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“Children are the world’s most valuable resource, and its best hope for the future”. – John F. Kennedy

What President Kennedy said over half a century ago, is more valid today than ever. This world needs a generation that can lead us out of the mess of dystopian values that was created predominantly by a western civilization of greed. The covid crisis, man-made, served the destruction of the world economy, as well as the ensuing World Economic Forum (WEF) designed “Great Reset”. If not stopped by our youth and coming generation, Covid cum Great Reset is about to give civilization the final blow.

However, the dark forces of the Global Cabal, the Deep State, has plunged humanity – all 193 UN member states at once, into a global catastrophe of epic proportions. To break that globalist spell and to get out of the disaster still unfolding, the world needs thinking people, courageous people, informed and awakened people; people who are not afraid to swim against the stream, to stem the ever-increasing flow of misinformation and government and media lies. It takes educated people. It takes people who dare to resist.

We are experiencing today just the contrary. The minute global elite that has taken a covid-stranglehold on the world’s 7.8 billion people, is doing everything to keep our children, the generations that are supposed to lead the world and humanity into a bright future, uneducated, scared, socially unfit to communicate, to take initiatives, to lead. Today’s youth is depressed by this constant fear propaganda, by the authorities (sic) rules of confinement, not being able to see their friends, to play with them, communicate with them, to do the healthiest social activities there are – exchanging ideas with peers, acquaintances and friends.

One might think, there is a purpose behind it all. Could it be, that this minute diabolical Globalist Cabal, those who are behind “The Great Reset”, co-authored by the WEF’s founder and CEO since the NGO’s creation in 1971, Klaus Schwab – could it be that these people have a plan, namely to leave the world to a generation of uneducated, fear-indoctrinated people, who are used to and have been trained to follow orders, obey authorities and believe their very leaders’ (sic) lies and fall for their manipulations?

Screenshot from weforum.org

It doesn’t take rocket science to believe that this could, indeed, be part of the Cabal’s “demonic” plan: breaking our society apart. Leaving behind no natural and new leaders to shape the world according to the real needs of the people, of our children – not the imposed “needs” of an egocentric dictatorial cabal.

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In a new book (in German), “Generation Mask – Corona: Fear and Challenge” (Generation Maske – Corona: Angst und Herausforderung), the immunologist and toxicologist Professor Stefan W. Hockertz illustrates the plight of our children in this artificially induced age of corona. He asks in particular the question, what does this pandemic – better called plandemic – do with our children and adolescents?

They are being flooded by autocratic measures they do not understand, like being forced to cover their faces by wearing masks in school, it’s like a forced-hiding of their identity from their friends and peers; being obliged to follow strict rules of social distancing – don’t get close to your friend, for the protection of your health, you need a distance to your friend, you can no longer freely communicate, and even if you could, due to the covered face, you could not read your friends facial expressions – which is key to any useful conversation, between kids as well as adults.

Our kids in the west are being fear-induced and permanently indoctrinated, by radio, TV-broadcasts, by permanently having to listen to “case” figures, infections, hospitalizations and death rates. Never mind, that most of these figures are false or distorted, made even more meaningless by absurdly obsessive testing-testing-testing.

To crown it all off – newspapers and magazines depict pictures of coffins, not one or two, but hundreds, mass graves – they are utterly disturbing for adults, let alone for children – fear is being weaponized and replaced by more fear – followed by depression, the perspective of no future — and often and ever more frequently ending in suicide, children’s, adolescents’ suicides are skyrocketing.

Children who are the least vulnerable to the covid disease, are forced into mass-testing, entire communities, by order of the mayor or the governor – all the way to kindergarten. Testing with hurtful nasal swaps, as often as once or twice a month, and if positive – high percentages of these PCR tests – so far, the only covid test method available in the west – are false positives.

The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test is a technique used to “amplify” small segments of DNA. If over-amplified, the test results become positive, false positives. Maybe there is a purpose for over-amplifying – increasing the “case figures”, justifying more repression. If one kid tests positive in one of the periodic school tests – the entire class is ordered into quarantine, schooling from home, via computer, Skype, Zoom.

That’s in the wealthy west. What about in the Global South, where not everybody can afford the necessary electronic equipment for “home-schooling”? – There will simply be no schooling, no learning – no interchange with classmates. No education.

Testing is traumatic, especially for young children. It is hurtful and scares a kid on several levels, physically – a swap-stick deep into the upper nose, into the sinus cavities, is hurtful and can be even traumatic for children; – and psychologically, what if I’m positive? “All my school mates and teachers have to stay home because of me”; or “I could infect my parents and frail grand-parents”.

Guilt is everywhere. Guilt is like fear. It makes people pliable, manipulable – takes all initiative and enthusiasm for life away.

For many kids – this continuous repression makes them aggressive, frustrated and eventually so depressed, that many see no way out – as they see no future in their lives. They are crying from despair, crying from fear, crying from isolation – crying for not being able to congregate with their friends, classmates and peers – and crying for seeing no way out.

What is being done to our children is inhuman. The unilateral, viciously applied repressive measures of confinement, not being able to physically go to school and mix and exchange with friends is destructive. It may leave a deep dent in the social and psychological fabric and subsequent behavior of this future post-covid generation.

No doubt, with a few exceptions, most of the 193 UN member countries applying the same oppressive rules, are aware of what they are doing. They know what and why they are doing what they are doing. They are in complicity and in one way or another corrupted and perhaps coerced to adhere to the dictate from “above” – or else, if they don’t follow the ruling narrative. Yet, with a minimum of integrity of our leaders, this would not be happening.

First, they destroy the world’s economy in proportions never seen in recent history,

then they destroy our future generations – so there are no flag-bearers of a new generation into a bright future, once we, our children’s parents, have disappeared out. Our children are being primed as slaves for a minute diabolical elite, to become transhumans for the Great Reset.

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In his book, Dr. Stefan Hockhertz articulates these concerns and worries of the children, for parents, teachers and authorities to understand them. With the objective of stemming against this catastrophically oppressive trend, Dr. Hockhertz also uses the book to uncover lies and manipulations of governments and the media.

He corrects false information and outright lies, but also invites to a dialogue for bringing about more objectivity and less dictatorial rules. After all, this is not a deadly pandemic, but has developed into a plandemic – where clearly a set of different, societally harmful objectives is being played out – and relentlessly pursued.

As an immunologist and toxicologist, Dr. Hockhertz also corrects the highly propagated alleged over-fatality and informs about the dangers of the “vaccines”, especially the RNA-based inoculations. He warns against these vaccines – which, in fact, are no vaccines, but rather gene-therapy injections. They have not been sufficiently researched and tested to be considered safe. To the contrary, primary inoculation results are disastrous in terms of serious side effects and death rates. And this only after less than six months into a worldwide vaccination campaign.

See also Dr. J. Bart Classen’s January 18, 2021 peer-reviewed Research Paper “COVID-19 RNA Based Vaccines and the Risk of Prion Disease”, written for the SCIVISION Publication “Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ISSN 2639-9458) – (see this).

The paper points to the potential medium- to long-term disabling neurological effects, especially degenerative diseases, that may be linked o RNA-based inoculations. This would be disastrous for children. Entire generations could be wiped out, so to speak.

We must not allow this to happen. We must listen to our children’s grief. We must clear the path for a bright future for our children, for our successor generation and for the future of humanity.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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.

Featured image is by Xavier Donat

Biden Does Not Say Where and How ‘America Is Back’

March 4th, 2021 by Michael Jansen

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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US President Joe Biden insists, “America is back.” He says the US has returned to the world stage as a prominent actor and leader after four years of absence and wrong-headed policies adopted by the Trump administration. But, Biden does not say where and how “America is back.”

America is certainly not back to generating the hopes raised by the advent of the Obama-Biden administration in early 2009. As the first black US president, Barack Obama promised and was expected to deliver on his promises, particularly to this region and the wider Muslim world. On January 22, 2009, two days after his inauguration, Obama appointed former Senator George Mitchell as special envoy for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. Mitchell was a highly significant choice, as he must have been the first senior level figure with Lebanese background to be selected to broker a deal. As the man who made his name as a peacemaker in the successful Northern Ireland peace process, he was told to get to the area “as soon as possible” to relaunch negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. Obama followed up his appointment with an interview with Al Arabiya television on January 26, in which he expressed optimism over the possibility of a settlement between Palestinians and Israelis.

Obama met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on May 19 to urge freezing Israeli colonisation and a deal based on the “two-state solution” involving the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Obama recommitted the US to this goal and reiterated his demand for a halt to Israeli colonisation during his encounter with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on May 28.

On June 4, Obama made history by delivering a speech at Cairo University in which he called for the creation of a Palestinian state, an end to Israeli colonisation of Palestinian lands, and negotiations with Iran.  Obama’s aim was to reset relations with the Muslim world and “communicate that the Americans are not your enemy”.

Obama failed miserably on the Palestinian front due to Israeli intransigence. He also failed to convince Muslims of US goodwill. But, he did launch negotiations with Iran which culminated in the signing in 2015 of the landmark agreement providing for curbing Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for lifting punitive sanctions.

Biden has, so far, done nothing on the Palestinian front but to promise to renew humanitarian funding cancelled by Donald Trump without committing to sums and delivering cash, and he is making a mess of dealings with Iran over the nuclear programme abandoned by Trump in 2018.

During his election campaign, Biden repeatedly vowed to return to the Iran nuclear deal, Obama’s chief foreign policy success.  As his vice president, Biden was involved in the effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table and secure its adherence to an agreement which was win-win for all concerned. As soon as he took office, Biden should have promptly signed an executive order for US reentry to the deal, as he did to rejoin the Paris climate accord, from which Trump also withdrew the US. By taking urgent action, Biden would have preempted efforts by members of his own administration to stall reentry and by pro-Israeli lobby groups and legislators to block the return of the US.  Biden failed this test, putting the nuclear accord at great risk.

During his election campaign, Biden repeatedly vowed to return to the Iran nuclear deal, Obama’s chief foreign policy success. As his vice president, Biden was involved in the effort to bring Iran to the negotiating table and secure its adherence to an agreement which was win-win for all concerned. As soon as he took office, Biden should have promptly signed an executive order for US re-entry to the dea, as he did to rejoin the Paris climate accord, from which Trump also withdrew the US. By taking urgent action, Biden would have pre-empted efforts by members of his own administration to stall reentry and by pro-Israeli lobby groups and legislators to block the return of the US.  Biden failed this test, putting the nuclear accord at great risk.

First and foremost, Biden and his senior aides insist that Iran should be first to return to comppliance with the terms of the accord by halting uranium enrichment to levels above 3.67 per cent purity, dispose of its stocks of enriched uranium above the amount permitted, warehouse advanced centrifuges banned by the deal, and allow UN inspectors to continue conducting snap inspections of undeclared installations and sites.

Iran has, quite rightly, responded by arguing that since Trump walked away from the deal, Biden should first return he US to compliance by rejoining the deal and lifting sanctions imposed by Trump. Tehran was in full compliance when Trump withdrew and continued to comply for 14 months before resorting to retaliation. Iraq insists that it has taken such action in line with Article 36 of the accord which allows it to reduce compliance if one or more signatories  do not comply.

While Biden has stuck to his demand that Tehran should be first, he was offered a face-saving proposal by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif who, on February 1, suggested that the two sides should ask the European Union Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell to create a mechanism which would enable Iran and the US to return to the deal simultaneously. Although this amounted to a serious concession by Tehran, Zarif’s proposition was ignored by the US and its allies, the three Western European signatories of the deal, Britain, France and Germany.

Instead, the Europeans proposed an informal meeting of all seven signatories of the deal, including themselves, the US, Iran, Russia and China, to discuss compliance. The US accepted but, following days of deliberation, Iran rejected the invitation.

Iran’s refusal came after the US conducted air raids in eastern Syria on pro-Iranian Iraqi Shia militia factions. Washington claims the bombings, Biden’s first, were in retaliation for recent rocket attacks on Iraqi bases hosting US forces and Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone where the US embassy is located. US Defence Secretary LLoyd Austin justified targeting fighters in Syria by saying they belong to the same groups attacking US forces and personnel in Iraq. The Pentagon chose to hit in Syria because strikes in Iraq would increase pressure on Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi from powerful Shia militia commanders and politicians to order the full withdrawal of US forces from that country.

War-torn Syria has become a free-fire zone where anyone can bomb without worrying about criticism or consequences. Israel has been lobbing missiles into Syria on a weekly basis without interference or comment by Biden or his administration.

The administration has added insult to injury by submiting a complaint against Iran to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Organisation (IAEA), currently meeting in Vienna. Although the US is responsible for the crisis over the nuclear accord, the administration accuses Iran of non-compliance and of refusing to explain particles of enriched uranium found by IAEA inspectors in undeclared locations. Since censure of Iran by the IAEA could torpedo the accord, Biden is playing a dangerous game which can only roil this unstable region if the US and Iran do not return to full compliance with the nuclear deal. “America is back!” Indeed. Back to traditional bad behaviour.

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Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)

Hugo Chávez’s Legacy: Unity and Anti-imperialism

March 4th, 2021 by Nino Pagliccia

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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This March many remember Hugo Chávez. He passed away eight years ago. It is a very short time when measured in terms of the fresh memories we have of him. He is remembered as the Comandante, Comandante Supremo, creator of the Bolivarian Revolution, founder of the Fifth Republic. He has been the architect of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, of which he was president from 1999 to 2013, and one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.

Some, interpreting his own words on August 5, 1999, believe he was the reincarnation of Simón Bolívar, not in a metaphysical sense, but in an ideological sense. During the first session of the National Constituent Assembly that produced the 1999 Constitution, he said:

When we ask in Venezuela today, where does this revolution come from? We inevitably have to fall back into the figure and time, and in the Bolivarian context when the first republics that arose in that Venezuelan land were born. ‘It is Bolívar,’ Neruda said, ‘who wakes up every 100 years’: but Neruda, who was a revolutionary, assimilated Bolívar’s awakening with the awakening of the people. He wakes up every 100 years, when the people wake up. This is where this revolution comes from.”

But many believe he is still among us in terms of his legacy. There is no aspect of human development, political leadership, ideological renovation and geopolitical impact that Chávez has not influenced in some noticeable way.

Venezuela today is the epicenter of a revolutionary movement that wants to establish a different political paradigm for Latin America; a paradigm with an autochthonous ideology with historical and cultural elements, not only repeating the past, but also adding new elements and experiences from the global context of our era. Chávez called this new paradigm Socialism of the 21st Century.

His generosity of thinking made it implicit that he was not offering a final worked out theory or ideology. Chávez only indicated the path towards a just society. His path had clear landmarks leading in the correct direction such as independence, sovereignty, justice, peace, UNITY, democracy, popular power, ANTI-IMPERIALISM. Some he marked in capital letters, in a figure of speech. But the work had to be done with the involvement of all Venezuelans as protagonists, as builders of their just society.

What Chávez unmistakably provided was a solid foundation on which to build that society. A foundation that would reunite Venezuelans and Latin-Americans to their historical roots, and with that it would be able to resist the US endless imperial hybrid warfare. He was well aware of Simón Bolívar’s famous statement, “The United States seems to have been created by Providence to plague [Latin] America with misery in the name of freedom”. Chávez offered “Bolivarianism” as the antidote to the plague.

Perhaps the two words of which we are often defensive, Bolivarian Revolution, capture Chávez’s full legacy when we look at the core of their meaning.

The word Bolivarian” revives the independence values ​​of the 19th century based on the integrationist vision of Simón Bolívar, the idea of ​​civic-military unity of Ezequiel Zamora, and the liberating popular education of Simón Rodríguez, who was the mentor of Simón Bolívar. Hugo Chávez took from them his own vision of building the Bolivarian Patria Grande (Great Homeland) based on the original principles of sovereignty and independence, with the people as protagonists. Recalling in an interview the founding of the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement in 1982, the forerunner of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Chávez said: That was what we were pursuing, a revolution, a political, social, economic and cultural transformation inspired in the proposition of Bolívar [Zamora and Rodriguez]. This is how we designed what we have called the ‘tree with the three roots’, which is our ideological source.

These historical roots are what make us identify the Venezuelan political phenomenon, with nationalistic and patriotic characteristics, as “Bolivarianism.”

However, in the expression “Bolivarian Revolution”, it is the word “Revolution” that identifies the “tree with three roots” or the “ideological source” of Bolivarianism. It is the word Revolution that is associated with Chavismo. But Chavismo is a projection of Bolivarianism into the future. It is a growing entity that is inevitably shaped by the political environment and the global context at every single point in time.

Chavismo with its Bolivarian roots is what is known as the Bolivarian Revolution. These two words cannot be separated without irremediably losing its original meaning. The tree cannot be separated from the roots without losing the harvest of its fruits.

In the span of eight years since the death of Hugo Chávez Venezuela has undergone one of the most severe economic warfare launched by the US with criminal coercive measures that are crippling the Venezuelan economic system. But Chávez’s legacy as he originally offered it still stands today. His legacy included his trust in the Venezuelan people and his political successor, Nicolás Maduro. Venezuela owes it to the Maduro government and the Venezuelan people to hold on to his legacy at any cost because the Bolivarian project has not been completed, and it will not be completed unless all are on board.

Imperialism is seeking to create cracks in the Bolivarian Revolution at the slightest sign of weakness. This is the time to pay attention to Chávez’s landmarks. Two in particular: UNITY and ANTI-IMPERIALISM, and follow the compas that points to socialism. If the road is blocked, a detour may be necessary that will rejoin the main path. This is not the time to enter the dangerous political maze of doubts and blames. And it is never the time to be divided. The Bolivarian Revolution cannot die. The price of losing the Bolivarian Revolution is too high.

As Fidel once said, “History tells us that a defeated revolution must pay the victors in blood.”

Perhaps Hugo Chávez meant to give us another message with his image of the tree with three roots. A tree resists the impacts of stormy winds by bending before returning to its straight position, otherwise it snaps and dies.

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Nino Pagliccia is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from EFE/Miguel Gutierrez

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The forty years of the Cold War have made us endure hunger, fear and hopelessness.

The year old pandemic has made us desperate and vulnerable. Now, we are facing a new global threat, namely the Sino-American hot war which may mean the end the human civilization.  

These are the three post-WWII era mega crises. These crises have different causes, but one of the most important causes is the selection of wrong leaders who make wrong judgments and execute misleading decisions because of their political debts, personal interests, unrealistic ambitions and corruption.

Therefore, the only way to prevent mega crises is the proactive participation of ordinary people in policy decisions. The virtue of ordinary people’s proactive participation has been shown in South Korea. The South Korea’s success in the anti-COVID war was possible because of President Moon Jae-in’s inspiring leadership and ordinary Koreans’ enthusiastic proactive participation.

The present paper has the following messages.

First, Washington is prepared to undertake a shooting war, if China continues to threaten its global interests. As for China, it is too big and too strong to go back; it will increasingly assert itself either for bargaining purpose or preparing for the hot war. In other words, the shooting war is very possible.

Second, Washington tries to avoid the shooting war, if possible, because it is costly.

Third, Washington will try to subjugate China through China taming (bashing) operation. China bashing will likely to fail.

Fourth, since China bashing is likely to fail, Washington may choose the shooting war as the solution.

Fifth, since Washington cannot succeed with China bashing and since the shooting war is too costly, the wise alternative approach is its cooperative and productive coexistence with China.

Sixth, China should make it clear that it has no ambition to replace the U.S. as global hegemonic power on the one hand and, on the other, try to harmonize its regime with the American regime.

Before we get into the main body of the paper, I thought I should say a few words on the current scholarly debate on the possible Sino-American shooting war. There are those who claim the possibility of shooting war, while there are those who argue that the shooting war can be avoided.

For instance, Graham Allison, in his book “Destined for War” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2017), claims that Sino-American shooting war is a real possibility. Allison explains that when a new power challenges the existing one, the shooting war has been the rule rather than exception. The rival powers fall into complex and complicated dynamics of hostile relations that leads to the hot war. Allison calls this dynamics as “Thucydides Trap” referring to ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, who wrote about the war between Athena (new power) and Sparta (existing power).

According to Allison, in the world, there have been nineteen Thucydides traps of which only three avoided the shooting war, one of which was the rivalry between the U.S. and the British Empire.

On their part, Fena Zhang and Richard Ned LeBow in their book “Taming Sino-American Rivalry” (Oxford University Press: 2020) argue that the shooting war between the U.S. and China can be avoided through persuasion and diplomacy. Moreover, these authors make an important point that the probability of the shooting war depends also on leader’s wisdom and leadership quality.

This paper discusses two types of China bashing: the ideological bashing and the economic bashing.

Ideological China Bashing 

There are those who describe the U.S.-China conflict as civilization clash. However, a closer look at the history of Washington-Beijing relations shows that this view is only partially true. During the era of the Cold War (1950-1990) the Washington-Beijing relation was cordial, friendly and even cooperative.

In 1970, Richard Nixon went to see Mao Zedong and he was successful in normalizing the bilateral diplomatic relations in 1979. What made these countries to cooperate was the threat of the Soviet Union which was the common enemy of both countries. Since the opening of China by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the Sino-American relations were not hostile, even cordial.  George W. Bush was hostile to the Chinese politico-economic regime, because it was not a Christianity-based regime. But, the 911 tragedy made him to cooperate with China to fight against international terrorism. This shows that Washington does cooperate with Beijing when it is necessary

True, under Barack Obama, the Sino-American relations were more hostile and belligerent, but this had little to do ideology; it was rather the friction attributable to Beijing’s militarization of the South China Sea and Washington’s China containment strategy.

However, under Donald Trump, the Chinese regime has become one of the chief components of Washington’s China demonization.

In the post-CIVID era, the ideological conflict may become more serious, if China’s assertiveness intensifies and if Washington’s hegemonic status is compromised. The Washington’s establishment will argue that the Chinese socialism with Chinese characteristics will threaten Washington’s politico-economic regime. Therefore, China should be induced – even forced – to change its present regime and adopt the American regime. The question is: “Will China do it?”

I argue that China will never adopt the so-called “Washington democracy” or capitalism for two reasons. One is the very philosophical foundation of the Chinese system and the other is the weakness of American system.

China cannot escape from thousands-year old philosophical and religious traditions.

The Chinese system of thoughts has been formed by Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

Confucius statue, Shanghai

These three systems of thoughts seem to have provided the philosophical foundation of Chinese politico-economic system, namely, pragmatism, harmonious social order.

The Chinese pragmatism is largely inspired by Taoist notion of relative truth. According to Taoism, the universe is governed by the harmonious co-existence of the positive energy (yang) and the negative energy (Um). There is nothing absolute; there is no absolute truth; everything is relative. This way of thinking has provided the justification of Chinese pragmatism. This is a sharp contrast to the philosophical and religious tradition of the West which highly values the dichotomy of bad-good and the exclusive absolute truth. As a result, the Western politico-economic regime is dogmatic and exclusive.

The importance of harmony is another Chinese philosophical tradition. Taoism as well as Buddhism highly value harmony through compassion, humility and frugality in human relations including interpersonal relations, the ruler-ruled relations and inter-government relations.

The third element of Chinese way of thinking attaches paramount importance to the hierarchical social order. The hierarchical social order derives from collectivism requiring the subordination of personal interests to those of the collective entity such as family and the country. However, such social order is possible only through harmonious social relations made possible by obedience. This notion of harmonious hierarchical social order comes from the teaching of Confucius.

The combination of pragmatism, value relativism and harmonious social order explain the pragmatic nature of Chinese socialism à la Chinoise (Chinese way) where the political system is socialism ruled by the Communist Party in which the ruler-ruled relations are Confucian relations in which the ruler “looks after the citizens” with paternalistic love and the citizens obey ruler for the good of the country. It appears that this system will not change easily even in the long run, because it is very soul of the Chinese people; it is a part of Chinese DNA. It is about the time that Washington establishment stops demonizing China for its regime.

There is another reason for China’s reluctance of adopting American democracy. In the eyes of Chinese opinion leaders, American democracy is a failure, because it is unable to solve racism, human right violation, mass killing on the streets, starving children, the worsening income distribution and rising poverty. It is possible that the Chinese people think that their hybrid politico-economic regime is not inferior to the American system.

There is another worry for Washington; it is the alleged danger of the propagation of  “Chinese socialism”. This is a big surprise to me. Is the American regime is so weak that it is threatened by the Chinese regime? But, China has no intention of making its regime a politico-economic gospel and spread in Asia and throughout the world. Even if China wanted it, it has to confront the objection by Asian countries including ASEAN countries and South Korea. These countries are not what they were in the 19th century. They are no longer Chinese tributary countries; they are prosperous and they can defend themselves.

As for the Chinese relations with Washington, Xi Jinping made it clear that China wanted to coexist peacefully with Washington. Xi Jinping said this:

“The vast Pacific Ocean must have enough space to accommodate both China and the United States.” (quoted by Zhand-Le Bow, p.111)

The implication of the foregoing analysis is that Washington should give up the ambition of making China to adopt American democracy and the neo-liberal capitalism. Moreover, it is about the time to stop the demonization of China by the fabrication of the danger of global domination of Chinese regime. There is no danger of “Yellow Peril.” The more productive approach of Washington’s China policy would be one of peaceful and cooperative coexistence.

This is precisely what Xi wants. On June 7-8, 2013, at the shirtless talk with Barack Obama at the Sunnylands Estate in California, Xi Jinping (left) proposed a new inter-super power relations based on no conflict, no confrontation, mutual respect and win-win relations. This is important to remember this. China has no ambition of replace the U.S. as the master of the world; even if it wanted, it cannot. So, Biden should stop ideological China bashing.

 

Economic China Bashing 

The fundamental objective of Washington’s strategy of economic war is to prevent Chinese economy from catching up the American economy. Washington’s strategy consists in preventing the Chinese economy from growing faster than the American economy. To do this, Chinese economy should be made less productive, while the American economy should be made more productive. The economic war can takes place in three areas of economic activities: the demand for goods (and services), the supply of goods and the economic regime change.

Demand-side Strategy

The demand-side strategy involves the measures designed to increase the country’s domestic and foreign demand on the one hand and, on the other, debilitate the rival country’s foreign demand and domestic demand.

The American domestic demand had been falling even before the pandemic because of the lopsided income distribution caused by pro-business neoliberal government policies. Moreover, the prolonged pandemic has given the coup de grâce to the domestic demand. The pandemic has totally destroyed the SMEs that are the creators of jobs and the sources of the income of the ordinary Americans. For China, the early removal of lockdown has made possible the early revival of the economy. As a result, as far as the domestic demand is concerned, China is doing better than the U.S.

China’s foreign demand for goods involved in the Sino-American economic war is its exports of goods to the U.S. In 2019, its value was USD 360 billion.

On the other hand, American foreign demand is its exports to China; its value was USD 110 billion. This means that China’s dependence on the American market is 3.17, while the American dependence of the Chinese market is 0.67. In other words, as far as the foreign demand is concerned, China is more vulnerable than the U.S. However, China can increase more easily its foreign demand than the U.S. because China can diversify its exports partners by exporting more to developing countries. As for Washington, its main trade partners being developed countries, its capacity to diversify its trade partners may not be easy. It is to be noticed that, in 2021, the GDP growth rate for developing countries will be 7.4% as against 5.4% for developed countries. This may make the diversification of Chinese exports more effective.

The outcome of the demand-side Sino-American battle is not clear cut, but one thing sure is that the U.S. will not be the winner.

Supply-side Strategy

The supply-side strategy consists in expanding the country’s production capacity and reducing that of the rival country. The production capacity is determined in function of the supply of production factors such as labour, capital, technology, knowledge, and entrepreneurship as well as the number of firms producing goods and services.

For the time being, the U.S. seems to have, relatively speaking, more weapons in hand. First, Washington may continue to re-shore American firms in China. But the possibility is not great. In fact according to a recent survey results announced by American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai on September 9, 2020 as many as 92% pf American firms in China will remain in China despite the pandemic and the Sino-American trade war. This is understandable, because the cost of re-shoring and resettlement could be high.

The second weapon Washington has is more effective. Its objective is the prevention of the transfer of American knowledge and technology to China. The ammunitions include the reduction of the number of the Chinese students in the U.S., the restriction of the activities of U.S.- based Chinese media, the penal punishment of the theft of technologies, the sanctions against American firms selling technologies to Chinese forms, the creation of a black list of Chinese companies which deserve surveillance and other measures. These ammunitions will sooner or later hurt the Chinese economy.

China would like to hit back, but the impact of the hit may not be great for the simple reason that China depends much on American knowledge and technology. But, China will try to strengthen its self-sufficiency in technology and knowledge and in the long run it may succeed.

In short, as far as the supply-side war is concerned, the U.S. seems to have favourable edge over China.

Structural Adjustment Strategy

The long-run results of Sino-American economic war depend on the extent to which the domestic market can lead the economic growth. The decades-long experience with neoliberal economic system has given us one lesson, namely, the fact that we cannot rely on the exports of goods for sustained economic growth. This is due to several related factors.

First, as the universal reduction of tariffs continues, the marginal positive impact of free trade on GDP growth is decreasing. Second, as more and more advanced technology is applied for the production of exported goods, the exports-generated jobs is decreasing. Third, as more and more imported intermediary goods are used for the production of exported goods, the trickling effects of exports on the economy is declining. For these reasons, the sustained growth of the economy increasingly depends on the domestic market which depends on SMEs.

The lopsidedness of income distribution is more than the issue of social justice and welfare; it is now the issue of sustained economic growth. The unequal income distribution in favour of the rich and against the ordinary people means the weakening of the domestic demand and, if it continues, economic growth itself will be compromised. Indeed, the decades-long stagflation in Japan was due to the shrinking income of ordinary Japanese people for decades leading to the destruction of SMEs and the domestic market.

The lopsidedness of income distribution is often measured by the Gini coefficient. It varies from zero to 100. The higher the Gini, more lopsided becomes the income distribution in favour of the rich. In 2019, the U.S. pre-tax Gini was 48.7, the highest among developed countries.

We distinguish between the pre-tax Gini and after-tax Gini. The difference between the two represents the efficiency of the government’s effort to improve the income distribution.

The following figures show the effectiveness of government’s efforts of improving the income distribution of advanced countries: Australia (20.2%), Canada (26.0%), Demark (41.0%), France (41.3%), Germany (35.5%), U.K (21.4) and the U.S. (13.2%). Thus, the U.S. has not only the worst income distribution but also the most inefficient income redistribution policy.

Chinese Gini is the same as the U.S. Gini. But the reasons can be different. In the U.S. the high Gini is due to the government’s failure to tax sufficiently large corporations and to distribute the tax money to ordinary Americans. On the other hand, the high Gini in China is related to the low level of economic growth. The Gini is high at the early stage of economic growth, but, as the economy grows further it falls.

We have examined the nature of Sino-American economic war. We have examined the demand-side and supply-side strategies. We have not found any winner. We have examined also the structural adjustment strategy. Here, China may have some advantage. However, one thing is clear; there is no guarantee that the China will win.

To conclude, the possibility of Washington’s wining the ideological war and the economic battle looks uncertain. If this is the case, Washington might conclude that the only way of subduing China would be the shooting war.

But, the shooting war is costly. So, if Washington wants to avoid the war, and if it cannot succeed in China bashing, the only way left is the coexistence with China. Washington should reconsider Xi Jinping’s win-win cooperative coexistence. That is what the world would like to see, because it is good for the global security and prosperity.

It is sincerely hoped that Biden will envisage the U.S.-China policy not in terms of short-run interest of Washington but in terms of log-run interests of the U.S. and the world.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the East Asia Observatory (OAE) of the Study Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM).

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

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Black Americans have been the least inclined of any racial or ethnic group to say they’d get vaccinated against the coronavirus. The proportion of Black people who said they’ll probably or definitely take the shot has risen over time – but even by mid-January, with two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., only 35% of Black survey respondents said they’d get it as soon as they could, or already had gotten the shot.

Will you get a COVID-19 vaccine?

The Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed American adults in mid-January, asking “When an FDA approved vaccine for COVID-19 is available to you for free do you think you will…?” Black participants were least likely to say they had already received the shot or were hoping to be immunized as soon as possible. Black adults (43%) were significantly more likely than white adults (26%) to say they wanted to “wait and see.”

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately harmed Black, Indigenous and other people of color in comparison to white members of American society. With Black Americans being hospitalized at rates 2.9 times higher than white Americans and dying from COVID-19 at rates 1.9 times higher, you might assume that Black people would be lining up at breakneck speed to receive the vaccine as soon as it’s available to them.

But the Black community has reasons for distrust – even beyond what might be attributed to the mixed messaging of the nation’s COVID-19 response. And it’s not a simple or sole matter of miseducation. I’m a medical humanist and bioethicist who studies history, ethics and literature to understand racial and gender health disparities. My research explores the history of unethical and abusive treatment Black Americans have experienced at the hands of the medical establishment. Based on past experience, Black people have many legitimate reasons to be in no hurry to get the vaccination.

A troubling track record

The American medical establishment has a long history of unethical treatment of Black research subjects. Medical ethicist Harriet A. Washington details some of the most egregious examples in her book “Medical Apartheid.” There’s the now notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment, in which the government misled Black male patients to believe they were receiving treatment for syphilis when, in fact, they were not. That study went on for a total of 40 years, continuing even after a cure for syphilis was developed in the 1940s.

Perhaps less widely known are the unethical and unjustified experiments J. Marion Sims performed on enslaved women in 1800s U.S. that helped earn him the nickname the “father of modern gynecology.” Sims performed experimental vesicovaginal fistula surgery on enslaved women without anesthesia or even the basic standard of care typical for the time.

Sims experimented on Anarcha, a 17-year-old slave, over 30 times. His decision not to give anesthesia was based on the racist assumption that Black people experience less pain than their white peers – a belief that persists among medical professionals today. Historian Deirdre Cooper Owens elaborates on this case and many other ways Black women’s bodies have been used as guinea pigs in her book “Medical Bondage.”

Cases of medical malfeasance and malevolence have persisted, even after the establishment of the Nuremburg code, a set of medical ethical principles developed after World War II and subsequent trials for crimes against humanity.

In 1951, doctors harvested cervical cancer cells from a Black woman named Henrietta Lacks without her permission. Researchers went on to use them to create the first immortal cell culture and subjected her descendants to ongoing study for years without informed consent. Investigative journalist Rebecca Skloot details the cascade of ethical violations in her book “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” Despite heightened awareness after the book’s publication, the ethical violations continued when a group of scientists mapped the HeLa genome without her family’s knowledge or consent.

Advances in genomics are still being used to resuscitate theories of racial “science.” For example, a now-debunked 2007 study purported to isolate a so-called “warrior gene” in Maori Indigenous men and argued they are genetically “hard-wired” for violence. Scientists and news outlets in the U.S. jumped on board, suggesting there’s a genetic predisposition for Black and Latino males to engage in gang activity.

Legal scholar Dorothy E. Roberts explains in her book “Fatal Invention” how incidents like this one perpetuate the harm of race-based science. Using biological data and flawed reasoning tainted by racial stereotyping reinforces racist beliefs about Black people. Such logic focuses on purely biological factors and ignores the social and systemic factors that produce negative and inequitable health outcomes.

While there is now an ample body of scholarly research that reveals these truths about racism in the medical establishment, Black Americans need only to gather around the kitchen table with a few friends and family to share and hear personally experienced stories of medical malfeasance.

Present-day persistence of racism in health care

Even though their experiences at the hands of researchers like J. Marion Sims were central to advances in modern gynecology, today Black women have not benefited from these advances to the same degree as white women. Black women still suffer worse outcomes and more deaths from gynecologic cancers and have worse health and more deaths affiliated with childbearing, just to name two.

When tennis star Serena Williams gave birth, she saw firsthand how Black women are disbelieved by the medical establishment. She might have died from postpartum blood clots if she hadn’t advocated for herself in the face of dismissive medical professionals.

Black people are acutely aware of this history of racism in the medical establishment, and the ways it persists today on both an individual and a collective level. Stereotypes about Black patients, whether the result of explicit or implicit bias, continue to affect the care they receive and their medical outcomes. Again and again, when surveyed, Black Americans report that medical providers don’t believe them, won’t prescribe necessary treatments, including pain medication, and blame them for their health problems.

And the association between racism and increased disease cases and deaths has held true during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Overcoming these challenges

Ongoing trust issues around the COVID-19 vaccines are just the latest indication of racial health disparities in the U.S.

Still, there are ways to begin to close the COVID-19 racial health and mortality gap. Vaccinations for Black people may otherwise continue to lag in proportion to population size.

An important first step is for health care workers and policymakers to learn these painful histories and develop strategies informed by an understanding of the systemic racism Black Americans face.

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 is Associate Professor of English, affiliate with Africana Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies, Clark University.

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On Tuesday’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, the eponymous host exposed many of the ills emanating from lockdown restrictions, including the devastating effect wrought on American children, whom he noted are now “10 times more likely to die from suicide than from the coronavirus they’re meant to be protected from.”

During a blistering opening monologue, Carlson referenced a recently published FAIR Health study, The Impact of COVID-19 on Pediatric Mental Health, which highlights the developments in the mental health of children as a result of locking down the country.

The statistics therein demonstrate that “kids are depressed and dejected and they are regressing.”

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on mental health, particularly that of young people. School closures, having to learn remotely, and isolating from friends due to social distancing have been sources of stress and loneliness,” Carlson said.

“Among children aged 13 to 18 – teenagers – insurance claims for intentional self-harm were up 90 percent in March of 2020 compared to the previous year. The next month, in April, self-harm cases rose by nearly 100 percent.”

Continuing, Carlson drew attention to the astronomical rise in “claims for medical help related to drug overdoses,” which rose by “95 percent in March and then to 119 percent in April, and those numbers remained elevated through the fall.”

“Why was this happening? Mental illness caused by coronavirus lockdowns.”

“For the age group 13 to 18 in April 2020, insurance claims for generalized anxiety disorder increased 93.6 percent. As a percentage of all medical claims in April of 2019, major depressive disorder claims increased 83.9 percent and adjustment disorder claims by 89.7 percent.”

Concluding from the above, Carlson made the grim observation that “children are 10 times more likely to die from suicide than from the coronavirus they’re meant to be protected from.”

“That is the new normal that Andrew Cuomo and The New York Times are working to make permanent in this country,” he stated.

Carlson flagged the extreme-leftist teachers’ unions of America as perpetuating the lockdown problem, noting in particular the president of the Los Angeles Teachers’ Union, Cecily Myart-Cruz, who said, “Some voices are being allowed to speak louder than others. We have to call out the privilege behind the largely white, wealthy parents driving the push for a rushed return.”

Matt Meyer, the head of the Berkeley teachers’ union, also came under fire after it was revealed by a group of parents that he has been sending his children to private school for in-person education, defying his own public advocacy for the shutdown of public schools.

Speaking in January, Meyer said,

“Real-life children do not keep their masks on, they do not keep distance from each other or their teachers. Given the realities of working with real children in person, we need to account for the inevitable lapses in risk mitigation practices by choosing a standard of lower transmission for reopening.”

Dr. Marty Makary, professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Bloomberg School of Health, told Carlson that “public health research always lags behind reality. … We’re going to see a lot of research come out on the restrictions, particularly against kids, and this is the first of many research studies and it looks pretty grim.”

Using the national FAIR Health study, Makary lamented the “91 percent increase in kids, Tucker, who come to us as doctors because they tried to hurt themselves at a time when all medical utilization has been cut in half.” He noted there has been a “300 percent increase in some parts of the country where there are very strict restrictions against kids and school closures.”

Makary added that there has been “a 63 percent increase in overdoses. Twenty-three percent of all emergency room visits at one point last year were from mental illness complaints.”

“This is the first of many studies that’s going to tell us that many of these policies were basically an abuse by one group that has power over another group, and they exercise that power unfairly just because they could.”

Makary described the “fundamental problem” with accountability for locking down as a result of having “not looked at the totality of data on the health of kids and health consequences.”

He explained:

“If you were to ask me if you left your home could you get bacterial meningitis, the answer will always be yes; but if people stay isolated there will be more health consequences against that individual, and as a scientist, you’ve got to look at the totality of data on health outcomes. Those CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) guidelines that came out, Tucker, they were flawed. They were filled with dogma, they contradicted top CDC scientists who published in the journal the American Medical Association three weeks prior that schools don’t significantly contribute to transmission, and if they were applied to the airline industry, every plane in the U.S. would be grounded. Why is it that adults get to pack into planes, and they do it safely with masks, but kids are last in the reopening plan? That is an abuse of power.”

Carlson added that the reason for keeping schools shut is not the science, as has been demonstrated, but rather it is on account of the teachers’ unions that have “inordinate political power.”

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume told Carlson that “as powerful as I thought they (teachers’ unions) were, I did not realize they were powerful enough to do what they’ve succeeded in doing.”

“We saw the most recent manifestation of that when the director of the CDC came out and said, you know, that the science shows it’s safe to reopen schools without everyone being vaccinated. And in a matter of hours, really, the Biden administration had come out and said, ‘Well, she (the director) was speaking for herself,’ which gave you a sense of how afraid the Biden administration, newly in power, is of what the teachers’ unions say,” continued Hume.

Hume laid blame on “the effect of the media coverage in particular, and of a lot of the pronouncements of public health officials as well” for the “nation’s attitude” on allowing children back to school.

This narrative was, according to Hume, “very powerful and the sense of fear that it engendered in the American body politick has been the strongest thing we’ve seen, really, in terms of people’s unwillingness to face the data as it became clearer and clearer.”

“Scientists have said, almost in (sic) the beginning, that this is a disease that way disproportionately affects the elderly and those with certain attendant comorbidities, and that everyone else was, if not completely safe against the disease, then largely so.”

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Public-interest groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency today over its rushed decision in the final days of the Trump administration to reapprove previously cancelled uses of the dangerous pesticide aldicarb on Florida oranges and grapefruits.

The decision allows 100,000 acres of citrus to be treated with up to 2.5 million pounds of products containing aldicarb, a pesticide banned in more than 100 countries and one of only 36 pesticides classified as “extremely hazardous” by the World Health Organization.

“This approval of aldicarb is just one more assault on the men and women who harvest our citrus crops in Florida, who do ‘essential’ work but who are treated as dispensable,” said Jeannie Economos, coordinator of the Pesticide Safety and Environmental Health Project at Farmworker Association of Florida. “No one should risk their health and the health of their families in the course of doing a hard day’s labor feeding America.”

Aldicarb’s approval on Florida citrus came with lightning speed after a legally mandated public comment period that ended on Jan. 6. One day later, more than 100 pages of risk assessment documents were finalized, and on Jan. 12 — eight days before the transition to a new presidential administration — the Trump EPA finalized the approval.

“The outrageous decision to just ignore all the troubling research and expand use of this dangerous neurotoxin reeks of political interference,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re asking the court to make the EPA do its job and protect people and the environment. Florida’s rivers, lakes and streams should not be a dumping ground for poisons forbidden in countries across much of the globe.”

This approval came after representatives from the citrus industry lobbied the EPA, which had previously committed to banning aldicarb, to approve use of the neurotoxic pesticide on the nation’s citrus. The lobbying efforts included a meeting directly with the agricultural advisor to then-EPA administrator and Trump loyalist Andrew Wheeler.

“The former Trump administration is no longer in charge of EPA, but many of the actions it took at the behest of chemical agriculture remain in place,” said Dr. Olga Naidenko, Environmental Working Group’s vice president for science investigations. “Aldicarb is a potent neurotoxic pesticide that is especially risky for young children who are exposed through food or proximity to the fields where it’s sprayed. The EPA must follow the science and not the demands of the pesticide industry and ban the use of aldicarb on Florida’s citrus crops.”

