonian ideology and the threatened disintegration of Russia through foreign invasion. The Soviet Union would not have been the first federal state to factually deny the formal conditions of federation, e.g. the US Civil War.

[3] The “white dominions” were those constituents of the empire covered by the Statute of Westminster (1931): Australia, Canada, Irish Free State, Newfoundland (which was not yet part of Canada), New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa. Conspicuously absent was India. Along with India, the rest of the British Empire was not “self-governing”.

[4] The Federal Reserve Act (1913) was based on the Aldrich Plan conceived secretly at the so-called Jekyll Island conference (1910). The design of the Federal Reserve System was based on many key features of the Bank of England, a privately owned bank with monopoly powers over the country’s money. Coherence with the BoE model was assured by the participation of the Warburg and Morgan interests. Although the Aldrich Plan failed in Congress a modified version was adopted. The key element was the private control of the nation’s monetary system—as in the UK.

[5] The US circumvented the ostensible intent of the UN Charter to enshrine the prohibition of war (the 1928 ”Kellogg-Briand Pact”, General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) and establish the UN as the sole venue for international disputes, with the Security Council responsible for the use of force by including provisions that permitted so-called “collective security” arrangements. This sleight of hand was used to justify the creation of NATO outside the UN framework. NATO has commonly been portrayed as a defence against the Soviet-led “Warsaw Pact”. This too is propaganda. NATO was founded before the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union only initiated its own collective security agreement after US bombing of the Soviet Union while the US was waging war against Korea and China (1951-53).

[6] In Putin’s address to the Russian nation on 24 February 2022 (the full text of which was posted by Bloomberg) he detailed the NATO transgressions which Russia had endured since 1991. Many of these went unreported or underreported at the time. Rick Rozoff (Anti-Bellum) has been posting blow-by-blow reports of NATO actions all along Russia’s border for years—using NATO’

[7] The inception of a prescriptive easement can be prevented by appropriately defending the ownership rights. A well-known example is the closure of the central court of Rockefeller Plaza in New York City (where the ice rink is) for one day in the year to interrupt the period of otherwise continuous public access that would create such a prescriptive easement.

[8] Jens Stoltenberg is the Norwegian NATO general secretary. Ursula von der Leyen is the President of the European Commission, the junta that runs the European Union on behalf of its multi-national corporate cartels.

[9] While it is tempting to assume that NATO is comprised of democracies, the fact is that core members are monarchies, e.g. United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Norway, and Spain. Until 1974 NATO included outright dictatorships like Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey. Constitutionalism notwithstanding, monarchy has been an essential part of NATO’s political culture.

[10] The declaration of a „health emergency of international concern“ by the Gates-dominated, Rockefeller-founded World Health Organization in 2020 was only possible by regulatory manipulation and statutory deception perpetrated after the 2009 “Swine Flu pandemic”. The definition of “pandemic” was changed. This bureaucratic fraud has been discussed everywhere except by the general public which is still misled by official deceit. Thus it can be said that the “covid war” also started much earlier than officially admitted.

[11] In articles posted here at Global Research and  Dissident Voice: From Rags to Riches (2 April 2020) The First Circle (24 April 2020), Economic Epidemic (2 May 2020), The Fourth Circle (29 September 2020). See also The Military Origins of Public Health (4 November 2021) and The Real Anthony Fauci, reviewed there.

[12] Douglas Valentine, The CIA as Organised Crime, also reviewed by this author.

[13] George Carlin rendered a very sober summary of the problem of rights, as popularly understood in the West. “Rights and Privileges”

Featured image is from epthinktank.eu

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

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

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

***

The attempt by the United States to confront, contain and undermine the economies of both Russia and China continues unabated. Having instituted an economic war against Russia through its sanctions the US is also seeking to step up its offensive against China’s economy.

Over a year into his presidency Biden has not rolled back any of the punitive tariffs that Trump imposed on China’s economy which have contributed to rising prices for American consumers. Instead, the Biden regime is seeking to step its efforts to undermine China’s economic challenge to American hegemony over the global economy.

This comes a time when the United States trade deficit with China continues to reach all-time highs. In 2021 the US trade deficit with China surged from $124 billion in 2020 to $151 billion in 2021. This illustrates the continuing decline of the American economy.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday 1 March Biden stated that he will seek to reduce inflation facing ordinary Americans:

“We will ‘buy American’ to make sure everything from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on highway guardrails are made in America. But to compete for the best jobs of the future, we need to level the playing field with China and other competitors.”

Of course, he could help American consumers by eliminating the trade tariffs imposed on billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods by President Trump. Instead, Biden is seeking to implement a raft of punitive measures that will seek to undermine Chinese trade and manufacturing. The outcome of these measures is probably going to intensify geo-political rivalries with China. This is at a time when the US is pushing relations with Russia to dangerous levels of hostility reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis.

American efforts to further undermine China include the probable use of Section 301 of the Trade Act which Allows American officials to impose punitive sanctions on trading partners whose policies violate trade law. According to the Wall Street Journal the United States is seeking to prevent China’s challenge to American dominance in high-tech industries such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, 5G and electric vehicles.

On Tuesday 1 March the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Released its annual report which stated quite unequivocally that China is still continuing to practice unfair trade practices which the United States must take action to counter. The report however did not give any specifics on how this is to be done.

“We are clear-eyed about China’s doubling down on its harmful trade and economic abuses,’’ which it claims have harmed American workers. There is no acknowledgement that American corporations voluntarily moved most of their manufacturing to China to benefit from the low paid but highly skilled workforce in China.

The report pulls no punches when it details China’s economic ‘crimes’:

“These detrimental actions include China’s tariffs and non-tariff barriers to restrict market access, government-sanctioned forced labour programs, overcapacity in numerous sectors, industrial policies utilizing unfair subsidies and favouring import substitution, and export subsidies (including through export financing). They also include coercive technology transfers, illicit acquisition and infringement of American intellectual property, censorship and other restrictions on the internet and digital economy, and a failure to provide treatment to American firms in numerous sectors comparable to the treatment Chinese firms receive in those sectors in the United States.’’

It goes onto make the rather ironic claim that the US is committed to clamping down on China’s use of forced labour in the province of Xinjiang as, ‘Americans and consumers around the world do not want products made with forced labour on store shelves….’’

This rank hypocrisy glosses over the widespread abuse of prison labour in the US by over 4,100 corporations. Over 63,000 inmates work in prison workshops being paid between $0.50 to 2 dollars. Meanwhile, tens of thousands more are sent out on work release programmes working for similar wages in dangerous conditions in agricultural facilities.

The continuing efforts by American imperialism to undermine China’s economic development are sign of weakness not strength. History shows time and again that empires in decline rarely leave the scene of history without a fight. Washington’s economic warfare against China is symptomatic of the continued decline of American capitalism, which has a multitude of structural weaknesses that it appears unable to address. One example of this being the failure of Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure programme.

The current struggle between the US and China is reminiscent of the Punic Wars between the militaristic state of Rome and the trading state of Carthage. Geo economic and political rivalries turned former allies into deadly enemies.

We are seeing a similar scenario play out in the 21st century between China and the United States. In 1972 Nixon inaugurated a new era of positive relations with China as the US sought to isolate the Soviet Union. Now 40 years on and the US is hell bent on subjugating Beijing the way it was suppressed in the period known in China as the ‘Century of Humiliation’.

It remains to be seen whether the Beijing regime learns any lessons from past history. It can continue to seek cooperation with the US while America makes moves on the economic, military and political fronts to undermine and isolate it. Alternatively, it can take action to ensure that it does end up like Carthage.

*

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

Dr. Leon Tressell is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

In an interview just before his death in 2012, Günter Grass, who limned so poignantly the horrors of war in his novel The Tin Drum, spoke ominously about America’s interference in the Ukraine, remarking,

“There is war everywhere; we run the risk of committing the same mistakes as before. Without realizing it, we can get into a world war as if we were sleepwalking.”

The sudden media frenzy over the move of Russia’s military into the Ukraine in defense of Donetsk and Lugansk, the Donbass region featuring a largely Russian-speaking population, is deeply disorienting for us. We already know from the last few years, and from the last twenty years, that journalism, globally, is dead and that little of the information that we receive is reliable.

The number of Russians, or Ukrainians, reported killed might be as accurate as the number of people infected with COVID-19, a bogus disease. We may have to wait years to get to the bottom of this conflict.

We have little idea of what is happening in the Ukraine, but we can be sure that the new fluidity in geopolitics generated by it, the unprecedented escalation, threatens all.

We have been skillfully divided by the powerful, yet again. Some rush to condemn the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia as a horrific crime, holding protests in good faith around the country. They are concerned about Russian expansionism, Russian domination, and the global influence of a state system with President Vladimir Putin at the center.

Their concerns, although at times exaggerated, are not without basis.

Others, however, see the meddling of the United States in the Ukraine over the last twenty years, and especially the US-NATO covert orchestration of the overthrow of the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 as an illegal coup d’état. They condemn the horrific shelling of the Donbass region by the far-right, anti-Russian, government installed in Kiev. And they express concern over the funding by the United States, and other Europeans, of far right, explicitly Nazi and anti-ethnic Russian groups that have been responsible for most of the violence over the last eight years.

Their concerns are not without basis.

But arguing that Russia is expansionist when the United States has spread the tentacles of empire to every corner of the globe, is silly, is laughable.

Likewise, arguing that President Vladimir Putin offers a real opposition to American expansionism, that he presents a defense of the rule of law and a legitimate internationalism, is delusional.

But you, the American citizen, empowered by the Constitution and crippled by the multinational corporation, are forced to rely on news sources like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, or alternative news of the left and right, sources of varied quality that promote storylines meant to obscure the manner by which global financial institutions, a handful of the super-rich, are subjecting the United States economy to a controlled demolition with the intent of integrating the remaining shell-shocked fragments into a new global economy controlled by invisible forces.

Our media, with rare, rare exceptions, shies away from an investigation of deep structural contradictions, like the overproduction and false growth driven by hidden debt, that lead us to bounce back and forth between war with China and war with Russia so as to keep the billionaires in power.

All these media sources lied to you with a straight face about the 9.11 incident, about the COVID-19 scam, and they want you to forget about the trillions of dollars stolen by investment banks in 2020, and to avoid any consideration of how the super-rich are reducing our citizens to slavery.

Sadly, the media of Russia, or of China, is not much better, granted that it sometimes touches on topics that are forbidden in Washington.

What we can say today about the conflict in the Ukraine is that neither side, and there may be more than two sides involved, is aiming for incremental change or for a slight advantage.

The international community founded on the principles of the United Nations Charter, a community that had limped on, in spite of decadence and corruption, in spite of the radical concentration of wealth, in spite of the criminal privatization of government, and the reduction of education and journalism to tools for social control, that system has, at last, has died.

The international community has changed, changed utterly.

Make no mistake, the dumbing down of our citizens, the destruction of institutions of governance, education, and journalism during the COVID-19 operation, has opened the doors to a global battle, at home and abroad, unlike anything any of us have seen in our lifetimes.

This is most certainly not a Cold War ideological battle. The screaming headlines in the media about the “right” and the “left” refer power players who offer zero ideological analysis about the means of production and how power is perpetuated. The dialog on politics offers no serious ideological differences, but simply the antics of two parties in Washington D.C.: the whores and the pimps.

No, the current great unravelling resembles the days before the First World War when national governments that controlled multinational empires appealed to patriotism and created unity through a war effort, a war that was meant to generate profits and to divert attention away from social contradictions. Conflict, the bankers reasoned then and now, creates demand, increases the authority of the state, and gives reasons for suppressing open discussion.

Then as now, global finance had no commitment to a specific nation, and sought advantages in England, Germany, Russia and France by encouraging war.

The current two systems, represented at this moment by Washington and Moscow, are not competing for simple political influence.

Those gathered around Joseph Biden in the White House, those gathered around Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street, and their followers in the corporate world, threaten military attacks and impose extreme sanctions such as closing airspace to Russian planes, and ending communications for Russians via mobile phones.

NATO and the United States, through recent actions that shut Russia out of the international monetary and logistical systems, are committed to completely dismantling Russia, and leaving behind only cultural rubble. The demands for a no fly zone in the Ukraine are demands for war with Russia, demands for nuclear war. When Senator Lindsey Graham demands that President Putin be assassinated, when the Russian general Andrei Sukhovetsky is killed, we are in a war that must be stopped.

But something else is going on here. These sanctions on Russia are suddenly announced in the media without any discussion of the process by which they were generated or description of who will implement them. The argument promoted is that an authoritarian Russia threatens democracies. But the actions of these democracies are rendering them as dictatorships.

As a result, global institutions like the Bretton Woods system, the United Nations, as well as IT corporations like Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Oracle, are being militarized as we speak now.

What they have been authorized to do to Russians today they will do to you tomorrow, and there will be no appeal precisely because the policies were formulated and implemented in secret.

Your bank account, your automobile, your every action, can be shut down by these hidden forces. The oppression of citizens in Canada, New Zealand and Austria was the front line of this war against the citizens of the Earth. Now something far worse is slouching towards Kiev to be born.

A shadow government lurks behind the titles “US Government,” “German government,” “NATO,” “World Bank,” or “United Nations” and it will be able to seize everything you possess, and to put you in jail, without any due process.

The Russians are planning their own response on the global stage, and they will work most likely with Iran, and perhaps with factions in China, and with the dissatisfied in Europe and in the United States.

The Russians will not tell us what they are planning, and our corrupt media will not explain what steps Russia will take to dismantle the United States.

But we can be sure that the mansions of government, finance and journalism in the United States have such weak foundations, and such rotten beams that there will be plenty of havoc the Russians can wreak.

How sad that we will devote such effort to tearing each other apart when we should be building global institutions for disarmament and nonproliferation, for the response to the climate catastrophe, and to end the rule of private finance, and technological tyranny, over the good citizens of the United States, of Russia, and of the rest of the world.

The sanctions on Russia are presented as devastating. But from the position of Russia, sanctions make necessary self-reliance and economic independence which is healthy. They reduce the poisonous touch of vampire financial institutions like BlackRock, Vanguard and Goldman Sachs, institutions that are sucking the lifeblood out of the United States.

What happened on February 19th? Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference in which she called out to all members of NATO (which she referred to as “the greatest military alliance the world has ever seen,” to join the United States in preparing to confront Russia on all fronts.

When Harris said that “national borders should not be changed by force,” when she promised “unprecedented economic costs,” when she called for NATO to “move forward with consequences,” she was issuing a declaration of war against Russia, perhaps a war by means other than tanks and fighter planes.

The Munich Security Conference, funded by NATO, by global finance and by military contractors drooling over the potential for war, had a thin veneer of legitimacy that allowed Harris to speak with confidence.

She represents perfectly the culture politics employed to mask the emergence of class warfare and to render the Democratic Party as a public relations firm devoted to convincing Americans that the fusion of corporate and government power is good because minorities play key roles.

Harris was touted in the mass media (a media that could not care less about the realities faced by working class people of all colors) as “breaking barriers” by being the first woman, the first Indian American and the first African American to rise to such a prominent position.

There is value in her rise to prominence, but if we look at her role as San Francisco district attorney, we see that she destroyed the lives of young people, mostly black, who were locked up as her service to private prison franchises.

Harris serves us the poison whipped up by the criminal class of bankers in a bright multicultural cup, with a touch of progressive rhetoric so that bitter taste is bearable.

President Vladimir Putin delivered his formal response to Harris, and more broadly to the United States and NATO, on February 21 at the Kremlin. His speech formed a notable contrast. Putin presented the historical context of the American and NATO interventions in the Ukraine in a lucid, and largely accurate manner. He gave more detail about policy than any American politician would do.

He upheld diplomacy, international institutions and the need for concrete dialog. He deserves credit for this effort.

But there were ominous signs as well.

Putin sat at a desk in the icy Kremlin, with its high ceilings and marble walls, addressing a small group of government elites. His poise was perfect, wearing a meticulously prepared jacket and tie and watching every detail of the process like an eagle.

Behind him hung two flags: the flag of the Russian Federation, and the flag of the Presidency of Russia. Putin’s personal flag features a double eagle grasping the symbols of state power and the image of Saint George slaying a dragon. It is a flag that represents the authority of the emperor to punish.

Putin resembles most Napoleon Bonaparte, a self-made emperor who was determined to bend the world to his will. Napoleon held up the Napoleonic code in 1800 that granted basic rights to all men, and he opposed the power of the Catholic church and of the nobility. But his gambit in Europe was a means of increasing his power and the power of the state.

Similarly, Putin has advocated for international treaties and diplomacy, for rational dialog between nations, while at the same time relying on a tight-knit group of billionaires who have no interest in the common man.

There has been a surge in puppy love for Putin around the world. But before we get carried away, let us check the facts.

Did Putin note that COVID-19 is a scam that enables the super-rich to take over the global economy? No, he presumed that both Russia and the United States are run by functional governments and suggested that a few meetings with American secretary of state Anthony Blinken could clear up the misunderstandings.

Although Putin has, to his credit, discussed the concentration of wealth and the privatization of government, still he is fine with the United Nation’s system being reduced to a toy for the superrich. He did not even hint at the rising power of multinational banks, the war on money, privacy, and autonomy over one’s body.

Let us remember that the Russia presented as an alternative is an active member of the World Economic Forum and has implemented many COVID-19 policies, if perhaps not as severely as other countries.

Putin’s speech was about blood ties, family ties, between Russia and the Ukraine. He spoke like a Czar and he laid blame for Russia’s problems at the feet of the Communist Party, the Bolsheviks.

Although the failures of Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Communist Party are well documented, Putin’s suggestion that the Communist Party was hopelessly out of touch with reality, that it signed a humiliating treaty with Germany for peace during World War I out of cowardice, was misleading.

Lenin and his followers wrestled with the issue of class and the concentration of wealth. They may have been misguided, but they, unlike Putin, were right on the money.

Lenin was an imperfect politician and thinker, but his understanding of class struggle and of the hidden crimes of global finance is directly applicable to the crisis we face today.

What do we need to do in response?

We are looking at a war in the Ukraine that is part of a larger world war, a war intended to transform human society into a prison, into a digital nightmare wherein unaccountable techno-tyrants can track, and punish at will, anyone for any reason. Silent weapons to destroy the body and the mind are employed in this quiet war waged by supercomputers. No one, no one, in the corporate media will ever tell you this truth.

The war has already started. It will be a war unlike any war we have encountered before. Most likely, many of the expensive weapons we have purchased will prove useless.

It is a basic rule of history that we are always preparing to fight the last war. The cavalry charges of the 19th century proved useless in the face of machine guns in the First World War, and the biplanes of the 1930s were no match for the fighter planes, aircraft carriers, and long-range bombers of the Second World War.

We have been preparing for some version of the Second World War for a long time. Even today, experts struggle to fit the Ukraine war in the box of the Second World War or the Cold War.

This war is like the Second World War in that is consists of axis and allied powers around the world engaged in a global struggle for absolute control.

This war is like the Civil War in that it pits brother against brother, and state against state–just as we witnessed in the COVID-19 campaigns.

This war is like the Vietnam War. The enemy is everywhere.

And, this war has new elements. The massive destruction, retention, and manipulation of information means that tens of thousands can be killed and most people would never know anything had ever happened.

The militarization of money, of medicine, of communications and of journalism and education present us with unprecedented challenges. Military experts are not able to grasp this new reality because they are caught up in the WEF’s Great Reset themselves. Many are more concerned about their retirement benefits than about the long-term security of our people.

We witness an interference pattern wherein the traditional imperial struggle of a world war is projected on an unprecedented form technological class warfare.

That means that we cannot rule out the possibility that the war in the Ukraine will ultimately be a “rich man’s game” meant to further the enslavement of the common man.

The richest man on Earth, Elon Musk agreed to requests from the Ukraine government to supply internet services via his Starlink satellites. What a humanitarian! Or is this war just a more effective way of pushing through the great reset, of taking possessions away from citizens and stripping them of the means of production? Will we all be forced, sooner or later, to use Musk’s Starlink for communications because of a war, if not because of a pandemic?

The sudden sanctions on Russia without due process or debate, parallel the seizure of the assets of Canadians for questioning government policy.

Money and assets form the next front in this war. Assess to money will become a privilege granted by the corporate state to those who follow the rules.

Our response to this crisis must have two sides: a security side and an economic side.

On the security side, we must create a global arms control and disarmament regime that is democratic and transparent in nature and that takes the power to promote war away from arms merchants and the banks that support them. The regulations must be without exceptions and must be global.

The competition to develop nuclear weapons, and other dangerous devices, has already started in earnest between Germany, Turkey, Iran, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Vietnam, Brazil and other nations. Ukraine was clearly being encouraged to take that path.

We must be firm in presenting an alternative to this nightmare that threatens humanity—nuclear war is far, far, more dangerous than any bogus pandemic.

The United States will be the first to commit to a serious disarmament program.

Such a commitment will show that the United States is following the Nonproliferation Treaty and will do more than anything else to change the mood around the world and to open a window for true diplomacy.

On the economic side, we must end now the rule of parasitic finance that is trying to destroy Russia, as it has destroyed many other nations, and as it is preparing to destroy the United States.

We must separate the military and intelligence permanently from finance and profit-driven efforts, and end the deadly privatization of security that has allowed multinational investment funds like BlackRock to seize control of the Earth’s economy using the authority of the military and techno-tyrants like Facebook and Amazon to buy up chunks of the intelligence system.

Critical to ending this drive for world war by a handful of psychopaths will be taking back control of money in the United States. Bogus currency and financial manipulation must end. Fake money generated by supercomputers and called “derivatives” should be considered worthless. And stock markets and futures markets must be places run as cooperatives by citizens in which ordinary people can build enterprises with their neighbors.

There is no room for an elite untouchable class of the rich.

If the multinational investment banks intend to seize our money, we must make it clear that the definition of money, and its valuation, is a right that belongs to the citizens, and not to multinational investment banks. If they deny us access to our money, or manipulate its value in any way, we will make our own currency tied to assets that we define as local communities.

We need real security. We need self-sufficiency in renewable energy and in food. We need to an end the death cult of free trade and growth, and undertake a massive scaling back of these eternal alliance relations.

NATO is a monster in search of a war, a progeny of overproduction and financial speculation. It must be dismantled and the United Nations Charter used as the foundation for shared security treaties that span the Earth and the deal with the threats to the climate, to the oceans, and to food with the seriousness we would adopt to respond to war.

Along the way, we must set up an international constitution of information to assure that all citizens are entitled to the truth and that massive distortions of information do not lead us into needless conflicts.

We must rush to the front line in this global battle, establishing binding treaties to end nuclear weapons and to end the creation of deadly robots and drones that can so easily misused. We also need binding treaties on the use of nano-technology as a weapon, and of biotechnology as a weapon—as we witnessed in the case of vaccines.

We will do so by creating, and by defending with our lives, a global commons that belongs to all of us and that is off limits to the billionaires. That global commons will include most of our oceans, forests, rivers and natural wildlands.

There is so much we can do to offer hope, rather than despair, life, rather than death, understanding, rather than ignorance, and truth, rather than lies. We must start a great transformation, not a Great Reset, that will sweep across our nation, and the Earth.

We stand firmly at this critical moment and we order the money changers and mercenaries that they cannot set loose these dogs of war.

*

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

This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Rise Up Times

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

As Americans continue to watch on in shock as the horrors of war in Europe stream across their screens, a familiar refrain reverberates throughout the media echo chamber: Something must be done! But when it comes to American foreign policy, that something is all too often a horror all its own.

Sanctions 

First on the usual list of things that must be done are sanctions. And indeed, Washington has already imposed new sanctions on Moscow, with calls seemingly growing each day to sanction more, more, more.

But do sanctions actually work? And are they really as much of an alternative to war as they might appear?

Speaking on sanctions with NPR’s Steve Inskeep, former assistant secretary of the treasury Juan Zarate argued this week that sanctions against Russia, despite their limitations, were still worth pursuing.

As Zarate explained,

“There are limits to what sanctions can do [but] this is a use of sanctions to deal with an aggression of unprecedented scale and scope from Russia when we aren’t going to put troops on the ground or fight ourselves.”

Inskeep then questioned, “So you don’t think the goal is regime change here, which is something that people talk about on social media. You think the goal is to do something, and this is the thing that is available to do. Do you think, though, that President Putin is likely to feel any pain?”

Zarate went on to answer that Putin “is immune from the effects of this. He is going to continue, obviously, to march forward in Ukraine. And the effects will be felt by the Russian economy, no doubt.”

To be clear, Zarate is admitting here that the sanctions won’t do anything to change Moscow’s behavior. They won’t do anything to stop the war in Ukraine, in other words. But what they most certainly will do is torpedo the Russian economy, a burden which will then be left to bear by ordinary Russians. It’s a strategy of collective punishment undertaken for no other reason than a feeling we simply must do something.

But what of the risks of such punitive and seemingly fruitless measures?

Inskeep continued: “We’re dealing here with a nuclear-armed nation, thousands of nuclear weapons, with a leader who’s turned out to be less predictable than people thought just a week or two ago. And now the U.S. is economically backing Russia into a corner. Is there a scenario where this goes too far?”

“Perhaps,” Zarate answered. “And Putin has warned this.”

Warned he has, as Putin reiterated just this weekend that Moscow sees sanctions as being “akin to a declaration of war.” So much for sanctions as some sort of alternative to war.

So to summarize, sanctions don’t do anything to change “bad behavior” while actually risking further escalation. Seems like pretty terrible policy. But, hey, something must be done.

Arms

Much like sanctions, the something that must be done in the form of supplying arms to our chosen allies is already a fait accompli in the present case. Since 2014, the U.S. has pumped at least $2.7 billion into Ukraine for “security assistance,” with yet greater amounts in more lethal arms now pledged.

Supplying arms as a means of satiating the ‘something must be done’ demand is typically sold to the public as a somewhat prudent measure. We give arms so others can defend themselves and ultimately fight our wars for us. It will be their blood, not ours.

We saw this most recently when the CIA funneled arms via Libya to Syrian “moderate rebels” fighting Assad. This rat line from Benghazi ultimately blew up on Washington with the 2012 consulate attack and the death of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. The Benghazi attack would notably go on to play an outsized role in American political life, as Donald Trump and the Republicans used it repeatedly against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, with ‘Benghazi’ becoming a rallying cry on the right.

Ironic, then, that Clinton would appear this week to advocate for the U.S. to arm yet more foreign fighters, this time in Ukraine. Ignoring her own intimate experience with the U.S. adventures in Libya and Syria, Clinton instead chose to draw an analogy to the U.S. arming of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s.

“It didn’t end well for the Russians,” Clinton summed up before noting that “there were other unintended consequences as we know.” Those unintended consequences we all know would be minor things like the Taliban, Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, 9/11, etc.

But given all that, and given the role the Benghazi affair played in derailing her own political ambitions, Clinton remains steadfast in advocating for the arming of Ukrainians. As she remarked on the U.S. experience with the Mujahideen, “I think that is now the model people are looking toward.”

Unsurprisingly, the Washington Post reports that U.S. training and arming of Ukraine has been focused for months on building the means necessary to sustain a prolonged insurgency against Russian occupation. It’s the Mujahideen model at work. But as with any such insurgency, the arms now flooding Ukraine will inherently find their way to the most radical and extreme factions on the right, despite the inevitable claims of supplying only “moderate rebels.”

So it’s blowback be damned yet again. Something must be done.

No-Fly Zone

The Biden administration has so far been adamant that a NATO no-fly zone is off the table in Ukraine. But the war drums still beat loudly in Washington and Kyiv nonetheless.

The most prominent no-fly zone rallying point thus far has been the much-publicized Russian convoy on the outskirts of Kyiv. Such a ripe target for NATO bombardment, the no-fly zone advocates muse. As NBC News foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel framed it on Twitter, “Perhaps the biggest risk-calculation/moral dilemma of the war so far. A massive Russian convoy is abt 30 miles from Kyiv. The US/NATO could likely destroy it. But that would be direct involvement against Russia and risk, everything. Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?”

This harkens back once more to Libya and the Western hysteria back in March 2011 over another convoy. Recall that with a column of Ghaddafi forces poised to strike at the heart of the uprising in Benghazi, the cries to do something reverberated throughout Western media. NATO didn’t “watch in silence” in 2011, but instead bombed the convoy, imposed a no-fly zone, killed scores of civilians, helped murder Ghaddafi himself, set-up a rat line to Syria, and then left Libya to descend into anarchy.

But the results of NATO’s war in Libya are what they are. Something had to be done.

Assassination

For the more lunatic fringe of the Washington establishment, why not just kill Putin?

This past week both Lindsay Graham and Sean Hannity floated the idea of assassinating Putin as something to do. As Graham sneered, “The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

Such fantastical thinking. The criminal act of ordering the murder of a foreign head of state aside, political assassination is an often self-defeating policy. As Andrew Cockburn details in his book Kill Chain, assassinations don’t destroy political movements or ideologies, they instead tend to open the door for even more radical and hardline figures to assume power.

But once again, at least assassination is doing something.

Perhaps, though, it’s time Washington finally relented and for once stopped stoking the inferno. Perhaps it’s time to cease horrors begetting horrors. Perhaps that is ultimately the something that must be done.

*

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

Ben Schreiner is an American writer.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Below is a transcript of the interview of Prof. Francis Boyle by Dennis Bernstein from Pacifica Radio.

*

Dennis: From Pacifica Radio in San Francisco, this is Flashpoints. I’m Dennis Bernstein. Today on the show, Russian forces seize control of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown site, risking triggering a dangerous nuclear explosion. And the danger still hovers over the expanding conflict. Also international legal scholar and author, Francis Boyle, paints us a bit of a different picture of Putin than the corporate press, which has now taken to calling Putin unstable, unhinged, another Hitler, a Stalin. All this, coming up, straight ahead on Flashpoints. Stay tuned.

And you’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. My name is Dennis Bernstein. We broadcast every weekday from 5:00 to 6:00 over the Pacifica Radio Network. We broadcast out of the San Francisco Bay Area on KPFA and also, of course, welcome KPFK in the Los Angeles area. It is good to have you all with us today. There is so much going on and we have a lot to talk about.

First of all, this from the nation. War is a tragedy, a crime, and a defeat. The nation condemns the decision of Russian President, Vladimir Putin to abandon the path of diplomacy by attacking and undertaking a special military operation or operations in Ukraine. These actions violate international law and fuel a dangerous escalation of violence. We urge all parties to immediately cease hostilities to deescalate and seek a diplomatic solution to mitigate the risk of full-scale war and an unthinkable direct conflict between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Now, our guest who is coming up to join us in just a minute, Francis Boyle, writes and wrote today or said today: Obviously a case can be made that Russian’s actions violate international law, but we need to look at the actual circumstances of the case. And joining us to do just that is Professor Francis Boyle who is Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois. And Professor Boyle, it’s been a while. It’s good to have you back with us.

So, I mean, it is a fact, nobody can deny that the United States bombed Iraq illegally under—in the first Bush and then they bombed Iraq illegally under the second Bush. Joe Biden made sure that illegal war happened based on false weaponry. And included in that operation against Iraq, we carried out an extreme attack on their infrastructure leading to the deaths of tens of thousands, perhaps over a hundred thousand children. You might say, two wrongs don’t make a right or two rights don’t make a wrong.

Francis Boyle, what’s your perspective on the invasion? Clearly he’s invaded a civilian areas and great risks have been against human life.

Francis: Well, Dennis, thank you very much for having me on my best here listening audience. We really have to go back here to the agreements made by Jim Baker and Secretary General Gorbachev and the other European leaders at that time that if Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany, NATO would not extend one inch farther to the east.

Now, that was not put into writing, but under basic principles of international law that I teach to my students, oral commitments made by high level government officials such as Secretary of States, Prime Ministers, etc., are binding under international law. So, the Soviets had a binding commitment from the United States and several of these other European states that NATO would not move to the east.

What happened then was Clinton came into power and under the influence of Strobe Talbott, his so-called Soviet expert, proceeded to expand NATO to the east. Right up to the borders of Russia where they are today. And Ukraine is part of that project.

Second then came the 2014 coup d’état that was paid for and sponsored and organized by the United States against the democratically elected government in Ukraine under Yanukovych and put into power a gang of Neo-Nazi thugs that are still there today. And proceeded to engage in ethnic cleansing and pogroms against Russian speakers in Ukraine.

As for this statement by the Nation, you know, that they should return to negotiations, in 2014 and 2015, Russia went along with the Minsk Accords and yet what happened was, the United States did absolutely nothing to encourage the Ukrainian government to negotiate in accordance with the Minsk Accords in good faith. The Minsk Accords could have resolved this problem but we did not want it to be resolved. We still wanted to maintain our Neo-Nazi military platform there in Russia to be used—sorry, in Ukraine, to be used against Russia.

So, basically, what happened was that Putin issued his ultimatum in December, starting what could only be called a Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. Taking the same position on the US NATO military Nazi regime in Ukraine that JFK took towards the Soviet missiles in Cuba. And they tried to negotiate in good faith with the Bidenites for two months and got absolutely nowhere. Their demands were quite simple, their main demands, 1, NATO must not expand anymore. And 2, Ukraine must not join NATO. The Bidenites refused to give them any of those commitments, even though the United States government was bound to give them those commitments as far back as Jim Baker and Gorbachev.

So, I should point out that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, that was 13 days. Here, it was two months. Putin gave us two months. And President Kennedy was fully prepared to invade Cuba if he had not been able to negotiate through back channels, the agreement was with Khrushchev to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba which he was able to do and there was no invasion. By contrast here, Bidenites refused to negotiate on the critical points, so Putin treated this like Kennedy would’ve treated Cuba with the Soviet missiles still there and invaded.

It’s a terrible situation, but you have to understand that the front lines there at Donetsk, the front lines to this Neo-Nazi regime forces at Donetsk were 400—are 460 kilometers from Stalingrad, Volgograd.

Now, Dennis, I toured the front lines, World War II front lines at Leningrad, where the Germans starved a million Leningraders to death, including killing Putin’s brother. The front lines at Moscow that basically ended right where the trolley lines enter the city, where they ended and I have been to Stalingrad, now called Volgograd. The sheer genocidal savagery of the Germans took my breath away.

Now, that’s who was 460 kilometers away from Stalingrad. So, under these circumstances, I think Putin saw this as an existential threat to Russian and the Russians and he is acted the way he has. It’s regrettable that it’s come to this, but there were numerous ways to prevent it by the United States government and we provoked it.

Dennis: You are listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio, that’s the voice of Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, Francis Boyle. Author of many good books, an expert on international law and on many things legal. We’re always happy to have him on the air.

Now, as you point out, Putin is no Gandhi, but it’s doubtful that any Russian leader would tolerate the—sort of the way in which NATO is moving in on Russia.

Francis: That’s correct, Dennis. As a matter of fact, I offered both Soviet politics and Russian history for my PhD oral exams at Harvard and passed and that qualified me to teach both Soviet politics and Russian history to Harvard undergraduates. So you know, I’ve studied, you know, their entire history here–

Dennis: Yes.

Francis: –from the get-go. Indeed, going back to Ukraine, when I—I was invited to lecture there and met a lot of their peace leaders, lawyers, government officials and even asked for a tour of the monastery where Nestor wrote his chronicles. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians there said, yes, this is the start of Kievan and Russian civilization.

So, I’m acutely aware of the history of both people here. I don’t see how Putin could’ve done anything differently because NATO would’ve continued to expand. We were already pumping in billions of dollars of weapons, equipment, supplies, trainers, to this Neo-Nazi regime that we installed.

And let me say, you know, Dennis, we both know that the United States government has covertly cooperated with Nazis going back to Operation Paper Clip. And you’re free to correct me if I’m wrong, but this was the first time, certainly in my lifetime, that we overtly and proudly cooperated with, armed, equipped, supplied and trained an overtly Neo-Nazi regime. And of course, you have no idea the Soviet Union suffered 27 million people dead and they’re just 460 kilometers from Stalingrad and I’ve been there. It’s—it just took my breath away to see what happened there.

Dennis: Can I just throw this thing in here, people say and I’ve heard this, how can you say Neo-Nazi, it’s led by a Jew? You know, is this Jew supporting a Neo-Nazi regime?

Francis: Well, he’s a figure head, but if you don’t take my word for it, you cited The Nation. Today, there is an article on The Nation documenting in detail, just hit their webpage, on the Nazi, Neo-Nazi control and domination in Ukraine. Right. It’s all there in The Nation today.

Dennis: Say a little bit more about—I mean, the dual standard, people say, oh you can’t—comparison kills and all that stuff, but the dual standard, just for instance, let’s take the US relationship with the Saudis. You know, they’ve demonstrated that they’re willing to kill you as journalists and shred them in an Embassy, yet you’ve got the United States government fueling in the air Saudi planes that are committing slaughters in Yemen and creating a famine.

Francis: It’s outright genocide.

Dennis: It’s hard for the United States to talk morality, isn’t it?

Francis: It’s outright genocide what the Saudis are doing to the Houthis in Yemen. And yes, we are arming, equipping, supplying and assisting the Saudis and basically, aiding and abetting their genocide against the Houthis in Yemen in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Let me return to Ukraine and what could be done now. I mean, this is a very dangerous situation. If, you know, President Biden, I listened to his press conference today, basically, announcing economic warfare against Russia. If he really wanted to solve this problem, and deescalate, first he could announce that NATO will not be expanding, period. That’s the end of it. You know, we are NATO. NATO does what we tell them to do. NATO will not be expanding. Second, he can definitely announce that Ukraine will not be joining NATO. Third, that they will go back in good faith to the—to try to negotiate under the Minsk Accords.

Biden said nothing like that today. He just escalated it. If you’re reading the news media, following the wire services today sending more and more military equipment, surrounding Russia on all sides, under the pretext, well he has to bolster the NATO states when Russia has not threatened any of these NATO states. They’re problem is Ukraine, because as they see it, Ukraine is an American/NATO dagger, pointed right at the heart of Mother Russia.

And so, they had to do something about it. It still can be deescalated now if Putin—sorry, if Biden wanted to do it. I don’t believe that is the agenda here on the Biden administration. Also, I would say to some extent, Biden and the Bidenites are wagging the dog here, because, as you know, they have not controlled this pandemic. The economy is in the toilet. And rather than dealing with the very serious problems we have here at home, he’s just wagging the dog all over again and saying, he wants to promote democracy in Ukraine.

How many times have we heard US military invasions of countries saying, well, we’re out there to promote democracy. I mean, Woodrow Wilson said that on the First World War and yet, as we know his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryant quit and said, it’s all a lie, Wilson’s been scheming to get us into the First World War from the get-go.

So, you know, this could get out of hand over there if it’s not brought under control immediately, this could be a tinder box for—even Zelensky pointed out, it could become a pan-European war and it could be, yes.

Dennis: And you know, we’re about to get into this big time, but what happened today in terms of the Russians taking back Chernobyl and you know, like please, nobody light a match. That is such a risky moment in history. You’ve got the bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, they don’t even have any more room, we’re past midnight. And what’s going on there in Ukraine obviously is extremely dangerous for so many different reasons. But nukes are [crosstalk]

Francis: You know, I think they have twelve more nuclear reactors in Ukraine. I think the Russians were concerned that the Ukrainians, you know, Zelensky twice now threatened to get nuclear weapons. I think they were concerned that they might manufacture some type of dirty bomb there at Chernobyl, so they secured Chernobyl and you’re right, it was very dangerous. It could get worse.

Dennis: It’s its own dirty bomb waiting to happen. We all know that about nuclear power plants. We’re gonna have to leave it right there. Francis Boyle, I always appreciate having you on the show. You are Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois. Written wonderful books about the law, beautifully written. You’ve even written poetry about resistance. We appreciate you, Professor Boyle. We hope you’ll come back soon.

Francis: Well, thanks Dennis. And since the KPFA fund drive is on, I do hope everyone will pitch in something.

Dennis: All right. Thank you.

Francis: So they can all continue to hear progressive voices on this station. Thank you, Dennis.

Dennis: Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

Francis: Sure.

Dennis: You’re listening to Flashpoints on Pacifica Radio. We’re gonna take a short musical break.

*

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

Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Among his many books is “Destroying World Order.”

Featured image is from South Front

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Russian media alleged today that Ukraine was close to building a plutonium-based “dirty bomb” nuclear weapon. The TASS, RIA and Interfax news agencies quoted “a representative of a competent body” in Russia as saying Ukraine was developing nuclear weapons at the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear power plant recently seized by Russian forces.

Shortly before the military intervention in Ukraine, Russian President Putin also noted in an address to the nation that Ukraine was using Soviet know-how to create its own nuclear weapons, and that this was tantamount to preparation for an attack on Russia.

Depicting a doomsday scenario in order to malign Russia’s calculated offensive in Ukraine to minimize collateral damage, mainstream reporting focused Friday, March 4, on the fire that broke out[1] at Zaporizhzhia plant, one of Europe’s largest nuclear power plants situated 550 km southeast of Kyiv. The fire has since been extinguished after the plant was captured by Russian troops and no radiation leakage has been detected.

The black-op of setting a building in the sprawling nuclear complex alight and then posting doctored video clips of Russian tanks shelling straight at the nuclear plant on social media, promptly verified as “authentic” by corporate media, was clearly the dirty work of covert saboteurs who’ve been advising and assisting Ukraine’s inept security forces and also 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.

Besides setting the building ablaze, neo-Nazi saboteurs and foreign mercenaries fighting alongside Ukraine’s security forces also reportedly stole large quantities of fissile material from Chernobyl and Zaporizhzhia plants before the nuclear reactors were captured by Russian forces, and are working on rigging conventional explosives with fissile material to build dirty nukes in order to inflict maximum damage on Russian forces in combat zones.

Foreign mercenaries who have recently joined the fray in Ukraine after getting a nod of approval from the US national security agencies are especially skilled in building dirty nukes.

Total number of nuclear warheads across the world currently stands at roughly 13,000: Russia has 5977; NATO has 5943, including 5428 in the US, 290 in France and 225 in the United Kingdom; China has 350, Pakistan 165, India 160, Israel 90 and North Korea has 20 nuclear weapons, according to the Federation of American Scientists.

In addition, according to an Oct. 2017 Turkish parliament report[2], nuclear weapons belonging to the US were deployed in five NATO member states that did not themselves have developed nuclear programs. “There are nearly 150 US nuclear weapons in six air bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey,” it added.

During the Cold War, the US placed nuclear weapons in NATO countries, including Turkey, as part of the organization’s nuclear sharing program. Some of the nuclear weapons placed in the 1960s are still deployed in Turkey.

Although five non-nuclear NATO members are officially acknowledged to host American nukes, NATO has in fact covertly deployed strategic armaments in Eastern Europe, too, specifically in Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, aimed at Russia.

This was the foremost rationale the Kremlin was staunchly against the inclusion of Ukraine, straddling its western flank, into NATO and demanded written assurances against the transatlantic military alliance’s eastward expansion imperiling Russia’s regional security.

The safety of fifty American B-61 hydrogen bombs deployed at Incirlik airbase in Turkey became a matter of real concern during the foiled July 2016 coup plot against the Erdogan government after the commander of the Incirlik airbase, General Bekir Ercan Van, along with nine other officers were arrested for supporting the coup; movement in and out of the base was denied, power supply was cut off and the security threat level was raised to the highest state of alert, according to a report[3] by Eric Schlosser for the New Yorker.

The Biden administration approved on Feb. 24 an additional 7,000 US troops[4] to be deployed to Germany, bringing the total number of American forces sent to Europe to 12,000 this month, including troops previously deployed to Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

In Poland alone, the US military footprint now exceeds 10,000 troops as the majority of 12,000 troops sent to Europe last month went to Poland to join the 4,000 US troops already stationed there. The East European nation notorious for supporting the Nazis during the Second World War and committing a massacre of three million Jews has once again become a hub of covert warfare and providing lethal military assistance to Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Russia decides to invade Poland next after subduing Ukraine. According to a Politico report[5], the White House was weighing a three-way deal with Poland to get Soviet-era MiG fighter jets to Ukraine in return for the US providing Poland F-16s, despite stark warning by the Kremlin that any country attempting to impose no-fly zone over Ukraine would be treated as a belligerent in the war.

