Global Research

While the “Coronavirus crisis” continues to cause devastating socio-economic consequences also in Italy, a large part of the “Recovery Fund” is destined not to the most affected economic and social sectors, but to the most advanced sectors of the war industry.

According to the EU Recovery Fund, Italy should receive € 209 billion over the next six years, of which about 81 is for grants and 128 for loans to be repaid with interest. In the meantime, the Defense and Economic Development Ministries have presented a list of military projects for an amount of approximately 30 billion euros (Defense Analysis, from the Recovery Fund financing also for Defense, 09-25-2020).

The projects of the Ministry of Economic Development, mainly relating to the military aerospace area, foresee an expenditure of 25 billion euros from the Recovery Fund. After the F-35 fifth generation, the Ministry intends to invest in a sixth-generation fighter, the Tempest, called “the plane of the future.”

Other investments concern the production of new generation military helicopters / tiltrotors, capable of vertical take off and landing, and flying at high speed. At the same time, the Ministry will invest in next-generation drones and naval units, and advanced underwater technologies. Large investments are also expected in the space and satellite technology field.

Several of these technologies, including 5G communication systems, will be for military and civilian dual use. Since some of the military projects presented by the two departments overlap, the Ministry of Economic Development has drawn up a new list that makes it possible to reduce its spending to 12.5 billion euros.

In addition to these expenses, more than 35 billion is allocated for military purposes by Italian governments for the period 2017-2034, largely in the budget of the Ministry of Economic Development.

These expenses are added to the budget of the Ministry of Defense, bringing Italian military spending to over 26 billion per year, equivalent to an average of over 70 million euros per day, in public money subtracted from social expenses. A figure Italy is engaged to with NATO, as requested by the United States, to increase to an average of about 100 million euros per day. The allocation for this purpose of a large part of the Recovery Fund will allow Italy to reach this level.

Among the military industries, in the front row, pressing the government to increase the military share of the Recovery Fund, is Leonardo Ltd, whose 30% shareholding is owned by the Ministry of Economic Development.

The Leonardo group is integrated in the gigantic US military-industrial complex headed by Lockheed Martin, builder of the F-35 whose production Leonardo himself participates in with the factory in Cameri. Leonardo defines itself as a “global player in Aerospace, Defense and Security,” with the mission of “protecting citizens.”


This demonstrates what the company intends to do by using its influence and power to steal vital resources from citizens, and from the “Recovery Fund,” for a further acceleration in the “recovery” of the war industry – resources that we will always pay for, increased by interest. In this way we will be paying for “the plane of the future,” which will protect us and ensure a future of wars. 

(the manifesto, 13 October 2020)

Today Cuba obtained a new and resounding victory in the UN Human Rights Council, gaining election to the body for the 2021-2023 period.

Despite the aggressive campaign by the United States against the Cuban candidacy for the Council, the General Assembly elected Cuba as a member with 170 votes out of 193 possible.

With this victory the Caribbean nation reaffirms its commitment to an international order based on inclusion, social justice, human dignity, mutual understanding, and the promotion and respect of cultural diversity, a press release from the Cuban mission to the United Nations indicated.

At the same time, this statement adds, it demolishes the current maneuvers of the United States administration, who lost ground in their slandering of Cuba’s exemplary human rights record.

“The Caribbean island will continue to defend dialogue and cooperation with its own voice, in favor of all rights for all people.”

According to a note from the Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry, the nation presented its candidacy to the Human Rights Council, proud to be among the countries whose governments have done much to achieve the widest possible enjoyment of all human rights for all their citizens.

Electa #Cuba al Consejo de Derechos Humanos por 170 votos, el 88 % de los miembros de @UN

Nuestro país es parte de 44 de los 61 instrumentos internacionales de DDHH, cuyo cumplimiento reporta a ONU

A pesar de la campaña de desprestigio, los logros de Cuba no pueden ser opacados pic.twitter.com/PNjp7NDNIw

— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) October 13, 2020

Cuba is a founding member of the Human Rights Council, created in 2006; it held a seat for two consecutive periods until December 2012, and years later it held a seat for two more consecutive periods (2014-2016 and 2017-2019).

In this capacity Cuba presented resolutions on the right to food, cultural rights and cultural diversity, and on the effects of foreign debt on the enjoyment of human rights, in particular economic, social and cultural rights, among others.

The active participation of the largest of the Antillean isles in that body also resulted in the renewal of the mandate of the independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order.

The United Nations Human Rights Council was established on March 15, 2006 and is currently made up of 47 UN member states, which are elected directly and secretly in the General Assembly.

As established, this body that meets at the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland, is responsible for the promotion and protection of human rights throughout the world and has the capacity to debate various interconnected issues.

Cuba is recognized as a country firmly committed to building an increasingly just society concerned with the wellness of the human being and with social justice. The country obtained the secret, direct and individual vote of 170 members of the UN General Assembly, which the island sees as “the result of respect and admiration for the humanist work of the Cuban Revolution.”

According to the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations,

“the self-determination and resistance of the Cuban people in the face of serious obstacles and threats caused by the unilateral policy of hostility, aggression, and the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States, is honored in this way.

“It is also a recognition of the significant progress that Cubans have made in the enjoyment of all their rights, and of their extensive record of international cooperation in the field of human rights, demonstrating through concrete facts their unequivocal willingness to respect frank and open dialogue ”added the statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Greater Antilles will be accompanied in this body by Bolivia, China, Ivory Coast, Gabon, France, Malawi, Mexico, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Senegal, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and the United Kingdom.

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Featured image is file photo

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on Thursday that he tasked a Pentagon-funded university to focus half of its curriculum on China. The move is a testament to the shift in the US military’s focus from terrorism to so-called “great power competition,” as outlined in the 2018 National Defense Strategy.

“As part of our top-10 goal to focus the department on China, I directed the National Defense University to refocus its curriculum by dedicating 50 percent of the coursework to China by academic year 2021,” Esper said at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation.

The National Defense University is a higher-learning facility run by the Pentagon that offers graduate programs mostly to members of the US military.

“I also tasked the military services to make the People’s Liberation Army [China’s military] the pacing threat in our professional schools, programs and training,” the Pentagon chief said.

Esper also warned of the threat China and Russia pose to US global hegemony.

“Our strategic competitors China and Russia are attempting to erode our hard-earned gains,” he said.

The former Raytheon lobbyist also touted a new plan to increase the fleet of the US Navy that Esper has dubbed “Battle Force 2045.” The plan calls for the Navy to have a 500 ship fleet by 2045. Currently, the US Navy has just under 300 battle-ready ships.

The Pentagon released its annual report on China’s military in September. The report says China has the world’s largest navy and has “an overall battle force of approximately 350 ships and submarines.”

Despite having more ships, China’s navy is vastly smaller than Washington’s in terms of tonnage. One example of this is the number of aircraft carriers each nation has, with the US having eleven aircraft carriers, while China only has two.

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Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

Background

The fourth batch of Yemeni detainees has arrived the in Sana’a as part of the largest prisoner swap between the country’s warring sides. The residents in the capital received 112 prisoners after their plane landed in the Sana’a international airport. 1-thousand 81 men will be released in two days.

A two-day prisoner swap between Yemen’s warring sides is underway. The move is part of a deal reached last month in Switzerland. Here is a report:

Yemen’s warring sides are exchanging detainees in the largest prisoner swap between the Ansarullah movement and the Saudi-backed former regime. One-thousand eighty-one men will be freed in a two-day swap. –Hussein al-Bukhaiti – Political Commentator

The exchange was agreed last month after a week of negotiations in Switzerland. The prisoner swap is being overseen by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Analysts believe the exchange is a victory for Yemen’s Ansarullah movement. – Naseh Shaker – Political Analyst

Ansarullah Spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam says the swap brings hope for peace-building. The United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths also hailed the success of the operation.

“Today’s release operation, led by the I-C-R-C, is another sign that peaceful dialogue can deliver. I hope the parties will soon reconvene under UN auspices to discuss the release of all conflict-related prisoners and detainees.” – Martin Griffiths, UN special envoy for Yemen.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to bring former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power.

But the campaign that was supposed to last only a few months is raging on more than five years later now. The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has killed more than 100-thousand people, mostly civilians.

Saudi Arabia’s US-backed deadly war and an all-out blockade against Yemen, in tandem with outbreaks of cholera and now the covid-19 pandemic, have left some 24 million Yemenis, or 80% of the population, in need of aid. 20 million Yemenis also lack sufficient food supplies and access to clean water.

Riyadh has so far turned a deaf ear to all humanitarian pleas to stop the war. Yemenis say today’s prisoner swap is an important step, but what is necessary as a prelude to stop the conflict is an end to Saudi Arabia’s aggression and blockade.

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PressTV: Tell me the significance of this prisoner swap.

Peter Koenig: A prisoner swap is always a positive sign. It could be a first step to a cease fire – and leading hopefully to Peace negotiations.

At the outset, yes it may look like a victory, perhaps rather a “first step” towards peace, because victory is saying a lot —- of the Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, actually for better understanding it is the Houthi Shia’ movement.

All depends on what the Saudis will do next.

If they get instructions from the US and the UK and other European allies, like France – to halt the bombing, then we may be able to talk about an interim success.

The Saudis will do what their western Masters tell them to do.

The Saudis have been mostly a proxy for the US and UK. If you look at the map, you see how strategically located Yemen is… and Yemen in control of a left-leaning government, a government that supports the people, supports a move towards democracy, is not what the west wants.

However, the US has already reached a little talked-about target, namely to set up via the UAE (United Arab Emirates) a military base on Socotra, a beautiful island with some 60,000 inhabitants off the Yemeni Coast, off Aden, in the Gulf of Aden.

On 8 September 2020, politicians in Aden reported that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has begun building two military camps on Yemen’s Socotra island. In this case it is the UAE building the military camps, what will eventually become a military base, to which the US and western allies will have access.

The UAE were supporting Saudi Arabia in the fight against the Yemeni Houthis, who were and are fighting for their freedom, autonomy and democracy. The UAE were instrumental in blocking the port of Hudaydah so that no food and vital medicine could enter Yemen. The UAE – close ally to the western powers – is co-responsible for famine, disease – foremost cholera – and death of tens of thousands of children.

So, perhaps UAE military bases on Socotra island, to which the west, i.e. NATO, will have free access, may have been a “chip” in the negotiations for the prisoner exchange. This is of course speculation, but it would make geopolitical sense.

Image on the right is from Al-Masdar News

PressTV: How significant do you think this exchange is where initially the Saudi regime thought that its war on Yemen would only take a month and now more than five and a half years later, Riyadh has had to agree to negotiate with AnsaraAllah?

PK:  What we don’t know is what went on behind closed doors. I understand negotiations on Socotra started already in 2016…
That would be one explanation – another one, more straightforward, is the Irani support the Houthis received.

It wasn’t or isn’t direct weapons support, but military advice and technical support, so that the Yemeni Houthis are able to build their own military precision weapons, like rockets, missiles and drones, and are able to hit with drones’ guided missiles anywhere in Saudi Arabia, as we have seen when Yemeni missiles destroyed a Saudi pipeline last year.

Therefore the Saudi bombing had to go on – with of course weapons – bombs and missiles – supplied by the US, UK, and France. A Financial bonanza for the western weapons industry. War is a very profitable business.

PressTV: The talks leading up to this swap agreement were held in Switzerland. Do you think the so-called international community can play a more active role in trying to bring this war to an end?

PK: The talks were hosted by the International Red Cross (ICRC), that’s why it was taking place in Switzerland.

Yes, I believe the international community should play a much more active role when PEACE is at stake – anywhere in a conflict zone around the world.

Unfortunately, those who have a political weight in the international community are also those who have a vested interest in wars and conflicts – not only weapons sales, also moving a step or two closer to controlling the energy-and other resources-rich Middle East.

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PressTV: Why has Saudi Arabia not been condemned for its blockade on Yemen which is preventing foodstuffs and even medicine from entering the country?

PK: They have been condemned, but not with much noise and only with tiny voices; to no avail, because they got the support from the US, UK, France and Germany. Yes, Russia and China have voiced their opposition to the Saudi / US / UK war on Yemen. But their voices were silenced by the western-bought and oriented media.

We are living in a dystopian world, where rights and international laws do no longer count.

Breaking international laws is the new normal. And the public at large is so used to it, it doesn’t even react.

Laws and international rules are made up by the western powers, as they go along in the process of trying to conquer the world.

Fortunately, we have Russia and China as permanent members in the UN Security Council. Although, the UNSC has not been able to achieve Peace in Yemen – nor in Palestine, for that matter – it is at least a forum which the media cannot simply ignore. And little by little people will recognize who is behind all these conflicts and vested interests.

In the long-run, western powers for absolute dominance will not succeed.

Its not in the laws of nature.

PressTV: The Saudis are well equipped with sophisticated equipment and weapons which they buy from London and Washington despite their many human rights violations in this war. Shouldn’t these two countries be held partially responsible for the death and destruction which has been taking place inside of Yemen?

PK: Absolutely. Of course they should.

They are not only behind the war in Yemen, but they are involved in all the Middle Eastern conflicts, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, now Lebanon – wherever you look it’s the bloody fingerprints of the west, and often Israel acts as a proxy for Washington – almost all conflicts are started by the US, NATO and its European allies.

And not to forget, by western funding of terrorism.

PressTV: We have seen a big difference between the Yemeni fighters during the first year of war until now. It is no longer rare now that the Houthis are able to attack the Saudis. Does this help in being able to negotiate, even in being able to have a prisoner swap?

PK: Yes, probably. The fact is that the Houthis have become much stronger in the past five years of war – which the Saudis started in March 2015, when in the US the Obama Administration was still in power.

The Houthis have made technological advances in building their own drones, missiles, and rockets. They have shown the Saudis that they have the precision and capacity to attack Saudi Arabian targets practically anywhere in the Saudi territory. This is impressive and surely may have had a crucial influence in this first step of a prisoner exchange; first step to what I hope will be a much more important goal – Peace.

PressTV: Is the lesson learned here that in order to have effective political negotiations, that an entity needs to be strong militarily?

PK: In general, it helps.

We have seen other examples throughout the world, not least, North Vietnam won the war against the South which was basically the US Army, because the North Vietnamese were well equipped and were strategic thinkers. They gained the upper hand – to eventually prompt the US the leave.

So, yes, military strength helps definitely in defining the term to the war or peace process. In this case the AnsaraAllah movement, alias the Houthis military strength and strategic thinking has certainly played a role – reaching the point where they are now; possibly a step away from a Peace Process.

PressTV: Where do you see the situation in Yemen going?

PK: I am optimistic, hoping that the ICRC will involve the UN Security Council in calling for a Cease Fire and Peace Talks. The suffering of a poverty-stricken population without the war, has become atrocious with the war, especially affecting children. The Saudis, helped by the UAE and of course supported by western powers, have literally committed genocide – by depriving the population of vital food and medication imports, causing famine and famine related diseases – and countless death.

PressTV: Do you think the Saudi regime, basically Muhammad bin Salman, is getting to the point that he is ready to negotiate with AnsaraAllah?

PK: Yes, I do hope so. It may not be an easy negotiation, because a “loser” can never admit losing. But I do hope under the guidance of the UN Security Council and the strong presence of Russia and China in the UNSC, negotiations for PEACE may emerge – and that Peace may bring restoration to this devastated country.

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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 online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

“The paintings which I propose to do will depict the struggles of a people to create a nation and their attempt to build a democracy” – this is how Jacob Lawrence described his project in 1954. Over sixty-five years later his proposal has, if anything, become only more urgent. Two days after this exhibition closes, Americans will vote in what is arguably the most significant election in a generation, an election that will measure our commitment to preserving that democracy, the struggle for which was Lawrence’s mighty theme.

Jacob Lawrence is among the most recognized and celebrated African American painters of the twentieth century. Yet the series to which this exhibition is devoted – Struggle: From the History of the American People (1954-56) – has received relatively scant attention. Lawrence intended an immensely ambitious project: a series of sixty paintings beginning with European colonization and ending with World War I and America’s ascendance to the world stage. Ultimately, however, the series would comprise thirty small-scale tempera paintings on hardboard, detailing significant historical moments in the period lasting from 1775 to 1817; moments which will often underscore the role, and the experience, of people of color in the creation of the republic and its formative years.

Harlem Bar

The panels commence with a painting that draws its title from Patrick Henry’s famous “liberty” speech defending the colonial cause: “…Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” We begin, then, with the stirring scene of a crowd that stands roused, their arms upraised, their fists clenched, and their eyes fixed on the commanding orator elevated above the rest. Henry’s right hand grasps a bayonet, while his left hand hovers above the chaotic scene, drawing the viewers eye to a dark wall that drips with blood, reinforcing our awareness of the bloody conflict that is to ensue.

Blind Beggars

This painting is immediately followed by the “Massacre in Boston” – particularly notable for its central foregrounding of a dying Crispus Attucks, the seaman of African and Wampanoag descent who escaped slavery to become the first martyr of the American Revolution. The fifth panel confronts the experience of slavery head-on, drawing its title from the petition of an enslaved man to the Province of Massachusetts Bay: “We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!” It is a frightful scene of violence, with bayonets and knives flashing, naked brown bodies dripping blood, accentuated throughout by Lawrence’s sharp, angular lines.

The ninth installment is “Defeat”, a deeply moving reflection on the physical and emotional toll that military setbacks and the brutal winter took on Washington’s army. We see the backs of the men as they turn away from the dying warhorse that lies partially covered in the foreground, a poignant symbol of their desperate condition. It is an excellent example of Lawrence’s brilliant sense of economy, his ability to compress the greatest amount of meaning and emotional energy within the smallest surface. We are clearly in the presence of an artist who has thought long and deeply about his subject – and indeed we know that he spent “long hours” researching the period at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library (now the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture). Each of his compositions require an active participation on the viewers part, a readiness to engage with Lawrence not only in the exercise of our historical imagination, but in reexamining the ways we reconstruct, and mythologize the past – what gets left out, what is elided, and what is buried.

The next painting – about the crossing of the Delaware River on the night of December 27, 1776 – is a case in point. Lawrence takes a theme which was immortalized in Emanuel Leutze’s, “Washington Crossing the Delaware” (1851), also in the Metropolitan Museum, and transforms the meaning of the event – where it is less about the heroism of one man, General George Washington, and more about the “excessively severe” night, “which the men bore without the least murmur” – to quote from Washington’s military aide Tench Tilghman, whose firsthand observations served as a key source.  In other words, Lawrence underscores the shared, collective struggle, and the bravery, resilience and sheer nerve of all the men who took part.

We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton … the night was excessively severe … which the men bore without the least murmur…-Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776/Struggle Series – No. 10: Washington Crossing the Delaware (Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003) © 2020 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“And a Woman Mans a Cannon” is an important addition to the series because it reminds us that women also took part in the fighting – in particular, Margaret Cochran Corbin, who took her husband’s place when he fell in the Battle of Fort Washington. She boldly fought on until wounded and captured. Lawrence emphasizes her spiritedness and bravery – with her dead husband at her feet, and a pistol at her side, her standing figure extends almost the full height of the panel, imposing, dauntless and resolute.

The fifteenth painting takes its title from the preamble of the Constitution – “We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility…” – and once again Lawrence challenges the tendency to idealize, or in this case to mythologize the making of the constitution in Philadelphia 1787. In Lawrence’s depiction, the delegates are not bathed in heavenly light but in a dark room; they are not all standing erect as if modeling for a statue, but so utterly exhausted they can hardly sit upright; they are not cordially interacting and observing decorum, but gnashing, panting and gesticulating madly as the sweat rolls off their faces. Is it realism then Lawrence is after? Far from it. Seven sword hilts gleam in the foreground, symbolizing the seven states that were needed for ratification. Lawrence is also guided by an idea – the idea that this country was born out of struggle, and conflict, whether on the battlefield or in the halls of state. These delegates who are giving birth to the constitution look as though they are literally suffering the pangs of labor. Lawrence, to his credit, has not forsaken idealism – he has given us an idea that can inspire us today; one that is rooted in action, and sacrifice, courage and perseverance in defeat.

…is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the prices of chains and slavery? Patrick Henry-1775 (Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross) © 2020 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The eighteenth panel captures a memorable moment from the expedition of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. In August of 1805, Clark recorded in his journal that their translator and guide, a Lemhi Shoshone woman named Sacagewea, was reunited with her brother, Chief Cameahwait, from whom she had been separated since childhood. Lawrence depicts this moment of recognition between brother and sister by focusing our attention on their faces, unmistakably tinged with sadness, even as their eyes interlock. Its tenderness is underscored by Lawrence’s title, which records President Jefferson’s order to the explorers to treat all the natives they encounter “in the most friendly and conciliatory manner…” The painting becomes a painful reminder of how little the country in fact heeded the example set by Lewis and Clark in their interactions with the indigenous peoples of the American West.

Every panel in the series bears close examination and engagement. Lawrence recognizes the significance of those that have been under-represented, marginalized or oppressed. As he observed: “I don’t see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the negro.” Unfortunately, some of the paintings have been lost and are only known by black and white reproductions, others have been completely lost and only their titles are known. Still, enough remains that this exhibition is a profoundly rewarding experience, coming at a time when we desperately need to reinvigorate our commitment to democracy and universal enfranchisement, to the struggle against authoritarianism, and the cult of personality.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City.

“ A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth”. That is the threshold that Gates has established for ending the global lockdown.”

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– Robert F Kennedy Jr [1]

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According to the most recent poll conducted by the research firm Leger, roughly two out of every three Canadians intend to get the vaccine for COVID, once it has been approved by Health Canada. Only 17% of the Canadian population said “no.” [2]

That makes a certain amount of sense if you factor in the panic generated by the Sars-CoV-2 virus. No other known bug has brought our society to the point of shutting down. No one ever witnessed the economic desecration. None saw countries closing their borders. And now, many are starting to see face masks and social distancing as the new normal. So, if the promise that the world will return to pre-pandemic normal, once that magical elixir has been constructed, who wouldn’t risk the shot?

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a major booster of immunization. He claims that vaccines are to credit for the near annihilation of smallpox, polio and other feared diseases. Now he promises that the COVAX facility, co-led by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the WHO, will be delivering two billion doses of the COVID vaccine by the end of next year. [3]

The pharmaceutical corporations driving the vaccine push will certainly make tons of money getting a shot distributed to hundreds of millions around the world. But might there also be a risk associated with it? Is there another agenda that the authorities may be pursuing that patients may not even be aware of that will affect not only their health, but their prospect of freedom? This is the question that the Global Research News Hour investigates in part four of this special series on Coronavirus.

In our first half hour, the Global Research News Hour reassembles three of the guests from past episodes of this series, Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Meryl Nass MD, and Docs for an Open Debate, share their reservations about the COVID vaccine. In our second half hour, Peter Koenig, an economist and geopolitical analyst with background at the WHO, brings forward his perspective that includes an ID2020 nanochip that could ultimately raise the threat to a new level.

Sucharit Bhakdi, MD is a physician and  a post-doctoral researcher. He was named chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz in 1990, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. He has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology, and parasitology, for which he has received numerous awards and the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate. He is a specialist in microbiology and one of the most cited research scientists in German history. His book, co-authored by Karina Reiss, is Corona: False Alarm? Facts and Figures. 

Docs for Open Debate is a group in Belgium doctors and health professionals intent on demanding more critical analysis of the pandemic fight, relaxation of the extreme emergency measures, and freedom to express their positions on mainstream media. They crafted an open letter to this end which has so far been signed by 515 physicians and 1767 medically trained health professionals. Their site is docs4opendebate.be

Meryl Nass, MD is a General Internal Medicine Physician with 40 years of experience. She is an epidemic and anthrax expert and composes a series of blogs for the site Anthrax Vaccine as well as Global Research. She’s based in Ellsworth, Maine.

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 online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 291)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM in Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/moderna-covid-vaccine-trials/5713705
2. https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Legers-Weekly-Survey-October-13th-2020.pdf
3. https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/08/1070912

What’s happening in the US — with no significant relief in prospect — is unparalleled in the the nation’s history.

Unemployment, growing poverty, food insecurity, and overall deprivation are growing, not easing — while politicians in Washington prioritize war-making and self-interest over essential aid to needy households, small businesses, as well as cash-strapped states and local communities.

Both right wings of the US one-party state are guilty of crimes against humanity at home and worldwide.

Whatever the outcome of November 3 elections, nothing fundamental will change — unacceptable continuity assured like nearly always before.

On Thursday, another 898,000 jobless Americans filed new claims for unemployment insurance (UI).

Another 373,000 applied for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) — the federal program for workers ineligible for regular UI.

If not renewed, PUA will expire at yearend.

For the past 30 weeks, numbers of jobless US workers filing for unemployment benefits were double or more the highest ever single week total in US history.

What should make regular headlines gets short shrift at best.

The NYT gave the latest report scant attention, nothing on its front page about what should have been top-featured.

Separately, brief Times coverage of the latest filings for unemployment benefits published the wrong total.

Instead of 898,000 applying for UI, it reported 885,000 — omitting PUA filings.

Its business section published the correct number of UI filings, including mention of PUA ones.

WaPo was also dismissive about another 1.3 million Americans filing for unemployment benefits — burying the news in a related report, saying the following:

“The number of new unemployment claims jumped last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday.”

No further elaboration was given, nothing about unprecedented numbers of jobless workers in need of federal aid to survive.

WaPo’s business section gave the news more attention, calling rising UI filings “a sign that recovery (sic) could be stalling.”

You’d think that when 1.3 million or more unemployed Americans file UI claims for 30 straight weeks it would be headline news — not in the US by most establishment media.

The Wall Street Journal gave the news prominent, but incomplete, coverage.

Its report omitted PUA claims, failing to explain that another 1.3 million jobless US workers filed for unemployment benefits in the latest week — not 898,000 alone.

To its credit, the Journal’s report explained the dismal state of the US jobs market in detail.

Federally funded $600 in weekly benefits expired at end of July.

Congress and the White House failed to agree on extending what’s vitally needed.

On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader McConnell said the body will consider a small relief bill next week.

During the greatest ever US Great Depression that’s likely to be long-lasting, things worsening before improving at an unknown time ahead, small isn’t good enough when large-scale help is essential — now.

Before economic crisis happened this year, growing poverty in the US was the new normal

Today after economic collapse occurred, a grimmer new normal faces growing millions of Americans.

Without jobs and federal aid, when unemployment benefits end in the coming weeks, they’ll be no income without substantial federal help.

Today, millions of Americans are hard-pressed to pay rent, service mortgages, feed family members, afford medical care, and be able to have other essentials to life, health and well-being.

According to FoodPolitics.com, numbers of Americans “who say they cannot always afford enough food hit the highest level on record,” notably “among families with young children.”

Black households are hit hardest. They’re twice as likely as their white counterparts to face food insecurity. Latino households are nearly as hard hit.

Food, Research and Action Center president Luis Guardia said Covid related lockdowns “wreaked havoc on so many things: on public health, on economic stability and obviously on food insecurity.”

According to a Northwestern University report, food insecurity doubled because of economic crisis conditions — affecting about one in four households.

About 30% of US households with children are food insecure, the report explained.

Feeding America estimates that around 54 million people “face hunger and food insecurity every day” in 2020.

According to data reported by Axios.com, 103 million working-age Americans are considered “not in the labor force,” not unemployed.

It’s why official Labor Department reports distort reality.

Based on how calculated pre-1990, real US unemployment is 26.9% — not the phony BLS 7.86% figure, an affront to tens of millions of Americans who want work but can’t find it for lack of jobs.

Layoffs are rising, not falling. Greater numbers of furloughed workers lost jobs permanently.

Looking ahead to 2021 — regardless of November election results — hard times in the US are likely to get harder.

A weak economy at year’s end 2019 collapsed because of unacceptable Covid-related shutdown.

The toll from this policy has been infinitely more harmful to countless millions of Americans and the economy overall than public health concerns over

Covid disease.

In late August, Biden said the following:

“I would be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives (sic). We cannot get the country moving until we control the virus (sic).”

Civid is an illness, not a virus, a somewhat more contagious version of seasonal flu/influenza.

The latter is an annual occurrence in the US and most other countries — unaccompanied by fear-mongering induced mass hysteria and destructive shutdowns.

Asked if he’d shut down US economic activity if advised to take this step by “scientists,” Biden said: “I would shut it down.”

If he defeats Trump in November, his domestic agenda may worsen economic crisis conditions.

Trump is wrong on countless issues — his opposition to another shutdown, not one of them.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Falling Darkness

Weapons-makers — aka merchants of death and mass destruction — fuel conflicts when occur.

The US by far dominates the global arms trade. 

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the US accounted for 36% of major conventional weapons sales from 2015 – 2019.

Throughout most of the post-WW II period, the US dominated the global arms market.

Arms and security expert William Hartung explained that for 25 of the past 26 years, “the United States has been the leading arms dealer on the planet, at some moments in near monopolistic fashion.”

Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries are major buyers of US arms.

In areas where large amounts of heavy weapons are sold, wars often follow.

For nearly three weeks, Azerbaijan’s war on Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK below) has been raging.

All-out efforts by Russia to broker a ceasefire haven’t taken hold.