In addition to being designated as “extremely hazardous” by the WHO, aldicarb is also one of the few pesticides — along with DDT — subject to regulation under the Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty designed to reduce trade of the most hazardous chemicals in the world. The United States is one of only a few countries around the world that has not ratified the treaty.

Aldicarb is a known neurotoxin that can impair normal brain development in young children. Harms to people are similar to those seen in wildlife, where exposure can cause developmental defects, dizziness and blurred vision, abdominal pain and vomiting.

In 2011 the EPA and Bayer reached an agreement to end the use of aldicarb in the United States after the EPA found that its ongoing use posed unacceptable dietary risks to infants and young children. The crop use that resulted in the highest risk to infants and children was citrus, which Bayer agreed to cancel immediately. While the other uses of aldicarb were being phased out, AgLogic applied for, and received, approval for use on a small subset of other crops, like cotton and sweet potatoes.

After the 2011 phaseout of most uses, U.S. agricultural use of aldicarb has been consistently low, with under 100,000 pounds used each year. Despite its low use in recent years, aldicarb was detected in drinking-water systems in six states serving nearly 1 million people between 2015 and 2017.

The EPA’s approval of aldicarb on Florida citrus crops is projected to exponentially increase use across the state.

Today’s lawsuit was filed by the Farmworker Association of Florida, Center for Biological Diversity and Environmental Working Group in the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals.

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A no-holds-barred carnage of wolves in Wisconsin last week, which ended with trophy hunters killing nearly twice the sanctioned quota of animals in just under 60 hours, offers a terrible glimpse into just what lies ahead for these beloved native American carnivores unless the Biden administration moves swiftly to restore their federal protections.

Wisconsin’s wolf hunt was, from start to finish, an example of the worst wildlife management practices. The state was not prepared for a February hunt and was forced by a court ruling to rush into one without a clear, updated, scientific plan. ​

A whopping 2,380 wolf hunting permits — twice as many as are typically issued for hunts in the state — were made available for a quota of 119 wolves over what was supposed to be a week-long season. Little if any input was sought from Wisconsinites and tribal nations, which have opposed the hunts, or from the scientific community. The hunt also occurred during the breeding season for wolves, putting pregnant females in the crosshairs.

In less than 60 hours, 216 wolves had been slaughtered and all of the hunting zones had to be closed. We now know that nearly half the wolves killed were females. Entire wolf families were likely destroyed. And worst of all, nearly 85 percent of the animals killed were hunted down by packs of dogs — an extremely cruel and unsporting practice that no other state allows for wolf hunting.

“The swift pace of the wolf kills, mostly by hunters using trailing hounds, took the DNR by surprise. And the overage was made worse by a state statute that requires 24-hour, rather than immediate, notice of the season closure,” Paul A. Smith, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s outdoors editor, wrote in an article critical of the hunt.

We have issued many warnings predicting exactly such a horrific scenario since the federal delisting of wolves last year by the Trump administration. In Wisconsin, where some state officials and lawmakers had begun plotting a wolf hunt even before the federal delisting was finalized, we led a strong campaign to stop a February hunt, convincing the state’s Natural Resources Board and Gov. Tony Evers, in a letter, that an early hunt would be unscientific and illegal, with disastrous consequences for the wolves. Shortly after receiving our letter, the DNR announced they would not open a trophy hunt until November 2021 and committed to transparency and broad public engagement before doing so. Soon after, we helped thwart another attempt by some lawmakers to open a February hunt.

Unfortunately, an out-of-state trophy hunting group sued the state to open season earlier this month—a request the court granted, opening the door to a bloodbath. ​

In amicus briefs we filed with the court, we argued ​this hunt was ​not only scientifically unjustifiable but illegal under the state’s own law. The consequences of the court’s misguided decision underscores the importance of our fight — in federal court and elsewhere — to return Endangered Species Act protections to wolves.

We already know that Wisconsin is planning to open another hunt in the fall. And it is not the only one. In the Northern Rocky Mountains, where wolves had already lost their federal protections prior to the January national delisting, states are trying drastically to expand their trophy hunting seasons. Some lawmakers in Montana, for instance, are pushing forward numerous bills that would radically increase the number of wolves killed by trophy hunters and trappers. Wolves also continue to face grave threats in Idaho and Wyoming.

Wildlife agencies in other Great Lakes states, like Minnesota and Michigan, have committed to working to update their state wolf management plans and consult with scientists and tribes prior to considering a trophy hunting or trapping season. But in Minnesota some state lawmakers are trying to force a hunt, and bills were recently introduced that would require a season for wolves. However, another bill that would prohibit such a season was recently introduced as well. And in Michigan, the Senate Natural Resources Committee recently passed a resolution to urge the Natural Resources Commission to hold a wolf hunt even prior to updating their state management plan.

We have even seen a bill introduced in the 117th Congress by Rep. Thomas Tiffany, R-Wisc., that would remove gray wolves in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Wyoming from the Endangered Species Act indefinitely. The bill seeks to preempt any litigation that could potentially lead to federal protections being restored to wolves.

If you live in one of these states, it is crucial that you keep a watchful eye on decision-makers and continue to speak up for wolves. With trophy hunters raring to go after America’s wolves, and given the clout they have, in many cases, with state DNR officials and some lawmakers, this is a tough fight. But we have the majority of Americans, who are opposed to wolf trophy hunting, on our side and we are working to stop this cruel pastime on several fronts. ​

We are now suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service over the delisting decision to remove gray wolves in the lower 48 states from the Endangered Species Act, and we will continue to press the Biden administration’s Department of the Interior to restore federal protections for this species. We will also continue to fight state plans to open and expand wolf trophy hunts. Wolves need all of our help, and yours. These gorgeous animals today occupy only 15 percent of their historic range in this country: they are far from recovered, and in no state to withstand more carnage, in Wisconsin or anywhere else they call home.

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Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.

Featured image: A whopping 2,380 wolf hunting permits — twice as many as are typically issued for hunts in the state — were made available for a quota of 119 wolves over what was supposed to be a week-long season. Photo by JAMcGraw/iStock.com

Territorial Dispute Growing Between Guyana and Venezuela

March 4th, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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An old territorial dispute in South America is reaching its most tense point in decades. The territory known as Essequibo has been mutually claimed by Guyana and Venezuela since the 19th century when Guyana still belonged to the United Kingdom. In 1897, the Venezuelan and British authorities agreed to submit their dispute to an arbitrary international court in Paris, which ruled that the land belonged to the UK. For decades, the arbitration decision was accepted by Caracas, but in 1948 Venezuelan authorities revealed some irregularities in the trial, which were documented in old government files. As a result, the decision was considered null, and years later, in 1963, Venezuela formally submitted its territorial claim to the United Nations, and the dispute remains unresolved till today, when the interests of foreign oil companies threaten to increase the tensions.

As a region rich in oil, Essequibo has recently entered the map of the large multinationals in this sector, especially the American Exxon Mobil. More than that, the economic sanctions imposed on Venezuela and the political alignment of Guyana with Washington contribute to create an even more controversial scenario. Guyana has the support of the large private oil sector and the American government, while Venezuela remains alone. Last year, the case was filed with the International Court of Justice, but Venezuela did not accept it and remained out of the trial.

However, in a sentence on December 18, 2020, the Court proclaimed its competence to intervene in the dispute, despite Venezuela’s position. It is necessary to highlight that, regardless of any decision taken by the Court over who really has sovereignty in Essequibo, this sentence must be considered null, since the absence of Venezuelan consent prevents the execution of the sentence. The need for consent is one of the most elementary principles of international law and the very fact that the Court declares itself competent already leads us to question whether its judges are really impartial – clearly, the norms of international law are being violated in favor of Guyana.

Guyana has publicly admitted that its expenses for the court case in The Hague were paid by Exxon Mobil. Although the American oil company has been operating in Guyana for decades, its interest has been greatly increased with the recent discoveries of oil reserves and investors are willing to do anything to ensure the exploration of local natural resources. Currently, Exxon Mobil is interested in expanding its facilities over an area of more than 26,000 square kilometers, which not only crosses the disputed territory in Essequibo, but also violates Venezuelan undisputed national territory.

With this scenario of clear attack on Venezuelan national sovereignty and possible collaboration of the International Court with one of the parties, Venezuela is at a disadvantage mainly due to its diplomatic weakness. Venezuela, at this point, lacks sufficient influence to cause the Court to review its decision or judge the case in a really partial way. For that, only strong international alliances can help Caracas. The large nations that are not aligned with Washington and have so far cooperated strongly with Venezuela, Russia and China, might be provoked by the Venezuelan government to incite international pressure in this regard. Only these two countries can mediate a parallel agreement that may be established between Caracas and The Hague in order to choose between two paths: either Venezuela agrees to submit to trial on the condition that there is a partial judgment and without the influence of private companies, or the Court declines jurisdiction. As the first scenario is unlikely and difficult to monitor, the most viable route would be for The Hague to abdicate any form of judgment.

It is important to mention that, in the absence of international judgment, what is in force in Essequibo is the Geneva Agreement of 1966, which did not decide on sovereignty in the region, but, in search of a peaceful solution, defined what activities would be allowed or prohibited in Essequibo. Oil exploration by foreign companies is not allowed, so, in principle, Guyana is violating the agreement and its activities could only become lawful if there was a decision by the International Court on the matter, allowing exploration. As Venezuela does not submit to the Court, the trial is impossible and, therefore, exploration remains prohibited and Guyana is committing an international offense.

However, more worrying than that is the fact that the American military is working in Essequibo, carrying out tests with the aim of intimidating Venezuela and pressuring Caracas to renounce its demands. There are American military ships in Essequibo “protecting” Exxon Mobil facilities and provoking Caracas. In addition, considering that the American company wants to publicly explore areas within Venezuelan territory, what will become of the American presence? If Caracas does not allow the activities of Exxon Mobil, it is the Venezuelan right to control or even destroy the facilities in its territory. And what would be the American reaction to that – considering Biden’s aggressive interventionist policy?

It is for these reasons that, more than ever, countries of greater international relevance must mediate the issue in order to maintain the status of illegality to the Exxon Mobil’s activities. With international pressure, it is possible that the American company will retreat or that at least the American military in the region will leave and with that we would have a reduction in tensions.

Still, it is possible that with international mediation a mutual exploration agreement will be reached that allows both countries to enjoy the local wealth, without, however, allowing companies that violate the Geneva Agreement to operate.

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Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

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Trump & Biden’s Secret Bombing Wars

March 4th, 2021 by Medea Benjamin

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***
On February 25th, President Biden ordered U.S. air forces to drop seven 500-pound bombs on Iraqi forces in Syria, reportedly killing 22 people. The U.S. airstrike has predictably failed to halt rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago. 

The Western media reported the U.S. airstrike as an isolated and exceptional incident, and there has been significant blowback from the U.S. public, Congress and the world community, condemning the strikes as illegal and a dangerous escalation of yet another Middle East conflict.

But unbeknownst to many Americans, the U.S. military and its allies are engaged in bombing and killing people in other countries on a daily basis. The U.S. and its allies have dropped more than 326,000 bombs and missiles on people in other countries since 2001 (see table below), including over 152,000 in Iraq and Syria.

That’s an average of 46 bombs and missiles per day, day in day out, year in year out, for nearly 20 years. In 2019, the last year for which we have fairly complete records, the average was 42 bombs and missiles per day, including 20 per day in Afghanistan alone.

So, if those seven 500-pound bombs were the only bombs the U.S. and its allies dropped on February 25th, it would have been an unusually quiet day for U.S. and allied air forces, and for their enemies and victims on the ground, compared to an average day in 2019 or most of the past 20 years. On the other hand, if the unrelenting U.S. air assault on countries across the Greater Middle East finally began to diminish over the past year, this bombing may have been an unusual spike in violence. But which of these was it, and how would we know?

We don’t know, because our government doesn’t want us to. From January 2004 until February 2020, the U.S. military kept track of how many bombs and missiles it dropped on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and published those figures in regular, monthly Airpower Summaries, which were readily available to journalists and the public. But in March 2020, the Trump administration abruptly stopped publishing U.S. Airpower Summaries, and the Biden administration has so far not published any either.

As with the human casualties and mass destruction that these hundreds of thousands of airstrikes cause, the U.S. and international media only report on a tiny fraction of them. Without regular U.S. Airpower Summaries, comprehensive databases of airstrikes in other war-zones and serious mortality studies in the countries involved, the American public and the world are left almost completely in the dark about the death and destruction our country’s leaders keep wreaking in our name. The disappearance of Airpower Summaries has made it impossible to get a clear picture of the current scale of U.S. airstrikes.

Here are up-to-date figures on U.S. and allied airstrikes, from 2001 to the present, highlighting the secrecy in which they have abruptly been shrouded for the past year:

Numbers of bombs and missiles dropped on other countries by the U.S. & its allies since 2001

                       Iraq (& Syria*)               Afghanistan               Yemen               Other Countries**
2001                         214                              17,500
2002                        252                               6,500                           1
2003                  29,200
2004                        285                                    86                                                            1 (Pk)
2005                        404                                   176                                                           3 (Pk)
2006                        229                                1,770                                                  7,002 (Le,Pk)
2007                     1,708                                5,198                                                          9 (Pk,S)
2008                        915                                5,051                                                        40 (Pk,S)
2009                        119                                4,184                           3                      5,554 (Pk,Pl)
2010                           18                               5,126                           2                          128 (Pk)
2011                             2                                5,411                          13                      7,763 (Li,Pk,S)
2012                                                             4,083                          41                            54 (Li, Pk,S)
2013                                                              2,758                         22                            32 (Li,Pk,S)
2014                     6,292*                             2,365                         20                     5,058 (Li,Pl,Pk,S)
2015                   28,696*                                 947                 14,191                            28 (Li,Pk,S)
2016                   30,743*                              1,337                 14,549                         529 (Li,,Pk,S)
2017                   39,577*                              4,361                 15,969                         301 (Li,,Pk,S)
2018                      8,713*                             7,362                   9,746                           84 (Li,Pk,S)
2019                     4,729*                              7,423                  3,045                           65 (Li,S)
2020               SECRET                          SECRET                   7,622                           54 (S)
2021                SECRET                          SECRET                      310                              7 (S)

Total                152,096* + ?                    81,638 + ?           65,534                    26,712

Grand Total = 325,980 + Trump & Biden’s Secret Bombing 2020-2021

**Other Countries: Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia.

These figures are based on U.S. Airpower Summaries for Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria; the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s count of drone strikes in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen; the Yemen Data Project‘s count of Saudi-led airstrikes in Yemen; the New America Foundation’s database of foreign airstrikes in Libya; and other published statistics. Figures for 2021 are only through January.

There are several categories of airstrikes that are not included in this table, meaning that the true numbers of airstrikes are certainly higher. These include:

  • Helicopter strikes: Military Times published an article in February 2017 titled, “The U.S. military’s stats on deadly airstrikes are wrong. Thousands have gone unreported.” The largest pool of airstrikes not included in U.S. Airpower Summaries are strikes by attack helicopters. The U.S. Army told the authors its helicopters had conducted 456 otherwise unreported airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2016. The authors explained that the non-reporting of helicopter strikes has been consistent throughout the post-9/11 wars, and they still did not know how many actual missiles were fired in those 456 attacks in Afghanistan in the one year they investigated.
  • AC-130 gunships: The airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan in 2015 was not conducted with bombs or missiles, but by a Lockheed-Boeing AC-130 gunship. These machines of mass destruction, usually manned by U.S. Air Force special operations forces, are designed to circle a target on the ground, pouring howitzer shells and cannon fire into it, often until it is completely destroyed. The U.S. has used AC-130s in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria.
  • Strafing runs: U.S. Airpower Summaries for 2004-2007 included a note that their tally of “strikes with munitions dropped… does not include 20mm and 30mm cannon or rockets.” But the 30mm cannons on A-10 Warthogs and other ground attack planes are powerful weapons, originally designed to destroy Soviet tanks. A-10s fire 65 depleted uranium shells per second to blanket an area with deadly and indiscriminate fire, but that does not count as a “weapons release” in U.S. Airpower Summaries.
  • “Counter-insurgency” and “counter-terrorism” operations in other parts of the world. The United States formed a military coalition with 11 West African countries in 2005, and now has a drone base in Niger, but we have not found a database of U.S. and allied air strikes in that region, or in the Philippines, Latin America or elsewhere.

It was clearly no coincidence that Trump stopped publishing Airpower Summaries right after the February 2020 U.S. withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, reinforcing the false impression that the war in Afghanistan was over. In fact, U.S. bombing resumed after only an 11-day pause.

As our table shows, 2018 and 2019 were back-to-back record years for U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan. But how about 2020? Without the official records, we don’t know whether the withdrawal agreement led to a serious reduction in airstrikes or not.

President Biden has foolishly tried to use airstrikes in Syria as “leverage” with Iran, instead of simply rejoining the Iran nuclear agreement as he promised during the election campaign. Biden is likewise trailing along in Trump’s footsteps by shrouding U.S. airstrikes in the secrecy that Trump used to obscure his failure to “end the endless wars.”

It is entirely possible that the highly publicized February 25th airstrikes, like Trump’s April 2017 missile strikes on Syria, were a diversion from much heavier, but largely unreported, U.S. bombing already under way elsewhere, in that case the frightful destruction of Mosul, Iraq’s former second city.

The only way that Biden can reassure the American public that he is not using Trump’s wall of secrecy to continue America’s devastating airwars, notably in Afghanistan, is to end this secrecy now, and resume the publication of complete and accurate U.S. Airpower Summaries.

President Biden cannot restore the world’s respect for American leadership, or the American public’s support for our foreign policy, by piling more lies, secrets and atrocities on top of those he has inherited. If he keeps trying to do so, he might well find himself following in Trump’s footsteps in yet another way: as the failed, one-term president of a destructive and declining empire.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is a freelance writer and a researcher with CODEPINK, and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.     

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***

Dozens of U.S. law firms have formed a coalition to fight a new $2 billion settlement proposal by Monsanto owner Bayer AG that aims to contain the company’s ongoing liability related to claims that Roundup herbicides cause a type of cancer known as non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

The settlement is designed to compensate people who have been exposed to Roundup products and either already have NHL or may develop NHL in the future, but who have not yet taken steps to file a lawsuit.

The small group of lawyers who put the plan together with Bayer say it will “save lives” and provide substantial benefits to people who believe they developed cancer from exposure to the company’s herbicide products.

But many lawyers criticizing the plan say if it is approved it would set a dangerous precedent for other types of litigation involving large numbers of people injured by the products or practices of powerful corporations.

“This is not the direction we want the civil justice system to go,” said attorney Gerald Singleton, whose firm has joined with more than 60 other law firms to oppose Bayer’s plan. “There is no scenario under which this is good for plaintiffs.”

Bayer’s settlement plan was filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Feb. 3, and must be approved by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in order to become effective. A prior settlement plan submitted last year was scorned by Chhabria and then withdrawn. The judge has been overseeing the federal multidistrict Roundup litigation involving thousands of plaintiffs from around the United States.

Responses to the settlement plan are due March 3 and a hearing on the matter is set for March 31.

A key concern is that current Roundup users who may develop cancer and want to sue in the future will automatically be subject to terms of the class settlement unless they officially opt out of the settlement within a specific time period. One of the terms they would be subject to would bar them from seeking punitive damages in any future lawsuit.

Those terms and others laid out are wholly unfair to farm workers and others who are expected to develop cancer in the future from exposure to the company’s herbicide products, according to Singleton. The plan benefits Bayer and provides “blood money” to the four law firms that worked with Bayer to design the plan, he said.

Those firms working with Bayer to draft and administer the plan would receive a proposed $170 million if the plan takes effect.

Elizabeth Cabraser, one of the lawyers who crafted the new proposed settlement, said the criticism is not a fair description of the settlement. In truth, she said, the plan “provides significant and urgently-needed outreach, education, healthcare access, and compensation benefits” for people who have been exposed to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicides but have not yet developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

“We seek approval of this settlement because it will save lives and enhance quality of life through early diagnosis, assist people… inform them and raise public awareness about the link between Roundup and NHL…” she said.

A spokesman for Bayer did not respond to a request for comment.

The new proposed settlement is aimed at future cases and is separate from the $11 billion Bayer has earmarked to settle existing U.S. Roundup cancer claims. The people impacted by the class settlement proposal are only individuals who have been exposed to Roundup but are not yet in litigation and have taken no steps toward any litigation.

Bayer has been struggling to figure out how to put an end to the Roundup cancer litigation since buying Monsanto in 2018. The company lost all three trials held to date and lost the early rounds of appeals seeking to overturn the trial losses.

Juries in each of the trials found not only that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer but also that Monsanto spent decades hiding the risks.

Though the proposed settlement states that it “addresses the four concerns the Court raised regarding the prior, withdrawn settlement,” Singleton and other lawyers involved in the opposition said the new settlement proposal is just as bad as the first.

In addition to the concerns that class members would not have the right to seek claims for punitive damages, the critics also object to the four-year “standstill” period blocking the filing of new lawsuits. The critics also say the plan for notifying people of the class settlement is not sufficient. Individuals would have 150 days following the notification to “opt out” of the class. If they do not opt out, they are automatically in the class.

Critics also object to the proposed formation of a science panel that would act as a “guidepost” for an “extension of compensation options into the future” and to provide evidence about the carcinogenicity – or not – of Bayer’s herbicides.  Given Monsanto’s documented history of manipulating scientific findings, the science panel work would be suspect, said Singleton.

The initial settlement period would run for at least four years and could be extended after that period.  If Bayer elects not to continue the compensation fund after the initial settlement period, it will pay an additional $200 million as an “end payment” into the compensation fund, the settlement summary states.

“Substantial compensation” offered

The law firms that drafted the agreement with Bayer said in their filing to the court that the settlement is structured to provide potential future plaintiffs with “what most serves their interests,” including an option for “substantial compensation” if they develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The plan calls for the establishment of a compensation fund to make awards of between $10,000 and $200,000 per individual class member. “Accelerated Payment Awards” of $5,000 would be available on an expedited basis, requiring just a showing of exposure and diagnosis.

Those people first exposed to Roundup products at least 12 months prior to their diagnosis would be qualified for awards. Awards of  more than $200,000 could be made for “extraordinary circumstances.” Those qualified class members who were diagnosed with NHL before January 1, 2015, would not receive awards more than $10,000, according to the plan. 

The settlement would provide free legal advice and provide ”support to assist class members in navigating, registering, and applying for Settlement benefits.”

Additionally, the proposal states that the settlement will fund medical and scientific research into the diagnosis and treatment of NHL.

Notably, the plan states that no one will lose their right to sue unless they choose to accept compensation from the compensation fund, and no one needs to make that choice until that individual class member is diagnosed with NHL. They would not be able to seek punitive damages but could seek other compensation.

“Any class members who do not file a claim and accept individual compensation retain their right to sue Monsanto for compensatory damages on any legal theory, including personal injury, fraud, misrepresentation, negligence, fraudulent concealment, negligent misrepresentation, breach of warranty, false advertising, and violation of any consumer protection or unfair and deceptive acts or practices statute,” the plan states.

To alert people to the class action settlement, notices would be mailed/emailed to 266,000 farms, businesses and organizations and government entities where the company’s herbicides could have been used as well as to 41,000 people who have non-Hodgkin lymphoma and asked to receive information about their disease. Additionally posters would be mailed to 2,700 stores asking them to post notices of the class action settlement.

As part of the proposed settlement, Bayer said it would seek permission from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add information on the labels of its glyphosate-based products such as Roundup that would provide links to access to scientific studies and other information about glyphosate safety. But critics say providing a website links is inadequate and Bayer needs to put a straightforward warning of cancer risk on the weed killing products.

The proposed class action settlement threatens to affect “hundreds of thousands or even millions” of people who have been exposed to Roundup and “raises ‘unique’ and profound questions” under the U.S. Constitution, according to a court filing in opposition to the Bayer plan made by plaintiffs’ lawyer Elizabeth Graham.

Graham told the court that if the plan is approved it could have a “dramatic effect not only on this litigation, but on the future of mass tort litigation.”

Black farmers

 The National Black Farmers Association (NBFA) weighed in on the issue on Wednesday, submitting a lengthy filing with Chhabria’s court that states a “substantial proportion” of its more than 100,000 members “have been exposed to and potentially injured by Roundup, and its active ingredient glyphosate.”

Many of the farmers have already developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma they blame on Roundup use, and “an even larger proportion fear that they will soon develop symptoms,” the NBFA filing states.

The NBFA wants to see Roundup products removed from commerce or other changes made to protect farmers, the filing states.

The concerns of the NBFA need to be addressed by the court, particularly as Bayer looks to “settle a class action with a set of attorneys who purport to be representing the future interests of all farmers who have been exposed to Roundup but are yet to develop the cancers it causes.”

Lawsuits in Australia

As Bayer works to bring an end to Roundup litigation in the United States, the company is also dealing with similar claims by farmers and others in Australia. A class action filed against Monsanto is underway, and the lead plaintiff John Fenton, who applied Roundup as part of farm work. Fenton was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2008.

A series of key dates have been established: Monsanto has until March 1 to provide discovery documents to plaintiffs’ lawyers and June 4 is the deadline set for the exchange of expert evidence.  The parties are to enter into mediation by July 30 and if nothing is resolved the case would go to trial in March 2022.

Fenton said while he would “love the opportunity” to go to trial and tell his story, he hopes mediation will resolve the matter. “I think the consensus is starting to change thanks to what has been happening in the US. Farmers are more aware and I believe they do take more precautions than they used to.

Fenton said he hopes that Bayer ultimately will put a warning label on Monsanto’s glyphosate herbicides.

“At least with a warning the user can make up their own mind about what PPE (personal protective equipment) they choose to wear.”

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The Seven-Step Path from Pandemic to Totalitarianism

March 4th, 2021 by Rosemary Frei

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

First published on GR in April 2020.

Incisive article which revealed the timeline of what has now been unfolding.

***

As if it was planned in advance, billions of people around the globe are being forced step by rapid step into a radically different way of life, one that involves far less personal, physical and financial freedoms.

Here is the template for rolling this out.

STEP 1

A new virus starts to spread around the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) declares a pandemic.

International agencies, public-health officials, politicians, media and other influential voices fan fear by focusing almost exclusively on the contagiousness of the virus and the rising numbers of cases, and by characterizing the virus as extremely dangerous.

Within a few days governments at national and local levels also declare states of emergency. At lightning speed they impose lock-down measures that confine most people to their homes – starting withclosing schools – and shut down much of the global economy. World markets implode.

The stunned, fearful and credulous public – convinced over the previous few years that their bodies do not have the natural ability to react to pathogens by producing antibodies that confer long-lasting immunity – largely complies willingly.

The first weekly virtual class on local emergency and crisis responses to COVID-19 is held for mayors and other city officials around the world.Coordinated by a handful of American organizations in the academic, medical, financial, political and transportation spheres, the classes feature guests ranging from Barack Obama to Bill Gates.

STEP 2

National, state/provincial and municipal leaders, as well as public-health officials, start daily press briefings. They use them to pump out frightening statistics and modelling asserting the virus has the potential to kill many millions.

Most of this information is hard to decipher and sheds little real light on the natural course of the virus’s spread through each geographic area.

Officials and media downplay or distort inconveniently low death tolls from the virus and instead focus on alarming statistics produced by compliant academics, social-media influencers and high-profile organizations.

The main message is that this is a war and many lives are at stake unless virtually everybody stays at home. Mainstream media amplify the trope that the world is at the mercy of the virus.

Simultaneously, central banks and governments hand out massive amounts of cash largely to benefit the big banks. And they bring in giant private-sector financial firms to manage the process despite these global companies’ very poor track record in the 2008-2009 crash. Governments also rapidly start to create trillions of pounds’ worth of programs that include compensating businesses and workers for their shutdown-related losses.

STEP 3

There is a concerted effort by all levels of government and public health to very rapidly ramp up testing for viral RNA, along with production of personal protective equipment.

They push aside the need for regulation, including quality standards and independent verification of tests’ rates of accuracy, by insisting that fast approval and roll-out are imperative for saving lives.

Models are released that predict snowballing of numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths even under best-case scenarios.

At about the same time, public-health officials significantly loosen the criteria for viral infections, outbreaks and deaths, particularly in the oldest members of society. That increases the numbers of cases and deaths ascribed to the new pathogen.

The media continue to clamour for more testing and for severe punishment of people who aren’t completely compliant with the lock-down measures.

As a result, there’s little backlash as police and military with sweeping new powers enforce these measures and give stiff penalties or even jail terms to those who disobey orders. States also monitor with impunity massive numbers of people’s movements via their cellphones.

Vast human resources are focused on tracking down people who have had contact with a virus-positive individual and confining them to their homes. Thus the portion of the public exposed to the virus remains relatively small.

It also contributes to social isolation. Among many effects, this enables those in control to even further erase individual and collective choices, voices and power.

STEP 4

When the numbers of cases and deaths start to plateau, local officials claim it’s too early to tell whether the virus has finished passing through their population and therefore, restrictive measures must continue.

An alternative narrative is that if such measures aren’t kept in place there will be a resurgence of cases and deaths. Yet another is that the continuing climb in elderly persons’ deaths means all bets are off for the time being.

They admit that initial models incorrectly predicted there would be a tsunami of cases, ICU admissions and deaths. However, they assert more time is needed before it can be determined whether it’s safe to loosen some of the restrictions and let children return to school or adults go back to work.

Officials do not try to calculate the overall skyrocketing cost to their populations and economies of the shut-downs and other measures against, nor do they discuss what cost level may be too high.

They and powerful media organizations also push for the massive virus-testing over-capacity to be used to surveil the general population for viral DNA in their bodies. At the same time, the roll-out begins of widespread blood testing for antibodies to the virus.

Meanwhile, new data are published showing the virus has a high capacity to mutate. Scientists and officials interpret this as meaning a larger medical arsenal will be needed to combat it.

STEP 5

About two or three weeks later, the dramatic increase in testing for viral DNA produces the desired goal of a significant upsurge in the number of people found positive for the virus.

Public-health officials add jet fuel to the surge by adding to their case and death tallies the large number of people who are only suspected – and not lab-test-confirmed – to have had an infection. Politicians and public-health officials tell the populace this means they cannot return to their jobs or other activities outside the home for the time being.

Governments work with public-health agencies, academics, industry, the WHO and other organizations to start to design and implement immunity-passport systems for using the results of the widespread antibody testing to determine who can be released from the lock-downs. This is one of many goals of the seven steps.

Meanwhile, government leaders continue to highlight the importance of vaccines for besting the virus.

STEP 6

Large-scale human testing of many different types of antivirals and vaccines begins, thanks to a concerted push from the WHO, Bill Gatesand his collaborators, pharmaceutical and biotech companies, governments and universities.

Large swaths of the population don’t have the antibodies to the virus because they’ve been kept from being exposed to it; they eagerly accept these medications even though they’ve been rushed to market with inadequate safety testing. They believe these medical products offer the only hope for escaping the virus’s clutches.

STEP 7

Soon the new virus starts another cycle around the globe – just as influenza and other viruses have every year for millennia. Officials again fan the flames of fear by positing the potential for millions of deaths among people not yet protected from the virus.

They rapidly roll out virus and antibody testing again, while companies sell billions more doses of antivirals and booster vaccines.

Governments simultaneously cede control of all remaining public assets to global companies. This is because local and national governments’ tax bases were decimated during Step 1 and they’re virtually bankrupt from their unprecedented spending in the war against the virus in the other steps.

The overall result is complete medicalization of the response to the virus, which on a population level is no more harmful than influenza.

This is coupled with the creation of permanent totalitarianism controlled by global companies and a 24/7 invasive-surveillance police state supported by widespread blossoming of ‘smart’ technology.

The key players repeat the cycle of hysteria and massive administration of antivirals and booster shots every few months.

And they implement a variation of steps 1 to 7 when another new pathogen appears on the planet.

Sounds far-fetched? Unfortunately, it’s not.

With the arrival of COVID-19 many countries quickly completed Steps 1, 2 and 3.

Step 4 is well under way in a large number of jurisdictions.

Step 5 is on track to start in early May.

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Rosemary Frei has an MSc in molecular biology from a faculty of medicine and was a freelance medical writer and journalist for 22 years. She is now an independent investigative journalist in Toronto, Ontario. You can find her earlier article on the novel coronavirus for Off-Guardian here, watch and listen to an interview she gave on COVID19 and follow her on Twitter.

All images in this article are from OffGuardian

First published March 21, 2020

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had a slip of the tongue while addressing the American people from the White House when he stated that COVID-19 is “a live exercise”.

“This is not about retribution,” Pompeo explained. “This matter is going forward — we are in a live exercise here to get this right.”

 

.

.

With a disgusted look on his face, President Trump replied: “You should have let us know.”

THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT: 

Pompeo’s statement might be misinterpreted when taken out of context.

It is important to focus on the broader context of Secretary of State Pompeo’s statement.

The transcript is below. Pompeo was referring to China and China’s Communist Party. This is the transcript. (emphasis added). (GR Editor)

.

Speaker 29: (01:06:57)
.
Yeah, so we were alerted by some discussions that Dr. Redfield, the director of the CDC had with Chinese colleagues on January 3rd. It’s since been known that there may have been cases in December. Not that we were alerted in December.Speaker 28: (01:07:13)
.
Mr. President, the other question I have for you, when-Donald Trump: (01:07:15)
.
Excuse me, we’ll do that in a second. Let Mike-Sec. Pompeo: (01:07:18)
.
May I just say one more thing. There’s been some discussion about China and what they knew and when they knew it, and I’ve been very critical. We need to know immediately the world is entitled to know. The Chinese government was the first to know of this risk to the world and that puts a special obligation to make sure that data, the data gets to our scientists, our professionals. This is not about retribution. This matters going forward. We’re in a live exercise here. To get this right. We need to make sure that even today the datasets that are available to every country, including datasets that are available to the Chinese communist party are made available to the whole world. It’s an imperative to keep people safe. We talk about the absence of datasets, not being able to make judgments about what to do.Sec. Pompeo: (01:08:02)
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This is absolutely, this transparency, this realtime information sharing isn’t about political games or retribution. It’s about keeping people safe. And so when you see a delay in information flowing from the Chinese communist party to the technical people who we wanted to get into China immediately to assist in this, every moment of delay connected to being able to identify this risk vectors, creates risks to the people all around the world. And so this is why it’s not about blaming someone for this. This is about moving forward to make sure that we continue to have the information we need to do our jobs.

 

What is actually going on here? Does the White House care to explain?

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First published by GR on April 18, 2020

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For over twenty years Bill Gates and his Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have been vaccinating foremost children by the millions in remote areas of poor countries, mostly Africa and Asia. Most of their vaccination program had disastrous results, causing the very illness (polio, for example in India) and sterilizing young women (Kenya, with modified tetanus vaccines). Many of the children died. Many of the programs were carried out with the backing of the WHO and – yes – the UN Agency responsible for the Protection of Children, UNICEF. 

Most of these vaccination campaigns were implemented without the informed-consent of the children, parents, guardians or teachers, nor with the informed-consent, or with forged consent, of the respective government authorities. In the aftermath, The Gates Foundation was sued by governments around the world, Kenya, India, the Philippines – and more.

Bill Gates has a strange image of himself. He sees himself as The Messiah who saves the world through vaccination – and through population reduction.

Around the time, when the 2010 Rockefeller Report was issued, with its even more infamous “Lock Step” Scenario, precisely the scenario of which we are living the beginning right now, Bill Gates talked on a TED show in California, “Innovating to Zero” about the use of energy.

He used this TED presentation to promote his vaccination programs, literally saying, “If we are doing a real good job vaccinating childen, we can reduce the world population by 10% to 15%”. Watch this video from TED Talk at 04:21 or watch directly below.

 

Screenshot from the transcript on TED Talk

This sounds very much like eugenics.

The video, the first 6’45”, “The Truth about Bill Gates and his Disastrous Vaccination Program”, will tell you all about it.

Read also Gates’ Globalist Vaccine Agenda: a Win-Win for Pharma and Mandatory Vaccination by Robert F Kennedy Jr

Robert F Kennedy Jr, an avid Defender of Children’s Rights and anti-vaccination activist, has launched a petition sent to the White House, calling for “Investigations into the ‘Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’ for Medical Malpractice & Crimes Against Humanity

Screenshot 

“At the forefront of this is Bill Gates, who has publicly stated his interest in “reducing population growth” by 10-15%, by means of vaccination. Gates, UNICEF & WHO have already been credibly accused of intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines”. (Excerpt from text of Petition)

Link to the Petition.

If you wish to Sign the Petition click Here  

(At the time of writing, the petition had over 265,000. It requires 100,000 for an answer from the White House)

Video: Robert F. Kennedy Junior

See also brief video featuring Author Bill Still ( 6 min) entitled The Truth about Bill Gates and his disastrous Vaccination Programs around the World

Robert. F. Kennedy Exposes Bill Gates’ Vaccination Agenda

Now Mr. Gates and his allies, including Big-Pharma, WHO, UNICEF, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID / NIH, a close ally of Mr. Gates  – and of course, Agenda ID2020, are proposing to (force) vaccinate 7 billion people around the globe, with their concoction of a (so far) untested coronavirus vaccine. This is a multi-billion dollar bonanza for  Big Pharma and for all those who support the vaccine. Nobody will really know what the vaccine cocktail will contain. They intend to start with the Global South (Developing Countries) and then gradually move North (Developed Countries).

Mind you, there is no need for a vaccine to cure the corona virus. There are many cures:

French Professor Didier Raoult, who is one of the world’s top 5 scientists on communicable diseases, suggested the use of hydroxychloroquine (Chloroquine or Plaquenil), a well-known, simple, and inexpensive drug, also used to fight Malaria, and that has shown efficacy with previous coronaviruses such as SARS.  By mid-February 2020, clinical trials at his institute and in China already confirmed that the drug could reduce the viral load and bring spectacular improvement. Chinese scientists published their first trials on more than 100 patients and announced that the Chinese National Health Commission would recommend Chloroquine in their new guidelines to treat Covid-19. (Peter Koenig, April 1, 2020)

Be aware, awake, alert and warned.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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***

First published on Global Research in April 2020.

In Part 1 we looked at the reasons why questioning the coronavirus lockdown, despite the ever present allegation, does not demonstrate a callous disregard for human life. We are going to expand on why it doesn’t in this article.

I am based in the UK so much of this discussion relates to the decisions of the British State, but this is a global policy agenda and similar policies are found across the developed world. Effectively a small group of policy decision makers have placed an estimated 3.5 billion people under house arrest. It is only possible for them to do so with our consent. Consent is carefully cultivated by controlling the information we are given.

For the vast majority their only source of information is the corporate mainstream media (MSM) and the public announcements of the State. This article is written, as ever, in the hope people will do their own research and make up their own minds.

We are going to look at the evidence which strongly suggests the State and the MSM, adhering to a globalist agenda, have colluded to mislead the public into believing the COVID 19 (C19) threat is far greater than it actually is.

C19 can be fatal for those with pre-existing comorbidities, and possibly even some without, as can other forms of pneumonia and influenza-like respiratory illness. However, while every C19 death has been reported, none of the far greater number of people who have died in the UK this year from other respiratory infections have even been mentioned.

Systems have been created to ensure the C19 statistics are as terrifying as possible. Their statistical product is so vague it borders upon meaningless. It seems we have been inculcated with misplaced fear to justify the lockdown regime, to convince us to accept it and prepare us for what is to come.

I apologise for the article’s length but I hope you will read it in its entirety. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so please grab a coffee before we begin.

Lockdown advised by WHO?

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is financed through a combination of assessed and voluntary contributions.

Assessed contributions are paid by nation states for WHO membership and figures are released quarterly.

Voluntary contributions are additional contributions from member states and “other partners.” For some reason these figures haven’t been reported for more than three years.

About 80% of the WHO’s finances come from voluntary contributions.

In its most recent 2017 voluntary contribution report the WHO accounted for the $2.1 billion it received from private foundations and global corporations.

This compared to just over $1 billion voluntarily provided by governments.

Contributors included GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer AG, Sanofi, Merck and Gilead Sciences whose drug remdesivir is currently being trialled, along side the off patent hydroxychloroquine, as a possible preventative treatment for COVID 19.

The remdesivir trial is part of the WHO’s SOLIDARITY trials.

The third-largest single contributor in 2017 was GAVI. Formerly called the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, they contributed nearly $134 million. GAVI are partnered with the WHO, UNICEF, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank to sell vaccines globally.

The World Bank contributed nearly $146 million themselves and the largest individual payment, by some margin, at nearly $325 million came from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Though like many other foundations and corporations, through their various networks of interlinked partnerships, their overall contribution was much higher.

Among other beneficiaries of the BMGF’s generosity are the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium (VIMC) led by Professor Neil Ferguson.  They are based at Imperial College London and are directly funded by the BMGF and GAVI. Their objective is to provide statistical data analysis for the BMGF and GAVI in order for them to sell more vaccines.

Prof. Ferguson not only led the team who created the hopelessly inaccurate prediction which the U.S and UK governments based their lockdown regimes upon, he also co-founded the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling who worked with the WHO in 2009 to create ridiculous computer models predicting the H1N1 pandemic.

In 2009 the world went crazy after the WHO declared the H1N1 influenza pandemic. This resulted in billions being spent on very expensive H1N1 vaccines and antiviral treatments although it turned out the pandemic was indistinguishable from seasonal flu.

The only people who benefited from pointless vaccines and unnecessary medication were the manufacturers GlaxoSmithKline, Roche and Novartis. Each of these pharmaceutical corporations were among the largest voluntary contributors to the WHO in 2008/2009 financial year.

With an $84 million investment, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche were the largest single contributor into the WHO’s coffers that year. Luckily, as it turned out, they could afford it because sales of their unnecessary Tamiflu H1N1 medication rocketed to more than £3 billion following the WHO’s declared H1N1 pandemic. Which was just a coincidence.

The whole debacle resulted in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) launching an investigation into the WHO to look into the issue of a “falsified pandemic.” During the subsequent hearing the epidemiologist Dr Wolfgang Wodarg said:

The WHO basically held the trigger for the pandemic preparedness plans, they had a key role to play in deciding on the pandemic. Around 18 billion dollars was spent on this pandemic worldwide. Millions were vaccinated for no good reason. It is not even clear that the vaccine had a positive effect, because it was not clinically tested.”

At the same hearing Professor Dr Ulrich Keil, Director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Epidemiology at the University of Munster, said:

A number of scientists and others are questioning the decision of the WHO to declare an international pandemic. The H1N1 virus is not a new virus, but has been known to us for decades […] In Germany, about 10,000 deaths are attributed to seasonal ‘flu, especially among older and frail people. Only a very small number of deaths, namely 187, can be attributed to the H1N1 virus in Germany – and many of those are dubious.”

Of course nothing came of it because PACE were making allegations against the World Health Organisation. The WHO don’t break the rules, they make the rules. Amazingly, probably because no one ever learns anything from history, we all believed the WHO this time.

To imagine these huge investments made by pharmaceutical corporations and private foundations don’t buy influence is so naive it barely warrants mention. The WHO is essentially a policy lobby group for the powerful globalists who own it. Why an organisation with such significant and clear conflicts of financial interests should be considered a global health authority is anyone’s guess.

On the 11th March the WHO declared the SARS-CoV-2 global pandemic. On 15th March 2020 UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock stated that vulnerable people would be required to quarantine themselves or self isolate. 