The US has already disbursed $240 million of the $350 million in military assistance Biden approved recently, mostly on buying surface-to-air missiles and antitank Javelins, though there would be no shortage of funds for turning Ukraine into one of the most militarized nations on the planet following military intervention by the New Cold War rival, as the Biden administration has already announced a much larger $10 billion “humanitarian” and military assistance package, subject to forthcoming approval by the US Congress, and Washington’s opulent West European clients would willingly contribute billions more to punish Russia’s transgression in Eastern Europe.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told RT[6] on Thursday, March 3: “There’s information that mercenaries from Kosovo, Albania, and Bosnia and Herzegovina are being recruited to be transported to Donbass, and other nations, in order to destabilize Russia. We’re checking that.” That’s close to an official acknowledgement that besides neo-Nazis and foreign mercenaries, Islamic jihadists from the Balkans are also fighting in Ukraine’s proxy war.

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

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

Several contingents of Syrian militant groups had already left for Ukraine and were taking part in some of the most hard-fought battles against Russian security forces north of Kyiv and at Kharkiv and Donbas and the rest were on their way, according to informed sources.

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

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

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

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

Besides the inducement of monetary rewards, Islamic jihadists also have ideological reasons to fight Russian forces in Ukraine, as they were previously pounded by Russian forces in Chechnya, former Yugoslavia and lately in Syria. Thus, they have a score to settle with Russia in Ukraine.

When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware in support of the Syrian government in September 2015, the jihadist proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of driving a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.

With the help of Russia’s air power, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional allies.

The artificial distinction between ISIS jihadists and so-called “moderate militants” in Syria’s proxy war was more illusory than real. After the liberation of the ISIS-held territories in Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and Raqqa and Deir al-Zor in Syria in 2017 and the clearance operations at the Iraq-Syria border that lasted until 2019, the remnants of the militant group are on the run and the rest have already joined the ranks of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by al-Qaeda’s formidable Syrian franchise al-Nusra Front.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), led by al-Nusra Front Emir Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, controls most of the territory in Syria’s northwestern Idlib province with the tacit approval of Turkish security forces that have established numerous military outposts in the contested Syrian enclave bordering Turkey.

Both the self-styled caliphs of ISIS, al-Baghdadi who was killed in Oct. 2019 and his successor al-Qurayshi who was eliminated in the Feb. 3 raid, were hiding in Syria’s Idlib with the blessings of al-Nusra leadership and the Turkish security forces, which have trained and armed myriad groups of jihadists during Syria’s decade-long proxy war, and were scapegoated by the neo-Ottoman Sultan to extract geo-strategic concessions from Washington.

Reportedly, the contingents of Syrian mercenaries who have arrived in Ukraine to fight Russian security forces include a significant number of ISIS militants, as they are the most battle-hardened and ideologically driven and are known to deploy suicide bombings and VBIED attacks as weapons of choice, inflicting maximum casualties on adversaries.

*

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

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] Russian forces seize huge Ukrainian nuclear plant, fire extinguished

[2] US has 150 nuclear weapons in five NATO countries

[3] The H Bombs in Turkey by Eric Schlosser

[4] An additional 7,000 US troops to be sent to Germany

[5] White House weighs deal with Poland to get fighter jets to Ukraine

[6] Jihadists from the Balkans are fighting in Ukraine, Lavrov

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Im Schatten des Ukraine-Krieges bereitet die WHO – von der Öffentlichkeit unbemerkt – ein völkerrechtlich bindendes „internationales Abkommen zur Prävention und Bekämpfung von Pandemien“ vor. Die Verhandlungen in Genf haben bereits begonnen. Ursprünglich war die „Machtübername“ bereits für den 1. Mai 2022 geplant, d. h. alle 194 Mitgliedstaaten der WHO wären dann gezwungen, die von der WHO beschlossenen Maßnahmen wie Lockdowns oder allgemeine Impfpflicht umzusetzen.

Ein neues Memorandum vom Concilium Europa, vom 3. März 2022, hat den Prozess allerdings beträchtlich verzögert. Mittlerweile ist geplant, dass ein Arbeitspapier (working draft) für dieses neue WHO-„Weltherrschaftsabkommen“ am 1. August 2022 bereit sein sollte zu weiteren internen Verhandlungen. Siehe dies.

Offiziell begründet wird dieses von der WHO als notwendig erachtete Unterfangen laut „Rat der Europäischen Union“ mit dem vorgeschobenen Argument, dass die internationale Staatengemeinschaft noch besser auf mögliche künftige Pandemien und deren koordinierte Bekämpfung vorbereitet sein müsse (2). Ideengeber scheinen laut „Epochtimes“ vom 5. März sowohl die EU als auch private Akteure wie die Rockefeller Foundation und Bill Gates zu sein (3). Hinsichtlich der Pandemie-Erfahrungen der beiden vergangenen Jahre ein Hinweis darauf, was die Welt zu erwarten hat.

Grundlage des Abkommens ist Artikel 19 der WHO-Satzung. Dieser besagt, dass die WHO-Generalversammlung mit einer Zwei-Drittel-Mehrheit für alle Mitgliedstaaten bindende Vereinbarungen beschließen kann. Nationalstaaten können dann nicht mehr souverän entscheiden, welche Maßnahmen zur Pandemiebekämpfung sie einführen wollen.

Die Abschaffung des Nationalstaates bedeutet gleichzeitig den Verlust der Grund- und Bürgerrechte. Davor warnte der renommierte deutsch-britische Soziologe, Publizist und Politiker Ralf Dahrendorf bereits vor vielen Jahren:

„Wer den Nationalstaat aufgibt, verliert damit die bisher einzige effektive Garantie seiner Grundrechte. Wer heute den Nationalstaat für entbehrlich hält, erklärt damit – sei es auch noch so unabsichtlich – die Bürgerrechte für entbehrlich.“ (4)

Bei einer solch weitreichenden Frage muss jedoch das Volk das letzte Wort haben: Allen wahlberechtigen Bürger eines Landes muss das Recht und die Möglichkeit eingeräumt werden, in einer Abstimmung (Referendum) ihre Meinung kund zu tun.

Vorschlag einer Expertin an alle Landesregierungen

Frau Dr. Stuckelberger, die seit über 20 Jahren für die WHO arbeitet, unterbreitete laut „greatreject.org“ folgenden Vorschlag: Jedes Land sollte einen öffentlichen Protestbrief an die WHO schicken. Die ‚Regierungen‘ sollten einen Brief verfassen, in dem sie erklären, dass die Bevölkerung nicht akzeptiert, dass die Unterschrift des Gesundheitsministers ohne ein Referendum über das Schicksal von Millionen von Menschen entscheiden kann. Es ist sehr wichtig, diesen Brief aus jedem Land an die WHO in Genf zu schicken. Die WHO fordert alle Länder auf, die Maßnahmen bis Mai 2022 umzusetzen [diese Forderung wurde in der Zwischenzeit auf 2024 herausgeschoben, siehe].

Bisher hätten nur die Russen ein solches Ablehnungsschreiben verschickt (5).

Internationales Recht lässt keine UN-Verordnung zu, die über der Konstitution einzelner Länder steht. Dies trifft auch auf die WHO – eine UN-Organisation – zu.

*

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

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a retired rector, educationalist and graduate psychologist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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

Noten

1. [Updated English version]
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/coronavirus/pandemic-treaty/

2. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/de/policies/coronavirus/pandemic-treaty/

3. https://www.epochtimes.de/politik/ausland/globaler-pandemievertrag-der-who-kann-nationale-verfassungen-aushebeln-a3744145.html

4. https://weltwoche.ch/daily/im-schatten-des-uktaine-krieges-werkelt…ns-sollen-zum-neuen-instrument-der-internationalen-politik-werden/

5. https://greatreject.org/who-is-world-government-power-grab/

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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

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

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

***

A study published February 21, 2022, in Frontiers in Virology claims to have discovered that a sequence of the virus’ spike protein is a 100% match to a modified messenger RNA (mmRNA) sequence patented by Moderna in 2016

The genetic sequence patented by Moderna is part of a human DNA repair gene called MSH3. This patented sequence is found in SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site in the spike protein — the part that gives the virus such easy access into human cells

According to Moderna’s patent application, the gene sequence was modified “for the production of oncology-related proteins and peptides,” ostensibly for use in cancer research

According to the researchers, the chance that SARS-CoV-2 would have randomly acquired this furin cleavage site through natural evolution is 1 in 3 trillion

In a February 24, 2022, interview, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel proposed the COVID-19 pandemic may have been the result of a lab leak

*

The facts surrounding SARS-CoV-2’s origin just keep getting stranger and more disturbing as time goes on. From the start, most of the evidence seemed to point to the virus being a lab creation that somehow escaped the confines of the laboratory. We really don’t have much of anything to suggest otherwise.

Now, a study^1,2 published February 21, 2022, in Frontiers in Virology claims to have discovered that a sequence of the virus’ spike protein is a 100% match to a modified messenger RNA (mmRNA) sequence patented³ by Moderna — in 2016.

Some believe this is a smoking gun, proving gain of function research is at the heart of this mystery. Of course, more research is needed to verify the findings, but if proven correct, it could be rather incriminating.

What Did Moderna Patent?

The genetic sequence patented⁴ by Moderna — and now found to be part of the SARS-CoV-2’s furin cleavage site in the spike protein that gives the virus access into human cells — is a 19-nucleotide sequence of a human gene called MSH3, which is a DNA repair gene.⁵

Nucleotides code for specific amino acids. The MSH3 gene works with the part of your immune system responsible for combating cancer by repairing damaged cells. This pathway has been identified as a potential target for new cancer treatments.

As noted in the patent application, the gene sequence has been modified “for the production of oncology-related proteins and peptides,” ostensibly for use in cancer research. The first name listed on the patent is Stéphane Bancel, a Frenchman who has been Moderna’s chief executive officer since 2011.

What’s so curious here is that the scientists of the Frontiers in Virology paper searched all viral and bacterial databases looking for matches to the furin cleavage site patented by Moderna, and SARS-CoV-2 is the only pathogen that has this sequence. It’s an absolute match — 100% identical.

What are the chances of a naturally-occurring virus having a rarely encountered furin cleavage site that is genetically identical to an engineered and patented one? As noted by the authors:⁶

“The absence of CTCCTCGGCGGGCACGTAG from any eukaryotic or viral genome in the BLAST database makes recombination in an intermediate host an unlikely explanation for its presence in SARS-CoV-2.”

In other words, the sequence being a natural zoonosis is extremely unlikely. According to the researchers, the chance that SARS-CoV-2 would have randomly acquired this furin cleavage site through natural evolution is 1 in 3 trillion.⁷ They also noted that “Recombination in an intermediate host is an unlikely explanation.” What’s more, it’s known that inserting a furin cleavage site on the spike protein of a virus will make it more infectious.

Moderna CEO Suggests Lab Leak Responsible for COVID-19

One hypothesis raised in the paper is that the matching code might have been introduced into the SARS-CoV-2 genome through infected human cells that express the MSH3 gene. The question, then, is how and when did that happen?

Interestingly, in a February 24, 2022, interview, Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo questioned Bancel about the finding. He responded saying their scientists are looking into the claim, adding:

“That it came from a lab is possible. Humans make mistakes. It’s possible that the Wuhan lab in China was working on virus enhancement or gene modification and then there was an accident where somebody was infected in the lab, which affected family and friends. It is possible. On the claim you just mentioned, scientists will look to know if it’s real or not.”

Now, if SARS-CoV-2 was man-made, why would they use this particular code? As noted in the Frontiers of Virology paper, the MSH3 sequence in question has been shown to cause mismatch repair in DNA, and faulty repair of genetic damage can lead to a number of diseases, including cancer. But overexpression of MSH3 also plays a role in virology:

“Overexpression of MSH3 is known to interfere with mismatch repair … which holds virologic importance. Induction of DNA mismatch repair deficiency results in permissiveness of influenza A virus (IAV) infection of human respiratory cells and increased pathogenicity. Mismatch repair deficiency may extend shedding of SARS-CoV-2 …

A human-codon-optimized mRNA encoding a protein 100% homologous to human MSH3 could, during the course of viral research, inadvertently or intentionally induce mismatch repair deficiency in a human cell line, which would increase susceptibility to SARS-like viral infection.”

It’s interesting to note that Moderna did not have a single successful mRNA product brought to market before the COVID-19 pandemic allowed them to bypass normal regulatory requirements.

Now, all of a sudden, we’re to believe they managed to throw together a safe and effective mRNA injection against SARS-CoV-2, a virus that just so happens to contain one of its own patented components. What are the odds?

Did Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading promoter of mRNA technology as a replacement for traditional vaccines, have anything to do with Moderna’s sudden “success”? It certainly looks that way. After all, the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), an arm of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), both funded and co-developed Moderna’s COVID-19 jab.

As explained by the NIH,⁸ the injection “combines Moderna’s mRNA delivery platform with the stabilized SARS-CoV-2 spike immunogen (S-2P)⁹ developed by NIAID scientists.” In mid-November 2021, Moderna granted co-ownership of its COVID-19 mRNA “vaccine” patent to the NIH to resolve a dispute involving the naming of the inventors.¹⁰

Can the COVID Jab Trigger Cancer?

Incidentally, since the release of the mRNA COVID jab, some doctors have raised concerns about the possibility of the injections to trigger cancer, largely due to its detrimental impact on your immune function.

For clarity, this may have nothing to do with Moderna’s patented MSH3 sequence specifically, because the RNA code in the jab is not identical to the RNA code of the actual virus. The RNA in the jab has been genetically altered yet again to resist breakdown and ensure the creation of abundant copies of the spike protein.¹¹

So far, the link to cancer post-jab seems to be related to the downregulation of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), which is involved in both infections and cancer. In an October 2021 article, Dr. Nicole Delépine, a French pediatric oncologist,¹² discussed reports of exploding cancer cases post-jab:¹³

“Several months ago, we expressed at least “theoretical reservations” about vaccinating cancer patients or former patients who had been cured, because of the underlying mechanism of the gene injection on immunity.

Several geneticists had also expressed their concerns about the possible interference between active or dormant cancer cells and the activity of gene therapy on lymphocytes in particular. Months have passed, and the vaccine madness has amplified … [C]learly there seems to be three situations:

Beyond the testimonies that are pouring in from relatives and friends and on social networks, a Swiss newspaper has finally addressed the subject in a broader way. Here are some excerpts from their article and their references:

‘Can COVID vaccines cause cancer? In some cases, the answer seems to be yes … [It] has been shown that in up to 50% of vaccinees, COVID vaccines can induce temporary immunosuppression or immune dysregulation (lymphocytopenia) that can last for about a week or possibly longer.

Furthermore, COVID mRNA vaccines have shown to ‘reprogram’… adaptive and innate immune responses and, in particular, to downregulate the so-called TLR4 pathway, which is known to play an important role in the immune response to infections and cancer cells.

Thus, if there is already a tumor somewhere — known or unknown — or if there is a predisposition to a certain type of cancer, such a state of vaccine-induced immune suppression or immune dysregulation could potentially trigger sudden tumor growth and cancer within weeks of vaccination …’”

Dr. Ryan Cole, in August 2021, also reported^14,15 seeing a significant increase in certain types of cancer, especially endometrial and uterine cancers, since the start of the mass injection campaign. Cole runs a large pathology laboratory in Idaho.

Other Key Components of SARS-CoV-2 Have Also Been Patented

Time will tell where this all leads, but clearly, SARS-CoV-2 does not appear to be the result of natural evolution. The evidence for it being man-made is simply overwhelming. So far, few in mainstream media have been willing to touch this story, for obvious reasons.

Finding a key gene sequence of the virus in a patent of one of the primary vaccine makers is inconvenient to say the least — and this is in addition to all the other patents relating to the virus.

As previously detailed¹⁶ by David Martin, Ph.D., SARS-CoV-2 appears to have been engineered in the 1990s, perfected in 1999 and patented in 2002. Evidence also shows that plans for mandatory vaccinations were hatched in 2015. That year, during an Academies of Science meeting, Dr. Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance stated:

“… until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCM’s [medical countermeasures] such as pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine.

A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of [the] process.”

According to Martin, “That’s admission of a felony, and the felony is domestic terrorism.” In a November 2021 Red Pill Expo speech,¹⁷ Martin reviewed the timeline of the COVID-19 jab, which began in 1990 with the first coronavirus vaccine patent for canines (dogs) filed by Pfizer.

That vaccine was an S-1 spike protein vaccine — just like the current Pfizer COVID shot, and according to Martin, that S-1 spike protein is a bioweapon, not a pathogen. Nine years later, in 1999, Fauci, as director of the NIAID, tasked the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with the creation of “an infectious replication-defective coronavirus” specifically targeted for human lung epithelium.

The patent for that replication-defective coronavirus that attacks human lung cells, filed April 19, 2002, (Patent No. 7279327), details the gene sequencing of the resulting virus, and how the ACE receptor, the ACE2 binding domain and the S-1 spike protein were engineered and could be synthetically modified in the lab using readily available gene sequencing technologies.

Basically, computer code is turned into a manmade pathogen, or an intermediate pathogen. This technology was initially funded in order to harness the coronavirus as a vector for an HIV vaccine, but it clearly didn’t end there.

CDC Holds Patents on SARS Coronavirus

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also holds key patents, including an illegally obtained patent for the entire gene sequence for the SARS coronavirus (Patent No. 7220852), which Martin says is 99% identical to the sequence now identified as SARS-CoV-2.

That CDC patent also had several derivative patents associated with it, including U.S. patent 46592703P and U.S. patent 7776521, which cover the gene sequence of SARS coronavirus and the means for detecting it using RT PCR testing. With these two patents, the CDC has complete scientific control, as it owns the provenance of both the virus and its detection.

According to Martin, there’s also evidence of a criminal conspiracy involving the CDC and Sequoia Pharmaceuticals. April 28, 2003 — three days after the CDC filed its patent for the SARS coronavirus — Sequoia Pharmaceuticals filed a patent on an antiviral agent for the treatment and control of infectious coronavirus (Patent No. 7151163).

So, the CDC filed a patent on SARS coronavirus, and three days later there’s a treatment? This strongly suggests there was a working relationship behind the scenes. Sequoia Pharmaceuticals, founded in 2002, develops antiviral therapeutics with a special focus on drug-resistant viruses.¹⁸ Its lead investors include the Wellcome Trust.

But there’s yet another problem with Sequoia’s 2003 filing for an antiviral agent. It was actually issued and published before the CDC patent on SARS coronavirus had been granted, which didn’t happen until 2007, and the CDC had paid to keep the application private.

So, there is zero possibility for anyone but an insider to have that information. This is clear evidence of criminal conspiracy, racketeering and collusion, Martin notes. You cannot develop a treatment for something that you do not know exists.

Sanofi also owns a series of patents detailing what we’ve been told are novel features of SARS-CoV-2, namely the polybasic cleavage site, the spike protein and the ACE2 receptor binding domain. The first of those patents, U.S. Patent No. 9193780, was issued November 24, 2015.

Between 2008 and 2017, a series of patents were also filed by a long list of players, including Crucell, Rubeus Therapeutics, Children’s Medical Corporation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in München, Protein Science Corporation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University of Iowa, University of Hong Kong and the Chinese National Human Genome Center in Shanghai.

According to Martin, there are 73 patents, issued between 2008 and 2019, that describe the very elements that are said to be unique to SARS-CoV-2. It’s unclear whether Moderna’s 2016 patent filing is part of that list.

*

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

Notes

^1, 6 Frontiers in Virology February 21, 2022 DOI: 10.3389/fviro.2022.834808

² The Vault Project February 25, 2022

^3, 4 US Patent 9,587,003 B2 March 7, 2017

⁵ Briefings on Bioinformatics April 28, 2016; 18(3): 413-425

⁷ Daily Mail February 23, 2022

⁸ NIH November 16, 2020

⁹ NIAID February 19, 2020

¹⁰ CBS News November 15, 2021

¹¹ IJVTPR May 10, 2021; 2(1): 38-79

¹² AHRP Nicole Delepine Bio

¹³ Peckford42 October 25, 2021

¹⁴ Rumble Dr. Ryan Cole on the increase in unusual cancers in his practice

¹⁵ Rumble Dr. Ryan Cole COVID vaccine/cancer connection

^16, 17 Before It’s News November 11, 2021

¹⁸ Crunchbase Sequoia Pharmaceuticals

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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

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

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

***

The US-led West quite clearly took Pakistan for granted and continued to condescendingly view the country as their ‘junior partner’ or even still as their ‘vassal state’, which is why so many of their envoys in Islamabad unsuccessfully demanded that it publicly condemn Russia despite that undermining the South Asian state’s national interests.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan just proudly flexed his country’s strategic autonomy by condemning those Islamabad-based Western envoys that earlier demanded that he publicly condemn Russia for its special military operation in Ukraine. By rhetorically asking, “What do you think of us? Are we your slaves … that whatever you say, we will do? I want to ask the European Union ambassadors: Did you write such a letter to India?”, he broke the West’s post-colonial neo-imperial chains over Pakistan.

Pakistan abstained from the UNGA vote on Ukraine alongside around three dozen other non-Western countries, including India, both of whom are impressively pursuing the same policy of neutrality in the New Cold War despite being decades-long rivals. While India is well known for its prior policy of Non-Alignment and its post-Old Cold War one of Multi-Alignment, Pakistan hadn’t previously formulated its foreign policy in such a way, which speaks to PM Khan’s impact on reshaping its grand strategy.

Russian-Pakistani relations are mutually beneficial, aren’t aimed against any third parties, and jointly aim to fulfill their complementary grand strategies of integrating the Eurasian continent with a special focus on the Central Asian space between them. Russia’s Greater Eurasian Partnership (GEP) relies on Pakistan’s new policy of geo-economics in order to be successful and vice-versa. These former Old Cold War-era rivals have quickly become close partners due to their many bilateral and multilateral interests.

The US must be shocked by this since it’s always mistreated Pakistan as a “junior partner”, so much so that critics within that South Asian state became concerned that their country had at one time even transformed into America’s “vassal state”. PM Khan has been outspoken about prior administrations’ subservience to other states at the expense of their own’s interests, which explains why he immediately set to work to correct Pakistan’s foreign policy course as among his top priorities in office.

To be absolutely clear, “Closer Russian-Pakistani Relations Aren’t Aimed Against America Or India”, they’re aimed at mutually beneficial goals that run the gamut of jointly containing Afghan-emanating security threats and implementing PM Khan’s passionate anti-poverty policies, among many others. Third parties like the US-led West should applaud this ambitious vision but regrettably view everything through the outdated perspective of zero-sum politics.

They quite clearly took Pakistan for granted and continued to condescendingly view the country as their “junior partner” or even still as their “vassal state”, which is why so many of their envoys demanded that it publicly condemn Russia despite that undermining the South Asian state’s national interests as explained. By proudly standing up to them and defying the pressure put upon Pakistan, PM Khan showed that his country isn’t anyone’s puppet, which is comparable to a foreign policy revolution.

It’s also perfectly in line with the principles enshrined in Pakistan’s new National Security Policy (NSP), which was formulated in consultation with a broad array of experts over several years. PM Khan therefore isn’t acting unilaterally or in any “rogue” fashion like some of his critics at home and abroad might claim by refusing to have his country publicly condemn Russia, but is acting in full accordance with Pakistan’s NSP that represents its national interests as determined by its most capable experts.

Observers should pay close attention to the example that Pakistan is setting for other Global South states, particularly Muslim-majority ones and those that have a history of close ties with the US. PM Khan is showing everyone that it’s possible to defend one’s own national interests in the face of massive Western pressure, which is similar to what the UAE is also doing as well, along with Turkey and a few others. This trend that’s quickly taking over the “Ummah” suggests how much US influence is in decline.

America should never impose zero-sum policies on anyone, let alone its historical partners like Pakistan. There was a time where its unipolar hegemony was uncontested but that period is long over. Washington can no longer get whatever it wants from others whenever it wants. Pakistan’s brave stand in breaking off its post-colonial neo-imperial chains is a powerful flex of its strategic autonomy and will result in ultimately unleashing more of its geo-economic potential with time.

*

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

This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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

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

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

***

The Falkland Islands (referred to as Malvinas in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese) are once again generating tensions, and the Argentine authorities in Buenos Aires have been expressing their dissatisfaction with both the United Kingdom and neighboring Brazil.

Last Friday Argentina demanded the UK resume flights with stopovers in Río Gallegos (Argentina) – they were unilaterally interrupted in March 2020 due to the pandemic. They favored communication with the Malvinas archipelago, and allowed the relatives of those who died in the 1982 Falklands war to visit the graves of the Argentine soldiers in Darwin Cemetery.  A few weeks ago, the Argentine ambassador to Brazil, Daniel Scioli, also expressed his “concern” to the Foreign Ministry of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro about the significant increase in “military flights from the UK between Brazilian territory and the Malvinas Islands.”

The Brazilian government officially backs Buenos Aires’ claims over the island’s territory, but this gesture seems to be a kind of signal to the UK. It is unprecedented: even the Brazilian military dictatorship, which Bolsonaro admires, supported Argentina.

On January 5, the Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement reaffirming that the Malvinas were “illegally occupied” on 3 January 1833 by British forces who “expelled the Argentine authorities legitimately established there”. On February 12 there was also an incident when Argentina denounced the passage of an American nuclear-powered submarine – the USS Greeneville – in the South Atlantic sea, near the Falklands. It counted with the support of a British airplane.

The main economic activities in the islands are fishing, tourism and sheep farming. Oil exploration, licensed by the Government of the archipelago, remains controversial as a result of maritime disputes with Argentina. The Falklands, based on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) extending 370 km (200 nautical miles) from its coastal baselines – it overlaps with Argentina’s own EEZ. The islands’ government is a self-governing British Overseas Territory, with a Governor appointed by the British Queen.

In 1982 there was a ten-week undeclared war between London and Buenos Aires over the islands. It ended with Argentine surrender. At the time the Brazilian military government allowed Argentine airplanes to refuel in its territory and, although Brazil at the time was ruled by a military anti-communist regime, it even helped Soviet support operations for Argentina during the conflict.

Both Buenos Aires and London claim sovereignty over the Falklands. The latter does so based on the continuous British administration of the archipelago since 1833, while Buenos Aires claims it acquired the islands from Spain when Argentina achieved its independence (in 1816). In 1833, England sent two naval vessels to the Malvinas. This event is interpreted by  the Argentine as a usurpation, while the British see it as a reassertion of sovereignty. The troops however left the area without formal government.

In the twentieth century, the Malvinas faced significant population decline, with many young residents seeking job opportunities overseas. And, in recent years, the population decline was reduced mostly thanks to immigrants from the UK, as well as from Saint Helena and Chile.

The official and predominant language in the archipelago is English, but Spanish is also employed and South American Gauchos (once a majority) have also influenced the local dialect and culture.

In February, Argentine President Alberto Fernández began an international tour to Russia, China and Barbados. In Russia, Fernández expressed Argentine desire to join the BRICS group and received support from Vladimir Putin. Days later, in China, the same topic was discussed with President Xi Jinping, who also signaled a favorable position regarding Argentine entry into the bloc. It is noteworthy that the path to possible inclusion in the BRICS has been Russia and China, and not neighboring Brazil. This is yet another signal of Brazilian-Argentine deteriorated bilateral relations, and the issue of the Malvinas also plays a part in this situation.

It would be wrong to frame the issue of the Falklands within Argentine nationalism or a mere dispute over fishing rights. The Malvinas issue is part of the geopolitics of the western portion of the South Atlantic Sea. Only two regional players occupy most of the continent’s Atlantic coast: Brazil and Argentina. Meanwhile, Washington and London control a chain of islands that are located in the center of the South Atlantic Ocean (between America and Africa), and these two powers also exercise naval control over this zone. Thus, the “Malvinas issue” is actually part of a larger dispute over a vast ocean full of resources. The Falkland Islands also have great geostrategic importance due to the connection they establish with Antarctica. Moreover, the Strait of Magellan and the Beagle and Drake channels enable Atlantic-Pacific interoceanic communication and are essential for monitoring global trade.

The Falklands War is a kind of geopolitical trauma in South America, with a South Atlantic mostly controlled by London, which is the local hegemon there –  it controls access to Antarctica and the Indian Ocean. The Sandwich Islands, as well as the islands of Saint Helena, Gouch, South Georgia, and others are all ruled by Queen Elizabeth. With the independence of Brazil, the islands of Martim Vaz and neighboring Trindade became Brazilian. In 1890, the British occupied Trindade, but abandoned it after a bilateral agreement mediated by Portugal. The return of Trindade to Brazil through diplomatic means avoided a serious problem, but such was not the case with the Malvinas.

The 1982 Falklands War short-circuited the Monroe Doctrine and the Brazilian own “National Security Doctrine”. The very concept of the “Blue Amazon”, the Brazilian exclusive economic zone, developed partly out of these events and they still resonate today. For example, in 2019, Brazilian Colonel Leandro Freitas Ribeiro argued (in his Naval War School dissertation) that the country needs a nuclear submarine to defend its Blue Amazon, based on the experience of the Malvinas war.

Brazil’s goal today is to develop the first nuclear submarine in the Southern Hemisphere. According to anEconomist October 2021 piece, the South American country could in fact achieve it before Australia, notwithstanding AUKUS. This would of course not please the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). Brasilia and Moscow in fact advanced on their nuclear cooperation talks when Bolsonaro and Putin met in February. By 2010, Buenos Aires also had similar plans regarding the development of nuclear propulsion for its Navy’s vessels, and it even tried to participate in the Brazilian project, which did not happen. The 1982 war operates as a kind of a background to all these developments. Bolsonaro’s somewhat erratic foreign policy would in fact benefit a great deal from improving bilateral relations with Argentina within BRICS. A possible Lula electoral victory in October could boost the BRICS group again.

To sum it up, the Falkland Islands remain an important topic in the South American continent. They are part of a larger geopolitical dispute in the South Atlantic sea and we will be hearing a lot more about them.

*

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

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.

***

VAERS data released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention included a total of 1,151,450 reports of adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 24,827 deaths and 200,331 serious injuries between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 25, 2022.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,151,450 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 25, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

The data included a total of 24,827 reports of deaths — an increase of 425 over the previous week — and 200,331 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 4,128 compared with the previous week.

Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 774,373 adverse events, including 11,312 deaths and 74,257 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Feb. 25, 2022.

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

Of the 11,312 U.S. deaths reported as of Feb. 25, 18% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 22% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 60% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.

In the U.S., 552 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Feb. 25, including 325 million doses of Pfizer, 208 million doses of Moderna and 18 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).

Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 25, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:

8,817 adverse events, including 200 rated as serious and 4 reported deaths.

The most recent death involves an 8-year-old boy (VAERS I.D. 2109625) from Mississippi who died 7 days after his second dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine when he was found blue and lifeless at home.

He was taken to the hospital with a full code in process. A pulse was detected several times, but the boy ultimately died in the ICU. It was reported to the doctor who filed the report that the boy died from multisystem inflammatory syndrome. He did not have COVID.

• 17 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).
• 32 reports of blood clotting disorders.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 25, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:

• 29,797 adverse events, including 1,714 rated as serious and 39 reported deaths.

The most recent death involves a 13-year-old girl (VAERS I.D. 2115839) from Wisconsin who was severely compromised and received two doses of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine. Although the cause of death wasn’t clear, she appeared to have significant health issues, respiratory distress and heart problems.

• 69 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of cases
  attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
• 648 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 631 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
• 159 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.

U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Feb. 25, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:

• 19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
• 54% of those who died were male, 41% were female and the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.
• The average age of death was 72.6.
• As of Feb. 25, 5,176 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 1,653 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
• Of the 3,587 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 51% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 40% to Moderna and 8% to J&J.
• 853 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome, with 41% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 30% to Moderna and 28% to J&J.
• 2,339 reports of anaphylaxis where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
• 1,621 reports of myocardial infarction.
• 13,320 reports of blood clotting disorders in the U.S. Of those, 5,946 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 4,744 reports to Moderna and 2,568 reports to J&J.
• 4,060 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 2,505 cases attributed to Pfizer, 1,373 cases to Moderna and 172 cases to J&J’s COVID vaccine.

Pfizer vaccine only 12% effective in kids 5 to 11, study says

A study released Monday showed the effectiveness of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine in 5- to 11-year-olds was only 12% after a seven-week period of observation. Yet, the authors of the study still recommended the vaccine for that age group, stating it was protective against severe disease.

A study released Monday showed the effectiveness of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine in 5- to 11-year-olds was only 12% after a 7-week period of observation. According to New York Times, federal health officials knew about the findings since early February.https://t.co/yW33Z7JePh

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) March 2, 2022

They also proposed the recommended dose for 5- to 11-year-olds was too small, suggesting a higher dose might solve the problem.

Some scientists at the CDC and FDA pushed for the data to be made public before an FDA meeting, scheduled for Feb. 15, to review Pfizer’s application for Emergency Use Authorization of a three-dose regimen of its vaccine for infants and children 6 months to 5 years old — but the study’s findings were only made public this week.

The FDA on Feb. 11 abruptly postponed the meeting to review Pfizer’s application for infants and children under 5, stating Pfizer didn’t have enough data on the efficiency of a third dose for that age group.

In an article published March 1, Dr. Madhava Setty, senior science editor at The Defender, examined the data in the study and outlined two flaws in the authors’ conclusions: 1) that the vaccines prevent severe disease in this age group, and 2) that increasing the dose might be appropriate.

Judge clears way for Pfizer whistleblower lawsuit 

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

A whistleblower lawsuit alleging fraud during Pfizer’s COVID vaccine trials is moving forward, after a district court judge unsealed the complaint, including 400 pages of exhibits.https://t.co/qgNImhN5Ov

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) March 2, 2022

Brook Jackson in January 2021 sued Pfizer and two contractors that worked on its COVID vaccine clinical trials: Ventavia Research Group and ICON PLC.

Jackson worked for Ventavia for a brief period in 2020, before being fired after she filed a complaint with the FDA over alleged indiscretions she observed during the vaccine trials.

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

Jackson filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Beaumont Division, under the False Claims Act.

The lawsuit includes several charges of fraud and retaliation on the part of both Ventavia and Pfizer. The complaint remained under seal until Feb. 10, when U.S. District Court Judge Michael Truncale ordered it unsealed.

Husband of woman who died from J&J shot speaks out

The husband of an Oregon woman who died last year from a blood-clotting disorder — two weeks after receiving J&J’s COVID vaccine — spoke out publicly this week about his wife’s death.

U.S. health officials continue to say blood-clotting disorders like one that killed 52-year-old Monica Melkonianare two weeks after the J&J vaccine are rare — despite thousands of vaccine-induced blood-clotting events reported to CDC.https://t.co/QqgqgJY6tE

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) March 2, 2022

Stan Thomas told NBC News he’s fighting to ensure his wife’s sacrifice is not forgotten.

Monica Melkonian, 52, received her J&J shot at a vaccination clinic on April 7, 2021 —  the same day the CDC and FDA temporarily paused the vaccine to investigate reports of a rare blood-clotting disorder called vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia.

Melkonian’s most notable symptoms included a persistent headache and pain behind her left eye before she experienced a seizure, stroke and ultimately died from the condition.

To date, the U.S. has confirmed only nine deaths due to VITT caused by the J&J shot and 54 cases of blood clotting conditions among J&J recipients, despite thousands of cases reported to VAERS.

Booster shots causing more injuries than expected in Israel

More Israelis are experiencing injuries and reactions following COVID booster shots than the country’s passive reporting system shows, according to a survey conducted by the Israeli Ministry of Health (MOH).

The MOH conducted an active survey of booster shot recipients to collect data on adverse events associated with booster doses, then compared the survey data to the data available from the country’s passive reporting system. 

Out of 4,000 people who participated in the survey, results showed six of 2,049 respondents were admitted to the hospital following the booster shot, and a significant number of people reported worsening of their underlying health conditions.

Extrapolated to the millions of booster doses that have been administered, that’s 270,000 hospitalizations per 92 million booster doses administered in the U.S. and 13,000 hospitalizations per 4.5 million booster shots administered in Israel.

The MOH survey also found reports of allergic reactions, menstrual irregularities, neurological injuries, injection-site reactions and general adverse events.

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

*

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

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.

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.

***

In response to a FOIA request filed by TheBlaze, HHS revealed that it purchased advertising from major news networks including ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as cable TV news stations Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, legacy media publications including the New York Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post, digital media companies like BuzzFeed News and Newsmax, and hundreds of local newspapers and TV stations. These outlets were collectively responsible for publishing countless articles and video segments regarding the vaccine that were nearly uniformly positive about the vaccine in terms of both its efficacy and safety.

Hundreds of news organizations were paid by the federal government to advertise for the vaccines as part of a “comprehensive media campaign,” according to documents TheBlaze obtained from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Biden administration purchased ads on TV, radio, in print, and on social media to build vaccine confidence, timing this effort with the increasing availability of the vaccines. The government also relied on earned media featuring “influencers” from “communities hit hard by COVID-19” and “experts” like White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and other academics to be interviewed and promote vaccination in the news.

Though virtually all of these newsrooms produced stories covering the COVID-19 vaccines, the taxpayer dollars flowing to their companies were not disclosed to audiences in news reports, since common practice dictates that editorial teams operate independently of media advertising departments and news teams felt no need to make the disclosure, as some publications reached for comment explained.

Congress appropriated $1 billion in fiscal year 2021 for the secretary of health to spend on activities to “strengthen vaccine confidence in the United States.” Federal law authorizes HHS to act through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies to award contracts to public and private entities to “carry out a national, evidence-based campaign to increase awareness and knowledge of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines for the prevention and control of diseases, combat misinformation about vaccines, and disseminate scientific and evidence-based vaccine-related information, with the goal of increasing rates of vaccination across all ages … to reduce and eliminate vaccine-preventable diseases.”

Anyone who has spent time reading the news, watching TV news coverage, or browsing social media in the past year has more than likely been exposed to the government’s advertising. HHS ads posted to YouTube have been viewed millions of times and commercials featuring celebrities like singer Sir Elton John and actor Sir Michael Caine have been the subject of news coverage, such as this feature from NBC News:

“Fear-based vaccine ads” from HHS featuring “survivor” stories from coronavirus patients who were hospitalized in intensive care units were covered by CNN and discussed on ABC’s “The View” when they were unveiled last October.

Though the federal government was paying each of these companies and others for pro-vaccine advertising while news reports covered the same vaccines, many editorial boards say they have firewall policies that prevent advertisers from influencing news coverage.

“Advertisers pay for space to share their messages, as was the case here, and those ads are clearly labeled as such,” explained Shani George, vice president of communications for the Washington Post, in a statement. “The newsroom is completely independent from the advertising department,” she said.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Times gave a similar statement, emphasizing that the “newsroom operates independently from advertising.”

TheBlaze reached out to several other publications that either declined to comment or did not respond before publication.

The COVID-19 Public Education Campaign by HHS also used earned media outreach — word of mouth marketing — with the goal of having “trusted messengers and influencers” speak to news organizations to “provide factual, timely information and steps people can take to protect themselves, their families, and their communities.”

As a result of that effort, various government officials have frequently been quoted by reporters covering the COVID-19 pandemic, offering factual information on vaccine efficacy and safety. An October article from BuzzFeed News featuring the “essential facts” about who is eligible for a COVID-19 booster shot, for example, reported pro-vaccine statements from CDC director Rochelle Walensky, FDA official Peter Marks, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and University of California, San Francisco epidemiologist George Rutherford.

The article stressed how studies show “boosters work” and cited FDA data that suggests getting a booster shot “can reestablish strong protection against the virus.” BuzzFeed News advised everyone age 65 or older, people with health conditions that put them at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19, those like healthcare workers who are at risk from coming into contact with COVID-19 positive people for work, and anyone in areas with high virus transmission to get vaccine boosters, in accordance with guidance from the CDC.

Other publications, such as the Los Angeles Times, featured advice from experts on how readers could convince vaccine-hesitant people in their lives to change their minds. The Washington Post covered “the pro-vaccine messages people want to hear.” Newsmax has reported how the vaccines have “been demonstrated to be safe and effective” and “encouraged citizens, especially those at risk, to get immunized.”

HHS did not immediately respond when asked if the agency used taxpayer dollars to pay for people to be interviewed, or for a PR firm to place them in interviews with news outlets.

Since the COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson were given emergency approval for use in the United States last year, more than 215 million Americans have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. An estimated 94.6 million people have also received at least one booster dose. About 65% of the U.S. population has now been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, including 75% of U.S. adults and 88.8% of seniors.

HHS has not yet revealed how much advertising money was spent on each media platform.

*

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

Featured image is from TheBlaze

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.

***

Paul Nurse is no expert, he says. The geneticist and former president of the Royal Society is humble about the limits of his knowledge when it comes to covid-19, and yet on the hot topic of testing he does not hesitate to use his prominent voice.

“Under Matt Hancock, it was a shambles, frankly, given the strength and quality of UK biomedical science,” he says of the test and trace system. “They immediately turned only to private company solutions without recognising that that had to be set up from scratch when it was needed almost immediately. It is possible, but not something you can put together in weeks. I think they made a fundamental strategic error.”

What irks Nurse is that he and other research leaders with PCR testing expertise and infrastructure at their fingertips were ignored when UK science was chomping at the bit to help fight the virus.

“We have throughout the country many, many academic laboratories with both the facilities and the skilled staff to do these tests, and they were all sitting at home under furlough. [At the Francis Crick Institute, where I am director], we brought them back in and within three weeks we were doing around 10-15% of total test capacity in the country when we’d never done anything of the sort before.”

Nurse appealed to then health secretary Hancock to roll out what his institute was doing around the country. Within weeks, he claims, local laboratories could be providing a 24 hour turnaround testing service using pre-existing healthcare logistics.

“Here could have been a contribution to the complete chaos of the first round when people weren’t being tested—including healthcare professionals.

“We wrote to Hancock about it. Peter Ratcliffe, clinical physician and another Nobel laureate, wrote to him. We talked about it on the radio and television. We got no replies, then after three months we got a holding note from a civil servant. It beggars belief,” he says.

At the Crick, PCRs can be turned around very rapidly, usually within 8-9 hours.

“You just have to be good at logistics and be well organised, and also to have the testing facilities close to the people being tested so that it can work efficiently,” says Nurse.

The Crick’s efforts have kept them “surprisingly active” over the past two years. Nurse is proud of how the institute’s scientists have provided testing for 10 local hospitals and 150 care homes, set up within a week of the start of the pandemic.

Nurse fears that, if a similar pandemic occurs again, the government is likely to do the same thing and fall back on the private sector. And even today, it needs a contingency plan for testing.

“They’re not going to keep testing capacity up at half a million a day running for ever and ever. They can’t afford to do it.”

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

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

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

***

‘The emergency powers’ we have witnessed being enforced in Canada – and by another name in Austria, Italy, France, Australia, New Zealand and Greece in recent weeks  – are quite obviously without precedent. The spectre of Prime Ministers and Presidents awarding themselves demagogic powers of over-reach to force their citizens to comply with the prison persuasions of a police state – represents outright war on humanity.

Brutal acts of thuggery that, in one fell swoop, smash what until now most have considered sacrosanct civil codes of justice and basic human rights.

Evoking such ‘emergency powers’ to crush the right to peaceful protest sets all the red lights flashing simultaneously, putting us on high alert.

The precipitous events in Ukraine have stolen the focus from the swelling voices of reason amongst citizens under the Covid cosh. But this doesn’t take away from the fact that an actual war has been declared right in our own backyards and is being pursued here and now. A war that is essentially as repressive and vindictive as classical weapons based wars of attrition. 

The evoking of dictatorial powers to crush a nation’s own people is deeply criminal. Evoking such powers to brutally enforce absolute control over peace loving citizens is a crime of truly heinous proportions.

The major question raised in the minds of all sentient humans is who could possibly be so devoid of humanity as to be able to enforce such a crime?

In attempting to answer this question we should consider whether this form of evil stems from a recognised psychological sickness, or whether it results from a pathological form of conditioning carried-out on those who willingly open themselves to being programmed?

A form of such conditioning is widely found to be operating within the ranks of technocratic institutions under the title ‘applied behavioural psychology.’ One of a number of psychological tools used by the 0.5% cabal seeking to establish a New World Order/Great Reset centralising power over mankind – including the theft of human DNA and ultimately the complete robotisation of human kind.