Israel and Turkey are major suppliers of heavy weapons to Baku. The Jewish state reportedly provided 61% of its weapons last year — based on SIPRI data.

They include Israel’s IAI Harop, a loitering munition called a “suicide drone” — self-destructing when striking a target.

The Jewish state is also supplying missiles and banned cluster munitions.

Since conflict began in late September, Israel shipped significant amounts of arms to Azerbaijan.

According to the Asia Times, citing an anonymous Israeli war ministry “senior” official, “Azerbaijan would not be able to continue its operation at this intensity without our support.”

The anonymous Israeli source said they’ve been regular airlifts of heavy weapons to the country.

Azeri officials acknowledged buying them. In response to Israel’s involvement as an arms supply, Armenia recalled its envoy to the country.

While Israel has diplomatic relations with both countries, it’s more strategically tied to Azerbaijan.

According to the Asia Times, citing unexplained leaks, Azerbaijan “permitted Israel to use its airfields to strike nuclear targets in the Islamic Republic.”

In August, a spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said a July explosion causing damage to its Natanz nuclear site was “sabotage.”

Other Iranian officials believe cyber-sabotage was behind the blast, Israel and/or the US perhaps responsible for what happened.

The Asia Times also said that “Israeli intelligence has reportedly utilized Azerbaijani infrastructure to create listening posts and gather critical Iranian security information,” adding:

“These actions place Baku at great risk of Iranian retaliation. On Tuesday, Iran said its forces had shot down an Israeli-made drone that veered from the fighting in Karabakh on its territory.”

Turkey also is a major arms supplier to Baku.

Based on Turkish Exporters’ Assembly data, Reuters reported the following:

“Turkey’s military exports to its ally Azerbaijan have risen six-fold this year, with sales of drones and other military equipment rising to $77 million last month alone before fighting broke out over the (NK) region.”

From January through September this year, Turkey reportedly sold Azerbaijan around $123 million worth of heavy weapons — especially in August and September ahead of all-out Azeri war on Armenia in NK.

Russia supplies arms to both countries.

Sputnik News head Dmitry Kiselev spoke with Armenian and Azeri leaders.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called things in NK “very tense…a lot of losses on both sides.”

Weapons used by warring sides include “tanks, drones, aircraft and helicopters, armored vehicles, artillery, rocket artillery and so on.”

“And a lot of soldiers and troops are involved in these military activities.”

“I mean that very large-scale and fierce battles are going on.”

Pashinyan added that “there is concrete evidence that terrorist fighters from Syria are fighting” in NK.

“Turkey is the main sponsor of this war. Turkey has hired and deployed these terrorist fighters…”

As for compromises with Baku to end fighting, Pashinyan said (t)here is such a line…”

“It’s the right to self-determination of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. And at all times, Armenia was ready for such a compromise.”

“Azerbaijan refused to sign” an agreement on this issue, he claimed.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told Sputnik’s Kiselev that “Pashinyan is” supported by George Soros.

Aliyev’s position is that “under no circumstances can the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan be compromised, under no circumstances can Azerbaijan agree to recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

The enclave in Azeri territory has a majority Armenian population.

“Baku sees Karabakh…as a war of liberation, while Yerevan views it as conquest,” said Kiselev.

Differences between both sides are longstanding and deep-seated — why attempts to resolve fighting failed to succeed so far.

Aliyev believes that “the Armenian community and the Azerbaijani one can peacefully live and coexist in Nagorno-Karabakh in the future.”

They’re caught in the middle of fierce fighting. Unknown numbers of civilians were killed or wounded.

Aliyev claimed his forces destroyed over $1 billion worth of Armenian military equipment.

While each side blames the other for ongoing fighting, Baku launched it. Yerevan responded defensively.

On Thursday, Pashinyan urged the US and France to join with Russian efforts for ceasefire and conflict resolution diplomacy.

He called the humanitarian situation in NK “more than serious.”

He said what’s going on in the enclave is the result of “Turkey’s expansionist and imperialistic policies.”

He called Armenia “the last barrier to Turkey’s expansion to the east and southeast.”

Resolving weeks of fighting proved to be no simple matter.

Interviewed by RT, foreign doctors in NK to treat the wounded expressed “shock” over the severity of what they’ve seen — “horrible injuries,” according to one doctor saying:

“Some will die. Some will be disabled. It’s very hard from a psychological point of view. It’s a real shock for us…”

“(X)-rays show splintered bones and torn muscles…(H)igh energy explosives leave incomparable damage.”

In all wars, civilians suffer most. In NK, they’re hunkered down in basements, wanting an end to fighting.

The longer it continues, the greater the danger to their lives and welfare.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Joseph Biden was asked during a recent interview on MSNBC whether he thought domestic unrest would occur in the streets of the United States if all votes were not counted on November 3, throwing the outcome of the upcoming presidential election into question.

He replied by saying,

“I’m not going even to entertain that, because I’m not anticipating that will happen…. The last thing we need is the equivalent of a coup.  I mean, this is not who we are.”

History refutes Biden’s claim.  The United States perpetrates coup d’états.  It does so often.  And it does so without apology.

Did Ukraine cross Biden’s mind when he was asked whether the legitimacy of the imminent American presidential election might be called into question?  He was Barack Obama’s point man in the aftermath of the U.S. sponsored coup in 2014 that used neo-Nazis to bring sycophants of the IMF to power in Kiev precipitating a civil war.

And what about Honduras, where Obama passively accepted a coup against the democratically elected Zelaya government in 2009 that was undertaken by military graduates of the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia?

Exactly how would Biden characterize the removal of Muammar Gaddafi from power by Islamic extremists and NATO bombing in Libya as engineered by Obama in 2011, an action he and Secretary Clinton fully endorsed?  A coup? Regime change? Biden has a history of vocally supporting the latter while calling it humanitarian intervention.

Biden fully advocated Obama’s dirty war on Syria that began in 2011, to dislodge the Ba’athist government of Bashar al-Assad from power.  If elected president, he pledges to increase military spending and keep troops in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan as part of a broader plan to pressure Assad and confront Russia and Iran in the Middle East.

Biden is a neoliberal interventionist who is on the record as voting for Bush Jr’s war in Iraq that toppled the Ba’athist government of Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 after covert war planners realized that a coup could not eliminate the Iraqi president because of impenetrable security measures taken by the Iraqis.

Does Biden know anything about the secret history of U.S. covert interventionism?  How about the events that unfolded in Iran in 1953?  Guatemala in 1954?  Congo (Zaire) in 1960?  South Vietnam in 1963?  Indonesia in 1965?  Dominican Republic in 1961 and 1965?  Greece in 1967?  Chile in 1973?

Do the names Mohammed Mossadegh, Jacobo Arbenz, Patrice Lumumba, Ngo Dinh Diem, Sukarno, Rafael Trujillo, Juan Bosch, George Papandreou and Salvador Allende have any meaning for Biden?

Biden knows the fate of these leaders and the U.S. government’s complicity in their demise in the same way John Gotti and his underboss Sammy Gravano of the Gambino crime family knew the names of the victims on their hit list.

Biden is no less a mafioso than any of the underbosses of New York’s five crime families, having served as Obama’s Vice-President for eight years.  For example, in 2015, he engaged in blackmail by threatening to withhold a billion dollars in U.S. loan guarantees from the leaders of Ukraine unless they fired the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin who was investigating Burisma, an energy company on whose board of directors sat the Vice-President’s son, Hunter Biden.  The prosecutor was fired, and the investigation halted as Biden Jr. collected $83,000 per month to sit on the board of a gas company he knew nothing about in a country whose language he did not speak.

Mafia tactics are part and parcel of American foreign policy as evidenced by the history of U.S. intervention in Cuba.  Besides imposing a 60 year economic embargo on the island, the U.S. government took part with the Italian-American mafia in several failed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.  The mafia had vast holdings in Havana casinos it was trying to protect, while the CIA wanted to safeguard the investments of U.S. corporations and banks in the Caribbean.

Coup d’états are not only reserved for the leaders of foreign government who displease the rulers of empire.

Closer to home, ‘Russiagate’ and ‘Ukrainegate’ were attempts to remove Donald Trump from power by the intelligence community led by the CIA’s John Brennan, the NSA’s James Clapper and the FBI’s James Comey.  They acted at the behest of Hillary Clinton, a member along with husband Bill, of the notorious Clinton crime syndicate of racketeers and war criminals.

Trump, rather than learn from the illegality of the exercise, ordered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a de facto caporegime, to foment a coup in Venezuela by removing President Nicolas Maduro from power in favor of U.S. puppet Juan Guaido.  The coup attempt has failed, but U.S. economic sanctions have killed over 40,000 Venezuelan people.

When examining the history of American coup d’états, the assassination of John Kennedy was the most dramatic.  As was the murder of  Robert Kennedy.  The Kennedy brothers were impediments to the military-industrial complex during the cold war with the Soviet Union that threatened to go nuclear during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the hot war in Vietnam that was so divisive during the tumultuous year of 1968.  Both were killed by acts of state.

The United States only supports elite democracy when the elites serve corporate interests and those of the national security autocracy.  Even within this context, there are intense struggles to determine which faction of the ruling class will hold power.

American citizens should know their choice in the upcoming presidential election is limited to selecting the leader of the Democratic or Republican crime syndicates.  The two-party system of American imperialism works on behalf of a rapacious owing class that uses murder, extortion, sanction, bribery, electoral fraud, war and mass violence to control the world.

There should be no illusion that a vote for the Democrat Biden or the Republican Trump, is a vote for the American political mafia, a ruthless outfit that protects the material interests of the corporate plutocracy in a very unfree global market, proving that capitalism is synonymous with organized crime.

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics of Terrorism, and is available at amazon.com

The World Health Organization’s Regional Director for Europe Hans Kluge says governments should stop enforcing lockdowns, unless as a “last resort,” because the impact on other areas of health and mental well-being is more damaging.

In an interview with Euro News, Kluge cautioned against the imposition of more lockdowns unless they are “absolutely necessary.”

NEW: WHO Europe Director, Hans Kluge tells me, no government should enforce another national lockdown unless it is absolutely necessary, a last resort

He says damage to other health areas, mental health, domestic violence, schools and cancer treatment is too great pic.twitter.com/jzbh9YbH7z

— Darren McCaffrey (@DarrenEuronews) October 13, 2020

“He says damage to other health areas, mental health, domestic violence, schools and cancer treatment is too great,” tweeted reporter Darren McCaffrey.

Kluge’s warning matches that of the WHO’s special envoy on COVID-19, Dr David Nabarro, who recently told the Spectator in an interview that world leaders should stop imposing lockdowns as a reflex reaction because they are making “poor people an awful lot poorer.”

WATCH: Dr David Nabarro, the WHO's Special Envoy on Covid-19, tells Andrew Neil: 'We really do appeal to all world leaders: stop using lockdown as your primary control method'. Watch the full interview here: https://t.co/XLdaedsKVS #SpectatorTV @afneil | @davidnabarro pic.twitter.com/1M4xf3VnXQ

— The Spectator (@spectator) October 9, 2020

It also resonates with numerous other experts who have desperately tried to warn governments that lockdowns will end up killing more people than the virus itself, but have been largely ignored.

Germany’s Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, Gerd Muller, recently warned that COVID-19 lockdowns will result in “one of the biggest” hunger and poverty crises in history.

“We expect an additional 400,000 deaths from malaria and HIV this year on the African continent alone,” Muller said, adding that “half a million more will die from tuberculosis.”

Muller’s comments arrived months after a leaked study from inside the German Ministry of the Interior revealed that the impact of the country’s lockdown could end up killing more people than the coronavirus due to victims of other serious illnesses not receiving treatment.

Another study found that lockdowns will conservatively “destroy at least seven times more years of human life” than they save.

Professor Richard Sullivan also warned that there will be more excess cancer deaths in the UK than total coronavirus deaths due to people’s access to screenings and treatment being restricted as a result of the lockdown.

His comments were echoed by Peter Nilsson, a Swedish professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at Lund University, who said,

“It’s so important to understand that the deaths of COVID-19 will be far less than the deaths caused by societal lockdown when the economy is ruined.”

According to Professor Karol Sikora, an NHS consultant oncologist, there could be 50,000 excess deaths from cancer as a result of routine screenings being suspended during the lockdown in the UK.

Experts have also warned that there will be 1.4 million deaths globally from untreated TB infections due to the lockdown.

As we further previously highlighted, a data analyst consortium in South Africa found that the economic consequences of the country’s lockdown will lead to 29 times more people dying than the coronavirus itself.

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Featured image is a screenshot from a Youtube video

Israel has stopped granting any visas to employees at the United Nations’ human rights agency, effectively forcing the body’s top staff to leave, Middle East Eye can reveal.

In February, Israel announced it was suspending ties with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) after a report highlighted more than 100 companies that work in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Since June all requests for new visas have gone unanswered, with passports sent off for renewals coming back empty.

Nine of the organisation’s 12 foreign staff have now left Israel and the Palestinian territories for fear of being undocumented there, the OHCHR confirmed. Among those is country director James Heenan.

The other three have visas that are due to expire in the coming months. Three staff due to travel to Israel to start their work have been unable to do so.

Israeli and Palestinian staff continue to work and the organisation’s offices have not been closed.

“The absence of international staff from the occupied territory is a highly irregular situation and will negatively impact on our ability to carry out our mandate,” Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the OHCHR, told MEE.

“We continue to hope that this situation will be resolved soon, and we are actively engaged with various relevant and concerned parties to that end.”

All access to the Palestinian territories is controlled by Israel and the country has faced multiple allegations of quashing access to human rights workers in recent years.

Last year, Israel expelled Human Rights Watch’s country director Omar Shakir, after accusing him of supporting calls for a boycott, a claim he denied. Also last year, the Israeli government refused to renew the mandate for an international force that monitored violations in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank.

Shakir said the “forcing out of UN human rights monitors marks yet another attempt by the Israeli government to curtail documentation of its systematic repression of Palestinians”.

“Denying visas in order to punish critics has now become a central tool in Israel’s sustained assault on the human rights movement,” he told MEE.

‘Victory march’

The OHCHR writes regular reports highlighting alleged Israeli rights abuses in occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the besieged Gaza Strip.

In February, it published a list of 112 companies that work in Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law. The report, which highlighted Tripadvisor, Airbnb and the truck and digger maker JCB, among others, was welcomed by Palestinians but sparked Israeli ire.

In retaliation, Israel’s then-Foreign Minister Israel Katz suspended ties with the organisation, which he hailed as an “exceptional and harsh measure”.

It was not clear at the time what the practical implications would be.

“This development is not surprising given OHCHR’s official embrace of efforts to damage the Israeli economy,” Anne Herzberg, a legal advisor for pro-Israel organisation NGO Monitor, said in a statement on Thursday. “These actions suggest OHCHR’s willingness to be a party to the conflict rather than abide by its humanitarian obligations of impartiality and non-politicisation.”

United Nations employees across the world are supposed to have automatic access to visas to carry out their work.

Backed by fervent support from US President Donald Trump, Israel has achieved a string of global diplomatic successes in recent years, including recent peace agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

Martin Konecny, director of the European Middle East Project think tank, said restricting the OHCHR was part of a wider trend.

“With the support of the US, Israel has won one victory after another in the international arena – such as the UAE and Bahrain agreements. Human rights scrutiny is kind of nuisance that stands in the way of this victory march,” he said.

“I think Israel feels emboldened, not least through the support of the Trump administration, to act against organisations with human rights remits.”

He said that while European governments had criticised Israeli policies regarding this, there had been little action to force Israel to change course.

A spokesperson for the Israeli foreign ministry said it had nothing to add to statements suspending relations in February.

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

“We’re number one!” The United States famously fails to actually lead the world in anything desirable, but it does lead the world in many things, and one of them turns out to be the poisoning of the Pacific and its islands. And by the United States, I mean the United States military.

A new book by Jon Mitchell, called Poisoning the Pacific: The US Military’s Secret Dumping of Plutonium, Chemical Weapons, and Agent Orange, tells this story. Like all such catastrophes, this one escalated dramatically at the time of World War II and has continued ever since.

Mitchell starts with the island of Okunashima where Japan produced chemical weapons during World War II. After the war, the United States and Japan dumped the stuff into the ocean, stuck it in caves and sealed them shut, and buried it in the ground — on this island, near it, and throughout various parts of Japan. Putting something out of sight was apparently going to make it disappear, or at least burden future generations and other species with it — which was apparently just as satisfactory.

“Between 1944 and 1970,” Mitchell tells us, “the U.S. Army disposed of 29 million kilograms of mustard and nerve agents, and 454 tons of radioactive waste into the ocean. In one of the codenames beloved by the Pentagon, Operation CHASE (Cut Holes and Sink ’Em) involved packing ships with conventional and chemical weapons, sailing them out to sea, and scuttling them in deep waters.”

The United States didn’t just nuke two Japanese cities and a wide area to which the radiation spread, but also numerous other islands. The United Nations actually handed islands over to the United States for safe keeping and the development of “democracy,” and it nuked them — including Bikini Atoll which the world had the decency to name a sexy swimsuit after, but not to protect, and not to compensate the people forced to evacuate and still unable to safely return (they tried from 1972 to 1978 with bad results). The islands of various atolls, when not utterly destroyed, have been ruined with radiation: the soil, the plants, the animals, and the surrounding sea and sealife. The radioactive waste produced was not a problem, thank goodness!, since all that was required was to hide it out of sight, for example under a concrete dome on Runit Island that was guaranteed to last for 200,000 years but is cracking already.

On Okinawa some 2,000 tons of unexploded WWII ordnance remains in the ground, periodically killing, and likely to take 70 more years to clean up. But that’s the least of the problems. When the United States was done dropping Napalm and bombs, it turned Okinawa into a colony that it labeled “the junk heap of the Pacific.” It moved people into internment camps so that it could build bases and ammunition storage areas and weapons testing areas. It displaced 250,000 out of 675,000 people, using such gentle methods as tear gas.

When it was spraying millions of liters of Agent Orange and other deadly herbicides on Vietnam, the United States military was sending it its troops and weapons from Okinawa, where a middle school suffered from a chemical weapons accident within 48 hours of the first troops being sent off to Vietnam, and it got worse from there. The USA tested chemical and biological weapons on Okinawans and on U.S. troops on Okinawa. Some of the chemical weapons stockpiles it shipped off to Johnston Atoll after Oregon and Alaska rejected them. Others it dumped in the ocean (in containers that are now wearing out), or burned, or buried, or sold to unsuspecting locals. It also dropped nuclear weapons into the sea near Okinawa accidentally, twice.

Weapons developed and tested in Okinawa were deployed to Vietnam, including napalm strong enough to burn flesh under water, and stronger CS gas. The color-coded herbicides were used in secret at first, because the United States didn’t know that it could count on the world to accept its claim that targeting plants rather than humans (except as collateral damage) made it legal to use chemical weapons. But the herbicides killed all life. They made the jungles go silent. They killed people, made them ill, and gave them birth defects. They still do. And this stuff was sprayed on Okinawa, stored on Okinawa, and buried in Okinawa. People protested, as people will  do. And in 1973, two years after banning the use of deadly defoliants in Vietnam, the U.S. military used them against nonviolent protesters on Okinawa.

Of course, the U.S. military has lied, and lied, and lied some more about this sort of thing. In 2013, in Okinawa, people working on a soccer field dug up 108 barrels of Agent this and that color of poison. Confronted with the evidence, the U.S. military just kept lying.

“Although U.S. veterans are slowly receiving justice,” Mitchell writes, “there has been no such help for Okinawans, and the Japanese government has done nothing to help them. During the Vietnam War, fifty thousand Okinawans worked on the bases, but they have not been surveyed for health problems, nor have the farmers of Iejima or the residents living near Camp Schwab, MCAS Futenma, or the soccer field dump site.”

The U.S. military has been busy developing into the planet’s top polluter. It litters the globe, including the United States, with dioxin, depleted uranium, napalm, cluster bombs, nuclear waste, nuclear weapons, and unexploded ordnance. Its bases generally claim the right to operate outside the rule of law. Its live-fire (war rehearsal) sites poison surrounding areas with deadly water runoff. Between 1972 and 2016, Camps Hansen and Schwab on Okinawa also caused almost 600 forest fires. Then there’s dumping fuel over neighborhoods, crashing planes into buildings, and all variety of such SNAFUs.

And then there’s firefighting foam and the forever chemicals often referred to as PFAS, and written about extensively by Pat Elder here. The U.S. military has poisoned much of the ground water in Okinawa with apparent impunity, despite knowing about the dangers since 1992 or earlier.

Okinawa is not unique. The United States has bases in countries around the Pacific and in 16 colonies where people hold second-class status — places like Guam. It also has hugely destructive bases in places that have been made into states, like Hawaii and Alaska.

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Featured image: US naval base in Apra Harbor, Guam. (US Navy / Codie L. Soule / Flickr)

The 2020 Election Bamboozle: We Are All Victims of the Deep State’s Con Game

By John W. Whitehead, October 15 2020

The United States has the dubious distinction of being the world’s leading arms dealer. It dominates the global trade in a historic fashion and nowhere is that domination more complete than in the endlessly war-torn Middle East. There, believe it or not, the U.S. controls nearly half the arms market. From Yemen to Libya to Egypt, sales by this country and its allies are playing a significant role in fueling some of the world’s most devastating conflicts. But Donald Trump, even before he was felled by Covid-19 and sent to Walter Reed Medical Center, could not have cared less, as long as he thought such trafficking in the tools of death and destruction would help his political prospects.

Look, for example, at the recent “normalization” of relations between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Israel he helped to broker, which has set the stage for yet another surge in American arms exports. To hear Trump and his supporters tell it, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for the deal, dubbed “the Abraham Accords.” In fact, using it, he was eager to brand himself as “Donald Trump, peacemaker” in advance of the November election. This, believe me, was absurd on the face of it. Until the pandemic swept everything in the White House away, it was just another day in Trump World and another example of the president’s penchant for exploiting foreign and military policy for his own domestic political gain.

If the narcissist-in-chief had been honest for a change, he would have dubbed those Abraham Accords the “Arms Sales Accords.” The UAE was, in part, induced to participate in hopes of receiving Lockheed Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft and advanced armed drones as a reward. For his part, after some grumbling, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to one-up the UAE and seek a new $8 billion arms package from the Trump administration, including an additional squadron of Lockheed Martin’s F-35s (beyond those already on order), a fleet of Boeing attack helicopters, and so much more. Were that deal to go through, it would undoubtedly involve an increase in Israel’s more than ample military aid commitment from the United States, already slated to total $3.8 billion annually for the next decade.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

This wasn’t the first time President Trump tried to capitalize on arms sales to the Middle East to consolidate his political position at home and his posture as this country’s dealmaker par excellence. Such gestures began in May 2017, during his very first official overseas trip to Saudi Arabia. The Saudis greeted him then with ego-boosting fanfare, putting banners featuring his face along roadways leading into their capital, Riyadh; projecting a giant image of that same face on the hotel where he was staying; and presenting him with a medal in a surreal ceremony at one of the kingdom’s many palaces. For his part, Trump came bearing arms in the form of a supposed $110 billion weapons package. Never mind that the size of the deal was vastly exaggerated. It allowed the president to gloat that his sales deal there would mean “jobs, jobs, jobs” in the United States. If he had to work with one of the most repressive regimes in the world to bring those jobs home, who cared? Not he and certainly not his son-in-law Jared Kushner who would develop a special relationship with the cruel Saudi Crown Prince and heir apparent to the throne, Mohammed bin Salman.

President Donald Trump poses for photos with ceremonial swordsmen on his arrival to Murabba Palace, as the guest of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, Saturday evening, May 20, 2017, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Trump doubled down on his jobs argument in a March 2018 White House meeting with bin Salman. The president came armed with a prop for the cameras: a map of the U.S. showing the states that (he swore) would benefit most from Saudi arms sales, including — you won’t be surprised to learn — the crucial election swing states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Nor will it surprise you that Trump’s jobs claims from those Saudi arms sales are almost entirely fraudulent. In fits of fancy, he’s even insisted that he’s creating as many as half a million jobs linked to weapons exports to that repressive regime. The real number is less than one-tenth that amount — and far less than one-tenth of one percent of U.S. employment. But why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

American Arms Dominance

Donald Trump is far from the first president to push tens of billions of dollars of arms into the Middle East. The Obama administration, for example, made a record $115 billion in arms offers to Saudi Arabia during its eight years in office, including combat aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, military ships, missile defense systems, bombs, guns, and ammunition.

Those sales solidified Washington’s position as the Saudis’ primary arms supplier. Two-thirds of its air force consists of Boeing F-15 aircraft, the vast bulk of its tanks are General Dynamics M-1s, and most of its air-to-ground missiles come from Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. And mind you, those weapons aren’t just sitting in warehouses or being displayed in military parades. They’ve been among the principal killers in a brutal Saudi intervention in Yemen that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.

A new report from the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy (which I co-authored) underscores just how stunningly the U.S. dominates the Middle Eastern weapons market. According to data from the arms transfer database compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in the period from 2015 to 2019 the United States accounted for 48% of major weapons deliveries to the Middle East and North Africa, or (as that vast region is sometimes known acronymically) MENA. Those figures leave deliveries from the next largest suppliers in the dust. They represent nearly three times the arms Russia supplied to MENA, five times what France contributed, 10 times what the United Kingdom exported, and 16 times China’s contribution.

In other words, we have met the prime weapons proliferator in the Middle East and North Africa and it is us.

The influence of U.S. arms in this conflict-ridden region is further illustrated by a striking fact: Washington is the top supplier to 13 of the 19 countries there, including Morocco (91% of its arms imports), Israel (78%), Saudi Arabia (74%), Jordan (73%), Lebanon (73%), Kuwait (70%), the UAE (68%), and Qatar (50%). If the Trump administration goes ahead with its controversial plan to sell F-35s and armed drones to the UAE and brokers that related $8 billion arms deal with Israel, its share of arms imports to those two countries will be even higher in the years to come.

Devastating Consequences

None of the key players in today’s most devastating wars in the Middle East produce their own weaponry, which means that imports from the U.S. and other suppliers are the true fuel sustaining those conflicts. Advocates of arms transfers to the MENA region often describe them as a force for “stability,” a way to cement alliances, counter Iran, or more generally a tool for creating a balance of power that makes armed engagement less likely.

In a number of key conflicts in the region, this is nothing more than a convenient fantasy for arms suppliers (and the U.S. government), as the flow of ever more advanced weaponry has only exacerbated conflicts, aggravated human rights abuses, and caused countless civilian deaths and injuries, while provoking widespread destruction. And keep in mind that, while not solely responsible, Washington is the chief culprit when it comes to the weaponry that’s fueling a number of the area’s most violent wars.

In Yemen, a Saudi/UAE-led intervention that began in March 2015 has, by now, resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians through air strikes, put millions at risk of famine, and helped create the desperate conditions for the worst cholera outbreak in living memory. That war has already cost more than 100,000 lives and the U.S. and the United Kingdom have been the primary suppliers of the combat aircraft, bombs, attack helicopters, missiles, and armored vehicles used there, transfers valued in the tens of billions of dollars.

There has been a sharp jump in overall arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia since that war was launched. Dramatically enough, total arms sent to the Kingdom more than doubled between the 2010-2014 period and the years from 2015 to 2019. Together, the U.S. (74%) and the U.K. (13%) accounted for 87% of all arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia in that five-year time frame.

In Egypt, U.S.-supplied combat aircraft, tanks, and attack helicopters have been used in what is supposedly a counterterror operation in the Northern Sinai desert, which has, in reality, simply become a war largely against the civilian population of the region. Between 2015 and 2019, Washington’s arms offers to Egypt totaled $2.3 billion, with billions more in deals made earlier but delivered in those years. And in May 2020, the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that it was offering a package of Apache attack helicopters to Egypt worth up to $2.3 billion.

According to research conducted by Human Rights Watch, thousands of people have been arrested in the Sinai region over the past six years, hundreds have been disappeared, and tens of thousands have been forcibly evicted from their homes. Armed to the teeth, the Egyptian military has also carried out “systematic and widespread arbitrary arrests — including of children — enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, collective punishment, and forced eviction.” There is also evidence to suggest that Egyptian forces have engaged in illegal air and ground strikes that have killed substantial numbers of civilians.

In several conflicts — examples of how such weapons transfers can have dramatic and unintended impacts — U.S. arms have ended up in the hands of both sides. When Turkish troops invaded northeastern Syria in October 2019, for instance, they faced Kurdish-led Syrian militias that had received some of the $2.5 billion in arms and training the U.S. had supplied to Syrian opposition forces over the previous five years. Meanwhile, the entire Turkish inventory of combat aircraft consists of U.S.-supplied F-16s and more than half of its armored vehicles are of American origin.

In Iraq, when the forces of the Islamic State, or ISIS, swept through a significant part of that country from the north in 2014, they captured U.S. light weaponry and armored vehicles worth billions of dollars from the Iraqi security forces this country had armed and trained. Similarly, in more recent years, U.S. arms have been transferred from the Iraqi military to Iranian-backed militias operating alongside them in the fight against ISIS.