The State issued a set of guidelines for avoiding the spread of infection. On the 16th March UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson issued a statement advising people to practice social distancing, avoid non essential travel and warned that drastic measures may be needed to protect the NHS and the most vulnerable.

On the 18th of March the Director General of the BMGF funded WHO Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus gave a virtual press conference. He stated:

WHO continues to call on all countries to implement a comprehensive approach with the aim of slowing down transmission and flattening the curve. This approach is saving lives and buying time for the development of vaccines and treatments. As you know, the first vaccine trial has begun……This virus is presenting us with an unprecedented threat”

We are about to discuss why COVID 19 is not an unprecedented threat. On the 20th of March Boris Johnson ordered the closure of all venues for social gathering, such as pubs, cafes and restaurants. On March 23rd the UK State legislated for the Coronavirus Act and placed the UK in lockdown. Just as the WHO and their other partners called on them to do.

Lockdown to protect the NHS

The NHS was created to protect us, that’s why we pay for it. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when this relationship flipped on its head.

After years of chronic underfunding by successive governments of all persuasions, interminable mismanagement, savage ideologically driven austerity cuts, crippling Private Finance Initiative debts and increasing privatisation for corporate profit, there is absolutely no reason to believe the State cares about either our health or the NHS.

Every single major health policy and legislative decision, made over the last few decades, clearly demonstrates that it doesn’t.

The basic premise, apparently believed by so many, that the State has now decided to act to keep us safe is tragically comical. For us to swallow this tripe we need to be sufficiently terrified to willingly accept the imagined protection of the State. The MSM has been doing its best to make sure we are and that we do. The 24 hour fear-porn cycle is a wonder to behold.

Most of this is based upon claims about deaths and stories about desperately overloaded hospitals struggling to cope with the pressure. Meanwhile, as millions of British people remain under house arrest, glued to their TV’s and fondle pads, the data that has been released by official sources doesn’t back up any of the tales we have been spun.

This inconvenient truth has been reported by very few in the MSM print media and has been met with deafening silence on our TV’s. Rather, the data has been convincingly spun to tell a story that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

Evidence of NHS overload is entirely absent. The State will claim this is thanks to the lockdown regime. Certainly the fact that people with other serious conditions haven’t been treated has alleviated pressure on the NHS. Unfortunately, the evidence also indicates the lockdown regime is probably killing them in increasing numbers. Though it seems unlikely the State will claim responsibility for that.

The Financial Times reported that close to half of the UK’s hospital beds were empty. With just 60% of acute beds occupied this is 30% less than this time last year.

In the same period last year the NHS was creaking under the pressure of demand, prompting then Prime Minister Theresa May to suggest scrapping NHS targets. Once again, the State was only concerned with how the figures looked not about people dying on trolleys in corridors. This year it cares, honest!

During a supposed global pandemic we’ve had the lowest ever national A&E attendance. Manchester hospitals report a 57% bed occupation rate compared to their average of 94%.

Most concerning is the huge drop in cardiology patients. With Heart disease killing more than 40,000 people under the age of 75 every year in the UK, and with a reported rise in fatalities last year, this prompted Professor John Howarth from North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust to express grave concern.

“I am really worried that people are not seeking the help they need for important conditions other than Covid-19.”

Indeed, if your world view is supplied by the MSM, deaths from anything other than C19 seem to have become practically irrelevant in the space of a few weeks. The Health Service journal (HSJ) reports that the NHS has four times as many empty beds as normal. Confirming that more than 40% of acute beds are unoccupied.

Even in London, the alleged epicentre of the C19 pandemic, that figure is still nearly 29%.

The much publicised Nightingale temporary hospitals, a mobilisation the MSM were keen to portray as putting the nation on a war footing, which were allegedly required to cope with the surge of C19 patients, aren’t necessary.

Of the 1,555 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds available in London 1,245 are occupied. So questions must be asked why 19 patients, who presumably needed intensive care, were seemingly moved unnecessarily into the 4,000 bed London Nightingale over the Easter weekend.

Contrary to the claimed justification for the lockdown, as many have repeatedly warned, the health consequences of the lockdown regime could far outweigh the risks presented by C19.

Excess mortality this year is higher than average but reported coronavirus deaths form a smaller part of that bigger picture.

The HSJ reported a senior NHS sources who stated:

There could be some very serious unintended consequences. While there will be a lot of covid-19 fatalities, we could end up losing more ‘years of life’ because of fatalities relating to non-covid-19 health complications.”

The deputy director of research at the Nuffield Trust Sarah Scobie echoed this concern:

The PHE [Public Health England] data suggests there could be significant problems already developing for heart disease related conditions patients, for example. Attendances relating to myocardial infarction at emergency departments have dropped right down, whereas ambulance calls in relation to chest pain have gone right up.”

Not only is there no evidence that the NHS is even close to struggling to cope with a non-existent surge, the likely severe health consequences of the State’s lockdown policy are starting to emerge. When we look at the data on claimed COVID 19 deaths the picture only becomes more alarming.

Lockdown and reported deaths

Everyday, for weeks, the MSM has reported every single UK death which was supposedly due to COVID 19. This has been central to their effort to convince us of the severity of the pandemic. The reporting always supports the State’s narrative that the lockdown is necessary.

Under normal circumstances, when someone dies, a person who knows them well, such as a family member, or someone who was physically close to the person at the time of death, is the qualified informant who can notify the registrar of the circumstances and non medical details of the death.

That is not true for suspected C19 patients. For them a funeral director, who has almost certainly never met the deceased, can be the qualified informant. This places far more emphasis on the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death (MCCD) as registration can take place without any input from family or anyone else familiar with the circumstances of the death.

Prior to the Coronavirus Act, the last attending doctor to the deceased had the responsibility to register the death. However, in the case of suspected C19 deaths, that duty can be discharged by a doctor who has never met the patient.

The UK State guidance for C19 patients states:

A doctor who attended the deceased during their last illness has a legal responsibility to complete a MCCD….. this duty may be discharged through another doctor who may complete an MCCD in an emergency period….In an emergency period, any doctor can complete the MCCD….For the purposes of the emergency period, the attendance may be in person, via video/visual consultation, but not audio (e.g. via telephone)….Where the certifying doctor has not seen the deceased before death they should delete the words last seen alive by me on.

When an MCCD is completed the medical causes are listed sequentially with the immediate cause of death at the top and the underlying cause of death at the bottom of the list. For example, heart failure caused by pneumonia stemming from influenza would list the immediate cause of death as a heart attack and the underlying cause as influenza. That underlying cause is usually diagnosed through positive test results.

It is crucial to understand that for C19 to be recorded on the MCCD, as the underlying cause of death, there does not need to be any test based diagnosis of the syndrome. Diagnosis can simply be from observation of symptoms or CT scans. The guidance to medical practitioners states:

if before death the patient had symptoms typical of COVID 19 infection, but the test result has not been received, it would be satisfactory to give ‘COVID-19’ as the cause of death, tick Box B and then share the test result when it becomes available. In the circumstances of there being no swab, it is satisfactory to apply clinical judgement.

Given this seeming lack of clarity, guidance from the Royal College of Pathologists (RCP) is also concerning.

In circumstances where C19 is merely believed to be a factor they advise that there is no need for a post mortem.

If a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post-mortem examination to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.”

Post-mortems are not standard procedure and are normally required only where the cause of death is unknown or where the circumstances appear suspicious. However, the recommendation of the RCP is another part of a systemic approach to C19 deaths which is inexplicably opaque.

Even when a sample test is undertaken to identify C19, questions remain. The RT-PCR test commonly used to test for C19 does not appear to be very reliable, nor is it designed as a diagnostic tool for identifying viruses.

study from the Department of Microbiology, Queen Mary Hospital, University of Hong Kong found wild variations in RT-PCR accuracy. It was found to be between 22%  – 80% reliable depending on how it was applied. This general unreliability has been confirmed by other studies. Further studies show clear discrepancies between RT-PCR test results and clinical indication from CT scans.

Most of these studies indicate RT-PCR failure to detect C19 in symptomatic patients, so-called “false negative” tests. When Chinese researchers from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics School of Public Health conducted data analysis of the RT-PCR tests of asymptomatic patients they also found an 80% false positive rate.

Having passed peer review and publication the paper was subsequently withdrawn for what seem quite bizarre reasons. It was removed from the scientific literature because it “depended on theoretical deduction.” The paper was not testing an experimental hypothesis, it was an epidemiological analysis of the available statistical data. All such statistical analysis relies upon theoretical deduction. The claimed reason for withdrawal suggests that all data analysis is now considered to be completely useless.

It seems scientific claims that C19 numbers are underestimated are fine, claims they are overestimated are not. Either way, whether false negative or false positive, there is plenty of evidence to question the reliability of the RT-PCR test for diagnosing COVID 19.

The MSM has suggested that enhanced RT-PCR testing can detect the virus SARS-CoV-2 and, in particular, the amount of it in the patient’s system, the viral load. This is disinformation.

The Nobel winning scientist who devised PCR, Karry Mullis, speaking about the use of PCR to detect HIV stated:

Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron. PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers [viral load]…These tests cannot detect free, infectious viruses at all…The tests can detect genetic sequences of viruses, but not viruses themselves.”

Reported C19 deaths can be registered without a test clearly diagnosing any coronavirus, let alone C19. The death can be signed off by a doctor who has never seen the patient and can then be registered by someone who has never met the deceased and was nowhere near them when they died.

Further provision in the Coronavirus Act then allows for the body to be cremated, potentially against the family’s wishes, ensuring a confirmatory autopsy is impossible, though it is unlikely one will be conducted anyway.

To say this raises questions about the official reported statistics is an understatement. Questions in no way allege either medical malpractice or negligence. Neither are required for significant confusion to occur because the potential for widespread misreporting of causes of death seems to be a core element of the C19 MCCD process the State has constructed.

Lockdown the data

At the time of writing The UK is said to have 93,873 cases with 12,107 deaths attributed to C19. Both the infection and mortality rates are showing a declining trend.

Given the apparent haphazard reliability of tests, strange reporting procedures and oddly relaxed registration requirements, the claimed attribution is pretty weak.

Coupled with the data which shows unusually low hospital admissions, with little to no evidence of the widely anticipated “surge,” justification for the State’s lockdown of society and the economy appears painfully thin. The evidence base does not improve when we look at the official data.

ONS Data

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) have released analysis of the C19 deaths that occurred during March 2020.

In total 3,912 deaths were recorded of which 3,372 (86%) listed C19 as the underlying cause of death. Of these, 38 (1%) were cases where C19 was only suspected as the underlying cause, meaning neither a test nor any clear clinical presentation was observed. The problem is that the RT-PCR test, supposedly confirming C19, doesn’t tell us much either.

Of the 3,372 deaths recorded with underlying C19, approximately 3,068 had at least one comorbidity with the majority having more than two. Not only does the RT-PCR test fail to provide any reliable proof that these people even had C19 the existence of other comorbidities provides further reason to question if the C19 was a contributory factor.

Of the 3,912 people who died, 540 of them merely mentioned C19 on the MCCG with no indication that it contributed to the deaths. With at least 91% of patients having comorbidities, there is very little evidence that the people who died with a C19 infection wouldn’t have died without.

The age profile of the deceased is practically identical to standard all cause mortality in the UK. If C19 is a viral pandemic it is one that behaves like normal mortality.

And yet, despite all this, the MSM reported every one of them to the public as confirmed C19 deaths.

Another, perhaps even more alarming possibility has arisen. While heart disease accounts for 14% of C19 comorbidities, reported deaths from heart disease have mysteriously dropped by the corresponding amount during the same period. This clearly indicates that patients dying from other causes, such as heart failure, are being recorded, and certainly reported by the MSM, as dying from C19.

This illustrates a far more complex picture than we have been given to believe. Why have the State and the MSM made so many alarming claims about people dying from C19 when the evidence supporting those claims is, at best, questionable?

None of this is the fault of medical practitioners or bodies like the Office Of National Statistics (ONS). The ONS system has been both reliable and informative for many years. Yet once again, in the case of C19 deaths, the State felt it was necessary to make some changes.

On the March 30th the MSM reported that the UK State had instructed the ONS to change the way they record C19 deaths. Explaining the change to recording “mentions” of COVID 19 an unnamed spokesperson for the ONS said:

It will be based on mentions of Covid-19 on death certificates. It will include suspected cases of Covid-19 where someone has not been tested positive for Covid-19.”

This habit of states deciding to change the C19 mortality data, by adding in people who are assumed to have died from it, appears to be a global policy. The China CDC did the same and the U.S have just added a significant number to their statistics.

In every case the revision increases and never decreases the fatality statistics. Why do states around the world feel the need to do this? Is it because they are concerned about statistical rigour or are they more concerned about justifying their lockdown regimes?

The ONS reported all cause mortality for week 14 ending April 3rd. They recorded 16,387 deaths which was 6,082 higher than the ONS 5 year average. They stated that 21.2% of total deaths “mentioned” Covid 19. The MSM immediately pounced on this claiming this meant COVID 19 had pushed up the death toll to unprecedented levels. This was outrageous disinformation. That is not what the data showed.

The ONS stated that of the 6,082 excess deaths 3,475 “mentioned” coronavirus. Of those 1,466 also mentioned influenza and pneumonia. Consequently, while registered deaths are 6,082 above the 5 year average, only 2009 of those solely mentioned C19 with 4,073 mentioning other underlying causes. It is worth remembering only C19 deaths can be “mentioned” without a clear positive test result

Therefore, at least 67% of that excess mortality is being caused by other unknown factors that no one seems to care about. The MSM have absolutely no interests at all in this more severe health crisis. Why not? Once again they have completely misled the public and deny the existence of another, more significant reason for concern. Perhaps anticipating this the ONS stated:

“Influenza and Pneumonia” has been included for comparison, as a well-understood cause of death involving respiratory infection that is likely to have somewhat similar risk factors to COVID-19.”

Short of openly stating that C19 is no more deadly than any other pneumonia like illnesses, the ONS appear to be trying to get a message across. Perhaps they can’t say it directly.

ONS data showing mortality in 2020 comparing C19 to other respiratory illness

As the so called pandemic has progressed more in depth studies have begun to emerge. Initial findings from Chinese scientists indicate that SARS-CoV-2 has an infection fatality rate (IFR) of between 0.04% and 0.12%. which is comparable to flu pandemics with an estimated IFR of 0.1%. None of these have required a lockdown regime.

Further studies have highlighted the overestimated risk allegedly presented by SARS-CoV-2. [Including a new study released just yesterday – ed.]

For the year to date, the ONS showed a comparison of the deaths mentioning C19 and deaths mentioning pneumonia and Influenza. Deaths this year from pneumonia and influenza appear to stand at around 30,000.

Quite clearly, according to the ONS, other respiratory infections, like pneumonia and influenza, currently pose a significantly greater threat to life than COVID 19. Something is certainly pushing up mortality in the UK but, at the very most, only 33% of that increase is vaguely attributable to C19.

Lockdown to cover a myriad of sins

The MSM have recently started floating the idea that the lockdown regime could become the new normal.

According to the State it may be necessary to go in an out of various levels of the regime from time to time, depending on the State’s threat assessment. This is based on scientific research bought and paid for by pharmaceutical corporations and private foundations including GlaxoSmithKline (Wellcome Trust).

Seeing as it is increasingly evident that the C19 threat has been massively over-hyped, why would the State and its globalist partners want the economic destruction to continue?

Firstly it delivers on a number of long held globalist objectives.

A cashless society, mandatory vaccination, universal basic income, a surveillance state, restricted freedom of movement and a complete restructuring of the global economy have already been touted as necessary following the “pandemic.” All of these ambitions and economic realities existed before the pandemic first emerged in China.

The State has already moved towards censoring anyone who questions vaccines. It is vital to understand that the canard of the antivaxxer is a meaningless trope.

It is entirely possible to accept that vaccines can contribute towards effective preventative public health programs while, at the same time, questioning the efficacy and purpose of some vaccines. Vaccines are not all the same.

The State’s and the MSM’s insistence that anyone who question any vaccines is some sort of whacked out, new age, science Luddite is total nonsense. No one will be permitted to question vaccines, and that fact alone should be sufficient to raise anyone’s suspicion.

From GAVI to the WHO and from the BMGF to Imperial College the response to the C19 pandemic has been driven by foundations and pharmaceutical corporations with considerable investments in vaccine development. Of course they would like to see global mandatory vaccination.

To just ignore this, because you’ve been told by the MSM that questioning any vaccine is a “conspiracy theory”, not only evidences a lack of critical thinking it demonstrates a degree of brainwashing.

Global financial institutions, such as the IMF, have been advocating the cashless society for years. A cashless society will allow central banks to control every aspect of your life.

Everything you buy can be tracked and your purchases could easily be limited to exclude certain items.

Although there is very little evidence that handling cash presents any increased threat of infection that hasn’t stopped the MSM from selling the idea.

The impact of the lockdown regime across the globe has already had a devastating economic impact. All the indicators are that the regime will throw the global economy into a deep depression. The longer it continues the worse it will get.

The tendency of some to claim this doesn’t matter because saving life is the only concern is hopelessly myopic. The link between poverty and significantly increased mortality is beyond dispute. The cure will definitely be far worse than the disease.

As millions are forced into unemployment the outlook isn’t good. However, while the State will undoubtedly claim that unemployment has been caused by the C19 crisis, in truth the imminent economic collapse was already driving up unemployment before the crisis began.

This has led to increasing calls for the State to provide a Universal Basic Income.

This will create mass dependency upon the State for  huge swathes of the population. Affording the State immeasurable control over people’s lives. In a cashless society, people who don’t behave in accordance with State regulations, could be punished financially. Instant fines will be commonplace.

We are already seeing how that control can be deployed within a surveillance society as the State and its compliant MSM put the idea of immunity passports into the public imagination.

The link between this and mandatory vaccination is obvious. This proposed policy comes straight from the heart of the globalist think tanks.

ID2020 is a globalist initiative which intends to provide everyone on earth with an authorised identity. GAVI, Microsoft, BMGF and the Rockerfeller Foundation are among the happy ID2020 alliance who will decide who you are allowed to be.

Biometric ID controlled by your friendly ID2020 globalists – Because they care!

Comically they claim that proving who you are to the State is somehow a human right. This is utter bilge. I don’t know about you, but I know who I am and so do the people I care about. I couldn’t care less who the State thinks I am. Like everyone else on Earth you were born with inalienable human rights. The State doesn’t define what they are, they just choose to ignore them.

ID2020 is in no way objective. Your digital biometric ID can be “good” which means it can also be “bad.” Bill Gates and Rockerfellers are among those who state:

With a “good” digital identity you can enjoy your rights to privacy, security, and choice.”

Which means you can’t if its “bad.” As longs as you are a good citizen, do as you are told, get your mandatory vaccinations and don’t step out of line, you can have your rights because megalomaniacs think they are gods who have the power to allow or deny them.

Your digital ID will control the information you are allowed to access and your immunity passport will almost certainly be part of your State authorised identity as we move towards something indistinguishable from China’s social credit system.

It will be used to monitor your behaviour.

Your immunity passport status will depend upon where you go and who with. The State has decided that we all need contact tracing apps to regulate who we meet and limit our freedom of movement.

If you meet the wrong person or go to the wrong area, or perhaps fail to produce your authorisation Q-code on demand, then you will be locked down.

Perhaps the biggest deception of all is yet to come as the State manoeuvres to blame the C19 for the economic collapse.

Firstly, it isn’t C19 but rather the lockdown regime that has sped up destruction of the economy, but that destruction was inevitable anyway. The 2008 credit crunch was a failure of the banks. They speculated in the markets and lost.

As a result we have endured a decade of austerity to bail them out. Socialism only applies to those who can afford it. Austerity has reduced essential public services to rubble, and now, when we supposedly need them most, we’ve all been placed under house arrest to stop us using them while many of the most vulnerable have been ignored. The irony is laughable.

While we’ve all suffered austerity, the central banks have been printing funny money, blowing up the debt bubble to unimaginable proportions.

The result has been increasing consumer debt, staggering levels of corporate borrowing and, though government deficits have reduced, government debt is off the charts, even in comparison to 2010 levels.

This kind of debt-based economy was never sustainable and global financiers have known it for years.

What the globalists needed was a reason to reset the economy without losing power. Perhaps it is another coincidence that the C19 lockdown regime just happens to deliver both the mechanism and the excuse to press that global reset button. That it also ushers in all the globalist’s desires is just another in a very long line of remarkable coincidences.

Now that global terrorism is no longer a daily threat and global warming has been put on the back burner, the new normal of the ever shifting threat from pandemic seems to be the novel war on terrorTraining, funding and equipping terrorist groups has served the State well in the first two decades of the 21st century but now it is ready to move on to the next phase by exploiting a terror closer to the heart of every home. Disease.

In their totality, for those willing to look, it is transparent that these response measures have coalesced to create the framework for a totalitarian dictatorship. One rolling out at pace in the UK. Similar draconian diktats have sprung up across the globe.

A coordinated global effort like this doesn’t just happen. It takes years of training and planning. The only people who can’t see it are those who, for whatever reason, choose not to.

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First posted on GR on April 13, 2020

Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.

Gates’ obsession with vaccines seems to be fueled by a conviction to save the world with technology.

Promising his share of $450 million of $1.2 billion to eradicate Polio, Gates took control of India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) which mandated up to 50 doses (Table 1) of polio vaccines through overlapping immunization programs to children before the age of five. Indian doctors blame the Gates campaign for a devastating non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP) epidemic that paralyzed 490,000 children beyond expected rates between 2000 and 2017. In 2017, the Indian government dialed back Gates’ vaccine regimen and asked Gates and his vaccine policies to leave India. NPAFP rates dropped precipitously.

The most frightening [polio] epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines.

In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) reluctantly admitted that the global explosion in polio is predominantly vaccine strain. The most frightening epidemics in Congo, Afghanistan, and the Philippines, are all linked to vaccines. In fact, by 2018, 70% of global polio cases were vaccine strain.

In 2014, the Gates Foundation funded tests of experimental HPV vaccines, developed by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) and Merck, on 23,000 young girls in remote Indian provinces. Approximately 1,200 suffered severe side effects, including autoimmune and fertility disorders. Seven died. Indian government investigations charged that Gates-funded researchers committed pervasive ethical violations: pressuring vulnerable village girls into the trial, bullying parents, forging consent forms, and refusing medical care to the injured girls. The case is now in the country’s Supreme Court.

South African newspapers complained, ‘We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.’

In 2010, the Gates Foundation funded a phase 3 trial of GSK’s experimental malaria vaccine, killing 151 African infants and causing serious adverse effects including paralysis, seizure, and febrile convulsions to 1,048 of the 5,949 children.

During Gates’ 2002 MenAfriVac campaign in Sub-Saharan Africa, Gates’ operatives forcibly vaccinated thousands of African children against meningitis. Approximately 50 of the 500 children vaccinated developed paralysis. South African newspapers complained, “We are guinea pigs for the drug makers.” Nelson Mandela’s former Senior Economist, Professor Patrick Bond, describes Gates’ philanthropic practices as “ruthless and immoral.”

In 2010, Gates committed $10 billion to the WHO saying, “We must make this the decade of vaccines.” A month later, Gates said in a Ted Talk that new vaccines “could reduce population”. In 2014, Kenya’s Catholic Doctors Association accused the WHO of chemically sterilizing millions of unwilling Kenyan women with a  “tetanus” vaccine campaign. Independent labs found a sterility formula in every vaccine tested. After denying the charges, WHO finally admitted it had been developing the sterility vaccines for over a decade.  Similar accusations came from Tanzania, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the Philippines.

A 2017 study (Morgenson et. al. 2017) showed that WHO’s popular DTP vaccine is killing more African children than the diseases it prevents. DTP-vaccinated girls suffered 10x the death rate of children who had not yet received the vaccine. WHO has refused to recall the lethal vaccine which it forces upon tens of millions of African children annually.

[Global public health officials] say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

Global public health advocates around the world accuse Gates of steering WHO’s agenda away from the projects that are proven to curb infectious diseases: clean water, hygiene, nutrition, and economic development. The Gates Foundation only spends about $650 million of its $5 billion dollar budget on these areas.  They say he has diverted agency resources to serve his personal philosophy that good health only comes in a syringe.

In addition to using his philanthropy to control WHO, UNICEF, GAVI, and PATH, Gates funds a private pharmaceutical company that manufactures vaccines, and additionally is donating $50 million to 12 pharmaceutical companies to speed up development of a coronavirus vaccine. In his recent media appearances, Gates appears confident that the Covid-19 crisis will now give him the opportunity to force his dictatorial vaccine programs on American children.

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C.Y.A. and “Fraudulent Marketing”: The Pfizer Covid-19 Vaccine is an “Unapproved Product” which is “Permitted for Use”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 03 2021

Pfizer Inc, is currently involved in marketing its experimental mRNA vaccine with the relentless support of national governments. Amply documented, barely reported by the media, numerous cases of deaths and injury have occurred.

Washington’s Lopsided Bilateral Relationship with Israel

By Philip Giraldi, March 03 2021

My article last week that made some suggestions about what ordinary Americans can do to put pressure on Israel and on the lopsided bilateral relationship with Washington that has done so much damage to the United States proved to be quite popular.

Video: Pfizer $2.3 Billion 2009 Medical Fraud Settlement. US Department of Justice

By C-Span, March 03 2021

This was originally published in September 2009. Justice Department attorneys and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a news conference dealing with a health care-related settlement. The federal government announced the largest medical fraud settlement in U.S. history.

The EU’s Participation in the New Cold War against Russia

By Clare Daly and Dr. Leon Tressell, March 03 2021

The EU has chosen to compound its many problems by becoming an enthusiastic participant in the new Cold War against Russia initiated by American imperialism.

The Khashoggi Affair: “There Is No Longer Any Political Legitimacy for Saudi MBS Crown Prince”

By Steven Sahiounie, March 03 2021

President Joe Biden has disappointed human rights activists, journalists, and many in Congress who expected him to exact a punishment on Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) in the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi.

Home Invasions: All the Ways the Government Can Lay Siege to Your Property

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, March 03 2021

Americans are not safe in their homes. Not anymore, at least. This present menace comes from the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.

Investigation Links Fauci to Controversial Experiments that May Have Led to Pandemic

By Children’s Health Defense, March 03 2021

Fox News investigation says there’s “reasonable grounds to suspect” that SARS-CoV-2, which may have leaked accidentally from a lab in Wuhan, China, was the product of taxpayer-funded gain-of-function experiments commissioned by the U.S. government and overseen by Fauci.

‘Freedom Bracelet’ Tracking Device Launched as Alternative to Quarantine

By Steve Watson, March 03 2021

Israel has rolled out what it is calling a ‘Freedom bracelet’, a tracking device that will serve as an alternative to a two-week quarantine for anyone entering the country from abroad.

Video: Dr. Simone Gold – The Truth About the COVID-19 Vaccine

By Dr. Simone Gold, March 03 2021

Dr. Simone Gold of America’s Frontline Doctors shared information about the experimental COVID-19 vaccines and talked about the massive disinformation campaign that has taken over America and the rest of the world.

Biden Administration Escalates “War on Russia by Other Means”. On the Target for “Regime Change”

By Stephen Lendman, March 03 2021

The US is implacably hostile toward nations free from its control. None are adversarial. None threaten US security. None are at war with other nations. None are involved in destabilizing activities.

Sky-High Levels of Fracking Chemicals Detected in Children’s Bodies

By Climate Nexus, March 03 2021

While the hazards of fracking to human health are well-documented, first-of-its-kind research from Environmental Health News shows the actual levels of biomarkers for fracking chemicals in the bodies of children living near fracking wells far higher than in the general population.

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Three months after losing the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan still continues his quest to find the perfect excuse.

The most recent one backfired, heavily.

On February 24th, in an interview, Pashinyan claimed that the reason Armenia lost the war against Azerbaijan was Russia’s Iskander missile.

According to his estimations the missile only exploded 10% of the time upon impact. As such, the “40-year-old weapon” was ineffective, and led to Yerevan’s defeat.

He has gone through almost every possible reason for losing the war, except admitting poor leadership and gross mismanagement of the forces.

Deputy Chief of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff Tiran Khachatryan immediately rebuked Pashinyan, saying that his claim was “frivolous”.

In response, the Armenian Prime Minister released the official from his position.

Following that, the head of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff, Onik Gasparyan released a statement, signed by all his deputies and other military officials demanding that Nikol Pashinyan immediately resign from the country’s leadership.

Pashinyan, in response, did what he does best – said that he had released the Chief of the General Staff, because he would not be questioned.

He called his supporters to take to the streets because this constituted a “military coup” and began “actively” leading the country through Facebook livestreams.

There are protests in Yerevan, both in support and against Nikol Pashinyan. His leadership has all but failed, and he alone undermines the vestiges of Armenia’s statehood.

Following his statements, he was mocked by the Russian Defense Ministry, which denied that the Iskander had been used in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He was also mocked by Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev, who called his statements “anecdotal”. He also entirely denied that the Iskander had been used at all during the conflict.

Even Turkey released a statement playing along with the “military coup” narrative, saying that it was against it. Understandable, for Ankara, Armenia under inadequate leadership is a perfect neighbor.

After months of excuses, various accusations against past leadership, current military leadership, its own citizens and Russia, Pashinyan went too far. He still refuses to hang onto power, but he is becoming increasingly isolated in his attempt to “leave power in the people’s hands,” as he calls refusing to resign.

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The US is implacably hostile toward nations free from its control. None are adversarial. None threaten US security. None are at war with other nations. None are involved in destabilizing activities.

Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and other independent nations seek cooperative relations with other countries, confrontation with none.

Yet they’re all on the US target list for regime change — war by hot and/or other means Washington’s favored strategies by both right wings of its war party.

What’s been going on throughout most of the post-WW II period is symptomatic of a nation in decline.

At the expense of vital homeland needs, the US spends more on militarism, belligerence, so-called homeland security, and related war on humanity harshness than other major nations combined.

Living by the sword is self-defeating, a lesson not learned by US policymakers.

Washington’s rage to rule the world unchallenged, its imperial arrogance and unwillingness to change heads it for eventual arrival in history’s dustbin.

A separate article discussed coordinated US/EU sanctions on Russia — unjustifiably justified by a litany of bald-faced Big Lies.

Separately on Tuesday, the State Department defied reality with the following fabricated accusation:

Biden’s Secretary of State Blinken “determined that the Government of the Russian Federation has used a chemical weapon against its own nationals (sic).”

No evidence suggests it. None was presented by the US or EU to support the charge — invented, not legitimate, as part of longstanding US-led Western war on Russia by other means.

Along with US sanctions discussed in a same-day article, the State Department announced the following on Russia:

1. “Termination of assistance to Russia under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961…”

2. “Termination of (virtually nonexistent US) arms sales…to Russia…”

3. “Termination of (nonexistent US) foreign military financing for Russia…”

4. “Denial of (nonexistent US) credit or other financial assistance…to Russia…”

5. “Prohibition on the export to Russia of any goods or technology” related to security.

Unlawfully imposed sanctions “will remain in place for a minimum of 12 months.”

“They’ll only be removed…if the executive branch determines and certifies to Congress that the Russian government has met” its unacceptable demands.

Russian/US space cooperation is at least largely unaffected by the above.

Sanctioned Russian officials include Pavel Anatolievich Popov, Aleksei Yurievich Krivoruchko, Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko, Andrei Veniaminovich Yarin, Alexander Vasilievich Bortnikov, Igor Victorovich Krasnov and Alexander Petrovich Kalashnikov.

They’re involved in Russian Federation defense.

Russia’s Presidential Executive Office First Deputy Chief of Staff was targeted.

So was head of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), its prosecutor general, and Federal Penitentiary Service director.

In response to the above, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the following:

The US and EU “teamed up (to) ma(ke) a hostile move towards Russia by announcing (unlawful) new sanctions” for fabricated reasons.

“US policy…increasingly aggravat(es) bilateral relations that Washington has already brought to a complete halt.”

Falsely claiming that Russia “poisoned” convicted embezzler, unregistered foreign agent Navalny with a “chemical warfare agent” is a phony “pretext for continuing undisguised interference in our domestic affairs, and we will not accept this.”

“Based on the principle of reciprocity, we will respond but not necessarily with symmetrical measures.”

“Any hopes to impose something on Russia by way of sanctions or other pressure have failed in the past and will fail now.”

“If the US is not ready for an equitable and reasonable dialogue, this is their choice.”

“Regardless of the US’ enthusiasm for sanctions, we will continue to consistently and resolutely uphold our national interests and rebuff any aggression.”

“As a serial violator of international treaties and agreements on arms control and the non-proliferation of weapons, Washington is, by definition, deprived of the moral right to ‘lecture’ others.”

Separately on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the following:

“We will react to (coordinated US/EU sanctions) by all means.”

“Nobody has cancelled the rules of diplomacy. Reciprocity is one of these.”

“We have already repeatedly expressed our attitude to the unlawful unilateral sanctions…introduced by (the US and EU) without practically any excuse.”

“They have nothing to present by way of substantiating the alleged poisoning of Navalny in any way.”

“Those who treated him (in Berlin) conceal the facts that could throw light on what happened to him and instead of honestly cooperating they are economical with the truth.”

“When they start ‘punishing’ us (unlawfully), such decisions do not reflect well on them.”

“We will respond to this by all means.”

Hostile US-dominated Western actions against Russia risk confrontation if things are pushed too far.

Instead of pursuing peace, stability, and cooperative relations with other countries, US policymakers wage endless wars by hot and other means to dominate them, including against invented enemies like Russia.

Britain and EU bloc countries march in lockstep with Washington’s war on humanity.

If continues unchecked, there’s no good ending to what lies ahead.

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

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

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The European Union faces multiple challenges as it progress into 2021. The 27 member states are struggling with simultaneous economic and health crises resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the EU which is the world’s largest trading bloc is trying to expand its geo-political and economic power with a trade deal with China that was signed in December 2020.

It faces numerous problems as it struggles to emerge from economic recession and the attendant rising wealth inequality that has seen a huge wealth transfer to European elites. The EU has chosen to compound its many problems by becoming an enthusiastic participant in the new Cold War against Russia initiated by American imperialism.

Clare Daly MEP representing Independents For Change (Ireland) is part of the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, (GUE/NGL ) in the European Parliament. She took time time out to talk about the geo-political and economic challenges faces the European Union.

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Leon Tressell: During the Obama administration the United States initiated a new Cold War with Russia. This can be dated back to the events of 2014 when the American sponsored Maidan coup overthrew the elected government of Yanukovich. Following this, an ultra-nationalist regime took power in Kiev which led Russian speaking regions in Eastern Ukraine to secede in the Donbass region. The US sponsored regime in Kiev respond to this by launching a so-called anti-terrorist offensive against the people of the Donbass region. This war has killed over 10,000 civilians and continues to this very day. Plus we saw the secession of the Crimean region which voted to rejoin Russia. Following these events the United States and its EU allies imposed a series of sanctions upon Russia which continue to the present.

The new Cold War against Russia has also been pursued in the military sphere with the build up of NATO (i.e. US and EU) forces along Russia’s western borders and the installation of missile defence systems aimed at Russia in several East European countries.

More recently, there has been growing support within the EU for American demands that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline be suspended. Last September the EU Parliament overwhelmingly passed a resolution demanding a suspension of the construction of the Nord stream 2 gas pipeline. The same resolution also demanded further EU sanctions on Russia due to the imprisonment of the opposition politician Navalny by Russian authorities. Yet the EU is deafeningly silent on the continued imprisonment of journalist Julian Assange who is kept in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison in the UK. How would you explain the increasing hostility of the EU towards Russia and what dangers does this pose for peace on the continent of Europe?

Clare Daly: I’m not sure the Ukraine crisis marks the restart of Cold War politics to be honest – the proclamation of the end of the Cold War was a bit of stagecraft, but throughout the 1990s, during Clinton’s presidency and into the George W Bush years you had significant voices on both sides of US politics continuing to push for Cold War stances on Russia. Anti-Russian policy took a back seat to the so-called War on Terrorism, but NATO expansion continued. We shouldn’t forget the encroachment of American missile defence systems in Eastern Europe, which was going on throughout this period. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which was interpreted as aggression by Russia. We’re certainly back to fever pitch now. What is different, I think, is the dangers that are present in this new chapter of relations with Russia. The late Professor Stephen Cohen put it well when he said that this is probably more dangerous than it was before, because there do not seem to be rules of behaviour or red lines on either side. It’s an unstable situation and the rhetoric in Brussels and Washington is increasingly reckless and bellicose. It’s being undertaken as a project of national security for the NATO states, and that is driving massive hikes in weapons spending in Europe, but it is actually destroying security because it treats Russia – a nuclear armed state – as an adversary.

LT: The mainstream media across the EU, UK and the United States is engaged in a ferocious propaganda campaign attacking Russia for the 3 year prison sentence given to Alexei Navalny for parole violations. Governments in all these countries have agreed that if Navalny is not released by Russia then it will face further economic sanctions. Yet, the EU Parliament is not demanding sanctions be placed upon the UK for its imprisonment of journalist Julian Assange who faces a 175 year prison sentence if he is extradited to the United States and convicted on charges relating to the 1917 Espionage Act.

It should be noted that the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture Professor Nils Meltzer has repeatedly stated that Julian Assange is a victim of psychological torture at the hands of the US and UK governments. How would you explain the huge discrepancy between the EU’s defence of Navalny and its shameful silence over the psychological torture and imprisonment of Julian Assange?

CD: There are two main reasons Assange is ignored in the European Parliament. The first is that he exposed the wrong countries. There is zero interest from the larger groups in the European Parliament in the fact that Western governments routinely commit human rights abuses, war crimes, etc. Zero. Any talk of it is inconvenient and embarrassing for them. So the fact that WikiLeaks’ publications in 2010 provided massive amounts of documentary evidence of US and allied war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq is the main reason his human rights don’t matter to those groups. He embarrassed these power groups and they are happy to see him punished for it. However, his human rights would very quickly matter if they could be used to attack perceived adversaries, like Russia. Unfortunately, they can’t, so they are ignored. The same goes for Navalny. Most of these groups don’t care at all about Alexei Navalny’s human rights. If he couldn’t be used to attack Russia they would leave him for dead. For example in the last few days the Biden administration found that the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman personally approved the murder and shocking dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018. But the US has not sanctioned Saudi Arabia and that story will very likely sink like a stone. It just has no currency in the present geopolitical environment. For those of us who care about upholding human rights, consistency is important. But the European establishment doesn’t actually care about human rights except as a cudgel to bash official enemies. No analysis of how human rights are actually used and abused in the European Parliament could arrive at any other conclusion.

LT: Following the 2008 financial crisis EU countries pursued austerity policies for many years making ordinary people pay for the crisis of capitalism that was created by the unfettered greed of banks and other financial entities. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank pursued a policy of ultra low interest rates that made it difficult for ordinary people to save money. The ECB also printed trillions of euros through its QE programmes which continue to this day. During 2020 the European Central Bank spent over 1 trillion euros on buying government/corporate bonds. This QE programme has bought up huge quantities of government and corporate bonds yet it appears to have done little to improve the living standards of most EU citizens. This massive money printing has greatly inflated the prices of assets such as stocks and bonds and further enriched the billionaire class.

Meanwhile, social and economic inequalities have widened across Europe. We now have a situation where one arm of the capitalist state – national governments – issue huge amounts of debt. This debt is then monetised through the ECB purchasing those bonds. In effect we are seeing the ‘socialisation’ of the commanding financial heights of the economy due to the grave crisis of capitalism. Free-market capitalism which is touted as the only way to run society has effectively broken down. What economic measures are needed to effectively deal with this organic crisis of capitalism?

CD: I would take a step further back. The situation you describe cannot be addressed through purely economic measures – it arises because of a profound lack of democracy in the European Union. The only directly elected EU body is the Parliament, which does not determine the make-up of the Commission in anything but a token manner, has no ability to initiate legislation, and is not arranged on the government/opposition lines of most national parliaments. The electorate understands how little influence it has, and this is shown by the consistently low turnout in its elections. The institutions where power really lies are able to operate completely opaquely, with the public shut out. Meanwhile institutions like the Court of Justice and the ECB operate effectively without constraint. There is no counterbalance to them. Neo-liberal dogma is baked into the EU’s foundational treaties, and is basically beyond the reach of popular reform. We are well over a decade into a crisis of legitimacy for the free market dogmas on which the EU is based. The post-COVID EU will merely be the latest demonstration of the bankruptcy of that ideology. And there is widespread public appetite for a more socially just and equal EU, where the social component of EU policy becomes more than a mere alibi. The roadblock is that there is no path through the institutions for that to come into being. No such political programme has a hope of being implemented without profound reform of the institutional setup of the EU.

LT: Once the mass vaccination programs have been fully rolled out and economies begin to open up again there will no doubt be demands from some quarters for governments to take action to deal with their huge debts. Do you think the EU will return to austerity policies? If it proceeds down such a path how should ordinary people respond to a return to austerity economics?

CD: There are already indications that this is what will happen. As to what the response of ordinary people should be, that’s a more difficult question. The lack of real democracy in the EU’s structures set against the use of those structures to impose austerity has been the main problem for the left since the 2008 financial crisis. In the long run, the heedlessness of the EU institutions to the needs of ordinary people will continue to exacerbate that crisis. Crises bring about changes, and the outcome of a crisis can be either good or bad for ordinary people. To shape that outcome, it is necessary for people to organise, to have a clear vision of an alternative and to make sure they are in a position to apply decisive popular pressure. Elected politicians are reactive, not proactive, and cannot be depended on to take the initiative themselves. It is only the pressure of ordinary people that will keep them on their toes.

LT: In December last year The EU and China concluded in principle the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment. Negotiations are ongoing until the final draft can be presented to the EU Council. In a press release explaining this agreement the EU makes great fanfare regarding its demands upon China to end forced labour and implement the toothless Paris agreement on climate change. China has now replaced the United States as the EU’s largest trading partner so undoubtedly multinational corporations across Europe see the potential for making massive profits in China’s huge domestic market. Conversely, Chinese capitalists see great investment opportunities in Europe.

The documents provided by the EU on this agreement talk about protecting the property rights of Western corporations in China while paying lip service to the issue of workers rights. There is nothing in this investment treaty that specifies how workers and farmers will be protected from exploitation by foreign corporations. Nor is any explanation given as to how this Comprehensive Agreement on Investment will improve living standards for ordinary people in both China and the EU. It would appear that we are meant to believe in the widely discredited trickle-down theory of economics. In other words, the massive wealth and profits generated by multinationals under this agreement will eventually trickle down to the workers and farmers who produce the goods and services that are sold. As a member of the European Parliament what is your take on this pivotal economic treaty?

CD: It should be noted that the CAI is taking place in the context of the widening East-West divide driven by the United States over the last few years, during which we’ve seen the willingness of the EU to insist on a measure of independence from Washington, and to continue engagement with China. This is of course driven by the interests of European corporations, but in the context of increasingly bellicose rhetoric against China, the mere fact of continued engagement is not something we can overlook. It remains to be seen how this situation will develop now that there is a new president in the White House. As a general rule I am opposed to neo-liberal trade deals, because – despite lofty political declarations – they tend to create a race to the bottom, erode environmental and labour standards, entrench private sector control over public services and reinforce unequal North-South relationships. It’s premature to take a hard position on the agreement before having sight of a mature text, but there are obviously a lot of important issues embedded in this deal, especially for us on the left, and we’ll be looking at it in depth in the trade committee.