What we can ascertain without the need for further uncertainty is that amongst world ‘leaders’ of today, a percentage are clinically insane – seriously mentally ill. So when dealing with those who have no qualms and no emotional instinct against using extreme repression to get their way, one must start from the position of clearly recognising that one is dealing with a person who, in rational circumstances, would be hospitalised and under special treatment.  Not running a country or deciding the future direction of the planet.

One doesn’t plead with a clinically insane person for the return of one’s stolen civil liberties. Nor should one attempt to enter into a rational/intellectual conversation with someone who is regarding one as ‘abnormal’ because one has feelings and emotions. A pathologically possessed person sees a balanced individual that way – and his cold heart finds no commonality with the great majority of human beings.

Brave leaders of resistance movements can suddenly find themselves face to face with a senior state figurehead in an immaculately pressed and ironed suit, perfect manners, seemingly steely resolve and a pre-prepared script in his brain – and think this individual must be clever, successful and strong – but somehow gone astray. Someone who, with enough gentle persuasion and/or prayer, must finally come around to taking a rational and understanding view concerning resolving the conflict in question.

But in truth the good resistance leader in such a situation, is delusional. He or she is not aware that hoping for a rational response from a pathologically driven individual is a futile expectation.

Trudeau’s training as one of Klaus Schwab’s ‘young leaders’ guaranteed that no answer would emerge in response to the Canadian trucker’s call for dialogue. The training indoctrinates the trainee to have no other position than the one which gets the job done.

The same goes for senior technocrats, most politicians and virtually all employees of State hierarchies. We are dealing with entities that are programmed to perform; so what one is facing is a programme that looks like a human.

Only once we have absorbed this fact can we then plan an approach that fits the circumstances. Develop a tactic which fully takes-in the reality that one can’t negotiate with a pre-programmed cyborg.

To be successful, such a plan must be based upon a methodology which fits the reality. That addresses the actual circumstances.

In Stanley Kubrick’s iconic film ‘2001 a Space Odyssey’ the space mission’s logistics are heavily reliant upon ‘Hal’ the onboard computer. But the hero (Dave) is not aware that Hal has been programmed to follow a suicidal mission deep into space.

Hal is programmed to issue advice verbally and persuasively.  It takes a strong action of will for Dave (captain of the space mission) – having discovered the deception – to de-programme Hal and manually re-set the mission’s course back to Earth.

Precisely the same act of courage is needed now, in 2022. The world has been set (programmed) on a course that, if not diverted, will dehumanise the human race and disinvest the planet of its living soul.

In Kubrick’s film, the hero manages to retain his individual will power and self assurance, ultimately resisting and reversing the instructions being proffered by super computer Hal.

Make no mistake, that is exactly what is required of us at this critical moment of history.

*

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

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. Julian’s acclaimed book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is particularly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

On March 4, clashes between the Russian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian military continued west of Kyiv. Russian forces have expanded the control zone in the area forcing Ukrainian formations to retreat.

Fierce battles are taking place in the village of Bucha. The Russian Army took control of it in the morning of March 3, but the Ukrainian Army launched a counteroffensive. Serious clashes also occurred in the village of Irpin.

No significant changes of the situation took place near Kharkiv. Russian troops are on the northern outskirts of the city and bypass it from the southeast. They regularly deliver precise strikes on places where pro-Kiev forces are concentrated. In response, Ukrainian units used rocket launchers, at least some of which were deployed in residential areas. An operation to completely clean up the city from pro-Kiev forces is expected in the near future.

In Mariupol, clashes continue in the suburbs of the city. The Ukrainian army and nationalist battalions are trying to resist the superior forces of the DPR and Russia. Negotiations are underway to organize humanitarian corridors for the withdrawal of civilians. The operation to fully clean up the city from the remaining pro-Kiev units are yet to be launched.

In Vonovakha, the Russian military and forces of people’s republics have been developing their operation to eliminate the grouping of pro-Kiev forces there. Ukrainian Army and nationalist battalions suffered significant losses in manpower and equipment. At the same time, DPR forces have almost reached the town of Severodonetsk from the north.

In the Slavyansk-Kramatorsk direction, Russian forces are advancing towards Krasny Liman from the northeast, having taken control over Balakleya. They advance towards the settlement of Izyum. At the moment, there are battles and airstrikes in the area. The main aviation targets are the remaining facilities occupied by the Ukrainian military and the territorial defense fighters. By taking Izyum under the control, the joint forces of Russia and the LPR will create the possibility of encirclement of the grouping of Kiev forces in this area of operations.

The Ukrainian military still holds positions near Horlivka. Pro-Kiev forces carry out regular artillery strikes on Donetsk. According to DPR authorities, civilian objects are the main targets.

Nikolaev is partially blocked by Russian forces. An operation is being prepared to take the city under the full control. Eyewitnesses report the concentration of units of the Ukrainian Army and territorial defense forces in the southern outskirts. As of the morning of March 4, no clashes were reported there.

Intense fighting is taking place near Voznesensk. In order to hinder the attack on Kyiv from the south, the Ukrainian military blew up two crossings across the Yujniy Bug River. According to experts, the advance on Odessa is planned after the establishment of the full control over Nikolaev.

In Kherson, Russian troops are gradually establishing the full control over the region. The delivery of humanitarian aid has begun. The supply of water from the North Crimean Canal to the regions of the Crimean peninsula was organized.

Russian forces blocked the city of Chernihov. Fighting erupted to the north of it. However, no direct assault was launched.

Meanwhile, the Russians started establishing control of Energodar town. Now they are working to eliminate military positions of the Ukrainian Army in the city. Late on March 3 and early on March 4, clashes took place in the area, including areas near Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant where the Ukrainian Army set positions. This allowed the Zelensky government to speculate that the Russian advance may endanger the nuclear plant. Despite this, local sources report that by the morning Russians had established control and secured the facility.

In general, Kiev troops are retreating to the north of Zaporizhzhia Region, where the Russian Armed Forces are also advancing.

The second round of the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations achieved no breakthrough. Nonetheless, the sides agreed to work on establishing of ‘green corridors’ for evacuation of civilians and for deliveries of humanitarian aid.

*

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

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The root causes and the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis arise from, and rest on, the U.S.-led NATO’s strategy of military expansion to the East and threatening security of Russia, whom the West has defined as the enemy in its doctrines.

The first victims of NATO’s strategy of eastward expansion were Serbian people and Serbia. Their sanctions, demonization and isolation applied during the 1990s against Serbia and the Serbs are presently re-applied against Russia and the Russian people.

The centers of power which have, back in the day, prevented the implementation of the Peace Plan in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and presently demand revision of the Dayton Accords and UNSC Resolution 1244, are now preventing the implementation of the Minsk Peace Agreement in Ukraine, rejecting negotiations on equal security, and firmly pushing for further expansion and ultimately for military encirclement of Russia.

Serbia and Russia, the Serbian and Russian people are centuries-old friends, allies and strategic partners. Russia provides invaluable support to Serbia in her preserving own sovereignty and territorial integrity and also in efforts for peacefully resolving the issues related to Kosovo and Metohija, all in line with international law, UN Security Council Resolution 1244, and the Serbian Constitution.

As a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, Russia protected Serbia from groundless accusations for alleged genocide, coming from the West. It goes without saying that Serbia must not accuse, or impose any measures and sanctions against such a friend and partner as Russia is, in relenting to pressures coming from those same subjects who bear the greatest responsibility for the gravest violations of the UN Charter and international law in general, for the criminal aggression of NATO in 1999, and for illegal secession of Priština. The harder, more turbulent and volatile the times are, the greater the moral obligation to respect trusted friends and allies is.

Public speculation on whether Russia might be excluded from the United Nations is not well judged. Pursuant to the UN Charter, any initiative would have beforehand to secure consent of the permanent members of the Security Council. Any such attempt in that body would certainly be vetoed Russia, if not China as well. In other words, the UN Security Council would not be able to refer a valid proposal to the General Assembly. Russia has become a permanent member of the UN Security Council by virtue of the act establishing the world organization, as the country that had contributed the most, and had laid the greatest human sacrifice to the altar of the Allies’ victory in World War II and, accordingly, this is the status she cannot be deprived of.

Any contrary course of actions would only make the UN share the fate of the League of Nations. Needless to say, all are aware of what would that pave the way for.

Public speculations on the destiny of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 that go so far as to mention a possibility of the People’s Republic of China withdrawing its support for this universally binding legal document, in succumbing to a hypothetical pressure from the West, does not benefit anyone, least of all Serbia. For Serbia, UN SC Resolution 1244 is and should remain an irreplaceable generally binding legal document of enduring importance, until its consistent and full implementation.

*

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

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The Ukraine conflict has been ‘westsplained’ enough.

On Gravitas Plus, Palki Sharma tells you how Western arrogance & NATO’s expansionism are also to blame, how their actions precipitated the crisis in Ukraine.

*

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

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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

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

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

***

The geopolitical tensions caused by the conflict in Ukraine has had an immediate effect on the global economy and markets. There will be lasting implications for commodities, energy policy and the energy transition.

The world’s dependence on Russia for certain commodities cannot be overstated ‒ from gas, coal, oil, iron ore, aluminium, platinum group metals and zinc to copper, lead, petrochemicals and fertilisers. Many major international oil and gas companies, utilities and miners are invested in Russia.

Our global team has analysed the risks to commodities and corporate exposure, as well as the wider economic fallout. Read on for a brief outline of our views. For more detail, fill in the form to contact our experts.

Gas: short-term pragmatism, long-term change coming

The situation in Ukraine piles more pressure onto a European gas market that was already going through its worst crisis on record. Russian pipeline imports account for 38% of EU demand. If the EU were to impose sanctions that stopped Russian gas flows today, it could muddle through this winter, but struggle to build gas inventories for next winter. Prices would climb. Industries would need to shut down. Inflation would spiral. The European energy crisis would, we believe, trigger a global recession.

But Russia, too, would suffer if it halted gas flows. Consequently, we think business as usual is the most likely outcome, though the EU will inevitably be forced to question its dependency on Russian gas.

Coal: shock from European loss of Russian coal would ripple through global markets

Having to replace Russian coal volumes would result in a price shock to global coal markets and a coal shortage in Europe. Russian coal accounts for roughly 30% of European metallurgical coal imports and over 60% of European thermal coal imports. The primary issue with replacing Russian coal exports in Europe is its reliance on Russia’s particular quality of coal.

Coal-fired power currently accounts for around 14% of Europe’s generation mix. The impact on European power markets from a Russian coal shortage would not be as significant as gas. Crucially, though, Europe may not be able to depend on coal plants to make up for gas-fired generation losses.

Crude oils and refined products: too big to fail?

Crude oil

Although a risk, we do not expect Russia to curtail its oil exports in response to sanctions because its revenues would be sharply reduced. One sanction under consideration is blocking Russia from the SWIFT communication system and other dollar payment infrastructure. Russia has alternative payment methods, but the transition could disrupt exports temporarily.

Russia and Saudi Arabia are partners in an OPEC+ production restraint agreement. The Saudis have shown little appetite for helping the US deal with higher oil prices. In the case of an actual oil supply cut-off, OPEC would be more likely to consider using spare capacity to help offset losses.

Contact our experts with the form above to find out our views on the short- and longer-term direction of crude prices.

Refined products

Russian diesel/gas oil is of greater significance to Europe, as the region imports more than 8% of its demand from Russia. Fuel oil and residues are traded globally and often consumed as feedstocks by US Gulf Coast refiners or as bunker fuel for commercial shipping in Asia. As for crude oil, we do not expect a turn away from Russia’s refined product exports.

We do not expect a demand surge based on gas-to-oil switching if the crisis affects Russia’s gas exports. Fuel switching demand for heating in Europe is limited to Germany. In the power generation sector, European oil-fired capacity is either idled or shuttered, limiting the upside to oil demand.

Metals: supply disruption risk to already tight markets

Ukraine has few metal extraction and processing production facilities of scale, so the disruption to production will have a relatively small impact globally. Ceasing the output and export of certain commodities, such as aluminium, platinum group metals and iron ore, however, would have a disproportionate impact, as markets are already under supply pressure.

Of greater consequence are any limits on the ability of Russian producers to import raw materials to or export finished products from Russia. Another concern is whether counterparties are willing or able to transact with their offshore entities. As sanctions ratchet up, any metals and mining companies whose shareholders have links to the Kremlin are at risk.

Contact our experts for more on the potential disruptions to metal supply.

Petrochemicals: an obstacle to Russia’s major expansion plans

The short-term impact of the situation in Ukraine is likely to be felt through two main petrochemical channels: energy prices and sanctions. Any additional premiums will probably have to be absorbed in the form of reduced margins.

The precise impact of sanctions will depend on their final form. Russia accounts for just under 16% of total European petrochemical production, with its highest exposure in the polyethylene chain. This makes Russia an important – but not critical – contributor to the industry.

Corporate: international exposure

IOC exposure to Russia is concentrated in the hands of a few: BP and TotalEnergies have by far the largest positions of the Majors. Wintershall DEA is proportionately the most exposed through its two large upstream JVs with Gazprom and the current crisis could influence the timing of its IPO.

Stricter rules around access to the international financial system could hurt IOCs’ ability to receive dividends and other payments. Targeted sanctions against their Russian partners seem unlikely, but would present a much more profound challenge.

In the power sector, only legacy investments remain. They are are neither core nor strategic. The Russian metals and mining industry has seen similar diminishing international involvement. Glencore is the last one left, but its exposure accounts for less than 1% of its market capitalisation.

Economics: avoiding energy trade disruption could avert severe impact on the global economy

Russia’s economy is in a better position to withstand sanctions than it was in 2014 when it annexed Crimea. The conflict hurts Ukraine’s economy most. If energy flows are affected, the global impact could be severe. Neither Russia nor the Western allies will want to disrupt flows, but it cannot be ruled out.

Russia has built a reserve cushion that could soften the impact of sanctions short term. Being frozen out of international bond markets means new sovereign debt needs to be financed domestically. Reserves cover the US$ 50 billion due in principal repayments on government debt through 2025.

In Ukraine, the conflict risks disrupting economic activity and causing damage to capital stock. Its economy is likely to be back in recession in 2022 unless the situation de-escalates quickly.

Contact our experts to find out more.

*

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

Featured image is from oilprice.com

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The conflict in Ukraine has now entered its second week, with no end in sight. Casualties continue to rise and the flow of refugees through Poland, southern Russia and other countries grows daily. Hostilities must be brought to a quick end, and military confrontation replaced by diplomatic negotiations to stop the war before it spins out of control.

Preliminary negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian authorities have begun, but so far only reached agreement to open ‘humanitarian corridors’ for civilians fleeing some of the conflict zones.

While this is welcome, the main weakness in this limited negotiation process is that  the U.S., one of the key ‘players’ in this conflict, is not at the table, and has repeatedly shown no interest in achieving a settlement on the big issues which have given rise to this crisis.

To achieve any meaningful progress, the world’s peace forces must demand that the two main protagonists, Russia and the U.S., enter into immediate, serious, and comprehensive negotiations (without pre-conditions) to achieve an immediate ceasefire, the de-escalation of tensions, and a lasting solution guaranteeing the sovereignty and national security of all states on the European continent.

In our view, this agreement needs to encompass the following:

(1) the withdrawal of all foreign troops and military personnel – Russian, NATO and foreign mercenaries – from Ukraine;

(2) guarantees of the national security interests of all countries, including an immediate halt to the Eastern expansion of NATO, and its rollback to pre-1997 levels, creating a ‘buffer zone’ of neutral states between NATO and the Russian Federation;

(3) the removal of all sanctions and other unilateral coercive measures against all states;

(4) adoption and implementation of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW); and

(5) restoration of the language and cultural rights of the Russian-speaking and other national minorities within Ukraine (subject to international monitoring).

While this kind of settlement may well seem implausible and unrealizable, we are convinced that only such a comprehensive agreement can help end the current conflict and create a lasting basis for peace and cooperation among all the peoples on the European continent.  The alternative – a return to Cold War hostilities, economic warfare and nuclear brinksmanship – is too frightening to contemplate.

For its part, the Trudeau government, which has sadly played a leading role in stoking this crisis and fueling the flames of war, must abandon this dangerous course, and instead embrace and champion such a path to peace. Canada can show real, independent leadership by rejecting its slavish kowtowing to Washington’s every demand, and by removing all CAF personnel from, and ending all arms shipments to Ukraine, and by withdrawing from the NATO military alliance.

*

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

Featured image is from CODEPINK

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Top U.S. officials traveled to Caracas over the weekend to gauge whether the Venezuelan government of Nicolás Maduro might be willing to distance itself from Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, in exchange for an easing of U.S. sanctions on its oil sector.

A source familiar with the talks confirmed on Sunday to McClatchy and the Miami Herald that the meeting occurred, but did not provide details. Reuters reported that the sides made little progress in their first meeting, which included a top White House official and Maduro. The New York Times first reported about the meeting.

The United States has supported the opposition to Maduro’s government, and formally severed diplomatic ties in 2019. But the meeting suggests that the White House is willing to engage after years of stalemate.

Read complete article here

*

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

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.

***

It’s clear that the Biden Regime is committed to sadistically collapsing the United States, with White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm all saying over the past week that the world war simmering in Ukraine will not derail the WEF’s genocidal Green New Deal.

They will continue to block US energy independence and not restart US energy production. Instead, buying oil from Iran is now “on the table.”

Complete Upside Down World.

Ice Age Farmer, Christian Westbrook is back with news about the inevitable front in this war: the engineered global food crisis.

He notes that Egypt is the largest buyer of wheat from the Black Sea region of Ukraine and Russia and they’ve been rushing to find alternative wheat suppliers and to stockpile as much wheat as possible as quickly as possible.

Recall that during the Arab Spring a decade ago, the price of bread was the initial trigger for the protests that led to the resignation of then-President Hosni Mubarak.

Christian says, “Egypt is desperately trying to bolster their food supply. Is the EU doing the same thing? Is the US trying to protect its citizens? No. Neither is.

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

An innocuous tweet from Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organisations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov earlier today in the afternoon said that he met with the EU Coordinator at the Vienna talks on Iran nuclear issue Enrique Mora and “raised a number of questions which need to be duly addressed now in order to ensure smooth civil nuclear cooperation with Iran.” 

A couple of hours later, he again tweeted,

“The #ViennaTalks continue. I had today a useful meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran for Economic Diplomacy Mr. Mehdi Safari.” 

Other reports suggest that Russia has put forth a new demand at Vienna that its trade, investment and military cooperation with Iran would not be hindered by US sanctions. Russia seeks written guarantees in this regard at the highest level from the Biden administration. Apparently, Russia put forth this demand a couple of days back. 

A few hours ago in the evening, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed this development. Disclosing this at a press conference in Moscow, Lavrov explained that against the backdrop of the latest western sanctions, Russia wants to have a “very clear answer” from the US in the context of bilateral Moscow-Tehran relations and the Iranian nuclear deal. 

In Lavrov’s words,

“We need guarantees these sanctions will in no way affect the trading, economic and investment relations contained in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action for the Iranian nuclear program. We have asked the American counterparts, who rule the roost here, to provide us with guarantees at least at the level of the secretary of state [that] the current process launched by the United States will by no means affect our right to free and full-fledged trading, economic, investment, military and technical cooperation with Iran.” [Emphasis added.] 

Furthermore, Lavrov also openly backed remaining Iran’s demands, saying that Tehran’s expectations are “quite fair.” Whether Lavrov spoke in consultation with Tehran, we don’t know. 

The development comes as the 8th round of negotiations on the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and the United States’ return to the fold of that multilateral agreement is nearing completion. The negotiators are working on a draft final document. Iran and the IAEA also agreed today on a roadmap with the UN nuclear watchdog to resolve all outstanding questions about the country’s nuclear program by late June, which removes one big stumbling block. 

Lavrov calmly pointed out that the sanctions on Russia create a “problem” from Moscow’s perspective. He noted sarcastically,

“It would have all been fine, but that avalanche of aggressive sanctions that have erupted from the West — and which I understand has not yet stopped — demand additional understanding by lawyers, above all.” 

So, Lavrov insisted:

“We want an answer — a very clear answer — we need a guarantee that these [US] sanctions will not in any way touch the regime of trade-economic and investment relations which is laid down in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.” 

On Iran’s part, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had told EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell only yesterday,

“I am ready to fly to Vienna when the Western sides accept our remaining red lines… We are ready to finalise a good and immediate agreement. Most of Iran’s requests have been considered.” 

But today, the most anxious person to clinch the deal at Vienna is none other than President Joe Biden himself. After derailing the Russia-Europe energy relationship, Biden is witnessing that the prices for gas are skyrocketing in Europe, and Washington has no solutions to the grave situation that is developing. The spot market price for gas has zoomed to 8 times the price at which Russia had been supplying Germany. (Russia has announced that w.e.f Thursday, it has shut down the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline which is the trunk route transporting gas to German market.) 

On the whole, the situation in the energy market is becoming very complicated, as western oil companies which had invested in Russia are forced to quit due to the sanctions. These include big players such as BP which has a 20-percent stake in Russian giant Rosneft, Shell with 27.5 percent stake in the Sakhalin-II LNG facility and a 50 percent stake in the Salym Petroleum Development, ExxonMobil (Sakhalin-1) and so on. 

Apart from the impairment these companies will suffer running into tens of billions of dollars, their exit will also strain Russia’s ability to maintain such high production levels and continue to meet its commitments under the OPEC+ agreement. Now, the already-tight global market for crude – which saw Brent crude top $115 per barrel in early Thursday trading – can ill-afford these downstream hits from the sanctions against Russia. Evidently, crude prices still have nowhere to go but up from here. Expert opinion is that if oil price touches $125 per barrel, US economy slides into recession. 

Russia has not so far made any direct indications that it will restrict energy exports, though the rhetoric is heating up. Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov warned on Friday that western companies, including energy firms, that are ditching Russia will be considered pushing their Russian subsidiaries to “deliberate bankruptcy,” which under Russian law draws criminal prosecution. 

To solve Europe’s problem of high prices, Biden recently swallowed pride and mentioned buying cheap Iranian oil as a response. Western analysts opine that Biden is in a mood to appease the “Iranian hawks” at Vienna. That is to say, US desperately needs both a lucrative energy deal and Iranian cooperation in Vienna. Israeli observers are apprehensive that the Biden administration might go ahead with easing or lifting restrictions on Iranian oil exports even without signing the Vienna agreements! 

One big reason behind this panic is that the Biden administration is profoundly concerned about the strong growth of motor fuel prices in the US lately. But on the other hand, any visible US appeasement of Iran at this critical stage will be a sign of weakness, and, surely, Biden will come up for trenchant criticism in the domestic opinion. 

Indeed, Lavrov has factored in all these developments while demanding that “at least” Antony Blinken should give a written guarantee. Moscow is paying back for Blinken’s boorishness. Of course, it will be a devastating loss of face for Biden to cave in publicly. Of course, the most awful thing will be that it is not only precedent setting  but makes a complete mockery of America’s weaponisation of the dollar! 

Europeans too must be wondering what is going on. They have passively sacrificed self-interests vis-a-vis Russia on the basis of Biden’s demands! Nord Stream 2 stands abandoned!

This is going to be a catch-22 situation. For, Russia’s green signal is an imperative for the JCPOA deal to be approved within the framework the joint commission of Iran and the international quintet (Russia, Britain, Germany, China and France.) Besides, Iran will surely expect a formal approval for any deal from the UN Security Council. 

On the other hand, if the negotiations at Vienna get prolonged, Iran’s enrichment activities at the accelerated pace will continue and a point of no return may be reached very soon, in a matter of weeks at the most, which will put the Biden administration in an even bigger bind, as the spectre of a nuclear Iran haunts West Asia and Europe. 

To be sure, the blowback to the US sanctions has begun. This is of course only the beginning. Trust Russia to go further and further up on the escalation ladder. Russia would have no conceivable reason to cooperate with the US from now onward. (See my blog Ukraine sparks EU, US rush to  Iran deal, March 1, 2022)

However, if the chronicle of Russian-American relations is anything to go by, trust Biden to start making entreaties using back channels to Moscow.

Actually, in response to a question at a press briefing in Moscow today evening about the current state of Russia-US relations in view of the developments in Ukraine and the pressure of sanctions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked cryptically that “We are maintaining certain channels of a dialogue with the United States.” He didn’t elaborate. 

*

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

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.

***

On December 16, 2021, ICAN, through its attorneys, issued a Freedom of Information Act request to the CDC seeking any documents reflecting why a certain VAERS report was no longer available in the VAERS database. The report described an extremely disturbing incident wherein a two-year-old boy “began bleeding out of the mouth, eyes, nose and ears within six hours” of his first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine on November 18, 2021, and died later that night. On February 14, 2022, the CDC finally responded to ICAN’s request, stating: “A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request.”

Significantly, the CDC has made repeated assurances that “COVID-19 vaccines are being administered under the most intensive vaccine safety monitoring effort in the United States’ history.” The CDC’s VAERS Standard Operating Procedures for COVID-19 even states that the “CDC will perform clinical reviews” for certain “Adverse Events of Special Interest,” which include death, “especially in children (<18 years of age) and recipients of newly licensed vaccines).”

But despite all of these claims of about the unprecedented level of “intensive” safety monitoring of these vaccines, the CDC claims to have no records that would explain why a VAERS report describing the horrific death of a toddler suddenly disappeared from the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccines reactions in the United States, VAERS—a system of which the CDC is a co-sponsor.

ICAN intends to get to the bottom of the disappearance of this deeply disturbing report and will persist in holding the CDC accountable for its purported claims of intensive vaccine safety monitoring.

*

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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

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

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

***

This article was first published in 2019.

Western-supported ISIS/al Qaeda and western-supported neo-Nazis are two sides to the same Imperial coin.

They are the product of the West’s moral degradation, its disdain for international law, and its anti-Life core. A rotten apple by any measure.

Imperial strategies driving these proxies are also similar. Whereas the West created and supports ISIS/al Qaeda[1], it presents them as “enemies”.

The terrorists serve as fake humanitarian pretexts for invasions even as they serve as proxies to destroy target countries even before the invasions and the economic warfare are firmly established. Imperialists always need scapegoats, and the Western-supported terrorists also serve this function. Governing agencies fabricate Islamophobia by presenting the “Muslim” terrorists as enemies even when these terrorist behaviours are far removed from Islamic teachings.

‘No clear-cut profile’ of a foreign fighter

The so-called “Caliphate Project”[2]is a CIA project. NATO and its allies support the terrorists in Syria who are carving out territory in resource rich, strategic areas of Syria.  All of this has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt for years despite the widespread ignorance of Western populations who are trained to accept CNN and Defense Department messaging as the truth.

NATO and its allies use the Western-empowered and supported neo-Nazis[3]in Kiev, rotten fruits of the 2014 Western coup against the legitimate Ukrainian government, in a similar fashion. In this case, Russia is the scapegoat, even though the coup preceded Russian involvement that opposes the Western crime scene near its borders.

The neo-Nazi counterpart to the so-called “Caliphate Project” would be the “Reconquista” project. Max Blumenthal explains:

“Foreign Azov volunteers are driven by the call of the ‘Reconquista,’ or the mission to place eastern European nations under the control of a white supremacist dictatorship modeled after the Nazi Reichskommissariat dictatorship that ruled Ukraine during World War II. The mission is promoted effusively by Azov’s chief ideologue, Andriy Biletsky, a veteran fascist organizer who leads the Social National Assembly in Ukraine’s parliament. Biletsky’s assembly has pledged to outlaw interracial contacts and vowed “to prepare Ukraine for further expansion and to struggle for the liberation of the entire White Race from the domination of the internationalist speculative capital.”[4]

So, like the CIA Caliphate Project, the Reconquista project advances imperial designs against Russia, Empire’s real target.

Empire’s end-game is world conquest, a New World Order of fascist totalitarianism. Those controlling the levers of power must deceive domestic populations because the impoverishing “project” is toxic to Life itself. No reasonable, critically-thinking population would ever accept it.

A first step to countering this world-encompassing disease would be a NATO Exit[5]campaign. NATO is the deceptive umbrella under which these diabolical machinations are thriving.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017.

Notes

[1] Garikai Chengu,“America Created Al-Qaeda and the ISIS Terror Group.” Global Research, 19 September 2014, March 08, 2019, (https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/5402881?fbclid=IwAR0ery1aV8nuqqkTYvjoUJvVJ2cpFX2AGURrd164p4cHkjA2SL08ly4Kar8) Accessed 7 April, 2019.

[2] Washington’s Blog, “The Caliphate Project, Made in America. Declassified U.S. Government Documents Confirm the US Supported the Creation of ISIS.” The Caliphate Project, Made in America. Declassified U.S. Government Documents Confirm the US Supported the Creation of ISIS.” Washington’s Blog 24 May 2015, Global Research, 13 March, 2016, (https://www.globalresearch.ca/newly-declassified-u-s-government-documents-the-west-supported-the-creation-of-isis/5451640) Accessed 7 April, 2019.

[3] Max Blumenthal,” Israel Is Arming Ukraine’s Blatantly Neo-Nazi Militia the Azov Battalion.” The Real News Network, 6 July, 2018, (https://therealnews.com/stories/israel-is-arming-ukraines-blatantly-neo-nazi-militia-the-azov-battalion?fbclid=IwAR1VcIFf0-5min_36EuVUiEMaYg0XUCkGqonc-Nh4y_iKf-Su0RruVG2GoM) Accessed 7 April, 2019.

[4] Max Blumenthal, “The US is Arming and Assisting Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, While Congress Debates Prohibition.” 18 January, 2018, The Real News Network, (https://therealnews.com/columns/the-us-is-arming-and-assisting-neo-nazis-in-ukraine-while-congress-debates-prohibition) Accessed 7 April, 2018.

[5] Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “NATO-Exit: Dismantle NATO, Close Down 800 US Military Bases, Prosecute the War Criminals.” Global Research, 04 April, 2019, (https://www.globalresearch.ca/nato-exit-dismantle-nato-close-down-800-us-military-bases-prosecute-the-war-criminals/5670610) Accessed 07 April, 2019.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

**Voices from Syria**

Author: Mark Taliano

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-9-1

Year: 2017

Product Type: PDF File

List Price: $6.50

Special Offer: $5.00 

Click to order.

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.

***

My students, where I once taught at a private university outside of Bangkok, would often come into class carrying coffee cups conspicuously emblazoned with the universally recognizable Starbucks© logo.

When they set them on their desks, they were uniformly careful to position the cups so as to prominently display the logo.

They didn’t patronize Starbucks© because they liked the taste or thought it to be particularly good, but because of the status they believed it conveyed.

Success, in their estimation, meant consuming the most popular Western products. They had no idea they were diluting their own culture to line the pockets of malicious actors.

Image on the right is from Richard Barrow

What is difficult for the propagandized Western mind (including mine) to grapple with is that the “diversity” obsession is a purely Western phenomenon.

Any other culture understands that diversity is not ideal for cohesion; they’re mutually contradictory values.

If you ever get a chance, make the best-faith argument you can muster to an English-speaking native in a foreign land (who has not been educated in the West) about the merits of the “diversity is our strength” ideology.

You’ll get a blank, uncomprehending stare.

Japan is 99% racially and cultural homogenous and they have significantly fewer social problems than the West. They don’t need racial identity politics because their single racial identity is ubiquitous. They don’t need to predicate a delicate social fabric on the precarious “melting pot” philosophy.

Is that a coincidence?

As opposed to the fictions of corporate PR departments, the following statement conveys true respect for diversity: just like America is for Americans, Thailand should belong to Thais – a nationalist sentiment very commonplace in that land.

But marketing is a powerful thing; it can even trigger cognitive dissonance. Many of those Thai nationalists carve out a glaring exception for status-conferring consumer products imported from the West (or Japan or Korea).

That revered ballad of hippie aspiration, “Imagine” by the Beatles’ frontman John Lennon — and the 1960s zeitgeist that it reflected – always induced maximum cringe. I gagged reflexively even when I was younger, before I had fleshed out how I thought about things:

“Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for…
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one”

I’m sure that when John Lennon wrote that drippy, sappy ballad, he did so with starry eyes. He probably believed he was simply promoting harmony and peace.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Underneath its shiny exterior of utopian idealism, the song promulgates a new kind of global, banal universality by conflating the human desire for brotherhood with an embrace of corporate monoculture.

This is why the corporate media has and always will promote these vapid messages of vague “hope” as promotional gimmicks.

What kind of a world would that one envisioned by John Lennon look like? How droll, how drab, how ho-hum! No flavor or spice; just a monoculture of hip “tolerance” or whatever.

Why would anyone want Bangkok to look like Des Moines, Iowa?

What happened to the “diversity”? Isn’t it our strength? Or is that ideology conveniently discarded when it might oppose corporate creep?

Universal oneness and diversity, again, are antithetical values. But that hasn’t stopped the cultural left and the corporate behemoths that now bankroll their social movements from embracing both simultaneously in full earnestness.

At the same time that these entities expand across the world like a cancer to peddle their sub-par nutrition-free slop to local populations that were better off without them, they simultaneously (unironically) peddle the “diversity” babble.

What the Corporate Slogan ‘Diversity Is Our Greatest Strength’ Actually Means

What they mean: to bring as many of the world’s people into the corporate monoculture fold while simultaneously diluting the inherently valuable aspects of authentic, legacy Western culture through unchecked immigration.

If Apple© and NIKE© and McDonald’s© truly valued diversity, why do they penetrate and vandalize every culture on earth?

Does Wendy’s© belong in the Caucus Mountains on the far stretches of Eastern Europe? Is that “respecting indigenous culture” or whatever trite slogan the corporate PR department has come up recently?

Why, if “diversity is our strength,” do these corporate monoliths lobby for transnational trade deals that destroy the barriers like tariffs that insulate local industries from their predatory creep?

Image on the right: Wendy’s© in Georgia (the country, not the state)

A decade ago, I tried (but failed) to properly convey to my Asian students the unique threat of corporate monoculture.

Via my in-progress memoir, Broken English Teacher:

“I attempted to explain to my Taiwanese students that McDonald’s© is the quintessential representation of corporate monoculture creep worldwide.

The 10-year-old children of Zhushan [a rural remote village in the Central mountain region] — all of whom without exception loved McDonald’s© and viewed the presence of such a restaurant in their hometown as a crowning achievement of modernization — did not understand or appreciate the meaning I hoped to relay.

Somehow, which I can only vaguely recall, I attempted to draw a connection between 9/11 ( which ostensibly had nothing to do with corporate diners directly) and McDonald’s© predatory creep into local markets from Taiwan to Madagascar to Peru. I drew them poorly-drawn pictures, none of which helped them better grasp the thrust.”

The impetus for that poorly executed lecture to Taiwanese schoolchildren was the revulsion I felt each time I stumbled on another soul-crushing McDonald’s© in some far-flung corner of the world – like a cancerous lesion on a supermodel’s face.

All I wanted to do was escape the corporate sludge.

The lecture was poorly conceived, especially given the vast cultural divide and inexperienced unworldliness of my audience. You should’ve seen the mess of illustrations on that whiteboard – like from a schizophrenic explaining the Flat Earth. Or from that character Russell Crowe played in A Beautiful Mind.

Hopefully I did a better explanatory job here:

• reject globalization; embrace localization.
• wherever possible, construct a parallel society outside of the global monoculture.
• leave the unsaved to their McDonald’s© slop; excise the cancer from your own life.

“The factory mass producing fear, bottled,
Capped, distributed near and far
Sold for a reasonable price
And the people, they love it, they feed it
Brush with it, bathe with it, breathe it
Inject it direct to the blood
It seems to be replacing love
Why must we stay where we don’t belong”

-NOFX, Eat the Meek

*

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

This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

Ben Bartee is a Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via his blog, Armageddon Prose, Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter.

All images in this article are from TDB unless otherwise stated

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.

***

Wir Bürger laufen Gefahr, wirtschaftliche und soziale Sanktionen, die gegen ein Land und /oder dessen Präsidenten verhängt werden, als „normal“ und „nachvollziehbar“ hinzunehmen, weil sie seit Jahren sehr populär sind und dabei kein einziger Schuss abgegeben, keine Rakete abgefeuert und kein Panzer in Bewegung gesetzt wird. Über ihre Folgen wird selten informiert. Doch Sanktionen sind keine Alternative zum Krieg, sie sind Krieg – nur mit anderen Mitteln. Sie sind unsichtbare Kriege und perfekte Instrumente der Rache. Wenn wir uns daran gewöhnen, dergleichen hinzunehmen, gibt es nichts mehr, was wir nicht hinnehmen werden.

„Das Sanktionsregime der UNO im Irak.“

Dies ist der Untertitel des im Jahre 2005 erschienenen Buches von Hans-C. Graf Sponeck: „Ein anderer Krieg“ (1). Hans von Sponeck war von 1998 bis 2000 zuständiger Koordinator der Vereinten Nationen für das „Öl für Lebensmittel“-Programm im Irak. Anhand von Zahlen belegt er in seinem Buch die fatalen Folgen und das Scheitern des UNO-Sicherheitsrates in der Irak-Politik: Zunahme der Kindersterblichkeit und des Analphabetismus, mangelhafte Versorgung mit Nahrungsmitteln sowie Nicht-Funktionieren wichtiger Teile der Infrastruktur.

Anfang 2000 trat von Sponeck aus Protest gegen das genozidale Sanktionsregime als Leiter des UNO-Hilfsprogramms zurück. Kurze Zeit später lernte ich ihn auf einer Vortragsreise in der Schweiz persönlich kennen und erzählte ihm, dass ich als Deutscher sehr stolz war, als ich von seinem ehrenwerten Rücktritt erfuhr. Es entstand eine längere Freundschaft mit diesem menschlich vorbildlichen deutschen Diplomaten.

Eine ganz andere Erfahrung war die haarsträubende Antwort der ehemaligen US-Außenministerin Madeleine Albright auf eine Journalisten-Frage: In der Fernsehshow „60 Minuten“ am 12. Mai 1996 fragte Lesley Stahl die US-Außenministerin:

„Wir haben gehört, dass eine halbe Million Kinder gestorben sind (wegen der Sanktionen gegen den Irak). Ich meine, das sind mehr Kinder, als in Hiroshima umkamen. Und – sagen Sie, ist es den Preis wert?“.

Albright antwortete:  

„Ich glaube, das ist eine sehr schwere Entscheidung, aber der Preis – wir glauben, es ist den Preis wert.“ (2)

Sanktionen als perfektes Instrument der Rache (3)

Die jahrelangen Sanktionen gegen die irakische Zivilbevölkerung haben gravierende wirtschaftliche, soziale und psychologische Wunden geschlagen. Die dramatische Verarmung der Bevölkerung sowie der soziale und ökonomische Verfall des Landes waren nach Ansicht von Experten einmalig in der Geschichte der modernen Welt (4). Verzweifelte Not und Hoffnungslosigkeit hielten die Bevölkerung in Atem und raubte ihr die Kraft zur Rebellion. Getroffen von den Sanktionen wurde allein die Zivilbevölkerung. Das Regime des damaligen Präsidenten Saddam Hussein kam ungeschoren davon. Wie wollen wir eine solche politische Strafmaßnahme bewerten?

Die Sanktionen gegen den Irak sind nur ein Beispiel unter vielen: Die Strafmaßnahmen gegen die ehemalige Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien in den 90er- Jahren und diejenigen neueren Datums gegen Venezuela, Nord-Korea, Jemen oder Syrien sind uns ebenso in guter Erinnerung. In diesem Zusammenhang ist darauf hinzuweisen, dass die Lähmung und teilweise Zerstörung staatlicher Institutionen der organisierten Kriminalität Tür und Tot öffnet, das heißt, das rasche Aufkommen mafiöser Strukturen und Machenschaften sehr fördert.

Bald wird sich zeigen, welche ökonomischen, sozialen und psychologischen Wunden die ergriffenen Sanktionen der westlichen Welt unter Führung der USA der Zivilbevölkerung Russlands zufügen werden und inwieweit dadurch die Machtposition des russischen Präsidenten ins Wanken gerät? Der venezolanische Präsident Nicolas Maduro – einst selbst „Opfer“ von US-Sanktionen – verurteilte die westlichen Sanktionen scharf. In einem Zeitungsartikel vom 3. März bezeichnete er die Strafmaßnahmen, darunter im Bankwesen, als Verbrechen gegen das russische Volk und plädierte für diplomatische Auswege aus der Krise (5).

Dabei ist noch nicht abzusehen, welche fatalen Auswirkungen die verabschiedeten Sanktionen auch auf den Alltag der sanktionierenden Länder haben werden: So warnen Experten bereits vor höheren Inflationsraten, vor Energieknappheit und vor Engpässen bei der Produktion und Verteilung von Nahrungsmitteln.

*

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

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Rektor a. D., Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Noten

(1) Graf Sponeck, Hans C. (2005). Ein anderer Krieg. Das Sanktionsregime der UNO im Irak. Hamburg

(2) https://www.heise.de/forum/Telepolis/Kommentare/Der-US-Putschvers…ter-irakischer-Kinder-sind-den-Preis-wert/posting-34033445/show/

(3) https://monde-diplomatique.de/artikel/!386433

(4) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/10-jahre-sanktionen-gegen-irak-wenn-ich-denke-werde-ich-verrueckt/156928.html

(5) https://de.rt.com/amerika/133072-venezuelas-prasident-nicolas-maduro-bezeichnet-sanktionen-als-verbrechen/

Featured image is from InfoBrics

We at Global Research condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. All international issues need to be resolved peacefully through judicious negotiations and dialogue.

The events surrounding the Russia-Ukraine crisis are a poignant reminder of the decaying authority of diplomacy where instead of bilateral agreement, there is military incursion; instead of multilateral force for peace and order, there are sanctions, military aid and international isolation. 

In this weekend selection, we ask our readers to ponder on the urgent need of our time and on what could be done in its pursuit.

***

Russia-Ukraine War: A Different Invasion, the West’s Same ‘Madman’ Script

By Jonathan Cook, March 04, 2022

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

Did NATO Just Declare War on Russia?

By Mike Whitney, March 04, 2022

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

How Ukraine’s ‘Revolution of Dignity’ Led to War, Poverty and the Rise of the Far Right

By Olga Sukharevskaya, March 03, 2022

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

France’s Finance Minister: “We’re waging an all-out economic and financial war on Russia”

By Paul Antonopoulos, March 03, 2022

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

‘The Madman Putin’: The Globalists’ Misinformation Ploy

By Vasko Kohlmayer, March 03, 2022

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

Racism Thrives in Western Liberal Europe and Ukraine

By Steven Sahiounie, March 03, 2022

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

Everyone Loses in the Conflict Over Ukraine

By Ralph Nader, March 02, 2022

In recent weeks, the State Department said it recognizes Russia’s legitimate security concerns but not its expansionism. Well, what is wrong with a ceasefire followed by support for a treaty “guaranteeing neutrality for Ukraine similar to the enforced neutrality for Austria since the Cold War’s early years,” as Nation publisher and Russia specialist Katrina Vanden Heuvel urged.

Playing with Fire in Ukraine

By Eric Margolis, March 02, 2022

Western media has championed the cause of Ukraine in a totally one-sided manner. So, we have plucky David v. evil Goliath. Never mind that civil war between Ukrainian nationalists, militant rightists and the Kiev regime has been flaring for 14 years.

Follow the Money: US Sanctions, Will Russia Be Able to Bypass Western Economic Warfare?

By Pepe Escobar, March 02, 2022

About the possible introduction of a new Russia-China payment system bypassing SWIFT, and combining the Russian SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) with the Chinese CIPS (Cross-Border Interbank Payment System), Hudson has no doubts “the Russian-China system will be implemented. The Global South will seek to join and at the same time keep SWIFT – moving their reserves into the new system.”

For African and Colonized Peoples, to Understand Ukraine: De-center Europe and Focus on Imperialism

By Black Alliance for Peace, March 02, 2022

NATO’s expansion has been a well-known security concern for Russia since 1999, when Bill Clinton inaugurated the official process of growing NATO’s membership to include former nations of the Warsaw Pact. Today, as the conflict escalates, NATO’s expansion has become an existential threat to African people and all oppressed and colonized people around the world.