Meanwhile, in Yemen, while the U.S. has directly armed the Saudi/UAE coalition, its weaponry has, in fact, ended up being used by all sides in the conflict, including their Houthi opponents, extremist militias, and groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This equal-opportunity spread of American weaponry has occurred thanks to arms transfers by former members of the U.S.-supplied Yemeni military and by UAE forces that have worked with an array of groups in the southern part of the country.

Who Benefits?

Just four companies — Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics — were involved in the overwhelming majority of U.S. arms deals with Saudi Arabia between 2009 and 2019. In fact, at least one or more of those companies played key roles in 27 offers worth more than $125 billion (out of a total of 51 offers worth $138 billion). In other words, in financial terms, more than 90% of the U.S. arms offered to Saudi Arabia involved at least one of those top four weapons makers.

In its brutal bombing campaign in Yemen, the Saudis have killed thousand of civilians with U.S.-supplied weaponry. In the years since the Kingdom launched its war, indiscriminate air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition have hit marketplaces, hospitals, civilian neighborhoods, water treatment centers, even a school bus filled with children. American-made bombs have repeatedly been used in such incidents, including an attack on a wedding, where 21 people, children among them, were killed by a GBU-12 Paveway II guided bomb manufactured by Raytheon.

A General Dynamics 2,000-pound bomb with a Boeing JDAM guidance system was used in a March 2016 strike on a marketplace that killed 97 civilians, including 25 children. A Lockheed Martin laser-guided bomb was utilized in an August 2018 attack on a school bus that slaughtered 51 people, including 40 children. A September 2018 report by the Yemeni group Mwatana for Human Rights identified 19 air strikes on civilians in which U.S.-supplied weapons were definitely used, pointing out that the destruction of that bus was “not an isolated incident, but the latest in a series of gruesome [Saudi-led] Coalition attacks involving U.S. weapons.”

It should be noted that the sales of such weaponry have not occurred without resistance. In 2019, both houses of Congress voted down a bomb sale to Saudi Arabia because of its aggression in Yemen, only to have their efforts thwarted by a presidential veto. In some instances, as befits the Trump administration’s modus operandi, those sales have involved questionable political maneuvers. Take, for instance, a May 2019 declaration of an “emergency” that was used to push through an $8.1 billion deal with the Saudis, the UAE, and Jordan for precision-guided bombs and other equipment that simply bypassed normal Congressional oversight procedures completely.

At the behest of Congress, the State Department’s Office of Inspector General then opened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding that declaration, in part because it had been pushed by a former Raytheon lobbyist working in State’s Office of Legal Counsel. However, the inspector general in charge of the probe, Stephen Linick, was soon fired by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for fear that his investigation would uncover administration wrongdoing and, after he was gone, the ultimate findings proved largely — surprise! — a whitewash, exonerating the administration. Still, the report did note that the Trump administration had failed to take adequate care to avoid civilian harm by U.S. weaponry supplied to the Saudis.

Even some Trump administration officials have had qualms about the Saudi deals. The New York Times has reported that a number of State Department personnel were concerned about whether they could someday be held liable for aiding and abetting war crimes in Yemen.

Will America Remain the World’s Greatest Arms Dealer?

If Donald Trump is re-elected, don’t expect U.S. sales to the Middle East — or their murderous effects — to diminish any time soon. To his credit, Joe Biden has pledged as president to end U.S. arms and support for the Saudi war in Yemen. For the region as a whole, however, don’t be shocked if, even in a Biden presidency, such weaponry continues to flow in and it remains business as usual for this country’s giant arms merchants to the detriment of the peoples of the Middle East. Unless you’re Raytheon or Lockheed Martin, selling arms is one area where no one should want to keep America “great.”

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William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Arms and Security Program at the Center for International Policy and the co-author of “The Mideast Arms Bazaar: Top Arms Suppliers to the Middle East and North Africa 2015 to 2019.”

Featured image is from Stop the War Coalition

In an October address at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper unveiled the Pentagon’s plan for the future Navy, saying it would consist of over 500 warships — almost twice the number now in the U.S. inventory. 

A larger fleet was needed, he said, to counter the Chinese naval buildup and to ensure U.S. naval dominance well into the future. Esper indicated, however, that a Navy of 500 ships would not constitute an enlarged version of the current force — a feat probably far beyond the Navy’s fiscal and shipbuilding capabilities. Rather, it would contain approximately the same number of conventional warships now in the fleet plus “between 140 to 240 unmanned and optionally manned surface and subsurface vessels of all types.”

Huh? What are these unmanned vessels and what will they do? Can unmanned and “optionally manned” (whatever that means) vessels supplant conventional warships and provide the seapower advantage Esper claims we require? Nowhere in his October 6 speech or in other Pentagon statements can you find answers to these critical questions.

That the Navy, the Defense Department, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have been investigating the potential for replacing human crews with command-and-control (C2) systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) on naval vessels is no secret. In April 2016, DARPA announced the initial launch of the Sea Hunter, a 132-trimaran designed to patrol the high seas in search of enemy submarines with no humans aboard. A similar initiative, with the suggestive name “Ghost Fleet Overlord,” was conducted by the Strategic Capabilities Office of the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2018 and 2019. Both efforts sought to explore the possibilities of combining commercially available hulls and hardware with cutting-edge computer software to enable uncrewed vessels to navigate themselves and perform a variety of military missions.

For Navy leaders, the development of unmanned vessels is thought to have many advantages. To begin with, they do not require extensive crew quarters and so can be made smaller and for less money. At a lower price, you can buy more of them than you can of conventional, manned warships, so you can build a bigger fleet — that aspirational 500 number — without busting the budget.

In fact, Navy strategists now speak of a “distributed” fleet, consisting of a larger number of smaller, unmanned vessels in place of a smaller force of large capital ships. And, in an era in which large surface warships are becoming increasingly vulnerable to enemy anti-ship missiles, you can risk sending unmanned ships into highly contested waters, such as the South China Sea, where you might not want to send a carrier with thousands of sailors aboard.

All this represents “a shift in mindset,” said the Navy’s Surface Warfare Director, Rear Admiral Ronald Boxall.

“Instead of putting as much stuff on the ship for as much money as I have, you start thinking in a different way…. You start saying: ‘How small can my platform be to get everything I need on it?… And when I look at the force, I think, ‘Where can we use unmanned to so that I can push it to a smaller platform?’”

Inspired by this “mindset,” the Navy has invested billions of dollars in the development of two new classes of warships: a medium unmanned surface vessel (MUSV) and a large unmanned surface vessel (LUSV). Contracts have been awarded for the design of both types, with no conception of what they might look like, how they will be propelled, or what functions they may perform once put to sea.

In Fiscal Year 2020, the Navy was awarded $408 million to conduct research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) on two large unmanned surface vessels, and the Pentagon requested another $464 million for RDT&E work on an additional pair of LUSVs in FY 2021, with some of those funds intended for research on enabling technologies for an MUSV. If the Navy’s five-year shipbuilding request is fully funded, it will invest a total of $3.3 billion on LUSV and MUSV development and procurement over fiscal years 2021 to 2025.

Look through Pentagon procurement documents, however, and you will find scant information about the nature or function of these vessels. All that is said about them in the Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Request submitted to Congress in February by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) is these are “low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships able to accommodate various payloads for unmanned missions.” And, in an acknowledgement of the Navy’s uncertainty about these ships’ ultimate role, it added, “Future missions and payloads will be informed as the concept of operations is developed.”

Defense industry journalists have suggested a variety of missions for these vessels. Some say their primary task will be to hunt for enemy submarines. Paul McLeary, writing in Breaking Defense, says they could be used to deploy small underwater drones for detecting submarines in advance of manned vessels. Others suggest they will serve as floating “missile magazines,” providing the Navy with added firepower. According to David Larter of Defense News, they will be equipped with vertical launch tubes for ballistic missiles of various types. The truth of the matter is, however, that no one knows for sure what these ships will do, as the Navy has yet to figure this out.

Questions have also arisen about the software that will govern these ships in the absence of human pilots and commanders. The Sea Hunter has succeeded in undertaking long voyages on its own, navigating the seas and returning to base, but this is not the same as conducting military operations in contested areas under wartime conditions. Much of the C2 technology is still in the experimental stage, and Navy officials cannot be certain when all the necessary components will be capable of functioning together harmoniously. Some analysts worry, for example, that AI-governed ships could lose connectivity with manned vessels and “go rogue,” firing their missiles or undertaking other military actions not intended by their human overseers.

The fact that the Navy cannot specify the future role of these ships or guarantee that all the necessary software will perform as intended has caused unease among many in Congress. In its FY 2021 markup of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the House Subcommittee on Seapower and Projection Forces banned the use of funds for the procurement of large unmanned surface vessels until the Secretary of the Navy certifies in writing that all of its key components, including the hull, mechanical system, and autonomous features have been fully tested and proved to be reliable; roughly similar language is contained in the Senate version of the bill. The House and Senate have yet to reconcile their versions of the NDAA, so it is unclear whether a requirement of this sort will appear in the final text of the bill, but it is likely that the Navy’s plans to push ahead with the development and production of unmanned vessels will be subjected to ongoing Congressional scrutiny and limitations.

The Navy clearly hopes that by floating a few prototype LUSVs and MUSVs, it can win over skeptics and demonstrate the utility of unmanned vessels. Ships of these types obviously have their admirers among senior Pentagon officials, and so we can assume they will figure prominently in future Navy budget requests — whoever sits in the White House next year. But it would be wise to view such requests with a great deal of skepticism.

Do unmanned vessels fill an actual naval requirement? If so, what is that requirement, and why will such ships best satisfy it? It seems highly imprudent to begin building LUSVs and MUSVs until these questions can be answered — especially given the concerns about relying on wholly autonomous weapons systems. Reducing the risk to American sailors is obviously a desirable objective, but if the solution involves the creation of a “ghost fleet” of possibly unreliable unmanned vessels that Navy commanders feel free to deploy in highly-contested waters, the final outcome may not be reduced danger to our sailors but far greater.

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In his much discussed Being Mortal, Atul Gawande claims modern medicine is ill-equipped to cope with the aged and people near death not because the medical community has a faulty view about what matters most in life, but rather because “they have had almost no view at all”. [1] Gawande is wrong. Medicine does have a view. It is about survivability.

Medicine espouses a view about life: More time on Earth is always better.

It’s no wonder people experience FOMO so acutely, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. ‘Fear of Missing Out’ is social anxiety induced from the belief that others are having a better life than you. FOMO isn’t just about comparison with others. The anxiety can arise from thinking about the life you might have had, compared to your reality.

FOMO is fear of regret of missed opportunities, be it social events, novel experiences or acquisition of things. However, FOMO is really about an unwillingness to give up—an unwillingness to sacrifice.

Terry Eagleton notes sacrifice is what defines a martyr. [2] A martyr is willing to give up what is most precious to her—her life—in the hope that the cause will be realized. It is sacrifice that connects us to our humanness.

But Medicine tries to offer security in the face of change and decay. The goal is to patch up the patient and extend life. Medicine’s view about life promotes the belief that we should not have to give up anything. It contributes to an attitude of resistance to change, to death.

And so, we don’t grow. We do not know reality as it is. Resistance to change, loss and sacrifice warps our relation to the world: It is an attitude that assumes the self is at the center of it all. We falsely think that life and death are diametric opposites that can be separated, instead of being part of the same phenomenon. Life, however, is messy, just as we don’t control death.

We need to correct our relation to the world and things in it if we’re to better face something like COVID. Lalin Anik suggests adopting JOMO, ‘Joy of Missing Out’ to counter FOMO. [3] This approach is superficial. It merely shifts the objects of one’s desire. Its false life-affirming optimism doesn’t tackle the problem, because it still assumes the self is at the center of everything.

Thomas Merton says when we “forget ourselves on purpose,” we right our relation to the world. [4] His point is the existential purging of the self, the ego, allows us to really play in the world as we would like and avoid missing out. It’s a paradox: We miss out less if we give up more. We aren’t preoccupied by what the meaning of it all is, instead we simply are—we exist.

Suffering is constructive when it brings the insight we can accept change, which makes us suffer less. This isn’t to say that suffering experienced is any less profound or short-lived. The point is merely that resistance makes one suffer twice. Ceaseless hyperactivity to avoid suffering is suffering upon suffering. It is the wrong way to cope.

Gawande fails to acknowledge that modern medicine doesn’t equip us with the tools to face mortality, because its inherent life-extending stance is a denial of death, and as such a denial of life. It promotes FOMO and clinging on to life, making it sterile. We haven’t always been so. Past cultures practised ars moriendi, the art of dying. They cultivated an awareness of death and how to achieve a good death. The art of dying is the art of living. Recognition of death and the pursuit of a good death restores vitality, because it jolts us out of mundane stupor. They understood the messiness of life. Honest, hard conversations about death and life must happen while we are living. This isn’t about a frenzied search for deeper meaning where there is none. Rather, it involves patience and compassion with ourselves and others.

Mistakenly some think to reconcile oneself to death is to give up on life. It’s seen as resignation in the final battle. However, awareness of death delivers truth about human existence. It is to see life as a gift. It’s something we have not asked for, but has been bestowed to us all the same. This revelation helps us face reality as it is, not how we wish it to be. Enabling human well-being is about clarity and knowing one’s place in the world.

The Bardo Thödol, The Tibetan Book of the Dead, tells us there’s no mission more urgent than preparing for death, because it is life affirming. Zen Master Bunan Zenji says it best:

While alive, be dead,
Thoroughly dead—
All is good then,
Whatever you may do.

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Notes

[1] Gawande, Atul. 2014. Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End. New York, New York: Metropolitan Books. 128

[2] Eagleton, Terry. 2018. Radical Sacrifice. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. 88.

[3] Trepany, Charles. 2020. “Quarantine FOMO: Why You May Still Fear Missing Out, Even When Everything Is Canceled.” USA Today, August 11.

[4] McDonnell, Thomas P. 1996. A Thomas Merton Reader. New York, New York: Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 505.

Since March, the coronavirus has been treated as if it is a danger categorically different from other dangers, including other viruses. But this treatment is deeply mistaken. The coronavirus is not a categorically different danger. It occupies a location on the same spectrum that features other viruses. Reasonable people can and do debate just where this location is – that is, how much more dangerous is the coronavirus than are ordinary flu viruses and other ‘novel’ viruses that plagued us in the past. But the coronavirus is well within the same category as other viruses.

Yet humanity has reacted – and continues to react – to the coronavirus as if it is a beast that differs from other health risks categorically. The hysterical overreaction by the press, public-health officials, and politicians – an overreaction undoubtedly supercharged by social media – has convinced many people that humanity is today being stalked by a venomous monster wholly unlike anything to which we are accustomed.

Only by assuming that this virus differs fundamentally from other risks can governments continue to get away with unprecedented and arbitrary restrictions on peaceful human activities – restrictions on activities such as working at the factory or office, on dining out, on attending religious services, on going to school, and even on seeking medical treatments for non-Covid-related ailments. Only by being convinced that the coronavirus poses a threat categorically unique are ordinary men and women led to change their ways of living and interacting as fundamentally as many have done, and to tolerate the categorical change in governments’ responses to epidemics.

Quaking with fear that the angel of death lurks as never before in every stranger’s breath, on every person’s fingertips, and around every corner, people today treat each other categorically differently from how they treated each other until this past March. They leap frantically away from approaching strangers on sidewalks. They “meet” their co-workers only online. Neighbors no longer visit each other’s homes, while those who still dare to chat outside stand far apart, as if each is about to morph any moment from a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr. Hyde. When they stage athletic events, the stands are filled not with human beings but with eerie cardboard cutouts.

Other human beings are no longer treated as potential partners in productive social cooperation, whether for work or pleasure. Now regarded as meaty and mobile vials of unprecedented poison, other human beings are treated by so many of us in a way that differs categorically from how we treated them for centuries up until just a few months ago. “Social distancing” is undermining social cooperation – which means that it’s undermining civilization itself.

Is there any evidence to justify this categorical change in behavior?

Covid’s Risks

My always wise friend and sometime co-author Lyle Albaugh has from the start understood that Covid, while certainly no nothingburger, is not remotely close to being the extraordinary monster that it has become in the popular mind. And so he’s having the following information printed on business-card-sized notices:

COVID-19 INFECTION SURVIVAL RATES (per CDC)

• Ages 0-19:    99.997%
• Ages 20-49:  99.98%
• Ages 50-69:  99.5%
• Ages 70+:     94.6%
• Seasonal Flu Infection Survival Rate (for population as a whole): 99.90%

This single slice of information should be sufficient to put Covid-19 in proper perspective. It makes plain that the risk that this disease poses to humanity as a whole does not differ categorically from the risk of seasonal flu – or, for that matter, from any of the many other perils that we humans routinely encounter. And because these figures show the estimated chances of survival of those who are infected with Covid, even for persons 70 years of age or older Covid obviously is not a categorically unique threat.

And yet, again, humanity has reacted to Covid in a manner categorically unique. It’s as if a hornet rather than a honeybee found its way into our home, and so to protect ourselves from the somewhat-more-threatening invader we commenced to frantically scour every room of our home with a flamethrower.

But I despair that the information shared by Lyle – or even the more extensive information shared by my courageous colleagues at AIER – will have any noticeable impact. Very many people today seem almost eager to be misled about the danger posed by Covid. Much of humanity today appears to perversely enjoy being duped into the irrational fear that any one of us, regardless of age or health, is at the mercy of a brutal beast categorically more lethal than is any other danger that we’ve ever confronted. I hope that my despair proves misguided.

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Prof. Donald J. Boudreaux is a senior fellow with American Institute for Economic Research and with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University; a Mercatus Center Board Member; and a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University.

Featured image is from AIER

Months of planning preceed preemptive wars.

Since July, Turkish and Azeri troops participated in joint air and ground military exercise.

Most often these type drills are defensive. They’re conducted to prepare for possible attacks on the territory of participating nations.

Azeris launched war on Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh (NK below), its campaign for control of the enclave backed and likely encouraged by Ankara.

The same likely holds for the US and UK, supporting the agenda of one country over another and their own interests.

Most often when conflicts erupt, their fingerprints are all over them, especially in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Why would the US and Britain support Turkey over Armenia? One reason could be to draw Moscow into the conflict.

Along with Russia and four other regional countries, Armenia is a Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) state.

If the territory of any CSTO member state is attacked by a foreign power, other alliance members are obligated to provide military support.

NK is not Armenian territory, so conflict there doesn’t require other CSTO countries to aid Yerevan militarily.

Turkey is a NATO member.

Despite uneasy relations between Ankara and the West, notably the US and UK, alliance Article 4 calls for members to “consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence, or security of any” is threatened.

Article 5 considers an armed attack (real or otherwise) against one or more members, an attack against all. Collective self-defense is called for.

Based on what’s now known, Turkey helped Azerbaijan prepare for preemptive war on Armenia in NK.

Preparation included training, supplying Baku with heavy weapons, providing command and control involvement, along with deploying jihadist fighters to aid Azeri troops.

If Turkish commanders are harmed by ongoing fighting, accidentally or otherwise, Ankara could retaliate against Armenia militarily.

Azerbaijan borders Russia. Iran borders Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The US and maybe Britain would very much like to draw Iran into the NK conflict.

If fighting spills into its territory, its forces might respond in self-defense, giving the US and UK a pretext to terror-bomb Iranian targets.

On Wednesday, Armenia’s Defense Ministry accused Azerbaijan of striking military equipment in its territory.

Saying Armenian forces reserve the right to respond in kind against an Azeri military facility risks expanding conflict to the territory of both countries.

Under this scenario, Russia could get involved to defend its CSTO partnered state — potentially drawing the US, UK, and other NATO countries into the conflict, Turkey as well more directly.

The above is a nightmarish scenario Moscow and Tehran very much want avoided.

During a Wednesday interview on the NK conflict, I was asked what more can Russia do resolve it.

Major differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the one hand, Yerevan and Ankara on the other, are longstanding.

Resolving them to halt fighting might be beyond the diplomatic skills of any negotiator.

I responded to the question, saying Sergey Lavrov’s strategy may be to keep talking to his counterparts and leadership of both warring sides — in person as much as possible, otherwise by phone, urging a halt in fighting.

Protracted conflict in NK assures losers, not winners, he understands.

With Turkish help, Azeri forces could gain an advantage over Armenia’s military.

Baku perhaps could drive Yerevan out of NK partially or entirely.

If fighting continues for weeks or months, mass slaughter and destruction in the enclave will leave no prize for either side to claim.

The prevailing side, if things turn out this way, will have countless numbers of corpses to bury and likely billions of dollars needed for reconstruction.

On Wednesday, Lavrov proposed deploying Russian peacekeepers to monitor things along the line of control in NK.

He clarified his proposal, saying “not even peacekeepers (should participate in the verification mechanism), but military observers that would be sufficient.”

“We believe that it would be perfectly correct if these were our military observers, but the final word should be with the sides (of the conflict).”

“Of course, we proceed from the fact that both Yerevan and Baku will take into account our amicable relations, relations of strategic partnership.”

Stressing his country’s close ties to Turkey, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev said Baku, Yerevan, and Ankara would have to agree on Russia’s involvement this way.

On October 14, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Azerbaijan wants total control of NK, calling the situation on the ground “very difficult.”

He claimed Baku and Ankara do not want “to stop their aggression.”

NK defense forces accused Azerbaijan of “violat(ing) the humanitarian truce, targeting peaceful settlements,” adding:

“In addition to shelling the city of Martakert, the enemy (Baku) also employed air force (warplanes) in the northeastern direction.”

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry accused Armenia of shelling the town of Tartar, causing at least seven casualties.

It’s unclear if they’e civilians or military personnel.

Lavrov criticized Turkey’s involvement in the fighting.

Calling a military solution unacceptable, he said “(w)e do not agree with the position voiced by Turkey, that was also expressed several times by (Azeri) President Aliyev,” adding:

“It is not a secret that we cannot agree with a statement that a military solution to the conflict is permissible.”

International Committee of the Red Cross director for Eurasia Martin Scheupp called on both sides to halt fighting.

“We project that at least tens of thousands of people across the region will need support over the next few months,” he stressed, adding:

“Civilians are dying or suffering life-changing injuries.”

“Homes, businesses and once-busy streets are being reduced to rubble.”

“The elderly and babies are among those forced to spend hours in unheated basements or to leave their homes for safety.”

Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu spoke to his Armenian and Azeri counterparts, urging them to observe ceasefire.

Conflict is in its third week with no signs of either side backing down.

Russia continues trying to get them to halt fighting and discuss differences diplomatically.

Ceasefire agreed to by their foreign ministers in Moscow didn’t take hold.

On Tuesday, Armenia’s Defense Ministry said Azeri forces launched attacks in “three to four directions, and battles continued throughout the day.”

“Particularly intense fighting occurred in the northern sector.”

“It was probably among the most difficult battles in this war.”

Fighting could continue for weeks if Russia’s best efforts fail to get both sides to observe ceasefire agreed to last Friday.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The leader of the coronavirus vaccine team at Oxford University declared Tuesday that nothing is going to approach returning to normal until at least next Summer.

Professor Andrew Pollard said that face masks and social distancing rules are not going away any time soon, declaring that a vaccine is still months away and would only become available for key workers during the first phase of its rollout anyway.

“Life won’t be back to normal until summer at the earliest. We may need masks until July,” Pollard said during an online seminar with Oxford alumni.

“If we end up with a vaccine that’s effective in preventing the disease, that is by far the best way to control the virus. But in the medium term, we’ll still need better treatments,” the professor added.

“When does life get back to normal? Even if we had enough vaccine for everyone, in my view it’s unlikely that we’re going to very rapidly be in a position where the physical distancing rules can be just dropped,” he added.

Politicians and health advisors to governments have repeatedly said that strict measures will have to remain in place until a vaccine is available.

“Until we’ve got a high level of immunity in the population so that we can stop the virus so most vulnerable people are immune, there is going to be a risk. Initially, we’re going to be in a position where mask-wearing and social distancing don’t change,” Pollard reiterated.

“Only when there is a big drop in serious cases will governments feel able to relax these measures. This is a very easily transmissible virus,” he further commented.

Back in May, scientists expressed doubts over the effectiveness of Oxford’s coronavirus vaccine, after all of the monkeys used in initial testing later contracted coronavirus.

While funding is pouring into vaccine trials, other research on coronavirus treatments has all but been ignored, despite some scientists claiming to have discovered anti-bodies that can completely block COVID-19 or effectively neutralise the virus.

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Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s suggestion to deploy Russian peacekeepers and military observers into the universally recognized Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and its seven surrounding districts under Armenian occupation pending both sides’ agreement raises the prospect of Moscow’s military intervention in this conflict, which is worthwhile examining since this scenario isn’t as far-fetched as some might think.

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Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney released an extraordinary statement on Tuesday, decrying a political scene he said “has moved away from spirited debate to a vile, vituperative, hate-filled morass, that is unbecoming of any free nation.” “The world is watching America with abject horror,” he added.

Romney tweeted his statement under the title “My thoughts on the current state of our politics.” “I have stayed quiet,” he said, “with the approach of the election.” “But I’m troubled by our politics,” the sole Republican to vote to impeach Trump added in his statement.

“The president calls the Democratic vice-presidential candidate ‘a monster’. He repeatedly labels the Speaker of the House ‘crazy.’ He calls for the justice department to put the prior president in jail. He attacks the governor of Michigan on the very day a plot is discovered to kidnap her. Democrats launch blistering attacks of their own, though their presidential nominee refuses to stoop as low as others,” Romney, a Utah senator who was the 2012 Republican nominee for president, complained in the statement.

Though superficially trying to appear “fair and balanced” in the didactic sermon patronizingly delivered by the only adult in the room full of political upstarts, Romney’s perceptible bias in the polemical diatribe was hard not to be noticed.

It defies explanation if he didn’t watch the presidential debate or consciously elided over the sordid episode where the Democratic presidential nominee contemptuously sneered at his political rival with derogatory epithets such as “a clown, a racist and Putin’s puppy.”

I’m not sure if Biden was high on meth during the debate, as Trump had repeatedly been insinuating, or he lacks basic etiquette to act like a dignified statesman, but only amphetamines could make a person take leave of his senses and insolently yell at the president of the US, “Will you shut up, man,” while ironically complaining, “This is so unpresidential.”

Though a longtime Republican senator, Mitt Romney’s loyalty to the GOP was compromised due to a personal spat with Trump. In the Republican primaries of the 2016 US presidential elections, Romney severely castigated Trump, calling him “a phony and a fraud.”

After Trump was elected president, he dangled the carrot of the secretary of state appointment to Romney, invited him to a dinner in a swanky New York restaurant, made him eat his words and fawn all over Trump like a servile toady. But later, he gave one of the most coveted appointments in the US bureaucratic hierarchy to oil executive Rex Tillerson.

Romney felt humiliated to the extent that in Trump’s vulnerable moment, after impeachment proceedings were initiated against him in the Senate in February, Romney became the only US senator in the American political history who voted against his own Republican Party president.

Though lacking intellect and often ridiculed for frequent spelling errors on his Twitter timeline, such as “unpresidented” and “covfefe,” implying he gets his news feed from television talk shows and rarely reads book and articles, Donald Trump is street smart and his anti-globalization agenda and down-to-earth attitude appeal to the American working classes.

Nevertheless, it’s quite easy for the neuroscientists on the payroll of the national security establishment to manipulate the minds of such impressionable politicians and lead them by the nose to toe the line of the deep state, particularly on foreign policy matters. No wonder national security shills disparagingly sneer at the president as the “toddler-in-chief.”

In 2017, a couple of caricatures went viral on social media. In one of those caricatures, Donald Trump was depicted as a child sitting on a chair and Vladimir Putin was shown whispering something into Trump’s ears from behind. In the other, Trump was portrayed sitting in Steve Bannon’s lap and the latter was shown mumbling into Trump’s ears, “Who is the big boy now?” And Trump was shown replying, “I am the big boy.”

The meaning conveyed by those cunningly crafted caricatures was to illustrate that Trump lacks the intelligence to think for himself and that he was being manipulated and played around by Putin and Bannon. Those caricatures must have affronted the vanity of Donald Trump to an extent that after the publication of those caricatures, he became ill-disposed toward Putin and sacked Bannon from his job as the White House Chief Strategist in August 2017, only seven months into the first year of the Trump presidency.

Bannon was the principal ideologue of the American alt-right movement. Though the alt-right agenda of the Trump presidency has been scuttled by the deep state, Trump’s views regarding global politics and economics are starkly different from the establishment Democrats and Republicans pursuing neocolonial world order masqueraded as globalization and free trade.

Besides the Trump supporters in the United States, the far-right populist leaders in Europe are also exploiting popular resentment against free trade and globalization. The Brexiteers in the United Kingdom, the Yellow Vest protesters in France and the far-right movements in Germany and across Europe are a manifestation of a paradigm shift in the global economic order in which nationalist and protectionist slogans have replaced the free trade and globalization mantra of the nineties.

Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from multilateral treaties, restructuring trade agreements and initiating a trade war against China are meant to redress, at least cosmetically, the legitimate grievances of the American working classes against the wealth disparity created by laissez-faire capitalism and market fundamentalism.