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President Joe Biden has disappointed human rights activists, journalists, and many in Congress who expected him to exact a punishment on Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman (MBS) in the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi.  While sanctions were placed on 76 Saudi nationals as a result of the newly released report on the gruesome murder, the penalties did not name MBS personally.  Officials explained the need to end the war in Yemen, lower tensions in the Persian Gulf region, and ongoing counter-terrorism efforts as factors that held the administration back.  However, Biden has changed the US-Saudi relationship fundamentally: he is no longer dealing with MBS, and will only communicate with King Salman.  This effectively puts MBS in a box. Biden has started a process of the isolation of the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, and US allies may follow the US lead.  

The report

Avril Haynes, the director of US national intelligence, declassified a report on February 26 which accused the de-facto ruler of Saudi Arabia of ordering the murder of a dissident journalist.

“We assess that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman approved an operation in Istanbul, Turkey to capture or kill Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,” the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in the report.

“We base this assessment on the Crown Prince’s control of decision making in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman’s protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince’s support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi,” it added.

The fiancée

Hatice Cengiz, the 36-year-old fiancée of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, waited patiently outside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. The Turkish Ph.D. candidate was planning her upcoming marriage to Khashoggi, a US resident who wrote opinion columns for the Washington Post, and he was there to obtain routine paperwork to allow him to marry Hatice.  She waited, and waited, but he never appeared again.  Her hopes and plans were killed along with her fiancée.  Now, she demands justice.

On May 16, 2019, Cengiz testified before a US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing on “The Dangers of Reporting on Human Rights” on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

Cengiz said on Twitter.

“If the crown prince is not punished, it will forever signal that the main culprit can get away with murder which will endanger us all and be a stain on our humanity.”

“Starting with the Biden administration, it is vital for all world leaders to ask themselves if they are prepared to shake hands with a person whose culpability as a murderer has been proven,” Cengiz said.

Cengiz said that “following this report, there is no longer any political legitimacy for the Crown Prince.”

“The truth – that was already known – has been revealed one more time, and it is now confirmed … Yet this is not enough since the truth can only be meaningful when it serves justice being achieved,” she warned.

Mohammed bin Nayef

Prince Muhammad smiling

Mohammed bin Nayef, the former crown prince, and cousin of MBS was deposed in 2017 by MBS. Mohammed bin Nayef was arrested last spring along with Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, his uncle. Mohammed bin Nayef was the well-established contact of the Washington security establishment.

Mohammed bin Nayef is credited with saving the lives of dozens of Americans. He was educated in Oregon before training with the FBI and Scotland Yard and is pro-American while excelling in counter-terrorism.

Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet regarded Mohammed bin Nayef as the CIA’s closest partner in fighting Al Qaeda.

In 2010, Mohammed bin Nayef foiled a plot by Al Qaeda on UPS and FedEx planes headed from Yemen to Chicago, in which he gave President Obama’s terrorism advisor, John Brennan, the tracking numbers for the deadly containers.

Leon Panetta, former CIA director, has called Mohammed bin Nayef the “smartest and most accomplished of his generation.” Experts have assessed Mohammed bin Nayef to be the most successful intelligence officer in the Arab world.

In April 2016, King Salman promoted Mohammed bin Nayef to be his crown prince; however, without explanation, he was removed from the position in June 2017 and replaced by the king’s son, MBS, who ordered the arrest of Mohammed bin Nayef in 2020, who has not been seen since. He is reportedly unable to access medical care, and his life is threatened.

The family consensus had been the glue that bound the absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia, but MBS determinedly forged a path to the throne through a series of palace coups and shake-downs which has left him with all the power in his hands.

Experts in the US and allied intelligence communities know that Mohammed bin Nayef is a competent, and responsible team player, who had been their partner in counter-terrorism before, and might be the only one who could steer Saudi Arabia on a new path.

Biden statements

In November 2019 Biden promised to punish senior Saudi leaders, in contrast to Trump, who gave MBS a free-pass.

“And I said it at the time. Khashoggi was, in fact, murdered and dismembered, and I believe on the order of the crown prince. And I would make it very clear we were not going to, in fact, sell more weapons to them, we were going to, in fact, make them pay the price and make them the pariah that they are.”

“There’s very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,” Biden said. “They have to be held accountable.”

The Biden administration on Friday imposed a visa ban on 76 Saudis believed involved in the Khashoggi killing and placed sanctions that would freeze their US assets and prohibit Americans from dealing with them.

Last month, Biden announced he was stopping billions of dollars in arms shipments to Saudi Arabia.  He called the Saudi war in Yemen a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” The Biden team, backed by Congress, is pushing for an end to the six-year conflict that has brought famine and disease to Yemen.

Kate Bedingfield, White House communications director, told CNN that Biden had made it clear to King Salman during their Thursday call that the US will not tolerate the crown prince’s behavior, regardless of the lack of action.

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***

My article last week that made some suggestions about what ordinary Americans can do to put pressure on Israel and on the lopsided bilateral relationship with Washington that has done so much damage to the United States proved to be quite popular. It also resulted in some comments by readers who saw other issues that might be considered pressure points that could be exploited to bring about change or at least to mitigate some of the damage.

Two areas that were mentioned a number of times were the possibility of recusing the most strident Israeli partisans from some discussions on Middle East policy and also refusing to issue security clearances to American government employees and politicians who are “dual national” citizens, which raises the issue of dual loyalty. Recusal is defined as removing oneself from participation to avoid a conflict of interest due to lack of impartiality while refusing to issue clearances would completely block dual national Israeli and other foreign citizens from having high level positions in the U.S. government.

Some would argue that recusal is an excessive punishment that will limit debate on a key foreign policy issue. It will also inevitably be perceived by the usual suspects as anti-Semitic since the only ones who would be excluded would be some Zionists, but they miss the point, which is that the current system does not in any way permit the review of a range of points of view on the Middle East since it is monopolized by Jews and friends of Israel. And there is a precedent. Not so long ago the U.S. State Department had an informal policy that discouraged the selection of Jewish ambassadors for Israel. The intent was to prevent any conflicts of interest and also to protect the ambassadors from inappropriate pressure. There also existed a cadre of so-called Arabists who dealt with issues in the Middle East alongside Jewish officers in the State Department. In the 1950s and 1960s a concerted effort was made by Jewish organizations and Congress to weed out the Arabists and currently nearly all the working level handling of policy formulation for that region is being done by Jews.

One might assume reasonably that the concentration of decision making in the hands of a partisan group, whether Arabists or Zionists, would inevitably not be in the U.S. national interest, and so it has proven if one looks at the shambles in the arc from Afghanistan over to Lebanon.

The following description of how the process actually works comes from Ben Rhodes, who is himself half-Jewish, and it describes the decision making on the Middle East during the administration of President Barack Obama where Rhodes served as Deputy National Security Advisor. During his time in office he observed how same 10 to 20 individuals who invariably took the position of the Israeli government were in on discussions of Middle East policy but if anyone in the White House paid attention to Arab-American or peace groups, they could “get in trouble.”

Rhodes observed that

“You meet more with outside, organized constituency groups on Israel than any other foreign policy issue. I’d actually go as far to say that… as a senior White House official working on national security… the number of people you meet from the organized pro Israel community equals all the other meetings that you might do with kind of diaspora or constituency groups on all the other issues. It’s that degree of dwarfing. I’m pretty confident that’s consistent across [presidential] administrations…

“You just have this incredibly organized pro-Israel community that is very accustomed to having access in the White House, in Congress, at the State Department. It’s taken for granted, as given, that that’s the way things are going to be done… I remember looking around the situation room on a meeting on the Israel Palestine issue and every single one of us in the meeting was Jewish or of Jewish origin like me…”

The United States has many interests in the Near East, but if every move is seen through the optic of Israel the inevitable results will not be beneficial to Americans. So, if recusal, either voluntary or forced, is employed to obtain a better mix of opinion on policy options it can only beneficial. And it will also ipso facto loosen the overweening influence that successive Israeli governments have exercised over U.S. presidents and Congress.

Preventing individuals holding two passports from obtaining sensitive government jobs would also be a highly desirable step but it will be hard to execute in practice as the Israeli government does not make available lists of American citizens who have also taken up Israeli citizenship. Holding two passports was, in fact, illegal in the United States up until 1964. New citizens were required to turn in old passports and swear loyalty to the United States. Retention of former citizenship could be punished by the loss of the American citizenship.

Numerous online lists of dual Israeli-Americans in government circulate on the internet, but it is clear from the content that most of the compilations are speculative. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer describes himself as the “shomer” or protector of Israel in the Senate and appears on such lists. So too does former Congressman Tom Lantos, described as holocaust survivor and very active in his support of Israel. And then there is former Senator Frank Lautenberg was often described as the “Senator from Israel” and Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania who tried to cover up the Jewish source of the enriched uranium that Israel stole to construct its nuclear weapon.

Protecting Israel sometimes includes bending the rules. Lautenberg, for example, was responsible for the “Lautenberg amendment” of 1990 which brought many thousands of Russian Jews into the United States as refugees, even though they were not in any danger and were therefore ineligible for that status. As refugees, they received significant taxpayer provided housing, subsistence and educational benefits.

One might also include Rahm Emanuel, former White House Chief of Staff and mayor of Chicago, who reportedly served as a volunteer in the Israeli Army, and Doug Feith, who caused so much mischief from his perch at the Pentagon in the lead-up to the Iraq War. Feith had a law office in Jerusalem, suggesting that he might have obtained Israeli citizenship. Obama Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro chose to live in Israel after his term in office ended and wound up working for an Israeli national security think tank. He quite likely obtained Israeli citizenship and never registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, as required by law. Both he and Emanuel are reportedly being considered by President Biden for major ambassadorial assignments.

But in reality, few in Congress and in the federal government bureaucracy are likely to have actual Israeli citizenship even if they regularly exhibit what amounts to “dual loyalty” sympathy for the Jewish state. Nevertheless, Jews who are Zionists are vastly overrepresented in all government agencies that have anything at all to do with the Middle East.

That said, there was one individual dual national who truly stood out when it came to serving Israeli interests from inside the United States government. She might be worthy of the nickname “Queen of Sanctions” because she was the Department of the Treasury’s Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (OTFI), who handed the punishment out and had her hand on the throttle to crank the pain up. She is our own, unfortunately, and also Israel’s own Sigal Pearl Mandelker, and it is wonderful to be able to say that she finally resigned in late 2019!

Mandelker was born in Israel and largely educated in the United States. She is predictably a lawyer. She has never stated how many citizenships she holds while repeated inquiries as to whether she retains her Israeli citizenship have been ignored by the Treasury Department. It is not clear how she managed to obtain a security clearance given her evident affinity to a foreign country. The position that she held until October 2019 was created in 2004 by George W. Bush and is something of a “no Gentiles need apply” fiefdom. Its officials travel regularly on the taxpayer’s dime to Israel for consultations and also collaborate with pro-Israel organizations like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). Mandelker’s predecessor was Adam Szubin and he was preceded by David Cohen and, before that, by the office’s founder Stuart Levey, who is currently Group Legal Manager and Group Managing Director for global bank HSBC. Since its creation, OFTI has not surprisingly focused on what might be described as Israel’s enemies, most notably among them being Iran.

During her time in office, Mandelker, who predictably claims to be the child of “holocaust survivors,” was clear about her role, citing her personal and business relationship with “our great partner, Israel.” Referring to her office’s imposed sanctions on Iran, she has said that “Bad actors need money to do bad things. That is why we have this massive sanctions regime … Every time we apply that pressure, that crunch on them, we deny them the ability to get that kind of revenue, we make the world a safer place.”

So the answer is pretty clearly that there are Israelis and/or dual nationals working for the federal government and possibly also ensconced in the Congress. Refusing them clearances so they would not wind up in policy making jobs would be a good step forward, particularly if it is combined with recusal from policy planning for obvious partisan representatives of organizations dedicated to protecting Israel.

As a final observation, one might only suggest that three additional bastions of “Israel-first” think that need to be assailed to permit any rational discussion of an appropriate U.S. role in the Middle East. They are the deeply flawed accepted holocaust narrative, which is used to grant Israelis and Jews special exemption due to their status as perpetual victims; the cynical use of the label anti-Semitism to silence critics; and the still undisclosed role of Israel in 9/11, which has never been adequately addressed. For more information, I would refer the reader to Norman Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry, Ron Unz’s American Pravda piece on Mossad Assassinations and Justin Raimondo’s book on 9/11 The Terror Enigma. They are all major areas of inquiry on which some new information has developed and are worthy of separate articles in the future.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

How ‘secure’ do our homes remain if police, armed with no warrant, can pound on doors at will and … forcibly enter?”— Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone dissenter in Kentucky v. King

Americans are not safe in their homes.

Not anymore, at least.

This present menace comes from the government and its army of bureaucratized, corporatized, militarized mercenaries who are waging war on the last stronghold left to us as a free people: the sanctity of our homes.

The weapons of this particular war on our personal security and our freedoms include an abundance of laws that criminalize almost everything we do, a government that views our private property as its own, militarized police who have been brainwashed into believing that they operate above the law, courts that insulate police from charges of wrongdoing, legislatures that legitimize the government’s usurpations of our rights, and a populace that is so ignorant of their rights and distracted by partisan politics as to be utterly incapable of standing up to the government’s overreaches, incursions and power grabs.

This is how far the mighty have fallen.

Government agents—with or without a warrant, with or without probable cause that criminal activity is afoot, and with or without the consent of the homeowner—are now justified in mounting home invasions in order to pursue traffic violators, seize lawfully-owned weapons, carry out knock-and-talk “chats” with homeowners in the dead of night, “prevent” individuals from harming themselves, provide emergency aid, intervene in the face of imminent danger, serve as community caretakers, chase down individuals suspected of committing misdemeanor crimes, and anything else they can get away with.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the many ways the government and its corporate partners-in-crime may be using surveillance technology—with or without the blessing of the courts—to invade one’s home: with wiretaps, thermal imaging, surveillance cameras, and other monitoring devices.

However, while the courts and legislatures have yet to fully address the implications of such virtual intrusions on our Fourth Amendment, there is no mistaking the physical intrusions by police into the privacy of one’s home: the toehold entry, the battering ram, the SWAT raid, the knock-and-talk conversation, etc.

Whether such intrusions, warranted or otherwise, are unconstitutional continues to be litigated, legislated and debated.

The spirit of the Constitution, drafted by men who chafed against the heavy-handed tyranny of an imperial ruler, would suggest that one’s home is a fortress, safe from almost every kind of intrusion. Unfortunately, a collective assault by the government’s cabal of legislators, litigators, judges and militarized police has all but succeeded in reducing that fortress—and the Fourth Amendment alongside it—to a crumbling pile of rubble.

Two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court this term, Caniglia v. Strom and Lange v. California, are particularly noteworthy.

In Caniglia v. Strom, police want to be able to carry out warrantless home invasions in order to seize lawfully-owned guns under the pretext of their so-called “community caretaking” duties. Under the “community caretaking” exception to the Fourth Amendment, police can conduct warrantless searches of vehicles relating to accident investigations and provide aid to “citizens who are ill or in distress.”

At a time when red flag gun laws are gaining traction as a legislative means by which to allow police to remove guns from people suspected of being threats, it wouldn’t take much to expand the Fourth Amendment’s “community caretaking” exception to allow police to enter a home without a warrant and seize lawfully-possessed firearms based on concerns that the guns might pose a danger.

What we do not need is yet another pretext by which government officials can violate the Fourth Amendment at will under the pretext of public health and safety.

In Lange v. California, police want to be able to enter homes without warrants as long as they can claim to be in pursuit of someone they suspect may have committed a crime. Yet as Justice Neil Gorsuch points out, in an age in which everything has been criminalized, that leaves the door wide open for police to enter one’s home in pursuit of any and all misdemeanor crimes.

At issue in Lange is whether police can justify entering homes without a warrant under the “hot pursuit” exception to the Fourth Amendment.

The case arose after a California cop followed a driver, Arthur Lange, who was honking his horn while listening to music. The officer followed Lange, supposedly to cite him for violating a local noise ordinance, but didn’t actually activate the police cruiser’s emergency lights until Lange had already arrived home and entered his garage. Sticking his foot under the garage door just as it was about to close, the cop confronted Lange, smelled alcohol on his breath, ordered him to take a sobriety test, and then charged him with a DUI and a noise infraction.

Lange is just chock full of troubling indicators of a greater tyranny at work.

Overcriminalization: That you can now get pulled over and cited for honking your horn while driving and listening to music illustrates just how uptight and over-regulated life in the American police state has become.

Make-work policing: At a time when crime remains at an all-time low, it’s telling that a police officer has nothing better to do than follow a driver seemingly guilty of nothing more than enjoying loud music.

Warrantless entry: That foot in the door is a tactic that, while technically illegal, is used frequently by police attempting to finagle their way into a home and sidestep the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

The definition of reasonable: Although the Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless and unreasonable searches and seizures of “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” where we run into real trouble is when the government starts dancing around what constitutes a “reasonable” search. Of course, that all depends on who gets to decide what is reasonable. There’s even a balancing test that weighs the intrusion on a person’s right to privacy against the government’s interests, which include public safety.

Too often, the scales weigh in the government’s favor.

End runs around the law: The courts, seemingly more concerned with marching in lockstep with the police state than upholding the rights of the people, have provided police with a long list of exceptions that have gutted the Fourth Amendment’s once-robust privacy protections.

Exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement allow the police to carry out warrantless searches: if someone agrees to the search; in order to ferret out weapons or evidence during the course of an arrest; if police think someone is acting suspiciously and may be armed; during a brief investigatory stop; if a cop sees something connected to a crime in plain view; if police are in hot pursuit of a suspect who flees into a building; if they believe a vehicle has contraband; in an emergency where there may not be time to procure a warrant; and at national borders and in airports.

In other words, almost anything goes when it comes to all the ways in which the government can now invade your home and lay siege to your property.

Thus we tumble down that slippery slope which might have started out with a genuine concern for public safety and the well-being of the citizenry only to end up as a self-serving expansion of the government’s powers that makes a mockery of the Fourth Amendment while utterly disregarding the rights of “we the people.”

Frankly, it’s a wonder we have any property interests, let alone property rights, left to protect.

Think about it.

That house you live in, the car you drive, the small (or not so small) acreage of land that has been passed down through your family or that you scrimped and saved to acquire, whatever money you manage to keep in your bank account after the government and its cronies have taken their first and second and third cut…none of it is safe from the government’s greedy grasp.

At no point do you ever have any real ownership in anything other than the clothes on your back.

Everything else can be seized by the government under one pretext or another (civil asset forfeiture, unpaid taxes, eminent domain, public interest, etc.).

The American Dream has been reduced to a lease arrangement in which we are granted the privilege of endlessly paying out the nose for assets that are only ours so long as it suits the government’s purposes.

And when it doesn’t suit the government’s purposes? Watch out.

This is not a government that respects the rights of its citizenry or the law. Rather, this is a government that sells its citizens to the highest bidder and speaks to them in a language of force.

Under such a fascist regime, the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which declares that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” has become yet another broken shield, incapable of rendering any protection against corporate greed while allowing the government to justify all manner of “takings” in the name of the public good.

What we are grappling with is a government that has forfeited its purpose for existing.

Philosophers dating back to John Locke have long asserted that the true purpose of government is to protect our rights, not just our collective rights as a people, but our individual rights, specifically our rights to life, liberty and property. As James Madison concluded in the Federalist Papers, “Government is instituted no less for the protection of the property than of the persons of individuals.”

What we have been saddled with is a government that has not only lost sight of its primary reason for being—to protect the people’s rights—but has also re-written the script and cast itself as an imperial overlord with all of the neo-feudal authority such a position entails.

Let me put it another way.

If the government can tell you what you can and cannot do within the privacy of your home, whether it relates to what you eat, what you smoke or whom you love, you no longer have any rights whatsoever within your home.

If government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, gathering with friends to worship in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

If school officials can punish your children for what they do or say while at home or in your care, your children are not your own—they are the property of the state.

If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government.

If police can forcefully draw your blood, strip search you, probe you intimately, or force you to submit to vaccinations or lose your so-called “privileges” to move about and interact freely with your fellow citizens, your body is no longer your own—it is the government’s to do with as it deems best.

Likewise, if the government can lockdown whole communities and by extension the nation, quarantine whole segments of the population, outlaw religious gatherings and assemblies of more than a few people, shut down entire industries and manipulate the economy, muzzle dissidents, and “stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease,” then you no longer have a property interest as master of your own life, either.

This is what a world without the Fourth Amendment looks like, where the lines between private and public property have been so blurred that private property is reduced to little more than something the government can use to control, manipulate and harass you to suit its own purposes, and you the homeowner and citizen have been reduced to little more than a tenant or serf in bondage to an inflexible landlord.

If we continue down this road, the analogy shifts from property owners to prisoners in a government-run prison with local and federal police acting as prison guards. In such an environment, you have no rights.

So what can we do, short of scrapping this whole experiment in self-government and starting over?

At a minimum, we need to rebuild the foundations of our freedoms.

What this will mean is adopting an apolitical, nonpartisan, zero tolerance attitude towards the government when it oversteps its bounds and infringes on our rights.

We need courts that prioritize the rights of the citizenry over the government’s insatiable hunger for power at all costs.

We need people in the government—representatives, bureaucrats, etc.—who honor the public service oath to uphold and defend the Constitution.

Most of all, we need to reclaim control over our runaway government and restore our freedoms.

After all, we are the government. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” are supposed to be the ones calling the shots. As John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, rightly observed: “No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.”

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

Fox News investigation says there’s “reasonable grounds to suspect” that SARS-CoV-2, which may have leaked accidentally from a lab in Wuhan, China, was the product of taxpayer-funded gain-of-function experiments commissioned by the U.S. government and overseen by Fauci.

At the outset of the COVID-19 outbreak, anyone who dared question the mainstream government and media narrative that SARS-CoV-2 evolved in the wild did so at the risk of being labeled a conspiracy theorist.

But as months passed, organizations like Children’s Health Defense (CHD), U.S. Right to Know and others began asking questions and calling for investigations.

The Washington Post eventually went out on a limb to print an op-ed suggesting that the virus might have leaked from a lab. And more recently, the Wall Street Journal waded into the controversy with its article, “China’s Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk.”

On Feb. 28, Fox News tackled the COVID origins story, not to point blame, reporter Steve Hilton said, but to make sure “we learn lessons, to prevent the next pandemic.”

The Fox News investigation reveals the connection between Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in Wuhan, China, where some scientists believe the virus originated.

“Fox News reporter Steve Hilton persuasively linked — for the first time on national TV — Dr. Anthony Fauci to the creation of COVID 19,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman and chief legal counsel. “Hilton explains how Fauci — despite protests from leaders of the scientific community who warned that he was playing with fire — funded the specific gain-of-function study that almost certainly created the COVID-19 virus.”

Kennedy added:

“The irony of Fauci leading the global response to a pandemic that he may have created becomes starker by the day.”

In October 2020, Kennedy, on behalf of CHD, wrote to Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) asking the Congressman to investigate the causes leading up to and contributing to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Earlier this month, Posey introduced H.R. 834, a bill calling for an independent, bipartisan national commission on the COVID-19 pandemic.

As The Defender reported last week, 28 members of Congress sent a letter on Feb. 23 to the principal deputy director of the Department of Health and Human Services demanding an investigation into the National Institutes of Health’s response to biosafety concerns raised about the taxpayer-funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology  in Wuhan, China.

Watch the video here.

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Israel has rolled out what it is calling a ‘Freedom bracelet’, a tracking device that will serve as an alternative to a two-week quarantine for anyone entering the country from abroad.

The device, which looks like a smart watch is being produced by a company called SuperCom, which has previously worked with governments of several countries on systems to track and monitor prisoners.

Ordan Trabelsi, the CEO of SuperCom, said

“We call it a ‘freedom bracelet’ because we are not locking anybody up, but rather giving them the opportunity to go home.”

…And be tracked by the government if they try to leave their house.

“Nobody is forced to do it, but for those who are interested, it gives them another option: more flexibility,” Trabelsi added.

So, the choices are be locked up for two weeks in a military-administered quarantine hotel, or take the tracking bracelet.

It doesn’t really sound like ‘freedom’.

The development comes at the same time as a court ruling demanding that the country’s domestic spy agency the Shin Bet must back off Covid-19 contact-tracing surveillance.

The court ruled that the efforts are “draconian” and a threat to democracy in the country, and can only be used in emergencies.

Israel is also operating a two tier society where those who have been vaccinated have a ‘green pass’ to go where they want, and those who haven’t must stay under lockdown.

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While the hazards of fracking to human health are well-documented, first-of-its-kind research from Environmental Health News shows the actual levels of biomarkers for fracking chemicals in the bodies of children living near fracking wells far higher than in the general population.

The research fills a gap in the science between the health harms experienced by those living near fracking and the known harms caused by fracking chemicals: whether fracking chemicals were actually in people’s bodies. They are. Of the southwestern Pennsylvania families who participated in the study, those who lived closer to fracking wells had higher levels of fracking chemicals or their biomarkers than those who lived far away.

One nine-year-old boy had biomarkers for toluene, which can damage the nervous system or kidneys, 91 times higher than the average American. Another had biomarkers for ethylbenzene and styrene, 55 times higher than the average American. Exposure to ethylbenzene and styrene is linked to skin, eye, and respiratory tract irritation, reproductive harm, endocrine disruption, and increased cancer risk. The research is part one of a multi-part series by Environmental Health News exploring the multifaceted “body burden” of fracking.

As reported by Environmental Health News:

In Texas, researchers found that babies born near frequent flaring—the burning off of excess natural gas from fracking wells—are 50 percentmore likely to be premature. In Colorado, the state Department of Health found that people living near fracking sites face elevated risk of nosebleeds, headaches, breathing trouble, and dizziness. In Pennsylvania, researchers found that people living near fracking face increased rates of infant mortality, depression, and hospitalizations for skin and urinary issues. Studies of fracking communities throughout the country have found that living near fracking wells increases the risk of premature births, high-risk pregnancies, asthma, migraines, fatigue, nasal and sinus symptoms, skin disorders and heart failure; and laboratory studies have linked chemicals used in fracking fluid to endocrine disruption—which can cause hormone imbalance, reproductive harm, early puberty, brain and behavior problems, improper immune function, and cancer.

“We have enough evidence at this point that these health impacts should be of serious concern to policymakers interested in protecting public health,” Irena Gorski Steiner, an environmental epidemiology doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Environmental Health News (EHN).

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Featured image: A boy plays basketball in front of an oil well covered with large colorful flowers and located next to Beverly Hills High School. Wells like this have been hidden throughout Los Angeles. Faces of Fracking / Flickr

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With what right has the West, the US in particular, treated Iran the way it has since the CIA/MI6 coup d’etat – regime-change – in 1953?

With war threats, primary and secondary sanctions, ganging up, liquidation, demonization, closing down of media, diplomatic exclusion, shooting down a civilian plane and giving the pilot a medal, and telling Iran not to have what you can’t live without – such as nuclear weapons.

The argument is that that is how we treat somebody whose policies and behaviour we don’t like. OK, and so, what about those who do not like Western policies and behaviour?

Second, that is the way we force somebody to change and become like us.

As if ethics and philosophy mattered the slightest in international politics, I would ask: Do we have a right to do to others what we would never accept them doing to us?

And is there one example under the sky that such multi-decade, maximum – violent – pressure has lead to the desired change and solved the conflict? Vietnam? Russia? Cuba? Afghanistan? Iraq? Libya? Syria?

The US/NATO and other West need a completely new way of thinking about these things and getting its own house in order first.

But what we see is only a repetition of the outdated, intellectually poor and manifestly failed approach based on raw power and might makes right.

While trying to look strong, it is a sign of weakness and decline. It is tragically self-defeating too.

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Biden Set to Inflict Wounds on Eurasia

March 3rd, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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Mikhail Gorbachev in a special interview to the Tass news agency on Monday gave a poignant message to the Kremlin by calling for the strengthening of the Eurasian Economic Union and the Collective Security treaty Organization and for mending relations with those former Soviet republics which are “at odds” with Moscow. 

Gorbachev recalled he had stated many times in the past that the Soviet Union could have been preserved “provided it was modernised and reformed and the republics were granted broad rights and real sovereignty.” He stressed that a programme of regeneration is “vitally needed” today.  

Indeed, at no time since the birth of the Russian Federation, the Eurasian landscape looked so dark and foreboding as at present. Russia’s western periphery is in a state of high turbulence. 

Ukraine never really stabilised after the regime change in 2014. Things have become much worse in many ways — rampant corruption, venality, dysfunctional political system and poverty. What used to be one of the most prosperous regions of the former USSR is in decay. The charioteers of the 2014 colour revolution from the US and Europe have no interest in nation-building. All that matters to them is that Ukraine has turned into an American colony, driven by animus against Russia. 

Transparent conversations between Washington and Moscow are needed over Ukraine’s viable future as a neutral turf where Western and Russian interests can co-habit. Moscow is open to a modus vivendii but Washington’s interest lies in the opposite direction, as evident from the role Kiev played in instigating the current turmoil in next-door Belarus. 

Things can only get worse under President Joe Biden’s watch. The Pentagon announced on Monday a new $125 million package for supply of “defensive lethal weapons to enable Ukraine to more effectively defend itself against Russian aggression” on top of the remaining unutilised $150 million in the current budget appropriated by the Congress. The US has so far provided $2 billion “security assistance” to Ukraine since 2014 to promote that country’s “Euro-Atlantic aspirations.” Clearly, a neutral Ukraine in the eastern fringes of Eurasia does not suit the US’ geopolitical agenda. 

The story of Georgia, where the US’ regime change project in the post-Soviet period was first successfully staged, is even more tragic. As in Ukraine, in Georgia too, Russia was willing to work with the US for a democratic transition. But the US agenda narrowly focused on installing a virulently anti-Russian government in Tbilisi and a brash, US-educated lawyer named Mikheil Saakashvili — with an American wife — was brought in to serve that purpose. 

Again, as in Ukraine’s Donbas and Crimea, a highly charged issue of “territorial sovereignty” was subtly brought in when Washington encouraged Saakashvili to stage an attack on Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia in 2008, which in turn led to the loss of two breakaway regions. Georgia could never quite establish itself as a democracy, either.

Even by the ranking of American think tanks, Georgia has been steadily slipping in the democracy ratings. Then came a curious twist to the tale when the free and fair presidential election last October, threw up as winner a Georgian billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili (estimated by Forbes to be worth $5 billion). 

Washington suspects that Ivanishvili who made his vast fortunes in Russia as a Russian citizen once — in metals, real estate, and banking — may be beholden to Moscow. Thus, a whispering campaign began insinuating about the Russian roots of his business empire, which has snowballed into protests demanding snap elections despite President Ivanishvili’s insistence that his loyalty to his country is not to be doubted. 

Washington is mulling its options, caught between the rock and a hard place, as turmoil and uncertainty grips Georgian politics. In a bizarre turn of events, do not rule out Biden Administration soliciting Mikheil Saakashvili’s services once again as Georgia spins out of control. (Saakashvili had fled Georgia in 2013 and is wanted on multiple criminal charges.)

The Biden administration is expected to encourage Georgia’s further NATO integration. Antony Blinken, Biden’s state secretary, has voiced support for keeping the NATO’s door open for Georgia. The point is, a new configuration of balance is taking shape in the region and Georgia is located at a strategically important crossroads in the Caucasian region between Russian and Turkey, the Caspian and the Black Sea.

While Ukraine and Belarus are Russia’s buffer zones historically, the West is interested in Georgia because it is vital to the security in the South Caucasus and could limit Russia’s influence, apart from being relevant to the transportation of oil and gas from the Caspian and Central Asia to world markets.

Yet, the crux of the matter is that Ukraine are Georgia inextricably tied to the Russian market. If Ukraine critically depends on Russian energy and was historically an inalienable part of the Soviet production chain, Georgia has long been reliant on Russia as its largest export market for its agriculture products and its famed wines and mineral waters. 

Geoeconomics ought to have been the best prescription for the revival of Ukraine and Georgia and the consolidation of their democratic foundations, but Washington instead prioritises its geopolitical  agenda. (See opinion piece in Guardian titled Why Ukraine needs Russia more than ever.) 

Clearly, when it came to Belarus, Moscow didn’t have to be convinced anymore that the US was trying to incorporate yet another country (“buffer”) on Russia’s periphery into its sphere of influence. The Kremlin decided wisely not to interfere but instead created space for President Alexander Lukashenko to weather the storm. 

Unlike Georgia or Ukraine, Belarus has a functioning economy and unemployment is virtually non-existent while its Soviet era welfare system ensured social security for the masses. Thus, the colour revolution, stirred up via the social media by the CIA could only rally a section of the population. Lukashenko resorted to deploy “smart power”, outwitting the western countries. 

Russia’s growing confrontation with the US and Europe elevates Belarus to a special status in Moscow’s security calculus. The timing of the “Navalny case” alerted Moscow that the game plan is to entrap it in a quagmire. The Kremlin doubled down to prevent the overthrow of Lukashenko while also squashing the Navalny case. 

Having successfully weathered the western assault, Lukashenko travelled to Sochi on Feb. 22 and held a six-hour meeting with President Vladimir Putin to discuss an integration model with Russia while preserving Belarus’ sovereignty. Putin and Lukashenko stated that the instruments of cooperation between Moscow and Minsk are working well. 

Alarmed by the prospect of a Russian-Belorussian integration, the US is planning a counter attack by rekindling the protests in Minsk. Mass protests are planned to restart on March 25. This time around, the objective will be to whip up xenophobia to create a groundswell of anti-Russian public mood.

Suffice to say, Gorbachev’s remarks are predicated on an assumption that Ukraine or Georgia are free agents to conduct their relations with Russia. Whereas, both are de facto western colonies and Washington will not allow them to pursue an independent policy toward Moscow. 

In a forceful speech on February 24 while addressing top officials of Russian Federal Security Bureau (KGB), Putin lashed out at the “consistent and highly aggressive policy aimed at disrupting our [Russia’s] development, at slowing it down and creating problems along our external perimeter and contour, provoking internal instability, undermining the values that unite Russian society, and ultimately, at weakening Russia and forcing it to accept external management, just as this is happening in some post-Soviet states.” 

Putin anticipates that the US’ confrontation with Russia will escalate under Biden’s watch. Simply put, the future of Russia’s relations with the former Soviet republics on its western periphery are largely America’s choice. And that choice, unfortunately, is being exercised to create bleeding wounds to weaken Russia. 

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The Fallacy of North Korean Collapse

March 3rd, 2021 by Sang Ki Kim

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Video: Microsoft Forms “Ministry of Truth”

March 2nd, 2021 by Really Graceful

A carefully research video report on the role of Bill Gates in the “Battle Against Fake News”

Bill Gates initiative is supported by

“Adobe, Arm, BBC, Intel, Microsoft and Truepic in a coalition to develop end to end open standard for tracing the origin and evolution of digital content”

Under the helm of Bill Gates,

“Technology and media entities join forces to create standards groups aimed at building trust in online content”. 

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Video Production by Really Graceful (RG)

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Selected Articles: US Foreign Policy: “War Is Peace”

March 2nd, 2021 by Global Research News

Video: Joe Biden on Iraq War: “Taking this Son of a ****, Taking Saddam Down”

By Joe Biden, March 02 2021

As documented below in a September 1998 Senate hearing, Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”.

What Jordan’s Prince Hassan Fails to Recognize: Palestinian Struggle Is an Advance Guard of the Arab Liberation Movement

By Rima Najjar, March 02 2021

Déjà vu washed over me as I read a letter by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan addressing Israelis, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (Feb 26, 2021), the largest Israeli newspaper (Hebrew). It is a letter clearly written within the “one-homeland-two-state” initiative framework.

Joe Biden Championed the Iraq War. Will that Come Back to Haunt Him Now?

By Mark Weisbrot, March 02 2021

Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

On British Colonialism, Antisemitism, and Palestinian Rights

By Avi Shlaim, March 02 2021

In December 2016, then British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism.

Biden’s Journey: Change Is Imperceptible

By Philip Giraldi, March 02 2021

The new White House Team has been in place for more than a month and it is perhaps time to consider where it is going with America’s fractured foreign policy.

US Foreign Policy: “War Is Peace”. Plans to Partition Syria

By Stephen Lendman, March 02 2021

A permanent state of war on invented enemies is longstanding US policy. It’s been this way throughout most of the post-WW II period. Terror-bombing Syria last Thursday was one of many examples — escalating US aggression against the nation and people by Biden.

Biden’s Syria Attack: An Actual Impeachable Offense

By Rep. Ron Paul, March 02 2021

Last Thursday President Biden continued what has sadly become a Washington tradition: bombing Syria. The President ordered a military strike near the Iraqi-Syrian border that killed at least 22 people.

Whistleblower: 25% of Residents in German Nursing Home Died After Pfizer Vaccine

By Children’s Health Defense, March 02 2021

Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview a caregiver in a Berlin nursing home who describes what happened during and after the rollout of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

Video: Violent US-backed Hong Kong-Style Mobs in Thailand Continue

By Brian Berletic, March 02 2021

US-backed anti-government protesters in Thailand have once again “rebranded” to shake off the image of an unpopular, violent mob only to stage a poorly attended, extremely violent protest as their first “rally.”
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O compromisso de Cuba com a saúde internacional.

March 2nd, 2021 by Franklin Frederick

‘Eles descobriram armas inteligentes. Nós descobrimos algo mais importante: as pessoas pensam e sentem.’ Fidel Castro

A crise COVID-19 tem revelado o fracasso da maioria dos países capitalistas ocidentais em suas políticas de saúde pública. Décadas de austeridade neoliberal, de cortes em programas de saúde e educação induzidos por programas de reestruturação pelo FMI e pelo Banco Mundial, mostram agora seus resultados em números alarmantes de contágio e de mortes se espalhando pela América Latina, Europa e sobretudo pelos EUA.

No ocidente, Cuba tem dado um exemplo de eficiência e mostrado que um outro caminho é possível na luta contra a pandemia. Os números falam por si, basta compararmos Cuba com outros países ou mesmo grandes cidades com populações semelhantes para termos um quadro muito claro da diferença nos resultados.

Com uma população de cerca de 11,350,000 pessoas, Cuba teve até agora – 21 de fevereiro –  45,361 casos acumulados  de COVID-19  com 300 mortes. A cidade de Nova York, com cerca de 18,800,00 de habitantes, tem um total acumulado de 700,815 casos com 28,888 mortes. A Suíça, com uma população menor que a de Cuba, cerca de  8,600,000 pessoas, tem 550,224 casos acumulados de COVID-19 com  9,226 mortes. Como explicar que um país que dispõe de muito menos recursos que uma cidade como Nova York ou um país como a Suíça possa ser tão mais eficiente em sua luta contra a pandemia? A resposta é simples: a Revolução Cubana de 1959 concentrou os poucos recursos disponíveis no país na construção de um sistema de saúde que atendesse às necessidades da população – das pessoas – em primeiro lugar – e não aos interesses dos diversos setores da medicina privatizada – dos planos de saúde às grandes empresas farmacêuticas, passando pela cara medicina ‘high-tech’ da qual os países desenvolvidos tanto se orgulham.

Após a Revolução, praticamente a metade dos médicos cubanos deixou o país, limitando enormemente a capacidade do novo governo de atender às necessidades de saúde de sua população. A decisão do governo revolucionário foi de investir na formação de novos profissionais de saúde – em pessoas – e de ampliar o acesso aos cuidados médicos à população rural e sobretudo aos negros, até então deixados de fora. Deste modo, Cuba foi capaz de aumentar o número de enfermeiros e enfermeiras de 2,500 em 1958 para 4,300 em uma década. Através de suas massivas campanhas de vacinação, Cuba eliminou a polio em 1962, a malária em 1967, tetano neonatal em 1972, difteria em 1979, síndrome da rubéola congênita em 1989, meningite pós-caxumba em 1993, rubéola em 1995 e meningite tuberculosa em 1997. Atualmente, a taxa de mortalidade infantil em Cuba é menor do que a dos Estados Unidos e menos da metade do que a da população negra nos Estados Unidos.

Em 1983, pouco mais de duas décadas depois da Revolução, a expectativa de vida em Cuba já tinha aumentado para 73.8 anos, quando no período anterior era de apenas  58.8 anos. Enquanto muitos especialistas em saúde pública costuman atribuir à falta de recursos a crônica insuficiência de atendimento médico na América Latina, a Revolução Cubana mostrou na prática que quando recursos limitados são distribuídos de maneira equitativa e com ênfase em pessoas e em prevenção, pode-se obter resultados em saúde pública  antes inimagináveis. O neoliberalismo, imposto pela força em muitos países do Sul,  e escolhido pelas elites econômicas do Norte como política preferencial em seus próprios países, levou a um caminho oposto ao Cubano.

E a pandemia de COVID-19 está mostrando com muita clareza qual caminho foi o mais acertado. Nos países ricos do Norte, a austeridade neoliberal tem causados há décadas sucessivas reduções nos orçamentos da área da saúde,  sobretudo com cortes no número de pessoal qualificado disponível.Cuba, ao contrário, investiu na formação de um número cada vez maior de profissionais da saúde. Quando a pandemia chegou, era claro que Cuba já dispunha do pessoal e da capacidade de alocação de recursos necessários para enfrentar uma tal situação. Nos países do Norte , ao contrário, à falta de pessoal e de infratestrutura pública somaram-se a incapacidade de tomar as medidas corretas quando estas se opunham aos interesses privados já estabelecidos. Consequentemente, pela primeira vez,  Cuba foi solicitada a levar a sua ajuda a alguns países ricos e desenvolvidos do Norte, como a Itália. Os médicos e outros profissionais de saúde cubanos também levaram sua ajuda à Andorra e aos departamentos ultra-marinos da França no Caribe, Martinica e Guadalupe. Não se pode imaginar uma demonstração maior da falência do modelo neoliberal.

A Revolução Cubana, desde o seu início e apesar de todas as dificuldades materiais enfrentadas pelo novo governo, fez todo o possível para ajudar países mais pobres e em dificuldades. Em 1963, apenas quatro anos depois da Revolução, lutando ainda com enormes dificuldades internas, Cuba enviou sua primeira missão de ajuda médica à Algéria, nação que acabava de sair  de décadas de uma sangrenta guerra de independência contra a França. Em 1966, com a ajuda de 200.000 doses de vacinas contra poliomielite doadas pela União Soviética, Cuba e seu pessoal médico, em colaboração com o governo do Congo, coordenou a vacinação de mais de 61,000 crianças no que foi a primeira campanha de vacinação em massa na África. Até o presente, Cuba já enviou cerca de 124.000 profissionais de saúde para prestar cuidados médicos em mais de 154 países.

Ao lado desta impressionante ajuda levada pelo seu próprio pessoal médico à várias partes do mundo, uma outra contribuição fundamental de Cuba é a formação de profissionais da saúde vindos sobretudo de países pobres em sua Escola Latino Americana de Medicina, a ELAM. Fundada em 1999, a ELAM forma estudantes de acordo com o modelo cubano de Medicina Geral Integral (MGI), com o foco principalmente em saúde pública e cuidados primários, com uma abordagem holística na compreensão da saúde, incluindo disciplinas como biologia, sociologia e política. Os estudantes estrangeiros da ELAM tem todas as despesas pagas pelo Estado Cubano, exceto as passagens. Em 2020, a ELAM já havia formado 30,000 novos médicos vindos de mais de 100 países, principalmente da África. Muitos destes estudantes não teriam a menor possibilidade de estudar medicina em seus países de origem e, ao retornar, providenciarão um serviço inestimável e por vezer antes inexistente aos seus concidadãos, incluindo cuidados relativos à pandemia. De acordo com a ELAM, há cerca de 52,000 profissionais da saúde de Cuba trabalhando em 92 países, o que faz com que Cuba tenha mais médicos trabalhando no exterior do que todas as contribuições de profissionis de saúde enviados pelos países do G-8 somadas.