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.

First published on March 13, 2013

March 2022. The War in Ukraine.

***

Is it a coincidence? 

In recent history, from the Vietnam war to the present, the month of March has been chosen by Pentagon and NATO military planners as the “best month” to go to war.

With the exception of the War on Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO and allied led military operations over a period of more than half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.

The Ides of March (Idus Martiae) is a day in the Roman calendar which broadly corresponds to March 15.  The Ides of March is also known as the date on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC.

Lest we forget, the month of March (in the Roman Calendar) is dedicated to Mars (Martius), the Roman God of War.

For the Romans, the month of March (Martius) marked  “the time to start new military campaigns.”

As in the heyday of the Roman Empire, the US Department of Defense has a mandate to plan and implement a precise “timeline” of military operations.

Does the month of March –identified by the Romans as a “good time” to initiate new military undertakings–, have a bearing on contemporary military doctrine?

Throughout history, seasons including the transition from Winter to Spring have played a strategic role in the timing of military operations.

Do Pentagon military planners favor the month of March?

Do they also –in some mysterious fashion– “idolize” Mars, the Roman God of War?

March 23 (which coincides with the beginning of Spring) was the day “Romans celebrated the start of the military campaign and war fighting season.”

“Homage was paid to Mars the god of war with festivals and feasting. … For the Romans March 23 was a huge celebration known as Tubilustrium”.

Under these festivities which celebrated the Roman god of war,  a large part of the month of March “was dedicated to military celebration and preparedness.”

Timeline of March Military Interventions (1965- 2017)

Recent history confirms that with the exception of Afghanistan (October 2001) and the 1990-91 Gulf War, all major US-NATO led military operations over a period of almost half a century –since the invasion of Vietnam by US ground forces on March 8, 1965– have been initiated in the month of March.

The Vietnam War

The US Congress adopted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon Johnson to dispatch ground forces to Vietnam on March 8, 1965.

On 8 March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam marking the beginning of “America’s ground war”.

NATO’s War on Yugoslavia

NATO’s war on Yugoslavia was launched on March 24, 1999. 

The NATO bombing of Yugoslavia code-named by the US Operation “Noble Anvil”. started on March 24, 1999 and lasted until June 10, 1999.

The Iraq War

The War on Iraq was launched on March 20, 2003. (Baghdad time)

The US-NATO led invasion of Iraq started on 20 March 2003 on the pretext that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

(The 1991 Gulf War on Iraq began on 17th January. However, after the 28th February ceasefire was agreed and signed – following the Basra Road massacre of withdrawing soldiers and fleeing civilians on 26th/27th February – the US 24th Mechanised Infantry Division slaughtered thousands on 2nd March.“)

The Covert War on Syria

The US-NATO Covert War on Syria was initiated on March 15, 2011 with the incursion of Islamist mercenaries and death squads in the southern city of Daraa on the border with Jordan. The terrorists were involved in acts of arson as well as the killings of civilians. This incursion of terrorists was from the very outset supported covertly by the US, NATO and its Persian Gulf allies: Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

NATO’s “Humanitarian” R2P War on Libya

NATO commenced its bombing of Libya on March 19, 2011.  The United Nations Security Council passed an initial resolution on 26 February 2011 (UNSC Resolution 1970), (adopted unanimously).

A subsequent United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 was adopted on 17 March 2011. It authorized the establishment of “a no-fly zone” over Libya, and the use “all necessary measures” “to protect the lives of civilians”.

Libya was bombed relentlessly by NATO warplanes starting on March 19, 2011 for a period of approximately seven months.

Yemen 

On 25 March 2015, an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the US launched air strikes against the Huthi armed group in Yemen.

**

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

After a dire experience visiting a factory pig farm in Italy, Clodagh McKenna decided to only cook with high welfare meat from then on.

“We all have ideals of the kind of person we want to be and I think every single one of us wants to be somebody that is making a little bit of a difference in this world”, she says in our latest Rooting for Real Farms video.

So, using the power of her purse, the acclaimed chef and author of numerous cookbooks, is helping to close factory farms by only buying meat from high welfare British farms like Helen Wade’s Eastleach Downs Organic Farm.

Helen rears rare-breed saddleback pigs that are sold from their on-farm butchery. She says, “For me the welfare of the animal is the most important thing, pigs are very intelligent creatures and they should have the best possible life we can give them.”

War

I am finding it incredibly difficult to focus on our precious farmers when the headlines are dominated by war. The UK is directly involved not least by upgrading its US air bases to enable Washington to intercept international communications and launch military strikes from Britain more quickly and with more devastating effect.

In 2014 I was filming vast pig factories owned by the Danish company Danosha in Western Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian owned factory pig farms in the East. We left a few weeks before all hell broke out as the US backed coup d’etat replaced the Russian backed elected leader with an unelected leader answerable to the US.

Naturally, like all sane people, I absolutely abhor war, it is horrifying from any quarter. I abhor censorship too; how can peoples of the world come together in peace when so much is hidden?

Censorship of the whole story

Last weekend, I met a very prosperous man in his 80s who confessed that he was interested to know the Russian side of the war story with the caveat that he might not believe a word he read. I was impressed that he had even an inkling that the mainstream media are only telling half truths, just as they did to justify our authorities’ invasion of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

In my humble opinion, the truth resides in a fringe niche of journalists who have been banished from the UK’s mainstream media but who continue to provide us with an independent narrative. A pool of these brave truthsayers can be found on the Dont Extradite Assange website.

Silenced by fear of reprisals

In this new world of surveillance, you are not safe to hold an opinion counter to your authorities. In some countries you can be punished for speaking out. The Czech Republic has warned Czech citizens that they can be imprisoned for agreeing with the Russia’s military operation in Ukraine and for not speaking out the conductor of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra, was fired for privately refusing to denounce Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.

Whether it is fear of a virus or fear of Russia, we have successfully been polarised into our opposite silos. So it is with some trepidation that I share the info that I sent to the gent about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, its causes, its aims, and its likely aftermath.

Jimmy Dore Show (976K subscribers);

‘Jimmy and The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté, discuss the lies and misrepresentations surrounding the leadup to the war in Ukraine.The media description of the Russian attack on Ukraine has almost universally elided and whitewashed the role played by the US and its NATO allies, including supporting a coup overthrowing the democratically elected president in 2014, refusing to support the Minsk Accords or refusing to engage in negotiations in the months leading up to the Russian invasion.’

Jimmy and The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal; discuss the past predictions made by noteworthy people ranging from Noam Chomsky and Stephen Cohen to Henry Kissinger and Pat Buchanan.’

Jimmy Dore ‘Ukraine Conflict Centered Around Gas Pipeline – Of Course!’

Consortium News; discuss; Russia Hits Back ;

‘After 30 years of NATO expansion towards its borders, and eight-years of a coup regime’s attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine, Russia has taken military action to “demilitarize” and “de-nazify” the country.’

and 4 articles;

Scott Ritter says the Russian president is working from a 2007 playbook, when he warned European leaders of the need for a new security framework to replace the system built by the U.S. and NATO.

Ukraine update – 04/03/22

Caitlin Johnstone: 12 Thoughts on Ukraine

‘The U.S. power alliance has a choice between escalating aggressions against Russia to world-threatening levels or doing what anti-imperialists have been begging them to do for years and pursue detente.’

Diana Johnstone: former press secretary of the Green Group in the European Parliament from 1989 to 1996.

US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport

‘……today, a version of bear baiting is being practised every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale. It is called United States foreign policy. It has become the regular practice of the absurd international sports club called NATO.’

‘‘….And from the start, Washington strategies, in cahoots with a large, hyperactive anti-communist anti-Russian diaspora in the U.S. and Canada, contrived to use the bitterness of Ukraine’s divisions to weaken first the U.S.S.R. and then Russia. Billions of dollars were invested in order to “strengthen democracy” – meaning the pro-Western west of Ukraine against its semi-Russian east.

The 2014 U.S.-backed coup that overthrew President Viktor Yukanovych, solidly supported by the east of the country, brought to power pro-West forces determined to bring Ukraine into NATO, whose designation of Russia as prime enemy had become ever more blatant. This caused the prospect of an eventual NATO capture of Russia’s major naval base at Sebastopol, on the Crimean peninsula.’

‘Meanwhile, major parties in the Russian Duma and public opinion have long expressed concern for the Russian-speaking population of the eastern provinces, suffering from privations and military attack from the central government for eight years. This concern is naturally interpreted in the West as a remake of Hitler’s drive to conquer neighbouring countries. However, as usual the inevitable Hitler analogy is baseless. For one thing, Russia is too large to need to conquer Lebensraum.’

The Secret US Biolabs in the Ukraine

‘the work in the laboratories is carried out under the program of biological experiments. The budget is $2.1 billion and is funded by the US Defence Threat Reduction Agency.’

Sanctions cause pain and relief

The present tranche of sanctions against Russia imposed by the European Union, the US, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Australia, Taiwan and Japan will continue the pain caused by numerous earlier sanctions. However, as reported in Newsweek Russia’s Ambassador to Sweden said;

“Excuse my language, but we don’t give a shit about all their sanctions,” Viktor Tatarintsev told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet in an interview published on Saturday.

“We have already had so many sanctions and in that sense they’ve had a positive effect on our economy and agriculture,” the diplomat said, according to the AFP news agency.

‘We are more self-sufficient and have been able to increase our exports. We have no Italian or Swiss cheeses, but we’ve learned to make just as good Russian cheeses using Italian and Swiss recipes’.

Russian rural kids adopt American junk food

While visiting Russia when Yeltsin was President in the 90s, clicking our cameras to capture the beautiful wooden homes in a tiny village deep in the countryside, a Russian housewife shouted “go away you horrible Americans’. She explained that their children used to drink their home grown apple juice and now, thanks to TV adverts and billboards, only Coca-Cola would do.

Putin pushes for local organic produce

The embargo on importing European foodstuffs, imposed by Russia in 2014, acted as an incentive for domestic production. No less than 95 percent of organic food was previously sourced from imports. So, the present sanctions imposed on food imports to Russia, might even help Putin achieve his 2015 commitment to meet his country’s demand for a local, organic, GMO free diet, as they will no longer be out competed by imports of cheap junk food doused in chemicals derived from dangerous GMO seeds. As such the sanctions could potentially help Russia fulfil its pledge to be the world’s largest producer and supplier of organic food.

In addition, it will strengthen the 2018 law which came into effect in 2020 setting out a new food strategy around organic produce.

‘The Law is designed to regulate relations in the field of production of organic food, to protect agricultural producers, who produce organic products and to attract new producers into this sphere.’

Putin is also giving land away to repopulate former farming land in Eastern Russia near the Japanese border. Plenty of young aspiring UK farmers and growers would love to have some land to build a home and grow food.

Legalising GMOs in the UK

While GMOs have been banned in Russia since 2016, Boris Johnson’s government has abandoned the EU’s precautionary principle that restricts their use, and is presently pushing to legalise this highly controversial technology.

“The clear consensus of 88% of British citizens who responded to the consultation was ‘no to deregulation’. Nevertheless the government has ignored public opinion and announced its plans to deregulate gene editing and, in the longer term plans to deregulate all genetically modified organisms used in agriculture.”

Based on events from a 1998 lawsuit, the film PERCY Vs GOLIATH, follows 70-year old small-town farmer Percy Schmeiser who challenges the agro-chemical conglomerate Monsanto that sued him for damages when their genetically modified (GMO) canola seeds were blown by the wind from a neighbour’s farm onto his land. As he defends himself against the Monsanto’s corrupt lawsuit, he realises he is representing thousands of other disenfranchised farmers around the world who are being sued because of GM seeds unintentionally and unavoidably spreading onto their fields from neighbouring farms. Suddenly, he becomes an unsuspecting folk hero in a desperate war to protect farmers’ rights and the world’s food supply against corporate greed.

Two-faced Tories

Strange that with one hand the Tories are pushing for GMO’s, banned in organic agriculture, and with the other giving more generous subsidies to organic farmers. As reported in Wickedleeks;

‘Payments for organic farming are rising by between 46 and 500 per cent under a new Countryside Stewardship scheme. The new payments will be available until at least 2024 when a new organic standard is promised as part of the wider plan for how farmers will be supported by the government post-Brexit.’

It coincides with news that the organic food market continues to out-perform sales of non organic food, with sales rising by 5.2 per cent in the last year, helped by shopper interest in ethics, the environment and health during the pandemic.

Even the UK could benefit from sanctions against Russia’s food imports

Sanctions against Russia and Belarus will have a massive impact on UK’s conventionally grown food and farming as fertiliser imports sourced from Belarus will dry up along with cheap wheat from Ukraine. Therefore, food prices, now inflated to their highest in more than a decade due to pandemic-related supply constraints, are likely to rise even further.

However, if we look at the long term, sanctions may help our farmers get a fairer price for their home grown wheat and, by increasing the cost of fertiliser across the world, the use of this ecologically damaging and expensive input will be reduced.

An economic system that demands that we have cheap food at a cost to our health, animal welfare and the ecosystem is plainly a failed system. As the Guardian article explains;

‘Farmers from England and Wales gathered in Birmingham on Tuesday, against the backdrop of huge upheaval in agriculture, with labour shortages caused by Brexit and Covid, an ongoing pig cull and the transition to life beyond the EU’s subsidy scheme. The day opened with a blistering attack on ministers from the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) president, Minette Batters, who accused the government of having no post-Brexit plan and of showing a “total lack of understanding of how food production works.” Her views were echoed by farmers speaking from the floor of the conference.’

Only when we break up the corporate farms and pay independent farmers a fair price for their produce, will we prevent their decline and get UK farm workers back on the land to produce healthy food. Farmers would then be free to earn a livelihood while protecting the soil and biodiversity and raise livestock that do not need antibiotics to keep them alive, in sheds that have become a breeding ground of disease. Far better than going vegan and filling up on lab meat or highly processed plant based meat, is to eat less but better real meat from pasture fed animals sourced locally or online from the Real Food Hub.

There is a window of hope in the government’s White Paper, usually a precursor to new legislation, due to be published at the end of March that will respond to the (June 2021) National Food Strategy. More than 100 organisations that include major supermarkets and food retailers including TESCO, Sainsburys, Co-op, Aldi and M&S, have joined forces with civil society groups, health campaigners and academics in calling for bold food legislation in the UK Government’s response to the National Food Strategy.’

The “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to fix nation’s broken food system is massive; As described by Kath Dalmeny chief executive of Sustain;

“……..Councils, academics, health charities and consumers are all signalling that the Government needs to act. Businesses say they need a level playing field to prevent being held back by a system that is skewed in favour of junk food. We need the Government to be bold, to take action and put laws in place that help tackle the systemic problems in our food system.”

Sue Davies, Head of Consumer Rights and Food Policy at Which? said;

“The report highlights some key questions for the UK’s trade policy. Given the government’s commitment to upholding standards and tackling climate change, it is essential that ministers heed the report’s warning on the worrying precedent the Australia deal could create and set core food standards for imports. The UK can’t work to transform its own food system and support people in making food choices that are better for their health and the environment if we allow foods to be imported that are produced to lower safety, environmental or welfare standards.”

*

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

Featured image is from GlobalMeatNews

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

One of the key underlying themes of the Russia/Ukraine/NATO matrix is that the Empire of Lies (copyright Putin) has been rattled to the core by the combined ability of Russian hypersonic missiles and a defensive shield capable of blocking incoming nuclear missiles from the West, thereby ending Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)

This has led the Americans to nearly risk a hot war to be able to place hypersonic missiles that they still don’t have on Ukraine’s western borders, and so be within three minutes of Moscow. For that, of course, they need Ukraine, as well as Poland and Romania in Eastern Europe.

In Ukraine, the Americans are determined to fight to the last European soul – if that’s what it takes. This may be the last roll of the (nuclear) dice. Thus the next-to-last gasp at coercing Russia into submission by using the remaining, workable American weapon of mass destruction: SWIFT.

Yet this weapon can be easily neutralized by rapid adoption of self-sufficiency.

With essential input by the inestimable Michael Hudson I have outlined possibilities for Russia to weather the sanction storm. That didn’t even consider the full extent of Russia’s “black box defense” – and counter-attack – as outlined by John Helmer in his introduction to an essay that heralds no less then The Return of Sergei Glaziev.

Glaziev, predictably detested across Atlanticist circles, was a key economic adviser to President Putin and is now the Minister for Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). He has always been a fierce critic of the Russian Central Bank and the oligarch gang closely linked to Anglo-American finance.

His latest essay, Sanctions and Sovereignty, originally published by expert.ru and translated by Helmer, deserves serious scrutiny. This is one of the key takeaways:

“Russian losses of potential GDP, since 2014, amount to about 50 trillion rubles. But only 10% of them can be explained by sanctions, while 80% of them were the result of monetary policy. The United States benefits from anti-Russian sanctions, replacing the export of Russian hydrocarbons to the EU as well as China; replacing the import of European goods by Russia. We could completely offset the negative consequences of financial sanctions if the Bank of Russia fulfilled its constitutional duty to ensure a stable ruble exchange rate, and not the recommendations of Washington financial organizations.”

De-offshore or bust

Glaziev essentially recommends:

• A “real de-offshorization of the economy”.
• “Measures to tighten currency regulation in order to stop the export of capital and expand targeted lending to enterprises in need of financing investments”.
• “Taxation of currency speculation and transactions in dollars and euros on the domestic market”.
• “Serious investment in R&D in order to accelerate the development of our own technological base in the areas affected by sanctions – first of all the defense industry, energy, transport and communications.”

And last but not least, “the de-dollarization of our foreign exchange reserves, replacing the dollar, euro and pound with gold.”

The Russian Central Bank seems to be listening. Most of these measures are already in place. And there are signs that Putin and the government are finally ready to grab the Russian oligarchy by the balls and force them to share risks and losses at an extremely difficult for the nation. Goodbye to stockpiling funds taken out of Russia offshore and in Londongrad.

Glaziev is the real deal. In December 2014 I was at a conference in Rome, and Glaziev joined us on the phone. Reviewing a subsequent column I wrote at the time, between Rome and Beijing, I was stunned: it’s as if Glaziev was saying these things literally today.

Allow me to quote two paragraphs:

“At the symposium, held in a divinely frescoed former 15th century Dominican refectory now part of the Italian parliament’s library, Sergey Glaziev, on the phone from Moscow, gave a stark reading of Cold War 2.0. There’s no real “government” in Kiev; the U.S. ambassador is in charge. An anti-Russia doctrine has been hatched in Washington to foment war in Europe – and European politicians are its collaborators. Washington wants a war in Europe because it is losing the competition with China.”

“Glaziev addressed the sanctions dementia: Russia is trying simultaneously to reorganize the politics of the International Monetary Fund, fight capital flight and minimize the effect of banks closing credit lines for many businessmen. Yet the end result of sanctions, he says, is that Europe will be the ultimate losers economically; bureaucracy in Europe has lost economic focus as American geopoliticians have taken over.”

Gotta pay the “tax on independence”

A consensus seems to be emerging in Moscow that the Russian economy will stabilize quickly, as there will be a shortage of personnel for industry and a lot of extra hands will be required. Hence no unemployment. There may be shortages, but no inflation. Sales of – Western – luxury goods have already been curtailed. Imported products will be placed under price controls. All the necessary rubles will be available though price controls – as happened in the U.S. in WWII.

A wave of nationalization of assets may be ahead. ExxonMobil announced it will withdraw from the $4 billion Sakhalin-1 project (they had bailed out on Sakhalin-2, deemed too expensive), producing 200,000 barrels of oil a day, after BP and Norway’s Equinor announced they were withdrawing from projects with Rosneft. BP was actually dreaming of taking all of Rosneft’s participation.

According to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the Kremlin is now blocking asset sales by foreign investors looking to divest. In parallel, Rosneft, for instance, is bound to raise capital from China and India, who are already minority investors in several projects, and buy them out 100%: an excellent opportunity for Russian business.

What could be construed as the Mother of All Counter-Sanctions has not yet been announced. Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev himself hinted all options are on the table.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, channeling the patience of 10,000 Taoist monks, still expecting the current hysteria to fade away, describes the sanctions as “some kind of a tax on independence”,

with countries barring their companies from working in Russia under “huge pressure.”

Lethal counterpunches though are not excluded. Apart from completely de-dollarizing – as Glaviev recommends – Russia may ban the export of titanium, rare earth, nuclear fuel and, already in effect, rocket engines.

Very toxic moves would include seizing all foreign assets of hostile nations; freeze all loan repayments to Western banks and place the funds in a frozen account in a Russian bank; completely ban all hostile foreign media, foreign media ownership, assorted NGOs and CIA fronts; and supply friendly nations with state of the art weapons, intel sharing and joint training and exercises.

What’s certain is that a new architecture of payment systems – as discussed by Michael Hudson and others – uniting the Russian SPFS and the Chinese CHIPS, may soon be offered to scores of nations across Eurasia and the Global South – several among them already under sanctions, such as Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, the DPRK.

Slowly but surely, we are already on the way to the emergence of a sizeable Global South bloc immune to American financial warfare.

The RIC in BRICS – Russia, India and China – are already increasing trade in their own currencies. If we look at the list of nations at the UN that voted against Russia or abstained from condemning Operation Z in Ukraine, plus those that did not sanction Russia, we have at least 70% of the whole Global South.

So once again is the West – plus satrapies/colonies such as Japan and Singapore in Asia – against the Rest: Eurasia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America.

The coming European collapse

Michael Hudson told me,

“the U.S. and Western Europe expected a Froelicher Krieg (“happy war”). Germany and other countries haven’t begun to feel the pain of gas and mineral and food deprivation. THAT’S going to be the real game. The aim would be to break Europe away from U.S. control via NATO. This will involve “meddling” by creating a New World Order political movement and party, like Communism was a century ago. You could call it a new Great Awakening.”

A possible Great Awakening certainly will not involve the NATOstan sphere anytime soon. The collective West is rather in serious Great Decoupling mode, its entire economy weaponized with the aim, expressed in the open, of destroying Russia and even – the perennial wet dream – provoking regime change.

Sergey Naryshkin, the head of the SVR, succinctly described it:

“Masks have dropped. The West is not just trying to enclose Russia with a new ‘Iron Curtain’. We are talking about attempts to destroy our state – its ‘abolition’, as it is now customary to say in the ‘tolerant’ liberal-fascist environment. Since the United States and its allies have neither the opportunity nor the spirit to try to do this in an open and honest military-political confrontation, sneaky attempts are being made to establish an economic, informational and humanitarian “blockade”’.

Arguably the apex of Western hysteria is the onset of a 2022 Neo-Nazi Jihad: a 20,000-strong mercenary army being assembled in Poland under CIA supervision. The bulk comes from private military companies such as Blackwater/Academi and DynCorp. Their cover: “return of Ukrainians from the French Foreign Legion.” This Afghan remix comes straight from the only playbook the CIA knows.

Back in reality, facts on the ground will eventually lead entire economies in the West to become roadkill – with chaos in the commodities sphere leading to skyrocketing energy and food costs. As an example, up to 60% of German and 70% of Italian manufacturing industries may be forced to shut down for good – with catastrophic social consequences.

The unelected, uber-Kafkaesque EU machine in Brussels has chosen to commit a triple hara-kiri by grandstanding as abject vassals of the Empire, destroying any remaining French and German sovereignty impulses and imposing alienation from Russia-China.

Meanwhile, Russia will be showing the way: only self-sufficiency affords total independence. And the Big Picture has also been keenly understood by the Global South: one day someone had to stand up and say, “That’s Enough”. With maximum raw power to back it up.

*

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

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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.

***

Amidst much fanfare and eager anticipation for imminent restoration of Iran nuclear pact, unilaterally annulled by Washington in May 2018, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi arrived in Tehran late on Friday. But the much-hyped visit was nothing more than a formality as he would hold talks only with Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian before returning to Vienna in the afternoon.

Before embarking on the futile visit, though, the figurehead chief of the nuclear watchdog told reporters the Iran nuclear deal was a “fait accompli.” Though he likely used the Latin phrase in a positive sense, implying a “done deal,” in order to deliberately raise expectations, fait accompli in legal jargon typically has negative connotations, implying a “past and closed transaction” requiring no further litigation, though the gaffe could also be construed as a Freudian slip spilling out subconsciously held belief.

Restoring Iran nuclear deal doesn’t require a Manhattan Project to hammer out all the intricate details with diplomatic finesse and suave statesmanship. Had Biden been sincere in reviving the pact, he would’ve immediately restored JCPOA within first few months of the presidency.

In fact, all the media hype surrounding imminent restoration of Iran nuclear pact should be viewed in the broader backdrop of escalation of hostilities between the US and Russia following the latter’s military intervention in Ukraine in order to scuttle the steadfast regional alliance Iran has forged with Russia in recent years.

In January, following Russia’s troop build-up along Ukraine’s borders portending imminent invasion, Houthi rebels in Yemen backed by Iran, which is Russia’s most dependable regional ally in the decade-long Syrian conflict, significantly escalated missile strikes on the oil-rich Gulf States in order to take pressure off Russia in the Ukraine stand-off by opening a second front in the veritable Achilles’ heel of the energy-dependent industrialized world.

To buttress the defenses in the Gulf, US F-22 fighter jets arrived in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Feb. 12, as part of an American defense response to missile attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels targeting the country. The Raptors landed at Al-Dhafra Air Base in Abu Dhabi, which hosts 2,000 US troops. American soldiers there launched Patriot interceptor missiles and briefly had to take shelter after the missiles exploded in the airspace above the military base on Jan. 24.

The deployment came after the Houthi rebels launched three successive attacks targeting Abu Dhabi in January, including one on Jan. 17 targeting a fuel depot that killed three people and wounded six. The attacks coincided with visits by presidents from South Korea and Israel to the UAE. Though overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis, the missile strikes targeting the Emirates sparked a major US response. The American military sent the USS Cole on a mission to Abu Dhabi.

Last June, the Associated Press reported [1] the largest warship in the Iranian navy caught fire and later sank in the Gulf of Oman under unclear circumstances. The blaze began around midnight and firefighters tried to contain it, but their efforts failed to save the 207-meter Kharg, which was used to resupply other ships in the fleet at sea and conduct training exercises. The Fars News Agency reported 400 sailors and trainee cadets on board fled the vessel, with 33 suffering injuries.

The ship sank near the Iranian port of Jask, some 1,270 kilometers southeast of Tehran on the Gulf of Oman near the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf. Photos circulated on Iranian social media showed sailors wearing life jackets evacuating the vessel as a fire burned behind them.

Meanwhile, a massive fire broke out at the oil refinery serving Iran’s capital, sending thick plumes of black smoke over Tehran. Similarly, last April, an Iranian ship MV Saviz believed to be an Iranian Revolutionary Guard base and anchored for years in the Red Sea off Yemen was targeted in an attack suspected to have been carried out by Israel.

Among the major attacks to target Iran, none have struck deeper than two explosions in July 2020 and then again in April last year at its Natanz nuclear facility. Former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service Yossi Cohen offered the closest acknowledgment yet that his country was behind the attacks targeting Iran’s nuclear program and the assassination of a military scientist.

While Cohen was being interviewed in investigative program Uvda of Israel’s Channel 12 in a segment aired last June, the interviewer, journalist Ilana Dayan, offered a detailed description of how Israel snuck the explosives into Natanz’s underground halls.

The man who was responsible for these explosions, it became clear, made sure to supply to the Iranians the marble foundation on which the centrifuges were placed, Dayan said. “As they install this foundation within the Natanz facility, they have no idea that it already includes an enormous amount of explosives.”

They also discussed the November 2020 killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist who began Tehran’s military nuclear program decades ago. While Cohen on camera didn’t claim the killing, Dayan in the segment described Cohen as having “personally signed off on the entire campaign.” Dayan also described how a remotely operated machinegun fixed to a pickup truck killed Fakhrizadeh and later self-destructed.

A joint American-Israeli program [2], involving a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes, aimed at taking out the most prominent generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and targeting Iran’s power stations, industrial infrastructure, and missile and nuclear facilities has been going on since early 2020 after the commander of IRGC’s Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in an American airstrike at the Baghdad airport on January 3, 2020.

Besides pandering to Zionist lobbies in Washington, another purpose of these subversive attacks has been to avenge a string of audacious attacks mounted by the Iran-backed forces against the US strategic interests in the Persian Gulf that brought the US and Iran to the brink of a full-scale war in September 2019.

In addition to planting limpet mines on oil tankers off the coast of UAE in May 2019 and the subsequent downing of the American Global Hawk surveillance drone in the Persian Gulf by Iran, the brazen attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia on September 14, 2019, was the third major attack in the Persian Gulf against the assets of Washington and its regional allies.

The September 14, 2019, attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility in eastern Saudi Arabia was an apocalypse for the global oil industry because it processed five million barrels crude oil per day, almost half of Saudi Arabia’s total oil production.

The subversive attack sent jitters across the global markets and the oil price surged 15%, the largest spike witnessed in three decades since the First Gulf War after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, though the oil price was eased within weeks after industrialized nations released their strategic oil reserves.

Alongside deploying several thousand American troops, additional aircraft squadrons and Patriot missile batteries in Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of the Abqaiq attack, several interventionist hawks in Washington invoked the Carter Doctrine of 1980 as a ground for mounting retaliatory strikes against Iran, which states:

“Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Although the Houthi rebels based in Yemen claimed the responsibility for the September 2019 complex attack involving drones and cruise missiles on the Abqaiq petroleum facility and the Khurais oil field in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, Washington dismissed the possibility. Instead, it accused Tehran of mounting the complex attack from Iran’s territory.

Nevertheless, puerile pranks like planting limpet mines on oil tankers and downing a $200-million surveillance aircraft can be overlooked but the major provocation of mounting a drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq petroleum facility that crippled its oil-processing functions for weeks was nothing short of waving red rag to the bull.

Considering the nature of steadfast alliance between Iran and Russia, what if Iran, too, flexed its muscles in the critically important volatile region in order to disrupt the global oil supply and put pressure on the energy-dependent industrialized powers to carefully consider their retaliatory measures against Russia amidst the Ukraine War.

The Persian Gulf holds 800 billion barrels, over half of world’s total 1,500 billion barrels crude oil reserves. If Iran decided to open a second front in the Gulf by mounting subversive attacks on oil installations in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait amidst the Ukraine War, forget about sanctioning Russia’s oligarchs, the oil price would skyrocket, the dollar would take a nosedive, crippling energy shortages would bring industrial production to a standstill and Washington would find it hard maintaining its grip over neocolonial world order.

In fact, this was the precise message conveyed to Washington’s military strategists by the audacious Houthi attacks on strategic targets in UAE in January, specifically the one targeting al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi hosting US forces.

In order to mend fences with Iran at a critical time, however, Washington has promptly dispatched IAEA’s chief as a “goodwill ambassador” to Tehran to dangle the carrot of imminent restoration of the Iran nuclear deal to wean Iran off Russia’s orbit, at least, until the gathering storm over the horizon following the Ukraine intervention clears out.

Notwithstanding, the acts of subversion in the Persian Gulf in 2019 culminating in the “sacrilegious assault” on the veritable mecca of the oil production industry in Sept. 2019 should be viewed in the broader backdrop of the New Cold War that has begun following the Ukraine crisis in 2014 after Russia occupied the Crimean peninsula and Washington imposed sanctions on Russia.

The Kremlin’s immediate response to the escalation by Washington was that it jumped into the fray in Syria in September 2015, after a clandestine visit to Moscow by General Qassem Soleimani, the slain commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force.

When Russia deployed its forces and military hardware to Syria in September 2015, the militant proxies of Washington and its regional clients were on the verge of driving a wedge between Damascus and the Alawite heartland of coastal Latakia, which could have led to the imminent downfall of the Bashar al-Assad government.

With the help of Russia’s air power, the Syrian government has since reclaimed most of Syria’s territory from the insurgents, excluding Idlib in the northwest occupied by the Turkish-backed militants and Deir al-Zor and the Kurdish-held areas in the east, thus inflicting a humiliating defeat on Washington and its regional allies.

Thus, Iran is under moral obligation to pay its debt to the patron in the latter’s moment of crisis. Let me clarify, however, I’m not inciting anybody to jump off the cliff. But in its blind rage, if Washington goes all out in resorting to economic warfare against Russia, then a limited and calculated response to give the self-styled global hegemon a taste of its own medicine would certainly deter it from resorting to extreme measures.

*

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

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] Iran’s largest warship catches fire, sinks in Gulf of Oman

[2] Long-Planned and Bigger Than Thought: Strike on Iran’s Nuclear Program

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

In an unprecedented move, the European Commission has banned Russian news outlets RT and Sputnik across the EU, calling them ‘Kremlin Media Machines’ and accusing them of indulging in pro-Russia propaganda

Amidst the ever growing list of sanctions against Russia by the US and its NATO allies since its attack on Ukraine on February 24, the European Unions’ announcement of banning some of Russia’s media outlets stands as unique and unprecedented. The move raises fundamental questions about the West’s commitments to freedom of speech and expression and democracy. It also exposes the West’s discomfort about narratives which challenge its preferred version of what is happening in the Eastern Europe.

On 27 February European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU is banning Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik because they were spreading Russian government’s propaganda declaring that, these channels and their subsidiaries, “will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union.” Since then, these channels have also faced a blockade on Meta owned social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and Google owned Youtube. Twitter, a popular microblogging platform also announced that it will comply with the ban order when asked.

Though the US has not yet announced a formal ban on RT and Sputnik, it has supported the EU’s move. Several users in the country have claimed that these channels are not accessible to them as well. Similar news has been reported from Australia as well.

Some ministers in the conservative government in the UK, including Foreign Secretary Liz Truss and several MPs from the party have pressured the Ofcom, the country’s media regulator, to issue a EU-like ban on RT and Sputnik in the country. On Wednesday, March 2 Ofcom announced an investigation into RT’s news coverage.

Violates the right to free information for viewers 

Apart from curtailing the choices of its people by proscribing Russian channels, the EU’s move also puts a question mark on its citizens’ maturity to differentiate between fact and propaganda. It is also a clear violation of the right to free access to information which is part of the EU charter. Some public opinion surveys conducted on social media on the issue also confirm that EU leadership’s decision to ban RT and Sputnik does not have popular support.

This is an example of seriously compromising freedom of speech and expression considered fundamental to liberal democratic systems preferred and glorified in the west. The EU has undertaken several punitive actions including sanctions against countries outside the union for their alleged violations of the same rights.

Though the amount of public outrage against the ban in Europe was limited mostly due to overt or covert censorship self-imposed by the Western media groups, there were several people from both within the region and outside who questioned EU leadership’s commitments to free speech and democracy.

The commentators from within the European countries have emphasized that even if the Russian networks were following a particular agenda the correct course of action for the EU leadership was to disseminate counter facts in public domain instead of resorting to a ban. With varied amounts of qualifications, some commentators have also called it an assault on the freedom of press.

Some commentators also questioned the argument that continued broadcasting of these channels would have caused threat to security and unity of Europe.

Several commentators have also questioned the legality of the move as a pan EU ban does not have any precedence and there is no legal regime for the same.

One propaganda over the other

Speaking to RT, Nicola Mircovic called the ban an attempt by the European leadership of “fabrication of consent”. He claimed that most of the electronic and print media in Europe has been disseminating a one sided and biased narrative of what is happening in eastern Europe and by banning RT and Sputnik they want to make sure that the people of Europe do not get to see the alternative side of the story.

Some of the commentators even while opposing the ban on Russian media channels tried to find justifications for demands for the same. Precious Chatterjee Doody, a lecturer in Open University in the UK wrote in the Conversation, that “there are some patterns in how its [RTs] coverage plays out. RT usually gives strictly factual-albeit heavily curated-news coverage that prioritizes sources and perspectives that correspond with Russian interests.” She forgets to add that this is done by most other so-called neutral media outlets as well.

Activists have also questioned the aggressive tagging of pages related to news outlets such as RT, Sputnik and Chinese media outlet CGTN among others as “state-affiliated media”. In some cases even journalists working with some of these outlets are tagged in a similar way by twitter. Activists blame that twitter uses the tags as a yardstick of neutrality very selectively. In most of the cases, western media outlets such as BBC which receives funds from the UK state are exempted from such practices. The personal accounts of several journalists such as Afsin Rattansi who hosts a show on RT called Going Underground, have been marked as “state affiliated media” by Twitter recently.

It is obvious that the West has adopted a tactic of media warfare where all those narratives which question its preferred take on the Russia-Ukraine crisis will be treated as “propaganda”. The ruling class in the west appears to have decided that they have the truth on their side and those who question about NATO’s eastward expansion and present Russia concerns about rise of neo-Nazis in Ukraine are misinformation agents. The people have to believe that, as Ali Abunimah, director of Electronic Intifada said in a twitter post, “all this censorship is to defend free speech, all this conformity is to protect democracy and all this repression is to guarantee freedom”.

*

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

Featured image: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU is banning Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik. (Source: Peoples Dispatch)

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.

***

Maine physician Dr. Meryl Nass, who has been successfully treating covid patients with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and who exposed massive corruption in the suppression of chloroquine drugs for treating covid, talks about finding herself in the Orwellian position of having her medical license suspended by the Maine’s Board of Licensure in Medicine for “public dissemination of misinformation” regarding the covid pandemic and covid vaccines and being ordered to undergo a psychological examination to ensure she is fit to continue treating patients.

*

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

This article was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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

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

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

***

A blog that tracks COVID-19-related “Great Reset” incidents has reported that at least 20 people have been killed over a two-week period in February due to private plane and helicopter crashes.

“The U.S. Helicopter Safety Team (USHST) reported 122 helicopter accidents, with 51 fatalities, in 2019. There were 92 accidents and 35 fatalities in the first year of COVID dystopia (2020) when aircraft were grounded for months. In fact, there was a 107-day period in 2020 with no fatal helicopter accidents, which is unusual compared to other years,” The COVID Blog reported. “Further, small, private aircraft crash relatively-frequently, even before the COVID-19/vaccine era. But the difference since 2021 – more people are dying in said crashes.”

The report goes on to note that USHST data record fatal accidents per 100,000 flight hours on a monthly basis, adding that it is very rare for them to exceed one fatal crash per 100,000 hours. Any figure under one is considered a good measurement.

However, the report says that three months in 2021 exceeded the baseline number, peaking at 2.08 fatal crashes per 100,000 flight hours in December of that year.

Meanwhile, The COVID Blog noted that most Americans pay little attention to helicopter crashes, but the exception recently came when a helicopter carrying former NBA star Kobe Bryant and his daughter crashed into a mountain in California, killing them both in 2020.

That said, helicopter crash searches online began trending upward last month, the report continued.

While some mainstream media outlets began reporting on an unusually high number of plane crashes for a brief period over the summer of 2021, for the most part major outlets have ignored the most recent uptick.

The blog then listed several of those recent crashes, including photos of the victims who died and short histories of when they obtained their licenses to fly. The report also listed the types of aircraft being flown by the victims.

Overall, 11 aircraft crashes over a period of 14 days is not necessarily unusual, the blog report notes. But what makes these crashes significant is the high rate of death: At least 20 people have died in these crashes, and that is not normal in any way.

One good thing to note is that none of the crashes killed anyone on the ground, though there were several instances where that was a distinct possibility.

In normal times, the blog reported, this kind of story would make headlines internationally, “but during The Great Reset” — the term for the pandemic — “it’s a mere blip in the 24-hour news cycle.”

“Small planes crashed quite a bit even before The Great Reset. But there were 347 civil aviation deaths in 2017, and 393 in 2018. Twenty people are dead from all the foregoing crashes. That number could rise to 22. But if it stays at 20, and it’s extrapolated for all of 2022, that means 520 will die in aviation crashes in 2022,” the report continues.

“The NTSB considers anything over one fatality for every 100,000 flight hours far too much. The data at the beginning of this article show three months in 2021 with more than one fatality per 100,000 hours in helicopters, with December 2021 having more than two per 100,000 hours. In other words, there will most likely be more accidents this year than any other year, and most definitely far more deaths as a result,” the report adds.

And while it’s impossible to know the cause of these crashes, the data are alarming enough, especially given that they have occurred at a time of maximum COVID-19 vaccination and boosters.

There have been a number of odd, unusual phenomena since the pandemic and, more specifically, since the widespread use of vaccines. People who are otherwise healthy drop over dead; planes and helos fall out of the sky; drivers of vehicles suddenly lose control and crash for no apparent reason.

*

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

Featured image is from Pandemic.news

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

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

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

***

Former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd is speaking out about the real motivations behind the pandemic, which include a global debt problem and an imminent global collapse of the financial industry.

After the Great Financial Crisis, the decision was made to increase the money supply, but this debt-based financial system is unsustainable and Dowd believes it’s on the brink of collapse.

Restrictions on travel, vaccine passports and rampant censorship enacted as measures to control the pandemic are all a global way to control the collapse and its aftermath.

Dowd’s friend in the biotech industry told him that the all-cause mortality endpoint had been missed by Pfizer in the original clinical trial — this means that in the jab group there were more deaths than in the placebo group.

The biotech executives who saw the Pfizer data decided they weren’t going to get boosters, and the people who weren’t yet injected were not going to get the shot.

Looking to Wall Street may give some of the greatest clues that what Dowd says is correct — even with COVID-19 shots so prevalent, Big Pharma stocks are dropping; Moderna is down 70%.

*

Another high integrity patriot, former BlackRock portfolio manager Edward Dowd, is speaking out about the real motivations behind the pandemic, which he believes aren’t about COVID at all. Instead, it’s all about money — specifically a global debt problem and an imminent global collapse of the financial industry.

During his career, Dowd witnessed two bubbles — corporate fraud and then bank fraud — and now he believes we’re in the third bubble, which involves central banks and governments.¹

“A lot of the regulatory agencies have been captured by deep-pocketed money interests, and so we have to spread the word and awareness through educating people, because the governments aren’t going to come and rescue us this time. We, the people, are going to do it, I believe,” he says.²

Deaths Increased After COVID Shots

Dowd became suspicious of COVID-19 shots early on, as he reviewed data on side effects from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). “These jabs kill people and they maim people. That’s my personal belief, and I think I’m 100% correct,” he says.³

Dowd has been analyzing data about mortality rates before and after COVID-19 shots became widespread, and found that death rates worsened in 2021 — after the shots became prevalent — compared to 2020, particularly among non-COVID-related deaths among young people.

For instance, Scott Davison, the CEO of Indiana-based insurance company OneAmerica, reported the death rate for 18- to 64-year-olds has risen 40% compared to before the pandemic.⁴

Further, insurance companies citing higher mortality rates include Hartford Insurance Group, which announced mortality increased 32% from 2019 and 20% from 2020 prior to the shots. Lincoln National also stated death claims have increased 13.7% year over year and 54% in quarter 4 compared to 2019.⁵ Dowd tweeted:⁶

“Randy Frietag CFO just explained that in 2021 the share of young people dying from covid doubled in the back half of the year & that’s driven the result for Lincoln & its peers. He cited 40% in 3Q and 35% in 4Q were below the age of 65 … Mandates are killing folks … This shouldn’t be happening with miracle vaccines in a working age population period and a mild Omicron.”

Further, Dowd pointed out “a spike in mortality among younger, working-age individuals coincided with vaccine mandates. The spike in younger deaths peaked in Q3 2021 when COVID deaths were extremely low (but rising into the end of September).”⁷

Dowd also reported data from public funeral home company Carriage Services, which announced a 28% increase in September 2021 compared to September 2020, while August had a 13% increase. He tweeted:^8,9

“Business has been quite good since the introduction of the vaccines & the stock was up 106% in 2021. Curious no? Guys this is shocking as 89% of Funeral homes are private in US. We are seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

The Global Debt Bubble Is at Its Peak

The pandemic was the perfect cover for central banks to print money for an “emergency,” Dowd said.¹⁰ “Under the cover of Covid they were able to print 65% more money to keep this thing afloat, but we’re at the end days here.”¹¹ After the Great Financial Crisis, the decision was made to increase the money supply, but for every dollar you create, you create a dollar in debt, which then gets multiplied across the globe.