Michael Crowley reported for the New York Times [1] last month that American allies and former US Officials fear Trump could seek NATO exit in a second term. According to the report,

“This summer, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser John R. Bolton published a book that described the president as repeatedly saying he wanted to quit the NATO alliance. Last month, Mr. Bolton speculated to a Spanish newspaper that Mr. Trump might even spring an ‘October surprise’ shortly before the election by declaring his intention to leave the alliance in a second term.”

The report notes,

“In a book published this week, Michael S. Schmidt, a New York Times reporter, wrote that Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff John F. Kelly, a retired four-star Marine general, told others that ‘one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO.’ One person who has heard Mr. Kelly speak in private settings confirmed that he had made such remarks.”

Crowley adds,

“Donald Trump now relies on ‘a team of inexperienced bureaucrats’ and has grown more confident and assertive, as he has already sacked seasoned national security advisers, including John F. Kelly; Jim Mattis, another retired four-star Marine general and Trump’s first defense secretary; and H.R. McMaster, a retired three-star Army general and Trump’s former national security adviser.”

In fact, the Trump administration announced plans in July to withdraw 12,000 American troops from Germany and sought to cut funding for the Pentagon’s European Deterrence Initiative. About half of the troops withdrawn from Germany were re-deployed in Europe, mainly in Italy and Poland, and the rest returned to the US.

Similarly, although full withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan was originally scheduled for April next year, according to terms of peace deal reached with the Taliban on February 29, President Trump hastened the withdrawal process by making an electoral pledge this week that all troops should be “home by Christmas.” “We should have the small remaining number of our BRAVE Men and Women serving in Afghanistan home by Christmas,” he tweeted last week.

Even the arch-foes of the US in Afghanistan effusively praised President Trump’s peace overtures. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told CBS News [2] in a phone interview last week,

“We hope he will win the election and wind up US military presence in Afghanistan.”

The militant group also expressed concern about President Trump’s bout with the coronavirus.

“When we heard about Trump being COVID-19 positive, we got worried for his health, but it seems he is getting better,” another Taliban senior leader confided to reporter Sami Yousafzai.

Moreover, Iran-backed militias recently announced [3] “conditional” cease-fire against the US forces in Iraq on the condition that Washington present a timetable for the withdrawal of its troops. The US-led coalition has already departed from smaller bases across Iraq and promised to reduce its troop presence from 5,200 to 3,000 in the next couple of months, though Iraq’s parliament passed a resolution urging the full withdrawal of US troops in January.

There is no denying the fact that the four years of the Trump presidency have been unusually tumultuous in the American political history, but if one takes a cursory look at the list of all the Trump aides who resigned or were otherwise sacked, almost all of them were national security officials.

In fact, scores of former Republican national security officials recently made their preference public that they would vote in the upcoming US presidential elections for Democrat Joe Biden instead of Republican Donald Trump against party lines.

What does that imply? It is an incontrovertible proof that the latent conflict between the deep state and the elected representatives of the American people has come to a head during the Trump presidency.

Although far from being a vocal critic of the deep state himself, the working-class constituency that Trump represents has had enough with the global domination agenda of the national security establishment. The American electorate wants the US troops returned home, and wants to focus on national economy and redress wealth disparity instead of acting as global police waging “endless wars” thousands of miles away from the US territorial borders.

Addressing a convention of conservatives last year, Trump publicly castigated his own generals, much to the dismay of neoliberal chauvinists upholding American exceptionalism and militarism, by revealing: “I learn more sometimes from soldiers what’s going on, than I do from generals. I do. I hate to say it. I tell the generals all the time.”

At another occasion, he ruffled more feathers by telling the reporters:

“I’m not saying the military’s in love with me. The soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Allies and Former U.S. Officials Fear Trump Could Seek NATO Exit in a Second Term:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/trump-nato-withdraw.html

[2] The Taliban on Trump: “We hope he will win the election”:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/taliban-on-trump-we-hope-he-will-win-the-election-withdraw-us-troops/

[3] Iran-backed militias announce ‘conditional’ cease-fire against U.S. in Iraq:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iran-backed-militias-announce-conditional-cease-fire-against-us-in-iraq/2020/10/11/7a64f624-0bbd-11eb-b404-8d1e675ec701_story.html

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic there was much concern about the impact the virus would have on the African continent.

Predictions focused on the underdeveloped healthcare, transportation and educational sectors of the African Union (AU) member-states stemming from their dependent neo-colonial economies, suggesting that this would prove disastrous once the virus penetrated the region.

The major outbreaks of COVID-19 infections are centered in the more developed economies within the AU. South Africa, the continent’s most industrialized state with a population of close to 60 million, has borne the brunt of the pandemic with approximately 700,000 cases and 18,000 deaths.

Other states reporting high numbers of cases include Ethiopia, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, all of which are major hubs for urbanization, tourism, international trade and strategic resources extraction. Early on in the beginning of the pandemic, the African Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ACDC) began to track the spread of the potential deadly illness and strengthened cooperation with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international public health agencies.

Image on the right: Africa CDC Director coordinates efforts across the continent

A daily update published by the ACDC, an affiliate of the AU, reports as of October 14, that 1,593,472 cases have been confirmed on the continent while the death toll from the pandemic stands 38,884 with 1,319, 118 classified as recovered from COVID-19. There are approximately 1.3 billion people living in the AU member-states and therefore in comparison to other geo-political regions, the infection rate overall remains low.

Western corporate and governmental media agencies are perplexed by the situation in Africa which has undergone numerous public health crises over the last two decades. Most recently, the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreak in three West African states during 2014-2015, resulted in the deaths of more than 11,000 people. (See this)

Over the last year, there was an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which has been contained through the courageous efforts of Congolese healthcare personnel and research scientists working in collaboration with international groupings such as the WHO. Vaccines to prevent Ebola, along with sophisticated contact tracing mechanisms, have served to prevent a wider proliferation of the disease both domestically and in other contiguous states in Central and East Africa.

Africa Attempts to Coordinate Responses to the Pandemic Unlike the U.S.

Various projects are underway to maintain vigilance against the pandemic. A workshop was held during September on the need to rapidly increase the production of personal protective equipment (PPE) in the AU member-states.

According to a report on the enhanced efforts aimed at producing PPE within the region, the ACDC says that:

“The Infection Prevention and Control Technical Working Group of the Africa Task Force for Coronavirus Response (AFTCOR) held a special virtual workshop to promote manufacturing of personal protective equipment (PPE) in Africa on Thursday, 3 September 2020. Over 300 participants representing policymakers, regulatory agencies, the private sector, government and non-government institutions, manufacturers and distributors of PPE, PPE technical experts, multilateral and bilateral organizations, attended the workshop.”

The lack of PPE is by no means exclusively an African problem. In the United States, this was one of the major complaints leveled against the privately-owned healthcare industry which failed its own workers and patients by not providing adequate protections. Healthcare workers in the U.S. have stated that within the senior convalescent facilities, managers often told employees not to wear masks because it could alarm the residents and patients. Such disregard for protocols and the safety of employees and patients undoubtedly lead to many unnecessary deaths.

President Donald Trump deliberately minimized the threat of the pandemic in the critical months of February and March. After the economic consequences of the rapid spread of infections and consequent deaths, the stock market fell precipitously prompting the appointment of a now-defunct White House Task Force and the eventual passage of a stimulus package in April.

Trump was reluctant to evoke the Defense Production Act and instead sought to bailout large corporations, banks and institutions which experienced drastic declines in revenues and profits.

Today in the U.S., tens of millions remain jobless while facing the potential of foreclosures and evictions in equally as great numbers.

The ACDC stressed during the September workshop the need for the continent to be self-reliant  in PPP production, saying:

“In his opening address, Dr. John Nkengasong, Director of Africa CDC, said with a population of about 1.3 billion Africa cannot continue to import over 95% of its PPE requirements. He said adequate and continuous supply of PPE is needed to protect vulnerable healthcare workers from being infected while caring for others…. Key issues discussed included the need for uniform continental standards for PPE manufacturing (including domestication of international standards), enforcement of the standards, greater collaboration between national regulatory agencies for sharing best practices, resource mobilization, procurement of raw materials, post-marketing surveillance, and the protection of intellectual property rights and patents.”

Anyone observing the public health crisis in the U.S. would note the lack of a national policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each state, county and municipality has largely been left to its own devices related to mitigation efforts.

Although the White House has issued guidelines through the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Trump routinely ignores the wearing of masks and the necessity of social distancing. After contracting the virus, the president was given an early detection test and experimental treatments which are not available to the majority working and oppressed peoples in general.

Statistical Comparisons and the Need for Socialized Medicine

Considering the population and economic status of Africa in comparison to other regions of the world, medical experts, social scientists and journalists are seeking explanations of the disparity in rates of infection and deaths. Some of the analysis centers on the relative youthful nature of the African people where those under 30 years of age make-up a substantial portion of the population in most AU member-states.

Others have attempted to claim that the low numbers are a result of the lack of testing capability across the continent. Also there is the notion that the number of cases is being underreported due to lack of access to testing locations within clinics, hospitals and public places.

Yet, in Zimbabwe, for example, the number of infections remains low particularly when compared to neighboring Republic of South Africa. Zimbabwe remains under the yoke of western imperialist sanctions from Britain and the U.S. and has undergone labor difficulties in the healthcare sector. Nonetheless, the government has been able to keep the number of infections to 8,000 with less than 250 deaths.

Zimbabwe First Lady Auxillia Mnangagwa wearing masks along with other government officials

An article published on October 14 in The Hill by Dr. Steven Phillips, an epidemiologist formerly employed by the CDC, raised the questions:

“How can the earth’s poorest continent by almost any health, income, or education measure, including the UN’s Human Development Index, lead the world? How can a continent where 56 percent of its urban population is concentrated in non-social distanced slums, and where only 34 percent of households have access to basic handwashing facilities, largely avoid this viral scourge? These conditions have resulted in Africa having the highest rates of malaria, tuberculosis, AIDS and measles deaths in the world. Not only does COVID not follow this dismal trend, but it has reversed it — demonstrating a dramatically lower toll than any other continent.”

Contrasting the African situation with the U.S. and the world illustrates the dangerous social conditions under which people are living in the most advanced industrialized state in the world, where the number of infections and deaths are continuously climbing. The U.S. remains the most dangerous place to be in the world with more than 7 million infections and 215,000 deaths from COVID-19. The global share of COVID deaths to the world’s population is 5 for the U.S., 2.3 for Europe and 0.26 for Africa. (See this)

This worldwide pandemic has revealed the vulnerability of the U.S. capitalist and imperialist system. These lessons must be learned by the working class and oppressed in order to re-energize the struggle for national health insurance and socialized medicine. Quality healthcare is a fundamental human right despite the avoidance of this pertinent issue within the 2020 presidential debates.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author; featured image: African Union and African Center for Disease Control in parnership against COVID-19

This weekend, celebration of Indigenous People’s Day will replace the federal holiday, Columbus Day, in at least eight states and over 130 cities in 34 states. Along with the toppling of Columbus statues and the removal of a racial slur as a name for a major football team, this signals a shifting awareness in the United States of our colonial roots and ongoing Indigenous genocide and a desire for change.

If, like me, you are not indigenous, there are ways each of us can educate ourselves and those around us about the land we live on, to whom it belonged and how it was taken away from them. We can learn about the ways our actions may silence indigenous voices or otherwise contribute to their oppression. We can support indigenous people by buying from their businesses, contributing to their organizations or showing up to assist with their struggles. Taylor Payer (Anishinaabe) wrote this guide for ways to celebrate Indigenous People on this day and every day.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States,” writes,

“By and large the history of relations between Indigenous and settler is fraught with conflict, defined by a struggle for land, which is inevitably a struggle for power and control. Five hundred years later, Native peoples are still fighting to protect their lands and their rights to exist as distinct political communities and individuals.”

Here are a few of the current efforts by Indigenous Peoples to protect their sovereignty, right to exist and lands.

Image on the right: Navajo and Hopi Families COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Prioritizing Health During COVID19

Indigenous communities in the United States are more likely than other communities to lack basics such as running water, electricity, access to the internet and other necessities that support public health measures, the ability to get information and to stay at home.

The Navajo Nation, which was hit very hard early in the pandemic, received federal funds after a long delay, but this money has to be spent by the end of the year or they lose it. While much of it was used to provide protective equipment, food and health care, leaders argue they also need to build infrastructure to support health now and in the long term, but those projects take time. There is a bill in Congress to extend the deadline for when the funds must be used, but it is not likely to pass in time.

In the Great Sioux Nation, tribes such as the Cheyenne River Sioux and the Oglala Sioux created checkpoints at the entrances to their reservations to screen people for COVID-19. This is a public health measure used by nations around the world to control the spread of the virus. In South Dakota, where cases are rising, Governor Kristi Noem is opposed to the checkpoints and is threatening to withdraw aid if they aren’t dismantled. The tribes refuse to take them down and have filed a complaint with the federal government.

Protest at border wall. Rafael Carranza/The Republic.

Respecting Sacred Sites

There is a long history in the United States of failure to understand Native American culture and respect sacred sites. Think of an indigenous sacred site as a church, mosque or temple. Now imagine what the reaction would be if a government or corporation tried to destroy those structures or refuse access to them. Religious freedom is protected under the First Amendment in the United States, except for Indigenous Peoples.

Sacred sites have been destroyed, such as the San Francisco Peaks where a ski resort, Snowbowl, was built. In February, the Trump administration granted permission for mining and logging on Bears Ears land. The Black Hills have long been a target for development. Cal State Long Beach is facing consequences for dumping construction debris, including asphalt, metal and concrete, on a sacred site that is registered as a national  historic place.

At present, a conflict is taking place along the US-Mexico border where construction of the wall is violating indigenous sovereignty and rights. A group of tribes in the Kumeyaay Nation are suing the federal government for blocking their access to “sacred sites, trails, plants and medicines, as well as a number of historic landmarks.” And activists in Arizona from the Tohono O’odham Nation are waging a direct action campaign to physically block construction of the wall there that will stop them from having access to a sacred site and source of water, the Quitobaquito Springs.

From the Toronto Star.

Stopping Fossil Fuel Projects

The struggle to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline is perhaps one of the most well-known efforts to stop fossil fuel infrastructure from invading and degrading indigenous land, and that struggle continues, but there are many similar struggles going on. Resistance is rising in Greater Chaco against fracking, which began there in 2010.

Two major conflicts are in Western Canada, the Trans Mountain Pipeline on Secwepemc and Ktunaxa land and the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline on Wet’suwet’en Territory. The Trans Mountain Pipeline project was bought by the Canadian government in 2018 when Kinder Morgan was about to give up on it. Construction has begun and people are trying to block it through tree sits and targeting corporations that insure the project. Similarly, the Wet’suwet’en have used blockades, and been treated violently by militarized police, and are now asking the Supreme Court to halt the project because of the violence to their communities associated with the pipeline workers’ “man camps.”

Phoenix, Arizona. Jenni Monet.

Ending Violence Against Women

The kidnapping, sexual assault and murder of indigenous women is at a crisis level. Clearing the FOG spoke with Annita Luchesi (Cheyenne) about it last year. She has been working to document the cases through the MMIW Database, win policy changes to solve the cases and prevent them from occurring through the Sovereign Bodies Institute. Red dresses are used in protests to symbolize the women and girls who have disappeared or have been killed. Not only are “man camps” that exist around fossil fuel projects directly correlated with increased violence towards women, but law enforcement, who are supposed to investigate the violence, are perpetrators of it too.

From Real Peoples Media.

Reclaiming the Land

Land defenders from the Six Nations in Canada are waging a struggle to prevent a development from being built on their land. They established a camp on the land, which is disputed territory, in July and named it 1492 Land Back Lane. Police arrested them last month and now the land defenders are receiving more support and solidarity through rallies and marches.

In this interview, two Haudenosaunee land defenders explain how settlers are encroaching upon their land with development and restricting their land base as their population grows. They describe how they need land for their sources of food, such as plants and game, and how development destroys that. It is easy to see the parallels with the situation faced by colonized people all over the world, and particularly Palestinians who are being constrained to smaller spaces and attacked right now for harvesting their olives.

This is the “American Way of War,” as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz describes it. It has its roots in the tactics used by settlers when they first came to the Americas of destroying land, housing and crops to weaken Native Americans and drive them off their land. It continues today in places like Yemen and Syria where there are food crises and with the use of economic coercive measures against countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Iran that prevent them from buying food and medicine. It’s time for the people of the United States to demand an end to these destructive practices.

From Last Real Indians.

Moving Forward

Celebrating Indigenous People’s Day is a step towards recognizing that colonization exists. We can do more to end that colonization and respect the sovereignty of indigenous nations.

Climate Justice Alliance developed a set of  proposals for an indigenous-led just transition to a green economy. They write:

“A just nation-to-nation relationship means breaking the cycle of asking Indigenous nations to choose between a colonial imposed model of an extractive economy or preservation of their Indigenous sovereignty, including protection of their traditional lands, waters and air, and the right to practice their spirituality and cultural lifeways.”

The proposals include respecting the sovereignty of indigenous nations, requiring their consent for policies and projects, repairing the damage done through broken agreements and investment in indigenous communities. These principles can be applied more broadly than just  addressing the climate crisis to become a template for all interactions with indigenous nations.

There is a path forward to a future where the rights of indigenous peoples are respected and protected. As we participate in the current movement to end systemic anti-black racism in the United States, let’s include the ways systemic racism and colonization impact Native Americans. Let’s show our solidarity with indigenous people through our actions to support their resistance.

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Margaret Flowers directs Popular Resistance.

Featured image is from Jenna Pope

“We’re run by the Pentagon, we’re run by Madison Avenue, we’re run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don’t revolt we’ll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche…. As long as we go out and buy stuff, we’re at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people’s Villages, but we are all prisoners.”— Patrick McGoohan

This is not an election.

This is a con game, a scam, a grift, a hustle, a bunko, a swindle, a flimflam, a gaffle, and a bamboozle.

In this carefully choreographed scheme to strip the American citizenry of our power and our rights, “we the people” are nothing more than marks, suckers, stooges, mugs, rubes, or gulls.

We are victims of the Deep State’s confidence game.

Every confidence game has six essential stages:

1) the foundation to lay the groundwork for the illusion;

2) the approach whereby the victim is contacted;

3) the build-up to make the victim feel like they’ve got a vested interest in the outcome;

4) the corroboration (aided by third-party conspirators) to legitimize that the scammers are, in fact, on the up-and-up;

5) the pay-off, in which the victim gets to experience some small early “wins”; and

6) the “hurrah”— a sudden manufactured crisis or change of events that creates a sense of urgency.

In this particular con game, every candidate dangled before us as some form of political savior—including Donald Trump and Joe Biden—is part of a long-running, elaborate scam intended to persuade us that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we live in a constitutional republic.

In this way, the voters are the dupes, the candidates are the shills, and as usual, it’s the Deep State rigging the outcome.

Terrorist attacks, pandemics, civil unrest: these are all manipulated crises that add to the sense of urgency and help us feel invested in the outcome of the various elections, but it doesn’t change much in the long term.

No matter who wins this election, we’ll all still be prisoners of the Deep State.

We just haven’t learned to recognize our prison walls as such.

It’s like that old British television series The Prisoner, which takes place in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly idyllic retirement community known only as The Village.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned, monitored by militarized drones, and interrogated in The Village, a beautiful resort with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.

While luxurious, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, all of their movements tracked. Residents of the Village are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.

First broadcast in Great Britain 50-some years ago, The Prisoner dystopian television series —described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the loss of freedom, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of human beings to meekly accept their lot in life as prisoners in a prison of their own making.

The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan is Number Six.

Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.

“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by Patrick McGoohan, who also played the title role.

In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”

Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.

Number Six refuses to comply.

In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.

Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s attempts to escape are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”

Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.

As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man’s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”

The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.

As Thill noted, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”

The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.

Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be while funding its existence.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the Deep State and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Instagram, etc.).

Government eyes are watching you.

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body camerasthat turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”

This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.

It is a prison from which there will be no escape. Certainly not if the government and its corporate allies have anything to say about it.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”

None of this will change, no matter who wins this upcoming presidential election.

And that’s the hustle, you see: because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, the day after a new president is sworn in, we’ll still find ourselves prisoners of the Village.

This should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior: we never stopped being prisoners.

So how do you escape? For starters, resist the urge to conform to a group mind and the tyranny of mob-think as controlled by the Deep State.

Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

You want to be free? Remove the blindfold that blinds you to the Deep State’s con game, stop doping yourself with government propaganda, and break free of the political chokehold that has got you marching in lockstep with tyrants and dictators.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, until you come to terms with the fact that the government is the problem (no matter which party dominates), you’ll never be free.

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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]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The discourse about, or for, peace has mostly disappeared over the last 2-3 decades. It applies to research (and its non-governmental funding possibilities), to politics in general and to the media.

In foreign and security politics, the intellectual level is now such that it does not even seem strange to decision-makers that they never obtain peace advice or consult peace experts. The fantasy-assumption is that if only there is enough military’ security’ means applied to enough societal problems, peace will automatically come about.

I can’t remember having heard a parliamentarian or minister mention or conceptualise peace beyond the level of the state dinner speech – that is, devoid of theoretical and factual content as well as of meaning.

The mainstream media have no one who can focus on peace – not to mention, do peace journalism with professional conflict analysis. Military, political, psychological and economic warfare as well as interventions – usually in the fake-and-omission mode – dominate the reporting.

Remarkably, that applies also to those who are firmly against these types of policies: the focus is critical but seldom constructive: What should and can be done? Think Chomsky.

Living in Sweden, I cannot remember the last 20 or so years to have seen a peace perspective applied to the world or a particular conflict by any mainstream media in the Nordic countries. There is simply no editors, reporters or journalists who are specialised in such a perspective. And “peace people” seem barred from those media.

So the peace discourse has vanished. Peace made invisible. Peace being treated as the big benign Godot in the middle of the room that everybody, knowingly or not, pretends will never come and is unrealistic – that is, irrelevant and much more unrealistic than the ongoing militarism, nuclearism, interventionism and ongoing destruction of that Nature on which we are all dependent and with which we must all have a partnership.

Eutopia #18 @ Jan Oberg

Those of us who have been engaged in international matters for about half a century are seen as survivors of a culture gone by – the culture, thinking, researching and action for peace. Welcome to the Museum of Peace and its niks…

In other words, in the corridors of today’s more or less kakistocratic (” a government that is ruled by the least suitable, able, or experienced people”) power circles, the word ‘peace’ will be met with silence, ridiculed, considered overly idealistic/unrealistic out of time and place.

Conclusion on those points: We should simply just continue in spite of all – lit the light in that darkness ’cause the times will change. If you work out of conviction, passion or talent – like, say, a composer – you don’t stop just because you don’t get attention. You continue because you are passionate about your values and goals and because – precisely in these times – you have a delightfully different story to tell: that peace is possible and by no measure unrealistic but requires different thinking, knowledge and policies.

This leads me to continue saying that we must change this fact: 95% of the people in the West, devote 95% of their energies to the world as it is – criticising this or that, producing diagnoses and prognoses, predicting catastrophes, issuing warnings and fighting each other about the right interpretation or making up conspiracies and propaganda.

But such negative energy will get us exactly nowhere:

• When you fall ill, you don’t fancy a doctor who does only diagnosis and prognosis but hasn’t got a clue about your treatment, do you?
• The focus ought to be on the better futures that are possible – imagining them and finding ways to reach them – together. Dear Elise Boulding always rightly told us that what people cannot imagine they won’t work for.
• We know more than enough about today’s problems to now attend creatively to what could be instead of what is: that is, a little of wisdom built on top of knowledge – as E F” Small is Beautiful” Schumacher expressed it: We are now so knowledgeable that we cannot do without wisdom.

In short, positive energy put into visualising and “visionising”…

This leads me in this short article – as well as in my own life – to the question: What about art?

Can the arts become one of the building blocks of the necessary bridge between what is and what could be? Between criticism and constructivism? Between now/here and vision/strategy towards different future(s)? Between the blindness of the information avalanche and the seeing of a better future?

I believe it can – however with the qualification “in principle” or ”theoretically”.

Art is fundamentally about seeing something less visible or not readily visible. It’s about realising something that does not yet exist but comes bursting out of the imagination. It’s about doing old things in new ways or doing what has never been done before.

Art is based on an emotionally/intuitively expressive urge to say something – also beyond empirical reality – to make a wake-up call to fellow global citizens. It’s the thing the artist does because she or he can do nothing better than exactly that.

True art is existential – no matter today’s perverted commercial “art market” and “art industry” (and some who are inside that are indeed true artists anyhow, complicated and contradictory as it may seem).

If you can’t hear those defining qualities in, say, Beethoven’s symphonies or in Dylan’s poetry-music, if you cannot see it in Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings, sense it in Tolstoy’s writings, or in Boulding’s writings – and Gandhi’s and King’s too – there is nothing I can do to explain what I mean.

YellowRedGreenPink Geometry © Jan Oberg

But there is still at least one problem on my mind: Why is so much of the arts also focused more – much more – on violence, war, evil, death, drama, killing, aggression and suffering?

Why is so little of it motivated by or conveying life-confirming stuff such as reconciliation, forgiveness, harmony, diversity, development, cooperation, joy, conviviality … and peace?

Why is so much of it on problems rather than solutions? On history/present more than on the future?

The classical discussion – are humans fundamentally good or evil? – can be extended to: Do humans pay attention mostly to good or to evil? To problems or solutions? And that is much more easy to answer.

Perhaps you now think that I am exaggerating and that these matters can simply not be quantified. That’s a valid argument but I believe we should try to dialogue about it anyhow.

Many of the great works in literature, films, music, and paintings build on themes of violence and destruction and take their inspiration in the dark sides of human and societal nature, behaviour and actions. They ask the question why the past and present world is evil – rather than stimulate our imagination to perceive the better world as it could be – to paraphrase George Bernhard Shaw.

I was reminded of that when recently I went to the leading photography festival in Sweden, if not in Scandinavia – the Landskrona Photo Festival –  which I always visit because I am also an art photographer.

Beyond any doubt, it shows high average quality, considerable diversity, many and highly topical themes – all the attributes defining fine curatorship.

So what was my problem?

Well, that at least 40% of the exhibited works focus on war, genocide, massacre, concentration camps, the suffering of particular groups of people, refugees and other ‘damned of the earth.’ And that much of the rest is either expressive of de-politicising identity issues or experimental photography, constructed, stage-set or hybrid, formalistic.

And it’s all pretty lifeless! No humour, satire, no attempt to depict beauty, conviviality, happiness. Or make the spectator think about peace and other positive values.

I mean, what is the point of displaying yet another series of (documentary) images of skeletons from various massacres in the narrow, dark prison cells of a Citadel?

two of my own photos from the festival

Is the assumption, perhaps, the – naive – one like the one surrounding Hiroshima and hibakusha films and photos, namely that by showing them the audience will be appalled and become more critical or warfare and other types of violence?

Is it part of the broader “violence industry” in which we also find the museums of wars and massacres and Holocaust?

Or is it that it hits us emotionally and get an “automatic” mileage, a little like if a photographer takes portraits of celebrities rather than non-celebrities, then she or he becomes famous more easily?

Why are there so many more images in this world of destruction than of construction, of violence than of peace?

The very important World Press Photo contest is another – worse – example. Just look at the photos on the link.

It’s filled with violence and suffering – and I am relatively sure that those who run these contests and festivals are not even aware of that bias or have discussed it. As if reality or the imagination or the creative impulse could not also be expressed through images of beauty and peace?

Perhaps we have come so far down the mental slippery slope that war and destruction is considered (un- or subconsciously) to be more ‘realistic’ and significant or ‘normal’ and everyday-like than peace, love, cooperation and beauty?

We live in an age influenced much more by images than by text and even sound – also because everybody has become a kind of photographer.

What the hundreds of images we more or less consciously perceive during a day through all sorts of media tell us about the world is extremely important in shaping our worldview.

Well, you may say, it’s always been the case that the negative dominated and fascinated us, hasn’t it? Perhaps.

But if so, let’s become a bit more peace-creative and re-balance it all!

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All images in this article are from TT/Jan Oberg

If masks don’t stop infection, yet cause known and probable harms, what’s the point of wearing them? What motive would governments have for mandating them? In their new book, Drs. Karina Reiss PhD and Dr. Sucharit Bakdi MD provide one possibility:

“In fact, there is no study to even suggest that it makes any sense for healthy individuals to wear masks in public. One might suspect that the only political reason for enforcing the measure is to foster fear in the population.”

Fear of a pandemic that never was. Fear of those hiding their face. Fear of those without a mask. Fear of a government that violates human rights.

Professor Karina Reiss holds a PhD in biology and has received prestigious honors and awards for academic contributions to fields of infection and biochemistry. Dr. Bhakdi has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology and virology for which he has received the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate.

You can order a copy of their fact-rich book, Corona, False Alarm?, from the publisher, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk or your local, struggling bookstore. In June 2020, the original German version sold 200,000 copies and 75,000 e-books in six weeks. Let’s help make the English version a New York Times Bestseller.

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

In a public statement, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich says:

“…the allegedly new and highly dangerous corona virus has not caused any excess mortality anywhere in the world… But the anti-corona measures, whose only basis are the PCR tests results… have, in the meantime, caused the loss of innumerable human lives and have destroyed the economic existence of countless companies and individuals worldwide.”