Devido ao seu comprometimento com a saúde de pessoas, principalmente dos mais pobres e desprovidos, e não com um sistema de saúde privatizado onde o lucro determina onde e como alocar recursos, os médicos cubanos são alvos frequentes dos ataques da extrema direita nos países onde atuam. No Brasil, em seguida ao golpe de estado contra a presidente eleita Dilma Rousseff e à ascenção ilegal ao poder de Jair Bolsonaro, os médicos cubanos tiveram que deixar o país. O mesmo ocorreu na Bolívia em seguida ao golpe contra o presidente Evo Morales e em  Honduras, depois do golpe contra o presidente Zelaya. Em todos estes casos foram sempre os pobres os mais atingidos pois ficaram sem o atendimento médico providenciado pelos profissionais cubanos, muitas vezes o único cuidado que já haviam recebido até então.  Em 1979 Cuba enviou uma missão médica para Granada e em 1982 este país apresentou uma  redução de 25% na taxa de mortalidade infantil, graças sobretudo ao trabalho realizado pelos profissionais cubanos. Mas os Estados Unidos invadiram Granada em 1983 e os trabalhadores de saúde cubanos foram obrigados a deixar o país.

Em relação à pandemia de COVID -19,  o exemplo que talvez melhor revele as consequências desastrosas que o efeito combinado da saída de médicos cubanos e imposição de reajustes estruturais podem causar num país é o caso do Equador. Em seguida à eleição do Presidente Lenin Moreno em 2017 os profissionais de saúde cubanos que trabalhavam no país com o apoio do Presidente Rafael Corrêa foram expulsos e o Fundo Monetário Internacional recomendou um corte de 36% no orçamento da saúde, medida adotada pelo Presidente Moreno. Estas duas ações deixaram o país praticamente sem um sistema de saúde e sem defesa diante da pandemia. Em consequência, só a cidade de Guayaquil, a maior do Equador, com cerca de 2,700 milhões de habitantes, teve um número estimado de  7.600 mortos devidos à pandemia, um número mais de 25 vezes maior do que o de Cuba.

As brigadas médicas e a ELAM são importantes contribuições de Cuba na luta contra a pandemia de COVID-19. Mas uma outra contribuição, decisiva, está a caminho: a vacina Soberana II, produzida pelo Instituto de Vacinação Finlay de Havana. Cuba espera imunizar ainda este ano toda a sua população com a sua própria vacina. Uma vez mais, a abordagem socialista de Cuba na produção de vacinas difere radicalmente da adotada pelas nações capitalistas do mundo. Fruto da experiência internacional acumulada de Cuba, através de suas muitas missões conduzidas em várias partes do mundo, a vacina cubana é uma esperança para as nações pobres pois, mais uma vez, pode-se contar com a solidariedade de Cuba. De acordo com um artigo de W. T. Whitney Jr. (ver https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/cuba-develops-covid-19-vaccines-takes-socialist-approach/):

“100 milhões de doses da Soberana II estão sendo preparadas, o suficiente para imunizar todos os 11 milhões de cubanos, com o  início da vacinação acontecendo  em Março ou Abril. Os 70 milhões de doses restantes irão para o Vietnam, Iran, Paquistão, Índia, Venezuela, Bolívia, e Nicarágua. A Soberana II ‘será a vacina da ALBA’,  como explicou a vice-presidente venezuelana Delcy Rodríguez, referindo-se à aliança de solidariedade estabelecida em 2004 pelo presidente venezuelano Hugo Chavez e o cubano Fidel Castro.”

E autor do artigo citado acrescentou:

“’A estratégia de Cuba na comercialização da vacina representa uma combinação do que é bom para a humanidade e o impacto na saúde mundial. Não somos uma multinacional onde um objectivo financeiro vem primeiro’, diz Vicente Vérez Bencomo, director do Instituto de Vacinas Finlay de Cuba. Os rendimentos gerados pela venda de vacinas no estrangeiro irão pagar os cuidados com saúde, educação e pensões em Cuba, tal como acontece com as exportações de serviços médicos e medicamentos.”

Em contraste com a abordagem cubana, o autor citado escreveu:

“Segundo o forbes.com em Novembro de 2020, ‘Se a [vacina] da  Moderna conseguir a aprovação da FDA (Food and Drug Administration, órgão regulador dos EUA)  e conseguir fazer doses suficientes, a sua margem superior de lucro poderá ser quase 35 mil milhões de dólares mais alta … do que … nos últimos 12 meses’. Outro relatório sugere que, ‘As empresas (Pfizer e Moderna) vão ganhar milhares de milhões de dólares em lucros com as suas vacinas COVID este ano [e] haverá mais lucros em anos posteriores’As empresas ‘reivindicam os direitos a vastas quantidades de propriedade intelectual’.”

“Com as empresas sendo responsáveis, a distribuição de vacinas COVID-19 é distorcida. Desde 27 de Janeiro, ‘foram enviadas cerca de 66,83 milhões de doses, das quais 93 por cento foram fornecidas apenas a 15 países’. Na América Latina, apenas o Brasil, Argentina, México, e Chile conseguiram contratos de compra adequados para imunizar populações inteiras. Os contratos das empresas com nações africanas permitem a imunização de apenas 30 por cento dos africanos em 2021.”

“A divisão da riqueza determina a distribuição. Os epidemiologistas da Universidade de  Duke relatam que, ‘embora os países de elevado rendimento representem apenas 16% da população mundial, possuem atualmente 60% das vacinas para a COVID-19 que foram compradas até o  momento’. O jornalista cubano Randy Alonso relata que apenas ‘27% da população total dos países de rendimento baixo e médio podem ser vacinados este ano’.”

Desde que realizou sua revolução, Cuba segue sob ininterrupto ataque do Império e de seus comparsas.Sua população sofre com as sanções e bloqueios econômicos, que comprometem muito também seus esforços de solidariedade internacional. Mesmo assim, esta pequena nação, sempre tão teimosa e generosa  segue sendo uma fonte de esperança para o mundo. Sobretudo, Cuba aponta o caminho a seguir, com muita firmeza, despojamento, coragem e uma inesgotável alegria.

                                                                                                                       Franklin  Frederick

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La pericolosa strategia Usa/Nato in Europa 

March 2nd, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

Si sta svolgendo nello Ionio, dal 22 febbraio al 5 marzo, l’esercitazione Nato Dynamic Manta di guerra anti-sottomarino. Vi partecipano navi, sottomarini e aerei di Stati Uniti, Italia, Francia, Germania, Grecia, Spagna, Belgio e Turchia. Le due principali unità impegnate in questa esercitazione sono un sottomarino nucleare Usa da attacco della classe Los Angeles e la portaerei francese Charles de Gaulle a propulsione nucleare assieme al suo gruppo di battaglia, comprendente anche un sottomarino nucleare da attacco. La Charles de Gaulle, subito dopo, andrà nel Golfo Persico. L’Italia, che partecipa alla Dynamic Manta con navi e sottomarini, è la «nazione ospite» dell’intera esercitazione: ha messo a disposizione delle forze partecipanti il porto di Catania e la stazione elicotteri della Marina sempre a Catania, la stazione aeronavale di Sigonella (la maggiore base Usa/Nato nel Mediterraneo) e la base logistica di Augusta per i rifornimenti. Scopo dell’esercitazione è la caccia ai sottomarini russi nel Mediterraneo che, secondo la Nato, minaccerebbero l’Europa.

In questi stessi giorni la portaerei Eisenhower e il suo gruppo di battaglia stanno effettuando operazioni nell’Atlantico per «dimostrare il continuo sostegno militare Usa agli alleati e l’impegno a mantenere i mari liberi e aperti». Tali operazioni – condotte dalla Sesta Flotta, il cui comando è a Napoli e la cui base è a Gaeta – rientrano nella strategia enunciata in particolare dall’ammiraglio Foggo, già a capo del Comando Nato di Napoli: accusando la Russia di voler affondare le navi che collegano le due sponde dell’Atlantico, così da isolare l’Europa dagli Usa, egli sostiene che la Nato si deve preparare alla «Quarta battaglia dell’Atlantico», dopo quelle delle due guerre mondiali e della guerra fredda. Mentre sono in corso le esercitazioni navali, bombardieri strategici B-1, trasferiti dal Texas in Norvegia, stanno effettuando «missioni» a ridosso del territorio russo, insieme a caccia F-35 norvegesi, per «dimostrare la prontezza e capacità degli Stati uniti nel sostenere gli alleati». Le operazioni militari in Europa e nei mari adiacenti si svolgono sotto il comando del generale della US Air Force Tod Wolters, che è a capo del Comando Europeo degli Stati Uniti e allo stesso tempo della Nato, con la carica di Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa che spetta sempre a un generale statunitense.

Tutte queste operazioni militari vengono ufficialmente motivate come «difesa dell’Europa dalla aggressione russa», capovolgendo la realtà: è stata la Nato a espandersi in Europa, con le sue forze e basi anche nucleari, a ridosso della Russia. Al Consiglio Europeo il 26 febbraio, il segretario generale della Nato Stoltenberg ha dichiarato che «le minacce che avevamo di fronte prima della pandemia sono ancora lì», mettendo al primo posto «le azioni aggressive della Russia» e, sullo sfondo, una minacciosa «ascesa della Cina». Ha quindi sottolineato la necessità di rafforzare il legame transatlantico tra Stati Uniti ed Europa, come vuole fortemente la nuova amministrazione Biden, portando a un livello superiore la cooperazione tra Ue e Nato. Oltre il 90% degli abitanti dell’Unione Europea, ha ricordato, vive oggi in paesi della Nato (di cui fanno parte 21 dei 27 paesi Ue). Il Consiglio Europeo ha ribadito «l’impegno a cooperare strettamente con la Nato e la nuova amministrazione Biden per la sicurezza e la difesa», rendendo la UE militarmente più forte.

Come ha precisato il premier Mario Draghi nel suo intervento, tale rafforzamento deve avvenire in un quadro di complementarietà con la Nato e di coordinamento con gli Usa. Quindi il rafforzamento militare della UE deve essere complementare a quello della Nato, a sua volta complementare alla strategia Usa. Essa consiste in realtà nel provocare in Europa crescenti tensioni con la Russia, così da accrescere l’influenza statunitense nella stessa Unione Europea. Un gioco sempre più pericoloso, perché spinge la Russia a rafforzarsi militarmente, e sempre più costoso. Lo conferma il fatto che nel 2020, in piena crisi, la spesa militare italiana è salita dal 13° al 12° posto mondiale scavalcando quella dell’Australia.

Manlio Dinucci

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Introductory note

As documented below in a September 1998 Senate hearing, Joe Biden was a firm supporter of the Invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein “had weapons of mass destruction”.  

Foreign policy arrogance. In the second video, see the confrontation between Senator Joe Biden and Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter.

“The American People were deceived into this war”, said Senator Dick Durbin. Do not let yourself be deceived again by Joe Biden.

The Biden administration is committed to military escalation in the Middle East with the direct participation of Israel in US Central Command (USCENTCOM). 

Currently the US military is involved in Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen. The illegal war of aggression against Syria is ongoing marked by direct US-Israeli bombing raids.

The US is threatening Iran. Biden has intimated that the (illegal) US strikes against Syria are a warning to Iran to “be careful”. 

Is Biden committed to waging so-called “forever wars” under a humanitarian label?

The Project for the New American Century –formulated by the Neocons in the late 1990s, was adopted by the GWB administration.

We will “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars”. (PNAC)

In 2006, under the Bush administration, The Pentagon launched The “Long War” against “Islamic Extremism”.

America’s “Long War” was to replace the “War on Terrorism”.

And in 2014, the Obama-Biden adminstration launched its “counter terrorism” bombing campaign against Iraq and Syria.

The entire foreign policy discourse is based on a Lie, namely that so-called “Islamic Extremism” (a creation of US intelligence) was threatening the American homeland, requiring  the deployment of US sponsored covert, counter-terrorist forces (also consisting of private sector mercenaries). These covert special forces are now deployed throughout the Middle East, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and South East Asia.

Preemptive nuclear war was first put forward by the Bush administration as a “first strike” means of self defense.

And then under the Obama-Biden administration (2009-2017)  a 1 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program was launched with a means to defending the homeland…

Biden remains a firm supporter of the nuclear option.

We are at a dangerous crossroads. Biden is committed to the “globalization of war”.

The truth is a powerful and peaceful weapon. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 2, 2021

***

Selected quotations from Video

“The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,”

“You [Scott Ritter] and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction.

“You and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it’s a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone — start it alone — and it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert”

“You know it and I know it.”

Scott Ritter was the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq (1991- 1998).

Renowned author and distinguished foreign policy analyst, Scott Ritter is the author of “Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein.” 

***

 

 

In this second video Senator Biden Admonishes Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter, September 3, 1998

 

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***

It’s déjà vu time for Palestine; we have lived through the same fiasco before only to get bogged down in the Oslo poisoned swamp.

Déjà vu washed over me as I read a letter by Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan addressing Israelis, published in Yedioth Ahronoth (Feb 26, 2021), the largest Israeli newspaper (Hebrew). It is a letter clearly written within the “one-homeland-two-state” initiative framework.

The rhetoric of Prince Hassan’s letter includes references to climate change, weapons of mass destruction (meaning nuclear), global security (meaning terrorism) and Covid19, all of which, other than Israel’s own security, were not in the political lingo or horizon of the Oslo Accords (ratified in 1993 and 1995). But the outline of the plot to draw Palestinians away from a struggle for liberation is much the same. In historian Nur Masalha’s analysis, it is even worse:

“One homeland — two states”, a solution that seeks to legitimize Zionism in all of Palestine, is a discourse much worse than the traditional “two-state solution” and the solution to full Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This initiative can only strengthen the Israeli grip on the West Bank and reinforce reactionary Arab powers (within the Palestinians and in the Arab world) that seek normalization with Israel.

Following is an excerpt of the letter [translated from an Arabic translation of the Hebrew. In the Arabic translation of the letter on which I am basing this blog post, every reference Prince Hassan makes to Israel is, oddly, in quotes.]

Jordan faces a triple threat: increased number of refugees it hosts, budget cuts, and the need to support a vulnerable population. The Corona epidemic has only worsened the situation. Of course, we are not alone in this campaign. Corona poses a threat to health and the economy in every country… This is perhaps the greatest test of solidarity and compassion the world has ever known. Within such a reality, cooperation between all parties to revive our region is essential.

… The main point is that no country in the Middle East can solve its problems on its own. We must work together to advance our common regional goals. The alternative is a reality in which competing countries are rushing to maximize domestic consumption toward unlimited resource depletion. This is a tragedy that will hurt everyone. Water cooperation in a low-potable water region would be a good place to start.

We can take inspiration from the coal and steel community in Europe or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It is encouraging to see that despite the conflicts between the countries of Southeast Asia, and despite the great and varied diversity of political systems, these countries are cooperating in the face of very few common trade challenges. This comes at a time when trade between Arab countries represents less than ten percent of its total commercial activity.

Our region is characterized by a mixture of oil and human resources that can help build pluralistic and modern societies, encourage political and economic reforms, and reduce inequality. We must work to increase the stability of the countries of the region — including the State of Palestine, which will be present alongside “Israel” in the framework of an arrangement based on a two-state solution, political affiliation and close economic cooperation. Such a political settlement must involve the division of Jerusalem; taking into account the Abrahamic religions (Islam and Judaism), maintaining the security and integrity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, and rejuvenating the Palestinian leadership to sit in Jerusalem — the capital of “Israel” and Palestine — will complete the bilateral parties. Israel and the Arab countries that are ready for this could really start the process. Other countries in the region, including Turkey and Iran, could join in due course. Time for a fresh start.

In a short introduction to the letter, the Israeli reporter Smadar Perry gushes with assurances to the Israeli reader that “Prince Hassan is keen to keep his door open to Israelis.”

Perry also assures his Israeli readers that “Senior officials in Amman with whom I spoke are convinced that Prince Hassan would not have started publishing an article he wrote in an Israeli newspaper without a green light from King Abdullah himself.”

These are mostly people he has known from the start of the peace process in which he participated deeply on the side of King Hussein … Recently, there was a secret meeting between him and a group of Israelis in key positions who did not know him personally, and most of them had never visited Jordan. Two weeks later, the prince had another conversation through Zoom with five other Israelis known to the kingdom on the topic: How can the peace process be strengthened? … In the message he sends to readers in “Israel” through these pages, he tries to open a new window, to cautiously break the deadlock in the relations between the two countries.

The letter attempts to engage Israelis as if they have agency to act, assuming they are rational, decent human beings who are capable of appreciating global economic, climate and security forces (“the creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction,” he says). It attempts to engage Israeli leaders as if they are capable of cooperating in good faith and as if hegemony in the region is not their raison d’être.

It’s the kind of “courting” letter Prince Hassan would never write to engage Jordanian citizens, who, in fact, don’t have agency and whose leaders have zero leverage both with Israel and in the region.

Instead, Jordanians may or may not hear of Prince Hassan’s secret meetings with Israeli officials similar to those his brother King Hussein regularly used to conduct. That’s because, decades after the 1994 Wadi Araba peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, widespread “people to people” ties have not materialized. Nor will they ever materialize without a just resolution of the Nakba.

In the letter, Prince Hassan references this same treaty between Jordan and Israel positively, as an achievement to build on:

October of this year marks the 27th anniversary of the signing of the peace treaty between Jordan and “Israel,” the same historic agreement that marked the beginning of the end of the long and tragic conflict between Israelis and Palestinians and represented an important milestone towards peace between the peoples of the region.

The Wadi Araba peace treaty had been incentivized by Washington in the same way Trump’s deal incentivized the recent “normalization” between the Gulf countries and Israel. If it has achieved anything, it is to make Jordan, a client state of the US, a perpetual supplicant to both Israel and the US.

In seeking prosperity, peace and stability “in the region,” what Prince Hassan fails to recognize is a fundamental principleof our Palestinian struggle:

The Palestinian people, recognizing their role as an advance vanguard of the Arab liberation movement in the struggle against imperialism and Zionism, calls upon all of the democratic and progressive forces and popular movements of the world to provide all forms of support to the struggle to achieve their full rights and national liberation.

Prince Hassan was 43 years old in 1991, when the Palestinian delegation attended the “Madrid Peace Conference” under cover provided by Jordan, by-passing the decisions of the Palestinian National Council. He is now 73 years old and, based on this letter, has learned hardly anything about the true nature of the “peace process” or the true nature of the Zionist regime with whom he is dealing “in secret.”

Advocates of the one-homeland/two-state confederation between what remains of Palestine and Israel believe that “in the long run, one might envision transforming the confederation into one federal state, with the autonomous regions Israel, West Bank, and Gaza.”

Given the experience of the “interim” agreement of Oslo that lasted decades and netted enormous strategic gains exclusively for Israel and the US, it is hard to understand on what exactly such advocates base their faith.

It is much saner to advocate, as Nur Masalha says, for the One Democratic State Campaign: a progressive liberation movement, an ambitious movement with a future vision that seeks to end the colonization of Palestine and change the reality on the ground from the river to the sea. These tasks are not easy and cannot be accomplished in the short term:

The discourse of “political realism” is also a refrain of the Oslo architects. In the name of “political realism”, we Palestinians found ourselves mired in the Oslo swamp…. The discourse of “one homeland— two states” is essentially the “two-state solution incomplete”: without full and effective Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank, no Israeli decolonization, and Palestinian “coexistence” with Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

The Oslo two-state “peace process” is dead. Israelis and Palestinians need to consider a just and equitable alternative, which means one democratic state, not a so-called binational state that entrenches and legitimizes the apartheid status quo, political Zionism, settler-colonialism, and Israel as a Jewish state.

In an excellent analysis of the letter published in al Arabi al Jadeed, Lamis K. Andoni wonders:

Al-Hassan bin Talal proposes a solution based on the establishment of two states, Israeli and Palestinian, at a time when it has become clear, and for some time now, the “Palestinian state” that Israel might accept, is a monolithic and isolated entity without sovereignty, in which Israel controls its outlets, its sky — literally what’s underground and what’s above. Regarding the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination, it means the cancellation of all historical and legal rights, the most important of which is the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. The question here is: Why does Jordan accept giving free gifts that further weaken the already dysfunctional balance of power? How can Jordan call on the Palestinians to give up all their cards, and then talk about a solution acceptable to the Palestinians, unless there is no place for the opinion [will] of the Palestinians in the first place?

It’s time for a fresh start for Palestine, as Prince Hassan says, but a truly fresh start, not a variant mutation of the toxic past.

*

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

This article originally published on The Intercept in January 2020 provides an incisive perspective and understanding of President Joe Biden’s foreign policy “commitment” to waging war in the Middle East.

All of this was known and documente before the 2020 elections.

So-called progressives played a key role in supporting his candidacy.

M. Ch. GR Editor

***

Former Vice President Joe Biden this week [early January 2020] continued to maintain the fiction that he stood against the war in Iraq “the very moment” it began in 2003. The claim has been easily taken apart by fact checkers — Biden publicly supported the war before, during, and after the invasion — but a 1998 Senate hearing sheds additional light on his determination to confront Iraq over weapons of mass destruction.

In 1998, U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter resigned in protest and accused the international community of not giving him and his colleagues the support they needed to carry out their job in Iraq, which had agreed in 1991 to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile. He was called to testify before the Senate in September 1998, where Biden, who was then the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations committee, grilled him. In the course of the questions, Biden made revealing remarks about where he stood on regime change in Iraq.

Biden thanked Ritter for forcing senators to “come to our milk,” by which he meant forcing them to make a decision on what to do about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his alleged weapons of mass destruction program.

Biden told Ritter that no matter how thorough the inspections, the only way to eliminate the threat was to remove Saddam Hussein.

“The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,” Biden said, characterizing former President Bill Clinton’s administration’s policy. “You and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam is at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam’s program relative to weapons of mass destruction. You and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it’s a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we’re going to get rid of Saddam Hussein is we’re going to end up having to start it alone — start it alone — and it’s going to require guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down,” Biden said. “You know it and I know it.”

Hussein, it turned out, did not have an active WMD program.

During questioning, Biden mocked Ritter as “ol’ Scotty boy” and suggested that his demands — that the international community compel Iraq to cooperate with inspectors — if met, would give Ritter the unilateral authority to start a war in Iraq. Biden argued that such decisions belonged to higher-level officials. “I respectfully suggest they have a responsibility slightly above your pay grade, to decide whether or not to take the nation to war,” Biden said. “That’s a real tough decision. That’s why they get paid the big bucks. That’s why they get the limos and you don’t. I mean this sincerely, I’m not trying to be flip.”

He ended by redeploying his unusual idiom in thanking Ritter.

“The reason why I’m glad you did what you did: We should come to our milk. We should make a decision,” Biden said.

Biden’s earlier suggestion that “taking Saddam down” was the only way to guarantee an end to the WMD program left little doubt where Biden would later come down on the issue.

Biden’s grilling of Ritter is important because it gives context to claims Biden later made: First, that when he voted in favor of the invasion of Iraq as a senator, he did not mean to vote for war, but hoped the resolution would empower inspectors to get back into Iraq and monitor the program. And second, that he never believed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

On the first claim, Biden told NPR last year that former President George W. Bush “looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program. … He got them in and before you know it, we had ‘shock and awe.’”

But according to Biden’s own statements in 1998, he believed that Hussein could never be trusted to eliminate his program, no matter how many inspectors were admitted.

In October 2004, by which time it had become clear there were no WMDs, Biden told an audience at the Council on Foreign Relations, “I never believed they had weapons of mass destruction.”

In fact, as Biden had said in 1998, he believed not only that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but no amount of inspections or diplomacy could guarantee their removal. That, he told Ritter, could only be done by “guys like you in uniform to be back on foot in the desert taking this son of a — taking Saddam down.”

Biden’s thought process puts critical hearings he held in 2002 as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee in sharper context. That summer, as the world was focused on the war in Afghanistan, from where the attacks of September 11, 2001, had been launched, Biden sought to begin “a national dialogue” on Iraq. During a series of high-profile hearings, he feigned neutrality, but his earlier questioning of Ritter leaves no doubt where he stood: Iraq had WMDs, and the only way to disarm Iraq with confidence was to depose Saddam Hussein. Biden, given his chairmanship, was a leading voice on foreign policy within the party. He had voted against the first Gulf War, waged by Bush’s father, and wasn’t considered a knee-jerk hawk. His support for the 2003 war made Democratic opposition ultimately untenable — even as Ritter, in the run up to it, loudly made the case against war, arguing that the WMD claims were overhyped.

Biden had reason to disbelieve the WMD claims. In a classified hearing on September 24, 2002, at the urging of a staff member, Biden asked then-CIA Director George Tenet what evidence of WMDs the U.S. had “technically collected.”

“None, Senator,” Tenet said, according to an account in the book “Hubris,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Biden, wondering if there was some highly classified evidence, asked Tenet, “George, do you want me to clear the staff out of the room?” Tenet told him no. “There’s no reason to, Senator.”

“‘None, Senator’ — that answer will ring in my ears as long as I live,” the staffer later told the authors. Later in that same hearing, Biden heard from two government witnesses who rejected the “aluminum tubes” claim that had been circulating, and would later become a centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations.

Biden, to be sure, was not a full-throated advocate for the war on Bush’s terms, and throughout the fall, worked with Republican Sens. Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel to try to build support for a narrower authorization, that would only allow Bush to attack Iraq for the purpose of dismantling a WMD program. But the effort was undercut by House Democratic leaders, and particularly Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., who pushed ahead with Bush’s broader resolution. “I was angry,” Biden later said, according to “Hubris.” “I was frustrated. But I never second-guess another man’s political judgment.”

Biden was also aware of the difficulty of invading and occupying Iraq, unlike some of his Republican colleagues. In February 1998, the News Journal of Wilmington reported that Biden saw invasion as unlikely.

Though some Republicans have urged the military to remove Saddam from power entirely, Biden said there was little will for that in Congress. Such a move would require a bloody ground war, the use of 300,000 to 500,000 ground troops, and some kind of continuing presence in Iraq while a new government is installed, he said.

Yet during the summer 2002 hearings, Biden claimed that “one thing is clear, these weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” Given that he was already on record believing that the weapons could never effectively be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, that left only one option: war. Biden voted for the Iraq war resolution on October 11, 2002, three weeks after hearing from Tenet in the classified session.

*

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***

Veoma cenjeni gospodine Predsedniče!

Dozvolite mi da Vam se ponovo obratim, ali najpre bih želeo da Vam uputim srdačne čestitke povodom Vašeg rodjendana.

Pošto me već poznajete iz mojih prethodnih pisama, ne moram da Vam se detaljnije predstavljam. Ja sam diplomirani psiholog, doktor pedagogije i poslednjih decenija sam radio kao profesor u Nemačkoj u obrazovanju odraslih. Duže od godinu dana živim u Srbiji zajedno sa svojom suprugom, Srpkinjom koja je penzionisani diplomata. Pošto gotovo svakodnevno do mene dolaze veoma uznemirujuće vesti iz moje bivše domovine, obraćam se sada Vama.

Za razliku od Srbije, u Nemačkoj i okolnim zemljama su već mesecima svi restorani ii barovi zatvoreni i gradjani se žale zbog veoma restriktivnih političkih mera, koje dovode do ekstremnih psihičkih, fizičkih i privrednih posledica odnosno šteta. Ljudi se žale i zbog sve jačeg pritiska da se vakcinišu vakcinama, koje posebno u domovima za stare, dovode do teških nuz pojava, šta više i do smrti. Političari tvrde da veoma nepopularne mere kao što su pomenute inekcije, nošenje maski ili socijalna distanca preduzimaju isključivo zbog zaštite zdravlja stanovništva. Gradjani, medjutim, više ne veruju u to.

Pošto ja nameravam da i nadalje živim ovde u Srbiji, želeo bih da od Vas saznam koje planove imate Vi i Vaša vlada za Srbiju? Da li će se uskoro prestati sa neprijatnim i problematičnim nošenjem maski koje izobličuju lice? Da li će i u Srbiji biti uvedena obavezna vakcinacija za sve gradjane? Pored toga bi me interesovalo, da li se i u Srbiji slušaju samo mišljenja naučnih ekseparta koja se dopadaju vladi? Ili će se moći čuti i druga gledišta – i da li će se čuti i glas naroda?

Gospodine Predsedniče, bio bih Vam veoma zahvalan, ako bi ste odgovorili na moja pitanja i ako bi ste mogli da me umirite.

U tom očekivanju ostajem s prijateljskim pozdravima,

Vaš Rudolf Hänsel

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Dear Mr. President!

Let me address you again, but first I would like to send you my heartfelt congratulations on your birthday.

Since you already know me from my previous letters, I do not have to introduce myself to you in more detail. I am a graduate psychologist, doctor of pedagogy and in recent decades I have worked as a professor in Germany in adult education.

I have been living in Serbia for more than a year together with my wife, a Serbian woman who is a retired diplomat. Since very disturbing news from my former homeland comes to me almost every day, I am addressing you now.

Unlike in Serbia, in Germany and the surrounding countries, all restaurants and bars have been closed for months and citizens complain about very restrictive political measures, which lead to extreme psychological, physical and economic consequences or damage. People are also complaining about the growing pressure to get vaccinated with vaccines, which, especially in old people’s homes, lead to severe side effects, and even more to death. Politicians claim that very unpopular measures such as the mentioned injections, wearing masks or social distance are taken solely to protect the health of the population. Citizens, however, no longer believe in it.

Since I intend to continue living here in Serbia, I would like to know from you what plans do you and your government have for Serbia? Will they soon stop wearing uncomfortable and problematic masks that distort the face? Will compulsory vaccination be introduced in Serbia for all citizens? In addition, I would be interested in whether only the opinions of scientific experts who like the government are listened to in Serbia as well? Or will other views be heard – and will the voice of the people be heard?

Mr. President, I would be very grateful if you could answer my questions and if you could calm me down.

In that anticipation, I remain with friendly greetings,

Rudolf Hansel

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Below are relevant excerpts from an important article by Mark Weisbrot originally published in The Guardian in February 2020.

Click here to Access the complete article

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….

When the war was debated and then authorized by the US Congress in 2002, Democrats controlled the Senate and Biden was chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations. Biden himself had enormous influence as chair and argued strongly in favor of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq.

“I do not believe this is a rush to war,” Biden said a few days before the vote. “I believe it is a march to peace and security. I believe that failure to overwhelmingly support this resolution is likely to enhance the prospects that war will occur …”

But he had a power much greater than his own words. He was able to choose all 18 witnesses in the main Senate hearings on Iraq. And he mainly chose people who supported a pro-war position. They argued in favor of “regime change as the stated US policy” and warned of “a nuclear-armed Saddam sometime in this decade”. That Iraqis would “welcome the United States as liberators” And that Iraq “permits known al-Qaida members to live and move freely about in Iraq” and that “they are being supported”.

The lies about al-Qaida were perhaps the most transparently obvious of the falsehoods created to justify the Iraq war. As anyone familiar with the subject matter could testify, Saddam Hussein ran a secular government  ….

…. But Iraq in 2002 was devastated by economic sanctions, had no weapons of mass destruction, and was known by even the most pro-war experts to have no missiles that could come close to the United States. The idea that this country on the other side of the world posed a security threat to America was more than far-fetched. The idea that the US could simply invade, topple the government, and take over the country without provoking enormous violence was also implausible. It’s not clear how anyone with foreign policy experience and expertise could have believed these ideas.

…. Regardless of Biden’s intentions – which I make no claim to know or understand – the resolution granting President Bush the authority to start that war, which Biden pushed through the Senate, was a major part of that deception.

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Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He is the director of Worth the Price? Joe Biden and the Launch of the Iraq War (2020).

Featured image is from Oxfam International

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In December 2016, then British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government formally adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism. It was the first government in the world to do so, marking yet another milestone in the 100-year history of British support for Zionism and callous disregard for Palestinian rights. 

The “original sin” was the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which promised to support the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people”, provided that nothing was done to “prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”. In 1917, Arabs constituted 90 percent of the population of Palestine; Jews made up less than 10 percent.

The declaration was thus a classic colonial document: it granted the right to national self-determination to a small minority, while denying it to the majority. To add insult to injury, the declaration referred to 90 percent of the country’s inhabitants as “non-Jewish communities in Palestine”, relegating them to an inferior status. Although grotesquely imbalanced in favour of Jews, the declaration at least included a promise to protect the civil and religious rights of Palestinians – but even this promise was never kept.

The British mandate for Palestine lasted from 1920 until midnight on 14 May 1948, the date the State of Israel was proclaimed. The first high commissioner for Palestine, Herbert Samuel, was a Jew and an ardent Zionist. Partiality towards Jews was evident from day one; the cornerstone of the mandate was to deny representative institutions as long as Arabs were the majority in Palestine.

In the end, Britain over-fulfilled its promise to Zionists by helping the “national home” evolve into a Jewish state, while betraying its pledge to Palestinians. Britain’s betrayal gave rise to the Palestinian Great Revolt of 1936-39. This was a nationalist uprising, demanding Arab independence and an end to the policy of open-ended Jewish immigration and land purchases.

The revolt was suppressed with utter ruthlessness and brutality by the British army and police. Britain resorted to the entire panoply of colonial measures, including martial law, military courts, detention without trial, caning, flogging, torture, extra-judicial killings, collective punishment and aerial bombardment. Nearly 20,000 Palestinians were killed or wounded during the revolt, and villages were reduced to rubble.

In the process of crushing the uprising, Britain broke the backbone of the Palestinian national movement. British actions gravely weakened Palestinians and strengthened Zionists, as the two national movements moved inexorably towards a final showdown. Palestine was not lost in the late 1940s, as is commonly believed; it was lost in the late 1930s, as a result of Britain’s savage smashing of Palestinian resistance and support for Jewish paramilitary forces.

Anti-Arab racism

An undercurrent of anti-Arab racism coloured Britain’s entire handling of the mandate for Palestine. In 1937, future British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said:

“I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right.

“I do not admit, for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race … has come in and taken their place.”

A Black Lives Matter protester had a point when, in June 2020, he sprayed graffiti on a Churchill statue in London’s Parliament Square to add the words “was a racist”. Churchill held Arabs in contempt as racially inferior. His description of Palestinian Arabs as a “dog in a manger” is shocking, but not entirely surprising; racism usually goes hand in hand with colonialism.

As the British mandate for Palestine approached its inglorious end, Britain persisted in its anti-Palestinian stance. When the United Nations voted in November 1947 to partition mandatory Palestine into two states, Britain adopted an official posture of neutrality. Behind the scenes, however, it worked to abort the birth of a Palestinian state.

Haj Amin al-Husseini, the leader of the Palestinian national movement, fell out with Britain over its pro-Zionist policy in Palestine and made contact with Adolf Hitler during the Second World War. In British eyes, a Palestinian state was synonymous with a mufti state; accordingly, Britain’s hostility towards Palestinians and Palestinian statehood was a constant factor in its foreign policy from 1947-49.

Wiped off the map

Britain gave a green light to its client, King Abdullah of Transjordan, to send his British-led little army into Palestine upon expiry of the British mandate, to capture the West Bank – which was intended to be the heartland of the Palestinian state. The winners in the war for Palestine were King Abdullah and the Zionist movement; the losers were Palestinians. Around 750,000 Palestinians, more than half the population, became refugees, and the name Palestine was wiped off the map.

In short, Britain played a significant but little-known part in the Nakba, the catastrophe that overwhelmed Palestinians in 1948. When Jordan formally annexed the West Bank in 1950, Britain and Pakistan were the only UN members to recognise it.

Against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter, the reassessment of Britain’s colonial past and the drive to decolonise school curricula, some scholars have leapt to the defence of the British Empire. Nigel Biggar, the Regius professor of theology at the University of Oxford, for example, defends the British Empire as a moral force for good.

Christopher Hilton / Statue of Cecil Rhodes, High Street frontage of Oriel College, Oxford / CC BY-SA 2.0

Referencing Cecil Rhodes and the campaign to remove his statue from Oriel College, Biggar conceded that Rhodes was an imperialist, “but British colonialism was not essentially racist, wasn’t essentially exploitative, and wasn’t essentially atrocious”. The British Empire’s record in Palestine, however, is rather difficult to reconcile with the benign view of the learned professor.

Shameful legacy

The Conservative Party and its leaders are the standard-bearers of this shameful legacy of unqualified British support for Israel and indifference to Palestinian rights. Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is by far the most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group in Britain, and its membership includes around 80 percent of Tory members of parliament. Since the May 2015 general election, CFI has sent 24 delegations with more than 180 Conservatives to visit Israel.

The last three leaders of the Conservative Party have been uncritical supporters of the State of Israel. Former Prime Minister David Cameron described himself as a “passionate friend” of Israel and insisted that nothing could break that friendship.

Theresa May was probably the most pro-Israeli leader in Europe during her premiership. In an address to CFI in 2016, she described Israel as a “remarkable country … a thriving democracy, a beacon of tolerance, an engine of enterprise, and an example to the rest of the world”. She spoke of Israel as “a country where people of all religions and sexualities are free and equal in the eyes of the law”.

May reserved her sharpest criticism for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which works to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to pressure Israel to comply with international law. BDS is a non-violent, global grassroots campaign whose principal demands – the right of return of 1948 refugees, an end to occupation, and equal rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens – are grounded in international law. This movement, May stated, “is wrong, it is unacceptable, and this party and this government will have no truck with those who subscribe to it”.

May reminded her audience that Britain was entering a “special time” – the centenary of the Balfour Declaration – and went on to deliver a wholly one-sided verdict on this colonial document: “It is one of the most important letters in history. It demonstrates Britain’s vital role in creating a homeland for the Jewish people. And it is an anniversary we will be marking with pride.” There was no mention of Britain’s failure to uphold even the minimal rights of Palestinians.

National rights

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has a slightly more nuanced take on Britain’s record as a colonial power in Palestine. In his 2014 book on Churchill, he described the Balfour Declaration as “bizarre”, “tragically incoherent” and an “exquisite piece of Foreign Office fudgerama”. This was one of the rare examples of sound judgement and historical insight on Johnson’s part. But in 2015, on a trip to Israel as mayor of London, Johnson hailed the Balfour Declaration as “a great thing”.

In October 2017, in his capacity as foreign secretary, Johnson introduced a debate in the House of Commons on the Balfour Declaration. He repeated the mantra about Britain’s pride in the part it played in creating a Jewish state in Palestine. He had the perfect opportunity to balance this with a recognition of Palestine as a state, but he repeatedly turned it down, saying the time was not right. Since the Conservative Party supports a two-state solution, recognising Palestine would be a logical step towards that end.

Arthur Balfour, the foreign secretary in 1917, undertook to uphold the civil and religious rights of the native population of Palestine. A century later, the House of Commons added national rights as well, voting in October 2014 – by 274 votes to 12 – to recognise a Palestinian state. Cameron chose to ignore the non-binding vote; at least he was consistent in his passionate attachment to Israel, which is more than can be said about his successor. As with Johnson’s approach to any subject, in his attitude towards Palestinian rights, expediency prevails.

An unbroken thread of moral myopia, hypocrisy, double standards and skulduggery connects British policy on Palestine, from Balfour to Boris. The Conservative government’s adoption in 2016 of the IHRA’s non-legally-binding working definition of antisemitism falls squarely within this tradition of partisanship on behalf of Zionism and Israel, and disdain for Palestinians.

The definition states:

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

Problematic examples

The definition does not mention Israel by name, but no fewer than seven out of the 11 “illustrative examples” that follow concern Israel. They include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour”; “applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis”; and “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”.

The 11 examples make a series of unwarranted assumptions about Israel and world Jewry. They assume that all Israelis adhere to the notion of Israel as a Jewish state; that Israel is a “democratic nation”; that Israel is not a racist endeavour; and that all Jews condemn the comparison between Israeli policy and that of the Nazis.

In fact, Israel is a highly heterogeneous and deeply divided society with a wide range of opinions on all these issues – and a political culture marked by fierce disputes and no-holds-barred debates.

Many left-wing Israelis regard Israel as a racist endeavour. B’Tselem, the highly respected Israeli human rights organisation, issued a closely argued position paper in January titled “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.”

It declared:

“The entire area Israel controls between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is governed by a single regime working to advance and perpetuate the supremacy of one group over another. By geographically, demographically and physically engineering space, the regime enables Jews to live in a contiguous area with full rights, including self-determination, while Palestinians live in separate units and enjoy fewer rights.”

Right-wing Israelis continue to hotly deny that Israel is an apartheid state and reject any comparison with apartheid South Africa. But there is no law against calling Israel an apartheid state, and progressive Israelis do so all the time. Comparisons with Nazi Germany are also not proscribed by Israeli law. Such comparisons are less common in Israeli political discourse, but they are occasionally expressed in newspaper editorials and even by politicians.

Devil in the details

The global Jewish community is just as diverse and disputatious. Ironically, to treat Jews as a homogeneous group is in fact an antisemitic trope. It is antisemites who fail to differentiate between different kinds of Jews, and want to see them all clustered in one place. It is on this basis that Theodor Herzl, the visionary of the Jewish state, predicted that “the antisemites will become our most dependable friends”.

The devil is in the details or, in the case of the IHRA document, in the examples. Strictly speaking, there are two definitions: the two opening sentences, quoted above, and the list of 11 examples. This point cannot be emphasised strongly enough; it is a tale of two texts.

To achieve consensus on the document within the IHRA, it was necessary to separate the statement from the illustrative examples that followed. Pro-Israel partisans, however, have repeatedly conveyed the false impression that the examples are an integral part of the definition. They also habitually omit the qualifier that this is only a draft – a “working definition”.

As countless commentators, lawyers and scholars of antisemitism have pointed out, the IHRA working definition is poorly drafted, internally incoherent, hopelessly vague, vulnerable to political abuse, and altogether not fit for purpose. It does not fulfil the most elementary requirement of a definition, which is to define.

The definition states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews”, but fails to spell out what this perception is. In my 50 years as a university teacher, I have not come across a more vacuous or useless definition. Yet, although it is vacuous, it is not innocuous. Kenneth Stern, the lead author of the definition, has rejected its adoption as a campus hate speech code, arguing that it “will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself”.

Antisemitism vs anti-Zionism

What the non-legally-binding IHRA document does do, with the help of the examples, is shift the focus from real antisemitism to the perfectly respectable and growing phenomenon of anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is sometimes described by pro-Israel stakeholders as “the new antisemitism”. It is essential, however, to distinguish clearly between the two.

Antisemitism may be simply defined as “hostility towards Jews because they are Jews”. Zionism, meanwhile, is a nationalist, political ideology that called for the creation of a Jewish state, and now supports the continued existence of Israel as such a state. Anti-Zionism is opposition to the exclusive character of the state of Israel and to Israeli policies, particularly its occupation of the West Bank. Antisemitism relates to Jews anywhere in the world; anti-Zionism relates only to Israel.

The IHRA document, taken as a whole, is susceptible to political abuse in that it makes it possible to conflate legitimate anti-Zionism with nefarious antisemitism. Israel’s energetic apologists, who were instrumental in promoting the document, conflate the two deliberately and routinely.

To criticise the definition for its vacuity is thus to miss a central point. In this endeavour, the definition’s very vagueness confers a political advantage. It enables Israel’s defenders to weaponise the definition, especially against left-wing opponents, and to portray what in most cases is valid criticism of Israeli behaviour as the vilification and delegitimisation of the State of Israel.