This debt-based financial system is unsustainable and Dowd believes it’s on the brink of collapse. “My overarching thesis is that we have a global debt problem, and after the Great Financial Crisis (of 2007-2008), all the central banks and the governments started pumping money into the system.”¹² Since 2008, the central banks have cooperated to keep the debt bubble afloat — he used the example of negative yielding bonds in Europe — but it can’t stay afloat forever.

Restrictions on travel, vaccine passports and rampant censorship enacted as measures to control the pandemic are all a global way to control the collapse and its aftermath, Dowd believes, put in place under the guise of medical care:¹³

“If you know a debt bubble is going to blow up, and pensions won’t be able to be paid and people’s life savings will be wiped out, wouldn’t it be interesting to use COVID as cover to set up a system to prevent all that from happening, a medical system … under the guise of medical welfare or help. It’s a stealth tyrannical system that can be switched from medical to riot prevention pretty quick.”

“That’s what I would do if I was anticipating a global debt problem,” he added.¹⁴ When asked whether the collapse is guaranteed, Dowd said, “Absolutely, it’s just a matter of time.” He didn’t want to speculate on whether the collapse would be this year, next year or at another point in the future, but believes it will be sooner rather than later. Still, he stressed that people shouldn’t run out to make investment decisions based on this prediction.

The Cat Is Out of the Bag

With solid data that non-COVID deaths have skyrocketed among young people since the introduction of COVID-19 shots, evidence of fraud in Pfizer’s COVID shot trials and disturbing Department of Defense (DOD) data on COVID injection side effects, Dowd believes it’s only a matter of time before the criminals behind this scheme are held accountable.

For instance, three DOD whistleblowers datamined the DOD health database, revealing significant increases in rates of miscarriage, cancer, neurological disease and stillbirths since COVID-19 jabs rolled out.¹⁵ This, combined with nonsensical public health mandates, doesn’t add up:¹⁶

“The responses from governments to this virus that doesn’t kill 99.9% of us makes no sense. And they’re all unified in their determination to put in these systems — these digital vaccination/passport systems. They’re all globally synced. They all want us to get these jabs, and it’s too unified. I suspect there’s a problem coming down the road.”

The systems, including ever-expanding plans for digital currency, vaccine passports and digital IDs, are in place for control and power.¹⁷ While digital IDs are being promoted as convenient and easy, underneath it is the ability to track — and tax — everything you do.

If you buy the “wrong” products or foods, you could be penalized by being heavily taxed, for instance, and there’s no limit to how high the tax could go or what products or activities could be affected. Even the promotion of fake meat in lieu of real animal protein, Dowd believes, is a way of turning people off animal-based protein, which is key for health and growth. “They want you to get sick and die,” he said, or at the very least to stay physically weak.

“It’s a total enslavement system,” Dowd said. “And then they can cut off your digital currency if you behave badly, like they do in China … digital currency and social credit will be tied. If you’re a ‘bad citizen,’ they turn it off and you disappear.”¹⁸ The answer, Dowd believes, lies in eliminating the debt-based monetary system:¹⁹

“We have to have a monetary system that is no longer debt-based … that allows real investments in real things, not financial speculation … I think it’s going to go from global back to local. So it’s really important to make real human relationships locally, develop a network of people who you trust, who you can rely on that will take care of you. It’s not about money. It’s about human connection and taking care of each other.”

In the meantime, he stressed that “cash is good” if you think a financial crash is looming and offered these warning signs of imminent financial collapse:

• Lots of currency fluctuations versus the dollar
• Bond market yields rising fast, because they’ve been kept artificially low
• Signs of officials no longer speaking in public
• Watch equity markets and prices of gold and silver

Pfizer Fraud Revealed

Dowd was wary of getting a COVID-19 shot from the beginning. “Operation Warp Speed sounds like a disaster,” he said, noting that the drug is experimental and it normally takes seven to 10 years for safety data for shots to be effective. He saw side effects to the shots being reported to the VAERS database early on, so he was very suspicious and didn’t take the shot.

Then, around November, a friend in the biotech industry told him that the all-cause mortality endpoint had been missed by Pfizer in the original clinical trial — this means that in the jab group there were more deaths than in the placebo group. Normally, during the drug approval process, if you fail that endpoint, you do not get approved.

Dowd said. “When that came out in November, the biotech executives who saw that decided they weren’t going to get boosters, and the people who weren’t vaxxed were not going to get vaxxed.”²⁰Seeing we’ve been misled, Dowd started to share his thoughts on Twitter. Around that time, the FDA decided to hide the clinical data from the trial for 75 years.

“When I saw that, that’s when I got very vocal and said fraud has occurred. How do I know that? They won’t show us the clinical data.”²¹ Then, he spoke with Brooke Jackson, a regional director formerly employed by Pfizer subcontractor Ventavia Research Group, which was testing Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

She witnessed falsified data, unblinded patients, inadequately trained vaccinators and lack of proper follow-up on adverse events that were reported. After notifying Ventavia about her concerns, repeatedly, she made a complaint to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration — and was fired the same day.²² Dowd believes this fraud could not have occurred without the help of the FDA.

FDA Executive: Annual COVID Shots Imminent

If you thought you’d be done with COVID-19 shots after the first two or three doses, you’re mistaken. The end game was revealed in footage published by Project Veritas, in which FDA executive officer of countermeasures initiative Christopher Cole speaks about the FDA’s conflicts of interest.

“You’ll have to get an annual shot [COVID vaccine],” he said. “I mean, it hasn’t been formally announced yet because they don’t want to, like, rile everyone up.” He explained:²³

“Well, there’s a money incentive for Pfizer and the drug companies to promote additional vaccinations … it’ll be recurring fountain of revenue. It might not be that much initially, but it’ll be recurring — if they can — if they can get every person required at an annual vaccine, that is a recurring return of money going into their company … that’s one of the benefits. They clearly want it also for that reason.”

Cole also states, “Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible” and, when it comes to approving COVID-19 shots for toddlers, states, “They’re not going to not approve [emergency use authorization for children 5 years old or less].”²⁴

In an official statement, the FDA responded to Cole’s remarks by saying, “The person purportedly in the video does not work on vaccine matters and does not represent the views of the FDA.”²⁵

However, as it stands, looking to Wall Street may give some of the greatest clues that what Dowd says is correct — even with COVID-19 shots so prevalent, Big Pharma stocks are dropping. Moderna, for instance, was down nearly 70% from its all-time highs of 2021.²⁶ “In a normal time, that would make lots of news.” The answer, he believes, lies in each person speaking up for freedom:²⁷

“We all have to get involved. We can no longer remain silent … if you believe what I say about what’s going on with the Pfizer fraud, you need to make your loved ones aware of it. You’re going to have to have uncomfortable conversations. I am a different voice. I’m a Wall Street voice, and I’m saying fraud.

Also point out the stock prices to these people to convince them something’s going on, Wall Street is turning on us. That, hopefully, can change a mind, make someone pause. This is a battle for the marginal mind, and you’re not going to convince people by screaming at them. You have to come at them in a loving way … Everyone has to stand up for freedom.”

*

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

Notes

¹ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 2:25

² Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 2:52

³ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 51:00

⁴ ZeroHedge January 3, 2022

⁵ The Verge Funeral Home Stocks Surge February 21, 2022

^6, 9 Twitter, Ed Dowd February 2, 2022

^7, 8 Zero Hedge February 5, 2022

^10, 12 KLIM News February 15, 2022, 0:04

¹¹ Twitter, TheNo1Waffler February 3, 2022

¹³ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 22:00

¹⁴ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 23:06

¹⁵ Rumble, The Red Line With Dr. Robert Malone, Part I February 3, 2022, 18:48

¹⁶ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 23:31

¹⁷ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 28:00

¹⁸ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 37:52

¹⁹ Zeee Media February 16, 2022, 42:00

^20, 21 KLIM News February 15, 2022, 6:45

²² BMJ 2021;375:n2635

²³ YouTube, Project Veritas February 16, 2022

^24, 25 YouTube Project Veritas February 15, 2022

²⁶ Nasdaq February 17, 2022

²⁷ KLIM News February 15, 2022, 42:00

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

On 12 March 2014 a historic 10-minute video was uploaded to youtube that acquired over a million hits since then, and that presented and truthfully explained a compendium of video-clips which had been uploaded to the Web during the 2014 overthrow and replacement of Ukraine’s democratically elected President,

Viktor Yanukovych, who had been called to the White House right after his 2010 electoral win and was asked by Obama to help to push his country toward joining NATO (though all of the opinion polls that had been taken of the Ukrainian public showed that the vast majority of Ukrainians viewed NATO to be their enemy, no friend of Ukraine).

Yanukovych said no, and the Obama Administration began by no later than 2011 to organize their coup to take down and replace Yanukovych so as to get Ukraine into NATO in order for America to become able to place its missiles only a five-minute striking-distance away from Moscow, for a retaliation-prohibiting blitz nuclear first-strike attack.

During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it.

In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.”

Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.”

The 2014 coup in Ukraine was about two things: getting Ukraine into NATO, and seizing Russia’s biggest naval base, which ever since 1783 has been in Crimea, which (Crimea) the Soviet dictator had transferred to Ukraine in 1954 while still continuing Crimea as the Soviet Union’s biggest naval base. Obama, already by no later than June 2013, was planning to grab that naval base and turn it into yet another U.S. naval base.

However, in order to get that coup-installed new regime to last as being a ‘democracy’, Obama needed to be sure that Crimea, which had voted 75% for Yanukovych, and that Donbass, which had voted more than 90% for Yanukovych, be ethnically cleansed of those especially favorable-toward-Russia voters.

So, promptly as soon as the Obama-installed government received the reins of power in Ukraine, Ukraine’s top generals were replaced by rabidly anti-Russian ones, who planned this ethnic-cleansing of those ‘terrorists’, in what they called their “Anti-Terrorist Operation” or “ATO,” in, especially, Donbass. (Donbass is the farthest-east part of Ukraine’s “East” as shown in slide 26 here, and you can see there that ONLY Crimea was even more anti-U.S. than was Ukraine’s “East.”

Donbass was the most pro-Russian part of that “East.” Those were therefore the two regions where Obama especially needed the ethnic cleansing, the “ATO.”) But it also was done in Odessa, and in other Ukrainian cities that had voted heavily for Yanukovych. This would be the ‘democratic’ way to produce a permanently nazi-controlled Ukraine.

The Obama Administration was demanding that Ukraine quickly conquer Donbass; and, since the only air power over that region was Ukraine’s Air Force, Ukraine relentlessly bombed Donbass. One of their bombers got shot down, but that was only a minor loss for the U.S.-installed regime. Overall, the bombings caused massive devastation in Donbass.

Nonetheless, the U.S. Government’s hopes for a military conquest of Donbass were not fulfilled; and this got us to the current situation.

When, on 15 February 2022, the U.S. Government closed its Embassy in Kiev and relocated it to Lviv (which is the Ukrainian city that was the most ardently pro-Hitler during WW II), it scrubbed from its computers, and from the Web, its correspondences concerning the secret joint U.S.-Ukrainian bioweapons labs that have been built in Ukraine since the Obama coup. (Fortunately, at that link, one can find archived versions of those destroyed documents.) The U.S. Government likewise had established secret Pentagon bioweapons labs in Georgia.

The U.S. Government not only allows Ukraine to firebomb Donbass, but America’s think tanks that have discussed those firebombings have said the Ukrainian Government needs to do more of it.

Ukraine’s nazis also target school buses, so as to kill children, in parts of Ukraine that had voted heavily for Yanukovych.

Furthermore, in the more rightwing parts of Ukraine, nazis are invited into classrooms in order to spread anti-Russia hate and provide literature encouraging the students to join their movement.

This was the situation before Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

*

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

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.

Featured image: Members of the Azov Battalion and other far-right groups march through Kyiv during Defenders of Ukraine Day, October 14, 2018. Photo from Leave the West Behind.

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Canadians calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine have lost the plot. Unless their real aim is nuclear war.

Recently, former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander, New Brunswick education minister Dominic Cardy and former Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier have raised the idea of creating a “no-fly zone” (NFZ) over Ukraine. “We’re calling on all governments of the world to support creating a no fly zone over Ukraine”, declared Michael Shwec, president of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, at a rally in Montréal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US Congressman Adam Kinzinger have also called for NATO to adopt a NFZ.

A NFZ over Ukraine means war with Russia. It would force the US or NATO to shoot down Russian planes.

A war between Russia and NATO would be horrendous. Both the US and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons. Highlighting the dangers, Paul Street wrote on Counterpunch that “any elected official calling for a No-Fly Zone over Ukraine should be forced to rescind that call or resign for advocating a policy that could lead to the end of human civilization.”

Fortunately, Canada’s defence minister Anita Anand and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki have rejected the idea of an NFZ.

“It would essentially mean the US military would be shooting down planes, Russian planes,” said Psaki. “That is definitely escalatory, that would potentially put us in a place where we are in a military conflict with Russia. That is not something the president wants to do.”

Even when the target is not a nuclear power, Canadian-backed NFZs have created death, destruction and escalation.

After killing thousands of Iraqis in 1991 the US, UK, France and Canada imposed a NFZ over Northern and Southern Iraq. Over the next 12 years US and British warplanes regularly bombed Iraqi military and civilian installations to enforce the NFZs.

On different occasions Canada sent naval vessels and air-to-air refueling aircraft to assist US airstrikes. Canadian air crew on exchange with their US counterparts also helped patrol the NFZs.

After a September 1996 US strike to further destroy Iraq’s “air-defence network” Prime Minister Jean Chretien said the action was “necessary to avert a larger human tragedy in northern Iraq.” Five years later Chretien responded to another bombing by stating, “if the Iraqis are breaking the agreement or what is the zone of no-flying, and they don’t respect that, the Americans and the British have the duty to make sure it is respected.”

12-years after enforcing the NFZs the US/UK launched a full-scale invasion of Iraq. Hundreds of thousands were killed.

In March 2011 Washington, Paris and some other NATO countries convinced the United Nations Security Council to endorse a plan to implement a NFZ over Libya (China, Germany, Russia, Brazil and Turkey abstained on the vote).Begun under the pretext of saving civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s terror, the real aim was regime change. The UN “no-fly zone” immediately became a license to bomb Libyan tanks, government installations and other targets in coordination with rebel attacks. With a Canadian general leading the mission, NATO also bombed Gaddafi’s compound and the houses of people close to him. The military alliance defined “effective protection” of civilians as per the UN resolution, noted Professor of North African and Middle Eastern history Hugh Roberts, as “requiring the elimination of the threat, which was Gaddafi himself for as long as he was in power (subsequently revised to ‘for as long as he is in Libya’ before finally becoming ‘for as long as he is alive’).” Thousands, probably tens of thousands, died directly or indirectly from that conflict. Libya has yet to recover and the conflict spilled south into the Sahel region of Africa.

While they may sound benign, NFZs have generally elicited violence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a terrible violation of international law that is likely to have deleterious consequences for years to come. But, escalating the conflict through a no-fly zone will only make it worse. It could lead to a cataclysmic nuclear war.

*

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

Featured image is from Yves Engler

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

It is simply astonishing how many western journalists, including normally cautious BBC reporters, are shamelessly fawning over young women building Molotov cocktails on the streets of Ukrainian cities like Kyiv.

It’s suddenly sexy to make improvised explosives – at least, if the media consider you white, European and “civilised“.

That might surprise other, more established resistance movements, especially in the Middle East. They have invariably found themselves tarred as terrorists for doing much the same.

Western journalists’ difficulty containing their identification with, and support for, Ukraine’s civilian “resistance” must be maddening to Palestinians in tiny Gaza, for example, who have been locked into a metal cage by an Israeli military occupier for decades.

Palestinians in Gaza make their own Molotov cocktails. But because they can’t get close to the Israeli army, they have to pack them intoballoons that drift over the steel barrier surrounding Gaza and into Israel, sometimes setting fire to fields.

#Kyiv – our report on the city fighting to save itself, with Molotov cocktails and improvised barricades, where lawyers are now manning look-out posts. #RussiaInvasion With @Goktay @wburema @N_sosnytska @TwittPirojok pic.twitter.com/lc1viGKUht

— Orla Guerin (@OrlaGuerin) March 2, 2022

No one from the BBC has celebrated these “incendiary balloons” as a small act of resistance. They are reflexively blamed on Gaza’s governing group Hamas, the political wing of which was recently designated a terror organisation by the British government.

Double standards

Palestinians in Gaza have also suffered a trade blockade by Israel for the past 15 years, one designed to put them on a “starvation diet”. Protesters, including women, children and people in wheelchairs, have regularly turned out to throw a stone in the direction of distant Israeli snipers, hidden behind fortifications, as a symbolic way to demand their freedom. These protesters have often been shot by the Israeli army in response.

The western media offer occasional anguish at the lives lost or the legs amputated of those targeted by the snipers. But none of them cheerlead this Palestinian “resistance” as they do the Ukrainian one. More usually, the protesters are treated as dupes or provocateurs of Hamas.

Gaza, unlike Ukraine, does not have an army, and its fighters, unlike Ukraine’s, are not being armed by the West.

The Guardian newspaper even censored its cartoonist Steve Bell when he sought to depict one of the victims of Israel’s snipers, a nurse, Razan al-Najjar, who had been trying to help the wounded. The paper implied that the cartoon – of Britain’s then prime minister, Theresa May, welcoming her Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to London, with al-Najjar a sacrificial victim behind them in the fireplace – was antisemitic.

Assuming the media has in the past been reluctant to encourage ordinary people to confront well-armed soldiers – so as to avoid civilian casualties – then why has that policy suddenly been ditched in Ukraine?

The double standards are glaring and everywhere. It is impossible to claim that the journalists doing this are ignorant of reporting conventions elsewhere. They are mostly veterans of Middle East war zones, well used to covering Gaza, Baghdad, Nablus, Aleppo and Tripoli.

Fuelling the fire

Britain and other European states have chosen to fuel the fires of resistance in Ukraine by sending it weapons that can only lead to greater loss of life, especially of civilians caught in the crossfire. One might have expected the British media to examine the ethical implications of such a policy, and the hypocrisy. But not a bit of it.

In fact, much of the media have not only been acting as lobbyists for more weapons to be sent to the Ukrainian army, they have whipped up support for civilians in the UK to get more involved in the fighting.

That has been the case even after No 10 distanced itself from comments by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, that Britons should be encouraged to volunteer for Ukraine’s so-called “international legions”, supposedly to defend Europe.

Her position was in conflict with usual government practice, which has treated those heading off to fight in war zones in the Middle East as terrorists. Shamima Begum, who went to Syria aged 15, has been stripped of her British citizenship and denied the right to return for doing what Truss has proposed in Ukraine.

Nonetheless, that did not dissuade the BBC from travelling to Essex to meet “Wozza“, a supplier of surplus British army kit he has been selling cheaply to Ukrainians in Britain so they can head off to the battlefront. Wozza was shown tearing off Union Jack insignia from uniforms so Ukrainian militiamen could use them.

Compare that with the treatment of an entirely peaceful form of resistance by westerners in solidarity with the Palestinians, the international Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) movement. It has been treated as barely better than terrorism, with bans on support for BDS across Europe and the US.

Compromised ‘impartiality’

It is hard to remember in all the media agitation over Ukraine that this sympathetic coverage flies in the face of its reporting conventions. It is inconceivable, of course, that Britain would ever send arms to help, for example, Gaza liberate itself.

For that reason, the media will never have the opportunity to exercise their vocal chords in outrage at such a development.

In fact, the western media more typically echo western government opposition to any support for Gaza, even construction materials like cement to rebuild the enclave after one of Israel’s intermittent wrecking sprees. That is because reporters treat uncritically Israeli claims that humanitarian aid will be repurposed by Hamas and bolster “terrorism”.

Back in 2010, for example, a BBC Panorama programme failed to mention that an Israeli naval attack on a humanitarian aid convoy to besieged Gaza was conducted illegally in international waters. Nine activists trying to deliver aid items like medicine to Gaza aboard the Mavi Marmara ship were killed by Israeli commandoes, but the interviews with these masked men were largely uncritical. There was very little sympathy from the BBC for that act of resistance against a brutal occupier.

A year earlier, the BBC broke with tradition and refused to broadcast a long-established aid appeal because on this occasion it was to provide food and shelter to Gaza, following an Israeli assault that destroyed swaths of the enclave. The BBC justified the decision on the grounds that it would compromise its “impartiality” – something it seems entirely unconcerned about in Ukraine.

The BBC had not responded to questions about these inconsistencies by the time of publication.

Fog of war

The battlefield is well known for becoming quickly enveloped in the fog of war. That is one reason why inexperienced journalists are cautioned by their editors to wait for evidence and to be alert to propaganda. In practice, however, one can assess where the media’s sympathies lie – concealed behind flimsy claims of objectivity – by noting when and for whose benefit these caution rules are abandoned, and which side’s narratives are accepted quickly and uncritically.

In the Middle East, it is clear that US, European and Israeli claims are all too readily amplified, even when their veracity is in doubt.

Such media-fuelled lies have been manifold. That Israel urged the Palestinians it expelled in 1948 to return home. That Saddam Hussein’s troops ripped babies from incubators in Kuwait, and that the Iraqi leader colluded with his arch-enemy, al-Qaeda, in the 9/11 attacks. That Muammar Gadaffi’s soldiers in Libya took Viagra to rape civilians in Benghazi. That Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan.

These deceptions and fabrications grabbed headlines when they were useful as propaganda, only to be quietly withdrawn much later on.

In the case of Ukraine, a similar pattern appears to be emerging. There were widespread, inciteful and entirely fictitious reports in the western media of Russian troops butchering a contingent of 13 Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island, in the Black Sea. A fake audio tape was released of the Ukrainians supposedly cursing the Russian invaders. Ukraine’s government promised each of them a Hero of Ukraine award.

But in fact, it was Russian media reports that were true. There were 82 Ukrainian soldiers and they had surrendered. All were alive and well. In another example, a clip from a video game was widely promoted as a heroic lone Ukrainian fighter pilot – dubbed the Ghost of Kyiv – shooting down Russian planes and helicopters.

Misinformation has been shared even more aggressively on western social media accounts, and most of it is designed to evoke sympathy for Ukraine and hostility to Russia.

Softening-up operation

But what we are seeing is more than just an appetite in the media for evidence-free stories and falsehoods so long as they are directed against Russia. And it is about more than the media’s sympathy for Ukrainian “resistance” denied other groups battling their oppressors, when those oppressors are the West and its allies.

The media is chock full of commentators far more rabidly tribal than even western governments and military generals. The media chorus for “more war” seems to be serving as an ideological softening-up operation, clearing the path for governments as they prepare for more extreme propaganda and undemocratic measures.

Along with many others, Mail on Sunday commentator Dan Hodges has beencalling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine that even Boris Johnson has rejected for very obvious reasons. It would lead Europe into a direct confrontation with the Russian airforce and risk confrontation with a nuclear power.

Nonetheless, Hodges has described any rejection of this idea as “an act of appeasement no different to our appeasement of Hitler in 1938”. Russia’s invasion came after nearly a decade of goading by the US using Nato as cover to forge ever tighter military relations with its neighbour.

Rightly or wrongly, Moscow interpreted Nato’s behaviour as an aggressive move by the US and its allies into its “sphere of influence”. The idea that no concession could, and can, be made to Russia – that the only “moral choice”, as Hodges calls it, is risking a potential nuclear war – should be understood as the belligerent provocation it clearly is.

NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, tweeted out what he saw as a “risk calculation” and “moral dilemma”: should the West bomb a convoy of Russian tanks on their way towards Kyiv? Apparently concerned by current inaction, he asked: “Does the West watch in silence as it rolls?”

Utter hypocrisy

Condeleeza Rice, an architect of the criminal invasion of Iraq, has not been challenged by the media over her utter hypocrisy in agreeing that “When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.” If that is the case – and international law says it is – then Rice herself should be on trial at the Hague.

Russia's intervention in Ukraine has gotten much more coverage, and condemnation, in just 24 hours than the US-Saudi war on Yemen has gotten since it started nearly 7 years ago

377,000 Yemenis have died. US-backed Saudi bombing now is the worst since 2018 https://t.co/LKyeW0LsNB

— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 25, 2022

Or what about the media’s horror this week at the shelling of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, where “dozens” were reported killed? Compare that to the media’s breathless excitement over the “Shock and Awe” bombing campaign that likely killed thousands in the opening hours of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

What about the media’s mostly complicit silence over many years of Saudi bombing – using British planes and bombs – of civilians in Yemen, leading to a barely imaginable humanitarian catastrophe there? Those in Yemen who resist the Saudi horror show are not heroes to our media, they are simply dismissed as puppets of Iran?

Veteran BBC journalist Jeremy Vine, meanwhile, expressed the view that conscripted Russian soldiers “deserve to die” when they put on a Russian army uniform. “That’s life,” he told a shocked caller to his show.

Did Vine think British and US troops – professional soldiers, unlike Russia’s conscripts – also deserved to die when their armies illegally invaded Iraq? And if not, why not?

The racist undertones and overtones of much western coverage – with commentators and interviewees regularly stressing how Ukrainian refugees are “European”, “civilised”, “blond haired and blue eyed”– is hard to miss.

State propaganda

And in the midst of this rampant, often unhinged western war propaganda, much of its coming from the British state broadcaster, Europe has banned Russia’s state broadcaster RT from the airwaves, while Silicon Valley scrubs its presence from the internet.

There is no doubt that RT generally promotes an editorial line largely sympathetic to Moscow’s foreign policy goals – just as the BBC can invariably be relied on to promote an editorial line largely sympathetic to Britain’s foreign policy goals.

The problem for western audiences is not their exposure to Russian state propaganda. It is their constant exposure to relentless western state propaganda.

If we seek peace – and there are few indications of that at the moment – then we need the western media held to account for its mindless jingoism, its exaggerations, its credulity, its double standards, and its deceptions. But who is going to act as a watchdog on the supposed watchdog of the Fourth Estate?

Right now, we need voices from Russia to understand what Putin thinks and wants, not what the BBC’s “chief international correspondents” think he wants. We need information sources ready to quickly challenge both western and Russian “fake news”.

And most of all we need to stop with our racist view of the world, in which we are always the Good Guys and they are always the Bad Guys, and in which our suffering matters and the suffering of others doesn’t.

*

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

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

Featured image is by MEE

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The foreign intelligence service of Russia (SVR RF) warned on 4 March that the US and NATO countries are sending ISIS fighters from Syria to Ukraine.

The ISIS members, who are reportedly headed to Ukraine, underwent special training at the US army’s Al-Tanf military base in Syria.

The SVR also stated that similar extremist groups are being recruited throughout West Asia and North Africa. The militants will allegedly enter Ukraine through Poland.

The SVR statement detailed the history of the secret operation they uncovered, saying in a statement: “At the end of 2021, the Americans released from prisons … several dozen Daesh terrorists, including citizens of Russia and CIS countries. These individuals were sent to the US-controlled Al-Tanf base, where they have undergone special training in subversive and terrorist warfare methods with a focus on the Donbass region.”

The US claims that the illegal presence of their troops in northeast Syria is to protect the country’s vast oilfields from falling under the control of ISIS.

Neither Moscow nor Damascus believe this official explanation, with the latter accusing the US of using it as an excuse to steal Syrian oil.

However, ISIS fighters are not the only foreign militants to be recruited to join the fight against Russia in Ukraine.

According to Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov, private military contractors have poured into Ukraine from around the world.

“US military intelligence has launched a large scale propaganda campaign to recruit PMC [private military company] contractors to be sent to Ukraine. First of all, employees of the American PMCs, Academi, Cubic, and Dyn Corporation are being recruited. […] Only last week, about 200 mercenaries from Croatia arrived through Poland, and joined one of the nationalist battalions in the southeast of Ukraine,” Konashenkov said.

Both Iraq and Syria have accused the US of supporting and transferring ISIS fighters within the region.

Earlier this year, The Cradle reported that US forces transferred dozens of ISIS detainees, including high-ranking commanders, to Deir Ezzor governorate, which is close to the Iraqi border. This was reportedly an attempt to “revive ISIS” for the purposes of destabilizing a region that had recently been liberated by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) with the help of Russian troops.

In August last year, similar reports surfaced after a high-ranking officer from Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) reported that their thermal cameras detected US military helicopters transferring ISIS fighters to different locations around the country.

Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine on 24 February after responding to the call for assistance by the newly-recognized republics of Dontesk and Luhansk.

Despite recognition of their independence by Russia, Ukrainian armed forces continued to shell civilian targets and to breach the borders of the two republics, prompting the leaders of the republics to formally ask Russia for military assistance.

*

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

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

April, 2004: In the attack on Fallujah, which ended after 3 weeks in defeat of the “coalition”:

“Forces bombed the power plant at the beginning of the assault; …The town was placed under siege; the ban on bringing in food, medicine, and other basic items was broken only when Iraqis en masse challenged the roadblocks. … After initial instances in which people were prevented from leaving, U.S. forces began allowing everyone to leave except for what they called ‘military age males,’ men usually between 15 and 60. Keeping noncombatants from leaving a place under bombardment is a violation of the laws of war.

“The main hospital in Fallujah is across the Euphrates from the bulk of the town. Right at the beginning, the Americans shut down the main bridge, cutting off the hospital from the town. … This hospital closing (not the only such that I documented in Iraq) also violates the Geneva Convention.

“In addition to the artillery and the warplanes dropping 500, 1000, and 2000-pound bombs, and the murderous AC-130 Spectre gunships that can demolish a whole city block in less than a minute, the Marines had snipers criss-crossing the whole town. For weeks, Fallujah was a series of sometimes mutually inaccessible pockets, divided by the no-man’s-lands of sniper fire paths. Snipers fired indiscriminately, usually at whatever moved. Of 20 people I saw come into the clinic … only five were ‘military-age males.’ I saw old women, old men, a child of 10 shot through the head…

“One thing that snipers were very discriminating about every single ambulance I saw had bullet holes in it. Two I inspected bore clear evidence of specific, deliberate sniping. Friends of mine who went out to gather in wounded people were shot at. When we first reported this fact, we came in for near-universal execration. Many just refused to believe it. Some asked me how I knew that it wasn’t the mujahedin. Interesting question. Had, say, Brownsville, Texas, been encircled by the Vietnamese and bombarded … and Brownsville ambulances been shot up, the question of whether the residents were shooting at their own ambulances, I somehow guess, would not have come up. Later, our reports were confirmed by the Iraqi Ministry of Health and even by the U.S. military.

“The best estimates are that roughly 900-1000 people were killed directly, blown up, burnt, or shot. Of them, my guess, based on news reports and personal observation, is that 2/3 to 3/4 were noncombatants.“

— “Fallujah and the Reality of War,” –Rahul Mahajan, CounterPunch, Nov. 6, 2004

Act II

“A hospital has been razed to the ground in one of the heaviest U.S. air raids in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Witnesses said only the facade remained of the small Nazzal Emergency Hospital in the center of the city. … A nearby medical supplies storeroom and dozens of houses were damaged as US forces continued preparing the ground for an expected major assault.“

— “U.S. strikes raze Fallujah hospital,” BBC, Saturday, Nov. 6, 2004

“In a series of actions over the weekend, the United States military and Iraqi government destroyed a civilian hospital in a massive air raid, captured the main hospital, and prohibited the use of ambulances in the besieged city of Fallujah.“

— “Fallujah: U.S. Declares War on Hospitals, Ambulances,” by Brian Dominick, Antiwar.com, Nov. 10, 2004

“NEAR Fallujah, Iraq Nov. 12, 2004 — Hundreds of men trying to flee the assault on Fallujah have been turned back by U.S. troops following orders … ‘We assume they’ll go home and just wait out the storm or find a place that’s safe,’ one 1st Cavalry Division officer, who declined to be named, said Thursday. … Army Col. Michael Formica, who leads forces isolating Fallujah, admits the rule sounds ‘callous.’ But he insists it’s key to the mission’s success.

“Tell them ‘Stay in your houses, stay away from windows and stay off the roof and you’ll live through Fallujah,’ [Army Col. Michael] Formica, of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 2nd Brigade, told his battalion commanders in a radio conference call Wednesday night. …

“Troops have cut off all roads and bridges leading out of the city. Relatively few residents have sought to get through …On Wednesday and Thursday, American troops sunk boats being used to ferry people … across the river. …“

— “GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2004

“Insurgent attacks across Iraq stretched American forces to their limits yesterday when rebels appeared to be in control of at least two cities, and the operation in Fallujah entered its most dangerous phase. … Some of the toughest street fighting encountered so far erupted during the day as rebels reemerged in areas already secured by U.S. Marines in the north of the city. Gunmen resumed positions on the roofs of mosques which had earlier been cleared…

“‘I’m supposed to shoot into the houses before our troops go in,’ said Marine Cpl. Will Porter…“

— “U.S. troops stretched to limit as insurgents fight back,” Robin Gedye, Nov. 13, 2004

“Her shins, shattered by bullets from U.S. soldiers when they fired through the front door of her house, are both covered by casts. Small plastic drainage backs filled with red fluid sit upon her abdomen, where she took shrapnel from another bullet.

“Fatima Harouz, 12 years old, lives in Latifiya, a city just south of Baghdad. Just three days ago soldiers attacked her home. Her mother, standing with us says, ‘They attacked our home and there weren’t even any resistance fighters in our area.’ Her brother was shot and killed, and his wife was wounded as their home was ransacked by soldiers. ‘Before they left, they killed all of our chickens,’ added Fatima’s mother, her eyes a mixture of fear, shock and rage.“

— Slash and Burn, Dahr Jamail, November 17, 2004

“Journalists with the troops speak of a city that is gradually being devastated. Scarcely a single house does not bear some form of weapons scar and many have been rendered uninhabitable.

“Tactics handed down from years of urban warfare in Israel mean that troops sometimes search rows of buildings by punching holes through walls with high velocity bullets rather than moving from house to house through doors, thus reducing the risk of booby traps and increasing the element of surprise.“

— “The Telegraph: U.S. troops stretched to limit as insurgents fight back,” Robin Gedye, Nov. 13, 2004

“The 33-year-old Associated Press photographer [Bilal Hussein] stayed behind to capture insider images during the siege of [Fallujah] … In the hours and days that followed, heavy bombing raids and thunderous artillery shelling turned Hussein’s northern Jolan neighborhood into a zone of rubble and death. The walls of his house were pockmarked by coalition fire.

“‘Destruction was everywhere. I saw people lying dead in the streets, wounded were bleeding and there was no one to come and help them. … U.S. soldiers began to open fire on the houses, so I decided that it was very dangerous to stay in my house,’ he said. … Hussein moved from house to house — dodging gunfire — and reached the river. … ‘I decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river.’

“He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. …’I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim.’“

— “AP Photographer Flees Fallujah,” Katarina Kratovac, Nov. 14, 2004

“No outside aid has reached civilians in the city since the offensive began last Monday, and yesterday U.S. forces kept an Iraqi Red Crescent aid convoy of seven trucks and ambulances waiting at the main hospital near a bridge on the edge of the city. … Reports from within Fallujah yesterday said bodies lay in the streets, homes and mosques were destroyed, and power and telephone lines were down. …

“However, [Marine] Col. [Mike] Shupp said the Red Crescent did not need to deliver aid to civilians in Fallujah and questioned whether there were any. He said: “There is no need to bring supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people. …

“[U.S.-chosen Iraqi Prime Minister] Mr. [Iyad] Allawi also said he doubted reports of civilians in the city. This contradicted accounts from residents inside the city …

“‘Our situation is very hard,’ said one resident [Abu Mustafa] contacted by telephone in the central Hay al Dubat neighborhood. ‘We don’t have food or water. My seven children all have severe diarrhea.’

“‘One of my sons was wounded by shrapnel last night and he’s bleeding, but I can’t do anything to help him.’

“It is thought about half of Fallujah’s 300,000 people fled the fighting in the city. … In April, 2,000 U.S. Marines fought for three weeks and failed to take Fallujah. This time, six times that number were sent … Major General Richard Natonski of the U.S. Marine Corps: ‘We had the green light this time and we went all the way.’ … [M]ore than 20 different types of planes were used in bombing swarms … as U.S. soldiers began clearing weapons and fighters from every one of Fallujah’s 50,000 buildings, bands of insurgents were still roaming freely in some neighborhoods.“

— “Bodies litter streets in rubble of Fallujah,” Calum MacDonald, Nov. 15, 2004

“[T]he command in Baghdad thought there were at least 2,000 insurgents, and perhaps as many as 5,000. But the coalition forces have failed to find large clusters and now think that there might have been less than 1,000, military sources said yesterday. The senior defense official said some generals now think there might have been 600 or fewer.“

— “U.S. suspects many insurgents have fled,” Rowan Scarborough, Nov. 12, 2004

“Fallujah has been under relentless aerial and artillery bombardment and without electricity since Monday. Reports have said residents are running low on food. An officer here said it was likely that those who stay in their homes would live through the assault, but agreed the city was a risky and frightening place to live.

“U.S. military says it does all it can to prevent bombing buildings with civilians inside them.“

— “GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2004

“You read about precision strikes, and it’s true that America’s GPS-guided bombs are very accurate when they’re not malfunctioning, the 80 or 85 percent of the time that they work, their targeting radius is 10 meters, i.e., they hit within 10 meters of the target. Even the smallest of them, however, the 500-pound bomb, has a blast radius of 400 meters.“

— “Fallujah and the Reality of War,” –Rahul Mahajan, CounterPunch, Nov. 6, 2004

“Once the battle ends, military officials say all surviving military-age men can expect to be tested for explosive residue, catalogued, checked against insurgent databases and interrogated about ties with the guerrillas. U.S. and Iraqi troops are in the midst of searching homes, and plan to check every house in the city for weapons.“

— “GIs Force Men Fleeing Fallujah to Return,” Associated Press, Nov. 16, 2004

“[A]ll the excuses Mr. Bush gave for attacking the people of Iraq were either wrong or lies. … We’ll only mention in passing that the domestic price for ‘our’ sarkar attacking Iraq, a country with no WMD, no al-Qaeda links, and no connections to 9/11 so far has been $87 billion, a good chunk of our civil liberties — and 1,239 or so American soldier’s lives, not to mention a minimum of approximately 8,000 more wounded and/or maimed.“

— L. Reichard White, “The Only Way to Make Your Vote Count,” Oct. 31, 2004

So, are Putin and the Russians as good at invading countries and murdering men, women and children as these guys?

*

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

L. Reichard White [send him mail] taught physics, designed and built a house, ran for Nevada State Senate, served two terms on the Libertarian National Committee, managed a theater company, etc. For the next few decades, he supported his writing habit by beating casinos at their own games. His hobby, though, is explaining things he wishes someone had explained to him. You can find a few of his other explanations listed here.

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.

***

If you think gas (and food) are expensive now, give it a week.

That’s all it may take for the thing styled the “media” to whip up enough hysteria about the Danger of Putin to cause something far worse and even more idiotic than the pouring out of Russian Vodka into the sink.

That thing being the turning off of the Russian spigot.  

America currently imports something on the order of 600,000 barrels of Russian oil every day – an amount about 200,000 barrels shy of the number of barrels America would not have to import from Russia, had the Biden Thing not cancelled the Keystone Pipeline, among other things.

The deficit of those 200,000-something barrels per day – along with the other things of-a-piece done by the Biden Thing to reduce the supply of oil available to Americans – has helped to almost double the price of a gallon of gas over the course of a little more than one year since Orange Man Bad. And while he may, indeed, have been very bad – as by declaring (and continuing) an “emergency” when there wasn’t one and by turgidly Warp Speeding dangerous drugs not merely into existence but facilitated the forcing of them into the bodies of tens of millions of Americans – he was very good on the energy front. 

It was only about a year ago that America didn’t need oil from Russia.  It was only about a year ago that America was on the verge of being a net exporter of oil – perhaps to places like Russia.

In that case, America could have turned off the spigot – without Americans having to pay three times as much for a gallon of gas as they just may, soon, than they were paying when Orange Man Bad.

Americans ought to consider what that will mean – and whether it’s a cost they’re wanting (are able) to bear.

At $6 per gallon, it will cost the average American just shy of $100 to fill up the 15 gallon tank of the average compact-sized economy car; something in the Toyota Corolla class of car.

Assuming a once-a-week fill-up, the average American will be paying about $400 per month to get to work, in order to pay for that. Assuming it stays at just $6 per gallon – an unsafe assumption, if the Biden Thing stops importing Russian oil to punish the Russians by punishing Americans – the average American will be spending close to $5,000 annually on gas. For the same gas that he spent $30 to buy a tankful of when Orange Man Bad – or $120 per month ($1,440 per year).

His work is not likely going to give him a raise to compensate him for the difference.

Nor for the difference in what it costs him to eat.

Americans may not understand where their food comes from – nor how it is produced – much as they do not understand why the Russians are unsettled about this business of having a Western military alliance ensconced right up against the border of their country. But here’s the spoiler.

It requires oil.

A great deal of it, to create the fertilizer upon which crops depend. Upon which livestock depends, to grow into hamburger and pork chops. Without oil – or rather, without affordable oil – it not  only gets more expensive to grow the crops, it gets harder to grow them. Modern industrial agriculture “guzzles” a great deal more gas – in the form of oil – than any V8-powered SUV.

Than all of them, combined.

Without the oil, you get the double whammy. Less food that costs more. And more to get that food to you. Trucks using oil, you see.

As well as for you to get to it.

Think about that a little bit.

How about $10 for a pound of ground round? How about no ground round, at all? It is a delicious irony – for those who appreciate it – that as the American regime fulminates against the Russian regime, America looks more and more like the Soviet regime.

Well, American supermarkets begin to look more and more like Soviet-era supermarkets, full of empty shelves and high prices. A kopek for your thoughts, comrade? American roads, too.

Or rather, soon will.

Lots of open roads – for the Party nomenklatura, people like the Biden Thing. They don’t have to worry about the cost of filling up, because they don’t have to pay it. The nomenklatura – whether then or there or here and now – never has to worry about such things. What they do worry about is a comfortable, well-fed population of citizens who don’t need them and for that reason can ignore them.

This is harder to do when your stomach – and your tank – are empty.

Or when you can’t afford to fill either.

*

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

Featured image is from Libertarian Car Talk

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

An international cat federation has banned all Russian-owned and bred cats from competing in international competitions, in a move that’s sure to stop Putin’s attack on Ukraine.

No, this isn’t a Babylon Bee story.

The Fédération Internationale Féline (FIFe) issued a statement saying it “cannot just witness these atrocities and do nothing.”

The federation has decided that “no cat bred in Russia may be imported and registered in any FIFe pedigree book outside of Russia. … No cat belonging to exhibitors living in Russia may be entered at any FIFe show outside Russia.”

The ban will apply until at least the end of May and will punish popular breeds such as the Russian Blue, Peterbald and the Siberian cat, which can cost up to $4,000 dollars.

The Fédération Internationale Féline, one of the nine members of the World Cat Congress, has banned all Russian born cats from their cat registry. https://t.co/XxudWQ8RkU pic.twitter.com/mSHmokJTBt

— Daniel Dumbrill (@DanielDumbrill) March 3, 2022

The story attracted condemnation from Chinese users of Weibo, with one asserting, “Animals should not have nationalities.”

As any rational person will surely understand, this is virtually guaranteed to send battle tanks scurrying back to Moscow

As we explain in the video below, the outpouring of utterly moronic moral exhibitionism in the aftermath of the attack on Ukraine is now manifesting itself in a very dangerous form of vitriolic Russophobia.

It’s also a crusade being taken up by leading politicians.

In the United States, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) wants to expel all Russian students from universities, while in the UK Conservative MP called for all Russian citizens to be deported.

*

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

Featured image is from LoveToKnow

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.

***

By the beginning of 1942 Adolf Hitler had led Nazi Germany into a desperate situation, from which there was probably no escape. At the time, this was not easily apparent to the Wehrmacht or the German population, nor indeed to the Third Reich’s enemies, particularly those in the West.

The failure of Nazi Germany’s Army Groups to deliver a lethal blow against Soviet Russia in 1941, meant that the Wehrmacht had missed its chance to win the war; and well prior to the defeat at Stalingrad, which confirmed to the world that the Germans were unlikely to emerge victorious. As 1942 began, the sands of time were moving rapidly against the Nazis and their Axis allies, principally Benito Mussolini’s Italy and Ion Antonescu’s Romania, both of whom were dependent on German success to ensure their own survival.

The Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, with its greater industrial power and much larger population than the Reich, could only strengthen as the conflict continued and the Germans could only weaken. However, the USSR itself would never completely recover from the devastation inflicted by the Wehrmacht on their state, at a minimum 25 million Soviet deaths suffered and tens of thousands of towns destroyed (1); along with the effort simply expended in the struggle against the German war machine.

English historian Chris Bellamy wrote that the Nazi-Soviet War had ongoing implications, not merely for Germany but for Russia too, and was a leading factor which “ultimately broke the Soviet Union” in 1991. The other central cause behind the USSR’s disintegration was “the succeeding struggle against the West – which followed without any respite”. (2)

Bellamy recognised that Soviet Russia “was a long-term casualty of the Great Patriotic War [1941–45]” (3). Had Hitler known this as he raised a pistol to his head in the Führerbunker, and furthermore that the Soviet Union would collapse without a shot fired, he presumably would have gone to his grave in a more serene state of mind. Russian military journals conceded that the Soviet victory over the Germans was achieved at too great a cost. (4)

During the Nazi-Soviet War, the turning of the tide took far longer than Stalin and his regime had expected. From January 1942 until the high summer, the Soviet hierarchy continued to claim complete triumph was achievable over the Wehrmacht that year (5). The Germans proved to be made of sterner material than Napoleon’s army, in their ill-fated 1812 attack on Russia.

The lingering effects of Stalin’s purges of the Red Army high command (1937-41) should not be underestimated. After the war, Marshal Georgy Zhukov said the purges had inflicted “enormous damage” on “the top echelons of the army command” (6). As Zhukov knew, the repercussions were felt strongly in the war with Nazi Germany. The Red Army had a shortage of top class commanders. It was further deprived of the initiative to make independent decisions when needed, especially early in the conflict against Nazism when Stalin was personally caught by surprise with the German invasion.

Moreover, British scholar Evan Mawdsley observed, “the purges made foreign governments – potential allies as well as potential enemies – assume that the Red Army was a broken shell” (7). The British and French presumed it to be so. As did Hitler’s Germany who had taken advantage of the circumstances.

Red Army intelligence agent Leopold Trepper wrote in his memoirs,

“The Germans exploited this situation to the full, instructing their Intelligence Services to convey to Paris and London the alarming facts – and they really were alarming – on the state of the Red Army after the purges”. (8)

It was the case also that the purges were a factor which influenced Hitler to attack the USSR, on 22 June 1941, otherwise he may have held off until 1942 or later. Proof of the damage imparted on the Soviet armed forces was evident in the Winter War with Finland (30 November 1939–13 March 1940), which the Soviet authorities had predicted would last for between 10 to 12 days. (9)

The Nazis were subsequently confident that a war against Soviet Russia would be a routine one. This confidence grew after the German divisions brushed aside French and British forces, during the summer 1940 Battle of France.

With 1942 continuing from its opening weeks the German high command, on paper at least, still had cause for hope. Most of eastern Europe and European Russia was under Nazi occupation, and there was no immediate threat of a large-scale Anglo-American landing in the West. Though by some distance the world’s strongest country, America and its war industry was shifting slowly into gear after the Great Depression, and would not reach its potential until late in the global conflict.

Much to Stalin’s dismay and frustration, it was the Japanese, and not the Germans, who would then endure the brunt of US industrial might. Stalin and his entourage’s growing suspicions, that the Anglo-American powers hoped the Nazi-Soviet War would last for years, were based on well-founded concerns.

This desire had already been expressed in part by Harry S. Truman, future US president, hours after the Wehrmacht had invaded the Soviet Union.

Truman, then a US Senator, said he wanted to see the Soviets and Germans “kill as many as possible” between themselves, an attitude which the New York Times later called “a firm policy” (10). The Times had previously published Truman’s remarks on 24 June 1941, and as a result his views would most likely not have escaped the Soviets’ attention.

The area of landmass conquered by Nazi Germany increased substantially again through 1942. Expanding to its peak, the Third Reich’s territory was equal to the size of terrain conquered by the legendary Macedonian king, Alexander the Great, in the 4th century BC (11). Alexander the Great had ruled over a land area from the eastern Mediterranean all of the way to north-western India. Hitler’s dominion stretched across the entirety of continental Europe, much of north Africa and had breached into the fringes of western Asia.

As early as 18 October 1941, the Germans had taken captive at least 3 million Soviet troops. Bellamy noted,

“The total of 3 million was almost 10 times the figure of 378,000 admitted by Stalin on 6 November [1941], on the eve of the twenty-fourth anniversary of the 1917 October revolution. By the end of 1941, 3.8 million Soviet servicemen and women had surrendered or been captured”. (12)

Stalin was not assuming responsibility for the fall of Kiev, in the middle of September 1941, which had resulted in 665,000 Soviet soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans, an unequalled number in the military annals. By refusing to allow the Ukrainian capital to be abandoned for strategic reasons, Stalin had overruled the pleas of commanders like Zhukov and Semyon Budyonny. The latter was a distinguished cavalryman, but this did not prevent Budyonny from being scapegoated for the Kiev calamity and sacked on 13 September 1941.

Geoffrey Roberts, a specialist in Soviet history, wrote that

“Stalin fully shared these misconceptions and, as Supreme Commander, bore ultimate responsibility for their disastrous practical consequences. As A.J.P. Taylor noted [a British historian], Stalin’s dedication to the doctrine of the offensive ‘brought upon the Soviet armies greater catastrophes than any other armies have ever known’. There were many occasions, too, when it was Stalin’s personal insistence on the policy of no retreat, and of counterattack at all costs, that resulted in heavy Soviet losses”. (13)

Among Hitler’s goals for the 1942 offensive was to deal a devastating blow on the Red Army, by destroying its divisions in the south-western USSR; and thereafter seizing control of the Soviet oil fields of the Caucasus, primarily at Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The fossil fuel sources there supplied the Soviet Union with almost 90% of its fuel, a remarkable total. Roberts outlined,

“Unlike in 1941, Hitler did not necessarily expect to win the war in the east in 1942” (14). He did expect to place the Reich in an insurmountable position, self-sufficient by enjoying mastery over rich oil deposits and, in doing so, depriving Soviet Russia of those reserves.

Should they fail Hitler acknowledged, “If we do not capture the oil supplies of the Caucasus by the autumn, then I shall have to face the fact that we cannot win this war” (15). German plans for the 1942 summer campaign expounded that the Russian infiltrations, behind Wehrmacht lines, were to be wiped out once and for all. The surrounded German garrisons in the Russian towns of Demyansk and Kholm were to be relieved, and the Soviet pocket at Volkhov, 70 miles east of Leningrad, was earmarked for eradication. (16)

German objectives further stated that the 60 mile Soviet salient near the city of Izyum, in eastern Ukraine, should be cleared of Russian forces; as would the Kerch peninsula in the east of Crimea, while the city of Sevastopol in southern Crimea was to be taken.

The German Army of 1942 was still very powerful, and it remained much stronger than its Soviet counterpart. Between January and June 1942, the Germans would inflict 1.4 million casualties on the Soviet Army, while in those same 6 months the Wehrmacht lost 188,000 men, Mawdsley highlighted (17). The Germans therefore had less than one-seventh (13.4%) of Soviet personnel losses during the first half of 1942.

The German high command had contemplated remaining on the defensive through 1942, so as to build up its strength to something like that of 1941. The primary argument against this once more loomed large, in that the Germans could not afford to let the war drag on indefinitely, and had no alternative but to revert to attack.

The maximum Russian goal in the Winter Campaign was to encircle and annihilate German Army Group Centre, the largest and strongest Wehrmacht force. Were this achieved, the war would have been practically decided in the Russians’ favour in 1942, but it was not to be. By late January 1942 it was clear the operation had failed, largely because of robust counterstrokes launched by the German 9th Army commander, Walter Model, known as Hitler’s “fireman” (18). The less ambitious but realistic Russian aim, supported by Zhukov, of forcing the enemy back to the city of Smolensk, 230 miles west of Moscow, also fell short of being reached.

At the beginning of February 1942, the Eastern front was stabilising, and the threat of a capitulation akin to that suffered by Napoleon had disappeared. The German high command achieved this in part by removing tired commanders when necessary, and replacing them with energetic and skilful officers (19). Perhaps most notably General Model and Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, the new commander of Army Group Centre, who had replaced the disgruntled Fedor von Bock on 19 December 1941. Mawdsley described the 59-year-old von Kluge as “one of Hitler’s most talented and effective leaders”. (20)

In the second week of February 1942, Field Marshal von Kluge issued a positive report about Army Group Centre’s fighting capacity. This account was accurate and warmly received by Hitler and the military staff at the Wolf’s Lair headquarters. The Germans had altogether lost 48,000 men in January 1942, hardly a shattering number (21). In mid-February 1942, Hitler informed his commanders that the “danger of a panic in the 1812 sense” was “eliminated”. (22)

Most senior German officers agreed with Hitler’s wish to instigate another offensive for 1942 but, as the year before, they favoured a major drive through the centre – in order to finally capture Moscow, the heartbeat of Soviet Russia, which had narrowly eluded the invaders at the start of December 1941. The centre of Moscow was just 100 miles from the most advanced German positions (23). If the capital went uncaptured, the Soviet Union would remain in the war beyond 1942. The taking of Stalingrad would not have changed that.

Hitler had recklessly postponed Army Group Centre’s march on Moscow in August 1941, instead dispatching separate panzer formations northward and southward towards Leningrad and Kiev. Undeterred, he intended reverting to this plan for 1942, of holding in the middle and attacking on the flanks; but Hitler accepted (for the time being) that he would have to be less grandiose than in 1941, because his armies were now not as large. The Nazi leader temporarily put to one side capturing Leningrad by storm, so the city would continue to be strangled and bombarded.

In March 1942, after nine months of fighting, the Germans had suffered 1.1 million casualties, a fraction of Soviet losses, but still serious (24). Of the German casualties, by 20 February 1942 about 10% of them (112,627) comprised of frostbite victims (25). This was not surprising in the midst of one of the worst Russian winters ever recorded.

German losses were insufficiently replenished during the winter fighting, with Army Group Centre receiving a modest 9 fresh divisions. Hitler could not restrain himself, however, and he was encouraged by General Erwin Rommel’s victories in North Africa: such as the recapturing in late January 1942 of Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city on the Mediterranean coast.

Before long, Hitler was dreaming not only of advancing through the Caucasus, but of linking up with Rommel’s panzers in North Africa – and then advancing to the oil rich Middle East nations of Iran and Iraq, while another thrust was to be implemented along the Caspian Sea in the direction of Afghanistan and India. (26)

*

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

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

1 Geoffrey Roberts, “Last men standing”, The Irish Examiner, 22 June 1941

2 Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (Pan; Main Market edition, 21 Aug. 2009) p. 6

3 Ibid.

4 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War, 1939-1953 (Yale University Press; 1st Edition, 14 Nov. 2006) p. 10

5 Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 (Hodder Arnold, 23 Feb. 2007) p. 119

6 Andrei Gromyko, Memories: From Stalin to Gorbachev (Arrow Books Limited, 1 Jan. 1989) p. 216

7 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 21

8 Leopold Trepper, The Great Game: Memoirs of a Master Spy (Michael Joseph Ltd; First Edition, 1 May 1977) p. 67

9 Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War, p. 74

10 Alden Whitman, “Harry S. Truman: Decisive President”, New York Times, 27 December 1972

11 Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War, p. 18

12 Ibid., p. 23

13 Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, p. 100

14 Ibid., p. 119

15 Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War (Harper, 17 May 2011) Chapter 10, The Motherland Overwhelms the Fatherland

16 Donald J. Goodspeed, The German Wars (Random House Value Publishing, 3 April 1985) p. 446

17 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 147

18 Goodspeed, The German Wars, p. 407

19 Mawdsley, Thunder in the East, p. 123

20 Ibid., p. 128

21 Ibid., p. 147

22 Ibid., p. 124

23 Ibid., p 151

24 Roberts, Stalin’s Wars, p.118

25 John Toland, Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography (Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 3 Feb. 2007) Part 8, The Fourth Horseman

26 Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries (Collins/Fontana, 1 June 1977) p. 56

Featured image is from history.com

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

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @globalresearch_crg.

***

With tensions between the U.S. and Russia at historic levels and threat of a hot war breaking out in Ukraine, we would do well to remember FDR’s visionary leadership and pursuit of diplomacy

Reuters reported last week that the Ukrainian military was carrying out war games with newly delivered American military hardware in preparation for a conflict that could break out at any time.

For years now, the U.S. media has been demonizing Russia, accusing its leader Vladimir Putin of being an iron-fisted dictator who has interfered in U.S. elections, poisoned opponents, and carried out aggression by illegally annexing Crimea.

With Russia having amassed over 100,000 troops on Ukraine’s border, the U.S. Congress is prepared to pass a “sanctions bill from hell” whose purpose would be to cripple Russia’s economy.

Mississippi Senator, Roger Wicker, the second highest Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, went so far as to suggest in an interview with Fox News that the U.S. should not rule out a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia if it invaded Ukraine.

Source: mississippifreepress.com

Today’s deeply Russophobic political climate provides an opportune moment to look back to an era of promise in the U.S.-Russian relationship—when U.S. leaders were more sober minded and rationale.

Seventy-seven years ago today, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt brokered a deal with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that offers a particular model of diplomatic engagement.

Under the terms of the Yalta agreements, Stalin agreed to enter the war in the Pacific in exchange for the return of Russian territory that had been lost during the Russo-Japanese war.

Stalin further agreed to the division of Germany and to stay out of Greece’s civil war. In return, the U.S. and Great Britain agreed to a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe to avoid the prospect of Germany ever invading Russia again.

Leaders of the Big Three at the negotiating table at the Yalta conference. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Conservatives have compared FDR’s performance at Yalta to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at the Munich conference in September 1938.

In May 2005, then-U.S. president George W. Bush stated in a speech in Latvia that “the Yalta Agreement followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable.”

However, as historian Jacques Pauwels shows in the below account drawn from his book, The Myth of the Good War, Stalin was in fact a pragmatic statesman who made many concessions at Yalta. He agreed to the Allies terms because he legitimately feared a renewed German-Western alliance and replication of the Allied invasion of Russia in 1918-1919 following the Russian civil war.

Image on the right is from amazon.com

After World War II, the Yalta accords broke down when both Russia and the U.S. violated their terms. FDR’s successor, Harry S. Truman was no longer committed to U.S.-Russia cooperation, having gained power following the purging of Henry Wallace, Roosevelt’s Vice-President from 1940-1944, who had wanted to continue the policy of détente.

In a history of the Yalta agreements published in 1970, Diane Shaver-Clemens wrote “we are living with the problems of a world that could not benefit from the experience at Yalta. It is perhaps relevant to ask what the world would have been like if the spirit of Yalta had triumphed.”^[1]

The same question, I think, is relevant today.

Below is an excerpt from Jacques Pauwels’ book, The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War, rev ed. (Toronto: Lorimer Publishers, 2015), dealing with Yalta. Pauwels’ account debunks historical misconceptions and stereotypes that still prevail about Russia today and gives us a model of diplomatic cooperation that hopefully will prevail again.

Yalta, February 1945: Indulging Stalin?

The events of the years 1943 and 1944 in countries such as Italy, Greece, and France had shown all too clearly that it was the liberators who determined how the local fascists were chastised or spared, how democracy was restored, how much input the antifascist resistance movements and the local population in general were permitted in the reconstruction of their own country, and whether political, social, and economic reforms were introduced or not.

In Italy for example, the American and British liberators had sidelined the leftist resistance movement, established a regime (under Marshal Badoglio) that was sarcastically described as “fascism without Mussolini,” and – violating previous inter-allied agreements – had excluded the Soviets from any input into the postwar arrangements for the country.

This unsubtle conduct set a fateful precedent: it implicitly gave Stalin carte blanche to proceed similarly in countries in Eastern Europe that were destined to be liberated by the Red Army. However, this symmetry was far from perfect. First, until the summer of 1944 the Soviets continued to fight almost exclusively in their own country. It was only in the fall of that same year that they liberated neighbouring countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, states which could hardly rival Italy and France.

Soviet parade after liberation from Nazi rule in North Bessarabia in Romania. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Second, a sphere-of-influence formula agreed upon between Stalin and Churchill (during WC’s visit to Moscow in the fall of 1944.) afforded the Western Allies a small but possibly important percentage of input in some countries of Eastern Europe, which the Soviets did not enjoy anywhere in Western Europe. Regarding their prospects for influence in the post-war reorganization of Europe, then, the situation of the Americans and the British did not look bad at all toward the end of 1944.

And yet, there were also reasons for concern. After the failure of Operation Market Garden, the September 1944 attempt by the American and British to cross the Rhine, it had become obvious that the war in Europe was far from over. A considerable part of the continent still awaited liberation, and Nazi Germany itself had yet to be conquered.

In the meantime, it was evident that Poland would be liberated in its entirety by the Soviets, a prospect that alarmed the conservative and strongly anti-Soviet Polish government-in-exile in London. This government, incidentally, did not consist of devoted democrats, as is too often taken for granted, but represented the autocratic Polish regime of the prewar period, a regime that had connived with Hitler himself and that on the occasion of the Munich Pact had followed his example by pocketing a piece of Czechoslovakia.^[2]

Furthermore, by the start of 1945 at the latest it was as good as certain that the prestige of marching victoriously into Berlin would fall to the Red Army, and not to American or British troops. The advance of the British-Americans in the direction of the German capital was first checked in the Netherlands at the time of Operation Market Garden and was strongly impeded again between December 1944 and January 1945 by Field Marshal von Rundstedt’s unexpected counteroffensive in the Ardennes.

The latter episode was destined to enter the American collective consciousness as well as American history books as a gigantic and heroic clash, the Battle of the Bulge, and was celebrated in due course in an eponymous Hollywood production. In reality, however, the confrontation in the Ardennes represented a serious setback for the Americans. Von Rundstedt’s counteroffensive did eventually end in failure, but initially the German pressure was considerable.

Scene from the Battle of the Bulge. [Source: thoughtco.com]

The Americans battled back heroically on many occasions, for example at Bastogne, but there were also cases of panic and confusion, and the danger would not be fully averted before the end of January 1945.^[3] It was therefore decided to call once again on the unloved but useful Soviet partner.

Responding to an urgent American request, the Red Army unleashed a major offensive in Poland on January 12, 1945, one week earlier than originally planned.

Forced to face a new threat in the east, the Wehrmacht had to divert resources from its project in the Ardennes, thus relieving the pressure on the Americans.

But on the Eastern Front the Germans could not stop the Soviet steamroller, which forged ahead so quickly that in a few weeks it reached the banks of the Oder. In early February, the Soviets arrived in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, a town situated less than one hundred kilometres from the German capital.

The Americans had reason to be grateful for the military favour rendered by Moscow, but they were far from happy that in the undeclared inter-Allied race to Berlin the Soviets had thus taken a huge lead over their Western partners, who had not even reached the banks of the Rhine and were still separated from Berlin by more than 500 kilometres.^[4]

Already after the failure of Market garden, it became apparent to the American and British leaders that they would lose the race to Berlin and that the Red Army would eventually control the lion’s share of German territory, so that in keeping with precedents set by the liberators in Italy and elsewhere, the Soviets would be able to impose their will on post-war Germany.

This produced much pessimism, and doomsayers like General MacArthur, who opined in November 1944 that all of Europe would inevitably fall under Soviet hegemony, undoubtedly gained additional credibility at the time of the setback suffered in the Battle of the Bulge.^[5] It was true that if military developments alone would be allowed to determine things, the eventual outcome would be very unfavourable to the Western Allies. However, the result might be different if the Soviets could be talked into agreements which would be binding regardless of military developments.^[6]

Precisely this is what the British and the Americans hoped to achieve in a series of meetings with Soviet representatives in London in the fall of 1944. They proposed to divide Germany into three roughly equal occupation zones regardless of the position of each ally’s army at the end of the hostilities. (A fourth occupation zone would be assigned to the French much later.)

This arrangement was clearly in their own interest, but Stalin accepted the Western proposal. It was a major success for the BritishAmericans, which must have dumbfounded pessimists such as MacArthur. “In brief,” writes the American historian Gabriel Kolko, “the Russians agreed not to run Germany unilaterally despite every indication of an imminent military victory that would permit them to do so.”^[7]

An additional unexpected bonus for the Western Allies turned out to be the fact that the Soviets also agreed that the capital, Berlin, like Germany as a whole, would be divided into three occupation zones, even though it was obvious that the Red Army would take the city and that Berlin would be situated deep in the occupation zone assigned to the USSR.

That a “West Berlin” could later exist in the heart of East Germany was due to the accommodating attitude displayed by Stalin in the fall of 1944 and again the successes of the Red Army and the Yalta Agreements during the winter of 1944-45.

Indeed, the London Agreements regarding the future occupation zones in Germany, and the agreements reached by the Big Three (Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin) at the Yalta Conference between February 4 and 11, 1945, can be properly understood only from the perspective of the conundrum of the Western Allies at the time of the setbacks of their own armed forces and the simultaneous successes of the Red Army in 1944-45.

It has often been said that in the Crimean resort of Yalta the shrewd Stalin managed to dupe his Western colleagues, and above all President Roosevelt, who was already a very sick man at the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, it was the British and Americans who had nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from such a meeting. The reverse applied to the Soviets, who might arguably have been better off without this conference.

Indeed, the Red Army’s spectacular advance deep into the German heartland put more and more trumps into Stalin’s hands. On the eve of the conference General Zhukov stood on the banks of the Oder River, a mere stone’s throw from Berlin.

This is why Washington and London, and not Moscow, insisted on a meeting of the Allied leaders. Precisely because they were so desperate to meet Stalin in order to reach binding agreements, Roosevelt and Churchill also proved willing to accept his precondition for a conference, namely, that it be held in the USSR.

The American and British leaders had to undertake an inconveniently long voyage, allowing the Soviets a kind of “home-game advantage” during the tug-of-war that the conference promised to be. But these were minor imperfections compared to the advantages that a conference might bring and compared to the huge disadvantages certain to be associated with the anticipated occupation of most of Germany by the Red Army. Stalin had not needed or wanted a meeting of the Big Three at this stage of the war.

However, as we will soon see, he had reasons of his own for agreeing to hold such a conference, from which he of course also expected to derive certain advantages for the Soviet side, and he also had good reasons to reveal himself accommodating vis-à-vis his Western partners.^[8]

Second, the agreements which eventually resulted from the Yalta Conference were indeed favourable to the Western Allies. Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Edward Stettinius Jr., who was present at the Crimean resort, later wrote that in this conference “the Soviet Union made more concessions to the [west] than were made to the Soviet Union.”^[9]

And the American historian Carolyn Woods Eisenberg emphasizes that the U.S. delegation left Yalta “in an exultant spirit,” convinced that thanks to the reasonableness of the Soviets not only the Americans but mankind in its entirety had “won the first great victory of the peace.”^[10]

Famous photograph of Big 3 at Yalta—Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin. [Source: wikipedia.org]

With regard to Germany, the London Agreements were officially confirmed in Yalta by the Big Three. As mentioned, the division of Germany into occupation zones was advantageous to the Americans and the British, because already in the fall of 1944 and even more so at the time of the Yalta Conference it appeared likely that the Red Army, which stood in Frankfurt-on-the-Oder in the east, might find itself in Frankfurt-on-the-Main in the West when the hostilities concluded.

Furthermore, the British and Americans were assigned the bigger and richer western part of Germany. It was also agreed in principle on the Crimean Peninsula that after the war Germany would have to make reparation payments, as had been the case after the First World War.

Both Roosevelt and Churchill found it justified and reasonable that half of these payments, then roughly estimated at 20 billion dollars, would go to the Soviet Union, where the Nazi vandals had conducted themselves in a particularly barbarous and destructive manner. (The amount of 10 billion dollars assigned to the USSR has been considered by some to be too high, but in reality it was “very moderate,” as the German historian Wilfried Loth has put it; a few years after the Yalta Conference, in 1947, the total war damage suffered by the Soviet Union was conservatively calculated at no less than 128 billion dollars.)

To Stalin, the issue of reparation payments was crucially important. It is very likely that he revealed himself to be so accommodating toward his Western partners regarding the division of Germany into occupation zones because he craved their cooperation in the matter of reparations.^[11]

Conversely, to obtain the Soviet leader’s ratification of Germany’s division into occupation zones and his acceptance of other arrangements that were advantageous to themselves, the Americans and the British also indulged Stalin in some respects. In return for Stalin’s renewed commitment to eventually declare war on Japan, for example, Roosevelt offered American assent to the Soviet recuperation of the Far Eastern territories that czarist Russia had lost as a result of the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-05.^[12]

Yalta American Delegation in Livadia Palace from left to right: Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Maj. Gen. L. S. Kuter, Admiral E. J. King, General George C. Marshall, Ambassador Averell Harriman, Admiral William Leahy, and President F. D. Roosevelt. Livadia Palace, Crimea, Russia. [Source: wikipedia.org]

No definitive decisions for Germany’s future were arrived at in Yalta, even though particularly the Americans, and to a certain extent also the Soviets, showed some interest at the time in the widely publicized plan of the American secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau.

Morgenthau reportedly proposed to solve the “German problem” by simply dismantling the country’s industry, thereby transforming Germany into a backward, poor, and therefore harmless agrarian state. In reality, this plan amounted to not much more than a rather vague and incoherent series of proposals, far less draconian than its opponents claimed and many Germans still believe.^[13]

What was not properly realized at the time, neither in Washington nor in Moscow, was that not only major moral but also serious practical objections could be raised against the Morgenthau Plan.

For example, the plan could hardly be reconciled with the expectation that Germany was to pay huge reparations; this presupposed a certain measure of wealth, and for such wealth there was no room in Morgenthau’s scenario. “The logical inference of the Morgenthau Plan,” writes the German historian Jörg Fisch categorically, “was that there could be no question of reparations payments.”^[14]

Moreover, as the American historian Carolyn Woods Eisenberg points out, Morgenthau’s plans for a “pastoralization” of Germany were totally “out of step with the thinking of the most important US . . . policy-makers,” who had good reasons for favouring the alternative option, “the economic reconstruction of Germany.”

Certain American politicians feared that the Plan would drive Germany into the arms of anarchy, chaos, and possibly Bolshevism. Businessmen realized that one would not be able to do any profitable business with a poor Germany.

And influential Americans worried about the possibly extremely negative implications of the Morgenthau Plan regarding the fate of Opel, Ford-Werke, and other highly-profitable German branch plants of American corporations.^[15]

It was not a coincidence that precisely the representatives of firms with huge investments in Germany—such as Alfred P. Sloan, the influential chairman of the board of GM, the parent firm of Opel—were most categorically opposed to the Morgenthau Plan. (The Soviet ambassador to the U.S., Andrei Gromyko, was not far off the mark when he remarked that the opposition against the Morgenthau Plan was spearheaded by America’s “imperialist circles.”)

The Plan would thus gradually and quietly disappear from the scene during the months that followed the Yalta Conference. Morgenthau himself, a good friend of Roosevelt, would be dismissed from his high-ranking government position on July 5, 1945, by the new president, Truman.^[16]

From the perspective of the Western Allies, then, the sometimes vaguely formulated agreements concluded in Yalta regarding Germany were important and advantageous. In addition, Stalin was prepared to discuss the future of the Eastern European countries liberated by the Red Army, such as Poland, even though the Big Three had never discussed the postwar fate of Western European countries such as France, Italy, and Belgium.

Stalin had no illusions regarding Western Europe, and he did not want to jeopardize the relationship with his British and American allies for the sake of countries that happened to be far away from the borders of the Soviet Union, the “socialist fatherland” whose survival and security had obsessed him since the beginning of his career.

With respect to Eastern Europe in general, however, and with Poland in particular, the situation was very different. The Soviet Union was keenly interested in the post-war makeup of neighbouring countries whose governments had formerly been unfriendly and sometimes totally hostile to the USSR, and whose territories formed the traditional invasion road to Moscow.

As for the postwar reorganization of Poland and other countries of Eastern Europe, Stalin had good reasons and, in the form of the Red Army’s presence in these countries, effective means to demand for the Soviet Union at least the same kind of input that the Americans and the British had permitted themselves in Western Europe.

Stalin had not challenged the Western Allies’ modus operandi in Western Europe; it may be supposed that he felt that it was now the turn of his Western partners to give him a free hand in Eastern Europe.^[17]

In spite of all this, however, in Yalta Stalin was prepared to discuss the fate of Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe, even though the topic of Western Europe remained unmentioned. In addition, the actual Soviet demands turned out to be minimal and far from unreasonable, as Churchill and Roosevelt could hardly deny: the so-called Curzon Line should form the border between Poland and the Soviet Union (for which Poland would receive compensation in the form of German territory to the east of a line formed by the Oder and Neisse rivers) and no anti-Soviet regimes would be tolerated in Poland and other neighbouring states.^[18]

Source: polishgreatness.com

In return for their agreement to these demands, the Americans and the British received from Stalin what they wanted in the liberated countries of Eastern Europe, namely, no social and economic changes along communistic lines, free elections, and continuing input for themselves—together with the USSR, of course—In the future affairs of these countries.

This kind of formula was far from unrealistic, and variations of it were to be implemented successfully after the war in Finland and Austria.

The Yalta Agreements, then, did not award the Soviet Union the monopoly of influence in Eastern Europe, that is, the kind of exclusive influence that the Americans and the British already enjoyed, with Stalin’s silent approval, in Western Europe, even though they assigned “controlling influence” in Eastern Europe to the USSR.

The Yalta Agreements thus represented a considerable success for the Western Allies. It has often been said of Churchill that he had grave misgivings about the “concessions” that Roosevelt allegedly had made in the Crimean resort. In reality, he was totally euphoric when the conference ended,^[19] and with good reason, since the British and Americans had fared far better at Yalta than they would have dared to hope when it started.

The allegation that in the Crimean resort the shrewd Stalin wrung all sorts of concessions from his Western colleagues is therefore totally false. It is true that afterwards the Yalta Agreements would not be properly implemented, for example regarding Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. This had a lot to do with Stalin’s reaction to America’s “atomic diplomacy” of the summer of 1945, after the “nuking” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when Washington believed that it could impose its will on the presumably defenseless Soviets, and also with the irreconcilable, and totally unrealistic anti-Soviet attitude of the Polish government-in-exile in London.

The London Poles did not even want to recognize the Curzon Line as the future eastern border of their country, which had been acknowledged by Roosevelt and Churchill as both fair and inevitable, and which had been officially accepted in Yalta.^[20]

Owing to the intractability of the London Poles, Stalin increasingly played the card of a communist and pro-Soviet Polish government-in-exile, the “Lublin Poles,” and this would eventually lead to the installation of an exclusively communist regime in Warsaw.

The Americans, like the British, would complain loudly about this, but their protest was hardly reconcilable with the uncontested fact that after the war they themselves would install or support dictatorial regimes in many countries, such as Greece, Turkey, and China, and that in those dictatorial client states they never insisted on the kind of free elections that they urged Stalin to organize in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

Stalin was a realist. On the occasion of the London Agreements and the Yalta Conference he proved to be accommodating vis-à-vis Churchill and Roosevelt not because he wanted to be so, but because he correctly calculated that he could hardly afford not to be.

The war in which the USSR had suffered grievously and had just barely escaped total obliteration was not yet over. The Soviets’ military situation in early 1945 was excellent, of course, but all sorts of disagreeable things could still come to pass. As the end approached for the Third Reich, for example, the propaganda machine of Goebbels aggressively pursued an ultimate rescue scenario for the Nazi state, namely, the project of a separate armistice between Germany and the Western Allies, followed by a common crusade against the Bolshevik Soviet Union.

This plan was not nearly as naive and unrealistic as one might assume, because Goebbels knew only too well that leading circles in Great Britain and virtually everywhere else in the Western world had considered Bolshevism as the “natural” enemy, and simultaneously viewed Nazi Germany as the spearhead in the coming anti-Soviet crusade.

The Nazi propaganda minister was also keenly aware that during the war quite a few Western leaders found the Soviets a useful ally but continued to despise the communist state and were determined to eliminate it sooner or later.

As for the USSR, all this meant that after years of superhuman efforts and huge losses, when victory seemed tantalizingly near, the order of the day continued to be survival—the survival of the country and the survival of “socialism in one country,” which had always been Stalin’s great obsession.

The Soviet leader worried about Goebbels’ scenario, and not without reason. In the camp of the Western Allies several leading personalities, generals as well as statesmen, found this scenario quite attractive. After the war some of them would openly express regret that the American and British armies had not continued to march eastward in 1945, preferably all the way to Moscow.

Churchill himself flirted with the thought of this kind of initiative and actually ordered preparations to be made for what was codenamed Operation Unthinkable.^[21]

Churchill had his sights set on the Soviet Union. [Source: rbth.com]

Stalin harboured no illusions with respect to the true Western feelings for the Soviet Union. His diplomats and spies kept him well-informed about opinions and developments in London, Washington, and elsewhere.

For the Soviet leader, who remembered the historical precedent of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, the possibility of a reversal of alliances, a combined German-Western undertaking against the Soviet Union, constituted a genuine nightmare. He tried to exorcize it by not giving Churchill and Roosevelt the slightest excuse to undertake something against the USSR.

Thus it becomes possible to understand why he refrained from criticizing their conduct in Western Europe and in Greece, and why he revealed himself to be so accommodating at Yalta.^[22] In any event, in Yalta in February 1945, Roosevelt and Churchill did not indulge Stalin, to the contrary, the Soviet leader indulged his “Anglo-Saxon” counterparts.

*

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

Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). Jeremy can be reached at [email protected].

Jacques Pauwels holds PhDs in history (York University) and political science (University of Toronto) and has taught history at numerous universities in Ontario, Canada. He is author of books on Nazi Germany, World Wars I and II, the French Revolution, and the origins and meaning of the names of peoples and places.  He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Jacques can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. Diane Shaver-Clemens, Yalta (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971) quoted in Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018), 65. 

2. Alvin Finkel and Clement Leibovitz, The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (Toronto: Lorimer Publishers, 1997), p. 206; Dpmrovp Losurdo Stalin: Storia e critica di una leggenda nera (Rome: Carocci Editori, 2008., pp. 179–180. 
3. Philip Knightley, The First Casualty (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 324–25; Helen Keyssar and Vladimir Pozner, Remembering War: A U.S.-Soviet Dialogue (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 153. 
4. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 256–60; Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945 (New York: Random house, 1968), pp. 350–52; Robert J. Maddox, The United States and World War II (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 250–51; Keyssar and Pozner, Remembering War, p. 154. 
5. MacArthur’s opinion is cited in Erich Schwinge, Bilanz der Kriegsgeneration (Munich: Universitas, 1997), pp. 10–11. 
6. Edward M. Bennett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Search for Victory: American-Soviet Relations, 1939–1945, (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1990), p. 156. 
7. Rolf Steininger, Deutsche Geschichte 1945–1961: Darstellung und Dokumente in zwei Bänden. Vol. 1 (Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1983), pp. 20–22; Kolko, The Politics of War, pp. 353–55, quotation from p. 355. 
8. Fraser J. Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War(New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 82. 
9. Stettinius quotation from Michael Parenti, The Anti-Communist Impulse (New York Random House: 1969), p. 131. 
10. Carolyn Eisenberg, The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1943-1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 61. 
11. Wilfried Loth, Stalins ungeliebtes Kind: Warum Moskau die DDR nicht wollte (Berlin:, Rowohlt, 1994), pp. 14-15; Steininger, Deutsche Geschichte 1945–1961: Darstellung und Dokumente in zwei Bänden. p. 28. 
12. Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas (eds.), Roosevelt and Churchill: Their Secret Wartime Correspondence (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1975), p. 656. 
13. Harbutt, The Iron Curtain: Churchill, America, and the Origins of the Cold War, p. 72; Loth, Stalins ungeliebtes Kind: Warum Moskau die DDR nicht wollte, p. 18; Michaela Hoenicke, “Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (1933–1945),” in Klaus Larres and Torsten Oppelland (eds.), Deutschland und die USA im 20. Jahrhundert: Geschichte der politischen Beziehungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1997), p. 293 ff.; Wolfgang Krieger, “Die amerikanische Deutschlandplanung, Hypotheken und Chancen für einen Neuanfang,” in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches — Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Ruckschau (Munich and Zurich: Piper, 1995), pp. 36, 40–41; Kolko, The Politics of War, pp. 331, 348–49; Werner Link, Deutsche und amerikanische Gewerkschaften und Geschäftsleute 1945–1975: Eine Studie uber transnationale Beziehungen (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1978), pp. 107–08; Lloyd C. Gardner, Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy 1941–1949 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), pp. 250–51. 
14. Jörg Fisch, Reparationen nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: Beck, 1992), p. 48. 
15. Jacques R. Pauwels, Big business and Hitler (Toronto: Lorimer, 2017). 
16. Eisenberg, The American Decision to Divide Germany, 1943-1949, p. 26; Gromyko’s comment is from Hoenicke, “Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (1933–1945),” p. 302. 
17. Parenti The Anti-Communist Impulse, p. 135; Bert Cochran, The War System (New York: Macmillan, 1965), p. 42. 
18. Parenti, The Anti-Communist Impulse, p. 137. 
19. Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 809; Jost Düllfer, Jalta, 4. Februar 1945: Der Zweite Weltkrieg und die Entstehung der bipolaren Welt (Munich: Drutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, 1998), p. 29. 
20. Parenti, The Anti-Communist Impulse, p. 139. 
21. “Operation Unthinkable,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Unthinkable. 
22. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War 1941–1947 (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1972), p. 88; Christopher Simpson, The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: Grove Press, 1993), pp. 118–19; Loth, Stalins ungeliebtes Kind: Warum Moskau die DDR nicht wollte, p.16. 

Featured image is from biblio.com

Many of the world’s most popular platforms and services have sought to stymie Russia’s information operations and propaganda amid its illegal invasion of Ukraine. Meta, Google, Twitter, TikTok, and others have de-platformed, de-monetized, and de-amplified Russian state media and official channels, making them official participants in the information war that they largely refused to wade into in the months and years leading up to the war on Ukraine.

Apple joined in by removing RT and Sputnik from its App Store outside of Russia and went a step further and stopped all product sales and Apple Pay services in the country, a move that will undoubtedly affect ordinary Russians far more than the ruling class. Netflix has refused to carry Russian channels, and Warner Bros. and Disney have nixed upcoming movie releases in the country. Ukraine has encouraged this and recently asked Xbox and Sony to block Russian and Belarusian accounts and prevent gamers and teams from participating in or hosting esports events.

But Ukraine wants to go even further by kicking Russia off the internet.

On Monday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation sent a letter to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the body that oversees the domain system that forms the backbone of the open web. The letter asks ICANN to shut down Russian-administered domain names (think .RU, .SU, and .рф) and root servers in the country; to revoke Russia’s control of its top-level domain name system root servers; and to revoke the digital signatures that authenticate domain names. This is all a bit technical, but it basically means that the part of the internet run by Russia would not work. Most Russians won’t be able to access their email or apps, search the web, or access local websites because they resolve using the country-level domain. It would also create substantial security risks for anyone trying to navigate to one of those sites.

The domain name system, or DNS, is like the internet’s phone book, allowing anyone to type in a web address and get to the right place without having to figure out the corresponding string of numbers. The ability to authenticate a site is a crucial part of combating disinformation by preventing tampering and impersonation—which means that if you tried to get to novayagazeta.ru (the website of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose editor Dmitry Muratov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021), you either would be stuck or could be directed to a spoofed site. The letter claims that “these measures will help users seek for reliable information in alternative domain zones, preventing propaganda and disinformation.”

But it would do the opposite, shutting down some 5 million domains—including those belonging to local news outlets, nongovernmental organizations, and civic groups—and potentially kicking much of the country offline. While it wouldn’t be a full-scale internet shutdown, “this is basically like kicking Russia off the internet,” according to Ephraim Kenyanito, a senior program officer at Article 19 whose work focuses on DNS and censorship. (Disclosure: I’m the U.S. adviser for Article 19.)

Local businesses, news outlets, and civil society would have to scramble to find new hosting services, which could be difficult given the increasing pressure to deny services to Russians. “Government ministries of health would be taken offline, including information on COVID. Basically it would prevent Russians from accessing information, and it would do disproportionate harm,” says Kenyanito.

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

***

First published by Global Research on June 23, 20212

***

War against the Soviet Union was what Hitler had wanted from the beginning. He had already made this very clear in the pages of Mein Kampf, written in the mid-1920s. As a German historian, Rolf-Dieter Müller, has convincingly demonstrated in a well-documented study, it was a war against the Soviet Union, and not against Poland, France, or Britain, that Hitler was planning to unleash in 1939. On August 11 of that year, Hitler explained to Carl J. Burckhardt, an official of the League of Nations, that “everything he undertook was directed against Russia”, and that “if the West [i.e., the French and the British] is too stupid and too blind to comprehend this, he would be forced to reach an understanding with the Russians, turn and defeat the West, and then turn back with all his strength to strike a blow against the Soviet Union”. This is in fact what happened. The West did turn out to be “too stupid and blind”, as Hitler saw it, to give him “a free hand” in the east, so he did make a deal with Moscow — the infamous “Hitler-Stalin Pact” — and then unleashed war against Poland, France, and Britain. But his ultimate objective remained the same: to attack and destroy the Soviet Union as soon as possible.

Hitler and the German army commanders were convinced they had learned an important lesson from World War I. In 1918, in the final stages of World War I, mobile warfare resumed after years of stalemate in the trenches. That is when the Allies, whose unlimited access to colonial resources, including petroleum, had allowed them to construct and use thousands of tanks, trucks, and airplanes and thus “float to victory on a wave of oil”, as one of their leaders put it. Germany, on the other hand, had been prevented by a Royal Navy blockade from importing these vital raw materials, had therefore not provided its army with similar modern equipment and weapons, and thus went down to defeat.

Hitler and his generals knew that it would be impossible to win a new modern war without motorized equipment, but Germany had a highly developed industry, quite capable to produce huge numbers of tanks, airplanes, and trucks to transport the infantry. But fighting and winning a new modern war would also require sufficient stocks of strategic raw materials, especially petroleum and rubber, which Germany lacked. It was decided to tackle this crucial problem in two ways. First, by importing plenty of petroleum and rubber, creating huge stockpiles for use whenever the dogs of war would be unleashed and further imports were likely to be prevented by a new British blockade. Most of this came from the world’s greatest exporter of oil at the time, the US. Second, it was decided to start producing synthetic petroleum and rubber from coal, a raw material abundantly available in Germany.

These preparations were supposed to enable Germany to win the coming war. It was still considered vital to keep the war as short as possible, since the stockpiles of fuel were likely to dwindle fast, the potential for wartime imports (from friendly countries such as Romania) was limited, and synthetic rubber and oil could not be expected to be available in sufficient quantities. To win a new edition of the “Great War”, Germany would therefore have to win it fast, very fast. This is how the Blitzkrieg concept was born, that is, the idea of warfare (Krieg) fast as lightning (Blitz). The Blitzkriegapproach called for synchronised attacks by waves of tanks and airplanes to pierce the enemy’s defensive lines, behind which enemy troops could be expected to be massed; deep penetration into hostile territory; rapid movement of infantry units not on foot or by train, as in the Great War, but in trucks; and the German spearheads swinging back to bottle up and liquidate entire enemy armies in gigantic “encirclement battles”. Blitzkrieg meant motorized war, making full use of the massive numbers of tanks, trucks, and planes cranked out by German industry, but also burning gargantuan amounts of imported and stockpiled petroleum and rubber.