“In Australia, for example, people are thrown into prison if they do not wear a mask, or do not wear it properly (as deemed by the authorities). In the Philippines, people who do not wear a mask… are getting shot in the head.”

It’s no wonder, Dr. Fuellmich refers to the COVID-19 scandal as “the greatest crime against humanity ever committed.”

Dr. Fuellmich is one of four members of the German Corona Investigative Committee. The Committee is filing a class action lawsuit against those responsible for the German lockdowns — including the WHO and many pharmaceutical companies, as well as the German government.

You can listen to the committee’s full and articulate statement of the facts of their case in the video below or in this BitChute video.

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

John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novel, Brave New Normal: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

For several weeks people prevented AT&T from installing 5G devices in the first two locations in Berkeley. A key part of the project consisted of placing antennas on utility poles at the corner of Gilman and Neilson streets and near the Monterey Market on Hopkins Street. These are tiny business districts with coffee shops, restaurants, a natural grocery and other small shops in a residential area.

Residents and workers feared negative health effects from the radiation, that 5G just might even turn the district into a slow-acting microwave oven. So whenever AT&T’s installation crews showed up with trucks and equipment, small groups of activists and residents would gather around the base of the poles, occupying the sites and blocking the work. Thus, eight installation attempts were thwarted.

Police did not intervene. Mayor Jesse Arreguin and the city council were allowing AT&T to proceed with their installation plans, while at the same time not allowing police to intervene or arrest protesters. But since a multibillion dollar corporation was involved, it was not certain how this might play out.

Finally, in October, AT&T came up with a new tactic. Instead of coming in the daytime and having the locals meet and block them, they decided to come on Monday, October 5th at one A.M., put up a fence around the pole to keep protesters away, enabling the subcontractors to install the antenna.

To counter this our home team called for a midnight vigil, sending out an email saying in part, “This looks like the crucial moment. . . . If you cannot come at midnight, please come at 7 AM for the second shift.” The idea was to get there first.

Midnight? I’d attended one or two of the previous events, in the daytime of course. I didn’t really know how dangerous this 5G might be, but anyone who’s ever put food into a microwave oven must know that microwaves can burn. Even high voltage power lines are not harmless to people who are unfortunate enough to live under them. A friend of mine is an electronics engineer who worked around antennas and radio frequency radiation for many decades, considering that to be harmless till he developed symptoms of leukemia.

Our city should exercise caution. The fact that this 5G project was being approved almost on the sly, without notifying people of hearings, without openness, suggested to me that there might be something unhealthy about this. People who had written to Berkeley city officials asking for hearings received no replies.

Looking for more information, I found a signed statement from “more than 180 scientists and doctors from 35 countries, recommending a moratorium on the roll-out of the fifth generation, 5G, for telecommunication until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry.” It’s about three pages, well written and readable.

Here are two articles from Scientific American, “New Studies Link Cell Phone Radiation with Cancer.” and “We Have No Reason to Believe 5G Is Safe” by Joel M. Moskowitz of UC Berkeley’s School of Public Health.

Of course if we can ignore climate change, GMOs, dangers of nuclear radiation and other hazards that scientists so inconveniently warn us about, I suppose we can also live with 5G. Or can we?

The pole at 1321 Gilman street is a ten minute walk from where my neighbor Steve and I live. We arrived shortly after midnight. By 1 a.m. a dozen of us had gathered, Phoebe Sorgen, a co-founder of Wireless Radiation Education & Defense (WiRED), and others, some of whom I knew, some I didn’t. Someone had brought folding chairs, and someone else brought cookies. We sat near the pole chatting, getting to know each other and updating on events.

We wore masks. We remarked that since this spring we’d been living with Covid 19, for the last few weeks with bad air from forest fires, and now the prospect of 5G. This evening the air wasn’t that bad; we looked up and saw the silvery moon. A couple of nights ago the moon had been a frightful deep orange. And of course there’d been that day about a month ago when the sun hadn’t come up.

Hours passed. The street was quiet, very few cars passed, it was just our small group out here by the dark street. Were the antenna installers actually coming? Maybe they’d decided not to.

A large orange kitty cat came by, possibly, it seemed, with intentions of joining our demonstration. Did the kitty share our fear of 5G? Maybe he did. He stayed with us for a while.

More time went by. It was after three o’clock and it didn’t look to us like the installers were coming. Sierra and another person were setting up a tent, they’d be camping next to the pole. Some would be sleeping in their cars. Others left to go home. Steve and I were also about to leave, but just then a construction vehicle drove past, and parked up the street. On the side it read “Modus,” the name of AT&T’s subcontractors.

Two or three more trucks arrived, also parking up the street. One pulled a portable generator. We jumped up, standing close to the pole. Another truck arrived, this one pulling a trailer, parked on the street right beside us. What was this? I wondered. “It’s the fence truck,” someone said. The trailer was loaded with the fences. After a few minutes it drove off, apparently leaving.

The other vehicles remained parked about a block up the street. They didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It looked like this would be another standoff, such as had occurred on several occasions by now. Elizabeth was hurriedly phoning the people who’d left, asking them to return.

Fog was descending on the scene, drifting in to fill up the air, visible in the street lights. I assumed it was fog, not smoke from the wildfires which so often covers the sky these days.

There were about nine of us now. Nothing seemed to be actually happening at the moment. There weren’t any police around.

Another truck arrived, the letters “B A T” on its side. This was said to be traffic control; they put out cones, and block and direct traffic around construction sites.

I glanced at my watch. Four o’clock. Minutes later, three police cars drove up, and at least six police got out. The sergeant in charge walked up to us, and with a disarming smile she said, “Hi Phoebe!”

Phoebe returned the greeting; they knew each other by name from previous events here at this pole. The officer, Sergeant Ronnie Hernandez, told us we had to leave, and said the order came from the city, though she said she didn’t know whether from the City Manager (Dee Williams-Ridley), Public Workers Director (Liam Garland), or Supervising Engineer (Ron Nevels). AT&T will reimburse the city for the expenses, she said. That needs to be verified, but if true, the Berkeley Police Department is a rent-a-cop service for corporations. The surprising thing is that they could be so open about it.

Rather than leave, Phoebe and several others sat down on the sidewalk. Sergeant Hernandez gave the word, and two cops, huge musclemen, dragged them away from the pole and across the street. Asking us each our names, it looked like they were going to arrest all of us, though as it turned out they didn’t arrest anyone.

Our team near the Monterey Market were treated worse. Cynthia Papermaster told us that two of the officers threatened to take her service dog, Luck-Key, and put him in the pound if she didn’t move away from the pole. “One of the threats about Luck-Key was made as the officer was grabbing my arm and twisting it,” Cynthia said. “I thought they were going to break my arm. More important than my pain is that we were removed so that a private multibillion dollar company could perform non-essential work in the middle of the night against Berkeley’s laws.”

Meave O’Connor, also at the Monterey site, has many large bruises on her arms and on one hand that was slammed into the pole. Jason Winnett sustained pulled muscles in his left shoulder and neck. “I had to change this week’s work plans in order to rest and rehabilitate,” he said. “I was appalled to witness women in their 70s, concerned citizens, who after being up in vigil all night, were being roughly handled by a large number of young, strong police officers.”

According to the scientific reports, microwaving from 5G can cause memory loss, so maybe we’ll forget all about it.

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This article was originally published on Daniel’s Free Speech Zone.

Daniel Borgström is an ex Marine, now living in Berkeley where he attends and writes about the various struggles against corporate dominance.

Sometimes it can be useful to be brief. Last year, the wave of worry, promoted by the Swedish Alberich, without at least the artistic virtue of her deceased compatriot, Birgit Nilsson, stimulated predictions of imminent Götterdämmerung. This virtually Wagnerian kitsch was further dramatised by the pretensious performers of troupes apocalyptical like Extinction Rebellion. As 2019 ended we were all to believe that indeed Valhalla lay around the corner- at least for the sustainable. Instead we should have anticipated the Götzendämmerung. Yet 2020 proved that the idols are worshipped more than ever, albeit with the collusion of the gods.

The general tendency (or intention) to focus public attention on phenomena which require religious faith is a very old means of exerting control and diverting attention from the destructive activities of those in whom control has been concentrated.

The reluctance to attribute climate change to universal — in the sense of phenomena in the universe — processes like solar activity, planetary motion etc. lies in the fact that this would weaken clerical claims to authority (whether as priests or scientists).

By attributing events — most of which we only “know” from mass media depictions — as “climate change” and due to CO2, it is possible to promote a pseudo-scientific argument that implicates the masses without necessarily subjecting the “clergy” to the same accusations. CO2 has the same function as “sin” for the Church. So the rich and powerful can say “we are all sinners” but there are only a few of us and many more of YOU — the masses of CO2 sinners. What is demanded then is submission and penance, while the rich — literally have recourse to indulgences.

The crimes of mass poisoning and destruction of the habitable environment — we need only remember that mega-cities are the product of land theft and wage or other forms of slave labour — are entirely withdrawn from the scope of specific (e.g. class) human responsibility. They become non-events.

Often it is said that climate activists are like religious fanatics. However, to adequately respond to the problem — not merely condemn it — one has to pay more attention to how religion as such functions, especially in a culture polluted by Christendom.

On another level, and levels are always being confused, the demands for less waste and unnecessary consumption — rooted in the Puritan morality of non-conformist clergy — has more appeal given the forty years of declining incomes for labouring people. It suggests to the frugal and ordinary that they could preserve what little they have accumulated if they could only live in an environment where conservation was a generally accepted practice and value. Meanwhile monopolies and cartels — the rulers of the economy — dress their business models in new garb like “sustainability” and “carbon neutrality”. For them sustainability is foremost sustainable profit and carbon neutrality a fiction achieved by trading in environmental indulgences (e.g. emission certificates). Having accrued their tonne of wealth, they would have us believe they will be satisfied with a few tonnes less.

(Well, a tonne of wealth comes from creating several tonnes of poverty too. But that has never stopped anyone interested in wealth for its own sake.)

A few years after the Club of Rome (1968) was founded and began its crusade, a German-speaking engineer was endowed with the resources to begin in 1971 what would become the World Economic Forum (WEF), a kind of ecumenical council for the episcopate and prelates of capitalism. In 1972, the Club of Rome published the eugenic epistel,  The Limits to Growth. Soon Klaus Schwab became a kind of permanent prefect of this college of cannibals. One is tempted to say pontiff. His role seems clearly to be that of a bridge between the rapacious, vicious, and obscenely wealthy and those who deliver their messages to the true believers and the masses compelled to be faithful. For nearly 50 years, the pontiff of profit has preached to the flock how they may expect to be sacrificed in future. The most recent version of this message is the encyclical “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

A particularly obnoxious aspect of the WEF theology is implicit in the call for a “fourth” industrial revolution, the blatant disregard for the violence of the previous three. Industrial revolutions were not revolutions so much as they were wars against labour at each time when the risk swelled that such labour would demand its share of the fruits it had produced.

Among others Andre Gunder Frank (e.g. in ReOrient) explained, the so-called Industrial Revolution (the first one) in the Western peninsula, in part, as propelled by a population shortage. In contrast to the centre of human civilisation, Asia, labour was always relatively expensive in what came to be known as Europe (except slaves, whose labour generated much if not most of the capital for the Industrial Revolution). In fact, what we now know as western capitalism and white supremacy are directly related to chronic shortages of reliable (subservient) labour in the West. However, the overproduction that soon resulted regularly from industrial manufacture also required the destruction of competitors and later the inducement to desire rather than need products. Massive industrial strength wars, leading to atomic weapons, were the other means by which profitability was restored and surplus population slaughtered, starved or killed by disease.

The WEF anticipates a “4th industrial revolution” because since the 1950s labour in the West has been considered too expensive at any price. Now having stripped almost all benefits of the wage/ salary and non-wage growth as well as pensions (employees’ deferred income- deceptively called a “benefit” by the State) from the declining labour force, there is a need to redesign industry again to eliminate all but the most essential workers at any educational level. It must be remembered that the WEF represents the pinnacle of profitability and control. The rhetoric of stakeholder v. shareholder notwithstanding, the overall social objective of the class represented in these alpine atrocities is the means by which wealth can be further amassed. It would be more useful to understand “stakeholder” as a reference to those who may be burned at the stake, to sustain the benefits to elite shareholders.

The apparent paradox is that this will eliminate the capacity for consumption and hence an economic model based on low or no consumption is needed in the West.

Hence drug addiction is the best model there is for this kind of economy. The never-ending wars in Latin America, the Middle East and South Central Asia assure the supply of illicit drugs. Expanding the drug addiction beyond narcotics to what might be called “life entitling” substances; e.g., medicines and vaccines, offers the potential to reduce political opposition/resistance while maintaining income streams as the population declines. This was, in fact, the business model of the British East India Company, producing opium in India to smuggle into China. That model has never really been abandoned, merely its legal forms have been changed.

The 4th industrial revolution will be just as criminally violent as the previous three but it will involve applying old techniques — religion and drugs — to subject at least 20-30 per cent of the world population. This is to be eased by the viral and climate crusades designed to prepare the pious masses to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of the alpine conclave. The rest of us are just industrial waste, green indeed, like soylent green.

*

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This article was originally published on Dissident Voice.

Dr T.P. Wilkinson writes, teaches History and English, directs theatre and coaches cricket between the cradles of Heine and Saramago. He is also the author of Church Clothes, Land, Mission and the End of Apartheid in South Africa. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Morgen in Riesengebirge, by Caspar David Friedrich

The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists, the disturbing reality of today’s US.

As a boy, adolescent and youth with nothing special going for me, advantages I had are gone.

On Wednesday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) said workers in the US aged-16 to 24 “face high unemployment and an uncertain future,” adding:

Countless millions of US workers “of all ages” are enduring high unemployment — at a time of economic collapse that could be long-lasting.

Job prospects for new grads are bleak. Dire economic conditions “may persist for years.”

“Young workers have experienced worse outcomes than older workers leading up to and during the” the current depressed conditions.

“Over one-third of young workers (with jobs) are underemployed.”

Women are impacted more than men, Blacks and Latinos hit hardest.

In a weeks earlier column, former Reagan budget director David Stockman described the Wall Street owned and controlled Fed as follows:

It’s “a rogue institution that comprises a clear and present danger to the future of prosperity and liberty in America,” adding:

Wall Street speculators and US politicians don’t grasp the danger of “the most egregiously inflated financial bubble ever.”

“(W)e’re on the cusp of a economic crisis that could eclipse anything we’ve seen before. And most people won’t be prepared for what’s coming.”

When Stockman was appointed Reagan budget director in 1980, “US public debt was…$863 billion.”

It took “192 years and 39 presidents to get there.”

During a 30-day period last summer, Washington borrowed more than the nation’s lawmakers fom inception of the republic in 1776 through 1980.

According to the US Debt Clock, the national debt today exceeds $27 trillion and keeps exploding higher.

Current US federal spending is more than double federal tax revenues.

On October 1, Wall Street on Parade explained that the Fed handed Wall Street over $9 trillion this year that produced speculative excess.

From 2007 – 2010, the Fed doled out $29 trillion in “secret bailouts.”

Something similar is going on today — secretive emergency lending, giveaways to monied interests.

The Fed isn’t “provid(ing) information on to whom or how much it” handed out trillions of dollars.

How much more free money for speculative excess will follow ahead?

In the run-up to and following the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Fed “arbitrarily decided to provide an unlimited money spigot to Wall Street’s trading houses whenever they are at risk of blowing themselves up as a result of their own hubris,” Wall Street on Parade explained.

Conditions today are far more dire than then. The open-ended Fed money spigot most likely will pour out countless more trillions of dollars than already.

A day of reckoning awaits one day. The greater the speculative excess, the more damaging the eventual price to pay.

Like always before, ordinary people will be hardest hit.

Current hard times may continue for years, the lives and welfare of countless millions of Americans adversely affected.

According to the Economic Collapse blog, citing Social Security Administration 2019 wage data,  median annual income for Americans was $34,248.

With current unemployment at nearly 27% today — based on the pre-1990 calculation model, median income is much lower.

When I was at a young working age, single-income households could support middle class living standards — no longer.

To get by today, households need two or more jobs. According to the Social Security Administration:

Nearly one-third of US workers earned less than $20,000 annually last year.

Around 45% of US workers made less than $30,000.

Over 56% earned under $40,000.

Around two-thirds of US workers made less than $50,000 annually.

Unemployment, underemployment, and poverty affect millions of US households, things likely to worsen ahead.

For years, especially during the new millennium, America has been systematically thirdwordized.

The nation is heading toward becoming a full-blown ruler-serf society — controlled by police state harshness.

At a time of economic collapse, hard times are especially hard for most people to get by.

Analyst Doug Casey calls what’s happening today “one for the record books.”

The “house of cards (US economy is) built on quicksand, with a tsunami on the way,” he stressed in his latest commentary.

Casey predicts a “Greater Depression” ahead — to be “(m)uch different, much longer lasting, and much worse than the unpleasantness of 1929-1946.”

If Trump v. Biden November election results are disputed no matter who wins, what Casey considers likely, “mass unrest…stock market convulsions, a dollar collapse, and much more” could happen in the post-election period.

Clearly these are no ordinary times.

Endless US wars by hot and other means rage abroad.

State-sponsored health and welfare harm affects ordinary Americans.

Around 100,000 small business suspended operations or shut down permanently. Growing numbers of medium-sized and large ones filed for bankruptcy.

At a time of Depression-level unemployment, growing hunger and homelessness, along with deepening deprivation overall, US politicians prioritize their own interests, and those of corporate America they support — at the expense of essential to life and welfare needs of ordinary people.

Looking ahead to next year and beyond, things may get much worse for a protracted period with little relief for most Americans in need.

It took global war 2.0 to end the 1930s Great Depression.

Will something similar happen in the 2020s at a time when super-weapons can to kill us all if their full destructive power is unleashed?

It’s the wrong time to be young or working-age at a time when future prospects in America may be dire for a protracted period.

Instead of bipartisan efforts in Washington to turn things around, the worst of times are likely to continue.

Will they exceed Great Depression hardness throughout the 2020s?

No one of Franklin Roosevelt’s stature exists in Washington today.

There’s no likelihood of all-out efforts to create jobs for unemployed workers — no matter which right wing of the one-party state controls the White House and/or Congress.

Ordinary Americans are largely on their own during the hardest of hard times, likely to get harder in the months ahead.

*

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Malevolent Encirclement of Russia

By F. William Engdahl, October 14 2020

On 16 August 1819, an estimated 60,000 pro-democracy and anti-poverty activists were peacefully protesting the utterly corrupt nature of the Parliament in Westminster and demanding the reform of parliamentary representation (which afforded less than 2% of people the right to vote). The gathering took place in St Peter’s Field, Manchester in England.

The protest was precipitated by the acute economic slump, including chronic unemployment and harvest failure, following the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars as well as by enforcement of the Corn Laws which kept the price of bread high, by blocking (or imposing tariffs on) the import of cheap grains, at the expense of ordinary people.

After arresting some key figures on the speaker’s cart at the gathering, the cavalry was ordered to disperse the crowd. Charging with sabres drawn, approximately eighteen people were killed and nearly 700 seriously injured, with the event dubbed the ‘Peterloo massacre’ by radical media in a bitterly ironic reference to the bloody Battle of Waterloo some four years earlier. See ‘The Peterloo Memorial Campaign’.

In his evocative tribute to those peaceful activists gathered at St Peter’s Field, Percy Shelley penned what might be considered the first modern words to capture a sense of nonviolent resistance in his poem ‘The Masque of Anarchy’. The poem’s 38^th verse, repeated in the 91st (and final) one, is as follows:

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you —

Ye are many — they are few.

The history of much of human existence since the Neolithic Revolution 12,000 years ago can be written simply: the endless struggle by those who are oppressed and enslaved against the insane elite that oppresses, enslaves and kills them. For brief explanations,

see ‘Why Activists Fail’ and ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

For insight into the terrified psychology that traps members of the elite, and their agents, in an endless cycle of profit-making and wealth accumulation at the expense of the rest of us, see

‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.

Of course, nothing has changed although four important points have given the latest manifestation of this perpetual struggle a profound importance that far exceeds earlier (and other ongoing) versions.

1. The elite coup currently being conducted is taking place under cover of a ‘virus’ that has been labeled SARS-CoV-2.

What is troublesome is that the identity of the virus remains to be fully ascertained. It  has not been revealed by the Chinese authorities, the WHO or the CDC. (See ‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup).

There is no proof that the  ‘virus’ labeled SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated, purified and proven to cause a consistent set of disease symptoms among those it ‘infects’, which is then labeled Covid-19. So far, the many of us who have searched for this document – including some of the world’s leading virologists – have not found it.

2. This coup involves all of humanity, not just a local, provincial or national population.

For just two of the many detailed exposés of the coup and what it portends, see the report written by the Association of French Reserve Army Officers ‘Investigative Report on the COVID-19 Pandemic and its Relationship to SARS-COV-2 and other Factors’ and the video ‘Plandemic II’.

As Pepe Escobar characterizes this coup in his article ‘From 9/11 to the Great Reset’:

A drive by design towards ironclad concentration of power and geoeconomic diktats was first conceptualized – under the deceptive cover of “sustainable development” – already in 2015 at the UN (here it is, in detail).

Now, this new operating system – or technocratic digital dystopia – is finally being codified, packaged and “sold” since mid summer via a lavish, concerted propaganda campaign. 

The whole Planet Lockdown hysteria that elevated Covid-19 to post-modern Black Plague proportions has been consistently debunked…

The de facto controlled demolition of large swathes of the global economy allowed corporate and vulture capitalism, world wide, to rake untold profits out of the destruction of collapsed businesses.

And all that proceeded with widespread public acceptance – an astonishing process of voluntary servitude.

3. Unless we succeed completely in defeating this coup the very essence of what it means to be human will be taken from us.

Introducing her careful explanation of the agenda of the transhumanists, in her video Dr. Carrie Madej opens with the following words:

So what do you think about going from human 1.0 to human 2.0?… Transhumanism… is about taking humans, as we know ourselves, and melding with artificial intelligence…. That might seem kinda cool to you, we might have some superhuman abilities… that’s the idea, that’s what you see in sci-fi movies… Thinking about this topic… I [had thought that it was] many years in the future.

However, this question, this idea is now right in this moment. We need to make a decision… because I investigated the proposed Covid-19 vaccine and this is my alarm call to the world. I looked at the pros and cons and it frightens me.

And I want you to know about this, you need to be very well informed because this new vaccine is not like your normal flu vaccine. This is something very different, this is something brand new, something completely experimental on the human race. And it’s not just about being a different vaccine. There are technologies that are being introduced with this vaccine that can change the way we live, who we are and what we are. And very quickly….

Some people… like Elon Musk, who is the founder of SpaceX and Tesla Automotive, as well as Ray Kurzweil, who is one of the bigwigs of Google, … are self-proclaimed ‘transhumanists’. They believe that we should go to human 2.0 and they are very big proponents of this. There’s a lot of other people… involved with this…. I think the easiest way to explain this to you is to go with one of the frontrunners for the vaccine and go into a little bit of the history and tell you how they want to make the vaccine and I think that will speak volumes. So, for instance, Moderna is one of the frontrunners for the Covid-19 vaccine…. Watch the video ‘Human 2.0 – Transhumanist Vaccine – A Wake Up Call to the World’.

Whitney Webb provides further insight into the elite intention in this regard. In one of her meticulously-researched articles – ‘Coronavirus Gives a Dangerous Boost to DARPA’s Darkest Agenda’ – she outlines the hidden technological agenda behind the Covid-19 coup that might well be delivered as part of any vaccination program by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Technology developed by the Pentagon’s controversial research branch is getting a huge boost amid the current coronavirus crisis, with little attention going to the agency’s ulterior motives for developing said technologies, their potential for weaponization or their unintended consequences.…

Those who are fearful and desperate will not care that the vaccine may include nanotechnology or have the potential to genetically modify and re-program their very being, as they will only want the current crisis that has upended the world to stop.

In this context, the current coronavirus crisis appears to be the perfect storm that will allow DARPA’s dystopian vision to take hold and burst forth from the darkest recesses of the Pentagon into full public view. DARPA’s transhumanist vision for the military and for humanity presents an unprecedented threat, not just to human freedom, but an existential threat to human existence and the building blocks of biology itself.

4. And among the possible consequences of this coup are nuclear war, the collapse of biodiversity, the deployment of 5G, the climate catastrophe.

For fuller explanations of each of these four points, together with the evidence for the paths to extinction, see ‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’.

But to highlight just one symptom of the accelerating climate crisis, for example, you can read the daily update on the 100 or so extreme wildfires in the western United States (including Alaska) on the National Interagency Fire Center website. Importantly, however, you can also read or watch Dane Wigington’s accounts of the role of climate engineering in precipitating these catastrophic fires to destroy forests on GeoEngineering Watch.

And for a taste of the accelerating collapse of Earth’s biodiversity, this article briefly explains some lowlights of the latest Living Planet Report: Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss – see ‘Humans behind 70% fall in world’s wildlife over last 50 years’ – while this brief report highlights another of the largely ignored risks to biodiversity and life itself. See ‘Sellafield nearly goes bang, and The Guardian totally misses story’.

So why is this being allowed to happen?

Unfortunately, despite the enormous gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves, most people remain too frightened to seriously investigate and consider the evidence regarding what is taking place and to respond powerfully. Why? Because our parenting and education models mass-produce unconsciously terrified and submissively obedient individuals. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

For these individuals, it is far less frightening to simply accept the elite-driven narrative, promulgated by the World Health Organization, the medical industry, governments and the corporate media, and to submissively accept the savage curtailment of our rights and freedoms. And to powerlessly hope that this assault on our identity, liberty and future will all go away ‘once we have the “virus” under control’.

But as anyone who understands political history or has even the vaguest genuine understanding of modern geopolitics well knows, this will not happen. If we do not struggle, it will be our own obedience, our own cooperation that will condemn us all to the fate being orchestrated by the global elite.

Moreover, given the depth, complexity and multifaceted nature of the threats we now face, unless we struggle strategically there is no real prospect of succeeding.

Resisting the Elite Coup so Far

Fortunately, courageous individuals all around the world are doing what they can to inform and mobilize people before it is too late. These range from individuals writing articles or producing videos to expose the simple fact that the virus known as SARS-CoV-2 does not exist and the non-existent disease labeled Covid-19 is being used to ‘cover’ the elite coup, it involves individuals working to defend our hard-won rights and freedom by using legal challenges to the Covid-19 lockdown measures and, vitally, it involves those people taking nonviolent action to defeat the coup or aspects of it.

And, of course, these measures are having impact as evidenced by the actions being taken by elite agents to suppress awareness of this effort and to thwart it. These actions range from censorship of resistance documents and videos, public disparagement of those resisting (perhaps by being labeled ‘conspiracy theorists’ or ‘anti-vaxxers’), the corporate media ignoring or misrepresenting those protesting, and sham scholarship purporting to describe those resisting as psychologically disordered – see

‘Psychopathic traits linked to non-compliance with social distancing guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic’ and

‘Adaptive and maladaptive behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic: The roles of Dark Triad traits, collective narcissism, and health beliefs’ – to police harassment, intimidation and arrest of those who take action to resist the coup or one of its features.

But for a taste of the most recent mobilizations, here are some examples.

At the rally in Berlin on 29 August 2020, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke the following words:

The pandemic is a crisis of convenience for the elite who are dictating these policies. It gives them the ability to obliterate the middle class, to destroy the institutions of democracy, to shift all of our wealth to a handful of billionaires [while] impoverishing the rest of us. And the only thing between them and our children is this crowd that has come to Berlin…. Thank you all very much for fighting. See ‘Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Speaks at Berlin Rally for Freedom and Peace’.

RFK Speaks to Crowd in Berlin

 

Berlin August Rally 2020

You can see a compelling photo of police at the Berlin rally removing their helmets in solidarity with the people at ‘Peaceful Rallies Around the World to Champion Freedom’.

At the Unite for Freedom Rally in Trafalgar Square, London, also on 29 August, David Icke spoke as follows:

We gather here today because a dangerous disease, a deadly disease is sweeping across this land and across this world and it’s not Covid-19, it is fascism…. This world is controlled by a tiny few people because of a simple sequence of imposition and acquiescence. All the way down the pyramid: imposition-acquiescence…. How do we break that sequence? We stop acquiescing! Human race get off your knees!… Stay in your home? No! Wear a mask? No! Let your kids be psychologically dismantled? No!

It is well past the time when we learn the lessons of history. The entirety of human history is one of the few controlling the many because the many acquiesce to the few. Enough!… And I say to the police opposite: ‘You have children, you have grandchildren. And you are enforcing the fascism which your own children and grandchildren will have to live with. Join us, for goodness sake and stop serving the psychopaths.’ There are billions of us and the core of the core of these psychopathic wimps…. I think I can see a way out of this. Come on people of the world. Let’s go! See ‘David Icke’s Speech at the Unite for Freedom Rally’.

But apart from earlier gatherings of large numbers of people to protest the coup that I have previously reported – see, for example,

‘Halting Our Descent into Tyranny: Defeating the Global Elite’s Covid-19 Coup’ – you can read a report of the demonstration in Ottawa on 29 August 2020 here:

‘Parliament Hill protestors denounce “tyranny,” demand end to COVID-19 restrictions’.