Double standards

Israel is not the victim of double standards. On the contrary, it is the beneficiary of western double standards. Under the IHRA examples, it is antisemitic to require of Israel a behaviour “not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”. But this has nothing to do with anti-Jewish racism.

In any case, Israel is not a democracy. Even within its original borders, it is a flawed democracy at best, because of discrimination at multiple levels against its Palestinian citizens. But in the whole area under its rule, including the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel is an ethnocracy – a political system in which one ethnic group dominates another.

The superior status of Jews in Israel is enshrined in the 2018 nation-state law, the official confirmation that Israel is an apartheid state. The law states that the right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people”. It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic – which is widely spoken by Arab citizens of Israel – to a “special status”.

Israel is the only member of the UN that enshrines its racism in law. It is therefore not antisemitic, but only right and proper, to expect Israel to behave like a democratic nation by giving equal rights to all its citizens.

Israel’s friends in the US and Europe have claimed for the definition an international status that it does not have. They pushed hard for the adoption of the definition by as many governments as possible, because it can be used to intimidate critics of Israel and pro-Palestinian campaigners by tarnishing them with the brush of antisemitism.

In Britain, the top echelons of the Conservative Party have followed the Israel lobby’s lead. Indeed, in the Conservative Party as a whole, the IHRA document seems to have acquired the status of holy writ.

Divisive consequences

The Labour Party discovered to its cost the divisive and damaging consequences of adopting this document. Initially, the party’s code of conduct incorporated five of the IHRA examples verbatim, and an additional two with minor amendments.

This did not satisfy Israel’s friends either inside or outside the party. The party was bullied by the Jewish Labour Movement, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Community Security Trust, and the Campaign Against Antisemitism to adopt all the examples verbatim. Not to adopt all the examples exactly as they stood, it was misleadingly argued, was tantamount to a rejection of the definition.

Labour’s national executive committee caved in and abandoned its amendments to the remaining two examples. In the Orwellian world of the post-full-adoption Labour Party, many of the members who have been suspended or expelled for the crime of antisemitism were themselves Jewish. Several Jewish Labour Party members have been investigated since 2016, nearly all on the basis of allegations of antisemitism. This made a mockery of the claim of Keir Starmer, who succeeded the allegedly antisemitic Jeremy Corbyn as leader, to be making the Labour Party a safe place for Jews.

Under the new regime, the Labour Party is slavishly subservient to the benighted definition. A local Labour Party branch recently tried to submit a motion endorsing B’Tselem’s latest report on Israeli apartheid. It said: “This Branch supports the call from B’Tselem for an end to the apartheid regime to ‘ensure human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike, living on the bit of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.’”

The motion was ruled out of order at the national level of the party on the grounds that, according to the IHRA’s working definition, this could be seen as designating Israel a “racist endeavour”.

Politically dangerous

In the rush to burnish its pro-Zionist credentials, the Labour Party turned against some of its most progressive Jewish members. Moshe Machover, the veteran Israeli British anti-Zionist, was expelled and then reinstated in 2017 after the Guardian published a letter of protest undersigned by 139 Labour Party members, including eminent Jewish lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, dismissing the insinuation of antisemitism as “personally offensive and politically dangerous”.

But in 2020, Machover was suspended again. He received a 20-page letter from party bureaucrats containing a melange of old and new allegations of antisemitism, which Machover described as “full of lies” and part of a “Stalinist purge of the Labour Party”. He considered resigning and slamming the door behind him, but decided to give the party inquisitors a chance to further disgrace themselves by expelling him.

The real question is: why did the British government adopt this fundamentally flawed and deeply controversial document? The government cannot claim in self-defence that it had not been warned about the potentially harmful consequences of adoption.

It actually rejected calls from the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to insert two “clarifications” to the IHRA definition and examples: firstly, to clarify that it is not antisemitic to criticise the government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent; and secondly, to clarify that “it is not antisemitic to hold the Israeli government to the same standards as other liberal democracies, or to take a particular interest in the Israeli government’s policies or actions, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent”.

Funding threatened

The clearest clue that the present Conservative government is wedded to the IHRA definition as a means of curtailing debate and restricting free speech on Israel is contained in a letter from Gavin Williamson, the secretary of state for education, to university vice chancellors.

Sent in October 2020 amid a national crisis of the education sector due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the letter noted that the number of universities that had adopted the IHRA definition remained “shamefully low”. The universities who ignored it were said to be letting down their staff and students, and their Jewish students in particular.

The education secretary insisted that these universities stop dragging their feet and formally endorse the IHRA definition. He threatened to cut off funding to universities at which antisemitic incidents occur and which had not signed up to the definition.

Williamson’s letter was not well received. He himself came across as authoritarian, while the tone of his missive was arrogant, hectoring and bullying. More worrying, however, was the content. It made no reference to any other form of bigotry, such as Islamophobia, homophobia or anti-Black racism. It did not escape notice that antisemitism was singled out for attention and punishment by a Conservative government that is renowned for its intensely relaxed attitude towards Islamophobia.

The letter assumed that universities that did not formally endorse the IHRA definition were not taking antisemitism seriously, which is far from being the case. It did not allow for the fact that most universities have rules and disciplinary procedures for combatting most forms of discrimination and racism, including antisemitism. Even if a specific definition of antisemitism is needed, which is debatable, no reason was given for privileging the IHRA one.

Above all, the letter, or rather the ultimatum, was seen as a threat to free speech, which universities and the Department for Education have a statutory duty to uphold.

Ministerial diktat

Some English universities openly, and courageously, rejected the IHRA definition; about a fifth capitulated to the ministerial diktat by signing up to the definition; and the majority chose not to commit themselves one way or the other. My own university, Oxford, has fixed its colours firmly to the fence.

The statement on its website reads: “Oxford University aims to ensure that all students, whatever their background, have a fulfilling experience of higher education. To support us in our work, we have adopted (reflecting the position of the Office for Students) the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a guide to interpreting and understanding antisemitism, noting the clarifications recommended by the Home Affairs Select Committee. The IHRA definition does not affect the legal definition of racial discrimination, so does not change our approach to meeting our legal duties and responsibilities.” In other words, Oxford will draw on the definition for intellectual enlightenment in thinking about antisemitism, but not as a guide for action.

In a letter to the Guardian published in November 2020, a group of 122 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals expressed their concerns about the IHRA definition. Palestinian voices are rarely heard in the national debate on antisemitism and Israel-Palestine. This letter is therefore worth quoting at some length for the light it sheds on Palestinian perceptions and positions:

“In recent years, the fight against antisemitism has been increasingly instrumentalised by the Israeli government and its supporters in an effort to delegitimise the Palestinian cause and silence defenders of Palestinian rights. Diverting the necessary struggle against antisemitism to serve such an agenda threatens to debase this struggle and hence to discredit and weaken it.

“Antisemitism must be debunked and combated. Regardless of pretence, no expression of hatred for Jews as Jews should be tolerated anywhere in the world. Antisemitism manifests itself in sweeping generalisations and stereotypes about Jews, regarding power and money in particular, along with conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial. We regard as legitimate and necessary the fight against such attitudes. We also believe that the lessons of the Holocaust as well as those of other genocides of modern times must be part of the education of new generations against all forms of racial prejudice and hatred.

“The fight against antisemitism must, however, be approached in a principled manner, lest it defeat its purpose. Through ‘examples’ that it provides, the IHRA definition conflates Judaism with Zionism in assuming that all Jews are Zionists, and that the state of Israel in its current reality embodies the self-determination of all Jews. We profoundly disagree with this. The fight against antisemitism should not be turned into a stratagem to delegitimise the fight against the oppression of the Palestinians, the denial of their rights and the continued occupation of their land.”

Chilling effect

The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), Britain’s leading academic organisation for the study of the Middle East and North Africa, issued a statement expressing its profound concern about the pressure applied on universities by the government to adopt the IHRA definition.

It said Williamson’s intervention would have a “chilling effect” on academic freedom and the university sector in Middle East studies and beyond. While welcoming steps to root out antisemitism and all forms of racism from university campuses, the association came to the conclusion that this particular definition would have a detrimental impact on researchers and students.

After tracking the use of the IHRA definition in different contexts in the UK, it concluded that it was being deployed “to use the false charge of antisemitism to silence and delegitimise those who support Palestinian rights”. The anti-racist working groups within universities with whom it had consulted were all vehemently against adopting the IHRA definition.

The statement ended by urging universities “to protect academic freedom, to defend their autonomy against the government’s pressure to adopt the IHRA definition, and to retract the definition” where it had been adopted.

Another call on universities to resist the government’s attempt to impose the IHRA definition came from an unexpected source: British academics who are also Israeli citizens. I am a member of this group, brought together by outrage at Williamson’s rude and crude intervention. It came as a surprise to discover that there are so many of us but, on the issue of his threat, we were all on the same page, regardless of our diverse academic disciplines, ages, statuses and political affiliations.

Attacking free speech

Our demarche took the form of a long letter sent in the last week of January to all vice chancellors of English universities and many academic senates. Since then, our letter has been signed by an impressive list of 110 supporters, all Israeli academics outside the UK, including many from Israel.

We tried to reach a wider public beyond the academy by publishing our letter in the mainstream media. Our request was either rejected or ignored by no less than 12 national newspapers and other media outlets. We were rather surprised and disappointed that not a single national paper saw fit to publish our letter or to report our initiative. But the letter was eventually published by the Jewish leftist online journal, Vashti.

The litany of rejections is in itself a comment on the reluctance of the mainstream media to give space to non-mainstream Jewish voices.

In our letter, we said:

“Fighting antisemitism in all its forms is an absolute must. Yet the IHRA document is inherently flawed, and in ways that undermine this fight. In addition, it threatens free speech and academic freedom and constitutes an attack both on the Palestinian right to self-determination, and the struggle to democratise Israel.”

We also pointed out that the government’s pressure on higher education institutions to adopt a definition for only one sort of racism singles out people of Jewish descent as deserving greater protection than others who today endure equal or more grievous manifestations of racism and discrimination.

Step in the wrong direction

We took strong exception to some of the “illustrations” of the IHRA document. Surely, we argued, it should be legitimate, not least in a university setting, to debate whether Israel, as a self-proclaimed Jewish state, is “a racist endeavour” or a “democratic nation”. We found it alarming that the document was being used to frame as antisemitic the struggle against Israel’s occupation and dispossession. No state should be shielded from such legitimate scholarly discussion, we opined, and nor should Israel.

Our letter went on to say that “as Israeli citizens settled in the UK, many of us of Jewish descent … we demand that our voice, too, be heard: the IHRA document is a step in the wrong direction. It singles out the persecution of Jews; it inhibits free speech and academic freedom; it deprives Palestinians of a legitimate voice within the UK public space; and, finally, it inhibits us, as Israeli nationals, from exercising our democratic right to challenge our government”.

In conclusion, we joined in the demand that UK universities remain firm in their commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech. We urged UK universities to continue their fight against all forms of racism, including antisemitism. We repeated that the flawed IHRA document does a disservice to these goals.

We therefore called on all academic senates in England to reject the governmental diktat to adopt it, or, where adopted already, to act to revoke it. A copy of our letter was sent to the secretary of state for education but, so far, we have not heard back from him. It would seem that all the protests about his letter are, for Mr. Williamson, like water off a duck’s back.

The case of Ken Loach

A recent episode at Oxford highlighted the problematic implications of adopting or even semi-adopting the IHRA definition. Ken Loach – the multi-award-winning British filmmaker, lifelong anti-racist and social campaigner – was invited by his old Oxford college to a discussion that had nothing to do with Jews or Israel. This was advertised as a joint event between Torch, the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities, and St Peter’s College.

Loach was billed to discuss his filmmaking career with the master of St Peter’s College, Judith Buchanan, who is also a professor of literature and film. The event was part of a broader university humanities cultural programme that fosters debate between artists and academics.

What followed was a well-orchestrated campaign of character assassination against a man who had spent his life championing the victims of oppression and discrimination, including Palestinians. Buchanan was bombarded with messages demanding she cancel the event.

The Oxford University Jewish Society said it was deeply disappointed by the decision to host the event because “on numerous occasions, Loach has made remarks that are antisemitic under the IHRA definition, which was recently adopted by the University of Oxford”.

Marie van der Zyl, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, wrote to Buchanan, describing the decision to invite Loach to speak at her college as “entirely unacceptable”, and called for the event to be cancelled. She added that the board had been in touch with Jewish students at Oxford and “wholeheartedly support their condemnation of the event”. The categorical conclusion was: “This event should not take place.”

Combined pressure

The Union of Jewish Students, a national organisation that represents around 8,500 students, piled on the pressure.

“Just last summer”, it tweeted, “the University of Oxford stated they were committed to addressing systemic racism wherever it may be found, including within their own community. We do not see how this event can be reconciled with that statement. It is an outrage that St Peter’s College has ignored the concerns of its Jewish students and we urge Judith Buchanan, Master of St Peter’s College, to remove this speaker from the event. UJS are offering support to the Jewish Society.”

Buchanan and Torch stood firm against the combined pressure from all Jewish quarters, and the event went ahead as planned. It was also streamed live on YouTube. The discussion was moderated by Professor Wes Williams, the director of Torch.

In my inexpert opinion, it was a wonderful cultural event, a model of its kind. Loach showed clips from his films The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) about Ireland in the early 20th century and I, Daniel Blake (2016) about the inhumanity of the social benefits system.

Loach talked about his films, and the worldview that informs them, eloquently and movingly in the discussion with Buchanan. There was no mention of Israel or Palestinians. After the webinar, Buchanan referred to the controversy surrounding it and stressed that neither the college nor the university believe in no-platforming. In an email, however, she apologised to Jewish students for the “hurt” caused by the row over the event.

Rehashed allegations

The day after the event took place, on 9 February, the student union of Wadham College held a meeting regarding St Peter’s College and Loach. It is unusual for the students of one college to criticise the conduct of another college, but the Jewish students at Wadham evidently felt strongly about this issue.

The motion before the meeting went into great detail about comments made by Loach on different occasions that were considered to be antisemitic and complicit in Holocaust denial. The document generated more heat and venom; it was essentially a rehash of old allegations that had been comprehensively refuted in the past. The motion was to formally condemn Buchanan and St Peter’s College in poorly handling the concerns of Jewish students. The censure motion was passed with 150 votes for, 14 against and four abstentions.

Loach told the Telegraph, which reported on the controversy: “These recycled accusations are false and based on persistent misrepresentation and distortion.” The embattled filmmaker’s friends rallied to his defence. Some were members of Jewish Voice for Labour, which in the past had defended Corbyn against false charges of antisemitism.

At their request, I sent a statement to be read at the student union’s meeting at Wadham College. It read:

“I deeply regret the attack by Wadham College students on Ken Loach. He has a strong and consistent record of opposing racism of every kind, including antisemitism. He is anti-Zionist but in no way antisemitic.

“He is charged with having made comments that are antisemitic under the IHRA definition. But that definition is utterly flawed. Its real purpose is to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order to suppress legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies. Antisemitism is hostility towards Jews because they are Jews.

“Under this proper definition Ken Loach is completely innocent. He is also an admirable person, a champion of social justice, and an outstanding artist. The attack on him undermines freedom of speech and that has no place in an academic institution. I therefore urge the students of Wadham College to stop their vilification of Ken Loach and to accord to him the respect that he so richly deserves.”

Smearing critics

The Loach affair vividly demonstrates the damage that the IHRA document can do to free speech on campus. The document was used to smear a prominent left-wing critic of Israel and a defender of Palestinian rights, and to try to deny him a platform.

The attempt at no-platforming ultimately failed, but it caused totally unwarranted pain to the artist, placed the master of his old college in an extremely awkward position, stirred up a great deal of ill-feeling on both sides of the argument, wasted a great deal of time and energy that could have been put to better use, and, worst of all, in my humble opinion, was completely unnecessary, unjustified and unproductive. All it did was sour the atmosphere around an imaginative cultural event.

Are there any lessons to be learned from this sad episode in relation to the IHRA definition of antisemitism? First and foremost, it must be emphasised that antisemitism is not a fiction, as some people claim. It is a real problem at all levels of our society, including university campuses, and it needs to be confronted robustly wherever it rears its ugly head.

Secondly, it would be quite wrong to suggest that Jewish students who protest about antisemitism are inventing or exaggerating their feeling of hurt. Jewish students genuinely feel vulnerable and have a real need for protection by university authorities against any manifestation of bigotry, harassment or discrimination.

Fighting racism

The real question is this: does the IHRA definition provide that protection? If the Loach affair is anything to go by, it most certainly does not.

In the first place, the definition is implicitly premised on Jewish exceptionalism – on the notion that Jews are a special case and must be treated as such. This gets in the way of solidarity and cooperation with other groups who are also susceptible to racial prejudice, such as Arabs and Muslims. To be effective, the fight against racism needs to take place across the board and not in isolated corners.

Another serious flaw of the IHRA definition is that, as I and many others have argued, so many of its examples are not about Jews, but about the State of Israel. As a result, it comes across as more concerned with the protection of Israel than the protection of Jews.

It is true that for many Jewish-British students, Israel forms a vital component of their identity. It is unhelpful, however, to let Israel feature so prominently in the analysis of antisemitism. Israel is a controversial country whose democratic institutions are being constantly eroded, and whose oppression of Palestinians attracts ever-increasing international censure – and, most recently, a ruling that paves the way for an investigation of war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Despite its claim to the contrary, Israel does not represent all Jews globally, but only its own citizens, a fifth of whom are Palestinian.

British Jews are not collectively responsible for Israel’s conduct, but the IHRA definition implicates them in Israel’s affairs, and encourages them to target anyone they consider to be an enemy of the Jewish state.

Furthermore, it bears repeating that criticisms of Israel are not necessarily antisemitic. The IHRA definition blurs the line between legitimate and illegitimate criticism. Nor does it protect Jewish students specifically; by aligning them too closely with Israel, it does the exact opposite. In the long term, therefore, it does not serve the interests of Jewish students.

No definition needed

The question arises, finally: do we need a definition of antisemitism at all? My own view is that we do not. The very term “antisemitic” is problematic because Arabs are Semites too. I prefer the term “anti-Jewish racism”. What we need is a code of conduct to protect all minority groups, including Jews, against discrimination and harassment while protecting freedom of speech for all members of universities.

The universal right to freedom of expression is already embodied in UK law by the Human Rights Act of 1998, which prohibits public authorities from acting in a way that is incompatible with that right. Specific protection for freedom of expression in universities is provided by the 1986 Education Act.

We do not therefore need any more legislation; all we need is common sense and honesty in applying the existing legislation. If a person attacks Israel, we should not ask whether the attack is antisemitic or not. And we should certainly not have to ask whether their statement falls foul of any of the seven Israel-focused IHRA illustrations of what might constitute antisemitism.

We should simply ask whether what they say about Israel is true or false. If true, the charge should be investigated further to ascertain whether the motive behind it is hostility or prejudice towards Jews and, if it is, appropriate action should be taken. And if the charge is false, it would be futile to speculate about the motives behind it. The debate about both anti-Jewish racism and Israel should be based on evidence, not on political or sectarian affiliations.

The essential point is that universities in the UK must have the autonomy to oversee and regulate all activities on their campuses, according to their own circumstances, free from external interference. Protecting freedom of speech on campuses is both a moral obligation and a legal duty.

The IHRA definition conflicts directly with this duty. I am old-fashioned enough to warm to the idea that a university is a pile of books and a community of scholars. In my kind of university, there is no room for colonial-style autocrats such as Williamson and his ilk.

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The promulgation of the US’ so-called “Khashoggi ban” in response to its intelligence agencies determining that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was behind that dissident journalist’s brutal killing shows that the Biden Administration is playing hard ball with the Kingdom’s future ruler, though there’s only so far that it’ll go in this respect since it’s still important for America to still retain some degree of regional strategic “balance” despite its newfound willingness to renegotiate the Iranian nuclear deal.

US-Saudi relations are drastically changing under the Biden Administration as evidenced by its promulgation of the so-called “Khashoggi ban” in response to American intelligence agencies determining that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was behind that dissident journalist’s brutal killing. This shows that the Biden Administration is playing hardball with the Kingdom’s future ruler, though there’s only so far that it’ll go in this respect. As it stands, the pro-Democrat members of the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) that pull the President’s strings intend to diversify their country’s hitherto regional strategic dependence on Saudi Arabia in line with former President Obama’s vision by improving relations with Iran. Nevertheless, there’s only so far that they’ll go in this respect since it’s still important for them to retain some degree of “balance” so as not to push the Kingdom further into Russia and China’s arms.

On the one hand, the US wants to make it clear that the days of Saudi Arabia calling the shots are over. Washington will no longer allow its regional strategy to be led by Riyadh. This also explains Biden’s pragmatic recalibration of his country’s policy towards Yemen, which was also influenced by the desire to send a goodwill signal to Iran about Washington’s willingness to re-enter into negotiations on the nuclear deal. That arguably went against Saudi regional strategic interests, yet the Kingdom was powerless to stop its patron from implementing this policy reversal, at least for the time being. In parallel with this, American intelligence decided to punish some Saudis for Khashoggi’s murder, which was also intended to further erode the Kingdom’s already damaged reputation, and MBS’ personally. The tangential objective is to put pressure on MBS to comply with the US’ new regional policy instead of opposing it lest he risk the ever-present threat of a palace coup.

On the other hand, however, American strategists are aware that these moves will only encourage the Kingdom to intensify its growing relations with Russia and China. It already cooperates real closely with Moscow on energy issues (OPEC+) and Beijing on military (drones) and investment (Vision 2030) matters. Saudi Arabia also agreed to an arms deal with Russia a few years back during King Salman’s historic visit to Moscow which eventually saw the Eurasian Great Power delivering state-of-the-art rocket launchers to the Kingdom that presumably saw action during the ongoing War on Yemen. The US fears these two Great Power’s multipolar coordination in courting the Kingdom to their side in the New Cold War, especially as it relates to the possibility of Riyadh supporting Beijing’s plans for the “petroyuan”, so it knows that it’ll either have to hold back on playing hardball with MBS or move forward with replacing him in the worst-case scenario.

This “deep state”/geostrategic dynamic explains why American intelligence agencies publicly blamed MBS for Khashoggi’s killing yet Biden backed off from personally punishing him for this. It’s a “good cop/bad cop” type of play, but one which is being made in order to put Saudi Arabia back in place after it ran the former Trump Administration’s regional policy in partnership with its unofficial “Israeli” ally. Those two players stand in the way of the Biden (Obama 2.0) Administration’s risky gambit to restore “balance” to their country’s regional strategy by reaching out to Iran through “nuclear diplomacy” and other means, though all the while retaining pressure on the Islamic Republic as well as can be seen by Biden’s Syria strike last week. If clumsily executed, however, then the US might ultimately end up provoking a so-called “polar reorientation” whereby Saudi Arabia and “Israel” “jump ship” by siding with Russia and China in response to any meaningful US-Iranian rapprochement.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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Biden’s Journey: Change Is Imperceptible

March 2nd, 2021 by Philip Giraldi

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The new White House Team has been in place for more than a month and it is perhaps time to consider where it is going with America’s fractured foreign policy. To be sure, when a new administration brings in a bunch of “old hands” who made their bones by attacking Syria and Libya while also assassinating American citizens by drone one might hope that those mistakes might have served as valuable “lessons learned.” Or maybe not, since no one in the Democratic Party ever mentions the Libya fiasco and President Joe Biden has already made it clear that Syria will continue to be targeted with sanctions as well as with American soldiers based on its soil. And no one will be leaving Afghanistan any time soon. The Biden team will only let up when Afghanistan is “secure” and there is regime change in Damascus.

A big part of the problem is that the personnel moves mean that the poison from the Barack Obama years has now been reintroduced into the tottering edifice that Donald Trump left behind. Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice once made the case for attacking the Libyans by explaining how Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi provided his soldiers with Viagra so they could more readily engage in mass rapes of presumably innocent civilians.

Unfortunately, Sue is back with the new administration as the Director of the Domestic Policy Council where she will no doubt again wreak havoc in her own inimitable fashion. She is joined at the top level of the administration by Tony Blinken as Secretary of State, Avril Haines as Director of National Intelligence, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, Samantha Power as head of USAID and retired General Lloyd J. Austin as Secretary of Defense. All of the appointees are regarded as “hawks” and have personal history working with Biden when he was in Congress and as Vice President, while most of them also served in the Obama administration.

Be that as it may, Joe Biden and whoever is pulling his strings have assembled a group of establishment warmongers and aspirant social justice engineers that is second to none. Those who expected something different than the usual Democratic Party template have definitely been disappointed. Hostility towards China continues with warships being sent to the South China Sea and the president is seeking to create a new Trans-Atlantic alliance directed against both Beijing and Moscow. The Europeans are reportedly not enthusiastic about remaining under Washington’s thumb and would like some breathing room.

In a phone conversation where it would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall, Biden warned Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would no longer ignore his bad behavior. The official White House account of the call included the following pithy summary:

“President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ firm support for Ukraine’s sovereignty. He also raised other matters of concern, including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russia placing bounties on United States soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 United States election, and the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny.”

And to be sure, there have already been a number of issues that Biden might have dealt with by executive order, like lifting the illegal and unjustified blockade of Cuba, that could have inspired some hope that the new administration would not be just another bit of old wine in new bottles. Alas, that has not taken place but for a series of moves to unleash another wave of illegal immigration and to “protect LGBTQ rights globally.” Biden has also retained a heavy military presence in Washington itself, possibly as part of a Constitution-wrecking plan to tackle what he is referring to as “domestic terrorism.” The domestic terrorists being targeted appear to largely consist of people who are white working and middle class and voted for Trump.

In some ways, foreign policy might have been the easiest fix if the new administration were really seeking to correct the misadventures of the past twenty years. Quite the contrary, Biden and his associates have actually reversed the sensible and long overdue policies initiated by Donald Trump to reduce troop strength in Germany and bring the soldiers home from Syria and Afghanistan. Biden has already committed to an indefinite stay in Afghanistan, America’s longest “lost” war, and has covertly sent more soldiers into Syria as well as Iraq.

As regards Latin America, the U.S. clearly is prepared to double down on regime change in Venezuela, continuing its Quixotic support of Juan Guaido as president. Meanwhile, the new Secretary of State Tony Blinken has clearly indicated that there will be no end to deference to Israeli interests in the Middle East. Under questioning by Congress, he has insisted that Israel will be “consulted” on U.S. policy to include arms sales in the region, which has been interpreted to mean that Jerusalem will have a veto, and has confirmed that his view on Iran is identical to that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both are apparently promoting the view that Iran will have enough enriched uranium to construct a weapon within a few weeks, though they have not addressed other technical aspects of what would actually be required to build one. Netanyahu has been making the claim about the Iranian threat since the 1980s and now it is also an element of U.S. policy.

Biden and Blinken have also moved forward slowly on a campaign commitment to attempt renegotiation of the 2015 JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran that President Trump withdrew from in 2017. As a condition to re-start discussions, the Iranian leadership has demanded a return to the status quo ante, meaning that the punitive sanctions initiated by Trump would have to be canceled and Iran would in return cease all enrichment activities.

Biden and Blinken, which admittedly sounds a bit like a vaudeville comedy duo, have reportedly agreed to withdraw the Trump sanctions but have also suggested that Iran will have to make other concessions, to include ending its ballistic missile development program and ceasing its “meddling” in the Middle East. Iran will refuse to agree to that, which means that the bid to renegotiate could turn out to be nothing more than a bit of theater involving multilateral “discussions” hosted by the European Union and the pointless hostility between Washington and Tehran will continue.

And speaking again of Israel, there have been concerns expressed by the usual suspects because Biden had not called Netanyahu immediately after the inauguration. It may be true that the president was sending a somewhat less than subtle message signaling that he was in charge, but the call has now taken place and everything is hunky-dory. As a separate issue, the Jewish state has, of course, the world’s only secret nuclear arsenal, estimated to consist of at least 200 bombs, and it also has several systems available to deliver them on target. For no reasons that make any sense, the United States since the time of President Richard Nixon has never publicly confirmed the existence of the weapons, preferring to maintain “nuclear ambiguity” that allows Israel to have the weapons without any demands for inspections or constraints on their use. The most recent four presidents have, in fact, signed secret agreements with Israel not to expose the nuclear arsenal. Biden has apparently not done so yet, but appeals by international figures, including most recently South African Desmond Tutu, had produced some expectations that the new administration might break with precedent.

Giving aid to Israel is, in fact, illegal due to the Symington Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, which bans U.S. economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that seek to acquire nuclear weapons. But Biden has already indicated that he would not under any circumstances cut aid to Israel, so the matter would appear to be closed. In any event the Symington Amendment includes an exemption clause that would allow the funding to continue as long as the president certifies to Congress that continued aid to the proliferator would be a vital U.S. interest. Given Israel’s power in both Congress and the White House it is not imaginable that its aid would be affected no matter what Netanyahu and his band of criminals choose to do.

So, it would seem that Biden is unprepared to either pressure or pursue any distancing from Israel and its policies, not a good sign for those of us who have encouraged some disengagement from the Middle East quagmire. And one final issue where some of us have hoped to see some movement from Biden has also been a disappointment. That is Julian Assange, who is fighting against efforts to have him extradited from England to face trial and imprisonment in the U.S. under the Espionage Act. Many observers believe that Assange is a legitimate journalist who is being set up for a show trial with only one possible outcome. The entire process is to a large extent being driven by a desire for revenge coming largely from the Democratic Party since Assange was responsible for publishing the Hillary Clinton emails as well as other party documents. Biden has already indicated that the process of extraditing Assange will continue.

So, Biden has been a major disappointment for those who expected that he might change course regarding America’s pathological involvement in overseas conflicts while also having the good sense and courage to make relations with countries like Iran and Israel responsive to actual U.S. interests. Finally, it would be a good sign if Assange were to be released from the threat of trial and prison, if only to recognize that free speech and a free press benefit everyone, but that is perhaps a bridge too far as the United States moves inexorably towards a totalitarian state intolerant of dissent.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

Recall GWB:

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.” George W. Bush

Recall Joe Biden

“I do not believe it is a rush to war [Iraq] but a march to peace and security,” Joe Biden

***

A permanent state of war on invented enemies is longstanding US policy.

It’s been this way throughout most of the post-WW II period.

Terror-bombing Syria last Thursday was one of many examples — escalating US aggression against the nation and people by Biden.

The Syrian Arab Republic threatens no one. President Assad is supported by most Syrians.

Yet Obama/Biden launched preemptive war on the country in March 2011.

US forces illegally occupy northern and southern areas.

The Pentagon and CIA use ISIS and likeminded jihadists as proxy forces to advance US imperial aims in Syria and elsewhere.

Washington under both right wings of its war party intends permanent occupation of the country.

Sergey Lavrov noted the diabolical scheme, saying:

Washington is “making the decision to never leave Syria, even to the point of destroying this country” — more than already he should have added.

Lavrov also stressed the US forces occupy “Syrian territory illegally, in violation of all norms of international law, including Security Council Resolutions on reconciliation in the Syrian Arab Republic.”

“They continue to play the separatism card.”

“They continue to block, using their levers of pressure on other states, any supply even of humanitarian aid, not to mention equipment and materials necessary to restoring the economy in the territories controlled by the government, and in every way possible force their allies to invest in territories outside Damascus’s control.”

“At the same time, they illegally exploit Syria’s hydrocarbon resources” by stealing them.

Longstanding US plans call for partitioning Syria and other regional countries for easier control.

According to former Global Policy Forum director James Paul, partitioning Syria “is the Israeli solution,” adding:

The Jewish state’s “overarching goal is to weaken every Arab state by bringing religion and ethnicity into the equation.”

The plan for Syria is partitioning it into Kurdish, Alawite and Sunni states.

Balkanization of Middle East countries is also longstanding US policy.

Regional expert Mahdi Nazemroaya earlier explained that

“(r)egime change and balkanization in Syria is very closely tied to the objective of dismantling the ‘resistance bloc’ formed by Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, the Palestinians, and various Iraqi groups opposed to the US and Israel.”

US/NATO/Israeli regional aggression aims to achieve this objective — what failed so far and won’t likely fare better ahead, but continues anyway.

In cahoots with Israeli interests, Obama/Biden launched preemptive war on Syria in 2011.

For hardliners in both countries, the road to Tehran runs through Damascus.

Control over the Syrian Arab Republic is seen as a way to weaken and isolate Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

According to Algerian academic Abdelkrim Dekhakhena, Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression against Iraq “metamorphosed into an apocalypse that swept the core nations of the region.”

“Chaos and destruction” followed with no end of it in prospect.

Washington’s notion of democracy building is suppressing its emergence everywhere and eliminating it wherever it exists.

Endless US Middle East wars created instability and human misery.

US regional aggression is aided by ISIS and other terrorist groups — created by the CIA to advance Washington’s control over regional countries, their resources and populations.

According to Biden’s doublespeak through his press secretary Psaki — paid to lie for her boss — he OK’d escalated US aggression in Syria to “protect Americans (sic),” adding:

Further aggression will aim to “deescalate tensions.”

The above doublespeak mumbo jumbo defines Washington’s war is peace policy.

Endless US wars by hot and/or other means have nothing to do with democracy building, pursuing peace, or protecting Americans.

They have everything to do with advancing Washington’s diabolical imperial agenda that prioritizes unchallenged global dominance.

Psaki also defied reality by claiming that preemptive terror-bombing of Syria on Thursday underwent a “thorough legal process (sic).”

There’s nothing remotely legal about naked aggression in Syria or anywhere else.

A decade of US war against the Syrian Arab Republic and its long-suffering people perhaps will continue in perpetuity.

The same diabolical agenda continues in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya, along with war by other means against numerous invented US enemies — notably China, Russia and Iran.

Washington’s rage to dominate other countries by brute force defines what the scourge of imperialism is all about.

There’s no end of it in prospect.

Biden’s longstanding support for wars on invented enemies suggests further escalation of hostilities on his watch.

Confrontation by belligerence and other means will likely be prioritized over pursuing peace and cooperative relations with other countries.

It’s the diabolical American way — addicted to warmaking, abhorring peace and stability.

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

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

Small Acts Can Become a Power No Government Can Suppress

March 2nd, 2021 by Margaret Flowers

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The American Rescue Plan (ARP) was passed in the House this past week and now heads to the Senate, where it will no doubt be changed before it becomes law some time in mid-March. The current unemployment benefits expire on March 14.

While we don’t know what the final bill will look like, at least now we can get an idea of what is in it. Overall, as expected, the provisions in the bill will help to provide some financial assistance to some people, but they won’t solve the crises we face. And the Biden administration is backtracking on promises made on the campaign trail.

As Alan Macleod writes, Biden has abandoned raising the minimum wage, ending student debt and the promised $2,000 checks. His focus is on forcing people back to work and school even as new, more infectious and more lethal variants of the virus causing COVID-19 threaten another surge in cases and deaths. There is only one promise Biden appears to be keeping, and that is one he made to wealthy donors at the start of his campaign when he said, “nothing would fundamentally change.”

Despite this, people are organizing across the country for their rights to economic security and health and an end to discrimination. These struggles are necessary as we cannot expect either of the capitalist parties to act in the people’s interest. But together, we can demand that one of the wealthiest nations on earth upholds its responsibility to provide the basic necessities for its people. This is consistent with a People(s)-Centered Human Rights approach.

What is and isn’t in the ARP?

The current version of the American Rescue Plan contains provisions that would provide money to people earning less than $75,000 per year. One is the one-time $1,400 check.  Another is raising the tax credit for families with children, which will benefit those who file tax returns but leave out the millions of poor people who don’t.

The ARP will also extend unemployment benefits until the end of August and increase the enhanced benefits to $400/week. Unlike the previous bills, this one includes workers who left their jobs because of unsafe conditions and those who had to leave work or reduce their hours to care for children. The benefits are retroactive for some workers who were denied benefits.

While this will temporarily improve the economic situation for many people, it is not a plan to address the poverty crisis in the United States nor is it sufficient to support people through the current recession and pandemic. People will still face barriers to receiving the aid. Instead of making the programs something that people have to apply for, the government could provide monthly checks to everyone with incomes under a certain amount automatically. Numerous examples show that putting money into people’s hands, such as through a guaranteed income or giving unrestricted lump sums, improves their well-being.

An increase in the federal minimum wage to $15/hour, a promise of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, is in the House version of the bill, but it will not be in the Senate version unless the White House or Democrats intervene, which they seem unwilling to do. The minimum wage increase is being blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian, but the Vice President could override the decision or the Democrats could take steps to work around the Parliamentarian, as has been done in the past on other issues. They are choosing not to take this stand.

The ARP also fails to extend the eviction moratorium, which will expire at the end of March. While it does contain funds for rental assistance, they are being given to the Treasury Department to disburse to the states, so it is not clear how these funds will help people directly. A recent study found that corporate landlords received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks last year but continued to evict thousands of people. When the eviction moratorium ends, those who cannot pay the back rent risk being evicted.

The health benefits in the ARP are not only inadequate but they are set to further enrich the medical-industrial complex, as I explain in “Biden’s Health Plan Shifts Even More Public Dollars into Private Hands.” The ARP is fulfilling a laundry list provided by private health insurers, hospitals and medical lobbying groups. It will subsidize the cost of insurance premiums but leave those who have health insurance still struggling to pay out-of-pocket costs and at risk of bankruptcy if they have a serious accident or illness.

And finally, another group that is being left out is those who have student debt. I spoke with Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice on Clearing the FOG this week. He said the current student loan burden is likely over $2 trillion and that the vast majority of debtors will never be able to repay . Collinge argues that it is imperative the Biden administration cancel student debt using an executive order, which he has the power to do, rather than leaving it to Congress. If the President does it, then the debt disappears (tax payers have already paid for the loans), but if Congress does it, which is unlikely to happen, they would have to offset the ‘cost’ through cuts to other programs or by raising taxes. Collinge also explains that cancelling student debt would be a significant economic stimulus.

All in all, the current ARP is another attempt by Congress to throw more money at a failed system that doesn’t change anything fundamentally. We must demand more.

The case for wealth redistribution

Lee Camp recently made the case for a massive change in the direction of wealth redistribution based on a new study that finds “the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality has grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020.” This amounts to over $1,000 per month per person in wealth that has been redistributed to the top or almost $14,000 per year.

It is time to reverse the direction of this wealth redistribution from one of consolidation at the top to one that creates greater wealth equality. This could be accomplished in a number of ways. In the middle of the last century, it was done through extremely high taxes on the wealthy and government investment in programs for housing and education. Camp advocates for taking all wealth over $10 million and redistributing it to the bottom 99.5% in a way that benefits the poorest the most.

Raising wages is another way to redistribute wealth. Professor Richard Wolff explains there are ways to raise wages without harming small businesses by providing federal support to them to offset the costs. Think of it as a reversal of the hundreds of billions in subsidies that have been given to large corporations, which they use to buy up and inflate the value of their stocks, to the small and medium businesses. It is smaller businesses that are most likely to keep wealth in their communities, unlike large corporations that extract wealth, and are the major drivers of the US economy. Small businesses alone comprise 44% of US Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

If workers earned higher wages, it would also save the government money that is currently spent on social safety net programs such as Medicaid and food stamps for low-wage workers. These programs enable large corporations to profit off worker exploitation, especially Walmart, Amazon and McDonalds, according to the DC Report.

Robert Urie points out that another price society pays for the gaping wealth divide is state violence and incarceration. He writes, “At $24 per hour, the inflation and productivity adjusted minimum wage in the U.S. from 1968, workers were still being added to employer payrolls. The point: $24 – $7.25 = $16.75 per hour plus a rate of profit is one measure of economic expropriation from low wage workers in the U.S. Maintaining an unjust public order is critical to the functioning of this exploitative political economy. Most of the prison population in the U.S. comes from neighborhoods where the minimum wage affects livelihoods.” Imagine the many ways that greater economic security would positively benefit families and communities.

People are fighting back

In our current political environment, we cannot expect Congress and the White House to do what is necessary to protect the health and security of people without a struggle that forces them to do so. There are many ways people are fighting locally for their rights through resistance and creating alternative systems. Here are a few current examples.

On February 16, fast food workers in 15 cities went on strike to demand $15 an hour. Other low-wage workers joined them. Last Monday, in Chicago, Black owners of McDonalds franchises began a 90-day protest outside of the McDonalds headquarters because of discrimination against them. They say, “McDonald’s has denied the Black franchisees the same opportunities as white operators and continually steer them to economically depressed and dangerous areas with low volume sales.”

In Bessemer, Alabama, workers are conducting a vote to start the first union for Amazon employees. If they succeed, it will be an amazing feat considering that Alabama is a right-to-work state and Amazon is doing what it can to stop them. In Arizona, another right-to-work state, workers at two universities are leading an effort to unionize all higher education employees in the state. They are concerned that federal funding provided to keep universities open will not be used in a way that protects all workers. They cite recent practices that prioritize the financial well-being of the universities over worker health and safety.

Some workers are taking power in other ways. Bus drivers in Silicon Valley organized with the support of community members to stop fare collections and only allow boarding in the rear, moves designed to aid passengers during the recession and protect drivers during the pandemic. They were committed to doing this whether management agreed to it or not. Others are building worker-owned platform cooperatives to challenge platform corporations that exploit their labor such as Spotify and Uber.

Others are working to meet people’s basic needs through mutual aid. Food not Bombs has been feeding people throughout the pandemic in various cities. In Santa Cruz, CA, they are out every day to feed the houseless despite being hassled by the city and moved around. A rural area in Canada that includes 65,000 people pulled together it local resources to make sure everyone is fed through a food policy council of elected officials, organizations and stakeholders. They reallocated their budget from events and travel to food security. They opened their seed banks to support local gardening efforts and commandeered unused buildings as spaces for assembling food boxes that were delivered to those in need.

These examples illustrate the tremendous power people have to force changes and create support networks in their communities when they organize together. While we should continue to expose and pressure Congress and the White House to invest in programs that provide for people’s needs, that is a function of government after all, we also need to organize in our communities to build popular power and create alternative systems that will slowly build the society we need.

“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power than can transform the world.” – Howard Zinn

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Escalation in the Middle East appears imminent, due to various incidents that took place throughout the reigon.

On February 25th, the Israeli-owned vehicle carrying vessel – MV Helios Ray was rocked by a heavy explosion, but didn’t sink. According to the owner of the vessel, it wasn’t known what had struck the Helios Ray, but likely it was “missiles or a mine placed on the bow.” It took two days of investigation to reach an obvious conclusion – Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Iran had carried out the attack.

Israeli TV reported that the assessment claimed that the Iranian navy had fired two missiles at the Israeli-flagged ship. Israeli Experts were allegedly on the way to the UAE, where the ship was anchored. There is no confirmation nor denial from Iran, as of yet, but Israel is already using this presumed attack for a potential escalation.

In recent weeks, Tel Aviv has been pushing to form a military security pact with Gulf States against Tehran. While having its interests targeted in the Gulf of Oman, Israel is still carrying out its usual activity towards Syria, and immediately responded to the alleged Iranian aggression.

On February 28th, Syrian air defense forces over Damascus were activated to repel an Israeli attack, launched from above the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli Air Force likely targeted alleged Iranian targets, but Israel provided no comment on the matter.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel was taking action “almost weekly” to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria. However, this is not just any action, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has once again claimed that Israel “was winning the war” against Iran.

Another informal Israeli ally – Saudi Arabia is currently suffering at the hands of the Axis of Resistance.

Yemen’s Ansar Allah – the Houthis – announced that their Air Force had carried out a large-scale operation in the Kingdom on February 28th. The operation, dubbed “Deterrent Balance 5,” targeted military positions in Riyadh. In total, a spokesman for the Houthis, said that a Zulfiqar ballistic missile, nine Samad-3 loitering munitions, and six Qasef-2K drones struck a network of Saudi military positions. This was likely in response to Saudi Arabia’s increased airstrike activity.

A February 28th warplane raid left 5 civilians, including a woman and a child dead. In Yemen, on the ground the fight is continuing in the Marib district.

Marib City and the Dam are currently beyond reach, and Saudi Arabia carries out increasingly more airstrikes and violations of the al-Hudaydah ceasefire. There are heavy clashes between the Ansar Allah and Saudi-led forces in the Talaat al-Hamra, Hamajira and Balaq mountains, with the Houthis purportedly taking the upper hand.

The situation is reaching a critical point, with the Axis of Resistance attempting to push on the US, Israel and their other allies on all fronts.

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Pentagon on February 25, 2021:

“At President Biden’s direction, US military forces earlier this [Thursday] evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” said spokesman John Kirby in a statement on Friday.

“These strikes were authorised in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq, and to ongoing threats to those personnel,” he said. (Here another report).

If you had any doubts – which you should not if you have followed him over the years – about Biden’s attitude to warfare, this bombing in Eastern Syria should clarify things for you.

It is true that both Russia and Iran operate in Syria, but whether you like it or not, they have been invited by the Syrian government in response to the Western+Arab allies’ attempt at regime-change in Syria that started in spring 2011. Being in another country by invitation is not against international law; regime change and occupation by one sovereign state of another is.

We remember President Trump proudly stating that the US has secured the oil – that is, Syria’s oil.

What strikes me when going through CNN, BBC, NYT and other media reports this morning is that the US is just “retaliating” in a non-escalating manner for something done to American personnel in Iraq. The NYT first wrote that one US personnel had been killed and later corrected itself that one had been injured. All interviewed are Americans – not one of them raising any issues. According to some sources, mentioned by Reuters, as many as 17 pro-Iranian militia people may have been killed last night.

None of these leading Western mainstream media offers a background, mentions international law, or mentions how many may have been killed. It comes through as a megaphone for the US, Pentagon and the Biden administration.

One is reminded of how Pravda operated in the Soviet Union.

The map on top is self-explicable. The US has 10 illegal bases in Syria and it’s building the 11th in Hasakah. Just about 1,5 years ago, reliable US military sources wrote that the US is leaving Syria – “What it means for American bases in Syria to be occupied by Syrian and Russian forces” (!).

Today the reality is a different one: 140.000 barrels of oil are stolen per day from oil fields in the Hasakah region and transported by trucks to Iraq. A similar report here with slightly different information.

Below are some facts about the mindboggling – I guess to many – US military presence in Syria and Iraq – two countries in which it has nothing to do.

This reporting is a very good example of what I have maintained for years: Lies and fake is old hat – just more sophisticated and widespread than before. Omission – the background, larger framework, perspectives, news bureaus, and counterpoints that are left out. Deliberately.

Interesting fact sites

Wikipedia: List of US military installations in Iraq

Co-bases: US military bases in Iraq

Middle East Monitor, MEMO: US continues to reinforce military bases in Syria

And note the take on this by CNN’s international security editor, Nick Paton Walsh: Biden sends a message to Iran, but with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer

David Andelman on CNN, February 27, 2021: The tough message Biden just sent Iran

Try to use various search engines and you’ll find that a search like “U.S. military bases in Syria” gives very little. Not even Wikipedia has such an entry. It is reasonable to assume that this is controversial, or sensitive, to an extent that public information about them has been reduced.

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Jan Oberg is a peace and future researcher, art photographer and global citizen, born in Denmark in 1951.

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Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview a caregiver in a Berlin nursing home who describes what happened during and after the rollout of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

In this 40-minute video, Reiner Fuellmich and his associate Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview an unidentified whistleblower at a nursing home in Berlin, Germany.

The whistleblower, a caregiver, describes what happened at the care facility during and after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The whistleblower’s voice has been distorted to protect the individual’s identity, and is in German with English subtitles.

The whistleblower describes how seven of 31 nursing home residents with dementia died after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and an eighth was near death at the time the interview was recorded.

After the second dose, 11 more residents became seriously ill and one more died.

In other words, 25% of the residents died immediately, and 36% were severely injured within a short time.

The video contains de-identified footage from the nursing home, where a team of three or four people, including a soldier in uniform, vaccinate residents, in many cases using force. The footage is troubling as it shows some people resisting the shots, being being vaccinated nonetheless.

Fischer has filed a complaint on behalf of the whistleblower with prosecutors and the police. They seek an investigation by law enforcement and publicity about this information to halt further deaths.

An investigation into the deaths at this particular nursing home won’t be the first investigation into deaths among elderly in care facilities, after being vaccinated with a COVID vaccine — there have been many reports of elderly people dying after the vaccines.

In January, officials in Norway and Germany said they were looking into deaths following the vaccine. Last month, in Spain, officials temporarily halted vaccines after 46 nursing home residents died after getting the vaccine.

The Global Times reported last week that 16 elderly people in Switzerland died following COVID vaccinations.

In the U.S., according to the latest available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, the average age of those who died following COVID vaccines is 77.8.

Children’s Health Defense is working closely with Fuellmich and his associates at the German Corona Investigative Committee to seek information and justice regarding COVID-19.

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Last Thursday President Biden continued what has sadly become a Washington tradition: bombing Syria. The President ordered a military strike near the Iraqi-Syrian border that killed at least 22 people. The Administration claims it struck an “Iranian-backed” militia in retaliation for recent rocket attacks on US installations in Iraq.

As with Presidents Obama and Trump before him, however, Biden’s justification for the US strike and its targets is not credible. And his claim that the US attack would result in a “de-escalation” in the region is laughable. You cannot bomb your way toward de-escalation.

Biden thus joins a shameful club of US leaders whose interventions in the Middle East, and Syria specifically, have achieved nothing in the US interest but have contributed to the deaths of many thousands of civilians.

President Trump attacked Syria in 2018 in what he claimed was retaliation for the Assad government’s use of chemical weapons against its own citizens. The Trump Administration never proved its claim. Logic itself suggests how ridiculous it would have been for the Syrian president to have used chemical weapons in that situation, where they achieved no military purpose and would almost certainly guarantee further outside attacks against his government.

Trump’s 2018 attack only added to the misery of the Syrian people, who suffered under US sanctions and then suffered President Obama’s “Assad must go” intervention that trained and armed al-Qaeda affiliated groups to overthrow the government.

Trump’s airstrike on Syria did nothing to further real American interests in the region. But sending in 100 Tomahawk missiles to blow up a few empty buildings did a great deal to further the bottom line of missile-maker Raytheon.

Interestingly, Biden’s Secretary of Defense came to the Administration straight from his previous position on the board of, you guessed it, Raytheon. Libertarian educator Tom Woods once quipped that no matter who you vote for you get John McCain. Perhaps it’s also fair to say that no matter who you vote for you get to enrich Raytheon.

The Democrats wasted four years trying to remove Trump from office under the bogus “Russiagate” lie and then the equally ridiculous and discredited claim that Trump led an insurrection against the government on January 6th. Yet when Trump started raining bombs down on Syria with no Congressional declaration of war or even authorization, most Democrats stood up and cheered. Left-wing CNN talking head Fareed Zakaria swooned, “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night.”

In fact, initiating a war against a country that did not attack and does not threaten the United States without Congressional authority is an impeachable offense. But both parties – with a few exceptions – are war parties.

President Biden should be impeached for his attack on Syria, as should have Trump and Obama before him. But no one in Washington is going to pursue impeachment charges against a president who recklessly takes the United States to war. War greases Washington’s wheels.

Isn’t it strange how we’ve heard nothing about ISIS for the past couple of years, but suddenly the mainstream media tells us the ISIS is back and on the march? When President Biden says “America is back,” what he really means is “the war party is back.” As if they ever left.

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First crossposted in October 2020.

The Panama Canal project is much older than just the US imperialistic endeavor and completion of the 20th century that most people associate it with that led to the birth of a new republic.

Leaving aside all issues regarding the indigenous population of the Americas, their suffering and their contribution, this article will focus only on the actions and plans of European conquerors with regard to the canal.

To be fair we have to say that the first well known Western man looking for an imperialistic trade water-route to Asia connecting the Atlantic and the ‘Southern Sea,’ (an early name for the Pacific Ocean in the first decades of the European invasion: ‘Mar del Sur’) was Christopher Columbus in the journeys that followed his first ‘discovery’ expedition, although he never actually reached that vast ocean. Historical chronicles and books teach us that later on Vasco Nuñez de Balboa and his men, following Rio Chagres, were the first Westerners to wash themselves in the Pacific after crossing what would become known as the Isthmus of Panama. But it’s quite unknown that even the Castilian-Extremaduran conqueror Hernan Cortes – worldwide-known for his victory and destruction of the Aztec social system and culture – launched himself into that adventure. And it is also unknown to most that since Cortes’ enterprise of the 16th century, many projects to find a route and even to build a canal linking the two oceans were presented to Spain’s’ king by Spanish individuals and institutions.

Vasco Nuñez de Balboa’s expedition. Source: Wikipedia.

Later on, that pathway became such an important ideal imperialistic tool for European powers that they started to fight for the possession of those lands, long before the French started the excavations for the canal in the 19th century and the United States of America completed it in the 20th. Indisputably, the US was not brighter than others. At that point in history such an idea was feasible because the US could learn from the technological, scientific and geographical knowledge and the failures accumulated in the previous decades and centuries by the earlier attempts at the canal. This, of course, is how human knowledge, including technological achievements, is built up.

The Conquistador and the Jungle

Hernan Cortes (1), and his contemporaries, thought it was not impossible to find a water-passage towards the Spice Islands. It was no consolation to know there was already a path to the Pacific through the Magellan Strait or around Cape Horn in Southern Patagonia which was a long and dangerous route to Asia that started to be used by Europeans from 1520. Cortes’ intuition told him it was possible to open another, easier and shorter way. Obsessed with the idea it could be through Central America, in 1524 he sent one of his men, Cristobal de Olid, to ‘Hibueras,’ the name given by Columbus to Honduras due to her deep bays.

After arriving de Olid was convinced by other conquistadors and decided to free himself from Cortes and to accomplish the enterprise for his own glory. It was a death sentence. As soon as Cortes was informed of de Olid’s plan he sent a loyal man of his, Francisco de las Casas.

Helped by a storm de Olid was able to imprison de las Casas. But after a little while, de Olid started to pay attention to his prisoner’s words and thought he could convert him into an ally. It is said that while having dinner together one night, de las Casas raised his hand, caught his host’s head and stuck a knife in his throat!

Anaware of what was going on in Honduras, Cortes was anxious. He thought that due to the distance the temptation was too strong for his emissary and decided to undertake the feat himself. With a little army he set off for the ‘Hibueras’ lands. It was a bad decision. Looking for a waterway, the luxuriant jungle prevented him from passing and disoriented him. He ended up losing his way and his army. One by one his men fell, and also his native hostages, among them the last Aztec Emperor Cuauhtémoc. Fearing an Indian revolt, Cortes hung all native captives after accusing them of treason. In the end, exhausted by the useless exploration he finally concluded that he could trust las Casas’ loyalty and returned to Vera Cruz, where other conquistadors thought he was already dead and had already planned to succeed him. In European history, this was the first attempt at finding a waterway connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Other Spanish Projects

In 1524, the same year Cortes sent de Olid to Honduras, Charles I of Spain, better-known as Charles V King of Spain, Aragon and Emperor of the Holy Roman-German Empire, suggested digging a canal in order to more easily trade and travel to South America. In 1529 a first project was presented but the technological and scientific knowledge of the time did not allow its materialization.

Later on, as shown by British historian Hugh Thomas, Gaspar de Espinosa y Luna, a Spanish conqueror, politician and businessman based in current Peru – who financed the expeditions of Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro against the Incas (1532), proposed to the Council of the Indies (the most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire for America and the Philippines) the digging of a canal and the creation of an alternative route. Only the road from Panama City (facing the Pacific) to Camino de Cruces City (on the banks of the river Chagres), from where the merchandise would arrive to the Atlantic on boats, was carried out and this became the main colonial route to the Viceroyalty of Peru (Spanish South America) until the XIX century.

In the middle of the XVI century Antonio Galvão, a Portuguese sailor, stressed again the need of an artificial canal, which became a trendy intention anew. But in 1590 the Spanish Jesuit missionary and naturalist José de Acosta reported about the difficulty of connecting the two oceans as some were requesting while warning of the strategic risks its use by Spanish enemies could mean. Later on, under the ruling of Philip III (1598-1621) the Council of the Indies blocked a similar project commissioned to Dutch builders exactly for those reasons. History also reports of British people occupying lands in what is known today as Panama with the same purpose. Then the idea of building a water-route disappeared for some decades, until the 19th century when the famous German geographer Alexander Von Humboldt revived it to invigorate trade and the flow of people through a canal. And thanks to Von Humboldt, France, the United States and Great Britain became very interested again.

A Brief and Approximate History of the Panamanian Territory

In the colonial period Panama was the northernmost part of the Viceroyalty of Peru (Spanish South America). During the first decades of Spanish colonization, Portobelo, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, was the main harbor for all goods travelling from South America to Spain and Europe and vice versa as the routes through the Magellan Strait and Cape Horn were considered not only too long and expensive but also too dangerous. After a few decades the Isthmus and its Portobelo port lost its unique strategic importance as Cartagena de Indias, in current Colombia, became another vital harbor of Hispanic South America.

Viceroyalty of Peru in the first centuries (dark and light green). Source: Wikipedia.

In 1739 the northern part of the Viceroyalty of Peru was spilt up and a new Spanish administrative area, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, was established. This new division was considered necessary in order to counter the increasing French and English smuggling and improve the protection of the area against the frequent marine attacks carried out by foreign European powers in the area (mainly England and Holland). The capital of the new-born viceroyalty became Santa fe de Bogota, the current Colombian capital. Within its territory Panama was included.

After independence from Spain, in 1821, Panama became part of the Republic of Gran Colombia which consisted, more or less, of today’s Colombia, Venezuela, Panama and most of Ecuador. In 1830, 9 years later and nearly 90 years after the first administrative dismemberment of the Viceroyalty of Peru, from the Viceroyalty of New Granada were born, roughly, the Republics of Ecuador, Venezuela and Gran Colombia. The territory of Panama was part of the latter.

The fathers of Hispanic American Independence and the canal

It is little-known that heroes of Spanish American independence were aware of the importance the Panama canal would have in the future of trade and it is quite unknown that the most eminent forefather of these movements, Francisco de Miranda from Caracas – who conceived of the union of Hispanic American territories through an Inca Federation – even offered its construction and a shared control of it to the English, historically considered the most seasoned enemies of the Hispanic world.

”On the 27th of March 1790, Miranda presented his first ”Plan for the constitution, organization and establishment of a free and independent government in Southern America” (meaning Hispanic America) to the British prime minister William Pitt. In exchange for financial and military support, Miranda offered to England trade preferences, a participation in the exploitation of Hispanic American riches and the possibility of building a navigation canal in the isthmus of Panama” tells historian and philosopher Carmen L. Bohórquez.

”All major world powers thought of building a canal through the isthmus of Panama as planned by Humboldt. Liberators Simon Bolivar and Francisco de Miranda offered the British rights over the canal in exchange for weapons and support against the Spaniards in their independence struggle as they considered Great Britain their natural ally against Spain. During the Pact of Paris in 1797, Miranda presented his idea of opening a canal in Panama or Nicaragua, ”the fast and easy communication between the Atlantic Ocean and the Southern Sea (Mar del Sur), will be for England of great interest,” documents Patricia Galeana in her bookEl Tratado Mc Lane Ocamo, la comunicación interoceánica y el libre comercio. Afterwards, tells the historian, ”Colombia sent an envoy to London with the objective of obtaining a loan and involving British capitalists in the construction of the canal.”

France, England, the United States and the Panama Canal

Due to the strategic importance of the Isthmus of Panama – the thinnest mainland of the Americas – allegedly in the second decade of the 19thcentury New Granada started receiving proposals for the realization of the canal but all were refused as Bogota thought it should be built with its own resources and administered locally.

By then Spain was practically already knocked out. Hispanic American independent countries and its elites were in turmoil. Most of them were militarily and financially weak or already under the orbit of the Anglo-Saxon and French Empires. The Brazilian elite were not interested much in their neighbors and since the beginning of the century were deeply involved with the United Kingdom. Therefore there was plenty of room to fill the void.

In 1846 the Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty was signed between the Republic of New Granada and the United States of America. In summary, the fundamental clause established that ”the citizens, ships and merchandise of the United States will enjoy the ports of New Granada, including those of the Isthmus of Panama, of all franchises, privileges and immunities, regarding trade and navigation; and that this equality of favors will be extended to the passengers, correspondence and merchandise for the US, that transit through said territory.” Furthermore it was given to the former British colony the right to build a canal in the New Granadian territory. But London was not so happy about this.

In the same years England seized territories in present Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras. For the US’ elite these occupations were a barrier to its 1823 Monroe Doctrine – ‘America for the Americans’ – and its 1845 Manifest Destiny ideology – a cultural belief that the US is destined by God to expand its dominion and expand capitalism and its ‘democracy’ over the Americas. The barrier was demolished with the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty signed between the USA and Great Britain in 1850. Among its most important known points were that neither one nor the other would keep for itself exclusive predominance over the canal and both would protect it. Many have seen in this treaty an act of respect towards Latin American countries, but it was principally an agreement of power-sharing over the area.

Even so, at the end the Anglo-Saxon project of a canal was not realized. And it ended up in the hands of the French.

Fernand de Lesseps, after a long career as a French diplomat and following his success in the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869 (it seems the first project was made in the Republic of Venice in the 16th century), was appointed by the Paris’ Société de Géographie as president of the Panama Canal Company in 1879. But the French project failed as de Lesseps did not take into account the different environmental conditions: in Panama canal-workers had to deal with a jungle and not a desert. He did not take into consideration the different water-levels between the two oceans and projected a sea-level canal. The company resulted in a huge scandal in France and in 1889 went bankrupt and lost its French investors’ money. It was in that moment that Lesseps and other important, rich French businessmen involved in the project went to the USA in search of economic support. By then Panama was still part of New Granada.

The Proclamation of Independence of Panama

In the beginning the US was interested in building the canal in Nicaragua but under the pressure of the French lobby, in 1899, a US commission was set to determine which site was better, Nicaragua or Panama. Nevertheless in 1901 US Secretary of State John Hay pressed the Nicaraguan government for its approval: Nicaraguan elite would receive $1.5 million in ratification, $100,000 annually, and the U.S. would “provide sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity.” Nicaragua’s elite were not satisfied. They asked for 6 million of ratification instead but the project got blocked by a US court decision. Undoubtedly the influence of the French in the final decision was fundamental. Nicaragua was ruled out. In 1901 the United States and England signed the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty in which both countries did NOT recognize Colombian sovereignty over the isthmus and gave it the status of ‘area of international importance.’

The treaty nullified the 1850 Clayton-Bulwer concordat (which arranged a shared authority over the canal) and gave the USA the right to create and control it. In this way Colombia was forced to cede and in 1903 an agreement was reached with the government of Bogota. The Hay-Herrán Treaty was signed but the Colombian Senate rejected it worrying about its territorial sovereignty. The rejection provoked a world scandal among nations ruled by imperialistic elites: how dare Colombia make decisions over its own territory!

Another cartoon of 1903. It depicts the French businessman De Lesseps (left) and US president Theodore Roosevelt. Source: Wikipedia.

Immediately after such a refusal, Washington (USA) engendered the independence of Panama supported by a power-greedy Panamanian elite and by a small portion of local people and on November 3, 1903, Panama became a new republic, receiving $10 million from the US. No blood was spilled. Theodore Roosevelt, president of the US, applied his famous Big Stick Policy sending the US Navy to the Colombian offshore while an Anglo-German blockade was stationed against Caracas (Venezuelan capital). Panama’s new government also gained for the canal an annual payment of $250,000 for ‘rent’ and guarantees of independence while the US obtained the rights to the canal strip “in perpetuity.” As was to be expected, on November 6 Roosevelt’s government was the first to formally recognize the new-born republic, followed the day after by France. And before the end of that month another 15 countries of Europe, America and Asia did the same.

At that point the deal was made. The United States paid the French 40,000,000 dollars for the trains, machinery, excavations and rights – an enormous amount compared to what it was offering to Nicaragua (1.5 million initially) or Panama (10 million). On this particular issue it’s worth noting that French author Gabriel J. Loizillon in his book Philippe Bunau-Varilla: L’Homme du Panama claims that the enterprise used by the US for the construction of the canal was that of Philippe Bunau-Varilla who earlier was a de Lesseps’ subcontractor and later greatly invested in the second French company for the construction of the canal. Bunau-Varilla was one of the main French lobbyists working within the US. It is said that before the birth of the republic of Panama he had already drafted the new Panamanian constitution, come up with the flag, and military establishment, and promised to float the entire Panamanian government on his own checkbook.

Construction of the Panama Canal in 1907. Source: Wikipedia.

The Panama Canal was inaugurated in 1914. It is reckoned it costed the lives of 20,000 workers under the French and an equal amount of men under the US – under the French principally coming from the French Antilles, later from the Anglophone Caribbean islands. Its construction also destroyed the lives of thousands of people living in the area that were expropriated and the local ecosystem.

The US benefited millions from the canal in exchange of an annual rent of $250,000 dollars. After the opening the main beneficiaries were US corporations belonging to tycoons like the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (later Exon, Exxon, Esso, Mobil and many others) and banker Pierpont Morgan (J.P. Morgan & Co., Federal Steel Company, Chase Bank). Morgan had also been appointed in 1903 as fiscal agent for the newly independent Republic of Panama and carried out his ‘duties’ through US and French financial institutions. Not much has changed since then. After the canal returned to Panamanian sovereignty in 1999, it keeps working principally with countries under the orbit of the US Empire. The canal is mainly used by the US, followed by China (the US’ biggest goods trading partner), Chile, Japan and South Korea.

But business is business and the golden age of the Panama Canal could be close to its end. The Northwest Passage in Northern Canada could be the future cheaper and shorter waterway between the Pacific and the Atlantic due to climate warming. This could be a great loss for the corrupt Panamanian elite, but not a real tragedy. If the world destructive and selfish capitalist system does not fall, Panama’s tax haven structure (2) could be enough to keep it wealthy and well-afloat in the upcoming years – a wealth from which about 37% of Panamanians are completely excluded, 4 out of every 10 persons in the country.

Indisputably, the history of the Panama Canal doesn’t show us only its imperialistic function, its corrupt character and all the unjustifiable sacrificial death it has produced for the sake of greed, power and money. But also that the project, for what we know, dates back to 1513. Its construction was possible thanks to the knowledge and ideas gathered over time. Columbus’ journeys, Balboa’s expedition (1513), the Spanish construction of the Viceregal Peruvian Northern trade route through the Rio Chagres, de Lesseps’ failures…These are some ‘contributions’ I have mentioned in this report but the list could grow exponentially even embracing cultures that today have disappeared. And this is valid not only for the Panama Canal, but for all human knowledge and achievements. They don’t belong to one person, one culture or one nation but are the result of a slow and long cross-border process.

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Notes

(1) Most people believe Hernan Cortes was an uneducated Castilian man. It’s not true. He was a poor aristocrat, who also studied at the University of Salamanca and according to historians was a cultured man.

(2) Panama represents an important but only a small part of the world tax heaven structure. Most tax and laundering paradises are under London’s control in British extraterritorial jurisdictions.

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March 1st, 2021 by The Global Research Team

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China has Become the EU’s Top Trading Partner to the Detriment of the U.S.

By Nica San Juan, March 01 2021

According to the research data analyzed and published by Comprar Acciones, imports from China to the EA increased by 5.6% while exports surged by 2.2% during the year. The same period saw a drop of 13.2% in EA imports from the US as well as an 8.2% decline in exports.

Beware of RNA-based Vaccines. Potentially Serious Injuries. The Risk of Prion Disease

By Peter Koenig, March 01 2021

This Gates / Gavi Agenda ID2020 has already been approved by the German Parliament, without any public debate whatsoever. In Switzerland too, the government wanted to ram this infamous Agenda ID2020 through without any public debate. However, the swiss still have the constitutional right to a referendum

The US Airstrike on Syria: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss, and the Boss before that

By Scott Ritter, March 01 2021

In his first publicly acknowledged military act as commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden orders an assault on Syria, and proves that when it comes to solving the many problems of the region, he’s no better than Trump, or Obama.

COVID-19 Vaccines Have Caused Bells Palsy Paralyzing Facial Condition

By Celeste McGovern, March 01 2021

The mainstream media have inaccurately reported that Pfizer’s and Moderna’s new COVID-19 vaccine trials found no potential risk of Bell’s palsy, a condition that causes the faces of patients to be paralyzed and droop on one side.

CDC Reports 1,095 Deaths Following Experimental COVID Vaccines While UK Government Reports 294 Deaths

By Brian Shilhavy, March 01 2021

The CDC has done another data dump today into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.

Coronavirus Fact-Check: Why “New Cases” Are Plummeting

By OffGuardian, March 01 2021

The scary red numbers are all going down. Check any newspaper or covid tracking website you want. Cases. Deaths. Hospitalisations. They’re all going down, sharply, and have been for weeks, especially in the US and UK. So, why would that be?

Analysis of India’s Nuclear Weapons Program

By Anum A. Khan, February 28 2021

It is India, not Pakistan with the oldest and fastest growing nuclear program. India enjoys the leverage over Pakistan regarding fissile material estimates because it started its fissile material production more than two decades earlier than that of Pakistan.

Joe Biden and the Pentagon’s “Ides of March 2021”: Best Month to Go to War?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 27 2021

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 Pentagon has a mandate to plan and implement a precise “timeline” of military operations.

Emergency Room (ER) Sees Surge of Seniors After COVID-19 Vaccination, Says Nurse Whistleblower

By John C. A. Manley, February 27 2021

We’re seeing a surge of patients come to the hospital from the nursing homes after getting vaxed. These poor folks, in their 80s and 90s with chronic heart and lung disease, can’t handle the metabolic stimulation caused by the COVID vax.

President Biden Says the Experimental Coronavirus Vaccines Are Safe. The Vaccines’ Fact Sheets Say Something Very Different.

By Adam Dick, February 28 2021

Via a Monday Twitter post, President Joe Biden made an unqualified assertion that the experimental coronavirus vaccines, which are not even vaccines under the normal meaning of vaccines, the United States government is encouraging Americans to take are “safe” for everyone.

America’s “Domestic War on Terror”: Under Domestic Terrorism Laws, Anyone Who Disagrees with the Government Can be Considered a Terrorist

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, February 28 2021

Forget Al-Qaeda, Washington has a new domestic enemy in town and they are called the White Supremacists. But the reality is that the new enemy is basically anyone who disagrees with the US government will be considered a terrorist.

The Billionaire Syndrome: How Individuals Become Excessively Wealthy

By Rod Driver, February 28 2021

Most people who are successful like to believe that their success is due to either intelligence or hard work. However, there are many case studies showing that success for individuals involves many other factors.

Putin Laid it All Out: “The So-called Policy of Containing Russia”

By Pepe Escobar, March 01 2021

This past Wednesday, at a very important meeting with the FSB board, President Putin laid it all out in stark terms: We are up against the so-called policy of containing Russia.

The Refugee Crisis: Crimes against Humanity in the Aegean

By Chris Jones, March 01 2021

The Report provides overwhelming evidence of criminal activity by state agencies which is systematic following a clear pattern often involving the use of ‘commandos’ – i.e. unidentifiable hooded and masked armed men who attack the boats as they attempt to cross to Greece – working in close co-operation with the Hellenic Coast Guard and Frontex, the EU border guards.

The Deep State Dynamics of Armenia’s Political Crisis. In the Throes of A “Color Revolution”

By Andrew Korybko, March 01 2021

Armenia is in the midst of a heated political crisis after the General Staff called on Prime Minister Pashinyan to resign last week following the country’s disastrous loss in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh War and the subsequent fury of many people who now blame the present government for that debacle.

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Armenia is in the midst of a heated political crisis after the General Staff called on Prime Minister Pashinyan to resign last week following the country’s disastrous loss in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh War and the subsequent fury of many people who now blame the present government for that debacle.

The Prevailing Narratives

Many observers are oversimplifying the heated political crisis in Armenia after the General Staff called on Prime Minister Pashinyan to resign last week. The prevailing narratives are that this is an unpopular coup attempt by rogue military elements or that it represents the culmination of a months-long popular uprising against a corrupt and quite possibly even traitorous government. The backdrop is that Armenia disastrously lost last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh War and many people now furiously blame the present government for that debacle. In response, the authorities have hinted that the military was actually responsible but that everyone should calm down and handle this crisis peacefully through democratic means in line with the country’s constitution instead of protesting in the streets like many have been since then. The reality, as usual, is somewhere in between these two extreme interpretations of events.

Background Context

It’s true that Prime Minister Pashinyan must ultimately take responsibility for that disaster by virtue of his position as Armenia’s leader, but there’s also truth to his supporters’ claims that the military also failed in its mission to retain control of the UNSC-recognized occupied territories of Western Azerbaijan.

For those who don’t remember the rapid sequence of events during that war, they’re encouraged to review the author’s following two pieces, the first of which chronologically lists his 36 analyses that were published about it at the time while the second suggests that lessons that should be learned from that debacle: “The End Of The Nagorno-Karabakh War: Retrospection, Clarification, And Forecast” & “Analytical Reflections: Learning From The Nagorno-Karabakh Fiasco”. At this point, Armenian society is deeply divided, but these partisan fault lines are made all the worse by some members of the country’s “deep state” recently exploiting them.

“Deep State” Divisions

What’s meant by the aforementioned provocative term is its permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, which exist not only in Armenia but in every country in the world and have been present in society since the dawn of organized human history. This is veritably the driver of the latest events in the Armenian case as evidenced from the fact that the General Staff called on the country’s elected leader to resign, which represents the public intervention of the highest level of the “deep state’s” military faction into political affairs. That “deep state” fault line is exacerbated by the Armenian President refusing to fire the Chief of General Staff on the alleged basis that it’s “unconstitutional” despite Prime Minister Pashinyan’s request, thus prompting the premier to promise that he’ll resubmit it. Another layer of “deep state” discord was identified after the Armenian Defense Ministry released a statement condemning the military’s intervention.

Color Revolution Concerns

All the while, people continue to protest in Yerevan and have even set up camp outside of parliament. For all intents and purposes, Armenia is in the throes of a Color Revolution, though it’s not clear whether foreign forces are involved like during the one that ironically swept Prime Minister Pashinyan into power. About that, he started off as a pro-American Soros-backed asset in Armenia but seems to have reconsidered the wisdom of being their puppet after having lost the last Nagorno-Karabakh War, with the Armenian military only being saved from total destruction by Russia’s last-minute diplomatic intervention to mediate an emergency ceasefire which thankfully still officially holds to this day. Even so, he’s earned himself the wrath of many patriotic Armenians and foreign-backed ones alike for various reasons over the years, thus proving that the popular outrage against his government is very real and palpable.

Key Questions

That arguably being the case, it’s unclear whether the majority of the population is truly against him or not, and if they are, whether a sizeable number of them are willing to resort to illegal acts such as violence in order to overthrow him. It’s not just average Armenians that are incredibly angry with him, but also the General Staff, hence their intervention into the country’s political affairs. Among the military faction of the “deep state”, however, there’s obviously a divide between those who support their regime change demands and those who believe that the issue should be politically decided by the people at the polls. It’s unclear where the Armenian President stands amidst all of this considering his refusal to fire the Chief of General Staff on the basis that the request was supposedly “unconstitutional”. He might be trying to do everything “by the book”, or just creating problems for the premier out of secret sympathy with the military. As the situation continues to boil, there’s a possibility of street clashes occurring which might prompt the military to intervene to “re-establish order”.

Putin’s Pragmatic Policy

While all of this is happening, it must be emphasized that Russia is unlikely to interfere since it doesn’t meddle in what it officially considers to be its mutual defense ally’s “internal affair”. The author elaborated on this policy in his analysis from last week about “What Explains Putin’s Pragmatic Approach To Armenia’s Political Crisis”.

It’s argued that Russia’s only interest is ensuring that Armenia continues to abide by last November’s Moscow-mediated ceasefire no matter the outcome of its current crisis. The Russian government has lent legitimacy to its Armenian counterpart by speaking to its representatives since the crisis began, but it won’t take any action to ensure their political survival if the military overthrows them. Moscow might be working behind the scenes to facilitate an amicable resolution to this crisis, but it won’t impose any meaningful pressure on either of the involved parties to promote its desired outcome of a strictly legal regime change.

Are Snap Elections A Realistic Solution?

Regarding that possibility, it can’t be discounted that a compromise solution might be to hold snap elections even though Prime Minister Pashinyan recently dismissed that option despite having previously supported it. Even in that scenario, though, it’s difficult to predict whether the process will truly be free, fair, and transparent since the country’s endemic corruption might result in a manipulated outcome which might in turn provoke even worse tensions in the street. Going to the polls is the only legal and therefore legitimate way to resolve this crisis, however, since Prime Minister Pashinyan’s resignation in response to the General Staff’s demand or his forcible ouster in the worst-case scenario would only destabilize this already chronically unstable country even more. The underlying problem is that Armenia’s “deep state” is deeply divided, which prevents the state from reacting in a unified way that could have otherwise stabilized the situation.

The “Deep State” Manipulates The Armenian People

These divisive “deep state” dynamics are ultimately responsible for the crisis reaching its breaking point, and it seems unlikely that they’ll improve anytime soon. Armenia’s disastrous loss in last year’s Nagorno-Karabakh War was too traumatic for many of its people, who had been indoctrinated for years and even during the midst of the conflict itself into thinking that their side retained military superiority at all moments. They were obviously lied to be a combination of self-interested, manipulative, and wishful thinking individuals, which made their loss all the more shocking since they had hitherto trusted their sources of information about this. Everyone is now looking for someone to blame instead of realizing that there wouldn’t have even been a crisis in the first place had Armenia simply complied with the four UNSC Resolutions from 1993 calling on it to withdraw from the occupied territory of Western Azerbaijan.

Concluding Thoughts

In any case, there’s no turning back time and talking about “coulda”, “woulda”, “shoulda”, since what’s done is done, and the Armenian military lost control of Western Azerbaijan after nearly three decades of illegally occupying it. The state’s political identity is now at stake since that occupied territory was considered by many Armenians to de facto be a part of their own country, so losing it amounts in their hearts and minds to losing a piece of Armenia itself. Under such challenging psychological circumstances, it’s very difficult to imagine Prime Minister Pashinyan winning re-election, but even so, his political future must be up to the people to peacefully decide at the polls whenever that moment arrives. It shouldn’t be decided in the streets even though that’s ironically how he himself came to power, nor by the military, otherwise Armenia’s possible regime change wouldn’t be truly legitimate. Without international recognition, the country will only become more isolated.

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

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Crimes Against Humanity in the Aegean is a 43 page report from the Legal Centre Lesvos (LCL) published on February 1st 2021. It is impressive on many levels. The detail provided in their investigation of refugee push backs in the Eastern Aegean over the past year is meticulous and includes powerful and distressing eye witness evidence from some of the refugees who suffered the push backs.

The Report provides overwhelming evidence of criminal activity by state agencies which is systematic following a clear pattern often involving the use of ‘commandos’ – i.e. unidentifiable hooded and masked armed men who attack the boats as they attempt to cross to Greece – working in close co-operation with the Hellenic Coast Guard and Frontex, the EU border guards. As always, the relevant state agencies deny that push backs are happening; total denial accompanied with impunity.

“Despite the numerous reports and investigations showing the widespread and systematic nature of this ongoing practice, the Greek state continues to dismiss such allegations as ‘fake news.’

Europe has been perpetrating violence against migrants at its borders with complete impunity for so many years that it seems EU and Greek authorities believed that under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic they could escalate their attack on migrants in the Aegean region without anyone reacting.” (Lorraine Leete, Co-ordinator, LCL, Feb 2021)

Against this trend however, on February 23rd 2021, the European Parliament began its investigation into the push back activities of Frontex which is not only in the process of forming an army 10,000 strong but is now the biggest single agency of the EU.

As Birgit Sippel, one of the people in the parliament demanding the inquiry said:

“Frontex’s reputation has gone from bad to worse in recent months. Change starts from the top and that’s why we urged the Frontex Director to stand down, following repeated allegations of fundamental rights violations at the EU’s borders. While Mr Leggeri is still in office, he is not in control of the situation. The result is not only that the credibility of the EU’s largest agency is in shreds, but it has meant that the disgraceful and unacceptable push backs of vulnerable people at Europe’s borders keep taking place. Frontex’ decision to pull out of Hungary, where push backs were well documented even after a recent ruling of the European Court of Justice, is a welcome first step in the right direction. But this step comes too late and is too little to restore the confidence in the Executive Director of the EU’s largest agency.” (See this)

With its notion that change starts from the top with the top being identified as the person deemed to be in charge of the organisation, it is good to see key figures named and being held to account. But given that the EU in its various institutions including the parliament has conspicuously failed until now to act on the criminal push backs despite compelling evidence suggests that we might well be disappointed by their efforts.

As LCL remind us, in March 2020 Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, thanked Greece for being “Europe’s shield” at the very time Greece unilaterally and illegally suspended the right to asylum and embarked on push backs which involved the use of lethal force, sugared with an additional 700 million euros for border and migration management followed in June 2020 by a further 10.75 million euros for the reinforcement of Greece’s eastern borders.

Ineffective Accountability

“The foregoing laundry list of ongoing violations entailed in the modus operandi of collective expulsions in the Aegean only underscored the ineffectiveness of existing accountability mechanisms. A number of extensively evidenced complaints on collective expulsions in the Aegean have already been submitted to the Greek courts, the Hellenic Parliament, the Greek National Commission of Human Rights, the European Commission and other EU institutions and the European Court of Human Rights by numerous civil society and legal actors including LCL, yet collective expulsions in the Aegean continue with absolute impunity” (LCL Report, p.32).

This is what I have also witnessed over 15 years living on Samos. There has been no shortage of reports detailing the daily horrors confronting the refugees on the island; no shortage of visitors who have been shaken by what they witness and not least countless testimonies of the refugees who have been or who are, still here. But all with little or no consequence. The authorities don’t give a damn about the living conditions of the refugees here. You would need to be living on another planet not to know this. We are now coming to the end of winter. The island has been pounded by storms, winds and rain. It has been very cold. Every winter here is a challenge both for locals with no income who can’t heat their homes and the refugees living in their shacks and tents in the jungle. Every winter NGOs and volunteers file their reports detailing these horrors. NOTHING CHANGES.

That so many refugees survive their ordeals on the frontier islands is almost entirely due to the refugees themselves. It is their efforts in building shelters that can withstand the harsh weather, in providing food and clothes especially for those facing problems that sees them through. And the efforts are wide and varied from caring for the sick and distressed to making Covid masks. It is a community of many layered solidarities between and within the nationalities and the generations. It is sad and reprehensible that many of those who work with (on) refugees fail to acknowledge this, including many of the volunteers who drop by the island to ‘help’. Charity and not solidarity epitomises much of this effort (but I will write more on this in a later article).

I defy anyone to tell me of any positive state action that benefits the refugees on Samos and more widely in Greece. Has the food improved or is it still shit? Has the Covid threat and shadow stopped the endless queues for food or any service? Have the managers of the camp accepted offers of support from the appropriate medical NGOs to develop a Covid strategy? Why are those who test positive quarantined in overcrowded containers? Every opportunity to make something better is shunned as exemplified by the new but as yet unopened camp on a remote and exposed hill top on Samos and the decision to open a new camp on Lesvos (replacing the fire destroyed Moria camp) on a site contaminated with dangerous levels of lead. On every dimension of life, from education to health the actions of the authorities have been cruel. And for years and years they get away with it. Critical and outraged reports are brushed aside, and “as if impunity was not enough, four human rights monitoring and migrants solidarity groups which have all publicly denounced collective expulsions in the Aegean, have been identified by Greek police in an investigation that accuses them of espionage, forming and membership of a criminal organisation, violating state secrets and violating the immigration code.” (LCL, p.34)

Deterrence

The European state agencies involved with refugees have been explicit in placing deterrence as the core principle of its strategy in trying to halt or at least moderate the flow of refugees from the broken and war torn countries of the middle east. On no account were these push factors to be aided by pull factors from within Europe itself. So no safe passage for refugees. Instead the death journeys across the seas or through militarised borders. And should you be lucky enough to make it, the ancient British Poor Law principle is practised namely that your living conditions and application for asylum should be so uncomfortable and degrading that you would do anything to keep away.

But as the LCL Report demonstrates all too clearly the dynamic of deterrence is and has moved on to greater violence and cruelties. As I read the accounts of the push backs at sea I could not stop thinking about what was going on in the heads of those carrying out these practices which included throwing terrified families and children into the sea at night to climb into tiny rubber dinghies which would take them to the Turkish coast and (hopefully) rescue from the Turkish coastguards. What goes through the minds of the Greek crews who drive their boats at speed at the small refugee dinghies knowing full well the dangers posed to the refugees as the bow waves roll over them?

These are important questions for as the LCL report makes clear,

“The complex network and multiplicity of actors involved in collective expulsions in the Aegean would require independent international institutions with significant investigative powers to trace modes of liability. In this context, international criminal law’s foundational logic that atrocities are ‘committed by men, not abstract entities,’ and its promise to de-naturalise the banality of evil appears more appropriate.” (LCL, p.35)

It is clear, that to date the efforts of those who compile, record and publish their damning reports of ongoing atrocities against so many refugees in Greece have had no impact on changing policy or practice. Perhaps it is time to change the focus in the struggle to ‘de-naturalise the banality of evil’; looking more to those who do this work. And its not just on the push backs where we should be thinking of what can be done. After all, how does a person feed another with food they would never touch ? How do you quarantine Covid victims with 20 others in a locked container with no toilet ? How do you tell refugees that they have to leave their accommodation four weeks after getting their asylum because now they have to live like Greeks supporting and housing themselves through work? Even without Covid this is not easy in Greece. With Covid it is almost impossible. Throughout this winter thousands of refugees have lost their homes and been forced onto the streets or into overcrowded squats.

And without exception, all refugees here have to deal with an Asylum Service that does not give a damn for you. It is evident the moment you arrive at virtually any Asylum Office where crowds of refugees are compelled to wait outside in all weathers to even get inside. So much for respect. Take Fahima and Yousef from Algeria. They have had 2 rejections for asylum which they appealed last September with the help of a lawyer. The court in Athens which heard the appeal made its decision at the end of October 2020. As of this day they have no idea what that decision was. They plead but get no answer. Torture for them. Take Mohammed, he was told in January that he had to travel from Samos to Athens to be interviewed over his application for family re-unification. He takes around 100 euros a month. The Asylum Service offered no expenses. The same for Younis who was faced with the same problem when told that he would have to go to Athens to collect his asylum papers. When he got to the office, he found a note pinned on the door informing him that his interview had been postponed (Covid) and to await further notice. These are just a few instances from Samos. Similar examples are legion.

The spectrum of cruelties is wide and the ‘doctrine of do no harm’ enshrined in international refugee law is endlessly breached. And breached by people ‘doing their jobs’. Within Greece the challenge of ensuring people to do indecent jobs quietly and without fuss seems to fall along two related dimensions. One is protection and the other is extreme regulation. Protective measures range widely from body armour, small arms, chemical weapons at one extreme through to ensuring that state agents carry no identifying insignia at the other. (Moreover, with or without legislation, most adults in Greece know that you don’t openly photograph the police in any context if you value your well being.)

Fear plays a significant role in this country in sustaining unacceptable and often criminal activity across vast parts of the society. It is a fear that goes well beyond ‘police phobia’ in a society which has endured massive economic and social decline over the past 15 years and is now worsened further by the Covid pandemic. Poverty is deep and widespread. Birth rates are plummeting. Those who can leave the country. The fear of losing your job is an ever-present worry for many and a remarkable percentage of those who work with refugees as in the Asylum Service are on short-term contracts often renewed but never secure. With high rates of unemployment it follows that many simply keep their heads down and mouths shut. Any step out of line can carry severe consequences.

In addition, over the years a raft of regulations and procedures have been implemented which explicitly constrain in great detail, those working in any formal capacity with refugees. A condition for working with refugees in Greece even as an individual (registered) volunteer or an NGO demands obedience to the Greek authorities. Criticism of the authorities is not allowed. On no account are you to disclose to any outside persons or organisations any aspect of your job or your experience including photographs. These are all set out in the contracts of employment and engagement which now run to pages and pages. Failure to comply brings disciplinary action and dismissal. Translators currently employed in the camp on Samos for example are forbidden from talking or socialising with any refugees outside their work time. I spoke just 2 weeks ago with a translator who when not working in the camp stays in his hotel room so as to avoid any contact with refugees as he was frightened about losing his job. Similar restrictions were introduced for the ‘volunteers’ who were forbidden to develop personal relationships with refugees which included not visiting refugee homes. (It should be noted that a few volunteers have resigned over the years because of these restrictions). Considerable effort has gone into ensuring all those who came to Samos as volunteers should be formally registered. This was entirely motivated by the concern to control and regulate their activities. These regulatory frameworks have not emerged to protect refugees nor the volunteers for that matter.

Regulations which seek to hide and close off any scrutiny have no place in welfare work with any group of people where the possibility of positive support demands that we identify the problems and challenges people confront. But instead we have front line workers gagged, frightened to speak out for fear of losing their job. This is the case in Greece. Many here generally fear complaining about any state crimes and violence because they fear the repercussions especially when their complaints concern the police. This must change and effective protection measures implemented for all those who have cause to complain. Quite simply, as we have learnt, refugee engagements in darkness are all too likely to be cruel and dangerous. But without effective and trustworthy protection for those who complain or just reveal poor practice then it is almost certain that the current darkness will continue. (There is something deeply sad about all this. Working with refugees should be celebratory and joyous as we help those seeking life and security in Europe. It is work that should bring pride and not shame to those involved. In all their diversities refugees enrich our lives and our societies despite all they have endured.)

Even with all these efforts, we should not assume that the authorities have stopped all front line workers from supporting refugees when possible. My evidence comes mainly from refugees who have been employed in the camps and by many of the bigger agencies as translators/facilitators. Taking advantage of their supervisors’ lack of language, translators are able to say things to the refugees which are not understood by their managers. They can and do tell refugees what they need to say or not say when asking for help or information. They tell them when they are being lied to or are being giving useless information. Oppressive welfare systems all face the problem that no matter how many procedures and regulations are imposed on their front line workers, there are always points in practice where workers and recipients inter-act without supervision; where there are opportunities for help and support however small. I have no reason to doubt that there are many front line workers, not only refugee employees, involved in such activities. But without any imaginative support networks these activities understandably remain largely hidden from view.

The impunity which cloaks the illegal activities of so many of the key actors plays a key role in ensuring the continuation of daily state violence. It naturalises the banality of evil. It banishes any notion of a common humanity. In its wake it brings secrecy, corruption and dismay. Refugees are casualties of this impunity but so are the majority of Greeks who live daily with a state that in so many ways fails the people.

A final plea! I believe that the work of organisations such as the Legal Centre Lesvos and Front Lex is of great importance for as Front Lex notes:

“EU migration policy constitutes a flagrant breach of all the international and European law frameworks regulating migration and borders: refugee, human rights, maritime and criminal law. For the first time since WWII, European institutions, governments and officials are committing countless crimes against humanity. These atrocious crimes are targeting the most vulnerable population on earth: civilians in need of international protection. Front-Lex reinstates the Law at Europe’s borders by holding the EU, its Member States and their officials responsible.

Through legal actions and public trials, we will seek to terminate EU migration policy, provide remedy for its victims, and hold the culprits to account.“ (See this)

They need our support. The stakes could not be higher, both for the refugees and indeed for us all:

We do expect Frontex to comply with its own regulations, the [EU treaties] and European and international human rights and criminal law. In case they won’t we will expect the competent courts to force them to do so. In case they won’t, well, this would be a sad day for the rule of law and mean the EU dropped its liberal ethos altogether.”

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This past Wednesday, at a very important meeting with the FSB board, President Putin laid it all out in stark terms:

We are up against the so-called policy of containing Russia. This is not about competition, which is a natural thing for international relations. This is about a consistent and quite aggressive policy aimed at disrupting our development, slowing it down, creating problems along the outer perimeter, triggering domestic instability, undermining the values that unite Russian society, and ultimately to weaken Russia and put it under external control, just the way we are witnessing it transpire in some countries in the post-Soviet space. 

Not without a touch of wickedness, Putin added this was no exaggeration: “In fact, you don’t need to be convinced of this as you yourselves know it perfectly well, perhaps even better than anybody else.”

The Kremlin is very much aware “containment” of Russia focuses on its perimeter: Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia. And the ultimate target remains regime change. 

Putin’s remarks may also be interpreted as an indirect answer to a section of President Biden’s speech at the Munich Security Conference ( Here is an excellent analysis, in Russian). 

According to Biden’s scriptwriters,   

Putin seeks to weaken the European project and the NATO alliance because it is much easier for the Kremlin to intimidate individual countries than to negotiate with the united transatlantic community (…) The Russian authorities want others to think that our system is just as corrupt or even more corrupt.

A clumsy, direct personal attack against the head of state of a major nuclear power does not exactly qualify as sophisticated diplomacy. At least it glaringly shows how trust between Washington and Moscow is now reduced to less than zero. As much as Bidens Deep State handlers refuse to see Putin as a worthy negotiating partner, the Kremlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have already dismissed Washington as non-agreement capable.  

Once again, this is all about sovereignty. The “unfriendly attitude towards Russia”, as Putin defined it, extends to “other independent, sovereign centers of global development.” Read it as mainly China and Iran. All these three sovereign states happen to be categorized as top “threats” by the US National Security Strategy. 

Yet Russia is the real nightmare for the Exceptionalists: Orthodox Christian, thus appealing to swathes of the West; consolidated as major Eurasian power; a military, hypersonic superpower; and boasting unrivalled diplomatic skills, appreciated all across the Global South.  

In contrast, there’s not much left for the Deep State except endlessly demonizing both Russia and China to justify a Western military build-up, the “logic” inbuilt in a new strategic concept named  NATO 2030: United for a New Era.  

The experts behind the concept hailed it as an “implicit” response to French President Emmanuel Macron declaring NATO “brain dead”. 

Well, at least the concept proves Macron was right.  

Those barbarians from the East 

Crucial questions about sovereignty and Russian identity have been a recurrent theme in Moscow these past few weeks. And that brings us to February 17, when Putin met with Duma political leadersfrom the Liberal Democratic Party’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky – enjoying a popularity surge – and the Communist Party’s Gennady Zyuganov to United Russia’s Sergei Mironov, as well as State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin 

Putin stressed the “multi-ethnic and multi-religious” character of Russia, now in “a different environment that is free of ideology”:  

“It is important for all ethnic groups, even the smallest ones, to know that this is their Motherland with no other for them, that they are protected here and are prepared to lay down their lives in order to protect this country. This is in the interests of us all, regardless of ethnicity, including the Russian people.” 

Yet Putin’s most extraordinary remark had to do with Ancient Russian history: 

Barbarians came from the East and destroyed the Christian Orthodox empire. But before the barbarians from the East, as you well know, the crusaders came from the West and weakened this Orthodox Christian empire, and only then were the last blows dealt, and it was conquered. This is what happened…we must remember these historical events and never forget them.

Well, this could be enough material to generate a 1,000-page treatise. As it stands, let’s try at least to – concisely – unpackage it.  

The Great Eurasian Steppe – one of the largest geographical formations on the planet – stretches from the lower Danube all the way to the Yellow River. The running joke across Eurasia is that “Keep Walking” can be performed back to back. For most of recorded history this has been Nomad Central: tribe upon tribe raiding at the margins, or sometimes at the hubs of the Heartland: China, Iran, the  Mediterranean.  

The Scythians (see, for instance, the magisterial The Scythians: Nomad Warriors of the Steppe, by Barry Cunliffe) arrived at the Pontic steppe from beyond the Volga. After the Scythians, it was the turn of the Sarmatians to show up in South Russia. 

From the 4th century onwards, Nomad Eurasia was a vortex of marauding tribes, featuring, among others, the Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries, the Khazars in the 7th century, the Kumans in the 11th century, all the way to the Mongol avalanche in the 13th century.  

The plot line always pitted nomads against peasants. Nomads ruled – and exacted tribute. G. Vernadsky, in his invaluable Ancient Russia, shows how “the Scythian Empire may be described sociologically as a domination of the nomadic horde over neighboring tribes of agriculturists”.  

As part of my multi-pronged research on nomad empires for a future volume, I call them Badass Barbarians on Horseback. The stars of the show include, in Europe, in chronological order, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Khazars, Hungarians, Peshenegs, Seljuks, Mongols and their Tatar descendants; and in Asia, Hu, Xiongnu, Hephtalites, Turks, Uighurs, Tibetans, Kirghiz, Khitan, Mongols, Turks (again), Uzbeks and Manchu.    

Arguably, since the hegemonic Scythian era (the first protagonists of the Silk Road), most of the peasants in southern and central Russia were Slav. But there were major differences. The Slavs west of Kiev were under the influence of Germania and Rome. East of Kiev, they were influenced by Persian civilization. 

It’s always important to remember that the Vikings were still nomads when they became rulers in Slav lands. Their civilization in fact prevailed over sedentary peasants – even as they absorbed many of their customs.   

Interestingly enough, the gap between steppe nomads and agriculture in proto-Russia was not as steep as between intensive agriculture in China and the interlocked steppe economy in Mongolia. 

(For an engaging Marxist interpretation of nomadism, see A.N. Khazanov’s Nomads and the Outside World).    

The sheltering sky  

What about power? For Turk and Mongol nomads, who came centuries after the Scythians, power emanated from the sky. The Khan ruled by authority of the “Eternal Sky” – as we all see when we delve into the adventures of Genghis and Kublai. By implication, as there is only one sky, the Khan would have to exert universal power. Welcome to the idea of Universal Empire. 

In Persia, things were slightly more complex. The Persian Empire   was all about Sun worship: that became the conceptual basis for the divine right of the King of Kings. The implications were immense, as the King now became sacred. This model influenced Byzantium – which after all was always interacting with Persia. 

Christianity made the Kingdom of Heaven more important than ruling over the temporal domain. Still, the idea of Universal Empire persisted, incarnated in the concept of Pantocrator: it was the Christ who ultimately ruled, and his deputy on earth was the Emperor. But Byzantium remained a very special case: the Emperor could never be an equal to God. After all, he was human. 

Putin is certainly very much aware that the Russian case is extremely complex. Russia essentially is on the margins of three civilizations. It’s part of Europe – reasons including everything from the ethnic origin of Slavs to achievements in history, music and literature. 

Russia is also part of Byzantium from a religious and artistic angle (but not part of the subsequent Ottoman empire, with which it was in military competition). And Russia was influenced by Islam coming from Persia.

Then there’s the crucial nomad influence. A serious case can be made that they have been scholarly neglected. The Mongol rule for a century and a half of course is part of the official historiography – but perhaps not given its due importance. And the nomads in southern and central Russia two millennia ago were never properly acknowledged. 

So Putin may have hit a nerve. What he said points to the idealization of a later period of Russian history from the late 9th to early 13th century: Kievan Rus. In Russia, 19th century Romanticism and 20th century nationalism actively built an idealized national identity. 

The interpretation of Kievan Rus poses tremendous problems – that’s something I eagerly discussed in St. Petersburg a few years ago. There are rare literary sources – and they concentrate mostly on the 12th century afterwards. The earlier sources are foreigners, mostly Persians and Arabs.  

Russian conversion to Christianity and its concomitant superb architecture have been interpreted as evidence of a high cultural standard. In a nutshell, scholars ended up using Western Europe as the model for the reconstruction of Kievan Rus civilization. 

It was never so simple. A good example is the discrepancy between Novgorod and Kiev. Novgorod was closer to the Baltic than the Black Sea, and had closer interaction with Scandinavia and the Hanseatic towns. Compare it to Kiev, which was closer to steppe nomads and  Byzantium – not to mention Islam. 

Kievan Rus was a fascinating crossover. Nomadic tribal traditions – on administration, taxes, the justice system – were prevalent. But on religion, they imitated Byzantium. It’s also relevant that until the end of the 12th century, assorted steppe nomads were a constant “threat” to southeast Kievan Rus. 

So as much as Byzantium – and later on even the Ottoman Empire –  supplied models for Russian institutions, the fact is the nomads, starting with the Scythians, influenced the economy, the social system and most of all, the military approach.     

Watch the Khan  

Sima Qian, the master Chinese historian, has shown how the Khan had two “kings”, who each had two generals, and thus in succession, all the way to commanders of a hundred, a thousand and ten thousand men. This is essentially the same system used for a millennia and a half by nomads, from the Scythians to the Mongols, all the way to Tamerlane’s army at the end of the 14th century.    

The Mongol invasions – 1221 and then 1239-1243 – were indeed the major game-changer. As master analyst Sergei Karaganov told me in his office in late 2018, they influenced Russian society for centuries afterwards. 

For over 200 years Russian princes had to visit the Mongol headquarters in the Volga to pay tribute. One scholarly strand has qualified it as “barbarization”; that seems to be Putin’s view. According to it, the incorporation of Mongol values may have “reversed” Russian society to what it was before the first drive to adopt Christianity.    

The inescapable conclusion is that when Muscovy emerged in the late 15th century as the dominant power in Russia, it was essentially the successor of the Mongols. 

And because of that the peasantry – the sedentary population – were not touched by “civilization” (time to re-read Tolstoy?) Nomad Power and values, as strong as they were, survived Mongol rule for centuries. 

Well, if a moral can be derived from our short parable, it’s not exactly a good idea for “civilized” NATO to pick a fight with the – lateral –  heirs of the Great Khan.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

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 frequent contributor to Global Research.

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At least 20 Israeli arms dealers have been arrested by Israel’s secret police over several months, in what is now being revealed as one of Israel’s biggest arms-industry scandals in history. 

The story is under a gag-order in Israel, and only a few scant facts have been printed by Israeli newspapers. Even the destination country for the arms remains unnamed.

Even so, there have been enough details coming out for the Israeli public to pick up the pieces and foreign platforms to publish what everyone already knew: suicide drones appear to have been developed in Israel to be sold to China.

Richard Silverstein, a Middle East Eye contributor, was one of the first to name Beijing in his blog, in a post published on 11 February. He noted that this was not the country’s first scandal involving the sale of attack drones, and it came as no surprise considering the lack of oversight by the Israeli defence ministry.

“There have been numerous similar problematic sales to China in the past, many of which have angered the US. Israel plays a dangerous game of both cultivating trade with China while trying to maintain the close relationship with the US,” Silverstein told MEE.

“In this case, the aerospace engineer who coordinated the ring of military technology thieves may have been acting for his own enrichment, but he also created a potentially damaging scandal just as the US changes administrations, welcoming a president who is far more reluctant to look the other way regarding Israel stepping over the line than his predecessor.”

Antony Loewenstein, an independent journalist, filmmaker and author, said that the recent scandal is just the latest example of Israel’s defence sector going rogue.

“Israel has a largely unregulated defence industry, allowing the Israeli government and its private companies to sell weapons, surveillance equipment and hi-tech to some of the most despotic regimes in the world from Uganda to the Philippines,” he told MEE.

“It’s time for the Israeli state to be held accountable for this decades-long practice.”

Despite the lack of regulations on the Israeli arms industry, this time Israel’s secret police (ISA) conducted an investigation and stopped the arms-dealing ring, indicating that the diplomatic cost of the deal in terms of the relationship with Washington would be too heavy to bear.

The sale marks the second time that China has purchased “loitering” munitions from Israeli manufacturers. The first time was in 1998.

These weapons, nicknamed “suicide drones,” have become a trademark of two Israeli arms companies: Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Aeronautics Ltd, which was bought by Rafael.

Suicide drones, a hybrid between a drone and a missile, hover in the air for hours before the operator directs them to explode on a target. They are expensive, carry less firepower than artillery, and are as indiscriminate and inaccurate as other drones, so what is their strategic value?

Terror factor

Newcastle University scholar Jamie Allinson pointed to the psychological value of suicide drones to commanders of powerful military forces who covet the only weapon that they do not have in their arsenal: the suicide bomber.

Human soldiers are reluctant to perform suicide missions, but suicide drones can take their place.

The deciding factor is terror: just as populations are terrorised by the thought that a stranger may turn out to be a suicide bomber and kill without warning, so can they be terrorised by a suicide drone that can drop from the sky without warning.

Israeli-made suicide drones were used extensively by Azerbaijan in its recent conflict with Armenia over the disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh.

By turning loitering munitions into an Israeli trademark weapon, although other countries produce them as well, Israeli arms companies have capitalised on the assumption that Israelis are familiar with suicide bombings.

While it is unlikely that Chinese generals suffer from suicide-bomber envy, China could however gain valuable intelligence from these drones, which are being increasingly employed by Nato forces.

A new database on Israeli exports launched by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organisation, lists three arms-export deals between Israel and China between 1998 and 2008: they involved missiles, loitering munitions and a satellite for the Beijing Olympics.

“The Israeli military export law from 2007 does not include human rights-related monitoring, consideration and restrictions because it was not legislated with that in mind,” researcher and anti-militarist activist Sahar Vardi told Middle East Eye.

“It was legislated for one reason only: to allow the state, and its foreign affairs interests, to restrict sales in situations in which it is not in Israel’s political interest.”

Vardi said that this policy meant that arms sales to countries like Myanmar, which has committed ethnic cleansing against Rohingya people, have been allowed to take place, which she describes as not surprising.

“Israel tests, develops, and more importantly markets its weapons as ‘battle proven’ – that ‘battlefield’ is Palestinian cities and villages under Israeli occupation.”

According to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronot, the value of the loitering munitions illegally sold to China was a few tens of millions of dollars.

Under $1m was confiscated from the account of the ringleader, indicating that the payment to the arms dealers was meagre.

Why would over 20 Israeli arms dealers take such a tremendous risk for such a small payoff?

Conditional US aid

Considering the long-term decline in Israeli defence spending; the 2015 urgent appeal of Israeli arms companies to the government warning of a crisis in arms sales; the Memorandum of Understanding signed by then-president Barack Obama in 2016 revoking the special privilege of Israeli arms companies to receive a piece of US military aid; and the new political movement by ex-generals aimed at ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as he faces corruption charges, a picture emerges that the Israeli security elite has been losing its hegemonic position in the Israeli economy.

This deep crisis of the Israeli security elite offers an explanation as to why these arms dealers chose to ignore the risks and sell suicide drones to China.

The arms dealers could not have known that Joe Biden would win the US presidential elections and take a harsh stance on China.

Even though Israel receives more US military aid than any other country, the aid comes with strings attached.

The Pentagon holds strong leverage over Israel, restricting the transfer of US technology to third parties, banning Israeli companies from competing with US arms manufacturers and demanding that, in addition to the aid, Israel will spend billions more on US weapons.

The inflexibility of the US demands on Israel was demonstrated by the Israeli finance ministry’s recent decision to refinance a $2bn loan that was due this year, in order to enable the purchase of F-35 jets for the Israeli air force at a cost of $9bn.

Although the upcoming elections in Israel scheduled for the end of March were triggered by the government’s failure to approve a budget, funds had to be found for the F-35 deal in order to avoid offending the Pentagon, which is already riled by the suicide-drone sale to China.

Israeli arms exports serve two, sometimes conflicting, goals: furthering diplomatic influence and generating profit.

Privatisation drove a wedge between the goals, as the arms dealers do not work for the government anymore and focus only on profit, while the government no longer has as much influence as before over the types of technologies developed and the customers.

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For the first time in history, China overtook the US in 2020 as the Euro Area’s (EA) top trading partner.

According to the research data analyzed and published by Comprar Acciones, imports from China to the EA increased by 5.6% while exports surged by 2.2% during the year. The same period saw a drop of 13.2% in EA imports from the US as well as an 8.2% decline in exports.

Following the pandemic-related slowdown, vaccine approvals raised hope of an economic turnaround toward the end of the year. But for many European nations, recovery was hampered by the second wave of Covid-19 cases. These prompted strict social restrictions for a second time.

During the period between January and December 2020, the Euro area exported goods worth €2.13 trillion to the rest of the world. Compared to the previous year, that marked a 9.2% decline. Imports similarly fell by 10.8% from 2019 to €1.89 trillion, while Intra-Euro area trade fell by 8.9%.

However, based on improvements in trade, the region seems to be on the path to recovery. The Euro area as a whole exported goods worth €190.7 billion in December 2020, up by 2.3% YoY. It was the first increase on record during the year since February 2020.

Imports from the rest of the world during the month totaled €161.5 billion, marking a 1.3% decline from December 2019. Intra-euro area trade, on the other hand, rose by 0.9% in the same period to €148.7 billion.

China’s Economy to Grow by 8.1% in 2021

The reason behind China’s international trade performance is that it is the only region in the world that is going through a V-shaped recovery. Consequently, it is closer to pre-pandemic performance than the rest of the world.

China is projected to post the second highest GDP growth in 2021. According to IMF projections, it is set to post an 8.1% growth during the year, slowing down to 5.6% in 2022. Its growth rate in 2020 was 2.3%.

India is expected to lead with an 11.5% growth rate, following an 8% decline in 2020. In 2022, the growth will slow down to 6.8%.  SP Global Ratings projects a 10% growth rate for India’s fiscal 2022, signaling a recovery to pre-pandemic levels. The period will run from April 2021 to the end of March 2022. For fiscal 2021, it estimates a decline of 7.7% for South Asia’s largest economy.

In the Euro area, Spain, which had the largest contraction in 2020 is expected to lead the recovery. Its GDP fell by 11.1% during the year and is projected to grow by 5.9% in 2021 and 4.7% in 2022.

The UK is forecast to grow by 4.5% in 2021, increasing to 5% in 2022. Its contraction in 2020 was the largest on record since the Great Frost of 1709. It had the second largest decline in the Euro area plummeting by 10%. The decline was higher than the 8% that Refinitiv analysts expected for the year. It was more than twice the fall recorded in 2009 following the global financial crisis and slightly worse than the 9.7% decline posted in 1921.

According to its Office for National Statistics, the GDP showed a slight recovery in Q4 2020, growing by 1%. This was slightly higher than Refinitiv’s estimated 0.5%.

China-US GDP Gap Narrowed to $6.2 Trillion in 2020 from $7.1 Trillion in 2019

The US economy contracted by 3.4% in 2020 according to the IMF and is projected to grow by 5.1% in 2021 and 2.5% in 2022. According to the US government’s preliminary reports though, the decline was slightly lower at 2.3% to $20.93 trillion.

These figures denote a significant divergence between the US decline and the growth of China’s GDP. Consequently, Nomura economists forecast that China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy sooner than expected. China’s 2020 GDP was $14.7 trillion (101.6 trillion yuan).

As such, China fell behind the US by $6.2 trillion in 2020, compared to $7.1 trillion in 2019. Based on Nomura’s estimates, China will take the place of the US as the top economy globally by 2028. In case the Chinese currency strengthens to 6 yuan per dollar, it could happen by 2026.

JP Morgan analysts forecast that it could take China eight to 10 years to catch up with the US. On the other hand, China Renaissance projects that due to the impact of the pandemic, China will overtake the US three to five years sooner than previously estimated.

However, the real challenge would be for China to overtake the US in terms of GDP per capita. While China’s per capita GDP was $11,000 in 2020, the US had more than five times the figure, at $63,200.

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Nica is a BA Political Science graduate, startup founder and financial expert. She has an entrepreneurial spirit and started several startups from a young age, eventually becoming fascinated with stocks, cryptocurrencies and the blockchain economy. She specializes in financial tech and her expertise is in writing detailed tutorials and guides on how to invest in stocks and cryptocurrencies.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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At a time in my life when I barely knew drones existed, a young Lebanese mother mourning the death of her six-year-old daughter, Zainab, helped me understand how monitoring by drones terrified her and her neighbors.

It was the summer of 2006, during a war referred to as the Israeli-Hezbollah war.

Kathy Kelly in Beirut, Lebanon, during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. [Source: Farah Mokhtarazadei]

On July 30th, around 1:00 a.m., Israeli warplanes fired missiles at buildings in Qana, Lebanon, a small village in southern Lebanon. One missile, a bunker buster supplied by the U.S. corporation Raytheon, caused a three-story building to collapse, killing an extended family of 27 people. Fifteen of them were children.

[Source: google.com]

Two weeks later, with a team of international observers, I visited Qana because of reports of a massacre there.

Driving toward the village, we saw men preparing cement structures for burials.

We entered the village on foot and saw men arranging white plastic chairs for guests who came to mourn with family members.

Four women sitting quietly in an outdoor patio invited Farah Mokhtarazadei and me to join them.

Each time a neighboring woman arrived, the women would stand and embrace one another. They had borne their pain for 18 days, since the bombs slammed into homes in their village. The mass funeral had been delayed until families could safely gather for burials.

One mother had suffered injuries. Under her veil, she wore a medical hood, and a thick brace encircled her neck.

She stiffly shifted her tall, slender body, unable to point across the street to what was once a building where frightened children huddled together for shelter during the bombing. One of those children was her six-year-old daughter, Zainab.

She winced as she tried to gesture upward. “Didn’t they know?” she asked. “Didn’t they see?”

Later, I realized she was referring to surveillance drones, overhead, which she was sure must have filmed children running back and forth between their homes and this building. Umm Zainab said we must be able to see how close the two homes were. Yes, we could see. We listened to the drone of an unmanned surveillance plane criss-crossing the skies above. Couldn’t they see?

Umm Zainab asked one of the children to bring her a stack of newspapers. One front-page photo showed Zainab held aloft, lifeless, by a strong, helmeted relief worker who seemed to be shouting in agony. Another photo showed Zainab lying next to two-year-old Zahr’a.

The force of the explosion apparently damaged the internal organs of the little girls, as they slept. Their bodies were not mutilated.

Then Umm Zainab placed in my hands a framed photo of Zainab, a curly headed little girl with huge dark eyes posing seriously for the camera. One could only imagine her smile. “Who are the ‘terrorists’?” Umm Zayneb whispered, slowly reaching over to point at Zainab’s photo. “Is she the ‘terrorist’?”

Umm Zainab and her neighbors endured the sheer terror of being monitored, constantly, by those evidently willing and certainly able to kill their children.

In Beirut, Lebanon, during the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war, Farah Mokhtarazadei, Kathy Kelly, and Michael Birmingham visit a site which was bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces. [Source: Ramzi Kysia]

Khaisor, Pakistan

I recall hearing an anguished account, in 2009, from a Pakistani man whose village, Khaisor, was struck by drones.

There, village elders, following their custom, had welcomed strangers who asked for a meal. U.S. military drone surveillance was presumably tracking the strangers. The home where the meal was served may have been deemed a Taliban stronghold.

At 4:00 a.m. the following morning, the U.S. bombed the home, killing 14 women and children and two elders.

[Source: infowars.com]

I asked our guest if he could ever imagine people in his village being willing to converse with ordinary U.S. people about possibilities for peace. He looked at me as though I were a bit off my rocker. “Who would ever be so crazy,” he asked, “as to not want peace? We would only ask you to leave your weapons outside.”

Leave the weapons outside. Leave them out of the toolkit. I think this advice can help persuade people, worldwide, to endorse a total ban on development, storage, sale, and use of weaponized and surveillance drones.

The proliferation of weaponized drones threatens people throughout the world, making it easier than ever for militaries to wage war. See the long list of hundreds of drone attacks in Pakistan alone.

Drone technology makes assassination physically safer for the perpetrator, thus encouraging nation-states to use assassination as a basic element of foreign policy.

Not only countries but also insurgent groups and paramilitaries continually acquire and use drones, raising possibilities for retaliation, blowback and mistrust.

Clearly, assassination and killing on suspicion violate the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Whoever gives the order becomes the judge, jury and executioner, unchecked by due process.

The targeted person or group never has an opportunity to appear before a court of law.

Between 2010 and 2019, I visited the Afghan Peace Volunteers (APVs) in Kabul several times a year, making 30 trips in all.

Four blimps steadily hovered over Kabul, equipped with surveillance cameras to constantly film people below. Unseen but likewise functioning as “eyes in the skies” were surveillance and weaponized drones.

These machines acquired hundreds of miles of video footage which was analyzed by teams of U.S. military and intelligence personnel, ostensibly to establish patterns of life in Afghanistan.

I believe far more valuable information is regularly gathered by the APVs who hike up steep mountainsides, along icy paths, during harsh winter months to visit widows and orphans living in hovels, lacking food and clean water.

They sit with the women, accepting tea and the warmth of utterly simple hospitality, while asking basic survey questions: How many times each week does this family eat beans? What is the source for your water? What is your rent? Who earns an income for this family?

Answers are recorded in notepads, and if the last question elicits a response indicating the main income earner is under 12 years of age, that family will likely be invited to participate in APV projects helping families to survive.

Afghan peace volunteers. [Source: charterforcompassion.org]

The APVs have enabled widows to earn a living wage by manufacturing heavy blankets which are then distributed free of charge at refugee camps in Kabul. They have also developed programs for “street kids,” helping them become literate and rely on a caring community.

An estimated 600,000 children hawk goods like tissues and cigarettes on the streets of Kabul to earn money for their displaced families who have fled to refugee camps.

I remember seeing my young friend, Habib, at work in a Kabul street. In one hand, he carried a scale, his other hand holding the hand of his younger brother. He earned a meager wage by placing the scale on the ground so that people could weigh themselves.

He and his brother would then return to their home which consisted of a piece of plastic held up by four poles. For warmth, they relied on blankets issued by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

The young APV surveys actually do help establish patterns of information about daily life in Kabul, and the information truthfully pertains to life and death matters, as well as imminent needs.

A recent assessment of Afghanistan’s crisis in terms of food insecurity notes that 13 million people are projected to face a “Crisis” or higher levels of food insecurity by March 2021. More than 40% of Afghanistan’s children are acutely malnourished. Covid-19 impacts, high food prices, reduced income and ongoing conflict are key drivers of food insecurity.

Drones criss-crossing the skies and hunting for high-value targets create a distraction from actual crises afflicting people in Afghanistan. Instead of suggesting ways to alleviate suffering, U.S. drone surveillance potentially sets the stage for criminal assassination. What’s more, people learn very little about the consequences of these attacks.

Consider, for example, the plight of Afghan laborers, in September 2019, who were hired to collect pine nuts. Their employer had already notified provincial authorities, by letter, that migrant laborers would encamp outside his farm.

On September 17, 2019, exhausted from their day’s work, about 150 migrant laborers set up an overnight camp. In the early hours of the following morning, a U.S. drone attacked, killing at least 32 people. More than 40 others were wounded. The U.S. military claims ISIS fighters were hiding among those who were killed.

There are no reports to help us know the names and ages of those who were killed or to learn what help was available for the wounded. How many were children?

In a remote, rural area of eastern Afghanistan, what are the odds of maimed and wounded survivors being offered X-rays, surgery, or medication?

As part of a broader effort to sell more weapons overseas, the Trump administration, in July 2020, relaxed rules regarding export of aerial drones to U.S. allies.

This was a change long sought by drone manufacturers such as General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, maker of the MQ-9 Reaper.

Under President Trump, the U.S.’s easing of restrictions on aerial strikes led to an increase of attacks across the Middle East, Afghanistan and neighboring countries.

For example, according to Neta Crawford’s research for the Cost of War Project, U.S. and allied air strikes in Afghanistan killed 700 civilians in 2019—the largest annual casualty count since the beginning of the war in Afghanistan over 19 years ago.

“Funeral of Afghanistan’s latest drone strike victims in Nangarhar province,” journalist Emran Feroz wrote on Twitter. “Like many others, they will remain nameless & invisible.” (Photo: @Emran_Feroz/Twitter)

By August 2019, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented 4,251 aerial strikes in Afghanistan for that year alone, saying this was more than double the total in all of 2018 and noting that most aerial strikes in Afghanistan came from drones.

Drone U.S. Strikes in Afghanistan

Total U.S. Drone Strikes in Afghanistan. (January 2004 to February 2020) [Source: thebureauinvestigates.com]

Biden has never publicly criticized President Obama’s legacy of expanding the use of drones, and his pick for top spy chief, Avril Haines, played a central role in Obama’s secretive drone war.

Former Deputy National Security Adviser Avril Haines (standing, center) has ben picked as President-elect Joe Biden's Director of National Intelligence. (Photo: Pete Souza/White House)

Former Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines (center, standing) jokes with then-President Barack Obama and his National Security Adviser, Susan Rice (L), and Homeland Security Adviser Lisa Monaco in the White House on December 5, 2015.(Photo: Pete Souza/White House) 

Writing for The Intercept, Elise Swain notes that Biden has pledged to end “endless wars” and has advocated for a strategy of “counterterrorism plus,” relying on a combination of Special Forces and aerial strikes.

But if President Biden wants to end endless wars, he should completely scrap reliance on militarism and weapons to solve problems. Taking weapons out of the toolkit pushes people in powerful places to stop provoking cold wars and the proxy wars they spawn.

Banning weaponized and surveillance drones would enhance our capacity to work toward meeting human needs. Countries could free up scientists and innovators to collectively tackle the greatest terrors we face, such as the terrors related to climate catastrophes, the likelihood of ongoing pandemics, the threat of nuclear annihilation, and the suffering caused by vast income inequities.

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Kathy Kelly is a peace activist and author whose efforts to end military and economic wars have sometimes led her to live in war zones and U.S. federal prisons. She can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image: Organized by Veterans for Peace, large demonstration at General Atomics where attack drones are made. (Poway, California) [Source: worldbeyondwar.com]

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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In his first publicly acknowledged military act as commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden orders an assault on Syria, and proves that when it comes to solving the many problems of the region, he’s no better than Trump, or Obama.

President Biden ordered US military aircraft to strike targets on Syrian soil that the US claims were affiliated with two pro-Iranian militias, Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada. The US, working closely with Iraqi security services, has implicated Iranian-backed Shia militias in a recent rocket attack on a US airbase in Erbil, Iraq, that killed a foreign contractor employed by the US and wounded four American contractors and a US service member.

A Pentagon spokesperson, John Kirby, called the attack, which was carried out by US F-15E aircraft and killed up to 17 people, a “proportionate military response” designed to send “an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki noted that the strike was part of a calculated response “using a mix of tools seen and unseen.” Psaki sought to differentiate the actions of the Biden administration from previous airstrikes undertaken during the Trump administration against the exact same target, for precisely the same reasons, a little more than a year ago. “What we will not do,” Psaki noted, “and what we’ve seen in the past, is lash out and risk an escalation that plays into the hands of Iran by further destabilizing Iraq.”

So that’s all clear and ok, then…or is it?

Airstrikes in the time of Trump

Back in December 2019, then-President Trump ordered US forces to strike targets located in and around the town of Abu Kamal, on the Syrian side of the Syria-Iraq border, opposite the Iraqi town of Al Qaim. The Syrian garrison at Abu Kamal had been reinforced by pro-Iranian Iraqi militias, in particular Kataib Hezbollah, in an effort to cut off forces affiliated with the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) trapped in Syria from their base of support in Iraq. Abu Kamal was also an important logistics support hub for supplies trucked in from Iran to pro-Iranian forces operating inside Syria.

The US airstrike on Christmas Day 2019 was ordered by President Trump in retaliation for a rocket attack on a US airbase at K-1, in Kurdish-controlled Iraq, that killed a US civilian contractor.

While the US blamed Iran and Kataib Hezbollah for the attack, Iraqi security forces believed that the real perpetrators were Iraqi insurgents sympathetic to IS. The airstrikes on Abu Kamal reportedly killed at least 25 militiamen and wounded 55 more, setting off a wave of protests inside Iraq which culminated in a mob overrunning parts of the US Embassy compound in Baghdad.

The US responded to the assault on the embassy by dispatching thousands of troops into the region, and ordering the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force which oversees cooperation between Iran and pro-Iranian militias, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the head of the Popular Mobilization Committee, an umbrella organization under which Kataib Hezbollah fell.

These two murders prompted a retaliatory strike by Iran against a US airbase inside Iraq that injured more than 100 American servicemembers, and brought Iran and the US to the brink of war. It was this cycle of escalation that Jen Psaki was referring to in her statement following the Biden-ordered airstrike of February 25.

It’s Joe time

While Kirby and Psaki have both espoused an official Biden administration position that tries to differentiate itself from the actions and policies of its predecessor, the reality is that the actions of the Biden administration, in bombing Syria, are just as ill-informed and wrong-headed as those which brought the US and Iran to the brink of war in early 2020.

Like the Trump administration before him, Biden and his advisers have shown that they are just as capable of misreading the facts on the ground in the Middle East, drawing the wrong conclusions, and developing solutions that only exacerbate an already dangerous situation. “We know what we hit,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin commented after the attack. “We’re confident that the target was being used by the same Shia militia that conducted the strikes.”

Austin’s confidence, however, does not jive with the facts. The Iraqi militias stationed at Abu Kamal denied any involvement in the Erbil rocket attacks (indeed, both are affiliated with the Iraqi government, having been officially absorbed into the Iraqi security services).

The militia that did claim responsibility, Awliya al-Dam, was formed in the aftermath of the assassination of Soleimani and al-Muhandis, from militia members belonging to Kaitab Hezbollah splitting from that organization in order to exact revenge against the US once it became clear that Kaitab Hezbollah would follow the instructions of the Iraqi government to not escalate the situation further.

While US intelligence believes that Awliya al-Dam was created to give Kaitab Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian militias plausible deniability regarding continued rocket attacks against US targets inside Iraq, regional experts believe that the split is genuine, and that the actions of Awliya al-Dam cannot be conflated with Kaitab Hezbollah or any other pro-Iranian militia operating as part of the Iraqi security services.

Compounding concerns that the US, by bombing Iraqi militias based in Syria whose mission is to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State, is once again seeking a solution to a problem it has incompetently defined, is the fact that the Biden administration has sought to color the February 25 airstrike as a “message” to Iran regarding other regional events which have nothing whatsoever to do with either the attack on Erbil, or the forces based in Abu Kamal that were bombed by the US in retaliation.

The Syrian government condemned the US airstrike, noting that the attack came at the same time that the Syrian Army and the Iraqi militias based in Abu Kamal were engaged in ongoing operations against Islamic State.

An optics nightmare

The complete lack of recognition by the Biden administration regarding the optics of being seen to be giving air support to IS escapes those who have articulated in favor of the assault.

The same applies to the seeming disconnect between those who view the Biden-ordered air attack as a measure designed to rein in Iranian regional malfeasance while keeping open the door for diplomatic engagement regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

Iran has been critical in the past of the US’ willingness to violate both international and US domestic law when it comes to pursuing policies aimed at keeping Iran in its place. If nuclear talks with Iran are to have any chance of succeeding, the Biden administration will need to convince the Iranian authorities that, unlike the Trump administration, the current iteration of the US government can be expected to obey the law and keep its word.

The US airstrike on Abu Kamal, however, makes a mockery of any such notion. Not only has the Biden administration mirrored the incompetence of the Trump administration when it comes to articulating a compelling reason for striking the targets it did, but its actions fly in the face of the stated moral and legal standards that senior members of the Biden administration had previously espoused when criticizing the actions of the Trump administration.

In 2017, Jen Psaki questioned the “legal authority” for airstrikes on Syria ordered by Trump in retaliation for thinly sourced allegations of chemical weapons use by the Syrian government. “Assad is a brutal dictator,” Psaki tweeted, “But Syria is a sovereign country.” And in 2018, then-Senator Kamala Harris, commenting on a second round of airstrikes against Syria ordered by the Trump administration, tweeted that she was “deeply concerned about the legal rationale” behind the US use of military force.

Each tweet could be resent today.

And let’s not even go back to the president twice-removed, Biden’s old boss Barack Obama, the man who came to office pledging to end George W. Bush’s wars, but whose last year in office saw America drop 26,171 bombs, many of them on Syria.

Deafening silence

The silence that exists inside Washington, DC regarding the legality of the new US airstrikes against targets inside Syria (a “sovereign nation”, as Jen Psaki once astutely observed) is deafening.

It is too early to tell what impact, if any, the illegal US attack on Syria will have on US-Iranian nuclear negotiations, or whether this attack will trigger yet another cycle of escalating retaliatory violence that could push those two nations to war.

One thing is certain, however – the Biden administration is no different than its predecessor when it comes to incompetently executing policies that fly in the face of both international and US law. To quote The Who’s Roger Daltry, “Meet the new boss – same as the old boss.”

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

Featured image: Vice President Joe Biden, Austin, and Command Sergeant Major Earl Rice, at an event marking the award of the Iraq Commitment Medal in December 2011


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

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The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

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Medical Experts Call for “Immunity Nights”

March 1st, 2021 by Target Liberty

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The Washington Post has published an op-ed by Dorry Segev and Marty Makar, professors at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Because they apparently understand some medicine, Segev and Makar feel comfortable throwing out some central planning ideas.

In their essay, they call for “local lawmakers to allow ‘immunity nights’ or designated days or times for businesses to accommodate immune customers at a higher capacity.”

“It’s time we mature our guidance,” they add.

The “papers please” details:

Here’s how it could work: Businesses such as restaurants would allow those with documentation of immunity to enter with 100 percent capacity during certain times. Documentation could be in the form of an app-based boarding pass or a QR code showing proof of vaccination, antibodies against the disease or a prior positive coronavirus test — similar to arenas scanning tickets or bars checking IDs.

How damn mad can you get?

For a virus that is not a serious threat to 99.9% of the population (and appears to be reaching herd immunity), these two want to launch a documentation program?

Do they have any sense of history and understanding of how government often expands its authoritarian grip one step at a time? Do they not know that you should never create another crack in the wall by which government authoritarian measures can be expanded, especially when it comes to tracking and “papers please”?

Have Segev and Makar ever heard of freedom where businesses can each choose their own guidelines, especially for a virus that is not a serious threat to 99.9% of the population?

Remarkably, their essay discusses all kinds of objections to their plan but never goes near the foundations. Not once is it discussed what is wrong with the argument raised by those who point to the fact that the low risk of the virus causing a serious consequence means no special measures are required. They don’t discuss the unknown long-term effects of the vaccine, nor do they address the objections to the suffocation of basic freedoms that they support via their authoritarian government tracking plan. Or have they not even thought of these objections?

My view of “follow the science” takes its lead from Richard Feynman who wrote, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”

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Featured image is from Target Liberty