In 1939 and 1940, the Blitzkrieg duly worked its magic, as the combination of excellent equipment and plentiful fuel permitted the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to overwhelm the Polish, Dutch, Belgian, and French defences in a matter of weeks; Blitzkriege, “lightning-fast wars”, were invariably followed by Blitzsiege, “lightning-fast victories”. By the summer of 1940, Germany looked invincible and predestined to rule the European continent indefinitely. As for Britain, the German high command had never been asked to prepare plans to invade that country. Why not? Hitler had always yearned for a continental war against the Soviets and counted on British political leaders such as Chamberlain, known to be virulently anti-Soviet, to watch approvingly from the sidelines. London’s infamous policy of “appeasement” confirmed this expectation, until Chamberlain, under pressure from public opinion, felt compelled to side with Poland in its conflict with Hitler over Gdansk. Under these circumstances, Hitler decided to postpone his planned eastern war so he could deal with Poland and the Western powers first. That is why he proposed a deal to the Soviets, whose offers to establish a common anti-Hitler front had repeatedly been rebuffed by London and Paris. The infamous “Pact”, which they concluded with Hitler in August 1939, offered them extra space and time to prepare for a Nazi attack they knew to be merely postponed until a later date.

Clockwise from top left: German soldiers advance through Northern Russia, German flamethrower team in the Soviet Union, Soviet planes flying over German positions near Moscow, Soviet prisoners of war on the way to German prison camps, Soviet soldiers fire at German positions. (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Britain had gone to war, but very reluctantly. After his conquest of Poland and France (and the British army’s evacuation from Dunkirk), Hitler had reason to believe that the decision-makers in London would “see the light”, exit the war, and allow him to rule the European continent so that he could finally march eastward and crush the Soviet Union, while he would let Britain retain its overseas Empire. In London, however, the anti-Soviet (and filofascist) appeasers were replaced by Churchill, who, while also very anti-Soviet, was not willing to let Hitler control Europe; the new PM feared that after a victory against the Soviet Union, Hitler would be enticed – and very much enabled – to turn against Britain. Britain thus refused to be “reasonable”, as Hitler saw it, but could not hope to win the war on its own and had to fear that the German dictator might soon turn his attention to Gibraltar, Egypt, and/or other jewels in the crown of the British Empire.

The Reich’s triumphs were spectacular enough, but they depleted its fuel stockpiles while not yielding new sources of strategic raw materials, other than some minor oil wells in Poland. Under the terms of the 1939 Pact, however, Germany was supplied with petroleum by the Soviet Union. But how much? An awful lot, according to the conventional anti-Soviet or anti-Russian view, so much, according to one claim, that it was a precondition for the defeat of France in the spring of 1940. Despite these claims, according to Brock Millman’s thorough study, merely four percent of all German oil imports at that time originated in the Soviet Union. The reality is that, in 1940 and 1941, Germany relied mostly on petroleum imported from two countries. First, Romania, originally neutral but a formal ally of Hitler’s starting in November 1940. And second, the still-neutral US, whose oil barons exported huge amounts of “black gold”, mostly via other neutral countries such as Franco’s Spain; they would continue to do so until the US entered the war in December 1941, following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. The Soviet deliveries of petroleum were of course useful to the Reich, but most troubling for Hitler was the fact that Germany had to reciprocate by supplying high-quality industrial products and state-of-the-art military technology, which was used by the Soviets to modernize their army and upgrade their defenses against a Nazi attack they were expecting sooner or later.

Another headache for Hitler was the fact that the terms of his Pact with the Soviets had made it possible for the latter to occupy eastern Poland, former Russian territory annexed by Poland during the Russian Civil War. They did so on September 17, 1939, when the Polish government fled to neutral Romania, thus abandoning the country and turning it into a “terra nullins”. The Soviet move was therefore in accordance with international law; as Churchill acknowledged, it did not amount to an act of war, did not turn the Soviet Union into an ally of Nazi Germany but allowed it to remain neutral, and for that reason it did not trigger a declaration of war by the Western powers, allies of Poland. Finally, if the Red Army had not occupied Eastern Poland, the Germans would have done so. This situation bothered Hitler. The Soviet border, and the country’s defences, had thus shifted a few hundred kilometres to the west, providing the Red Army with the defensive advantage of what is called a “glacis” in military jargon, a territorial “breathing space”; conversely, for the German military, the planned march to Moscow had thus become much longer.

The German dictator had a problem: the Soviets had gained valuable space, time was on their side, and their defences were getting stronger by the day. After the defeat of France, Hitler felt that he could not wait much longer before undertaking the mission he believed to be entrusted to him by providence, namely the annihilation of “Russia ruled by the Jews”. He had wanted to attack the Soviet Union in 1939, but had turned against the Western powers only, as German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller has put it, “in order to enjoy security in the rear when he would finally be ready to settle accounts with the Soviet Union”. Müller concludes that by 1940 nothing had changed as far as Hitler was concerned: “The real enemy was the one in the east”

Already in the fall of that year, after a failed attempt to have Churchill become “sensible” by means of bombing raids and a threatened invasion, he instructed his generals to forget Albion and plan for a great “Eastern War (Ostkrieg) in the spring of 1941. A formal order to this effect was issued on December 18, 1940. The project was code-named Operation Barbarossa (Unternehmen Barbarossa), after a famous German emperor and crusader. The choice of name reflected Hitler’s view of this coming conflict: it was to be a kind of holy war against the Soviet variety of communism, despised as a Jewish stratagem aimed at the overthrow of the natural superiority of the “Aryan” race. Such was the essence of Judeo-Bolshevism, a theory espoused not only by Hitler but also by countless influential political, economic, and intellectual leaders in Germany and throughout the Western world. One of them was Henry Ford, whose German branch plant was cranking out much of the equipment used by the German armed forces at the time, accumulating huge profits in the process.

Elements of the German 3rd Panzer Army on the road near Pruzhany, June 1941 (Public Domain)

Hitler felt that he could turn his gaze eastward without worrying too much about the British, who were still licking their wounds after a Houdini-like escape from Dunkirk. For two reasons, he was confident that their account could wait to be settled until after the completion of his primordial project, the Ostkrieg. First, that undertaking was to be yet another lightning-fast war, expected to last no more than two months; we will return to that issue very shortly. Second, unlike the previous German victories, a triumph against the Soviet Union was guaranteed to provide Germany with the virtually limitless resources of that huge country, including Ukrainian wheat to provide Germany’s population with plenty of food; minerals such as coal, from which synthetic oil and rubber could be produced; and — last, but certainly not least — the rich Caucasian oil fields, where the gas-guzzling Panzers and Stukas would be able to fill their tanks to the brim at any time. Steeled with these assets, it would be a sinecure for Hitler to deal with Britain.

Defeat of the Soviet Union would indeed have provided a “final solution” for Germany’s predicament, being an industrial superpower devoid of territorial possessions to provide strategic raw material. Possessing a huge “complementary territory” in the east, similar to America’s “Wild West” and Britain’s Indian colony, was certain to finally turn Germany into a genuine world power, invulnerable within a European “fortress” stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals. The Reich would possess limitless resources and would therefore be capable of winning even long, drawn-out wars against any antagonist — including the US — in one of the future “wars of the continents” conjured up in Hitler’s feverish imagination.

Hitler and his generals were confident that their planned Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union would be as successful as their earlier lightning wars against Poland and France had been. They considered the Soviet Union to be a “giant with feet of clay”, whose army, presumably decapitated by Stalin’s purges of the late 1930s, was “not more than a joke”, as Hitler himself put it on one occasion. In order to fight and win the decisive battles, they allowed for a campaign of six to eight weeks, possibly to be followed by some mopping-up operations, during which the remnants of the Soviet host would “be chased across the country like a bunch of beaten Cossacks”. In any event, Hitler felt supremely confident, and on the eve of the attack, he “fancied himself to be on the verge of the greatest triumph of his life”.

In Washington and London, the military experts likewise believed that the Soviet Union would not be able to put up significant resistance to the Nazi juggernaut, whose military exploits of 1939–1940 had earned it a reputation of invincibility. The British secret services were convinced that the Soviet Union would be “liquidated within eight to ten weeks”, and the chief of the Imperial General Staff averred that the Wehrmacht would slice through the Red Army “like a warm knife through butter” and that the Soviet forces would be rounded up “like cattle”. According to expert opinion in Washington, Hitler would “crush Russia [sic] like an egg”.

Barbarossa started on June 22, 1941, in the early hours of the morning. The Soviet Union’s border was crossed by “the largest invasion force in the history of warfare” (Wikipedia), consisting of three million German soldiers and almost 700,000 troops contributed by allies of Nazi Germany, equipped with 600,000 motor vehicles, 3,648 tanks, more than 2,700 planes, and just over 7,000 pieces of artillery. At first, everything went according to plan. Huge holes were punched in the Soviet defences, impressive territorial gains were made rapidly, and hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner in a number of spectacular “encirclement battles”. The road to Moscow seemed to lay open.

About the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, a few tenacious myths need to be dispelled. First, it is not true that the German attack purported to pre-empt an offensive planned by the Soviets themselves. This notion was originally propagated by the Nazi regime, recycled post-1945 for anti-Soviet propaganda purposes, and revived from time to time now that the Cold War turns out not to be over after all. A German historian, Bianka Pietrow-Ennker, has convincingly demolished this “thesis of a preventive war” (Präventivkriegsthese). An attack on Germany would have been suicidal for the Soviets, since it was certain to trigger a declaration of war by Japan, Germany’s ally, forcing the Red Army to do battle against powerful enemies on two fronts.

Second, it is untrue that the Soviet leaders, usually referred to as “Stalin”, did not expect a German attack. They did, and had been preparing furiously for it, but they did not know when to expect it and always kept hoping that the attack would come later, rather than sooner, since preparations for a coming attack are never totally finished. Signals were received that the curtain would rise when it did, namely on June 22; however, similar signals had come in earlier but had proved to be false; there was no reason to think that this time it was different, and it was felt necessary not to provoke Hitler with troop movements along the border, since in the summer of 1914 the hasty mobilization of the Russian army in similar tense circumstances had triggered a German declaration of war.

In the months and especially weeks prior to June 1941, Goebbels’ propaganda machine and the Nazi secret service had been working hard, and successfully, to befuddle Moscow with conflicting and consuming signals, mainly the idea that their troop concentrations along the Soviet border, impossible to dissimulate, were intended to deceive the British, against whom a major operation was supposedly being planned. Conversely, the British were working hard to bring about a conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union, as this would obviously be in their interest. In these circumstances, trying to trick Moscow into making a misstep that could trigger hostilities was part of that strategy of deceit, which deserves a major study. In any event, the Soviet leaders knew the attack was coming and had been preparing for it, but they found it impossible to correctly interpret a kaleidoscope of signals and were tragically fooled into refusing to believe that the German attack was imminent until the bombs started to rain down on them in the early hours of June 22.

A third myth concerns the purge of a considerable number of commanders of the Red Army, including Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. In the so-called “show trials” of 1937, these men were presumably falsely accused of treasonous activities, tortured so that they confessed, and executed or imprisoned, thus ridding Stalin of potential rivals but also eliminating countless capable and experienced high-ranking officers; this “decapitation” of the Red Army supposedly helps to explain its poor performance in the early stages of Barbarossa. While this loss undoubtedly exacted a toll, an ultimately more important consideration is the fact that it is now certain that a heterogeneous “bloc of oppositionists” did exist within the Soviet Union and that Tukhachevsky and the other defendants did in fact belong to it and were deeply involved in its treasonous activities, included contacts with German and Japanese agents. Their ultimate goal was to sabotage the Soviet defensive efforts when Germany and/or Japan would attack, and the traitors would be rewarded by being allowed to come to power in what was to remain of the Soviet Union or a Russian successor-state. Joseph Davies, the US ambassador to the Soviet Union at the time of the trials, believed the accused to be guilty.

In other words, Tukhachevsky and company would have done what a cabal of French generals and politicians with fascist sympathies are now known to have orchestrated in the spring of 1940: they deliberately opted for defeat at the hands of an “external enemy”, Nazi Germany, to be able to defeat the “internal enemy”, in the case of France the socialists, communists, and other leftist forces who had earlier formed the “Popular Front” government. France’s defeat made it possible for these French “Tukhachevskies” to install a fascist regime under Marshal Pétain, as French historian Annie Lacroix-Riz has convincingly demonstrated in two of her studies. The existence and collaboration of such a “fifth column” helps to explain Nazi Germany’s unexpectedly easy victory over France and, conversely, what in France itself is referred to as the country’s “strange defeat” in 1940. If Tukhachevsky’s “fifth column” in the Soviet Union had not been eliminated, the Red Army would undoubtedly have done much worse in June 1941 than it actually did, and it would probably have experienced a “strange defeat” similar to that of the French army one year earlier.

In the days and weeks following June 22, the German army advanced rapidly in three major directions, namely to Leningrad in the north, Kiev in the south, and Moscow in the centre, seemingly confirming the reputation of invincibility it had acquired in 1939 and 1940. It soon became evident, however, that the Blitzkrieg in the east would not be the cakewalk that had been expected. Facing the most powerful military machine on earth, the Red Army was predictably taking a major beating but, as propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels confided to his diary as early as July 2, also put up a tough resistance and hit back very hard on numerous occasions.

General Franz Halder, in many ways the “godfather” of Operation Barbarossa’s plan of attack, acknowledged that Soviet resistance was much stronger than anything the Germans had faced in Western Europe. Wehrmacht reports cited “hard”, “tough”, even “wild” resistance, causing heavy losses in men and equipment on the German side. More often than expected, Soviet forces managed to launch counterattacks that involved heavy losses but did slow down the German advance. Some Soviet units went into hiding in the vast Pripet Marshes and elsewhere, organized deadly partisan warfare (for which thorough preparations had been made during the time gained thanks to the 1939 Pact), and threatened the long and vulnerable German lines of communication.  It also turned out that the Red Army was much better equipped than expected. German generals were “amazed”, writes a German historian, by the quality of Soviet weapons such as the Katyusha rocket launcher (a.k.a. “Stalin Organ”) and the T-34 tank. Hitler was furious that his secret services had not been aware of the existence of some of this weaponry.

German advances from June to August 1941 (Public Domain)

The greatest cause of concern, as far as the Germans were concerned, was the fact that the bulk of the Red Army managed to withdraw in relatively good order and eluded destruction in a huge encirclement battle, in the kind of repeat of Cannae or Sedan that Hitler and his generals had dreamed of. The Red Army commanders appear to have carefully observed and analyzed the German blitzkrieg successes of 1939 and 1940 and to have learned useful lessons. They must have noticed that in May 1940 the French had massed the bulk of their forces right at the border, behind the Maginot Line, as well as in Belgium, thus making it possible for the German war machine to encircle them. The Soviets did leave some troops at the border, of course, and these troops predictably suffered major losses during the opening stages of Barbarossa. But — contrary to what is claimed by some historians – the bulk of the Red Army was held back in the rear, avoiding entrapment. It was this “defence in depth” – facilitated by the 1939 acquisition of a “glacis”, a territorial “breathing space”, namely “Eastern Poland” – that frustrated the German ambition to destroy the Red Army in its entirety. As Marshal Zhukov was to write in his memoirs, “the Soviet Union would have been smashed if we had organized all our forces at the border”.

As early as the middle of July, as Hitler’s war in the east started to lose its Blitz-qualities, countless Germans, military as well as civilians, of low as well as high rank, lost their belief in a quick victory. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Wehrmacht’s secret service, the Abwehr, thus confided on July 17 to a colleague on the front, General von Bock, that he saw “nothing but black”. On the home front, many German civilians also started to feel that the war in the east was not going well. In Dresden, Victor Klemperer, a Jewish linguist who kept a diary, wrote on July 13 that “we [the Germans] suffer immense losses, we have underestimated the Russians”.

Around the same time, Hitler himself abandoned his dream of a quick and easy victory and scaled down his expectations; he now expressed the hope that his troops might reach the Volga by October and capture the oil fields of the Caucasus a month or so later. By the end of August, at a time when Barbarossa should have been winding down, a memorandum of the Wehrmacht’s High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) acknowledged that it might no longer be possible to win the war in 1941.

A major problem was the fact that, when Barbarossa started on June 22, the available supplies of tires, spare parts, and above all fuel were good enough for only about two months. This had been deemed sufficient because it was expected that between six to eight weeks the Soviet Union would be on its knees and its unlimited resources — industrial and agricultural products as well as raw materials — would then be available to the Reich. But by late August the German spearheads were nowhere near those distant regions of the Soviet Union where petroleum, that most precious of all indispensibilia of modern warfare, was to be had. If the tanks managed to keep on rolling, though increasingly slowly, into the seemingly endless Russian and Ukrainian expanses, it was to a large extent by means of fuel and rubber imported, via Spain and occupied France, from the US.

The flames of optimism flared up again in September, when German troops achieved a major success by capturing Kiev and, farther north, made progress in the direction of Moscow. Hitler believed, or at least pretended to believe, that the end was now near for the Soviets. In a public speech in the Berlin Sportpalast on October 3, he declared that the eastern war was virtually over. The Wehrmacht was ordered to deliver the coup de grâce by launching Operation Typhoon (Unternehmen Taifun), an offensive aimed at taking Moscow. The odds for success looked increasingly slim, however, as the Soviets were busily bringing in reserve units from the Far East. (They had been informed by their master spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, that the Japanese, whose army was stationed in northern China, were no longer considering attacking the Soviets’ vulnerable borders in Vladivostok area.) To make things worse, the Germans no longer enjoyed superiority in the air, particularly over Moscow. Also, sufficient supplies of ammunition and food could not be brought up from the rear to the front since the long supply lines were severely hampered by partisan activity. Finally, it was getting chilly in the Soviet Union, though probably no colder than usual at that time of the year. The German high command, confident that their eastern Blitzkrieg would be over by the end of the summer, had failed to supply the troops with the equipment necessary to fight in the rain, mud, snow, and freezing temperatures of a Russian fall and winter.

Taking Moscow loomed as an extremely important objective in the minds of Hitler and his generals. It was believed, though probably wrongly, that the fall of its capital would “decapitate” the Soviet Union and thus bring about its collapse. It also seemed important to avoid a repeat of the scenario of the summer of 1914, when the seemingly unstoppable German advance into France had been halted in extremis on the eastern outskirts of Paris, during the Battle of the Marne. This disaster — from the German perspective — had robbed Germany of nearly certain victory in the opening stages of the Great War and had forced it into a lengthy struggle that, lacking sufficient resources and blockaded by the British navy, it was doomed to lose. This time, in a new Great War fought against a new archenemy, there was to be no new “miracle of the Marne”, that is, no faltering just outside the foe’s capital. It was imperative that Germany not find itself resourceless and blockaded in a long, drawn-out conflict it was doomed to lose. Unlike Paris, Moscow would fall, history would not repeat itself, and Germany would end up being victorious — or so they hoped in Hitler’s headquarters.

The Wehrmacht continued to advance, albeit very slowly, and by mid-November some units found themselves on the outskirts of Moscow, presumably even within sight of the towers of the Kremlin, but the troops were now totally exhausted and running out of supplies. Their commanders knew that it was simply impossible to take the Soviet capital, tantalizingly close as the city may have been, and that even doing so would not bring them victory. On December 3, a number of units abandoned the offensive on their own initiative. Within days, however, the entire German army in front of Moscow was simply forced on the defensive. Indeed, on December 5, at three in the morning, in cold and snowy conditions, the Red Army suddenly launched a major, well-prepared counterattack. The Wehrmacht’s lines were pierced in many places, and the Germans were thrown back between 100 and 280 kilometres with heavy losses of men and equipment; it was only with great difficulty that a catastrophic encirclement could be avoided. On December 8, Hitler ordered his army to abandon the offensive and to move into defensive positions. (As the Wehrmacht did actually make it to the western suburbs of Moscow in late 1941, it can be argued that they would almost certainly have taken the city, and perhaps won the war, had it not been for the concessions made by Hitler in the Pact of 1939, which resulted in the Soviet border being moved hundreds of kilometers to the west.)

In any event, it was in front of Moscow, in early December 1941, that Hitler’s Blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union ground to a halt. Thus ended not the war, of course, but the lightning-fast kind of war that was supposed to be the key to a German victory, the type of warfare that was to have enabled Hitler to realize his grand ambition, the destruction of the Soviet Union. More importantly, such a victory would also have provided Nazi Germany with sufficient petroleum and other resources to make it a virtually invulnerable behemoth. In the new “Battle of the Marne” just to the west of Moscow, Nazi Germany suffered the defeat that made victory impossible, not only victory against the Soviet Union itself, but also victory against Great Britain and victory in the war in general. It ought to be noted that the United States was not yet involved in the war.

Hitler and his generals had believed, not without reason, that to win a new edition of the Great War, Germany had to win it lightning-fast. But on December 5, 1941, it became evident to everyone present in Hitler’s headquarters that a lightning-fast triumph over the Soviet Union would not be forthcoming, and that Germany was doomed to lose the war, if not sooner, then later. According to General Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations staff of the OKW, Hitler realized on that very day that he could no longer win the war. And so it can be argued that the success of the Red Army in front of Moscow was unquestionably the “major break” [Zäsur] of the entire world war”, as Gerd R. Ueberschär, a German expert on the war against the Soviet Union, has put it. In other words, the tide of World War II turned on December 5, 1941. As real tides turn not suddenly but rather gradually and imperceptibly, the tide of the war turned not on a single day, but over a period of at least four months that elapsed between the summer of 1941 and early December of that same year.

The tide of the war in the east had been shifting extremely slowly, but it did not do so imperceptibly. Already in July 1941, less than one month after Operation Barbarossa got underway, well-informed observers had started to doubt that a German victory, not only in the Soviet Union but in the war in general, still belonged to the realm of possibilities. In that month, generals of Marshal Pétain’s French collaborator regime, meeting in Vichy, discussed confidential reports received from German colleagues about the situation on the eastern front. They learned that the advance into the Soviet Union was not going as well as expected and came to the conclusion that “Germany would not win the war but had already lost it”. From that moment on, a growing number of members of the French military, political, and economic elite discreetly prepared to leave the doomed ship Vichy; they hoped that their country would be liberated by the Americans, with whom contacts were established via sympathetic intermediaries such as the Vatican and Franco. Historian Annie Lacroix-Riz has described this development in detail.

In September, when the Blitzkrieg in the east was supposed to have been over, a correspondent of the New York Timesbased in Stockholm became convinced that the situation on the eastern front was such that Germany “might well collapse dramatically”. He had just returned from a visit to the Reich, where he had witnessed the arrival of trainloads of injured soldiers. And the always well-informed Vatican, initially very enthusiastic about Hitler’s “crusade” against the Soviet homeland of “godless” Bolshevism, became very concerned about the situation in the east in late summer 1941; by mid-October, it came to the conclusion that Germany would lose the war. (Clearly, the German bishops had not been informed of the bad tidings, since a couple of months later on December 10 they publicly declared to be “observing the struggle against Bolshevism with satisfaction”.) Likewise in mid-October, the Swiss secret services reported that “the Germans can no longer win the war”.

By late November, a defeatism of sorts had started to infect the higher ranks of the Wehrmacht and of the Nazi Party. Even as they were urging their troops forward towards Moscow, some generals opined that it would be preferable to make peace overtures and wind down the war without achieving the great victory that had seemed so certain at the start of Operation Barbarossa. And shortly before the end of November, armament Minister Fritz Todt asked Hitler to search for a diplomatic way out of the war, since purely militarily as well as industrially, it was as good as lost.

When the Red Army launched its devastating counteroffensive on December 5, Hitler himself realized that he would lose the war. But he was not prepared to let the German public know that. The nasty tidings from the front near Moscow were presented to the public as a temporary setback, blamed on the supposedly unexpectedly early arrival of winter and/or on the incompetence or cowardice of certain commanders. (It was only a good year later, after the catastrophic defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-43, that the German public, and the entire world, would realize that Germany was doomed; which is why even today many historians believe that the tide turned at Stalingrad.) But it proved impossible to keep the catastrophic implications of the debacle in front of Moscow a total secret. For example, on December 19, 1941, the German Consul in the Swiss city of Basel reported to his superiors in Berlin that the (openly pro-Nazi) head of a mission of the Swiss Red Cross, sent to the front in the Soviet Union to assist the wounded only on the German side, which contravened Red Cross rules, had returned to Switzerland with the news, most surprising to the Consul, that “he no longer believed that Germany could win the war”.

In his headquarters deep in an East-Prussian forest, Hitler was still ruminating the catastrophic tiding when he received another surprise. On the other side of the globe, the Japanese had attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. The existing agreements between Berlin and Tokyo were defensive in nature and would have required the Reich to rally to the side of Japan if the latter had been attacked by the US, but that was not the case. Hitler had no such obligation to assist Japan, as has been claimed, or at least insinuated, in histories and documentaries about that dramatic event. Neither had the Japanese leaders felt compelled to declare war on Hitler’s enemies when he attacked Poland, France, and the Soviet Union. On each of these occasions, Hitler had not even bothered to inform Tokyo of his plans, no doubt out of fear of spies. The Japanese similarly neglected to let Hitler know of their plans to go to war against Uncle Sam. Nevertheless, on December 11, 1941, the German dictator did declare war on the United States. This seemingly irrational decision can only be understood in light of the German predicament in the Soviet Union. Hitler almost certainly speculated that this entirely gratuitous gesture of solidarity would induce his Far Eastern ally to reciprocate with a declaration of war on the enemy of Germany, the Soviet Union, and this would have forced the Soviets into the extremely perilous predicament of a two-front war. (The bulk of the Japanese army was still stationed in northern China and would therefore have been able to immediately attack the Soviet Union in the Vladivostok area.)

Hitler appears to have believed that he could exorcize the spectre of defeat in the Soviet Union, and in the war in general, by summoning a sort of Japanese deus ex machina to the Soviet Union’s vulnerable Siberian frontier. According to the German historian Hans W. Gatzke, the Führer was indeed convinced that “if Germany failed to join Japan [in the war against the United States], it would . . . end all hope for Japanese help against the Soviet Union”. But Japan did not take Hitler’s bait. Tokyo, too, despised the Soviet state, but the Land of the Rising Sun, now at war against the US, could afford the luxury of a two-front war as little as the Soviets. Tokyo preferred to put all of its money on a “southern” strategy, hoping to win the big prize of Southeast Asia – including petroleum-rich Indonesia and rubber-rich Indochina – rather than embark on a venture in the inhospitable reaches of Siberia. Only at the very end of the war, after the surrender of Nazi Germany, would it come to hostilities between the Soviet Union and Japan.

And so, through Hitler’s own fault, the camp of Germany’s enemies now included not only Great Britain and the Soviet Union, but also the mighty USA, whose troops could be expected to appear on Germany’s shores, or at least on the shores of German-occupied Europe, in the foreseeable future. The Americans would indeed land troops in France, but only in 1944, and in the Western world this unquestionably important event is still all too often glorified as the turning point of World War II. It is worth asking, however, whether the Americans would ever have landed in Normandy or, for that matter, ever have declared war on Nazi Germany, if Hitler had not declared war on them on December 11, 1941. And one should ask if Hitler would ever have made the desperate, even suicidal decision to declare war on the US if he had not found himself in a hopeless situation in the Soviet Union. The involvement of the US in the war against Germany, then, which for many reasons was not in the cards before December 1941, and for which Washington had not made any preparations, was also a consequence of the German setback in front of Moscow.

Nazi Germany was doomed, but the war was still to be a long one. Hitler ignored the advice of his generals, who strongly recommended trying to find a diplomatic exit and decided to battle on in the slim hope of somehow pulling victory out of a hat. The Russian counter-offensive would run out of steam in early January 1942, the Wehrmacht would survive the winter of 1941-42 and, in the spring of 1942, Hitler would scrape together all available forces for an offensive – code-named “Operation Blue” (Unternehmen Blau) – in the direction of the oil fields of the Caucasus. Hitler himself acknowledged that “if he did not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, he would have to end this war”. But by then the element of surprise had been lost, and the Soviets disposed of huge masses of men, oil, and other resources, as well as excellent equipment, much of it produced in factories that had been established behind the Urals between 1939 and 1941. The Wehrmacht, on the other hand, could not compensate for the huge losses it had suffered in 1941. Between June 22, 1941, and January 31, 1942, the Germans had lost 6,000 airplanes and more than 3,200 tanks and similar vehicles. No less than 918,000 men had been killed, wounded, or gone missing in action, amounting to 28.7 per cent of the average strength of the army, or 3.2 million men. In the Soviet Union, Germany would lose no less than 10 million of its total 13.5 million men killed, wounded, or taken prisoner during the entire war, and the Red Army would end up claiming credit for 90 per cent of all Germans killed in the Second World War.

The forces available for a push toward the oil fields of the Caucasus were limited and, as it turned out, insufficient to achieve the objective. Under those circumstances, it is quite remarkable that in 1942 the Germans managed to make it as far as they did. The beast had been mortally wounded, but it would take a long time before it breathed its last, and it would remain powerful and dangerous until the end, as the Americans were to find out in the winter of 1944-1945 at the Battle of the Bulge. But when the Germans’ offensive inevitably petered out, namely in September 1942, their weakly held supply lines were stretched along many hundreds of kilometres, presenting a perfect target for a Soviet counterattack. When that attack came, it caused an entire German army to be bottled up and, after a titanic battle, to be destroyed at Stalingrad. After this great victory of the Red Army, the ineluctability of German defeat in World War II was obvious for all to see. The failure of the eastern Blitzkrieg in the second half of 1941, culminating in defeat in front of Moscow in early December of that year, had been the precondition for the admittedly more spectacular German Götterdämmerung at Stalingrad.

There are even more reasons to proclaim December 1941 as the turning point of the war. The Soviet counter-offensive destroyed the reputation of invincibility in which the Wehrmacht had basked ever since its success against Poland in 1939, thus boosting the morale of Germany’s enemies everywhere. In France, for example, the Resistance became bigger, bolder, and much more active. Conversely, the fiasco of the Blitzkrieg demoralized the Finns and other German allies. And neutral countries that had sympathized with Nazi Germany now became benevolent towards the “Anglo-Americans”. Franco, for example, sought to ingratiate them by averting his gaze as downed allied airmen, assisted by the French Resistance, technically violated Spanish neutrality by crossing the country from France to Portugal on their way back to Britain. Portugal, also officially neutral but on friendly terms with Britain, even allowed the British and Americans to use an air base on the Azores, which was to prove extremely useful in the Battle of the Atlantic.

Most importantly, the Battle of Moscow also ensured that the bulk of Germany’s armed forces would be tied to an eastern front of approximately 4,000 kilometres for an indefinite period of time and thus require the bulk of available strategic resources, above all petroleum. This all but eliminated the possibility of new German operations against the British. It made it impossible to supply Rommel in North Africa with sufficient men and materiel, and this ultimately led to his defeat in the Battle of El Alamein in the fall of 1942.

The tide of the war turned in the Soviet Union in 1941 Had the Soviets not been able to stop the Nazi juggernaut, Germany would almost certainly have won the war, because it would have gained control of the petroleum fields of the Caucasus, the rich agricultural lands of Ukraine, and many other vitally important resources. Such a triumph would have transformed Hitler’s Reich into an inexpungable superpower, capable of waging even long-term wars against anyone, including an Anglo-American alliance. Without the Soviet achievement in 1941, the liberation of Europe, including the liberation of Western Europe by the Americans, British, Canadians, etc., would never have taken place. During the landings in Normandy in June 1944, the western allies had a tough time, even though they faced only a fraction of the Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe was impotent because of lack of fuel. But without the successes of the Red Army, first in front of Moscow and later at Stalingrad, the entire Wehrmacht would have been available in Normandy, the Luftwaffe would have had plenty of Caucasian fuel, and the landings would simply not have been feasible. Had the Red Army not prevented the success of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany would have established its hegemony over Europe and would very likely have maintained it until the present time. Today, on the continent, the second language would not be English, but German, and in Paris the fashionistas might well promenade up and down the Champs Elysees in lederhosen.

German advances during the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa, August 1941 (Public Domain)

In 1943, after victories in Stalingrad in the spring and Kursk in the summer, it was obvious that, slowly but surely, the Red Army was on its way to Berlin. That is when the Americans and British, who had been sitting on the sidelines as a titanic war raged along the eastern front, decided it was high time to open a “second front” in France, so the Soviets would not defeat Nazi Germany and liberate all of Europe on their own – and reap the benefits of that achievement. While it must be acknowledged that, in the final year of the war, following the Normandy landings, the Americans and the other western allies did make a significant contribution to the victory over Nazi Germany, that triumph was due in the very first place to the herculean efforts and huge sacrifices made by the Russian and other peoples of the Soviet Union during four long years, starting on that fateful 22^nd of June, 1941.

Let us briefly examine two myths about the historical fact that the Soviet Union was the first country to defend successfully against a Blitzkrieg-style attack launched against it by Hitler – and ultimately to vanquish Nazi Germany.

First, the fable that the Nazi invaders of the Soviet Union were defeated by “General Winter”. The Germans were defeated by the Red Army, with the support of the majority of the many peoples that made up the Soviet nation, except, of course, a not inconsiderable number of collaborators. Of the latter, every country facing the Reich unfortunately had its fair share. The Germans wrongly believed that the Soviet Union would be full of them, so that they would be welcomed with open arms as liberators, but the opposite proved to be the case: they faced widespread resistance, including armed resistance by partisans, and it is fair to say that without such popular support, the Soviet Union would not have survived the Nazi onslaught. This factor, combined with the tough resistance put up by the Red Army, caused Barbarossa to progress much more slowly than expected and failed to finish by the end of the summer, as Hitler and his generals had expected. This means that, by September 1941 at the latest, the Blitzkrieg strategy that was supposed to be the key to a German victory had failed. It took a few more months, until December 5, in early winter, for this failure to be certified, so to speak, by the start of the Soviet counter-offensive in front of Moscow; but as far as Germany was concerned, the fatal damage had already been done in the summer.

The myth crediting “General Winter” was originally concocted by the Nazis to rationalize their defeat in the Battle of Moscow, signifying the fiasco of Operation Barbarossa. Nazi spin doctors presented the nasty tidings to the public in Germany and in occupied Europe as a temporary setback, to be blamed on the supposedly unexpectedly early arrival of winter. After 1945, in the context of the Cold War, this myth was kept alive as part of the effort to minimize the Soviet contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Finally, following the demise of the Soviet Union, the notion has been kept alive in the West because of its usefulness for anti-Russian purposes.

According to a second tenacious myth, the Soviets only managed to survive the Nazi onslaught thanks to massive material support provided by Uncle Sam in the context of the famous Lend-Lease program of aid to America’s allies. A number of facts demonstrate that this story, while woven around some historical facts, as myths usually are, also fails to do justice to the historical reality.

First of all, Uncle Sam was not an ally of the Soviet Union at the time of the Red Army counterattack in front of Moscow, in early December 1941, which confirmed the failure of a Blitzkrieg-strategy that was to have been the key to a German victory. The US was still a neutral country, and its upper class sympathized with the Nazis and with fascism in general and despised the Soviets and communism as a rule. In fact, a considerable number of rich, powerful, and very influential Americans – industrialists, bankers, members of Congress. generals, religious leaders, etc. – eagerly anticipated the defeat of the homeland of anti-capitalist and “godless” Bolshevism. It was only when, on December 11, 1941, a few days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler gratuitously declared war on the US, that Uncle Sam found himself to be an enemy of Nazi Germany and therefore an ally not only of the British but also of the Soviets, and that the flames of American anti-Sovietism were not quite extinguished, but temporarily dimmed.

Second, as for American aid to the Soviet Union, there was none at all in 1941, the year that ended with a reversal of the tide of war. Moscow asked the US to supply equipment from the very start of Barbarossa but failed to receive a positive response. After all, in the US too, it was expected that the Soviet Union was going to collapse soon. The American ambassador in Moscow even warned emphatically against sending aid, arguing that in view of the impending Soviet defeat, these supplies would fall into German hands.

The situation changed in the late fall of 1941, when it became increasingly clear that the Red Army would not be “crushed like an egg”. In fact, the Soviets’ tough resistance demonstrated that they were likely to be a very useful continental ally to the British, with whom American businessmen and bankers were engaging in extremely profitable Lend-Lease business. Extending Lend-Lease aid to the Soviets – which meant sales, not a free gift, of equipment – now promised to generate even more profits. The New York Stock Exchange started to reflect this fact of life: the quotations rose as the Nazi advance into Russia slowed down. It was in this context that a Lend-Lease agreement was signed by Washington and Moscow in November 1941, but it would take many more months before deliveries were to start trickling in. A German historian, Bernd Martin, has emphasized that throughout 1941 American aid to the Soviet Union remained purely “fictitious”. American material assistance thus became meaningful only in 1942 or arguably even 1943, that is, long after the Soviets had singlehandedly ruined Nazi Germany’s prospects for victory – while using their own weapons and equipment. According to British historian Adam Tooze, “the Soviet miracle owed nothing to western assistance [and] the effects of Lend-Lease had no influence on the balance of forces on the Eastern Front before 1943”.

Third, American aid would never represent more than 4 to 5 per cent of total Soviet wartime industrial production, although it must be admitted that even such a slim margin might prove crucial in a crisis situation. Fourth, the Soviets themselves cranked out all of the light as well as heavy high-quality weapons that made their success against the Wehrmacht possible.

Fifth, and probably most importantly, the much-publicized Lend-Lease aid to the USSR was to a large extent neutralized, and possibly even dwarfed, by the massive and very important aid provided to Nazi Germany not by the American state but by US corporations. But this US assistance to Hitler was unofficial, the public was unaware of it, and it has remained off the radar screens of most historians until the present day. Not surprisingly, the few historians who have drawn attention to it have been ignored by their mainstream colleagues and by the media. This story is too long and complex to be dealt with here, but it is essential to know that branch plants of US corporations such as Ford, GM, IBM, ITT, and Singer remained active in Germany before and even after Pearl Harbor; they cranked out trucks, airplanes, communications equipment, machine guns, and plenty of other martial equipment for use by the Nazi armed forces, and made a lot of money in the process.

In 1941, moreover, American oil firms and trusts were still delivering huge amounts of petroleum to Nazi Germany via neutral states such as Spain. The American share of Germany’s oil imports was in fact increasing rapidly; in the case of vitally important oil for engine lubrication, for example, from 44 per cent in July to no less than 94 per cent in September. The tens of thousands of Nazi planes, tanks, trucks, and other war machines involved in the invasion of the Soviet Union, many of them produced by US firms, were largely dependent on fuel supplied by American oil trusts. In view of the depletion of the stockpiles of petroleum products at that time, it is fair to say that the German Panzers would probably never have made it all the way to the outskirts of Moscow without fuel supplied by American oil trusts, as has been argued by the German historian Tobias Jersak. In light of this, the notion that US aid helped the Soviet Union to survive Barbarossa comes close to being laughable.

Hitler had code-named his attack on the Soviet Union after a medieval German emperor and crusader, Frederick I, known as Barbarossa, “Redbeard”. And he had opted to launch the attack on June 22, that is, the day after the summer solstice. Symbolically, these were two poor choices, conjuring up failure, defeat, and death. The Third Crusade, the one Barbarossa embarked upon, was far from successful and the emperor perished ingloriously while leading it, drowning while taking a bath in a river in Anatolia; and his body received a rather strange burial, with the skeleton, heart, and other parts ending up in different burial places in Outremer, the Middle-Eastern land of the crusaders’ enemies. As for June 22, that is the day when the sun’s annual trajectory, having reached a high point the previous day, the day of the summer solstice, takes a downward turn. Prior to the start of Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s sun had been rising steadily, and in the spring of 1941, after new victories in the Balkan, it had in fact reached what he believed was yet to come: its zenith; however, starting on June 22, it started to decline, slowly and almost invisibly at first, but perceptibly so after only a few months if not weeks. Hitler’s sun was to set slowly, but inexorably, and total darkness was to set in during the spring of 1945. To avoid being taken prisoner, Hitler committed suicide, and he ordered his body to be burned. However, the lack of fuel that would have been plentiful had Operation Barbarossa been successful, caused that job to be botched, and his corpse did not fare any better than that of Barbarossa. The charred remains were scraped together by the Soviets and shipped to Moscow. There, in the middle of the capital of the land of his archenemies, the Jerusalem of communism, he had looked forward to celebrating the success of Operation Barbarossa by overseeing a parade of German soldiers goose-stepping on Red Square. But as a result of the failure of his crusade, the few bits and pieces that were left of him, fragments of his jawbone and skull, ended up occupying a shoebox on a shelf in a Moscow archive.

*

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

Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels is author of Big Business and Hitler (Toronto, James Lorimer, 2015), The Myth of the Good War: America in the Second World War (second edition, Toronto, James Lorimer, 2017), and The Great Myths of Modern History (forthcoming).

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.

***

We citizens run the risk of accepting economic and social sanctions imposed on a country and/or its president as “normal” and “understandable” because they have been very popular for years and not a single shot is fired, not a missile is detonated and not a tank is set in motion. Information about their consequences is rarely given.

But sanctions are not an alternative to war, they are war – only by other means. They are invisible wars and perfect instruments of revenge. If we get used to accepting such things, there is nothing more we will not accept.

“The UN Sanctions Regime in Iraq.”

This is the subtitle of the book published in 2005 by Hans-C. Graf Sponeck: “Another War” (1). Hans von Sponeck was the UN coordinator in charge of the “Oil for Food” programme in Iraq from 1998 to 2000. In his book, he uses figures to prove the fatal consequences and the failure of the UN Security Council in its Iraq policy: increase in child mortality and illiteracy, inadequate food supply and non-functioning of important parts of the infrastructure.

In early 2000, von Sponeck resigned as head of the UN aid programme in protest against the genocidal Sanctions Regime. A short time later, I met him personally on a lecture tour in Switzerland and told him that as a German I was very proud when I learned of his honourable resignation. A long friendship developed with this humanly admirable German diplomat.

A completely different experience was the hair-raising answer of former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to a journalist’s question: on the TV show “60 Minutes” on 12 May 1996, Lesley Stahl asked the US Secretary of State:

“We’ve heard that half a million children have died (because of the sanctions on Iraq). I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And – tell me, is it worth the price?”.

Albright replied:

“I think it’s a very difficult decision, but the price – we think it’s worth the price.” (2)

Sanctions as the perfect instrument of revenge (3)

The years of sanctions against the Iraqi civilian population have inflicted serious economic, social and psychological wounds. The dramatic impoverishment of the population and the social and economic decline of the country were, according to experts, unprecedented in the history of the modern world (4). Desperate need and hopelessness kept the population in suspense and robbed them of the strength to rebel. Only the civilian population was affected by the sanctions. The regime of the then President Saddam Hussein got off scot-free. How are we to evaluate such a political punitive measure?

The sanctions against Iraq are only one example among many: The punitive measures against the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and the more recent ones against Venezuela, North Korea, Yemen or Syria are equally well remembered. In this context, it should be pointed out that the paralysis and partial destruction of state institutions opens the door to organised crime, i.e. it greatly promotes the rapid emergence of mafia structures and machinations.

Soon it will become clear what economic, social and psychological wounds the sanctions taken by the Western world under the leadership of the USA will inflict on the civilian population of Russia and to what extent the Russian president’s position of power will be shaken as a result? Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro – once himself a “victim” of US sanctions – strongly condemned the Western sanctions. In a newspaper article on 3 March, he described the punitive measures, including in the banking sector, as crimes against the Russian people and pleaded for diplomatic ways out of the crisis (5).

It is not yet clear what fatal effects the sanctions will have on the daily lives of the sanctioning countries: Experts are already warning of higher inflation rates, energy shortages and bottlenecks in the production and distribution of food.

*

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

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a retired rector, educationalist and graduate psychologist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes 

(1) Graf Sponeck, Hans C. (2005). Another war. The UN sanctions regime in Iraq. Hamburg

(2) https://www.heise.de/forum/Telepolis/Kommentare/Der-US-Putschvers…ter-irakischer-Kinder-sind-den-Preis-wert/posting-34033445/show/

(3) https://monde-diplomatique.de/artikel/!386433

(4) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/10-jahre-sanktionen-gegen-irak-wenn-ich-denke-werde-ich-verrueckt/156928.html

(5) https://de.rt.com/amerika/133072-venezuelas-prasident-nicolas-maduro-bezeichnet-sanktionen-als-verbrechen/

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

The  Video and text provides a factual review of developments on the ground.

***

As of March 3, the situation near Kharkiv remains difficult for both sides of the conflict. Russian units, that suffered losses in the previous days, do not seek to go deeper into the city. At the same time, they carry out targeted strikes on military facilities and hideouts of the Ukrainian military. On the night of March 3, Russian special operations forces continued their activities in the city, aimed at identifying the main defense nodes and eliminating the command staff. The encirclement of Kharkiv has not yet been carried out.

Mariupol remains blockaded by the joint forces of Russia and the DPR. Fighting is going on the outskirts of the city. The major assault has not started, but several clashes have taken place in the outskirts. No attempts of counter-offensive attacks by Ukrainian forces were reported.

Given the large number of military personnel and nationalistic fighters in the city, it will not be possible to take it quickly. However, Kyiv has no forces in the region to deblockade the city. The roads leading to Mariupol are cut off. On March 2, the DPR units closed the ring around Mariupol and took control over the settlements of Primorskoye, Priazovskoye, Shevchenko and Berdyansk.

DPR and Russia organized the evacuation of civilians and created a green corridor from Mariupol. However, the nationalist battalions, which are hiding in large numbers in residential areas, are in no hurry to let their ‘human shields’ go.

In Kyiv Region, Russian units continue their successful encirclement of the capital. Throughout March 2, there was fighting near Irpen. To the southwest of Irpen, there were battles for control over the Kiev-Zhytomyr highway. Russian troops encircling Kyiv from the southwest were spotted on the outskirts of Vasylkiv.

The Ukrainian military blew up a bridge in Baryshevka. This settlement is 10 km north of the Kiev-Boryspil-Poltava-Kharkiv highway. It can be assumed that Russian troops are close to this highway and that they are preparing an operation to intercept it with further advance to Boryspil.

In the direction of Mykolaiv, Russian units attempted to encircle the city in order to blockade it and get a passage to Odessa. On March 2, the Russians failed to cut off the Nikolaev-Krivoy Rog highway. On the same day, airborne troops allegedly landed from helicopters on the outskirts of Mykolaiv. The success of the operation as well as the objectives of the action are unclear.

Despite the fact that the main forces of Russia and the DPR were previously sent to break through to Mariupol, which ended yesterday with a complete encirclement, on March 2, Russian troops continued to strengthen their positions, moving north.

The Russian army took control over the town of Kamenka-Dneprovskoye and Vasilevka in Zaporizhia Region.

On March 1, it was announced that the Zaporozhye NPP, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, located in the city of Energodar, came under the control of Russian  forces in order to avoid provocations from Kyiv. However, local sources said that armed locals continue to block the road to the nuclear plant.

LPR forces continue their offensive north and northwest toward the junction with Russian units near Kharkiv. Meanwhile, Russian units took control of Balakleya and approached Izyum with further plans to advance toward Slavyansk.

As of March 3, the most threatening situation for the Ukrainian Armed Forces is developing in this theater of the military operation. Tens of thousands of servicemen may be completely surrounded.

DPR units are fighting positional battles to the West and Northwest of Donetsk. In this section of the front, DPR units act as an anvil, waiting for a hammer blow to the flanks of the largest grouping of Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine

On the one hand, the seventh day of the conflict demonstrated a certain tiredness of the advancing Russian troops. On the other hand, the Russian command seems to have taken into account the mistakes of the past days and the Russian offensive became a full-scale army operation rather than a cavalry special operation on the enemy’s rear. The morale and technical condition of the most combat-ready units of the Ukrainian military is deteriorating. Both Ukrainian servicemen and fighters of nationalist battalions in all eastern and southeastern parts of the front are surrendering.

*

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

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

Amid the abusive wave of sanctions against Russia due to the special operation in Ukraine, some specific rumors have caught the attention of experts, suggesting that there are plans on the part of the Western states to simply pressure to remove Russia’s permanent seat on the UN Security Council (UNSC). This kind of illegal maneuver is a real coup attempt and could lead to the end of the UN.

Apparently, an effort is under way to diplomatically isolate Moscow and even challenge Russia’s right to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, alleging that Russia took the seat of the former Soviet Union in 1991 without proper authorization – which in fact is nothing more than a public “justification” to promote such an illegal maneuver.

Currently, there are reports circulating on several websites alleging that Western diplomats, mainly American and British, are starting a research work to investigate whether there is a legal possibility of removing Russia from its position on the UNSC within the current international documents. Obviously, this type of “research” is useless and there is no possibility of carrying out this such a maneuver within the limits of public international law. In practice, when reporting that diplomats are investigating this kind of maneuver, it is only possible to conclude that they are somehow conspiring to carry out a coup against Moscow at the United Nations.

This absolutely absurd idea has become a common discourse in the Western media recently. This is due to the fact that the West has become furious with the Russian veto on the American resolution against the operation in Ukraine, voted on at the UNSC last week. Western political analysts began to say that “administrative reform” was needed at the UN to prevent “aggressor nations” from vetoing sanctions against themselves. Shortly thereafter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelesnky, during one of his online speeches, claimed that Kiev “demands” Russian removal from the Council, strengthening Western discourse.

Quite unexpectedly, diplomats seem to have paid attention to this utterly unrealistic idea suggested by Zelensky and some ideologically fanatical analysts, initiating the current plan, in which Western officials plan to form a legal argument about the “illegitimacy” of the Russian presence on the Council. It is expected that some document will soon emerge containing various distortions and arbitrary interpretations of the norms of international law, just in order to justify the idea of removing Russia.

It is questionable whether the analysts and diplomats involved in this type of maneuver are taking into account all the consequences of this attitude. This irresponsible, illegal, rude and anti-diplomatic act could simply generate the biggest crisis in international relations since the Second World War, directly threatening the stability of global peace.

The very existence of the UN will lose its meaning without the Russian presence in its Security Council, considering the country’s military and nuclear importance. If that happens, the Russian attitude may simply be to abandon the UN, as it will have become a mere pro-Western international organization. China would certainly take the Russian side in this dispute as it would also have its interests affected by the coup in the Security Council. Russia and China would perhaps form a new organization together. And that would be the end of the UN as the regulator of world peace. The UN would have the same end of its predecessor league and this is something that everyone wants to avoid – except the Western officials who are planning the coup against Russia.

Obviously, administrative reform is needed at the UN and until a few days ago there was a consensus on the need to expand the Security Council’s permanent seats, including new emerging states of geopolitical relevance, such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, among others. Trying to reduce the Council is absurd considering that the world is increasingly multipolar. This would be a mere attempt on the part of NATO to carry out a global coup d’état, but instead of controlling the world, it would only bring about the end of the UN.

It is necessary that good sense prevails in the UN, in order to such an illogical project to be promptly rejected, so that the organization survives. The attempt to “cancel” Russia cannot go beyond the limits of international law. It is essential that the main world powers are on the Security Council and that the most important of them have veto power to prevent the interests of one side from prevailing over those of the other. It is this structure that guarantees world peace. It is necessary to increase the permanent seats, giving this right to new world powers, adapting the UN’s structure to the multipolar world. Any attempt to the contrary threatens the very existence of the organization.

*

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

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

Featured image is from the UN/Mark Garten

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

“These people are not people we are used to… these people are Europeans.” – Kiril Petkov, Bulgarian Prime Minister, Associated Press, March 1, 2022

In the history of accepting refugees, countries have shown more than an erratic streak.  Universal human characteristics have often been overlooked in favour of the particular: race, cultural habits, religion.  Even immigration nations, such as the United States and Australia, have had their xenophobic twists and turns on the issue of who to accept, be they victims of pogroms, war crimes, genocide, or famine.

The Russian attack on Ukraine has already produced refugees in the hundreds of thousands.  By March 2, with the war one week old, 874,000 people were estimated to have left Ukraine.  The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that up to four million may leave, while the European Union adds a further three million to the figure.

This is already producing a growing capital of hypocrisy on the part of receiving states who have shown deep reluctance in accepting refugees of other backgrounds from other conflicts.  Tellingly, some of these conflicts have also been the noxious fruit of campaigns or interventions waged by Western states.

Refugees care for each other near Polish-border train station Przemyśl Główny (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

Offers of generosity – least to fair Ukrainians – are everywhere.  Poland, which will be a major recipient and country of passage for many Ukrainians, is showing ample consideration to the arrivals as they make their way across the border.  They find themselves playing moral priests of salvation.

A report from the UNHCR notes facilities at various border crossings stocked with “food, water, clothes, sleeping bags, shoes, blankets, nappies and sanitary products for people arriving with only what they can carry.”  Anna Dąbrowska, head of Homo Faber, notes the sentiment.  “Our two peoples have always had close relations… Of course, we help our neighbours!”

Such solidarity has been selective. Those of African and Middle Eastern background have faced rather different treatment at the border – if and when they have gotten there.  The number of accounts of obstructions and violence both within Ukraine and at the border, are growing.

Polish authorities have also been accused of explicitly targeting African students by refusing them entry in preference for Ukrainians, though the Polish Ambassador to the UN told the General Assembly on February 28 that this was “a complete lie and a terrible insult to us.”  According to Krzysztof Szczerski, as many as 125 nationalities have been admitted into Poland from Ukraine.

The sceptics have every reason to be doubtful.  Only last year, Minister of the Interior Mariusz Kamiński, and the National Defence Minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, gave a very different impression of welcome, suggesting that refugees of swarthier disposition – those from the Middle East, in particular – were immoral types tending towards bestiality.  Such arrivals were also accused of being weapons used by the Lukashenko regime in Belarus as part of a program of “hybrid warfare”.  President Adrzej Duda also signed a bill into law to construct what has been described as “a high-tech barrier on the border with Belarus to guard against an influx of irregular migrants.”

People in Warsaw take part in a protest rally on October 17 in solidarity with migrants who have been pushed back at Poland’s border with Belarus. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

It’s all well to accuse the Russians of disinformation, but Polish authorities have not been averse to sowing their own sordid variants, targeting vulnerable arrivals and demonising them in the process.  In 2021, those fleeing Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Yemen were left stranded by their hundreds in the freezing woods along the Polish-Belarusian border.  Eight individuals perished.

In this cruel farce of inhumanity, the European Union, along with Poland and the Baltic States, notably Lithuania, must shoulder the blame.  The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, has been openly calling Lukashenko’s fashioning of irregular arrivals as “a hybrid attack, a brutal attack, a violent attack and a shameful attack.” Doing so makes it easier to care less.

Globally, the war in Ukraine is now giving countries a chance to be very moral to the right type of refugee.  They are fleeing the ravages and viciousness of the Russian Bear, the bully of history; this is an opportunity to show more accommodating colours.  If nothing else, it also provides a distracting cover for the more brutal policies used against other, less desirable irregular arrivals.

This is a strategy that is working, with media outlets such as USA Today running amnesiac pieces claiming that Ukrainian families, in fighting “Putin’s murderous regime”, were engaged in a “battle … for life and death; there is no time for debates about political correctness.”

Countries in Western Europe are also showing a different face to those fleeing Ukraine.  The UK, which is seeking to adopt an Australian version of refugee processing – the use of distant offshore islands and third countries, lengthy detention spells and the frustrating of asylum claims – has now opened arms for 200,000 Ukrainian refugees.

Hungarian volunteers assisting refugees (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Distant Australia, whose participation in the illegal war against Iraq which produced refugees and asylum seekers that would eventually head towards the antipodes, is now offering to accept a higher intake of refugees from Ukraine and “fast track” their applications.  The same politicians speak approvingly of a system that imprisons asylum seekers and refugees indefinitely in Pacific outposts, promising to never resettle them in Australia.  The subtext here is that those sorts – the Behrouz Boochani-types – deserve it.

In the words of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC), “The Morrison Government has presided over the dismantling of Australia’s refugee intake, leaving Australia unable to adequately respond to emergencies”, with 2022 “marking the lowest refugee intake in nearly 50 years.”  True, the global pandemic did not aid matters, but COVID-19 did little in terms of seeing a precipitous decline in refugee places.  Australia’s refugee intake cap was lowered from 18,750 persons in 2018-2019 to 13,750 in 2020-2021.

The reduction of such places has taken place despite Canberra’s role in a range of conflicts that have fed the global refugee crisis.  Australia’s failure in Afghanistan, and its imperilling of hundreds of local translators and security personnel, only saw a half-hearted effort in opening the doors.  The effort was characterised by incompetence and poorly deployed resources.

The grim reality in refugee politics is that governments always make choices and show preferences.  “Talk of moving some applications ‘to the top of the pile’ pits the most vulnerable against each other,” opines the critical founder of the ASRC, Kon Karapanagiotidis. “This is a moral aberration and completely out of step with the Australian public.”

Sadly, the good people at the ASRC are misreading public sentiment.  This is an election year; accepting Ukrainian refugees will be seen as good politics, just as indefinitely detaining boat arrivals from impoverished and war-ravaged lands – many Muslim majority states affected by the policies of Western states – will continue to be praised.

*

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

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

Featured image: Ukrainian refugees arriving in Przemyśl in Poland (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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

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

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

***

Synopsis

by Barbara Ellis-Uchino

Nina, growing up in Belgrade, is a different kind of child – she prefers cleaning her parents’ apartment to playing with her younger sister and their friend. Nina cleans so thoroughly that she throws out all the socks her father leaves lying around the apartment – by tossing them off the balcony.

As young adults with good jobs, Nina, her sister, and their best friend enjoy the single life of Belgrade – until her sister marries at 29.

Many years later, Nina is in her 40s… That’s when she meets Filip. “Finally I would have a family of my own, just when everyone had written me off.” After a dismal “vacation” in Toronto in the winter, including an awkward dinner with his ex-wife Selena, they marry in her hometown, with 100 guests invited to the wedding.

Immediately after the wedding, Filip’s surprise new job takes him to Saudi Arabia. Nina is game, if wary. How, living in close quarters, will she adjust to Filip’s foibles? To the rules for women in this alien country? To the loneliness? Can she work? She cannot. And finally, will love win in their long-awaited marriage?

“If I lived in New York, I would have run to my shrink, lay down on the couch and told him this nightmare. I would feel better at once. Then I could meditate in Central Park with other stressed-out people struggling with difficult jobs, unpaid bills and loan payments, dissatisfied spouses, weeping (abandoned) lovers… but I lived in the Arabian Gulf and I had to be my own psychiatrist.”

Nina solves these problems by observing and writing about the men and women and the customs of Saudi Arabia, by dreaming about how to make the abaya a fashion statement, and most of all, by fantasizing that one day, she will fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a Manhattanite.

Nina turns her observations into a novel – Nina of Arabia. It is published to accolades, enabling her to make her dream of Manhattan come true. Faced with the realization that they could lose each other, as they quarrel often, Nina and Filip understand that what they have together is indeed true love. They move to Manhattan and throw a birthday party for all the family and friends who have supported them, both in their marriage and in the writing of the book. The novel ends (utterly believably) with success on every level.

What is it that you can find in the novel “Nina of Arabia“? And why would you be interested in her adventures at all? And who is this Nina, after all?

Moving from Europe to a different continent (Western Asia) in her early 40s, Nina finds herself momentarily without a clear direction in life, but her spirits are still up.

You will discover that it is her ‘karma’ to always be the second wife to her husbands (Alex and Filip). Why she craves marijuana while driving down Saudi highways.

How Donna Karan helped her to overcome the fashion trauma instigated by wearing the black abaya, but also how her Chinese neighbors, with whom she had hidden in the same bomb shelter, brought delight into her life.  How she coped with the fact that she had no children… Why she thinks that New York  is the capital of our planet – on what occasions she wears her lucky Calvin Klein panties. How often the ghost of Lawrence of Arabia haunts her – why she sometimes pities Saudi men (not women!). How she ended up sleeping in the same bed that Nicholas Cage once slept in. Why she thinks that her acquaintance with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson is inevitable and written in the stars. Why she is keen on Selena (a new friend) whom she had met under very strange circumstances in Canada. Why she believes that Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla are still friends up there, in Heaven. Why she sometimes longs to move to the Himalayas and live with the Hunza people. Why she had been persistent in inviting King Abdullah while he was alive to be her guest, and all the things she promised him… and much, much more.

My novel “Nina of Arabia” is being sold in three countries: Serbia (publisher: Mali Nemo); Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro (publisher: Nova knjiga).

The manuscript of my novel was translated into English by Alice Copple-Tošić and was then edited by Barbara Ellis-Uchino, who also wrote the synopsis.

My husband and I spent 10 years in Saudi Arabia, and that is where my novel originated, inspired primarily by my life in this Kingdom, but also by numerous travels that we took together.

Since I think that nothing in life happens ‘by accident’, therefore neither did my move to such a faraway and unknown country, it got me thinking: What is my purpose? Why did I, of all the countries in the world, have to move to this particular place? Since I had been one of the pioneers of the PR profession in Serbia, and had been writing for magazines in Serbia and Montenegro for years – writing presented itself as a natural choice, spurred on by a desire to chronicle the world around me.

Image on the right is from the author

“Nina of Arabia” is a modern fairytale and if you catch a glimpse of its magic world, you will discover why love is all around us. It will inspire you to observe your surroundings with hope and optimism.

Considering that societies around the world are founded on multiculturalism, I am sure that the target demographic for my novel will be broad, because my novel promotes these values.

I have written from my heart, with utter sincerity, hoping that readers who are members of my “energy tribe” and share my sensibility will recognize this. Here, I particularly mean women from 25 to 75 years old.

The novel “Nina of Arabia” could easily be adapted into a movie or a TV series script.

Therefore, I believe that Nina of Arabia, a century after the legendary Lawrence of Arabia, could reveal many unknown and interesting details about life in this Kingdom, and inspire people to turn their lives into a FAIRYTALE, regardless of where they live. Lawrence’s Arabia doesn’t exist anymore, and thanks to Nina, you will find out how much it has changed since the beginning of the 20^th century.

My novel has 243 pages, and is a work of literary fiction. The book that it could be likened to is Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson, or Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding.

*

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

Marina Bulatovic has been a member of the Independent Journalists’ Association of Serbia (NUNS) since 1998. Today, she is a freelance journalist and is working on a new novel, under the title “Happy Serbian New Year”.

Featured image is from Marina Bulatovic Barny/Facebook

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

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

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

***

Official data hidden within News Reports published by the New Zealand Ministry of Health has revealed that the fully vaccinated population account for the vast majority of Covid-19 hospitalisations in New Zealand, with some days seeing the triple/double jabbed account for 100% of people admitted to hospital.

The Expose – On the 16th Feb 22 the New Zealand Ministry of Health published a News Report containing information on Covid-19 Hospitalisations by vaccination status. In it they confirmed that of the current hospitalisations among the Northern Region, the unvaccinated population accounted for 2 hospitalisations, whilst the fully vaccinated accounted for 23 hospitalisations.

So we took a look back at previous news reports published by the New Zealand Ministry of Health to paint a picture on the current alleged Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the country.

These are the reports we analysed, dating back to 25th Jan 22.

The following chart shows the total number of Covid-19 hospitalisations by vaccination status each day in New Zealand between 25th Jan 22 and 16th Feb 22 –

As you can see, every single day has seen the fully vaccinated account for the vast majority of Covid-19 hospitalisations, and as of the 16th Feb 22 things look like they are getting progressively worse for the fully vaccinated but improving for the unvaccinated.

On the 25th Jan 22 just 6 people were hospitalised with Covid-19, with the fully vaccinated accounting for 5 hospitalisations, and the unvaccinated accounting for 1 hospitalisation. But by the 16th Feb 22, there were 25 people hospitalised with Covid-19, with the fully vaccinated accounting for 23 hospitalisations, and the unvaccinated population accounting for just 2 hospitalisations.

The following chart shows the percentage of Covid-19 hospitalisations by vaccination status in New Zealand between 25th Jan 22 and 16th Feb 22 –

Six of the 19 days have seen the fully vaccinated account for 100% of Covid-19 hospitalisations, this is despite approximately 79% of the New Zealand population being considered fully vaccinated.

The most recent 2 days of data has seen the fully vaccinated account for 90% of hospitalisations on the 15th Feb and 92% of hospitalisations on the 16th Feb 22.

The New Zealand Ministry of Health has refused to publish the number of Covid-19 deaths by vaccination status, but we think it’s plain to see by the very limited data they have quietly published on Covid-19 hospitalisations, that the country is very much in the midst of a Pandemic of the Fully Vaccinated, and it looks like Covid-19 vaccination has offered zero benefit in preventing hospitalisation.

In fact, from the numbers given it appears vaccination has made things worse.

*

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

And THAT’S why the US media and the government are so shocked and outraged.

The history of the world up until now has been one of peace.

Right?

I do seem to recall, though—so long ago it’s quite dim in memory—the US conducted war in Iraq more than once, and Afghanistan as well. And there was no outrage in the US press then.

And wasn’t there a US war in a place called Vietnam, or am I mistaken?

American journalists are now on wartime alert, fanning every flame of anti-Russian sentiment they can find.

And real red-blooded patriots should shout down and blot out anyone who dissents from absolute hatred of Russia.

Forget the fact that, for many years, the US government has been moving nuclear missiles closer to Russia. If more of those missiles were set up in the Ukraine, it would constitute an even greater threat.

Forget those moves, because they weren’t war. They were FOREIGN POLICY, which is quite different.

Americans aren’t supposed to think about that strange animal called foreign policy. It’s a subject every loyal patriot should make sure he never understands. It’s part of the patriot code.

For example, here is a secret piece of foreign policy carried out by a beloved President who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. You might remember him. Barack Obama. As you read the following details, make sure you don’t think they constituted WAR. There was absolutely no reason for the American press to report on them, or to stir up anti-war sentiment in the public.

The Guardian, January 9, 2017, “America dropped 26,171 bombs in 2016. What a bloody end to Obama’s reign,” by Medea Benjamin:

“…in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. This means that every day last year, the US military blasted combatants or civilians overseas with 72 bombs; that’s three bombs every hour, 24 hours a day.”

“While most of these air attacks were in Syria and Iraq, US bombs also rained down on people in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan. That’s seven majority-Muslim countries.”

“One bombing technique that President Obama championed is drone strikes. As drone-warrior-in-chief, he spread the use of drones outside the declared battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, mainly to Pakistan and Yemen. Obama authorized over 10 times more drone strikes than George W Bush, and automatically painted all males of military age in these regions as combatants, making them fair game for remote controlled killing.”

“President Obama has claimed that his overseas military adventures are legal under the 2001 and 2003 authorizations for the use of military force passed by Congress to go after al-Qaida. But today’s wars have little or nothing to do with those who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.”

“Given that drones account for only a small portion of the munitions dropped in the past eight years, the numbers of civilians killed by Obama’s bombs could be in the thousands. But we can’t know for sure as the administration, and the mainstream media, has been virtually silent about the civilian toll of the administration’s failed interventions.”

“In May 2013, I interrupted President Obama during his foreign policy address at the National Defense University. I had just returned from visiting the families of innocent people killed by US drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan, including the Rehman children who saw their grandmother blown to bits while in the field picking okra.”

“Speaking out on behalf of grieving families whose losses have never been acknowledged by the US government, I asked President Obama to apologize to them. As I was being dragged out, President Obama said: ‘The voice of that woman is worth paying attention to’.”

“Too bad he never did.”

Again, that was foreign policy, not war.

Shh. Don’t tell the children.

*

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

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Featured image is from Donbass Insider

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

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

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

Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

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

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

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

“I think it is the beginning of a new Cold War… I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way.” George F. Kennan (1904-2005), American diplomat and historian, (in an interview with Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times, May 2, 1998, about the U.S. expansion of NATO)

[NATO’s goal is] “to keep the Russians out [of Europe], the Americans in and the Germans down.”Hastings L. Ismay (1887-1965), first NATO Secretary-General (1952-1957)

“We [the State Department] have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.” Victoria Nuland (1961- ), Under Secretary at the State Department, in a speech, Dec. 13, 2013.

“The North Atlantic Alliance continues to expand, despite all our protests and concerns… Despite all that, in December 2021, we made yet another attempt to reach agreement with the United States and its allies on the principles of European security and NATO’s non-expansion. Our efforts were in vain… For the United States and its allies, it is a policy of containing Russia, with obvious geopolitical dividends. For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation.” Vladimir Putin (1952- ), Speech to the Nation, Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2022.

The tragic and illegal war of aggression launched by Russia (pop. 146 million) against Ukraine (pop. 44 million), its neighbor, on Thurs. February 24, 2022, has raised much emotion and many reactions in the West, and for good reasons.

Most people would much prefer that international conflicts between states be settled through diplomacy, or at the very least, through peaceful arbitration. Unfortunately for humanity, this is not yet the case. It is inadmissible that wars of aggression still rage today. In the end, it is ordinary people, the poor and the young, in particular, who end up paying, often with their lives, for the mistakes and failings of so called ‘leaders’.

At a time when weapons are increasingly lethal and destructive, it would appear that there is no longer any credible arbiter in the world to avoid military conflicts. This makes for dangerous times.

Therefore, several questions come to mind.

Will Europe, which was a large battlefield in the first half of the 20th Century, become embroiled in military conflicts again, in the 21st Century? Has the United States, which controls NATO, pushed that alliance’s expansion into Eastern Europe and Russia too far? Why do the institutions of peace that the world created after World War II seem to have withered away to the point of being incapable of preventing wars? Is it still possible to reform these institutions in order to prevent the world from falling back into the practices of past centuries?

Considering the complexity of today’s world and the divergent interests involved, it could be useful to identify the main reasons for the deterioration of international order over more than the last quarter of a century, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in December 1991.

• There is a clear danger of repeating the mistakes of the past in isolating countries from international life

The brinkmanship policy of isolating, humiliating and threatening foreign countries is a very dangerous approach in international relations. Such a policy, pursued against Germany by the French and other allied powers after World War I (1914-1918), through the imposition of heavy war reparation payments on Germany, is credited with having created the conditions that ultimately led to World War II (1939-1945).

Today, the world is again facing a European war between Russia and Ukraine, a war that should have been avoided, with a little more goodwill, leadership and perspicacity. Also, such a war of aggression illustrates very clearly how humanity risks returning to the geopolitical situation that prevailed before the Second World War.

It was a time when the League of Nations was paralyzed; much like the United Nations is today. It was also a time when major nations had been humiliated during the aftermath of World War I. They harbored resentment towards the victorious countries, which, in their eyes, only looked after their own narrow interests.

Let us remember that the United Nations was created in 1945 to prevent wars. But in the 21st Century, wars of aggression are still with us. Only during the past twenty years, the world has seen two major wars of aggression, both illegal under the U.N. Charter: the invasion of Iraq on March 20, 2003, by the United States and the invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24 of this year.

This may be an indication that the politico-legal system put in place in 1945 to prevent war is not working, at a time in human history when a war involving nuclear weapons could be more than catastrophic.

• The dangerous mentality prevailing today at the State and Defense Departments in the U.S.

Analysts and decision makers at the U.S. State Department and at the Pentagon rely on war games with simulations of military strategies of action-reaction, using computers, as if foreign policy were a kind of video game. That leaves little space for rational thinking, human feelings and imagination.

Relying on such ‘games’ is very dangerous because such a use of programmed computers could lead to huge mistakes in real life, and because they can make destructive military hostilities seem trivial and inconsequential.

• NATO as a substitute to the United Nations

After the fall of the USSR, in 1991, some so-called ‘planners’ in the American government saw an opportunity to place the U.S. government as the sole arbiter of international foreign relations in the post-Cold War world. They viewed the United Nations as a cumbersome body where five countries (USA, Russia, China, U.K. and France) held sway over the U.N. Security Council with their veto.

The idea was to rely on the ‘defensive’ NATO, created in 1949 to secure peace in Europe, with the goal of countering the threat posed then by the Soviet Union. It was believed, no doubt rightly, that NATO would be more favorable than the U.N. to U.S. interventions in the world. However, contrary to the U.N., NATO is a war machine, which has no legitimate mechanism to bring about peace.

Even though in the past the U.S. government has often had the backing of the United Nations for its interventions abroad, humanitarian as well as military—the Korean War (1950-1953) was a good example of the latter—things changed in 1999. Then, under President Bill Clinton, U.S. Armed Forces started a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, under the NATO flag, but without the authorization of the U.N. Security Council. This was a precedent.

Since that questionable decision, all U.S. military interventions abroad have been conducted under the cover of NATO, and not under the U.N. Charter. And that is where the world stands today.

• Why the beleaguered Russia is in a position similar to defeated Germany in the 1930’s

The shock of the fall of the Soviet Union was to Russia what the shock suffered after its defeat in the First World War was for Germany. In both cases, these involved large populations subjected to foreign interference, lasting several years. The interests of these two countries were ignored in the new international order.

The fall of the Soviet Union raised two fundamental questions. The first: What would become of the two military defense alliances, the Warsaw Pact of 1955 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of 1949? Both were organizations of mutual assistance, mainly military, against each other during a period of Cold War (1945-1989). The second: How to achieve the reunification of West Germany and the German Democratic Republic (GDR)?

From a geopolitical standpoint, these two questions were interrelated, especially from a Russian point of view. Russia conserves the historical memory of having been invaded by two great armies, by France under Napoleon, in 1812, and by Germany under Hitler, in 1941.

The fall of the Soviet Union meant the automatic dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Would the same be true of NATO? Not necessarily.

Indeed, for the U.S. government, NATO was its main source of influence in Western Europe. Containing the Soviet Union was not the only objective in creating NATO. Therefore, the George H.W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State, James Baker, had no intention of dismantling NATO.

On the Russian side, the position was that if NATO continued to exist, either as a defensive or an offensive military alliance, it was essential that it commit to not expanding into Eastern Europe and not threaten Russia.

Declassified documents show that the government of George H.W. Bush, through his Secretary of State James Baker, and the governments of major member nations of the alliance, were willing to promise the Russian government that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe, as long as the Russian government accepted the reunification of the two Germanys (1990-1991). History has recorded the colorful expression of James Baker, on February 9, 1990, to the effect that NATO would not expand “one inch Eastward”.

• The growing influence of neoconservatives (neocons) in U.S. foreign policy

American foreign policy changed dramatically in the 1990’s, notably under the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton (1993-2001), and even more so under the Republican administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009).

Even though President George H.W. Bush used to dismiss the neocons, at least those working in the U.S. government, as “the crazies in the basement” a small group of them did succeed in dominating American foreign policy later on. Their ideas provided the foundations of ‘The New American Empire’, (which is also the title of a book I wrote in 2004).

The neocon hegemonic mantra was very simple: The United States should take advantage of the demise of the Soviet Union and of its unparalleled military power to impose a “Pax Americana” similar to the Pax Romana during the Roman Empire.

In short, the United States must take advantage of its status as the undisputed military superpower in a unipolar world and adopt a very interventionist foreign policy, while putting emphasis on “national greatness”. And above all, they rejected any policy of accommodation or détente with Russia, just as they had done toward the USSR.

Armed with this doctrine, subsequent U.S. administrations, from the Bill Clinton administration on, have more or less followed its dictates. In particular, they have de facto abandoned the U.N. as the arbiter of world peace, and instead have increasingly relied on NATO to impose a Pax Americana.

• The coup that overthrew the Ukrainian government in 2014

There is an important event not to forget. In 2014, there was a coup in Ukraine that overthrew the pro-Russian government of President Viktor Yanukovych, elected four years earlier, with strong support from the Russian-speaking population in the eastern part of the country.

The above quote of American Under Secretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, would indicate that the U.S. government had spent billions of dollars to support various organizations in Ukraine.

In the fall of 2013, a protest movement called the ‘Maidan Revolution’ began peacefully in Kiev, the country’s capital. The protestations were directed against the Ukrainian government and its refusal to sign a bilateral commercial trade agreement with the European Union. However, things escalated when initially peaceful protests turned violent, in February 2014. Then, despite elections being scheduled for May of the same year, the Ukrainian parliament summarily dismissed the incumbent president and formed a new government.

That episode may help in understanding the future turn of events in Ukraine.

• The war between Russia and Ukraine is to a large extent a response to the progressive military encirclement of Russia by NATO

Since 1991, Russia has opposed NATO’s eastward expansion and has many times requested security guarantees that this would not happen.

Nevertheless, in spite of promises made by the George H.W. Bush administration and other governments, some subsequent U.S. administrations did go ahead and expand NATO eastward.

For instance, in 1999, the Clinton administration accepted that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic join NATO. In 2002, George W. Bush accepted seven more eastern countries (Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) into NATO. In 2009, it was Albania and Croatia’s turn to join. The most recent adhesions to NATO are Montenegro, in 2017, and North Macedonia, in 2020.

Things went even further when, in December 2014, the Ukrainian parliament voted to renounce its non-aligned status, a step harshly condemned by its neighbor Russia. Ukraine—a former Soviet republic, which became independent in 1991—has made it clear that it wishes to join NATO. And more recently, in 2021, Ukraine became an official candidate for NATO membership. The rest is history.

Conclusion

In these troubled times, an outside and independent moral authority should perhaps intervene to prevent the world from falling into the abyss of military conflicts. Possibly, an invitation could be made to either the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, or to Pope Francis, to serve as conciliator, in order to stop the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, before the Ukrainian people suffer irreparable loses, and before other countries intervene and turn the conflict into a world war.

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.

***

On incidents centering Ukraine, media reports said:

French President Emmanuel Macron thinks “the worst is yet to come” in Ukraine after talking with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

A senior French official said Macron’s warning came after the two leaders spoke for 90 minutes, which did not yield any diplomatic progress.

The official said Putin was determined to carry out the ongoing war in Ukraine until “the end.”

Putin also told Macron that Russia’s goals in Ukraine would be “fulfilled” and that the war was going “according to plan,” Reuters reported, citing a statement issued by the Kremlin.

Oil Prices Surge To Highest Level Since 2014

Global oil prices soared and U.S. stocks sank Tuesday.

Stocks fell as investors tried to measure how the conflict would impact the global economy. The S&P 500 dropped roughly 68 points, or 1.6%, to close at 4,306. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 598 points, or 1.8%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 1.6%. The declines add to the market’s losses after a two-month skid for the S&P 500.

The bigger moves came from the markets for oil, agricultural commodities and government bonds. Oil has been a key concern because Russia is one of the world’s largest energy producers. The latest bump in prices increases pressure on persistently high inflation that threatens households around the world.

U.S. benchmark crude oil jumped 8% to $103.41 per barrel, reaching the highest price since 2014. Brent crude, the international standard, surged 7.1% to $104.97.

The crisis in Ukraine prompted an extraordinary meeting of the International Energy Agency’s board, which resulted in all 31 member countries agreeing to release 60 million barrels of oil — half of which will come from the U.S.’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

President Joe Biden dipped into the SPR in November 2021, releasing 50 million barrels of oil at the time to tamp down high gas prices facing American consumers.

“Moving forward with the release reflects the magnitude of expected disruptions to global energy markets driven by sanctions on Russia,” Clayton Allen, director, and Raad Alkadiri, managing director of energy, climate & resources at Eurasia Group said. “Disruptions will also highlight the importance of U.S. domestic production,” the analysts said.

Europe remains highly exposed to Russia in some sectors, particularly energy,” analysts with TD Securities said in a report. “As the West rushes to sanction Russia, Europe is likely to feel the hit the hardest. This poses a typical stagflationary shock, and growth is likely to be lower, and inflation higher, than otherwise.”

Brent crude oil, the international benchmark, climbed to over $119 a barrel to a 10-year high on Thursday as the war in Ukraine continued to stoke supply concerns.

It briefly touched $119.30, its highest level since March 2012, before later retreating slightly meaning Brent has gained $20 in just a week since Russian troops pushed into Ukraine.

West Texas Intermediate was also trading above $115 on the day, its highest since 2008.

Earlier this week, the U.S., along with Japan and other major consumer nations, agreed to release 60 million barrels from their stockpiles in an attempt to stabilize global energy markets.

However, Russia’s key role as an exporter of oil and gas is driving more chaos in energy markets, while the region’s importance for other key commodities means panic is spreading through markets.

After the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, Russia is the third largest oil producer globally, and is also the world’s largest natural gas exporter.

“With Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies (OPEC+), refusing to respond to the sharp spike in oil prices by sticking to its 400,000 barrels per day increase in output in March and with the market unfazed by the IEA’s global crude reserve release, the geopolitical tensions look set to push oil prices higher with Brent crude on track to breach $120 or even $125 as the next major resistance hurdles,” Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, said.

Russian deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who attended the OPEC+ talks on Wednesday, said he hoped oil market volatility would ease and that Russian output was expected to reach pre-pandemic levels in May.

Benchmark European natural gas prices jumped as much as 20% to €198 per megawatt-hour on Thursday.

The Dutch April gas futures contract has gained more than 12% to €186 per megawatt hour, setting a new record, while the UK equivalent is also approaching the record high hit at the end of last year.

It is currently 8.3% higher at 426.9p per therm, not far from the all-time high of around 450p in December.

UK drivers are now facing record petrol and diesel prices amid soaring oil prices. February marked the fourth month of rising fuel prices with petrol and diesel both shooting up by £4.5p a liter to new record highs, according to RAC.

Energy analysts warn prices could even reach £1.60 a liter causing yet more pain for motorists with no end in sight.

“February was undoubtedly a shocking month for drivers. A rise of 4.5p in any month is bad enough but when it takes pump prices to record levels, it’s bound to hurt households across the UK,” said RAC fuel spokesman Simon Williams.

“Motorists are having to endure successive months of rising prices and, sadly, it doesn’t look as though February will be the last.”

‘Not Our War’: Gulf States Resist Pressure To Raise Oil Output

The oil-rich Gulf monarchies have so far resisted Western pressure to raise output, prioritizing their own strategic and economic interests.

The OPEC+, led by Riyadh and Moscow, failed Wednesday to respond to a call to produce more and faster, despite pressure on the Gulf states in particular.

The group argued that the “current volatility is not caused by changes in market fundamentals but by current geopolitical developments,” according to a press release.

“Gulf countries are testing their ability to have a strategic autonomy, to defend their own national interests,” Hasan Alhasan, a Middle East specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told AFP.

The Gulf countries, which had suffered from declines in oil prices since 2014, now seem all the more reluctant to take immediate action as they benefit from the short-term price surge.

If the barrel stays above $100, this will mean that none of the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries will face a budget deficit by 2022, wrote researcher Karen Young of the Washington-based Arab Gulf States Institute.

Amena Baker, an analyst with Energy Intelligence, said that according to OPEC+ “there is no physical shortage of crude in the market.

“The impact of the Western sanctions against Russia’s hydrocarbon exports is still unknown,” she told AFP.

Baker said the only two OPEC+ countries able to truly open the floodgates are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but that even they would be unable to make up for Russian exports.

“Overall our calculations put spare capacity of OPEC+ at 2.5 million barrels per day and that’s much less than what Russia exports. Russia’s exports are closer to 4.8 million bpd,” she said.

However, producing countries are aware that high prices risk depressing the global economy and accelerating the energy transition away from fossil fuels, at a time of fragile post-Covid recovery.

“What is most important for Saudi Arabia is oil price stability,” said Alhasan, who added that the kingdom counts on Russia’s cooperation in this.

The last time Saudi Arabia and Russia clashed over production quotas, it led to a price war and a collapse of prices, he recalled.

Baker agreed that “keeping Russia as part of OPEC+ is also seen as very important by member states … That’s the only way to ensure an effective market managing tool in the years to come.”

Alhasan said the pressure the U.S. has exerted on its close Gulf partners has been “limited” so far, adding that “we will see if the pressure will increase in the coming days”.

According to the analyst, the “Gulf countries have said: ‘This isn’t our war.’ A very similar message, by the way, to the one consistently sent by the U.S. to the Gulf states on Yemen over the past several years.”

Saudi Arabia and the UAE — close diplomatic and military partners of the United States — have intervened in Yemen since 2015 to support government forces against Huthi rebels, who are backed by Iran.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would like stepped-up support from Washington against the rebels, but the US has been reluctant to engage further in a conflict where all parties have been accused of war crimes.

The UAE hosts U.S. troops and has been a strategic partner to Washington for decades, but its ties with Russia have also been growing.

In its current role as holder of the UN Security Council’s rotating presidency, the UAE abstained last Friday from voting on a U.S.-Albanian draft resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

US-UAE relations now face a “stress test”, said Yousef al-Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to the U.S., but he voiced confidence that “we will get out of it and we will get to a better place”.

Volunteers Cross Polish Border Into Ukraine To Fight Russian Forces

Small groups of men were heading in the direction to fight the Russians.

Most appeared to be Ukrainian émigrés in their 20s and 30s, but some could also be heard speaking other languages. Many of the men had black tactical boots hanging from their duffle bags.

Judging by the license plates of the cars dropping them off at the crossing in this Polish border town, they had come from as far away as Italy and Germany.

Among those heading east into Ukraine was a man with a military bearing from Great Britain who identified himself only as Ian and said he was 62.

“I’m going to fight,” Ian told NBC News correspondent Jay Gray.

Then Ian walked up to the Ukrainian border guards, who looked him over, checked his papers and sent him to the left to join the other hard-eyed men waiting for a bus bound for the battle against the Russians.

Ian and the others were answering the call that embattled Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted on his website Sunday for “friends of peace and democracy” to join their new brigade, the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, and help them fight the Russians.

Zelenskyy said Thursday that some 16,000 foreigners have already joined the brigade, a number NBC News could not immediately confirm.

In France, the Ukrainian Embassy has been actively recruiting former soldiers to join the fight, and it set up a Facebook page with information and paperwork they would need to fill out, The New York Times reported.

More than 1 million Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have fled in the eight days since the Russians invaded their country, and the pace at which civilians have been crossing the border into Poland has been accelerating as the fighting has grown fiercer.

An army of Polish volunteers backed by relief workers from other countries has set up refugee aid centers in nearby cities, like Przemysl, an ancient city of some 61,000 people.

From there, Ukrainian refugees have been bused to major Polish cities like Warsaw, Krakow and Gdansk, as well as to Germany, Austria and even Denmark.

There have been outbursts of anger from Ukrainians frustrated by the bureaucracy on both sides of the border. And there have been allegations of racism lodged by Africans and Asians who had been living in Ukraine and who say their escape was delayed by Ukrainian border guards.

Rather than marching across the border, most of the escapees boarded buses provided by Poland’s national fire department on the Ukrainian side.

Russia Is Stopping Rocket Engine Sales To U.S., ‘Let them fly on their broomsticks’

Russia has stopped selling rocket engines to the US in response to sanctions, Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Thursday, Reuters reported.

“In a situation like this, we cannot supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I do not know what,” Rogozin said on state-run TV.

Rogozin claimed that since the 1990s, Russia had delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S., and 98 have been used. As part of the decision, Russia will stop servicing rocket engines, meaning that the 24 that are unused will be without the Russians’ assistance.

On Thursday, Roscosmos also announced that it will no longer collaborate with Germany on research at the International Space Station.

Dollar’s Weaponisation Threatens Its Global Dominance

The weaponisation of dollar-based global finance might pose long-term strategic and economic threats to the dominant position the US currency at present enjoys, according to an op-ed for The Hill by Vivekanand Jayakumar, an associate professor of economics at the University of Tampa in Florida.

He noted that the dollar-based global finance system, which has already been facing challenges from America’s spending policies and trade deficits, is now facing a threat of a China-Russia economic and strategic partnership. Jayakumar explained that China has long sought to replace the dollar as the reserve currency and now, seeing how the western nations can voluntarily cut a nation’s banks off SWIFT and slap them with sanctions, Beijing has all the more reason to promote renminbi and digital yuan abroad.

“Recent moves by the West to weaponise dollar-based international finance may yet provide the necessary spur for China to speed up measures to reduce its reliance on the US dollar and create an alternate global financial payments system”, Jayakumar wrote.

The professor noted that Beijing might grow cautious of the existing financial system and try to minimize its exposure to it, in case the situation around Taiwan – its breakaway province – escalates.

Jayakumar said that Beijing’s push for spreading digital yuan and to create alternative payment systems are part of China’s plan to deal with these potential issues. China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative will, in turn, broaden the acceptance of the Chinese currency, the professor said. He sees Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “inward-looking policies” and unwillingness to open its markets fully as the only barrier on this path (and the only hope for the US to maintain the dollar’s dominance).

“Any genuine moves to increase the global acceptance of the renminbi/digital yuan will require China to fully open its capital markets to foreigners. But such a step may not be in accordance with Xi’s dual-circulation economic strategy,” Jayakumar wrote.

The economist stressed that the dollar’s position is already undermined by the expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet, growing public debt and a “sizeable trade deficit” with China, which has grown over the past few years.

*

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

Featured image is from Countercurrents