There was also an ‘Anti-mask and anti-vaccination demonstration in Zurich’ on 29 August 2020.

And you can see a selection of videos from around the world here: ‘People of the World Do not Consent to Tyranny’.

Meanwhile, the government of the state of Victoria (in south-eastern mainland Australia) continues to cling tenaciously to its record as the most repressive police state on Earth, even arresting people for encouraging others to attend protest rallies.

See ‘Victorian woman charged over alleged anti-lockdown protest plans’ and

‘Australian Woman Arrested For Making A Facebook Post About A COVID Protest’.

This is occurring despite the obvious illegality of federal and state government actions in Australia (and Victoria particularly) which have been carefully detailed, for example, by Victorian lawyer Serene Teffaha who explains the substantial range of laws that are being violated by the government of Victoria (including sections 60, 61, 88, 90, 91, 92 and 95 of the Australian ‘Biosecurity Act 2015’ which takes precedence over its Victorian equivalent,

the Public Health and Mental Well-being Act 2008) in her video

‘Lawyer Serene Teffaha explains the Law re: Bio-security act – forced medical measures & procedures’.

If you thought that the rule of law would protect you from government overreach, it might be a good time to review your belief. The law is simply another tool in the elite’s armory against you and it is being used with devastating impact right now. See

‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

In his 77-minute recorded statement to police after his own arrest – ‘The accused at Greater Melbourne between the 16th of August 2020 and the 27th of August 2020 did incite another person/persons to pursue a course of conduct that involved the commission of an offence by promoting a planned protest with the intention to incite person/persons to contravene namely s 203 (1) of the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008 by encouraging them to not wear masks and also to leave their residence without a specified reason as provided by the stay at home directions’:

see ‘Solihin Millin Interview with Victorian Police After Arrest’ – 76 year old scientist Solihin Millin stated the following:

We live in a supposedly free society, surely we can debate…. Then we use our intellect and our ability to choose. It is stifled, it is censored everywhere by the Australian government, by the Victorian government, by unfortunately the police, who in my words are supporting extortion because [Victorian premier Daniel Andrews] knows that the way to people’s hearts is through their pockets and so he is extorting money from us to make us do his will and, of course, everyone is filled with fear. This is not an epidemic of a virus, it is an epidemic of fear….

I follow the value of truth, I follow the value of unconditional love, I follow the value [of] virtue… (‘help ever, hurt never’), [I follow] the value of peace and the value of nonviolence…. Our behaviour has to be Godly, it has to be pure, it has to be peaceful. However, the sword that we hold in our hand is the sword of truth…. And that is what’s not being allowed. And you will find that I have been arrested because I have a particular point of view which is against these dictates of the health minister…. So I have been arrested. 

And within two seconds I can… prove to you there is no pandemic. Just some simple arithmetic: How many people have died [in Australia]? Three, four hundred? How many Australians are there? 26,000,000. How long has this nonsense been going? Seven months. This is rubbish! And they are stealing – and this is absolutely guaranteed scientifically – they are stealing old-age deaths, with comorbidity features – cancer, heart attacks, pneumonia, diabetes – and they are assigning those old-age deaths to Covid-19. And you know if you look on the Australia Bureau of Statistics website all they have to do is assume Covid-19. They don’t even have to test for it! Watch ‘Solihin Millin Interview with Victorian Police After Arrest’.

Resisting the Elite Coup 

So while there is considerable ongoing resistance to this coup, given the extraordinary nature of what is at stake, my own preoccupation is to encourage and facilitate a strategically-focused resistance to it so that we have the impact we need in each of the dimensions – including those threatening human extinction – necessary for us to be successful.

Hence, if you already understand what is at stake – or you are willing to consider the evidence more carefully – but you are not yet ready to act powerfully in response, I invite you to focus more intently on how you feel in response to the threats posed and to give yourself adequate time to do so. By gaining a clearer sense of your emotional response – fear, anger, despair, frustration… – you will be better able to utilize this, along with other mental faculties such as your intellect, conscience and intuition, to craft an integrated and powerful way forward.

See ‘Putting Feelings First’.

And, depending on your interests and circumstances, there is a range of possible responses that will each make an important difference (with many entailing no risk whatsoever).

Fundamentally, you might consider making ‘My Promise to Children’ which will include considering what an education for your children means to you, particularly if you want powerful individuals – not ones who are submissively obedient to elite directives and project their fear onto others – who can perceive reality and resist violence.

See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

You might consider supporting others to become more powerful. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

You might also consider how your diet and healthcare could usefully be revised to empower you to resist medical propaganda, particularly given the extensively documented death-dealing for which corporate medicine is responsible.

See, for example, ‘Pharma Death Clock’.

If you wish to strategically resist the elite coup, you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals for doing so, from here: Coup Strategic Aims.

Remaining pages on this website fully explain the twelve components of the strategy, as illustrated by the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel, as well as articles and videos explaining all of the vital points of strategy and tactics, such as those to help you understand ‘

Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’ and

‘Nonviolent Action: Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’.

Given the complexity of the configuration of this conflict, however, which involves the need to fight simultaneously to retain our essential humanity, defeat the elite coup and avert near-term human extinction, it is important that our tactical choices are strategically-oriented (as are those listed on the Strategic Aims page nominated above). Hence, three further considerations assume importance.

First, choose/design tactics that have strategic impact, that is, they fundamentally and permanently alter, in our favor, the power relationship between the elite and us.

Second, when tactical choices are made, focus them on undermining the elite coup, not just features of it, such as ‘social distancing’ or the lockdowns. At its most basic, this can be achieved by using tactical choices that mobilize people to act initially, as is happening, but then inviting them to consider taking further, more focused, action as well (such as those nominated in the strategic goals referenced above). This is important if our actions are to have impact on key underlying measures, such as those being taken by the elite to advance the fourth industrial revolution, including the robotization of humans for work and war-fighting.

Third, choose/design tactics that also have strategic impact on the greatest threats to human survival, including the collapsing biodiversity on Earth, the threat of nuclear war, the climate catastrophe and the deployment of 5G. Given the incredibly short timeframe in which we are now working to avert human extinction, while people are mobilizing it is important to use this opportunity to give them the chance to perceive the ‘big picture’ of what is taking place – beyond lockdowns and other measures supposedly being used to tackle Covid-19 – and to act powerfully in response.

Fortunately, as more people become aware of the deeper strands of what is taking place, the energy to break the lockdowns, resist other limitations on our rights and freedoms (such as contact tracing, Covid-19 testing/temperature checks, mask-wearing and vaccinations) as well as resist the coup itself will gather pace. As I have previously outlined, using a locally relevant focus, or perhaps several, for which many people would traditionally be together – a cultural, religious or sporting event, a nonviolent action, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a celebration and/or a return to work – we can mobilize people to collectively resist. As has been happening.

Conclusion

Under cover of this manufactured ‘public health crisis’ the global elite is fundamentally reshaping global society to serve its own purpose with millions (in industrialized countries) being marginalized and millions (in countries throughout Africa and Asia particularly, where disruption of food distribution systems has hit hardest) being killed in the process.

See ‘WFP chief warns of “hunger pandemic” as Global Food Crises Report launched’ and

‘COVID-19 could kill more people through hunger than the disease itself, warns Oxfam’.

Fortunately, awareness of what is at stake is now steadily rising.

And so is the resistance.

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ANNEX

If you wish to focus on powerfully resisting one of the primary threats to human existence – nuclear war, the deployment of 5G, the collapse of biodiversity and/or the climate catastrophe – you can read about nonviolent strategy, including strategic goals to focus your campaigns, from here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

You might also consider joining those who are powerful enough to recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance as essential elements of these strategies by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. While you over-consume or are dependent on the elite for your survival, in any way, you are vulnerable.

In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Or, if you want something simpler, consider committing to:

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

 

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Reuters

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Wikileaks’ ascendancy has led to a revolution in publishing and politics that has been felt across the world, and was synonymous with the hope of the Arab spring. But a crackdown is now in full swing. The sudden, shocking ascendancy of Assange to the forefront of the right to dissent was an awakening for the world. In 2010, a global society a decade deep in the War on Terror rubbed its bleary eyes and gazed in horror at the vast misery engineered by US war crimes. The response from the newly roused was to take a veteran anti imperialist and rally behind his calls to hold war ideologues in Washington to account for their heinous policy.

With the viral success of ‘Collateral Murder’, Assange immediately instigated a collective public questioning of the US commitment to war and imperialism that was nearly unthinkable during the aftermath of 9/11, when the US deployed bullying tactics to ensure conformity to its agenda for total domination of global geopolitics.

Because Assange’s message has been so powerful in dissolving the hawk narrative of the Washington status quo, his leadership has heralded a new era of progressive politics. This new era threatens to smash the tight consensus grafted together by elites, so they have responded by enforcing a global mass propaganda program by stealth to defame Assange and his supporters.

The aim of this program is to distract people from the truth of the struggle Assange represents and the choices he makes plain, that in one direction lies a future promoting power for and by the people and in the other lies the continued dominance of politics, the economy, society and the narratives that bind it together by an unaccountable complex of elites and transnational corporate lobbies estranged from the working population.

It is balefully poor politics and testament to the hawk lack of imagination that today they denounce Wikileaks as a “hostile intelligence service.” The democratic function of a pillar of the fourth estate has been obscured as the bourgeoisie attempt to stifle its revolutionary potential.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that intelligence agencies (remember, they are unelected, secretive associations through which the constitution is undermined) are confreres of US imperial power and thus have a vested interest in maligning grassroots movements because they energize seismic campaigns that advance “unapproved” agendas that undermine the maintenance of elite control.

Wikileaks are activists who advocate the use of citizen journalism as a way to protect the public against abuses of power. Yet the media today don’t stop for a moment while denouncing Assange to reflect on whether there is value in his philosophy, or to ask themselves if there is a reason why his ideas have become popular. Because doing so would entail dangerous cognitive dissonance that would threaten their allegiance to status quo narratives that just so happen to justify the world they know and love.

This propaganda program is insidious, leaders like Assange who make any headway in challenging the status quo are smeared with a coordinated campaign of aspersions in an attempt to make them unacceptable to the public. Assange, who is not only arguably responsible for the renaissance of scientific journalism but has been a leading voice in the radical antiwar left for decades, has been vilified for years by both domestic and international media outlets . So now he has become the target of covert intelligence operations, directed in part by the dying hawk lobby that’s in cahoots with powerful intelligence firms. Together, they have mounted a bitter political attack by using the media to paint Assange as a cyber terrorist.

Anybody who denies that there is an agenda to repress voices of dissent against the policies of US war state, and who denies that the establishment suppresses reporting about its crimes, a suppression which operates by conflating dissidence with terrorism, is wrong. Citizens who support this dissent are not apologists for terror. They represent a people’s agenda for societal and political change that extends solidarity to struggles around the world.

The US empire is a clown car driven by hawks into dystopia. This reality has simply not been recognized within national political and media circles. It has been sidelined by distraction, diversion and misinformation unprecedented in its depth, complexity and scale. The media, which, when used earnestly, can be a great tool for emancipation and liberation through collective enlightenment, has, through forty years of machinations of neoliberal New Public Management doctrine, been transformed into the biggest, most dangerous totalitarian cult ever seen. The media cult is a threat to politics and global peace. It is the media that has been instrumental in manufacturing the myth of Assange’s danger.

This metamorphosis of the media and journalistic culture into an elite cult that attacks real progressive causes has come about silently because those who know about it are insiders with no incentive to speak about it. They are blinded by vested interests in maintaining the interconnected geopolitical and media status quo. Left to its own trajectory, in a few years the global media will be the canteen tannoy of postmodern totalitarianism, indivisible from U.S. power and the world order. We may, in fact, be there already.

The neoliberal hawk lobby is a useless parasite on the world, engorged on its power and profits in societies merging with a hell of poverty, austerity and destitution. The media-politico complex, not Wikileaks, is the true terror imperiling US politics and global peace.

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Seven months into the pandemic, as many US states inch back toward ‘normal’, New York is in the grips of a crime wave, reinvigorated lockdowns, and widespread fear of pretty much everything. Thank local government.

“When billions of pounds of public money is handed out to private companies, some of them with political connections but no experience in delivering medical supplies, ministers should be explaining why those companies were awarded the contracts.”

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There has been an outcry over the huge amount of money that the Government can’t account for, that has been spent since the start of the pandemic.

Serious questions have been asked about the whereabout of the funds, but so far the Government hasn’t been forthcoming with the details requested.

The Government has failed to account for £3 billion spent on private contracts since the start of lockdown, new figures have shown.

Despite the series of sanctions, corporate European businesses are still highly interested in Russia and Russia recognizes the enormous significance and invaluable contributions of these businesses in its economy. The stark reality is that there are more European businesses in Russia than Russian enterprises in Europe (EU). Russians simply adore European brands at the expense of their local brands. That makes European businesses and their products and services solid in the Russian Federation.

The Association of European Business, which unites European companies, believes that both business circles and business diplomacy can and should make a useful contribution to restoring mutual trust and confidence in the business sphere. Under its aegis, European businesses show readiness to expand cooperation and to implement mutually beneficial joint projects. On the other hand, Russia continues steadily creating the most favorable working conditions for foreigners, difficult though.

The European (EU) enterprises attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. The companies have people with first-hand knowledge about the market opportunities, how to overcome the challenges in Russia. European firms that have been around for a long time have much interest in expanding cooperation with Russian companies and increasing investment in the Russian economy.

As an association, it adheres to the principle of independence. It marked 25 years and planned to strengthen its foothold with series of business events this year, one of them to organize a grand conference under the motto:“Russia and Europe in the world of tomorrow: looking back on the past to move towards the future.” Over the years, the Association of European Business has held corporate meetings with participation of top Russian politicians and business stalwarts. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has always been the guest speaker during the Association of European Business.

The Association of European Business marked its 25th year early October 2020. During the opening, Guest Speaker Minister Sergey Lavrov noted, with an appreciation, the association’s various efforts to promote economic, investment and trade ties, laying a solid foundation for building good relations between Europe and Russia.

“We value opportunities for dialogue with European entrepreneurs aimed at pushing forward a pragmatic, politics-free and mutually beneficial agenda designed to improve the wellbeing of the people in Russia,” he said.

While pointing to the consistent commitment of the European businesses to Russia, Lavrov further touched on the common tasks and challenges based on the universally recognized norms of international law. Regrettably, this has not happened so far.  Quite to the contrary, some of our Western colleagues led by the United States have tried to take advantage of the novel coronavirus crisis to promote their narrow interests even more energetically and to settle scores with their geopolitical rivals.

Likewise, they have paid no heed to the initiative, put forth by President Vladimir Putin at the online G20 meeting, for setting up green corridors free from trade wars and sanctions to supply medications, food, equipment and technologies. This attitude to unifying initiatives is seriously poisoning the atmosphere of international cooperation and increasing the lack of mutual trust, damaging not only ordinary people, who have been affected, first of all, but also the business circles.

There are alarming trends that have also affected Russia-EU relations. For instance since 2014, when the European Union ruined the multilevel architecture of interaction between Brussels and Moscow, from summit meetings to over two dozen sectoral dialogues. Restrictions are, still retained on Russian economic operators’ access to external financial markets. European producers, too, continue to sustain multi-billion losses. Regrettably, the EU agencies continue their shortsighted policies, according to Foreign Minister.

“We regret that trade and economic cooperation is becoming increasingly politicized. Trade and economy have been viewed as a safety net in relations among nations. Nowadays though, things seem to have shifted into a somewhat different phase, Lavrov told the business gathering.

“Politicized energy cooperation is yet another blow at the foundations of what we call European security. Energy is the area of cooperation dating back over 50 years. Protectionism and other barriers and restrictions will only aggravate the economic situation, which is already complicated. By the way, we noted that the Business Europe Confederation of European Business recently published recommendations aimed at protecting European businesses amidst sanctions-related restrictions,” he added.

Nevertheless, Lavrov suggested

“we would like our discussions to become a global economic driver, we firmly believe that it is in our common interests to prevent the appearance of undesirable dividing lines in the new economic spheres created by the new technological paradigm. It is our strong conviction that this calls for combining efforts rather than trying to play zero sum games again, as was the case in the past. We are ready for cooperation on the broadest possible basis.”

European companies are cautious about the Russian market. Representatives of European companies have spoken about the greatest damage resulting from sanctions. They have complained about administrative bureaucracy, lack of investment and trade facilitation services in the country.

According to my investigations and research, the Government’s Foreign Investment Advisory Council deals with such matters. There are relevant ministries – including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economic Development and/or the Ministry of Finance. There are other independent agencies or departments such the Russian Chamber of Commerce and Trade established to help with market entry.

Russia is ready to build its relations with the European Union along some principles. The European Union remains as its important trade partner. As before, there is optimism that both are open to cooperation, European partners are keen on building businesses in the economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok, this vast country and in the Eurasian region.

Obviously, the future Russia and European business relations can still be consolidated despite the current political differences. After all, Russia and the EU countries not only belong to the same cultural and civilizational matrix, but are also linked by many ties in trade and investment cooperation, scientific and technological exchange and personal contacts. Russians spend their vacation in Europe. Common geography dictates the need to join hands in opposing trans-border threats, such as terrorism and drug trafficking.

In addition, there are challenges in adapting to demographic and climate change, in introducing a new model for an innovation economy, and modernizing technology. In this sense, much “value added” can be derived from linking the economic potential of the two regions: Russia and Europe. The interest in strengthening and diversifying trade and economic ties have been growing since Soviet collapse. According statistics, trade with the European Union reached almost $300 billion in 2019.

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The Abraham Accord signed recently between Israel on the one hand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain on the other, is touted as a peace deal. They were not at war. There was peace between them and much behind the scenes cooperation, reportedly for the last decade. Reports have it that the Accord promises Israel millions of dollars in trade. For the UAE, meanwhile, purchase from the USA of the F-35, which currently only Israel has in the Middle East (West Asia) Given the rather doubtful reputation of this fighter jet having them could mean a waste of money. For the Palestinians, for whom both the UEA and Bahrain have third States obligations, they are an inconvenience relegated to the back burner. So inconsequential were they that the UAE was pleased enough that Tel Aviv was suspending the annexation of the West Bank for the time being, as if it was a concession favouring the Palestinians and will lead to the restoration of Palestine and peace. Even amidst the joyful announcement, social media Israel was reporting the continued bombing of Gaza by Israel.

Palestine’s statehood was suspended when it refused to recognise UN resolution 181 which divided the then British Mandate between Israel and Palestine. Acceptance then would have meant the recognition of the theft of their own land. But Israel was a willing thief and with it became a state. The Palestinians whom at that point were, too, part of the Arab world was, therefore, part of the pan-Arab position which called for Israeli withdrawal from illegally occupied territories. Normal relations, according to this position, for Arab states with Israel can manifest only when there is acceptance of Palestinian statehood.

The Abraham Accords are then necessarily viewed as a betrayal to the Pan-Arab position, which is seen by Palestinians as third State obligations. Hamas’ spokesman Hazem Qassem has accused the Accords of harming the Palestinian cause by supporting the occupation. For the Palestinians it is the breaking of this pan-Arab consensus by the UAE and Bahrain that is viewed as a stab in their backs. The sentiment is unmistakeable. The Palestinian cause is no longer the centre of some Arab states’ politics. The refusal of the Arab League to condemn the Abraham Accords, as demanded by the Palestinian Authority, cannot but prove this betrayal. Obviously the Saudi Crown Prince’s rebuke of the Palestinians for refusing to relent to the Deal of the Century at the end of last year is another clear example of the erosion of pan-Arabism. Instead the new perception is that the Palestinian problem can be solved only with normalisation with Israel. Pan-Arabism has outlived its nature.

If the preservation of Palestine remains the central determinant of peace in West Asia what then would be the rallying call now that pan-Arabism has faltered.

It cannot be denied, however, that Palestine is more than an Arab concern. Palestine is a core constituent of the Islamic belief and is thus firmly ensconced in the Muslim world as a necessary feature of Islam. Malaysia, for example, has held strongly against the establishment of friendly relations with Israel. In today’s West Asia where the Islamic world is centred, Islam is, embraced as fiercely by non-Arabs. A recent article in the New Eastern Outlook, “On the Emerging Rival blocs in the Middle East” holds that the UAE-Bahrain-Israel alliance has caused a counter alliance to emerge. “…that the real locus of regional rivalry in the Middle East lies in Iran’s and Turkey’s own ambitions pitting both the non-Arab states against their powerful Arab allies and their common enemy, Israel”.

That at a recent virtual event of the High-Level Cooperation Council between Iran and Turkey they vowed to increase bilateral trade to US$30 billion is a sign of things to come. Additionally, the joint declaration at the end of the event outlined the areas of cooperation as Syria, Kurds and the Abraham Accords.

Will then the Abraham Accords be as near stillborn as the peace agreements between Israel and Egypt (1979) Jordan (1994)? Some are hailing it as bringing in a new climate of peace and economic cooperation and hence would usher in a change to West Asia, which is described by the New Eastern Outlook as thus: the UAE as “ringleader” of the Gulf and “Israel as the new security overlord”. But this view excludes the reason why the Accords were possible, the imagined Iran regional hegemony, a perception shared by both the UAE, Bahrain and, Israel and, too, Saudi Arabia allegedly the power behind Bahrain, a Shia majority state ruled by a Sunni minority.

Can peace with the Sunni Gulf powers give Israel the stability it aspires to? While there is speculation that many other minor Islamic nations — Morocco, Sudan, Oman are some — may join in this move the likelihood of the agreements bringing in a shift towards the embrace of Israel is remote. Turkey and Iran are major military powers in West Asia, while the Arab states are naught without US backing. Furthermore, Palestine is an Islamic issue despite the multi-religious composition of the Palestinians.  The question then is, can the leaders of the Gulf states and other lesser Islamic nations carry their people with them? Already Bahrain’s Sunni rulers are there on sufferance of the largely Shia populace, propped up by Riyadh. Given Saudi Arabia’s loosening regional grip — Qatar a prime example — is Bahrain a “power”? And, too, it cannot be ignored that Saudi Arabia is facing an economic decline in the midst of the world slump in oil prices, a recovery not assured if the Green economy is to become part of the post-Covid 19 new normal.

Or, is the Abraham Accords a political toy, an instrument of the Trump re-election campaign? A desperate attempt to resurrect some semblance of statesmanship in the face of an image defeated by a pandemic so badly mismanaged proving beyond doubt that America is far from great again. Making America great again was Trump’s 2016 promise. But today the decline of the American Empire is too naked to refute. Millions are unemployed. The economy is in shambles. More than 200,000 Americans are dead and businesses are failing. The United States is in socio-political chaos and unrest is widespread. Are the Palestinians the attempted sacrifice at the altar of a Trump re-election trickery?

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Askiah Adam is Executive Director of International Movement for a JUST World (JUST).

The political official of the Libyan National Struggle Front, Ahmed Gaddaf al-Dam, began on Monday, the first steps to sue former U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on charges of spreading destruction and supporting terrorism in Libya.

The cousin of the late Libyan president, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, said in an exclusive interview with Sputnik that he had assigned his legal team to sue the former U.S. Secretary of State.

Gaddaf al-Dam added that he provided the legal team with other documents not released by the U.S. State Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton on charges of spreading destruction and supporting terrorism in Libya.

No further details were released and it is not clear where the lawsuit will be filed.

Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State under U.S. President Barack Obama, when NATO interviewed in the Libyan Civil War in 2011.

Under heavy bombardment by NATO, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi was forced to abandon Tripoli and take refuge near the city of Sirte, where he was later captured by anti-government forces and subsequently killed by his captors in 2011.

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France is in crisis.

Official and unofficial Christian French radical extremism, legitimising itself under the umbrella of what the French ostentatiously call laicité, continues to increase its attacks on French and non-French Muslims.

The Collectif contre l’islamophobie en France (CCIF) listed 1,043 Islamophobic incidents that occurred in 2019 (a 77 percent increase since 2017) – 68 physical attacks (6.5 percent), 618 incidents of discrimination (59.3 percent), 210 incidents of hate speech and incitement to racial hatred (20.1 percent), 93 incidents of defamation (8.9 percent), 22 incidents of vandalism of Muslim sacred places (2.1 percent), and 32 incidents of discrimination linked to the fight against terrorism (3.1 percent).

French Christian and so-called “secular” hatred of Muslims is part of everyday speech by the French government, the pundits, and the media.

In fact, the normalisation of hate speech against Muslims not only legitimises the institutionalised discrimination to which French Muslims are subjected, but also incites violence against them inside and outside France, including the shootings at the mosque of Brest and the targeting of its popular imam Rachid Eljay in June 2019 and the attack on the mosque of Bayonne in October 2019 that wounded four.

Outside France, the terrorist who committed the 2019 massacre at the Christchurch mosques in New Zealand, killing 51 Muslim worshippers and wounding 49, cited the murderous theories of the Islamophobic French thinker Renaud Camus as influencing his actions.

In October 2019, French President Emmanuel Macron (whose first name is the name which the angel Gabriel gave to Jesus in the Gospels, meaning “God is with us”) and his then Interior Minister Christophe Castaner (also named after Christ himself) connected terrorism in France to any signs of French Muslims’ faith and culture, including having a beard, praying five times a day, eating halal food, etc.

It is purely coincidental that the president and his interior minister are named after Jesus Christ, which should not implicate all those named after Jesus with having a crisis with “Islam”, but rather only some of them who express anti-Muslim “secular” hatred.

‘Liberating’ Islam

Last week, Macron declared that “Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today, we are not just seeing this in our country”. He added that he is seeking to “liberate” Islam in France from foreign influences by improving oversight of mosque financing.

But Macron is not the first French ruler who wanted to “liberate” Islam.

This is an old French “secular” tradition. When Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt and Palestine in 1798, his clever plan was to lie to the Egyptians by announcing that he and his army were “faithful Muslims” and that they came to liberate Muslims and Islam from the tyranny of the Mamluks.

His deception did not work and the Egyptians rose against him as did the Palestinians. He returned in defeat to France after his army committed untold atrocities in Egypt and Palestine. Napoleon and France’s crisis with Islam two centuries ago was that they were defeated in the Palestinian city of Acre. Three decades later, when France invaded Algeria, the French no longer needed to lie to Muslims to conquer them, rob them, and destroy their places of worship.

The official casus belli that King Charles X used to justify the invasion of Algeria in 1830 was France’s refusal to pay its debt for grain that Algerian merchants had supplied Napoleon’s French army during the Italian Campaign under the First Republic. In view of the fact that the Algerian merchants were from the Livorno Jewish banking families of Bacri and Busnac, the public debate at the time in France had an “antisemitic tenor”.

Ironically, this is the same King Charles who in 1825 forced the liberated slaves of Haiti, whose revolution overthrew French colonialism and slavery, to pay millions in indemnity for the property losses of their former white French masters who had enslaved them in exchange for France’s diplomatic recognition and lifting its punishing blockade of Haiti.

In 1827, Hussein Dey, ruler of Ottoman Algiers, demanded payment of the debt from the French consul, Pierre Deval, who insolently refused. Incensed by the consul’s affront, the Dey struck him with a fly-whisk (what the French refer to as the coup d’éventail incident) – and called him “a wicked, faithless, idol-worshipping rascal”.

Invading Algeria

The invasion was launched in mid-June 1830 and Algiers fell on 5 July. The financially struggling France robbed Algiers’ treasury clean, stealing upwards of 43 million Francs in gold and silver, aside from the sums that disappeared and those that were spent on the French occupation army. Perhaps poor West African countries that continue to be indebted to France today should prove how assimilated they are into Frenchness by invading France to rob its treasury.

The immediate goals of the invasion, as Charles enumerated them to the French national assembly on 2 March, were to avenge the French for the Algerian insult, “end piracy and reclaim Algeria for Christianity”.

In line with France’s Christian commitments, the conquering French army took over mosques and converted them into churches and cathedrals at gunpoint, including the largest Ottoman Ketchaoua mosque in Algiers, built in 1612, which was converted into the Cathedral of St Philippe in December 1832.

That same year the French wiped out the entire tribe of the Ouffias, sparing no woman or child, and seizing all their possessions.

Not unlike contemporary white French Christian supremacist intellectuals’ utter hatred and racism towards Muslims, in the early 1840s, France’s celebrated thinker Alexis de Toqueville declared in this regard that “it is possible and necessary that there be two sets of laws in Africa, because we are faced with two clearly separate societies. When one is dealing with Europeans [colonial-settlers in Africa], absolutely nothing prevents us from treating them as if they were alone; the laws enacted for them must be applied exclusively to them.”

He objected to the faint of heart who opposed French barbarism and their use of blitzkriegs (which they called “razzias”) against the Algerian population. “I have often heard men whom I respect, but with whom I do not agree, find it wrong that we burn harvests, that we empty silos, and finally that we seize unarmed men, women, and children. These, in my view, are regrettable necessities, but ones to which any people who want to wage war on the Arabs are obliged to submit. And, if I should speak my mind, these acts revolt me no more nor even as much as several others that the law of war obviously authorises and which take place in all the wars of Europe.”

French barbarism

In 1871, Algerian Muslims revolted again against French rule, with 150,000 people joining the forces of a local Kabyle leader, Al-Muqrani.

The French genocidal machine responded by killing hundreds of thousands, which, combined with the French-caused famine deaths in the late 1860s, resulted in the death of one million Algerians (about a third of the population). The French razed dozens of towns and villages to the ground while eliminating the entire elite of Algerian society. But even that did not resolve France’s “crisis” with Islam.

In 1901, the French concern about their “crisis” with Islam increased. This was especially so as France, which “is and will become increasingly and without a doubt a great Muslim power”, given its acquisition of new colonies with large Muslim populations, needed to know what Islam would be like in the 20th century.

Mark Zuckerberg has clearly had enough of being hauled in front of Congress and hectored by a gang of senior citizens and listening to the head of the ACLU slam his company as a vessel for violent hate speech. Because over the past few months, Facebook has done a complete 180 on its position about speech, particularly sensitive political speech. Zuckerberg has apparently been shaken from his non-interventionist approach by announcing that FB wouldn’t accept new political ads during the last week of the campaign, and just yesterday announcing that Facebook would crack down on holocaust deniers on its platform.

The company has also launched salvos against QAnon and election-related misinformation, while taking an aggressive approach toward political advertising, and political content in general.

And as global authorities struggle to convince the public that an eventual COVID-19 vaccine will be safe to take despite the expedited approval process, Facebook has decided to give them a hand by banning all content encouraging users to refuse to take a vaccine. It laid out the new global policy in a blog post published Tuesday.

“Now, if an ad explicitly discourages someone from getting a vaccine, we’ll reject it,” the company’s Head of Health Kang-Xing Jin and Director of Product Management Rob Leathern said in a blog post Tuesday.

Facebook will draw the line at allowing users who advocate against “mandatory vaccination,” which the company said was a legitimate political position (not an argument made in “bad faith” that some on the left insist), to post as normal. They cited an example of a state lawmaker from Virginia who posted “STOP FORCED CORONAVIRUS VACCINATIONS”.

While the above ad will be allowed under the new rules, ads that explicitly discourage people from taking vaccines by portraying the vaccines as ineffective or unsafe will be banned.

“If an ad that advocates for/against legislation or government policies explicitly discourages a vaccine, it will be rejected,” a spokesperson wrote CNBC. “That includes portraying vaccines as useless, ineffective, unsafe or unhealthy, describing the diseases vaccines are created for as harmless, or the ingredients in vaccines as harmful or deadly.”

Facebook also plans to push directions for all people about how and where to get the flu vaccine.

And news about JNJ’s latest halt has certainly not been encouraging, especially since the public still hasn’t been informed about whatever is going on with the halted AstraZeneca-Oxford trials in the US.

As we have noted, Facebook’s decision comes as Bill Gates questions the legitimacy of Trump’s FDA, and Kamala Harris tells the American people that she “wouldn’t take” a Trump-approved vaccine.

Would that be banned?

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More than a dozen young visiting scholars from China had their visas abruptly terminated in a letter from administration of the University of North Texas (UNT), Denton, on August 26, in a letter dated …August 26! The letter informed the students that they could return to campus from their lodgings to pick up belongings, but all other access was closed to them. The students and fellows were given no explanation. They were left with no legal basis to be in the U.S. and began scrambling for the very few and very expensive flights back to China.

At first the UNT administration simply stated that all those funded by the Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) were terminated. According to Wikipedia, the CSC is the main Chinese agency for funding Chinese students abroad (currently 65,000 with 26,000 of them in the US) and an equal number of foreign students in China, some from the US. (Americans interested in CSC scholarships to study in China can easily find information here. There is nothing secret or nefarious about CSC; the US has agencies that offer similar aid to scholars.)

The University at last offered an explanation of sorts in a statement by its spokesperson, the Vice President for Brand Strategy and Communication (VP for BS and C) as reported on September 10 by the North Texas Daily: “UNT took this action based upon specific and credible information following detailed briefings from federal and local law enforcement.” The VP for BS and C was “unable” to provide more details. Local police later denied any role in such briefings. It was the feds who provoked the discharges.

If these young students were doing something illegal or in violation of University rules, then they should be told what it is and presented with evidence so they could answer such charges. That is what we in the US claim to believe in. If their crime is simply soaking up ideas, that is what education is all about and most assuredly that is what science is all about. If certain areas of research are classified, then scholars working in those areas should be screened and get classifications. And if the US does not want CSC-sponsored students here, then reasons should be given and no more visas allowed. None of that has been done. The students were found guilty of something, they know not what, and dismissed!

Although UNT may not be well known nationally, it is rated as an “R1” or top tier research university, one of about 130 institutions falling into that top category and receiving federal research funding. It is troubling that such action by an institution in this category and the beneficiary of federal largesse has not drawn more condemnation for its action. And it is even more troubling that this occurs in an atmosphere of anti-Chinese hostility in the wake of Covid-19, marked by physical attacks on Chinese Americans.

Have we forgotten the racism directed against Chinese and codified into federal law the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882, the only US law ever enacted to prevent all members of a specific ethnic or national group from immigrating to the US? Other such legislation followed, such as the Immigration Act of 1924 which effectively barred all immigration from Asia, including of course Chinese. The rationale given by the politicians for all such heinous legislation was that Chinese were stealing “our jobs”. Sound familiar? Notoriously the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 gave rise to the “Driving Out” period where Chinese were physically attacked to the point of brutal massacres designed to drive Chinese out of unwelcoming communities, the most infamous being the Rock Springs and Hells Canyon Massacres.

The anti-Chinese and anti-Asian sentiment has continued down the years in one form or another but it has had a resurgence recently with the meme that China’s prosperity has been at the expense of Americans. This narrative does not remind us that US corporations and investors offshore jobs for greater “returns,” but claims that Chinese are pilfering our technology.

Some time back The Committee of 100, a prestigious organization of leading Chinese Americans, commissioned a study on Chinese and other Asians charged under the Economic Espionage Act (EEA)., covering a period from 1996 to 2015 Some of its conclusions are as follows:

1. Up to 2008, Chinese were 17% of the total defendants charged under the EEA; from 2009-2015 under Obama this percentage tripled to 52%.
2. 21% of Chinese were never convicted of espionage, twice the rate for non-Asians.
3. In roughly half the cases involving Chinese the alleged beneficiary of the espionage was an American entity; roughly one third had an alleged Chinese beneficiary.

In sum a much higher rate of indictment for Chinese but a lower rate of convictions. So the additional “attention” given Chinese was not warranted. It seems that something changed after 2009. What was it? This time was the period when Obama’s Asian Pivot was put into play. The Pivot targeted China both militarily by moving 60% of US Naval forces to the Western Pacific and economically with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) designed to isolate China from its neighbors. Is the increased harassment of Chinese under the EEA another aspect of the strategy expressed openly in the Pivot?

This legal attack on Chinese has continued under the present administration, but the NTU case adds a new wrinkle. Here there was no legal action, but an action apparently taken by the University. However, hidden pressure to oust the students came from a federal agency or agencies. This should be no surprise since it fits in with FBI Director Christopher Wray’s “Whole of Society” approach to confronting China unveiled last February and reiterated din July when he said, “We’re also working more closely than ever with partner agencies here in the US and our partners abroad. We can’t do it on our own; we need a whole-of-society response. That’s why we in the intelligence and law enforcement communities are working harder than ever to give companies, universities, and the American people themselves the information they need to make their own informed decisions and protect their most valuable assets.” (Emphasis, jw) It looks like the FBI and or its “partner agencies” gave UNT officials “the information they needed” to throw out the Chinese students without any reason given or charge made.

Consider the position of those UNT officials when they found themselves visited by federal “authorities” and “asked’ to cooperate. When the FBI “asks” for cooperation, it is making an offer that is perilous to refuse. It would take considerable courage to say “no”. But that is precisely what the UNT administrators should have done if they were to live up to the presumed values and ideals of our society and universities. The question also arises as to how many other universities have been approached to take similar steps. It seems unlikely that UNT is alone. But it is very likely that other Universities, wealthier and with a bevy of VP’s for BS and C, might have handled the whole matter in a discrete way and in a way that makes it appear that such suspensions are not a wholesale matter. Perhaps other more “polished” university authorities would not own up to the dirty deeds but keep them as secret as possible.

Let us take it a step further. What if you were approached by one of these federal agents and “requested” to keep an eye on a Chinese colleague, friend, neighbor or co-worker. Would you have the courage to refuse? And as the confrontation with China heats up, a peace movement is arising to counter it. In fact, anti-interventionists are popping up across the spectrum on left and right to oppose policies that take us on the road to war with China. Will the peace advocates be targeted in the same way, on the sly as well as within a “legal” framework by the FBI and other federal agencies? And will the precedent established in cases like the UNT case make such federal actions more acceptable? Will those working for peace be labeled as puppets of Xi?

“First they came for the Chinese,” it might be said. And in the future, under the “Whole of Society” approach, they may come for anyone who chooses to work for peace with China rather than take a path to war. Anti-Chinese racism, repugnant in and of itself, is also one part of setting the stage for a new and more dangerous McCarthyism. It is time to stop the madness before it devours us all.

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John V. Walsh, an antiwar activist, can be reached at [email protected].

As long as nuclear weapons exist, the chance of their use ahead — as once before unjustifiably — is ominously high.

Humanity has a clear choice. Eliminate these weapons entirely or risk their eliminating us.

The history of warfare shows that warring sides use whatever weapons exist in their arsenal, if necessary, to win.

If two nuclear armed nations clash one day — notably the US v. Russia or China — these WMDs may be used by both sides to defeat the other.

Nuclear wars if waged are unwinnable. If these weapons used in future warfare, planet earth and humanity will lose.

Arms control is essential for humanity’s survival.

New START is the last remaining Russia/US agreement to prevent unconstrained expansion of nukes that can kill us all if detonated in enough numbers.

In 1959, Stanley Kramer’s chilling film “On the Beach” portrayed the aftermath of nuclear war — deadly radiation spreading worldwide.

The film’s location is Australia, the last part of the world to be irradiated. Its last scene is chilling.

Earlier Melbourne streets showed normal life.

The end shows them empty, devoid of life and windblown.

A church banner ironically reads: “There is Still Time…Brother.”

No longer. Radiation poisoning is unforgiving. It has final say.

Kramer’s film explains the madness of nuclear war. Yet it’s almost never shown in the US.

Its lesson is that if nuclear war is waged, there’s no undoing what happens, no second chance, no salvation from slow painful irradiated death.

Famed dancer, singer, actor, choreographer Fred Astaire played an Australian scientist in the film — the role far removed from his usual ones.

He commits carbon monoxide suicide to avoid the agony of death by radiation poisoning.

Extending New START for another five years with no preconditions — as Putin proposed — should be a no-brainer.

Things aren’t working out this way. On February 5, 2021, the landmark agreement will expire as long as unacceptable Trump regime demands remain unchanged.

In February 2017 during a Putin/Trump phone conversation, Russia’s president urged DJT to extend New START.

Reportedly, Trump paused the discussion to ask aides what New START is all about. He didn’t know.

With scant understanding of its details, he subsequently called it a “bad deal” — his faulty indictment similar to other landmark agreements he abandoned, notably the JCPOA and INF Treaty.

Russia/US New START talks are at impasse. As things now stand, the agreement will expire unextended in February.

As a result, the world will be far less safe than already. The risk of nuclear war one day will be greater than now.

Reportedly last month, Trump asked the US Strategic Command to assess how quickly nuclear weapons could be readied for use via bombers, submarines, and missiles (short and long-range) if New START expires.

Trump’s envoy for arms control Marshall Billingslea said if Russia doesn’t agree to US demands pre-election, “the costs (will) go up.”

Russia’s chief arms negotiator Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov called chances for extending the agreement “minuscule” because of unacceptable US demands, adding:

“It is up to the United States. The ball is in their court.”

“Either they give up their ultimatums and then we can start the talks about something or there’s no deal.”

Impasse between both sides continues because of the Trump regime’s unbending position.

Ryabkov stressed that “there are no grounds for any kind of deal in the form proposed” by Washington.

Trump regime unwillingness to extend New START for another five years with no pre-conditions, as Putin proposed, shows it’s not serious about preserving the landmark agreement.

The cost of its expiration is a hugely dangerous arms race.

It’s unclear what a Biden/Harris regime will do if succeeds Trump in January.

Their campaign website says Dems will pursue New START’s extension, “us(ing) that as a foundation for new arms control arrangements.”

Time and again, politicians say one thing — notably when campaigning — then do something entirely different if elected.

In September, Billingslea said if Russia doesn’t agree to Trump regime demands, the US will increase its strategic arsenal “immediately after the expiration of (New START) in February.”

Last July, Sergey Lavrov said if the US doesn’t agree to extend the agreement, “we will not insist.”

Billingslea’s undefined short-term extension proposal is unacceptable to Moscow because it would give the US wiggle-room around maintaining what New START stipulates.

Russia wants the agreement preserved in its current form.

With New START as a foundation, Moscow calls for including nuclear armed Britain and France in future arms control talks.

It want related issues negotiated for maintaining strategic stability, including missile defense, ground-based short-and intermediate-range missiles, space and hypersonic weapons.

Billingslea rejected talks on these issues, including removal of US nuclear weapons from Europe, some close to Russia’s border.

China expressed unwillingness to join in nuclear arms control talks unless the US decreases its arsenal to match numbers the PLA maintains.

The US has around 6,000 nuclear weapons, China two to three hundred, the latter according to a DOD estimate.

Deputy US Strategic Command’s head Admiral David Kriete disagreed with Billingslea’s claim about significant New START verification loopholes, saying:

“(V)erification procedures (in place give the US) great insight into Russia’s capabilities, numbers, and all kinds of things associated with their nuclear weapons.”

Without them, “we would have to go look for other ways to fill in the gaps.”

Chief New START negotiator Rose Gottemoeller said its verification procedures used what worked in previous treaties.

The US “got what it wanted in the New START verification regime: streamlined inspection procedures at a sufficient level of detail to be effectively implemented.”

Trump regime claims otherwise are false.

If things don’t change well before February, New START will likely expire.

If Biden succeeds Trump, it’s unclear if he’ll urge renewal with no pre-conditions or pursue an arms race instead.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The geopolitics of the cyber world is again influencing the global political and economic order. Now, a new international tension arises around a digital tax, known as the ‘Google tax’. Such tension could trigger a trade war, this time between the United States and France, which would reduce world GDP, warned the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), after confirming that there will be no agreement between both countries in 2020.

The need to tax virtual services has generated controversy all over the world and has caused the distancing of interests in some of the main world powers. This is precisely the case in the dispute between Washington and Paris. In July 2019, the French Parliament approved the GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) Tax, which obliges these companies to pay a 3% tax on their revenue with the provision of cyber services. The United States, however, strongly rejected French law and threatened to respond with a tax on wines from the European country. Thus began the discussions that continue to agitate both countries to this day.

The dispute has recently gained even more attention with the rapid advance of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many technology giants have benefited from the extraordinary increase in the use of virtual services, mainly due to the social isolation measures adopted by several countries in all the continents. The situation reached an intolerable level of dispute of interests, with the two parties becoming increasingly irreducible and resistant to giving up their proposals. On October 12, the OECD confirmed that there will be no agreement this year and warned that countries must reach it soon or risk further damaging the world economy.

The result of the failure in reaching an agreement can lift a mere tension of interests for an intense fiscal war. The American restrictions will certainly not be restricted to French wines and will later be applied to other products coming from the European country, which, in turn, should include more companies in the list of the “Google tax”. The result would be detrimental to all sides since the relations between two major global powers would be undermined at a time of great fragility for the world economy.

According to the OECD, the absence of a consensual solution between the US and France could lead to a proliferation of unilateral taxes on digital services and an increase in harmful tax and trade disputes, which would damage tax security and investment in international business, thus creating a chain of sanctions and an obstacle to the development. In other words, we would have the appearance of a new trade war, as significant or more than the current dispute between the US and China, considering that it would affect business between two nations that are members of the “capitalist west” and not two great ideological opponents such as Washington and Beijing.

In its recent statement on the subject, the OECD further confirmed that there is a danger that tensions are not restricted to the US and France, but that they can generate a global trade war. The Organization’s great fear is that the attitude will serve as an example for other nations with conflicts of interest, thus creating a worldwide trend. At the same time, the Organization ensured that the international community agreed to continue working to reach an agreement in mid-2021.

The OECD’s concerns seem somewhat “innocent” when we look at the world scenario in depth. Is it still possible to talk about measures to contain the advance of a more protectionist trend and the proliferation of fiscal and trade wars around the planet? The legacy of the dispute between the US and China is insurmountable: a global trend has been generated that puts an end to the neoliberal ideal of a world without borders and tax barriers. Economic nationalism is on the rise because this is the way in which nations have always tried to overcome moments of crisis: greater economic fluidity – less intervention, greater instability – greater intervention.

At a time of global crisis, with structural changes in the world economic order occurring in an accelerated way, how to talk about stopping tax barriers? Still, with virtual services taking on an increasingly important role for the world economy, how can we prevent nations from taxing them? There is only the possibility of mediating an agreement, but the fight against the proliferation of trade wars is absolutely in vain because this is the way in which the superpowers resolve their conflicts of interest in the contemporary world.

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

In an astonishing direct connection to the Imperial College professor who has been roundly denounced for his model which linked success in minimizing COVID deaths to “mitigation” measures such as lockdowns, records show that the Bill and Melinda Gates’ Foundation directly funded that professor in March and April to the tune of $8 million. Gates has been one of the most vociferous proponents of lockdowns, and the idea that they cannot end until a vaccine is available.

The epidemiology model provided the basis on which all governments requested or imposed, by controversial executive branch orders, a period of 15 days to “flatten the curve” of the inevitable spread of a virus, which has morphed into a daily drumbeat of “new cases.” It is on this drumbeat that governors base extended powers, into a never-ending “dark winter.” Gates largess also included a separate, unrelated grant of $79 million to Imperial College in March.

The CDC now accepts an overall survival rate for COVID of about 99.8%, versus flu which is 99.9%. (For Fatality Rate also see here and here.) Although COVID can have serious after-effects, this is true of any severe case of a respiratory illness, including severe cases of flu.

Professor Neil Ferguson has been called “one of the most wrong” scientists in the world, by other scientists.

Dr. Mike Yeadon, a former Chief Science Officer for Pzifer, said to an interviewer in September:

“It’s important that you know most scientists don’t accept that his [Ferguson’s model] was even faintly right…but the government is still wedded to the model.” (See: “Former Chief Science Officer for Pfizer Says “Second Wave” Faked on False-Positive COVID Tests, “Pandemic is Over”)

Now as Sweden, which skipped lockdowns, records a death rate that is 11% lower than the US, the Swedish model supports Ferguson’s critics. Other countries which still employ even more draconian, police-state lockdowns than the US show much higher death rates – deaths per capita – than either Sweden or the US. The data now shows no correlation between lower death rates and strong lockdowns, and in the case of Sweden, even show an opposite correlation.

Sweden early on decided to simply allow the human immune system to do its work, while sheltering the vulnerable. It never closed restaurants, bars, most schools, sports, or movie theaters. The Swedish government was roundly condemned for being reckless.

In Belgium, hundreds of citizens have filed both a civil lawsuit and a criminal complaint against Gates and Ferguson.

Sweden During International “Lockdowns”

Swedes do not and have never worn masks.

Hospitals in the US have received as much as $306,000 per declared COVID case (not deaths,) as reported in Becker’s Hospital Review. Michigan Public Radio reported that the national average was $160,000 per case, for the first round of $175 billion in hospital aid from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The poll-watching website Real Clear Politics argues that the COVID death toll is inflated.

Dr. Johan Giesecke, former chief scientist for the European Center for Disease Control and Prevention, called Professor Neil Ferguson’s model justifying the world lockdowns “the most influential scientific paper” in memory. He also called it “one of the most wrong.”

According to The National Review

Ferguson was behind the disputed research that sparked the mass culling of eleven million sheep and cattle during the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Charlotte Reid, a farmer’s neighbor, recalls: “I remember that appalling time. Sheep were left starving in fields near us. Then came the open air slaughter. The poor animals were panic stricken. It was one of the worst things I’ve witnessed. And all based on a model — if’s but’s and maybe’s.”

Ferguson’s nicknames in the science community have been reported to be “Master of Disaster” and “Professor Lockdown.”

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A small, loss-making firm run by a Conservative councillor in Stroud was given a £156m contract to import PPE from China without any competition, openDemocracy has learned.

Steve Dechan’s company, P14 Medical, signed the huge contract to supply medical gowns in May, even though the firm suffered significant financial losses in 2019, and its previous track record in PPE procurement is unclear. Transparency campaigners say the deal “reeks of cronyism”.

Dechan, who stood down from Stroud town council in late August, had previously made headlines when it emerged that P14 Medical had landed a contract worth almost £120m to supply face shields to the Department of Health and Social Care.

The £156m gowns deal was signed in late May, but details were only published at the end of September. Government contracts are supposed to be made public within 30 days.

Questions have also been raised about large contracts awarded to other small firms with limited experience of supplying PPE, including many with links to the Conservative party.

Shadow Cabinet Office secretary Rachel Reeves told openDemocracy: “There have been growing worries about the lack of transparency and effectiveness of the government’s approach to awarding public contracts throughout this pandemic, and how many contracts have been given to businesses with clear links to the Conservative Party.

“It is crucial that the public has total confidence that the best decisions are being made for the right reasons and that no-one has been advantaged in any way because of their party political relationships.”

In late September, Liberal Democrat peer Lord Tyler submitted a written question in the House of Lords asking “what due diligence and tendering process” was followed in awarding contracts to Steve Dechan’s firm, P14 Medical. A response was due by October 7 but at time of writing had not yet been received.

Government departments contracts are usually awarded after a tender process which allows multiple providers to compete to provide the best value. But since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the government has used an exemption in procurement laws to avoid having to open up public contracts to competition. The lack of transparency around pandemic outsourcing has been branded a “national scandal”.

Losses

Steve Dechan was elected to Stroud Town Council as a Liberal Democrat but defected to the Conservatives in 2018. During last year’s general election, he campaigned for the local Tory MP Siobhan Baillie.

P14’s experience in PPE procurement is unclear. The company – which is also known as Platform 14 – describes itself as an “experienced medical device distributor”. A section on the business’s website about ‘PPE gowns/masks’ appears to have been added recently. Searches on the internet archive reveal no mention of personal protective equipment in previous years.

Under terms of the £156m contract, P14 Medical would import isolation gowns from a Chinese firm called Xinle Huabao Medical Supplies, based in Hebei province. P14 was handed the contract despite recording significant losses in 2019.

P14 previously told the Financial Times that the losses were owing to heavy investment in new chronic pain technology that it plans to market in Europe and the Middle East this summer.

‘Reeks of cronyism’

Earlier this week it emerged that a company run by the former business associate of Tory peer Baroness Mone won a £122m contract to supply PPE to the NHS just seven weeks after it was set up.

Previously a firm co-owned by a Conservative donor that supplied beauty products to high street chains was given a £65m contract to provide face masks to the NHS.

Meanwhile Ayanda Capital, a private equity company, was handed a £252m contract to provide face masks that were subsequently not used, after concerns were raised that they may not provide an “adequate fixing” around the face. The deal was brokered by an advisor to International Trade secretary Liz Truss who was also a senior board advisor at Ayanda.

Transparency International’s senior research manager Steve Goodrich told openDemocracy: ‘When one politically-connected company is awarded uncompetitive public contracts it smells a bit off, but when this happens again and again it reeks of cronyism.

“Continuing to award major public contracts without competitive tender fuels the perception that political patronage matters more than suitability for the job. In order to ensure best value for money is being secured, the government should return to open, competitive tendering in all but the most exceptional cases.”

Steve Dechan could not be reached for comment but he previously told the BBC:

“We are an expert company that has been in medical supplies for eight years including PPE that has managed to deliver on a big contract that the ‘big companies’ could not.

“I only know a couple MPs through local campaigning on issues, only met ministers (no current ones) on [general election] campaign trails. Never discussed PPE.”

He added:

“We are so proud that we stood up and unlike many got it done and protected our customers.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “We have been working tirelessly to deliver PPE to protect our health and social care staff on the frontline throughout this global pandemic.

“Proper due diligence is carried out for all government contracts and we take these checks extremely seriously.”

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The Syrian people who have already been suffering from nearly a decade of externally waged Hybrid War are now forced to deal with the environmental devastation caused by the 156 forest fires that recently ravaged the Arab Republic, though most Western environmentalists couldn’t care less despite acting concerned whenever similar events happen in the Amazon, Southern Europe, or the US’ West Coast.

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A Reuters article republished by Bangkok Post titled, “Thailand to make, supply AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine” would claim that Thailand has agreed to make AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine.

This is despite the vaccine not only not having passed clinical trials or having been determined to be safe or effective yet – but despite AstraZeneca’s long history of corruption, bribery, and the overall danger of Western pharmaceutical giants who use lobbying to push dangerous, unnecessary products past regulators and onto the public.

AstraZeneca’s vaccine has already made news by possibily creating neurological disorders in patients involved in clinical trials.

CNN in an article titled, “Internal AstraZeneca safety report sheds light on neurological condition suffered by vaccine trial participant,” would report (emphasis added):

CNN has obtained an internal safety report by pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca that sheds light on the neurological condition suffered by one of the participants in its coronavirus vaccine clinical trial.

The report details how the study volunteer, a previously healthy 37-year-old woman, “experienced confirmed transverse myelitis” after receiving her second dose of the vaccine, and was hospitalized on September 5.

While both AstraZeneca and Western regulators dismissed the incident – it is not certain whether this is because the condition was truly unrelated to the ongoing vaccine trial – or because AstraZeneca simply bribed regulators to ignore it.

It is unclear because AstraZeneca along with the entirety of the Western pharmaceutical industry are notoriously corrupt and each investigated and fined multiple times around the globe for massive bribery campaigns aimed at everything from boosting sales, to having dangerous products approved for sale, to money paid to close investigations into their business practices or the dangers their products present to the public’s health.

Reuters Report on AstraZeneca 

AstraZeneca – developing its candidate for a COVID-19 vaccine with billions in US government funding – is guilty – not suspected of or accused of – but guilty of bribery in multiple countries and has been fined by the US government itself.

Reuters in its article, “AstraZeneca to pay $5.52 million to resolve SEC foreign bribery case,” would report:

U.S. regulators said on Tuesday that AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L) will pay $5.52 million to resolve a foreign bribery probe into improper payments by its sales and marketing staff to state-employed healthcare officials in China and Russia.

The article further explained (emphasis added):

Sales and marketing staff in those countries as far back as 2005 provided gifts, conference support, travel, cash and other benefits to the state-employed healthcare providers to buy or prescribe the company’s products, the SEC said.

The company’s Chinese subsidiary also paid healthcare providers speaker fees, sometimes for “totally fabricated” engagements, and in 2008, paid local officials to get reductions or dismissals of proposed financial sanctions it faced, the SEC said. 

More recently, FiercePharma in a 2018 article titled, “Justice Department probes claims that AstraZeneca bribed Iraqi terrorists to win contracts,” would report (emphasis added):

More than 100 veterans last year filed a bombshell lawsuit against several drugmakers, alleging they financed terrorism by paying bribes to win contracts with the Iraqi Ministry of Health. Now, the Department of Justice is investigating similar claims, according to an AstraZeneca securities filing that says it’s part of the probe.

Illustrating how AstraZeneca’s corruption is hardly an isolated case among the Western pharmaceutical industry – it  was being probed alongside two other pharmaceutical corporations working on US government-funded COVID-19 vaccines including Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services’ official website, AstraZeneca has already received $1.2 billion in funds from the US government for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate. It – like others involved in the US-funded campaign – will profit whether or not their vaccines are safe, work, or are even produced.

Legal measures have been put in place to protect pharmaceutical giants like AstraZeneca from lawsuits that will arise if their COVID-19 vaccine fails to work, or even harms the health of those given it.

AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine rewrites genetic information in human cells – and would be the first and widest distribution of such technology. This is an unimaginably reckless rollout for what is completely unproven technology with no long-term studies on safety available because no such technology has been used before or on such a large scale.

Considering AstraZeneca’s background – no corporation could be less qualified or less trustworthy to rollout such a risky product.

Surely there are other alternatives for Thailand [and any other nation] regarding COVID-19 vaccine programs – the nation itself having had fewer than 60 COVID-19 related deaths in the many months the virus has been circulating through the global population. And surely there are better partners Thailand can find – partners without criminal records or a history of dangerous impropriety for something as important as human health.

The Thai public will most likely need to get involved and raise the issue because those involved in creating this “partnership” with AstraZeneca – like in the many other countries AstraZeneca and other Western pharmaceutical corporations operate – likely did so because of personal gain and certainly not based on AstraZeneca’s nonexistent credibility.

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Note from Land Destroyer’s Editor: While this article was originally written in regards to AstraZeneca’s partnership with Thailand, the information applies to anyone in the world exposed to AstraZeneca’s products including – and especially – the incredibly dangerous roll-out of its COVID-19 vaccine.

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer Report.

Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from LDR

House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters and Senator Elizabeth Warren have introduced the Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act. This legislation directs the Federal Reserve to eliminate racial disparities in income, employment, wealth, and access to credit.

Eliminating racial disparities in access to credit is code for forcing banks and other financial institutions to approve loans based on the applicants’ race, instead of based on their income and credit history. Overlooking poor credit history or income below what would normally be required to qualify for a loan results in individuals ending up with ruinous debt. These individuals will end up losing their homes, cars, or businesses because banks disregarded sound lending practices in an effort to show they are meeting race-based requirements.

Forcing banks to make loans based on political considerations damages the economy by misallocating resources. This reduces economic growth and inflicts more pain on lower-income Americans.

The Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act has already shown what happens when the government forces banks to give loans to unqualified borrowers. This law played a significant role in the housing boom and subsequent economic meltdown. The Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act will be the Community Reinvestment Act on steroids.

This legislation also requires the Fed to shape monetary policy with an eye toward eliminating racial disparities. This adds a third mandate to the Fed’s current “dual mandate” of promoting a stable dollar and full employment.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has already publicly committed to using racial disparities as an excuse to continue the Fed’s current policy of perpetual money creation. Since inflation occurs whenever the Fed creates new money, Powell and his supporters want a policy of never-ending inflation.

Supporters of this scheme say that inflation raises wages and creates new job opportunities for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. However, these wage gains are illusory, as wages rarely, if ever, increase as much as prices. So, workers’ real standard of living declines even as their nominal income increases. By contrast, those at the top of the income ladder tend to benefit from inflation as they receive the new money — and thus an increase in purchasing power — before the Fed’s actions cause a general rise in the price level. The damage done by inflation is hidden and regressive, which is part of why the inflation tax is the most insidious of all taxes.

When the Fed creates new money, it distorts the market signals sent by interest rates, which are the price of money. This leads to a bubble. Many people who find well-paying jobs in bubble industries will lose those jobs when the bubble inevitably bursts. Many of these workers, and others, will struggle because of debt they incurred because they listened to “experts” who said the boom would never end.

The Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the money supply lowers the dollar’s value, creates a boom-and-bust business cycle, facilitates the rise of the welfare-warfare state, and enriches the elites, while impoverishing people in the middle and lower classes. Progressives who want to advance the wellbeing of people in the middle and lower classes should stop attacking free markets and join libertarians in seeking to restore a sound monetary policy, The first step is to let the people know the full truth about the central bank by passing the Audit the Fed bill. Once the truth about the Fed is exposed, a critical mass of people will join the liberty movement and force Congress to end the Fed’s money monopoly.

As of October 13, clashes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces continue in the southern part of the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region, while on the other parts of the frontline Baku and Yerevan limited their military activity to exchange of artillery and aerial strikes. The humanitarian ceasefire signed by the sides in Moscow formally remains in force, but the terms of the ceasefire are not fulfilled by both sides.

The main point of instability is the town of Hadrut, which Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced to have been ‘liberated’ from ‘Armenian occupants’. However, Armenian forces apparently forgot to read his tweet and withdraw from the area. So, now, the Azerbaijani leader is forced to explain what’s going on.

On October 12, he sated that a large group of Armenian special forces attacked the town to make a few selfies for Armenian propaganda, but the attack was repelled. “Although from a strategic point of view, it does not matter so much for Armenia. They just take such a step to go there and take a selfie or report to their population. The Azerbaijani Army neutralized this large group,” Aliyev stressed.

The Armenian military says that the town is still in the hands of its forces and that it has successfully repelled another Azerbaijani attack there.

Turkey has been openly threatening Armenia with a joint Turkish-Azerbaijani advance if it does not surrender the contested Nagorno-Karabakh region to Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said that “Baku cannot wait for justice for another 30 years” claiming that “Turkey is ready to support the fair position of the Azerbaijani side.” According to Akar, if the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh is not resolved in the near future, then the next step will be “the Azerbaijani-Turkish movement aimed at returning their land.”

Sources affiliated with Turkish-backed militant groups in Syria say that Ankara has been preparing a new deployment of militant groups’ members to Azerbaijan to support its war with Armenia. If the numbers of 1,500-2,000 fresh militants that are set to come to Azerbaijan are confirmed, this will not only make the estimated number of Turkish proxies deployed there from 4,000-6,000, but also confirm that Ankara is set to use its influence to motivate Azerbaijan to opt for the scenario of a further escalation.

Likely, the Turkish leadership seems the war in Karabakh as an important turning point, which, in the event of military success, will turn into the leading power in the Southern Caucasus and give additional momentum to its geopolitical expansion. It will also boost the popularity of Recep Tayyip Erdogan that positions himself as the leader of the Turkic world and a de-facto Sultan of his own Neo-Ottoman Empire.

According to the Armenian side, the Turkish military is already directly involved in the war. In particular, the presence of Turkish F-16s, Turkish special forces, military advisers and Turkish-backed Syrian militants in Azerbaijan are hardly deniable facts.

It is interesting to observe how for example the main version from Turkish and Azerbaijani sources about the Turkish F-16 jets switched from public denial of their presence to claims that they are not involved directly in the conflict and are just needed to deter Armenian aggression. Reports from the ground and the diplomatic posture of the sides indicate that Azerbaijan, supported by Turkey, is preparing a new military push against Armenian forces in the Nagorno-Karabakh region to consolidate and expand its initial gains before the winter.

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This is a politically desperate distraction which hints that the Democrats aren’t as confident about former Vice President Joe Biden’s supposedly impending victory as their media surrogates are trying to convince everyone is bound to happen in a few weeks’ time.

During the press briefing outlining Russia’s program of work for their October Presidency of the UN Security Council,  I mentioned the offer by Dr. Kee B. Park, Director of the Korea Policy Project at Harvard Medical School, and renowned Lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine,  who stated he is willing to address the Security Council and inform them of the horrifying human consequences suffered by the ordinary citizens of the DPRK, as a consequence of the sanctions that the Security Council is relentlessly and savagely inflicting upon North Korea.  Dr. Park was born in South Korea, and at the age of ten years his family brought him to the United States, where he now lives.  He is impeccably objective, and intimately aware of the devastation that these sanctions are wreaking upon the entire health care system of the DPRK, where he has helped, as a neurosurgeon, in several humanitarian organizations and programs.

Russian Ambassador Nebenzia immediately responded with profound and moving concern about this tragic situation, and emphasized that Russia has raised this issue for a long time, calling on the Chair of the Sanctions Committee of the DPRK to hold a briefing, which for some reason was postponed and postponed so, as Ambassador Nebenzia stated, “We have a debt that they owe us, and we want them to repay”! Ambassador Nebenzia stated that he has been approached by another  distinguished scientist who is completely unbiased, and is very familiar with this problem, and confirmed that the situation is appalling, and completely unacceptable. Ambassador Nebenzia reiterated:

“Indeed it is!!  I will approach the Chair of the Sanctions Committee, and tell him that there is a distinguished neurosurgeon willing to brief the Security Council.  Please provide me with his coordinates.”

Ambassador Nebenzia continued:

“This is a problem causing great suffering in other countries in addition to the DPRK.  The sanctions take a great toll on the general population in Syria.  Our partners say these sanctions are very targeted, very refined, and do not harm the general population.  This is disproved by numerous humanitarian actors, including even Western NGO’s, who are saying they are also victims of the sanctions, and state that the secondary effects of the sanctions cause many humanitarian providers to fear retaliation by the sanctions watchdogs of the Western countries that introduced them.”

Ambassador Nebenzia continued, stating that the Secretary-General called for a global ceasefire, and lifting of the sanctions. The General Assembly Omnibus Resolution on the 2030 Agenda contains a paragraph on the adverse effect of sanctions on achievement of the 2030 agenda, and this paragraph is a part of the Resolution.

In addition to the other brutal deprivations the general population suffers as a result of the sanctions, the sanctions deprive doctors of crucial medical equipment necessary to restore to heath and restore to life a huge number of citizens in the targeted countries, including the most vulnerable, the elderly, disabled, and women and children. I have also discussed this with Ambassador Olof Skoog, currently Ambassador of the European Union, formerly Ambassador of Sweden. Ambassador Skoog is also concerned about this situation, and one hopes he can awaken his colleagues to this emergency.

The great human concern about these egregious human rights violations caused by the Security Council sanctions,  concern so eloquently expressed by the Russian Ambassador, is phenomenally important. It is in staggering contrast to the almost psychopathic indifference with which other Security Council Ambassadors have reacted when I mentioned the tragic human suffering caused by the sanctions.

Their indifference is both immoral and obscene.  These Ambassadors whose lives are so privileged do not care if a human being in Pyongyang dies in agony because the Sanctions a white European supported deprived the people of the DPRK of the medical equipment necessary to cure his illness, and save his life.  These sanctions constitute Crimes against Humanity, and one day a court of law may hold the Security Council accountable for these crimes.  The Security Council is not above the law, and it behooves them to face the reality that they cannot continue imposing these genocidal sanctions with impunity.

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Carla Stea is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and Global Research’s Correspondent at UN headquarters, New York. 

Over recent weeks a series of events in the states surrounding the Russian Federation has erupted that certainly are not being greeted with joy in the Kremlin. Each crisis center of itself is not a definitive game-changer for future Russian security. Taken together they suggest something far more ominous is unfolding against Moscow. A recent RAND study prepared for the US Army suggests with remarkable accuracy who might be behind what will undoubtedly become a major threat to Russian security in coming months.

The Turkish-backed attacks by Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh, igniting a territory after almost three decades of relative stalemate and ceasefire, the ongoing destabilization of Lukashenko in Belarus, the bizarre EU and UK behavior surrounding the alleged poisoning of Russian dissident Navalny and most recently, the mass protests in Kyrgyzstan, a former part of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, bear the fingerprints of the MI6 of Britain, the CIA and an array of regime-change private NGOs.

Nagorno-Karabakh

On September 27 military forces from Azerbaijan broke the 1994 ceasefire with Armenia over the conflict in predominantly ethnic- Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh. The heaviest fighting in years ensued on both sides as confrontation escalated. Turkey’s Erdogan came out openly in support of Baku against Armenia and Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh, leading Nikol Pashinyan, the Prime Minister of Armenia, to accuse Turkey of “continuing a genocidal policy as a pragmatic task.” It was a clear reference to the 1915-23 Armenian charge of genocide of more than a million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Empire. Turkey to this day refuses to acknowledge responsibility.

Image on the right is from South Front

While Armenia blames Erdogan for backing Azerbaijan in the present conflict in the Caucasus, Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, sometimes called “Putin’s chef” for his catering empire as well as his close ties to the Russian President, has said in an interview with a Turkish paper that the Armenia-Azeri conflict was provoked by “the Americans,” and that the Pashinyan regime is essentially in the service of the USA. Here it gets interesting.

In 2018 Pashinyan came to power via mass protests called the “Velvet Revolution.” He was openly and heavily supported by the Soros Open Society Foundation-Armenia which since 1997 has been active funding numerous “democracy” NGOs in the country. As Prime Minister, Pashinyan has named recipients of Soros money to most key cabinet positions including state security and defense.

At the same time it is unthinkable that Erdogan’s Turkey, still in NATO, would so openly support Azerbaijan in a conflict that potentially could lead to a Turkish confrontation with Russia, without prior backing in some form Washington. Armenia is a member of the economic and defense association Eurasian Economic Union together with Russia. This makes the comments of Prigozhin especially interesting.

It is also worth noting that the head of the CIA, Gina Haspel, and the recently-named head of Britain’s MI-6, Richard Moore, are both seasoned Turkey hands. Moore was UK Ambassador to Ankara until 2017. Haspel was CIA Station Chief in Azerbaijan at the end of the 1990’s. Before that, in 1990 Haspel was a CIA officer in Turkey, fluent in Turkish. Notably, although it has been scrubbed from her official CIA bio, she was also CIA Station Chief in London just prior to being named Trump Administration CIA head. She was also specialized in operations against Russia when she was in Langley at the CIA Directorate of Operations.

This raises the question whether the dark hands of an Anglo-American intelligence operation are behind the current Azeri-Armenia conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Adding further gunpowder to the Caucasus unrest, on October 5 NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO’s security interests are synonymous with those of Turkey, despite Turkish purchase of Russian advanced air defense systems. Washington until now has been conspicuously silent on the Caucasus conflict or Turkey’s alleged role.

And Belarus…

The eruption of the simmering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict near Russia’s southern border is not the only state where Washington is actively promoting destabilization of vital Russian neighbors these days. Since August elections, Belarus has been filled with orchestrated protests accusing President Lukashenko of election fraud. The opposition has been active in exile from neighboring NATO Baltic countries.

Image below is from InfoBrics

In 2019, the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) listed on its website some 34 NED project grants in Belarus. All of them were directed to nurture and train an anti-Lukashenko series of opposition groups and build domestic NGOs. The grants went for such projects as, “NGO Strengthening: To increase local and regional civic engagement… to identify local problems and develop advocacy strategies.” Another was to “expand an online depository of publications not readily accessible in the country, including works on politics, civil society, history, human rights, and independent culture.” Then another NED grant went, “To defend and support independent journalists and media.” And another, “NGO Strengthening: To foster youth civic engagement.” Another large NED grant went to, “training democratic parties and movements in effective advocacy campaigns.” Behind the innocent-sounding NED projects is a pattern of creating a specially-trained opposition on the lines of the CIA’s NED model “Color Revolutions” template.

As if the unrest in the Caucasus and Belarus were not enough to give Moscow migraine headaches, on September 29 in Brussels, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia met with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg told him that, “NATO supports Georgia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty within its internationally recognized borders. We call on Russia to end its recognition of [Georgia’s breakaway] regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and to withdraw its forces.” Stoltenberg then told Gakharia, “And I encourage you to continue making full use of all the opportunities for coming closer to NATO. And to prepare for membership.” Of course NATO membership for Russian neighbor Georgia would amount to a strategic challenge for Russia as would that of Ukraine. The NATO comments add to the tensions facing the Kremlin recently.

Kyrgystan’s Third Color Revolution?

Then former Soviet Union Central Asian republic, Kyrgyzstan, has also just erupted in mass protests that have brought down the government for the third time since 2005, over opposition allegations of election fraud. USAID, a known cover often for CIA operations, is active in the country as is the Soros Foundation which has created a university in Biskek and funds the usual array of projects, “to promote justice, democratic governance, and human rights.” It should be noted that Kyrgyzstan is also a member of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union along with Armenia and Belarus.

Then to increase the heat on Russia we have the bizarre charges by the German Bundeswehr intelligence and now the OPCW that Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was poisoned in Russia using “a Soviet-era nerve agent,” said by the Germans to be Novichok. While Navalny since has evidently emerged quite alive and out of hospital, the German officials as well as British, do not bother to explain such a miraculous recovery from what is reputed to be the most deadly nerve agent ever. Following the OPCW statement that the substance was Novichok, the German Foreign Minister is threatening severe sanctions against Russia. Many are calling for Germany to cancel the Russian NordStream-2 gas pipeline as response, a blow that would hit Russia at a time of severe economic weakness from low oil prices and corona lockdown effects.

Nor does Germany bother to investigate the mysterious Russian companion of Navalny, Maria Pevchikh, who claims to have rescued the “Novichok-poisoned” empty water bottle from Navalny’s hotel room in Tomsk Russia before he was flown to Berlin on the personal invitation of Angela Merkel. After delivering the poisoned bottle to Berlin in person, she apparently swiftly flew to London where she lives, and no German or other authorities apparently tried to interview her as a potential material witness.

Pevchikh has a long association with London where she works with the Navalny foundation and is in reported close contact with Jacob Rothschild’s friend, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the convicted fraudster and Putin foe. Khodorkovsky is also a major funder of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK in Russian). There are credible reports that the mysterious Pevchikh is an asset of MI-6, the same MI-6 that ran another ludicrous Novichok drama in 2018 claiming that Russian defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were poisoned in England by Russian intelligence using the deadly Novichok. Again there, both Skripals miraculously recovered from the deadliest nerve agent and officially were discharged from hospital whereupon they “disappeared.”

A RAND Blueprint?

While more research will undoubtedly turn up more evidence, the pattern of NATO or Anglo-American active measures against key Russian periphery countries or against strategic Russian economic interests all within the same timespan suggests some kind of coordinated attack.

And it so happens that the targets of the attacks fit precisely to the outline of a major US military think tank report. In a 2019 research report to the US Army, the RAND corporation published a set of policy recommendations under the title, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.” They note that by extending Russia they mean “nonviolent measures that could stress Russia’s military or economy or the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” All of the above stress points certainly fill that description. More striking is the specific elaboration of possible stress points to “extend Russia,” that is to over-extend her.

The report specifically discusses what they call “Geopolitical Measures” to over-extend Russia. These include providing lethal aid to Ukraine; promoting regime change in Belarus; exploiting tensions in the South Caucasus; reduce Russian influence in Central Asia. It also includes proposals to weaken the Russian economy by challenging its gas and oil sectors.

Notably, these are the same areas of geopolitical turbulence within Russia’s strategic sphere of influence today. Specifically, on the Caucasus, RAND states, “Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia were part of the Soviet Union, and Russia still maintains significant sway over the region today…” They note that, “Today, Russia recognizes both South Ossetia and Abkhazia as separate countries (one of the few governments to do so) and is committed to their defense…. The United States might also renew efforts to bring Georgia into NATO. Georgia has long sought NATO membership;…” ix Recall the cited remarks of NATO’s Stoltenberg to encourage Georgia joining NATO and demanding Russia give up recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The RAND report also highlights the tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan:

”Russia also plays a key role with Azerbaijan and Armenia, particularly over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh… the United States could push for a closer NATO relationship with Georgia and Azerbaijan, likely leading Russia to strengthen its military presence in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Armenia, and southern Russia. Alternatively, the United States could try to induce Armenia to break with Russia.”

In relation to current massive protests in Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, RAND notes, “Russia is part of two economic ventures related to Central Asia: the EEU and the Belt and Road Initiative.” A pro-NATO regime change could throw a big barrier between Russia and China as well as within its EEU. As to economic pressures, the RAND report cites the possibility of pressuring the EU to abandon the NordStream-2 gas pipeline from Russia direct to Germany. The recent Navalny incident is creating growing pressure within the EU and even Germany to stop NordStream-2 as sanction for the Navalny affair. RAND notes,

“In terms of extending Russia economically, the main benefit of creating supply alternatives to Russian gas is that it would lower Russian export revenues. The federal Russian budget is already stressed, leading to planned cuts in defense spending, and lowering gas revenues would stress the budget further.”

If we examine the growing pressures on Russia from the examples cited here and compare with the language of the 2019 RAND report it is clear that many of Russia’s current strategic problems are being deliberately engineered and orchestrated from the West, specifically from Washington and London. How Russia deals with this as well as certain future escalation of NATO pressures clearly presents a major geopolitical challenge.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

Latakia: Friday morning in the coastal city of Latakia, Syria seemed normal at first. Even though the October weather was still far hotter than normal, not many noticed the unusually strong winds wiping through the countryside, filled with olives, citrus, and various fruit and nut trees. The usual cooler, humid breezes blowing eastwards from the Mediterranean were replaced by a westerly wind blowing out to sea in a sudden reversal of normal weather patterns.

The olive trees were heavy and ready to be harvested. In a usual year, there would already have been at least one prior drenching rain, and that last rain before harvest adds moisture to each olive. However, this year was different, as global climate change took deadly hold in the eastern Mediterranean region.

Syrians face the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, economic despair, lack of electricity, severe gasoline shortages, and now the loss of olive crops which not only bring income but are a traditional food source for farming families along the Syrian coast.

The Ministry of Agriculture had previously expected to produce 850,000 tons of olives this season from more than 87 million trees, said Engineer Muhammad Habu in August. Possibly more than 9,000 hectares of forests and agricultural lands burned between Friday and Saturday, while three people had died due to the fires, and 70 were treated at local hospitals with breathing difficulties.

Areas in the provinces of Latakia, Tartous, and Homs were affected, with an estimated 140,000 persons impacted.

The Syrian government response

President Bashar Assad, accompanied by various local officials, as well as those from the Ministry of Agriculture, visited areas in Latakia province which were affected in the fires.  Plans are afloat to assist farmers in replanting lost trees.

The mountain village of Qardaha was heavily hit by the fires, while the state-owned tobacco warehouse there became engulfed in flames, and the local hospital was threatened by the fires.

Syrian Agriculture Minister Mohammed Hassan Qatana said “a total of 156 fires” had broken out, most of them in Latakia and Tartus, in an unprecedented disaster, which was echoed by the Latakia fire brigade.

Bassem Douba, director of the forestry department in Latakia’s agricultural department, said villagers were forced to evacuate their homes and had sought shelter in Latakia and Tartus.

Latakia Governor Ibrahim Khader al-Salem said that “civil defense teams, supported by army units and the population, are now in control of all the fires in the province”.

Previous fires in September

Forest fires in the Hama region last month involved dozens of wildfires in the agricultural areas of Hama and Jisr Al Shughour, as well as near the coastal regions of Latakia, which consumed several square kilometers of forests. A severe heatwave caused nearly 60 bushfires.

Lebanon on fire

To the south in Lebanon, there have been more than 100 fires across the country since Thursday, according to George Abu Musa, head of operations for the country’s civil defense.

Dozens of fires hit Lebanon in mid-October 2019, amid unusually high temperatures and strong winds, which were the same conditions in Syria on Friday.

The Lebanese government faced heavy criticism over its response to the 2019 blazes, which contributed to the mass protests of the population against the ruling class. The fires last October burned through the countryside near the Chouf mountains for days, during a heatwave that saw the highest recorded temperatures for that month, while hospitalizing and displacing dozens of people.

Palestine

While Syria and Lebanon were burning on Friday, the authorities in the occupied West Bank, areas in central occupied Palestine, as well as along the north reported several fires as well, forcing thousands to evacuate.

United Nations

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said Monday has coordinated with authorities in Syria to develop a contingency response plan to those areas affected by the wildfires.

Niklas Hagelberg, a climate change expert with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says a fast-warming planet will likely lead to more wildfires.  He said in an interview that climate change is present now, and the planet is already 1.1°C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times and that is changing the world around us.

When asked about the wildfires raging in California and Oregon this fall, Hagelberg said forest fires are natural, but the rise in the average temperature has increased the frequency and intensity of fires.

California and Syria in simultaneous wildfires

LeRoy Westerling, professor of management of complex systems at the University of California, said

“It’s not as simple as saying the fire season is longer. It’s also much more severe.”

Westerling said climate change is a big factor in the ever-increasing number of wildfires, while climate change is also responsible for more extreme weather conditions than we experienced in the past.

“The weather systems slow down and linger longer; there are longer dry spells and longer wet spells,” said Westerling.

Besides climate change, high winds can knock down power lines or blow-dry grasses into them which causes them to ignite, and the gusting winds and dry heat spreads the fires rapidly. This is true in both Syria as well as California where more than 12,000 firefighters continue to work on 14 major fires or complexes of fires around California, which have resulted in 31 fire-related deaths and more than 9,200 structures have been destroyed.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.

Featured image is from MD

The African Bar Association wishes to express deep concern about the recent threats to the life and person of Dr. Denis Mukwege. This misguided threats arising from the activist activities of the Nobel Laureate in seeking for justice in the plunder of the DRC and murders of innocent citizens of that country by vested local and international interests is not only condemnable but must be resisted by all democratic forces across the globe.

The sagacious African who has spent most of his life championing the cause of justice and recognized for his diligent work in the DRC should not only be celebrated but emulated. The 2018 Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Denis Mukwege, a Congolese, on July 26, 2020 unreservedly condemned the gruesome killing of 220 individuals in the village of Kipupu, South Kivu, Congo, which massacre registered a similar pattern, having been adopted by same perpetrators since 1996.

In expressing his unbreakable resolve to make public the atrocities committed in the Bukavu region, he stated thus:

“No intellectual malfeasance, no threat, no use of fear will prevent me from expressing myself on the reality of the atrocities experienced by the populations of my country and the consequences of which I treat every day in my hospital in Bukavu”

Dr. Mukwege has since 2017, worked tirelessly to give the United Nations concrete proofs to spur the establishment of a Criminal Tribunal for the trial of war criminals in East Congo in accordance with the United Nations 2010 Mapping Report on crimes
committed in the Congo between 1993 and 2003 which include but not limited to invasions and wars leading to the untimely death of many.

In response to this fearless, vibrant and outspoken stance taken by Dr. Mukwege, on July 18, 2020, General James Kararebe, on Rwandan television issued statements veiled in death threats against Dr. Mukwege and his family which attempted to incriminate the Nobel Peace Prize Winner in the alleged inhuman acts culminating in the Hutu genocide, a claim that is refuted by hundreds of residents in Bukavu. The African Bar Association finds this distasteful and regards as unconventional the veiled death threats directed at the Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Denis Mukwege. In upholding the tenets of the Rule of Law the AFBA hereby demands for the establishment of a United Nations Tribunal for Eastern Congo to unveil the truth in respect of the war ravaging Congo, forestall the use of force and completely eliminate the prevailing extrajudicial killings and craves the indulgence of all Bar Associations and African governments to support this position.

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Featured image: Denis Mukwege. Torleif Svensson/Panzi Hospital, CC BY

The $1.4 billion increase in Taiwan’s military spending next year is still not enough to achieve effective defense, said David Helvey, Principal Director for East Asia in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. He made the comments during a two-day video conference hosted by the U.S.-Taiwan Defense Industry.

Reuters reported on October 7 that Helvey asked Taiwanese authorities to invest in “large numbers of small capabilities” that would signal to China that an “invasion or attack would not come without significant cost.” This was in reference to mainland China supposedly wanting to militarily capture Taiwan as Beijing considers the island to be a “rebel province” of the People’s Republic of China. A U.S. Department of Defense official listed the following weapons that they can sell to Taiwan: cruise missiles used to defend the coast, water mines, fast ships, self-propelled artillery, and modern surveillance and reconnaissance equipment.

It was learned in September that the U.S. plans to sell several weapon systems to Taiwan. Reuters today broke further news, claiming that pending Congressional approval, the U.S. is moving forward with three sales of advanced weaponry to Taiwan.

“The informal notifications were for a truck-based rocket launcher made by Lockheed Martin Corp called a High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), long-range air-to-ground missiles made by Boeing Co called SLAM-ER, and external sensor pods for F-16 jets that allow the real-time transmission of imagery and data from the aircraft back to ground stations,” Reuters reported earlier today.

This in turn has sparked a war of words with Taiwanese foreign ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou saying

“China continues to use military provocation to undermine cross-strait and regional stability, highlighting the importance of Taiwan’s strengthening of self-defense capabilities.”

In turn, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian stated that Beijing will respond “appropriately and necessary in accordance with the development of the situation,” without giving further explanation what a response could be. The Chinese spokesperson also pointed out that Washington should “fully recognize the serious harm” the U.S. arms sales to Taiwan has, abide by the one-China principle, immediately cancel any arms sales to Taiwan and end U.S.-Taiwan military contacts.

This is unlikely to occur because arms sales are very beneficial to the US as Taiwan’s military industrial capabilities can only produce a small part of the range of weapons listed. The economic benefit to the U.S. will be huge, whilst simultaneously pressurizing Washington’s main 21st century geopolitical rival, China. The U.S. is determined to contain China, and of course is interested in using Taiwan as an outpost for this containment policy. Therefore, everything the Americans allow Taiwan to purchase is in line with the overall strategy of confronting China, especially at sea.

If Taiwan helps block the Chinese navy, it will be in support of U.S. strategy. The Americans are therefore deliberately pushing Taiwan to confront Beijing. This policy has been implemented for more than a decade and precedes President Donald Trump, and will likely continue after him, whether that will be after the 2020 elections or after the 2024 elections. The Americans are trying to force Taiwan to bear most of the costs of serving this strategy to contain China, but leaders in Taipei are showing signs they are more than willing to pay.

The idea of building a “Fortress Taiwan” is in the U.S.’ own interests but is actually not feasible for Taiwan today. Not only do Taiwanese companies continue to get rich by trading and investing with China, but using profits and taxes to build a “fortress” aimed against China will not be tolerated by Beijing. Taiwan increases its participation in policies to contain China, however its benefits from trade with the mainland will begin to decline significantly.

The production of weapons will not help Taiwan to ensure its security from a perceived mainland Chinese threat either. Many of Taiwan’s rational politicians and analysts understand that if things develop unfavorably, the price to further strengthen Taiwan’s security from a perceived threat will be a heavy cost on its economy whilst enriching American military corporations.

Despite this reality, at a two-day meeting hosted by the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, Taiwan’s Deputy Minister of National Defense Zhang Guanqun stated that Taiwan needs U.S. weapons and equipment to meet its combat needs. Judging from the content of his speech, Taiwan and its defense projects on the island, including the construction of submarines, fighter jets, and warships, depend on a large extent on strengthening its defense capabilities through U.S. assistance.

However, although this may antagonize Beijing, the truth is that it still cannot prevent Chinese activities and power projections in the South China Sea. Rather, Taiwan’s ambitions can see it lose trade deals with the mainland which will be far more devastating and impactful than the island’s conversion into an American fortress to pressurize China.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics