Credit Suisse: The Continuing Saga

April 25th, 2023 by Peter Koenig

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The “case“ Credit Suisse (CS), referring to the Swiss Government’s forced merger of UBS and CS on 18/19 March 2023 the Dark Banking Weekend, has by no means reached an end, and much less a happy end.

According to Swissinfo, as of 3 April 2023, the takeover has been agreed but not yet carried out. Some hesitation and reservation may have grown within the Swiss Government, receiving top-expert-advice from many corners, but especially from within Switzerland, mostly regarding the legality of the deal.

Professor Arturo Bris, teaching finance at the IMD Business school in Lausanne, who has examined 1,000 deals between 2002 and 2022 says

“Mergers between established banks like UBS and CS, which are no longer growing rapidly and are less profitable than their competitors, almost never work.”

The CEO of the Swiss Julius Bär Bank, Philipp Rickenbacher, sees a long road ahead before the takeover can be deemed a success.

“An integration of that order of magnitude in Switzerland is going to take a lot of resources and effort, and a lot of complexity,” he told the Financial Times.

Julius Bär has seen inflows of client assets from both Credit Suisse and UBS in magnitudes of above CHF 60 billion in recent weeks. And the private banking group has been contacted by many Credit Suisse staff asking for job opportunities.

Both Professor Bris and CEO Rickenbacher believe that states should not have to intervene to save banks from collapsing. Rickenbacher adds, “My gut feeling and moral compass says that a private institution should be able to fail.” 

According to a recent poll, many Swiss economists found that the takeover of Credit Suisse is not the best solution and warned that the situation has dented Switzerland’s reputation as an international banking center.

*

This is the on-the-surface visible critique of the government-forced take-over. Underneath remains a myriad of questions, mostly of a legal nature, which are yet to be answered. A Big One is over the validity of the deal.

The government prompted takeover was carried out under a legally shady “emergency” measure. This emergency measure is being questioned by lawyers and legal experts in Switzerland and around the world.

It is also questioned by major shareholders of CS, as well as AT1 Bondholders. AT1 stands for Additional Tier 1 Bonds. They were created after the 2008 financial crisis, and are a type of hybrid debt issued by banks. They are a kind of quasi-capital and are supposed to protect a bank from tax-payer bailouts.

AT1 bonds can offer high returns, but they are riskier than regular bonds.

In the case of CS, neither the shareholders or the AT1 bondholders were consulted before the compulsory takeover. This is particularly problematic, because on Friday before the “emergency merger”, the Swiss Central Bank granted CS a “bail-out” line of credit of CHF 50 billion, which, according to CS inside and outside analysts, as well as FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Regulator, would have been sufficient to bring back CS to normal banking within less than a year.

CS had apparently no serious liquidity problem. It had a trust problem growing out of rumors that the bank may fail. And rumors can be planted. A case in point is the Californian Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Banking experts say, the trust issue could have been resolved with this Government bailout line of credit which would also have helped CS to get rid of old skeletons.

Under the emergency merger, CS shares dropped by more than 50% on Monday, 20 March, from what they were on Friday, 17 March, i.e. on March 15, they were CHF 1.76 and rose to CHF 2.05 on Friday, with the prospect of the bailout credit, dropping to CHF 0.91 on Monday, March 20.

Shareholders were not at all happy.

AT1 bondholders were even unhappier, not to say angry, when they learned on Monday, 20 March, that under the government-enforced deal, all AT1 bonds of CHF 16 billion ($17.24 billion) were written down to zero.

According to the Financial Times, the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger and the NZZ, three class-action suits by AT1 bondholders against the Swiss Government are being prepared by attorneys in the US and Singapore. It is likely that shareholders will either join them or launch their own class action suit.

Major shareholders include:

  • Saudi National Bank 10%
  • Olayan Group, Saudi Arabia 5%
  • Qatar Holding LLC 5%
  • Black Rock 5%

The Saudi National Bank has already announced they will sue the Swiss government. It is likely that the Saudi Olayan Group and Qatar Holding will join the lawsuit. That makes 20% of Arabian shareholders suing the Swiss government for its hardly justified emergency measure, that supposedly prevents the Swiss government from having to consult with shareholders. After all, the Swiss Central Bank had granted CS a CHF 50 billion “bail-out” line of credit, just on Friday 17 March, before the dark, “Black Box” weekend of 18/19 March.

See also this and this.

It is well possible that other shareholders may join the Class Action “club”. For example, the Pension Fund of the largest Swiss retailer, MIGROS, which lost CHF 100 million in the AT1 write-off, has told the Swiss Tages-Anzeiger they will join a Class Action suit.

Will these legal procedures be successful? Depends whom you ask. Standard & Poor’s predicts the law suits will unlikely succeed. On the other hand, Goldman Sachs believes these lawsuits may thrive to the point where GS is ready to purchasing CS AT1 bonds, to make money if the plaintiffs win their case, and the AT1 bonds have to be revalued.

The forced UBS / CS merger is far from finished for Switzerland. It is possible that it may cost the government or UBS another CHF 30 billion (about US$ 34 billion, at current exchange rates). That would be ten times more than UBS agreed to pay under this emergency action, namely only CHF 3 billion.

Among the four major shareholders listed above is BlackRock (5%). They have been watching from the sidelines. There are rumors that initially they advanced the possibility of taking over CS. But the rumors were quickly dispelled, as the Swiss government expressed concern that CS should stay in Switzerland.

The combined UBS / CS would have some US$ 5 trillion of managed assets.

The former head of the Swiss Central Bank, Philipp Hildebrand, joined BlackRock in 2012 as Vice-Chairman in charge of investments. He knows the ropes and wheeling and dealing of Switzerland inside-out.

It is quite possible that for now Hildebrand watches from the sidelines how this “CS case” evolves. If the plaintiffs win with a claim of say CHF 20 to CHF 30 billion against the Swiss Government, Switzerland could not simply absorb the debt with taxpayers money. So, they would pass it on to UBS. Yet, UBS was already reluctant to accept the take-over precisely because such mergers are complex and require lengthy processes before they may succeed, as per Philipp Rickenbacher, CEO of the Julius Bär Bank.

UBS would unlikely be able to absorb such a debt. In which case, a scenario where BlackRock jumps in from the sideline to help and take over UBS, is not to be excluded. That would add another US$ 5 trillion to BlackRock’s already at least US$ 10 trillion of managed assets and make the giant financial rock even more powerful.

Just a thought. Not to be discarded.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

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

“Freedom of Religion” and Other Lies

April 25th, 2023 by Philip Giraldi

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The United States government, in its incessant bullying of foreign nations to get them to see the world the way that the cabal that runs Washington sees it, ironically often cites such fictions as the “rule of law” that guarantees such “rights” as “free speech” and “freedom of religion” to justify its illegal actions. Right at the moment, the United States maintains garrisons illegally in both Iraq, where the country’s parliament has as it to depart, and also in neighboring Syria where the government is fighting an insurgency that seeks regime change and is supported by both the US and Israel.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is analogous to what Russia has done in Ukraine though Moscow certainly had stronger compelling national security reasons for doing what it did while the United States had to construct a series of lies to provide as an excuse to topple Saddam Hussein, an objective strongly supported by Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who added his own fabrications to the exchanges.

One has to look to the media to discern the reasons why some developments are wrapped in “religious freedom” or “democracy promotion” while other actions are ignored or even covered-up. Currently the right-wing Jewish extremists who have gained control of Israel’s government are engaging in something like genocide directed against the Palestinian population, many of whom are actually Israeli citizens though possessing second class rights when they are enforced at all. Israel regards itself legally as a Jewish state, so what is the “rule of law” for those who are not Jews and how does it perceive “religious freedom?” Considerable government pressure is being exerted to force the “terrorists,” as the Arab residents are frequently called, to emigrate or face the consequences if they choose not to. It is directed most particularly against those Palestinians who are leaders in their community and it has therefore focused on the major Arab religious groups, both the Christians and the Muslims.

Ironically, though one can read in the US media almost daily accounts of alleged surging anti-semitism and the myth of perpetual Jewish victimhood, the ongoing brutality against the Palestinians, including their religious foundations and practices, is hardly noticed. That is the fundamental problem as the silence or perhaps the willful connivance of the American media and entertainment industry, firmly in the grip of the Jewish community and its “standards,” has shaped the narrative and limited any propagation of contrary opinion. It is a process that is similar to what has taken place with any discussion of the Ukraine war in the mainstream media, where there is also a heavy Jewish footprint.

There have been two major incidents involving Jewish assertion of its occupation of and control over all of Jerusalem that have recently impacted on the country’s religious minorities during their holy seasons, Easter and Ramadan. The first consisted of two consecutive middle-of- the-night attacks by Israeli police and soldiers in full riot gear armed with stun grenades and clubs on Palestinians spending the night at the al-Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the third holiest site for Muslims. The Palestinian men were there in part to protect the building from Jewish settlers who have been threatening to destroy it. The Palestinians inside were beaten by police, who had broken into the mosque, and as many as 350 mostly young men were later arrested for resisting.

The second incident was an order by Israeli police limiting the regular Christian gathering on Holy Saturday, referred to as the “Holy Fire” celebration, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which normally attracts 10,000 worshippers, to no more than 1,800 attendees. On the day of the ceremony, Israeli police reacted with heavy-handed tactics to block hundreds of Orthodox Christians from gathering at the church, which is at the center of the old Christian quarter of the city. Several Coptic Orthodox priests were particularly targeted in front of the church and beaten with batons. Israeli forces closed off access to the site with roadblocks and barriers at the gates of the Old City, permitting only small numbers of Christians and those with government permits to enter.

Both steps restricting freedom of religion were taken without any consultation with the respective communities and without any evidence that there would be disorder or violence without the police interventions. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the Israeli action as a “blatant attack on the freedom of worship” and a “flagrant attack on the existing political, historical and legal status quo in occupied Jerusalem and on Israel’s obligations as an occupying regime in Jerusalem” that
“violate international law, international humanitarian law and signed agreements.” The Christian churches’ leadership also separately objected to no avail and responded to the threat by observing that Palestinian Christians are themselves under increasing pressure from the Israeli government to force them to emigrate. Christians constituted 20% of the Israeli population in 1947 but now are fewer than 2%.

Indeed, since the rise this year of Israel’s most far-right government in history, Palestinian Christians frequently experience Jewish Israeli discrimination at all levels. They directly observe how their 2,000-year-old community in the Holy Land has come under increasing attack. In March, two Israeli men assaulted and beat a priest in the church sited at the Tomb of the Virgin Mary. In February, a statue of Jesus was vandalized by an American Jewish tourist at the Church of the Condemnation, where Jesus was flogged and sentenced to death while a month earlier, dozens of Christian graves were desecrated by two Jewish teenagers at the Anglican cemetery on Mount Zion, where Jesus’s Last Supper took place. In November, two soldiers from the Israeli army’s Givati Brigade spit at the Armenian archbishop and other pilgrims during a procession in the Old City. Christian clerics living in Jerusalem claim that they are frequently physically assaulted and spat on by settlers and other Jewish Israelis when they are walking in the streets. The Israeli government has also been increasingly confiscating church properties for various projects that benefit only the Jewish community. When Christians seek redress from the Israeli courts they are almost always denied justice.

Now one would think that the United States, with its dedication to “rule of law” and religious freedom would at a minimum condemn the Israeli actions, particularly the unprovoked violent attack on peaceful Muslims during their high holy days at al-Aqsa. But no, and this is how a State Department spokesman Vedant Patel described it: “We are concerned by the scenes out of Jerusalem. And it is our viewpoint that it is absolutely vital that the sanctity of holy sites be preserved. We emphasize the importance of upholding the historic status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem and any unilateral action that jeopardizes the status quo to us is unacceptable. We call for restraint, coordination and calm during the holiday season.”

So the State Department believes that Israel did not initiate the violence, which is, of course, false. And Patel felt compelled to add an additional comment on recent home-made rocket attacks coming from Lebanon in the wake of the police and army actions: “We condemn the launch of rockets from Lebanon and Gaza at Israel. Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad and we recognize that Israel has the legitimate right to defend itself against all forms of aggression.” Don’t you love the frequent assertion of the claim that Israel has a “right to defend itself?” Patel was in fact wrong about Gaza firing missiles – that was a fiction invented by the Israeli government to explain why it had responded with a bombardment of its own directed against the long-suffering Gazans. The hostile rockets, which did little damage and injured no one, actually came from a Palestinian group in Lebanon. Apparently, the Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors do not have the right to defend themselves or to respond to Jewish violence. Rule of law and religious freedom appear to depend on who is attempting to exercise those rights and under what circumstances.

Interestingly, the New York Times had its own bizarre description of what took place at al-Aqsa. Their correspondent wrote how the crisis started when Palestinians “barricaded themselves” overnight inside the building before being “cleared” by police from the mosque in the middle of the night, to “protect Jewish worshippers” who were reportedly observing the Passover holiday in the vicinity. In other words, the violence was initiated by the Israelis but it was to prevent any threat against Jews, even though there is no evidence that anything like that was intended and why Jews were present at close quarters to a Muslim holy site is not clear. By one report, extremist Jews may have been preparing to sacrifice a goat.

On April 14th, to honor International Holocaust Remembrance Day, President Joe Biden demonstrated the he is not as brain dead as is often claimed. He knows exactly who owns him and knows how to pile it on. His proclamation reads: “During Yom Hashoah and throughout these days of remembrance, we mourn the 6 million Jews who were murdered during the horror of the Holocaust—as well as the millions of Roma and Sinti, Slavs, disabled persons, LGBTQI+ individuals, and political dissidents who were murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Together with courageous survivors, descendants of victims and people around the world, we renew our solemn vow: ‘never again.’”

Clearly Joe had not gotten the message that in America every day is de facto holocaust remembrance day as measured by the frequent appearance of that expression in the media. But he makes sure of the trans gay vote by including the LGBTQI+ folks as victims of the Nazis. Perhaps Joe should pay some attention to the Americans murdered by the Israelis, to include the 34 crewmen of the USS Liberty killed by the Israeli military in 1967, activist Rachel Corrie crushed by a bulldozer in 2003 and most recently Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh killed by the Israeli army last May. Israel has not been held accountable for any of those deaths and it knows it can get away with anything, including targeting and killing US citizens.

Next week, the GOP will be doubling down on the message as Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy leads a delegation of twenty bipartisan fawning congress critters to Israel. He has carefully billed it as his first foreign trip as speaker, underlining what an important ally Israel is. He will address the Knesset on May 1st and there will no doubt be a lot of kissing and hugging with Bibi and many pledges of undying commitment to the Jewish state. The Israeli government is already describing it as “Speaker McCarthy’s speech in the Knesset will be a sign for the strong and unbreakable bond between Israel and the US.” And no doubt lots of money will appear in the pipeline so Israel can defend itself. Just don’t mention Israel’s recent premeditated murder of Shireen Abu Akleh back or “religious freedom.” And to hell with the Palestinian Christians. They have been hanging around for 2,000 years but are on their way out.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Featured image is from TUR

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

27 year old Austrian pianist Sabine Wukovnig is permanently disabled after taking three COVID-19 vaccines (video source).

This is a sad story of a young woman whose life has been destroyed after she took her COVID-19 booster shot in early 2022.

Interestingly, in Europe she was diagnosed with a “Post-Vaccine Syndrome”.

She is suffering from multiple injuries: neurological injuries of central nervous system (spike protein in the brain – brain fog, ME), POTS (injury of autonomous nervous system) due to an autoimmune process involving spike protein, and MCAS which is like having a severe allergic syndrome.

UK Piano Teacher Julianna Bransden suffered catastrophic injuries starting Jan. 1, 2023 (click here) 

Julianna was a dedicated and popular teacher and musician. Since becoming a teacher 19 years ago in Aylesbury, Julianna devoted the last 10 years to the rural school of Llanmiloe in South Wales.

Julianna was fully COVID-19 vaccinated. On Dec. 23, 2022 she developed flu like symptoms and on Jan. 1, 2023 she had two cardiac arrests, went into septic shock, multiple systemic organ failure, needing full life support.

She was diagnosed with sepsis resulting from an aggressive form of pneumonia.

After weeks of fighting, she had to undergo surgery to amputate both of her legs below the knee and will lose most of her fingers.

“The pneumonia was caused by a combination of both invasive Strep A and Influenza, resulting in a level of sickness that several experienced ICU nurses said they had never seen anyone manage to recover from before.”

I have seen this situation before. I believe she experienced severe COVID-19 vaccine induced immune dysfunction and damage which predisposed her to catastrophic infections such as the Influenza/Strep A combination that has killed several COVID-19 vaccinated kids in Canada, and dozens around the world including 30+ kids in the UK. (click here)

Celine Dion Diagnosed with Neurological disease Dec. 15, 2022 

Singer Céline Dion revealed Dec. 15, 2022 in a tearful Instagram video that she’s been diagnosed with Stiff-Person Syndrome, sharing that the condition would force her to postpone and cancel a series of upcoming concert dates. (click here)

Stiff Person Syndrome is a rare and incurable neurological disease that affects the central nervous system, specifically the brain and spinal cord, causing symptoms like “hyper-rigidity, debilitating pain, chronic anxiety,” and muscle spasms “so violent they can dislocate joints and even break bones”.

Only one of every one million people have been diagnosed with the condition.

Justin Bieber reveals facial paralysis in June 2022

The 28-year-old said in an Instagram video that the condition is due to a diagnosis of Ramsay Hunt syndrome, when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near someone’s ears, say medical experts. (click here)

Other stories of injured musicians:

Bogota, Colombia – 50 year old drummer for the Foo Fighters died suddenly on March 25, 2022 – he complained of chest pain before collapsing in his hotel room (click here)

Taylor Hawkins, Foo Fighters Drummer, Dies at 50 - WSJ

Shanghai – 43 year old violin teacher Patrick Sabberton at a British International school died of a hemorrhagic stroke Feb. 9, 2022 (click here)

1st UK COVID-19 vaccine damage compensation was awarded to dead rock musician Lord Zion’s wife (click here)

Vikki Spit and Zion

The 1st UK COVID-19 Vaccine damage compensation was awarded for the death of rock singer Lord Zion, who died of a brain hemorrhage 14 days after taking AstraZeneca, on May 19, 2021. His wife received government compensation of 120,000 pounds.

Jessica Sutta (Pussycat Dolls Singer/Dancer) & Eric Clapton 

I’ve previously written substacks on COVID-19 vaccine injuries in musicians who have come forward:

Mar. 24, 2023, Jessica Sutta had neurological injuries including peripheral neuropathy after Moderna mRNA vaccine. (click here)

Feb. 10, 2023, Eric Clapton had neurological injuries after AstraZeneca, mainly peripheral neuropathy (click here)

My Take… 

As a Royal Conservatory of Music trained musician myself, I feel deeply for these musicians who have suffered horrific COVID-19 vaccine injuries or have died following vaccination.

COVID-19 vaccine induced neurological injuries are catastrophic and usually career ending for any musician. Eric Clapton can’t play the guitar or piano anymore, Jessica Sutta can’t dance anymore.

Then there are the usual post COVID-19 vaccination cardiac arrests, strokes, and blood clots to contend with as well.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Musicians Injured, Disabled or Killed by COVID-19 Vaccines (Or Suspected Injuries)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can seek to challenge and annoy, as we need not stay docile and quiet.”— Justice William O. Douglas

Absolutely, there is a war on free speech.

To be more accurate, however, the war on free speech is really a war on the right to criticize the government.

Although the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom, every day in this country, those who dare to speak their truth to the powers-that-be find themselves censored, silenced or fired.

Indeed, those who run the government don’t take kindly to individuals who speak truth to power.

In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

This is nothing new, nor is it unique to any particular presidential administration.

For instance, as part of its campaign to eradicate so-called “disinformation,” the Biden Administration likened those who share “false or misleading narratives and conspiracy theories, and other forms of mis- dis- and mal-information” to terrorists. This government salvo against consumers and spreaders of “mis- dis- and mal-information” widens the net to potentially include anyone who is exposed to ideas that run counter to the official government narrative.

In his first few years in office, President Trump declared the media to be “the enemy of the people,” suggested that protesting should be illegal, and that NFL players who kneel in protest during the national anthem “shouldn’t be in the country.”

Then again, Trump was not alone in his presidential disregard for the rights of the citizenry, especially as it pertains to the right of the people to criticize those in power.

President Obama signed into law anti-protest legislation that makes it easier for the government to criminalize protest activities (10 years in prison for protesting anywhere in the vicinity of a Secret Service agent). The Obama Administration also waged a war on whistleblowers, which The Washington Post described as “the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration,” and “spied on reporters by monitoring their phone records.”

Part of the Patriot Act signed into law by President George W. Bush made it a crime for an American citizen to engage in peaceful, lawful activity on behalf of any group designated by the government as a terrorist organization. Under this provision, even filing an amicus brief on behalf of an organization the government has labeled as terrorist would constitute breaking the law.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the FBI to censor all news and control communications in and out of the country in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt also signed into law the Smith Act, which made it a crime to advocate by way of speech for the overthrow of the U.S. government by force or violence.

President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which made it illegal to criticize the government’s war efforts.

President Abraham Lincoln seized telegraph lines, censored mail and newspaper dispatches, and shut down members of the press who criticized his administration.

In 1798, during the presidency of John Adams, Congress passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, which made it a crime to “write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous, and malicious” statements against the government, Congress or president of the United States.

Clearly, the government has been undermining our free speech rights for quite a while now.

Good, bad or ugly, it’s all free speech unless as defined by the government it falls into one of the following categories: obscenity, fighting words, defamation (including libel and slander), child pornography, perjury, blackmail, incitement to imminent lawless action, true threats, and solicitations to commit crimes.

This idea of “dangerous” speech, on the other hand, is peculiarly authoritarian in nature. What it amounts to is speech that the government fears could challenge its chokehold on power.

The kinds of speech the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation, prosecution and outright elimination include: hate speech, bullying speech, intolerant speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, incendiary speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, right-wing speech, left-wing speech, extremist speech, politically incorrect speech, etc.

Conduct your own experiment into the government’s tolerance of speech that challenges its authority, and see for yourself.

Stand on a street corner—or in a courtroom, at a city council meeting or on a university campus—and recite some of the rhetoric used by the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams and Thomas Paine without referencing them as the authors.

For that matter, just try reciting the Declaration of Independence, which rejects tyranny, establishes Americans as sovereign beings, recognizes God (not the government) as the Supreme power, portrays the government as evil, and provides a detailed laundry list of abuses that are as relevant today as they were 240-plus years ago.

My guess is that you won’t last long before you get thrown out, shut up, threatened with arrest or at the very least accused of being a radical, a troublemaker, a sovereign citizen, a conspiratorialist or an extremist.

Try suggesting, as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin did, that Americans should not only take up arms but be prepared to shed blood in order to protect their liberties, and you might find yourself placed on a terrorist watch list and vulnerable to being rounded up by government agents.

“What country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance. Let them take arms,” declared Jefferson. He also concluded that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Observed Franklin: “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”

Better yet, try suggesting as Thomas Paine, Marquis De Lafayette, John Adams and Patrick Henry did that Americans should, if necessary, defend themselves against the government if it violates their rights, and you will be labeled a domestic extremist.

“It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government,” insisted Paine. “When the government violates the people’s rights,” Lafayette warned, “insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.” Adams cautioned, “A settled plan to deprive the people of all the benefits, blessings and ends of the contract, to subvert the fundamentals of the constitution, to deprive them of all share in making and executing laws, will justify a revolution.” And who could forget Patrick Henry with his ultimatum: “Give me liberty or give me death!”

Then again, perhaps you don’t need to test the limits of free speech for yourself.

One such test is playing out before our very eyes on the national stage led by those who seem to believe that only individuals who agree with the government are entitled to the protections of the First Amendment.

To the contrary, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, was very clear about the fact that the First Amendment was established to protect the minority against the majority.

I’ll take that one step further: the First Amendment was intended to protect the citizenry from the government’s tendency to censor, silence and control what people say and think.

Having lost our tolerance for free speech in its most provocative, irritating and offensive forms, the American people have become easy prey for a police state where only government speech is allowed.

You see, the powers-that-be understand that if the government can control speech, it controls thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

This is how freedom rises or falls.

Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.

We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of allindividuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.

Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.

What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.

Tolerance for dissent is vital if we are to survive as a free nation.

While there are all kinds of labels being put on so-called “unacceptable” speech today, the real message being conveyed by those in power is that Americans don’t have a right to express themselves if what they are saying is unpopular, controversial or at odds with what the government determines to be acceptable.

By suppressing free speech, the government is contributing to a growing underclass of Americans who are being told that they can’t take part in American public life unless they “fit in.”

Mind you, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable to respecting our rights and abiding by the rule of law is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.

It doesn’t matter how much money you make, what politics you subscribe to, or what God you worship: as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are all potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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 most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from TruePublica

Learning Nothing from the Iraq War

April 25th, 2023 by Bill Astore

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

What has America learned from the colossal failure of the Iraq War? Not what it should have learned, notes historian (and retired U.S. Army colonel) Greg Daddis at War on the Rocks. Daddis recently attended a 20-year retrospective symposium on the Iraq War, where he heard two distinctive narratives. As he put it:

Most, if not all, veterans of “Iraqi Freedom” told an inward-facing story focusing on tactical and operational “lessons” largely devoid of political context. Meanwhile, Iraqi scholars and civilians shared a vastly different tale of political and social upheaval that concentrated far more on the costs of war than on the supposed benefits of U.S. interventionism.

In short, the U.S. view of the Iraq War remains insular and narcissistic. The focus is on what U.S. troops may have gotten wrong, and how the military could perform better in the future. It’s about tactical and operational lessons. In this approach, Iraq and the Iraqi people remain a backdrop to American action on the grand stage. Put differently, the Iraqis are treated much like clay for Americans to mould or discard should they refuse to behave themselves under our hands.

So the “lessons” for America focus on how to become better, more skilled, manipulators of the “clay” at hand. Issues of right and wrong aren’t addressed. The morality or legality of war isn’t questioned. And Iraqis themselves, their suffering, their plight, even their say in determining their own futures within their country, is pretty much dismissed as irrelevant. And the same is largely true when considering the Vietnam War or the Afghan War; we matter, they don’t, even when we’re fighting in their country and spreading enormous destruction in undeclared and illegal wars.

As Mike Murry, a Vietnam veteran who comments frequently at this site, has said: you can’t do a wrong thing the right way. America’s Vietnam War was wrong; the Iraq War was wrong. There was no “right” way to do these wars. Yet, far too often, U.S. military officers and veterans, joined by far too many Americans who lack military experience, want to focus on how to wage a wrong war in a better, smarter, often more ruthless, way

Indeed, the narrative at times is reduced to “We lost because we weren’t ruthless enough, or we were about to win until the U.S. military was betrayed.” I wrote about this back in 2007 after I heard Senator John McCain speak on PBS.  Basically, his point was that if America lost the Iraq War (which we already had), it wouldn’t be the U.S. military’s fault.  It would be the fault of anyone who questioned the war. McCain, in other words, was spouting yet another exculpatory stab-in-the-back myth.

What can we learn from the Iraq War, then? Let’s start with these basic lessons: Don’t fight a war based on governmental lies and unfounded fears. Don’t fight illegal and immoral wars. Don’t fight undeclared wars. Don’t meddle in the societies of other people where you are seen as invaders and about which you are ignorant. Don’t wage war, period, unless the domestic security of the U.S. is truly threatened.

Those seem like the right lessons to me, not lessons about how to recognize insurgencies or how to respond more quickly to asymmetries like IEDs and ambushes.

In sum, learn this lesson: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, were and are countries with rich pasts and proud peoples who were not about to submit to American invaders and agendas, no matter how well-intentioned those invaders believed or advertised themselves to be.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Learning Nothing from the Iraq War
  • Tags:

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Nationwide protests took place in Sweden to reject the country’s decision to host a large international military exercise – dubbed Aurora 2023 – and its aspirations to join NATO, China Daily reported on Sunday.

“NATO is nothing but the war machine of the United States,” Nellie Puig, a Swede protesting his country’s potential accession to the military coalition, told the newspaper.

“It is not a defensive alliance as they claim. It is an organization that runs the errands of the United States,” he added.

A number of organizations, political parties, and NGOs took part in the demonstrations, including the Arbitration Society, the Swedish Peace, No NATO, and No to Nuclear Weapons, the news outlet said.

Sweden’s capital Stockholm alone saw hundreds of anti-NATO protesters in its streets.

The demonstrators held banners saying: “No to NATO,” “NATO’s war will get our children killed for a dollar,” and “Stop Aurora 23,” as they marched the streets of the capital.

“Aurora 23 and similar previous exercises prove that Sweden has become increasingly integrated with NATO and Sweden also sells arms to NATO,” said Puig.

Earlier this month, Sweden launched Aurora-23, the largest military drill the country has witnessed in 25 years, involving 14 countries and around 26,000 servicemembers.

Members from the US, UK, Germany, France, Ukraine, Finland, Poland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, and Austria will take part in the training that ends on May 11.

“The purpose of Aurora 23 is to enhance the Swedish Armed Forces’ collected capability to counter an armed attack on Sweden, and also to exercise the entire chain of raised readiness to mobilisation to receive a third party for HNS, as well as a way to prepare us to be a member of Nato,” said Lieutenant Colonel Henrik Larsson, the planning director of the drills.

Last February, Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson said Stockholm aims to further integrate its military relations with NATO as the country’s accession into the coalition is facing obstacles after talks with Turkey have been put to a halt.

Last year, the start of the Ukraine war prompted Sweden and its neighbor Finland to drop decades of military non-alignment. Finland became the 31st member of NATO earlier this month, while Stockholm’s provocative actions toward Ankara – including rallies attacking the Turkish leadership in Stockholm and the burning of the holy Quran outside Turkey’s embassy – led the latter to block its accession to the coalition.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: Swedish demonstrators protesting the country’s decision to submit a NATO bid in March 2022 (Swedish state TT)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Israeli planes dropped warning leaflets on southern Syria on Monday hours after reportedly shelling pro-Iranian groups in the same region.

Flyers were dropped over the town of Hader in Quneitra province, close to a UN armistice line separating Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

The leaflets warned the Syrian regime against cooperating with Lebanon’s powerful Iran-backed Shia Hezbollah militant group, which has a strong presence in Syria.

“We are closely monitoring and aware of the ongoing intelligence cooperation with Hezbollah within the Syrian army’s positions in the region, including near the Israeli border strip,” the text on the leaflets read.

“Your cooperation with Hezbollah has turned you into a sacrificial lamb and brought you more harm than good. Cooperation with Hezbollah leads to damage!”

The leaflets included images of what Israel said was the Syrian regime’s head of military intelligence, Maj Gen. Samer al-Dana, alongside commander of Hezbollah’s intelligence apparatus in Syria, Tareq Maher.

Early on Monday, Israeli ground forces bombarded a location on the outskirts of Quneitra where fighters from the Syrian Resistance to Liberate the Golan are located, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

Syrian state media did not report the bombardment and no casualties were reported, but two local media outlets close to the regime reported an “Israeli aggression” that targeted the outskirts of Quneitra, a city which was laregely abandoned in 1967, when Israel captured parts of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

The shelling came days after a similar attack on 18 April, when Israeli forces bombed positions in the Quneitra countryside targeting areas where Iran-linked groups are present.

The Syrian Resistance to Liberate the Golan – a Hezbollah-linked group – was formed to launch attacks in the Golan Heights, which Israeli seized during the Six Day war in 1967.

Israel has repeatedly warned against the growing number of Iran-backed militants along its frontier with Syria, saying it will not allow its arch-foe to extend its footprint in the war-torn country.

It has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syria during the latter’s 12-year conflict, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces, Hezbollah fighters, and Syrian regime positions.

The Syrian regime has relied on Hezbollah and Iranian militias to battle Syrian rebels during the war.

Iran is believed to have flown thousands of fighters into Syria during the war, while Hezbollah has played a key role in regime offensives to regain rebel-controlled territories.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from The New Arab

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on ‘Hezbollah has turned you into a sacrificial lamb,’ Israel Warns Syrian Government
  • Tags: , , ,

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., near the very beginning of his April 19 announcement to run for President in the Democratic Party spoke these words:

“Fifty-five years ago last month, I sat as a 14-year-old boy behind my father as he now announced in a Senate caucus room in Washington, DC, his campaign for President of the United States. And my father at time was in the same, in many ways, the same position that I’m in today. He was running against a President of his own party. He was running against a war. He was running against – he was running at a time of unprecedented polarization in our country.”

In this way the son tells us right away that he is “running against a war,” Joe Biden’s cruel US proxy war against Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder.

He reminded us that his father was given very little chance of winning and felt he would likely lose. But on the day of his assassination, RFK had won the California primary, an urban state, and South Dakota, a rural state. The son is telling us that his is a candidacy not to be written off lightly. RFKJr was polling at 14% among Biden voters even before he announced. And nearly 44% of Democrats want anybody but Biden, with only 25% wishing him to run in 2024.

A video of the entire two hour long speech, impressive in many ways, is to be found here and a transcript here. Kennedy did not read from a prepared text although the speech appeared to be carefully outlined. It had a refreshing air of informality. And it deserves a careful listen.

Many of the points in the speech are summed up in the section on “Peace” in RFKJr’s campaign website, Kennedy2024.com, as follows:

“Annual defense-related spending is close to one trillion dollars. We maintain 800 military bases around the world. The peace dividend that was supposed to come after the Berlin Wall fell was never redeemed. Now we have another chance.

“As President, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will start the process of unwinding empire. We will bring the troops home. We will stop racking up unpayable debt to fight one war after another. The military will return to its proper role of defending our country. We will end the proxy wars, bombing campaigns, covert operations, coups, paramilitaries, and everything else that has become so normal most people don’t know it’s happening. But it is happening, a constant drain on our strength. It’s time to come home and restore this country.”

“When a warlike imperial nation disarms of its own accord, it sets a template for peace everywhere. It is not too late for us to voluntarily let go of empire and serve peace instead, as a strong and healthy nation.”

And on Ukraine:

“In Ukraine, the most important priority is to end the suffering of the Ukrainian people, victims of a brutal Russian invasion, and also victims of American geopolitical machinations going back at least to 2014. We must first get clear: Is our mission to help the brave Ukrainians defend their sovereignty? Or is it to use Ukraine as a pawn to weaken Russia? Robert F. Kennedy will choose the first. He will find a diplomatic solution that brings peace to Ukraine and brings our resources back where they belong. We will offer to withdraw our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russia’s borders. Russia will withdraw its troops from Ukraine and guarantee its freedom and independence. UN peacekeepers will guarantee peace to the Russian-speaking eastern regions. We will put an end to this war. We will put an end to the suffering of the Ukranian people. That will be the start of a broader program of demilitarization of all countries.

“We have to stop seeing the world in terms of enemies and adversaries. As John Quincy Adams wrote, ‘Americans go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.’”

Those are strong words and realistic categories like “empire,” “proxy wars,” “coups,” “geopolitical machinations going back to 2014,” all ugly imperial facts alluded to euphemistically or not at all in the mainstream media.

This is a candidacy that cannot be ignored or reduced solely to the pros and cons of mRNA vaccines or Kennedy family squabbles over the candidacy as the mainstream media has done. For example, in its brief back page coverage, the New York Times, the foremost mouthpiece of the imperial Establishment, there is nary a mention of war with another nuclear power now hanging over our heads!

This is not to say that we should accept all of RFKJr’s words at face value. But given the present enthusiasm for war in every corner of the Democratic Party’s political establishment and among much of its base, it is difficult to see RFKJr’s candidacy as opportunistic. His candidacy deserves to be treated skeptically like all candidacies but not cynically. The speech should be listened to carefully in that spirit.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

John V. Walsh, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at a Medical School in Massachusetts, has written on issues of peace and health care for the San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, Asia Times, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, Consortium News, CounterPunch and others.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

A groundbreaking study published in the Journal of Internal Medicine has revealed something absolutely amazing about the role of the Sun in human health: a deficiency of sunlight could be as harmful to human health as smoking cigarettes

The study titled, “Avoidance of sun exposure as a risk factor for major causes of death: a competing risk analysis of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden cohort,” was conducted by Swedish researchers on a population of almost 30,000 women. They assessed the differences in sun exposure as a risk factor for all-cause mortality, within a prospective 20-year follow up of the Melanoma in Southern Sweden (MISS) cohort. The women were aged 25-64 years at the start of the study and recruited from 1990 to 1992. When their sun exposure habits were analyzed using modern survival statistics they discovered several things.

First:  

“Women with active sun exposure habits were mainly at a lower risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and noncancer/non-CVD death as compared to those who avoided sun exposure.” 

Second:

“As a result of their increased survival, the relative contribution of cancer death increased in these women.”  

This finding may be a bit tricky to understand, so let’s look at it a little closer.

Because cancer risk increases along with biological age, the longer you live, the higher your cancer risk will be. Therefore, because increased sunlight exposure actually increases your longevity, it will also appear to increase your risk of cancer. But this does not necessarily mean that sunlight is intrinsically “carcinogenic,” which is commonly assumed. 

Because heart disease is #1 killer in the developed world, and since sunlight reduces this most common cause of premature death, even if it increases the risk of the #2 most common cause of death (cancer), the net effect of sunlight exposure is that you will still live longer, which helps to contextualize and neutralize the “increased cancer risk” often observed. Keep in mind, as well, that a huge number of cancers are overdiagnosed and overtreated, without sufficient acknowledgement by the medical establishment, whose culpability is rarely addressed. These “cancers” greatly inflate the statistics. With millions of so-called early stage cancers like these — especially breast, prostate, thyroid, lung, and ovarian — being wrongly diagnosed and treated, the complexity of the topic makes determining the role of sunlight exposure and cancer risk all the more difficult to ascertain. 

Moving on, the point about the longevity promoting properties of sunlight are driven home strongly by the third major observation: 

“Nonsmokers who avoided sun exposure had a life expectancy similar to smokers in the highest sun exposure group, indicating that avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking.” 

This is a powerful finding with profound implications. To say that “avoidance of sun exposure is a risk factor for death of a similar magnitude as smoking,” is to point out that sunlight exposure, rather than being the constant lethal threat it is perceived to be, warranting the slathering on all over the body of synthetic sunscreens virtually guaranteed to cause harm from toxicant exposure, is essential to our health. In fact, according to the CDC, smoking is responsible for 6 million unnecessary deaths a year, and the “overall mortality among both male and female smokers in the United States is about three times higher than that among similar people who never smoked.” And so, sunlight exposure may be so powerful an essential and necessary ingredient in human health that it might be considered medically unethical not to provide access to it, or to advise more routine exposure to it.  

The fourth and final observation of the study was that: 

“Compared to the highest sun exposure group, life expectancy of avoiders of sun exposure was reduced by 0.6-2.1 years.” 

Sunlight Attains Its Former Status As An Indispensable Component of Health

While we can say that sunlight deficiency may contribute to lethal outcomes on par with smoking, we can rephrase the information positively by affirming that the Sun and its light may be as important to human health as is clean food or water. In fact, compelling research suggests that energy from the Sun drives the cellular bioenergetics of the biomachinery of our bodies through non-ATP dependent processes. Consider the work of Gerald Pollack, PhD, author of the “The 4th Phase of Water” (see video below), who explains how infrared energy of the Sun charges up the water molecules within our body (99% of the molecules in our bodies in number are water) like trillions of molecular batteries. 

When pertaining to cardiovascular health, sunlight energy in the form of infrared charged water molecules supports the heart’s job of pumping the blood throughout the blood vessels by producing a form of highly structured and energized water known as Exclusion Zone water, or EZ water, and which may actually provide over 99.9% of the biomechanical energy needed to push the 1.2-1.5 gallons of blood in the average adult body through the literally thousands of miles of blood vessels.  Provocative research also suggests the body contains a variety of photoacceptors/chromophores (e.g. cytochrome C oxidase) capable of accepting and utilizing sunlight to generate so-called “extra synthesis” of ATP. Additionally, melanin may absorb a wide range of the Sun’s electromagnetic spectrum, converting it into useful energy and perhaps also biologically important information, even perhaps taking harmful gamma radiation and turning it into biologically useful energy. Even something as commonplace in the human diet as chlorophyll has recently been found to act as a means to enhanced the light-harvesting properties of animal cells. In fact, we reported recently on a study that found enhanced ATP production (without the expected concomitant uptick in reactive oxygen species production) through intermediary of chlorophyll metabolites that end up in the mitochondria of our cells following microbiome-mediated digestive processes.

Natural health advocates have sung the praises of sunlight for health since time immemorial. While in modern times, sunlight-phobia is omnipresent, with parents of especially lighter skinned ethnicities forcing their children to don space-suit level all body protective gear, along with spraying or slathering them with extremely toxic petrochemical derivatives and nanoparticle metals with potentially cancer-promoting properties, there is a growing appreciation that we need the Sun as both a form of food, energy and information. 

It’s, of course, not all about vitamin D. To reduce the perceived health benefits of sunlight to this hormone like compound is as reductionistic as saying a orange’s health benefits are solely dependent on and reducible to the molecular scaffolding of atoms that comprise the chemical skeleton of the ascorbic acid molecule. We are beginning to learn that certain wavelengths of sunlight activate a wide range of ancient, hard-wired genetic and epigenetic programs, relevant to all of our body’s systems. The wavelengths of light that occur at sunset, for instance, may have been so important to our evolution as a species that our very hairlessness, and our massive brains may not have evolved without daily exposure to them, for hundreds of thousands and even millions of years. This phenomena, also known as biophotomodulation, opens up a radically new perspective on the role of the sun in human health and disease. If sunlight deficiency is really as deadly as actively smoking cigarettes, it could be said that those who do not experience regular natural light exposure are no longer truly human, or capable of experiencing the optimal expression of their biological, mental, and spiritual blueprint. A fundamental right, and health practice, would be daily outdoors exposure. How many of us have considered the state of office workers, institutionalized educational systems without windows, night shift work, and prisons? Sunlight depravation, in light of these new findings, could be considered a significant violation of human health rights. 

This study may pave the way for a deeper understanding of what humans need to be truly healthy, with sunlight deficiency being a prime example of what is most wrong about our modern incarnation as a primarily indoors focused creature, leading to our physical and psychospiritual degeneration. As new models of cellular bioenergetics emerge, taking into account the ability of the body to directly or indirectly harvest the various light wavelengths of the Sun, direct daily exposure to sunlight may be looked upon as at least as an important step as “taking your vitamins,” or exercising, for maintaining our health. Conversely, sunlight deficiency and/or depravation will be likely be viewed to be as dangerous or lethal as smoking.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, author of international best-seller REGENERATE: Unlocking Your Body’s Radical Resilience through the New Biology, co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom (501c4), and UNITE.live, a global, multi-media platform for conscious creators and their communities.

Featured image is from GreenMedInfo

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Why Sunlight Deficiency Is as Deadly as Smoking

Did Biden Steal the Election?

April 25th, 2023 by Rep. Ron Paul

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Move over Watergate. On or around Oct. 17, 2020, then-senior Biden campaign official Antony Blinken called up former acting CIA director Mike Morell to ask a favor: he needed high-ranking former US intelligence community officials to lie to the American people to save Biden’s lagging campaign from a massive brewing scandal.

The problem was that Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, had abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and the explosive contents of the computer were leaking out. The details of the Biden family’s apparent corruption and the debauchery of the former vice-president’s son were being reported by the New York Post, and with the election less than a month away, the Biden campaign needed to kill the story.

So, according to newly-released transcripts of Morell’s testimony before the House judiciary Committee, Blinken “triggered” Morell to put together a letter for some 50 senior intelligence officials to sign – using their high-level government titles – to claim that the laptop story “had all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.”

In short, at the Biden campaign’s direction Morell launched a covert operation against the American people to undermine the integrity of the 2020 election. A letter signed by dozens of the highest-ranking former CIA, DIA, and NSA officials would surely carry enough weight to bury the Biden laptop story. It worked. Social media outlets prevented any reporting on the laptop from being posted and the mainstream media could easily ignore the story as it was merely “Russian propaganda.”

Asked recently by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) why he agreed to draft the false sign-on letter, Morell testified that he wanted to “help Vice President Biden … because I wanted him to win the election.” Morell also likely expected to be named by President Biden to head up the CIA when it came time to call in favors.

The Democrats and the mainstream media have relentlessly pushed the lie that the ruckus inside the US Capitol on Jan. 6th 2021 was a move by President Trump to overthrow the election results. Hundreds of “trespassers” were arrested and held in solitary confinement without trial to bolster the false narrative that a conspiracy to steal the election was taking place.

It turns out that there really was a conspiracy to steal the election, but it was opposite of what was reported. Just as the Steele Dossier was a Democratic Party covert action to plant the lie that the Russians were pulling strings for Trump, the “Russian disinformation campaign” letter was a lie to deflect scrutiny of the Biden family’s possible corruption in the final days of the campaign.

Did the Biden campaign’s disinformation campaign help rig the election in his favor? Polls suggest that Biden would not have been elected had the American electorate been informed about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop. So yes, they cheated in the election.

The Democrats and the mainstream media are still at it, however. Now they are trying to kill the story of how they killed the story of the Biden laptop. This is a scandal that would once upon a time have ended in resignation, impeachment, and/or plenty of jail time. If they successfully bury this story, I hate to say it but there is no more rule of law in what has become the American banana republic.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

Those Scary and Dangerous Russkies

April 25th, 2023 by Jacob G. Hornberger

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

It was always inevitable that the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s “war on terrorism” would begin fizzling out, especially as the number of foreigners they were killing significantly diminished. When U.S. forces got booted out of Afghanistan and began killing significantly less people in Iraq, the rage that motivates terrorists to strike began going down. 

That’s undoubtedly why the Pentagon hedged its bets and began expanding NATO eastward after the ostensible end of the Cold War, moving inexorably closer to Russia’s border. Pentagon officials figured that if their “war on terrorism” began fizzling out, they could still gin up their old Cold War racket, one that had proven to be highly lucrative for the national-security establishment and its army of voracious “defense” contractors who depend on feeding at the public trough.

With its interventionist antics, the Pentagon succeeded in provoking Russia into invading Ukraine, which has turned into an enormous bonanza for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, one comparable to the one that came after the 9/11 attacks. The Pentagon’s interventionist strategy got a large number of Americans imbued with a ferocious anti-Russia mentality, one that has been supportive of whatever quantity of tax-funded largess that Congress has been willing to heap onto the national-security establishment.

An unintended consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, however, has been the destruction of the Pentagon’s and CIA’s portrayal of the Russians as an all-powerful military nation that was coming to get us here in the United States. Prior to the invasion, Pentagon and CIA officials were saying that it was clear that Russia planned to reconstitute the Soviet Union, invade and conquer Eastern and Western Europe, cross the English Channel and take England, and then cross the Atlantic Ocean and conquer the United States. They were using that fear to justify the continuation and expansion of their tax-funded largess.

Really? Why, Russia hasn’t even been able to conquer Ukraine! If it can’t conquer Ukraine, how is it suppose to conquer the world? So much for that scary Russian boogeyman who was coming to get us.

It was really no different during the Cold War racket. At the end of World War II, U.S. officials imbued the American people with a deep fear that the commies were coming to get them. The notion was that there was an international communist conspiracy that was based in Moscow whose aim was to invade and conquer Europe, Latin America, the United States, and the rest of the world. 

The irony is that the Soviets had been America’s partner and ally during the war. But those who were advocating that the federal government be converted to a national-security state knew that America would need a new official enemy to justify the conversion. Enter the Reds. As someone told President Truman, who was the president who presided over the conversion, he needed to scare the hell out of the American people so that they wouldn’t object to the conversion.

Truman did that. “The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!” There was even an American movie with that title. Everyone was scared to death that the Reds were going to take control of America and teach Marxism in America’s public (i.e., government) schools.

The biggest fear-mongers were American conservatives. They lived in deep fear of the Reds during the entire 45 years of the Cold War racket. In fact, they were convinced that the communist invasion had already started. That’s why they went after Martin Luther King.They were convinced that he was a Red agent. The same holds true for leftists working in Hollywood. They went after them with a vengeance. Some right-wingers even believed that President Eisenhower was an agent of the Reds as well.

There was actually a humorous dimension to this deep right-wing fear. Throughout the Cold War, conservatives argued that socialism was doomed to fail. It was an inherently defective economic system, they pointed out. Socialism would inevitably impoverish countries that embraced this philosophy, such as Russia. Right-wingers would quote free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman to make their case.

Yet, despite that insight about socialism, conservatives continued to maintain that Russia was an all-powerful nation that was going to take down America. To this day, I don’t think right-wingers are able to recognize their internal contradiction.

The worst mistake America has ever made was to convert the federal government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a type of governmental system in which officials wield omnipotent powers. Genuine advocates of liberty fight communism and socialism with freedom and free markets, not with communism and socialism. With their deeply seated fear of the Reds, conservatives led our nation in a very bad direction, one that, for sure, has enriched and empowered the national-security establishment but, at the same time, has led to the destruction of our rights, liberties, security, and well-being here at home.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

Our Heartless Medical System

April 25th, 2023 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

A 41-year old mother of seven young children has been in effect condemned to death by Emory Healthcare Inc. of Atlanta, an affiliate of Emory University, for refusing to take the dangerous Covid-19 shot. The mother was approved for a kidney transplant but was removed from the list when she refused the death jab. The woman has had Covid and is protected by natural immunity.  Moreover, there are many medical scientists who believe the adverse effect of the Covid mRNA “vaccine” would attack her kidney and kill her.

Only about one-third of America’s transplant centers are still so medically ignorant of the mRNA “vaccine” danger, or corrupted by Big Pharma payments, as to continue to require patients to submit to Covid “vaccination” in order to receive health care. Emory Healthcare is in this minority that requires patients to take enormous risks in order to receive treatment.

It seems clear enough that Emory Healthcare is committing willful murder. But prosecutors are too busy putting Trump supporters in prison for attending a rally to pay attention to real crimes. Little doubt Emory graduates and the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation will continue to pour money into a heartless facility that has no qualms about murdering a mother of 7 kids.

This is America today, a place of Satanic evil.

See this

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from FiercePharma


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

Video: The Real Middle East Nuclear Threat. James Corbett

April 25th, 2023 by The Corbett Report

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

FROM 2018: There is in fact a Middle Eastern nation that is in fact in control of a vast, undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons. This nation does have the capability of deploying those weapons anywhere in the region. It is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and its arsenal has never been inspected by any international agency. But this nation is not Iran. It’s Israel.

Transcript

DONALD TRUMP: I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. In a few moments, I will sign a presidential memorandum to begin reinstating US nuclear sanctions on the Iranian regime. We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.

SOURCE: President Trump Gives Remarks on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action

When President Trump announced that the US was going to de-certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and reinstitute sanctions on that country, one of the reasons he cited for that move was the presentation of “new” evidence from Israeli intelligence showing that the Iranians had lied about its nuclear program during the negotiation of that deal.

TRUMP: Last week Israel published intelligence documents long concealed by Iran conclusively showing the Iranians regime and its history of pursuing nuclear weapons.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: A few weeks ago, in a great intelligence achievement, Israel obtained half a ton of the material inside these vaults. And here’s what we got: 55,000 pages; another 55,000 files on 183 CDs. Everything you’re about to see is an exact copy of the original Iranian material.

SOURCE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gives statement on Iran Nuclear Deal

Theatrical props and dramatic rhetoric aside, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent presentation on the “Iranian nuclear deal” in fact contained no new information.

That Iran had explored a nuclear weapons program prior to 2003 has been known and admitted for years. That they have an archive of this information is not a violation of the Iranian nuclear deal completed in 2015. In fact, if anything, Netanyahu’s presentation actually proved the exact opposite of what was intended: Namely, that Iran is abiding by the terms of that treaty and is not covertly pursuing any nuclear weapons activity. That’s why they had to go back to 15-year-old information and present it as if it was something new and revelatory.

But here’s the real head-scratcher in this new round of propaganda over the Iranian nuclear non-threat: There is in fact a Middle Eastern nation that is in fact in control of a vast, undeclared stockpile of nuclear weapons. This nation does have the capability of deploying those weapons anywhere in the region. It is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and its arsenal has never been inspected by any international agency. But this nation is not Iran. It’s Israel.

This is the story of the real Middle East Nuclear Threat. You’re watching The Corbett Report.

Hand-wringing over Iran’s nuclear program is nothing new. It became a mainstay of Western political discourse after an Iranian dissident revealed the Iranian government’s plans for a uranium enrichment facility in Natanz in August 2002. But the surprising fact for Americans and others around the world who get their information from the corporate mainstream media, is that Iran’s pre-2003 nuclear weapons program has long been known and admitted. Since 2003, when the program was scrapped, not a single piece of evidence has been presented (not even by Netanyahu or the Israeli government) that the Iranian government ever pursued anything other than what it said it was pursuing: a nuclear energy program.

Not that that fact has ever stopped Netanyahu from using any opportunity to use cartoon-level propaganda tactics to convince the world otherwise:

NETANYAHU: In the case of Iran’s nuclear plans to build a bomb, this bomb has to be filled with enough enriched uranium. And Iran has to go through three stages.

The first stage: They have to enrich enough of low enriched uranium. The second stage: They have to enrich enough medium enriched uranium. And the third stage and final stage: They have to enrich enough high enriched uranium for the first bomb.

Where’s Iran? Iran’s completed the first stage. It took them many years, but they completed it, and they’re 70% of the way there.

Now they are well into the second stage. By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage. From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks, before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I told you now is not based on secret information. It’s not based on military intelligence. It’s based on the public reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Anybody can read them. They’re online.

So if these are the facts, and they are, where should a red line be drawn?

A red line should be drawn right here. Before Iran completes the second stage of nuclear enrichment necessary to make a bomb. Before Iran gets to a point where it’s a few months away or a few weeks away from amassing enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon.

Now each day, that point is getting closer. That’s why I speak today with such a sense of urgency.

SOURCE: Israel PM Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu Address to United Nations Sept 27, 2012

Of course, Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons, and Netanyahu’s Wile E. Coyote bomb and red-line warnings bore no greater semblance to reality than the cartoon propaganda surrounding Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction.” Not only did the IAEA repeatedly confirm that Iran never diverted any nuclear material into any military program, but even the US intelligence community itself conceded that Iran was not trying to build a nuclear bomb. Most remarkable of all was Mossad’s own assessment that Iran was “not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons.”

As I detailed earlier this year in “We Need to Talk About the Iran Protests,” fearmongering over Iran’s non-existent nuclear weapons program was the basis for an extraordinary series of measures against the country in recent decades. These measures include “NITRO ZEUS,” a full-scale military cyberattack against Iran, the best-known element of which was Stuxnet, the military-grade cyberweapon co-developed by the United States and Israel that specifically targeted Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz.

Iran’s non-existent nuclear program also provided the pretext for sanctions aimed at crippling the country’s economy, including the de-listing of Iranian banks from the Swift Network connecting the world’s financial institutions.

The fearmongers even went so far as to plant evidence of nuclear weapons involvement on Iran to further justify these attacks.

But the great irony is that there really is a nuclear armed nation in the Middle East. It is not a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It does not allow inspections of its arsenal. It does not even officially acknowledge its stockpile of nuclear weapons. It has even resisted the push for an international treaty recognizing a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. And that country is Israel.

Sometimes ranked as the world’s sixth largest nuclear superpower, Israel actively pursued a nuclear program from the time of its inception as a state in 1948. By the late 1950s, they had begun building a reactor and reprocessing plant at Dimona with British and French aid. And by 1967, a classified CIA report estimated that Israel would be capable of producing a nuclear warhead in “six to eight weeks.” Shortly thereafter, it is believed, Israel began producing and stockpiling a nuclear arsenal.

OLENKA FRENKIEL: It was the young Shimon Peres, back in the ’50s who negotiated a secret deal with the French to buy a nuclear weapons reactor like theirs. But while Dimona was going up, intelligence reports reached Washington that Israel was building an atom bomb.

Despite claims that Dimona was for peaceful purposes only, Israel’s leader, Ben Gurion, was summoned to Washington. President Kennedy feared an arms race in the Middle East and demanded inspections. But when inspectors finally entered the plant in May 1961, they were tricked. They were shown a fake control room on the ground floor. They were unaware of the six floors below where the plutonium was made.

PETER HOUNAM, freelance journalist: Well, this was something of great pride and almost a legendary story in Dimona, according to Vanunu. When the Americans came they were completely hoodwinked. All the entrances, including the lift shafts, were bricked up and plastered over, so it was impossible for anyone to find their way down to the lower floors.

FRENKIEL: After Kennedy’s assassination, the pressure on Israel was off. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, turned a blind eye. Then, in 1969, Israel’s Golda Meir and President Richard Nixon struck a deal, renewed by every President to this day. Israel’s nuclear programme could continue as long as it was never made public. It’s called “nuclear ambiguity.”

The term “nuclear ambiguity,” in some ways it sounds very grand. But isn’t it just a euphemism for deception?

SHIMON PERES, former Prime Minister of Israel: If somebody wants to kill you, and you use a deception to save your life, it is not immoral. If we wouldn’t have enemies, we wouldn’t need deceptions. We wouldn’t need deterrent.

FRENKIEL: Was this the justification for concealing the floors of the plutonium reprocessing areas from the Americans, the inspectors, when they came?

PERES: You are having a dialogue with yourself, not with me.

FRENKIEL: But that’s been documented in a number of books.

PERES: Ask the question to yourself, not to me.

FRENKIEL: But, I mean, is it not true?

PERES: I don’t have to answer your questions, even. I don’t see any reason why.

FRENKIEL: Ambiguity is a luxury unique to Israel. Today the country’s an inspection-free zone, protected from scrutiny by America and her allies.

SOURCE: Israel’s Secret Weapon

Although estimates vary, it is now believed that Israel has somewhere between 75 and 400 nuclear warheads and that it possesses the capability to deliver these warheads to Iran.

The existence of this stockpile, while known to governments around the world for decades, was only revealed to the public in 1986, when The Sunday Times published photographic proof and a detailed account of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons program. That story was provided by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona facility, who spent decades behind bars for his part in revealing this truth to the world.

NARRATOR: On October the 5th, 1986, The Sunday Times announced they had evidence to prove that Israel had become the world’s sixth biggest nuclear power, having developed their arsenal beneath the Negev desert at Dimona. Photographs like this were given to The Sunday Times by a former technician at Dimona, Mordechai Vanunu.

[. . .]

Mordechai Vanunu’s family, Moroccan Jews, settled in the Negev in the early ’60s, inspired by the idea of being a part of Israel. Vanunu did national service in the army. Then, while he worked at Dimona, he began studying philosophy. He became active in student politics. He opposed Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. Vanunu came to believe that Israel’s nuclear development program was immoral. He left Dimona and, eventually, Israel itself.

Vanunu arrived in Sydney armed with photographs he’d taken inside Dimona. Here, he turned his back on Judaism and became a Christian. He met Oscar Guerrero, a Colombian journalist who urged him to sell his secrets to The Sunday Times. His evidence was processed at a local photo shop. Vanunu talked openly about what he’d done.

It’s said that by the time Vanunu arrived in London on September the 12th, 1986, Australian intelligence had already alerted MI6 and the CIA, and MossadIsraeli intelligencehad already begun questioning his family in Israel. The Sunday Times disguised their informant and moved him from place to place for protection. But in Leicester Square one day, Vanunu met a blonde who called herself “Cindy,” a beautician from Florida. Meanwhile, Oscar Guerrero, eager to profit from what he knew, turned to The Sunday Mirror. Vanunu’s photograph appeared on page one. Vanunu began to despair. At this point, Cindy was able to lure him to Rome to spend the weekend with her at her sister’s apartment. Not once did Vanunu suspect that Cindy was a Mossad agent and that this was the beginning of a plot to kidnap him.

In Rome, the tactics of the Mossad agents changed dramatically.

MEIR VANUNU: In the apartment, two Israeli agents attacked him and bit him and strangled him really hard. And then chained him, injected drugs [in]to his body. And later on he woke up in a small cell on a boat. The boat went to Israel for a few days and he arrived to Israel on the 7th of October, 1986.

NARRATOR: Vanunu was assumed dead until he turned up weeks later in Tel Aviv. Vanunu himself, on his way to court, gave the first clue of what had happened to him. Scrawled on his hand was the message “Vanunu was hijacked from Rome, Italy. 30.9.86. BA 504.”

SOURCE: Vanunu’s exposure of Israels nuclear program

But a key element of this story is missing from the handful of documentaries that do acknowledge Israel’s nuclear stockpile. Namely, that these weapons were not merely developed by Israeli scientists working in isolation, but with the aid of a nuclear smuggling ring that helped develop and advance Israel’s arsenal by stealing important nuclear technologies from their “ally,” the United States. These smuggling rings and their activities have been known about and even investigated by the FBI for decades, but largely kept secret from the public.

It has fallen to researchers like Grant F. Smith of IRMEP.org, author of Divert!: NUMEC, Zalman Shapiro and the Diversion of US Weapons Grade Uranium into the Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program, to piece together the story from the documents that have been released. On The Corbett Report in 2012, Smith revealed the name of one of the high-powered Israeli officials who was at the heart of a plot in the 1970s to smuggle 800 nuclear triggers from the United States.

GRANT F. SMITH: In terms of the FBI uncovering a multi-node network, this one happened to be centered in California. MILCO was a company that was incorporated in 1972 by a man named Richard Kelly Smyth. He was discovered sending 800 krytrons, which are dual-use items that could be used to trigger nuclear weapons. When he was discovered doing that, he skipped bail in the mid-1980s and disappeared until he was picked up by Interpol in the early part of 2000.

And so the story is interesting and explosive, because after multiple attempts and denials, we had a document release in which the key contact, or one of the key contacts, that Smyth was meeting with to set up sales in Israel was none other than Benjamin Netanyahu. And so the documentwhich I’m kind of holding up right here for the people who are on videoactually names Benjamin Netanyahu as being an employee of Heli Trading Company, which was the node in Israel that would receive Ministry of Defense requisitions that they would pass on to MILCO.

And so the interesting thing about this, of course, is the high-profile nature of Benjamin Netanyahu [and] the fact that the smuggling ring ringleader has been identified as Arnon Milchan, a person any American knows for his movie productions, such as Pretty Woman and other favorites, who is running this and who a recent book has named as being a top economic espionage spy for LAKAM, who worked under Benjamin Bloomberg and Rafi Eitan. But the FBI document that we published on July 4 related to an antiwar.com story, which was really short and direct. And its core focus was on the fact that in a period when Netanyahu was building himself up as a leader in the terrorism industryhosting major conferences, having just returned from his studies in the United States, hosting major conferences in the Jonathan Netanyahu Terrorism Institute, named after his brother who was killed on the raid on Entebbe.

Here’s a person who was supposed to be working as a furniture company executive, and yet these documents, which are very credible because of what they were, which is testimony from Richard Kelly Smyth after he was returned from his exile overseas and finally forced serve a prison sentence. These were the statements he made to an FBI agent in a district attorney office when they debriefed and wanted to know what the extent of the nuclear technology smuggling network was, andboom!there’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

SOURCE: Corbett Report Radio 214 – Israel’s Nuclear Smuggling with Grant F. Smith

Benjamin Netanyahu. And now this unindicted nuclear smuggler is lecturing Iran about a 15-year-old, long-acknowledged nuclear weapons program that never produced a single nuclear weapon.

Even more worryingly, Israel’s nuclear knowledge has not only helped to arm its own nation, but actually helped to proliferate nuclear weapons to Pakistan through the so-called Khan network. One of the men who helped to transfer the nuclear triggers used in the construction of the Pakistani bomb was Asher Karni, an orthodox Jew living in South Africa who had been a major in the Israeli army prior to emigrating to Cape Town. Upon his arrival there in 1985, he began teaching the Torah at the local synagogue and educating Jewish youth, encouraging them to relocate to Israel.

In 2004, U.S. authorities arrested Karni for his role in supplying the nuclear triggers, and in 2005 he was sentenced to three years in prison. It has never been officially explained why this Israeli citizen and former Israeli military officer was interested in helping proliferate nuclear technologies to Pakistan.

But perhaps the greatest irony of all is that it is Iran who has been arguing for decades that the Middle East should be a nuclear-free zone. The idea was first floated by the Shah in 1969 and was first formally proposed by Iran in a joint UN General Assembly resolution, but the idea failed to garner any support. The idea was again raised by then-Iranian President Ahmedinejad in 2006 and yet again by then-Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki in 2008, but these calls to banish nuclear weapons from the Middle East have not even been acknowledged by the West, let alone seriously considered.

Now more than ever, the prospect of a nuclear-free Middle East seems the only way to prevent a nuclear conflagration that threatens to draw in the world’s superpowers, and yet this idea is being ignored by Israel and its staunchest ally, the United States.

Why does Israel refuse to declare its nuclear weapons stockpile?

Why do they refuse to sign on to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty?

Why do they refuse IAEA inspections of their nuclear facility?

Why did they kidnap and imprison Mordechai Vanunu for 18 years for providing the proof of this nuclear program?

And perhaps most importantly, why does the United States, the only country who could single-handedly force NPT compliance from Israel, still refuse to even admit the openly-acknowledged status of Israel as a nuclear power?

Don’t hold your breath waiting for these questions to be answered by the teleprompter readers on the nightly news.

Still, as even many in the mainstream are now admitting, Netanyahu’s presentation on Iran’s nuclear non-secrets is a cheap display of political theatrics. The only thing he ended up doing is underlining the point that Iran, unlike Israel, fully cooperated with the IAEA, lived up to its obligations as a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and, pointedly, has not violated the 2015 nuclear deal.

And now that the United States has allowed the Israeli tail to wag the American dog once again by de-certifying that Iranian deal without valid cause, negotiators in North Korea and elsewhere will be watching, reminded yet again that a promise from the American empire isn’t worth the signed agreement it’s written on.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: MEE)

The Kursk Submarine Was Sunk by the Russian Navy by Accident

April 25th, 2023 by Capt. Igor Kirillovich Kurdin

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

When asked what happened to the submarine Kursk on August 12, 2000, when it ended up at the bottom of the Barents Sea with 118 crew members, I will not answer “only” it sank! For twenty years I have worked on the research of this great accident that hit the Russian Navy, and I am obliged to give my expert opinion: I am deeply convinced that it is a “man-made disaster”.

This is the essence of the investigation and the book that was written on the basis of 20 years of work on the expert examination of the sinking of the pride of the Russian Navy by the Navy captain Igor Kirilovich Kurdin, a legend of Russian submarines.

*

 Dragan Vujicic (DV): Please explain?

Igor Kirilovich Kurdin (IKK): Things went bad one after another. It was a poorly made torpedo, and the preparation for firing was also bad. The crew had never handled this weapon before and it was the first time they had to launch a “whale” torpedo. During the preparation for firing, there was a combination/mixing of kerosene and hydrogen peroxide, which caused the explosion of one torpedo after another.

*

The elite Russian commander from the town of Polari is the son of submarine commander Kirill Borisovich Kurdin and Nadezhda Yevgenievna Kurdin (Kolesnikov), a participant in polar convoys in the Great Patriotic War. He served on nuclear submarines for 20 years and one day and was commander of three nuclear submarine cruisers K-241 “Murena”, K-84 “Yekaterinburg” and K-407 “Novomoskovsk”. He retired in 1995, and after the sinking of the Kursk in 2000, he agreed to investigate all aspects of the tragedy on behalf of the families of the injured colleagues. He also presented his findings in Belgrade to his colleagues from the Association of Submarines of Serbia, whose guest he was at the end of April.

Kurdin was genuinely shaken as he said: “The investigation into the sinking of the Kursk submarine was my most difficult and emotional professional and life task.” The Kursk submarine was the pride of Russian engineering. This underwater colossus is designated in NATO codification as Oscar 2 (or Project 949A Antej). When designed in the USSR, the submarine was intended to track NATO aircraft carrier groups and eventually destroy them. Antej submarines are designed to have a double hull divided into 10 different spaces. The vessel has a reinforced double hull designed to break through the Arctic ice cap. It is 154 meters long and eleven such buildings were built between 1985 and 1999, eight of which are still in use. Such underwater giants were considered unsinkable, and the tragedy in the Barents Sea in 2000 was the biggest blow to Russian military power. – Of course it was a big blow to the prestige of the Russian Fleet and that is why the investigation has been going on all these years, slowly, thoroughly and checking all possible aspects of the accident – explains Captain Kurdin at the beginning of the interview for newsmagazine “Seal”.

He adds: Everything that preceded the explosion was also investigated, how and when the explosion occurred. Hull and mechanism designers, admirals and lifeguards as well as weapons specialists were interviewed. Everyone told and wrote down what they knew, and I, as the commander of the submarine, just arranged the facts.

*

DV: There are two basic versions?

IKK: One is the one that I believe is a man-made disaster, as I have already explained. Another version is that the Kursk was sunk by an American or English submarine. And these facts were taken into account because they were really nearby in the Barents Sea!

DV: There are also versions that there was a collision with the Americans?

IKK: To say that the American submarine allegedly accidentally hit the Kursk, which activated one torpedo after another. But if that had happened, that submarine would have ended up at the bottom. She couldn’t just lie down on the bottom and crawl on it to hide somewhere. Submarines don’t go on the bottom! 

DV: What’s the weirdest version you’ve worked on during a submarine recovery and expertise?

IKK: That it was an accidental torpedo attack. Allegedly, “someone else’s” computer made a mistake, but that only happens in science fiction. According to the sound, you can hear the firing of a torpedo, and no one in the vicinity of Kursk has heard anything like that, and it was not recorded on hydro acoustic devices 

DV: It was also said that this powerful submarine was at the minimum depth when the accident happened.

IKK: According to the scenario of that exercise, the Kursk had a zone of influence, and it is true that the accident of the 154-meter ship occurred at a depth of 108 meters, which is really low for this type of submarine. But, it could only be a mitigating circumstance for the crew because at that depth they could have taken it out more easily. However, during that exercise in 2000, when 12 submarines went out to sea, the only rescue ship in the war port was not working and could not even set sail.

DV: So there was no salvation for them?

IKK: According to the navigation regulations of the Russian Navy, when an accident like this happens and in the next eight hours help does not come and let’s say the entire crew dies – no one is to blame but fate. When 23 people wait two days for help at the bottom and there is none, then there is professional responsibility for not providing help to the victims.

DV: Has anyone been held accountable for that?

IKK: Unfortunately no. After a year, 30 admirals and generals were dismissed from service with the explanation: Poor combat readiness. We all knew it was because of Kursk, but it was never emphasized.

DV: So part of the crew was waiting for rescuers?

IKK: It is believed that twenty-three (23) of them could have been helped with the devices from the rescue ship. After the explosion, they barricaded themselves in the compartment (space) of the submarine that was flooded no more than five by five meters and if they kept quiet they could clearly hear the ships going above them. I talked to the people who were the first to enter the sunken submarine and they testify that everything was ready for evacuation. They prepared life suits, buoys and other rescue equipment and waited in the dark for the rescuers. A submariner can really imagine what it’s like to be at the bottom of a wrecked submarine in the dark at a temperature around zero and the percentage of carbon dioxide is rising.

DV: These people still didn’t surrender for two days?

IKK: They could not leave the submarine themselves, but waited for help to come from the rescue ship. They had food and water. They also had special hand-held air purifiers because the central purification system was not working. They regularly removed the air regeneration panels that bind CO2 (carbon dioxide) and release oxygen for about two days from the moment of the accident. 

DV: What happened?

IKK: The autopsy findings of the doctor say that 20 of them were killed in section no. 9 suffocated with carbon dioxide and three were burned. A fire broke out in the space where they were grouped as a result of the chemical reaction of this regeneration system and water. In that darkness, water somehow broke into the regenerative cabinet/apparatus, the board came into contact with the water and burst into flames, so that the three female officers could hardly be recognized. 

DV: Explain that afterburner?

IKK: This is due to the sensitivity of those devices for air purification in submarines. It was invented by the Germans during the Second World War, and in the boxes of regenerative mass type V-64 there are air purification plates used by submariners when they dive for a long time. The handling of these plates must be extremely careful because they are aggressive on the human mucous membrane, and in contact with water, a violent reaction like an explosion and a fire occurs. It was simply not possible to be careful after two days at the bottom, in the cold and in the dark…

K-407 “Novomoskovsk” submarine

DV: The Kursk tragedy was the biggest blow to the Russian Navy?

IKK: It is true. Previously, Russian submariners were stunned by the decision of their commander-in-chief Boris Yeltsin to give up tactical nuclear warheads on their submarines as well. Let’s say that this class of Antej submarines was designed to deal with the biggest threat to Russia on the seas of the world, which during the Cold War were aircraft carriers primarily from the USA. The Antej submarines were intended to use a bouquet of small tactical nuclear bombs to put to sleep a group of aircraft carriers on the ocean and sink them or a series of explosions would cause a tsunami. However, our president decided that the Americans were not a threat to him, which was, as it turned out later, a big mistake.

DV: Russian Navy – Black Sea Fleet had significant losses in this conflict as well?

IKK: The command ship “Moscow” was lost. What happened there? My personal opinion is that it was a reckless naval operation to leave the cruiser in range of the enemy’s missiles. Moscow was a great ship, it had excellent anti-aircraft protection but not the necessary protection of other ships of its Navy. I am sure that it was a bad calculation by our commanders.

DV: What hit Moscow?

IKK: Two rocket missiles, one of which exploded. The ship suffered such damage that it sank and 20 people died. It was a blow to our prestige in the Black Sea while the Ukrainians shouted: We sunk “Moscow”! Let’s face it, the loss of the landing ship “Saratov” is a blow, and we were also left without some smaller boats. 

DV: Have the Americans ever lost their nuclear submarines?

IKK: Yes, they sank the submarines “Thresher” (SSN-593) in 1963 and “Scorpion” (SSN-589) in 1968, and they probably had more such losses. They had the last incident in November 2021, when their submarine “Connecticut” hit a reef while diving in the South China Sea and was then towed to a base in Guam. As they reported themselves, the repair will cost them a whopping 650 million dollars.

DV: It has been in the history of the rivalry between the USA and Russia and the collision of underwater objects.

IKK: Yeah, right. I personally know Captain Igor Lokot, who with his nuclear submarine B-276 Kostroma had a collision with the American rival “Baton Rouge”. That contact is known among us sailors as an “Elbow” strike (after the captain’s last name). I also know the submarine commander Andrei Bulgakov who collided with the American submarine “Grayling”.  

DV: Were those collisions accidental or intentional?

IKK: There were no intentions. Submarines are not kamikazes, but in the game of hiding and tracking ships, anything happens, including the situation of colliding in the vast ocean. 

DV: Many submariners also testified about strange underwater unknown UFO-like objects?

IKK: There is no submarine commander in the world’s seas who has not witnessed the strangest events under water. I was commander of the submarine on one of the cruises when an unknown force gripped us and tilted the ship pushing us forward and to the bottom. We trimmed the submarine (corrected) but it was in vain. We measured the temperature of the water, the speed and direction of the sea current, but all the devices showed that everything was fine with us, but it wasn’t. Suddenly, that force disappeared and the submarine continued as normal. There are many such stories!

DV: They say that with the advent of hypersonic weapons, the era of aircraft carriers has ended?

IKK: The Americans are the strongest with 12 aircraft carriers and played a major role in the Cold War. Churchill interpreted that power: “The Navy exists and a lot of things don’t actually happen”!Even during the Cold War, we did not build carriers, and we had several smaller cruisers that had airplanes on board. A few years ago we started talking about it again, but although it is true that it is good, for one carrier you have to have three zones of security ships only in anti-submarine defense. Then a special system of basing and maintenance and general overhaul. All in all expensive and unnecessary.

DV: Yet the Chinese and Indians make their own carriers?

IKK: The Chinese are the smartest here. Let’s say they bought the old Soviet aircraft carrier “Varyag” from the Ukrainians as scrap metal to initially make it into a Cultural Center in the port. Then, when they studied it well, they turned that Cultural Center into a modern aircraft carrier, and it’s one of the three they have. Indians buy from us but also from the Americans, combining what they need. Russia has one carrier and our profession says that in the future war they will not be of much use.

DV: What is the standard of Russian naval officers today?

IKK: I will answer as my colleague today’s nuclear submarine commander answered me – I can’t tell you the salary because my wife will hear. Otherwise, during the service, they must get an apartment, a decent income and many other privileges. 

DV: Are you one of the most decorated Russian submariners?

IKK: I have 14 medals on my chest, and my favorite is the “Ruby” medal – for raising the sunken AK “KURSK”, which I received at the request of the relatives of the crew who died. Namely, when I finished the expertise on the sinking of the Kursk, I met the families of the victims with her. I also informed general constructor Admiral Mihail Kuznetsov, the commander of the submarine division to which Kursk belonged, Irina Zeljovna, the wife of the submarine’s commander. Nothing is hidden or hushed up.

DV: Have a legendary career?

IKK: Since I finished the Senior Officer Specialist Course “Submarine Commander” in 1983, and then the Higher Naval Academy of the USSR, I have not been on land or in any headquarters in Leningrad for a single day. I participated in 15 long-term (90 days) underwater cruises, five of which in the role of submarine commander. When we asked the famous Russian commander of nuclear submarines, Igor Kurdin, about the new Russian underwater weapon – unmanned underwater vessel “Poseidon”, which has become a “scarecrow” for NATO countries, he first answered “no comment” and then told a moral story:

In short, “Poseidon” is a Russian drone submarine that is capable of blowing up entire cities and creating tsunamis of enormous proportions, and it dates back to the fifties of the last century. The idea of doomsday weapons dates back to when the first Soviet atomic submarine was being constructed. –

When our designers constructed the first Soviet atomic submarine in the fifties, Academician Sakharov, the father of the Russian nuclear program, had the idea to put a 20-meter long super torpedo on the submarine, which would stand on the bow and occupy three sections of the submarine in length. That super torpedo with a thermo-nuclear warhead, according to the project, was supposed to have a range of several tens of kilometers, and the plan of use was for the submarine to reach the shores of America and launch, for example, in the direction of New York.The city would be destroyed, and the tsunami that would be created by the detonation, for example, in front of the city, would sweep away everything in its path. And when the designers, together with Sakharov, came to the Soviet admirals with the idea of such a weapon, they received the answer: We are not at war with civilians. The project was then abandoned – reveals Kurdin.

DV: So even in the most terrible time of the cold war, civilians were taken care of?

IKK: Of course. Now we see how politicians from the West are speculating that the use of tactical nuclear weapons could also be considered in the war in Ukraine. I, as the man who commanded the atomic missile submarines K-241 “Murena”, K-84 “Yekaterinburg” and K-407 “Novomoskovsk”, claim that after the first detonation, a second and then a third would occur and that would be the end of the world.

“Belgorod“ submarine

DV: Back to “Poseidon”?

IKK: I saw that underwater weapon only on “paper” and it is being installed in the “Belgorod” submarine project – the basis of which is the hull of the Kursk (that is, “Antej”). Right now, “Poseidon” are entering the fleet list as part of the “Belgorod” project. It is a doomsday weapon and Russia’s enemies must know that. 

DV: You called this vessel (submarine) – killer “Belgorod”. Does it have anything to do with the Serbian capital?

IKK: Maybe there is! (Smiled). 

DV: How do you rate today’s Russian Fleet?

IKK: It is heaven and earth as it was in the nineties and in the first decade of this century, when the Americans and the English ruled the world’s seas. Since the nineties, especially during Yeltsin’s time, we neither built nor designed new ships/submarines. The situation has now changed and parity with the Western strongest fleets has been achieved. The most famous Russian project is the atomic missile submarine cruiser “Borei” and another project is “Jasen”. The submarine “Jasen” is multi-purpose and is armed not only with torpedoes but also with missiles and has been used successfully in Syria. The submarine Borei with intercontinental missiles “Bulava” replaces my submarine and soon it will be the basic composition of the Strategic Naval Forces of Russia. 

DV: What can Russian submarines do that Western ones can’t?

IKK: We can launch from a dock, from the open sea or when we break through the ice crust in the Arctic or Antarctic. For example, compasses do not work at the poles, and the Russians are the only ones in the world who have target coordinates at the “poles”. We break through the ice, open the lids on the missile silos and shoot up to 12,000 kilometers away. 

DV: American submarines can’t do that?

IKK: They can break through the ice but not aim and shoot. 

DV: While you were in the service, what was that combat life like?

IKK: Since I finished the Senior Officer Specialist Course “Submarine Commander” in 1983, and then the Higher Naval Academy of the USSR in Leningrad, I have not been on land or in any headquarters for a single day. I participated in 15 long-term (90 days) underwater cruises, five of them in the role of submarine commander. One of my cruising areas was the mid-Atlantic because we had 2,500 kilometer missiles. What can I say – we didn’t know the goals, it was all encrypted and in the computer. Therefore, if there was a need, they would fire projectiles without knowing where they would end up.

DV: A 90-day underwater cruise is a very special experience?

IKK: Of course. There is a preparation before every cruise that is very serious and rigorous. Let’s say it is interesting that Russian sailors are entitled to 50 grams of vodka a day even under water.Admittedly, the principle was that the sailor gives up his portion to his colleague for six days, and then when it’s his turn and his 350 grams, he “has the right” to rest for 24 hours. We managed. Everything is there.

DV: How are submarines used in the Black Sea?

IKK: I can’t comment on that. Just 20 years ago, Russia had one old submarine in the Black Sea, while Turkey had 12 new German ones. Today, our fleet has six underwater objects marked 636.3.which we call Warsaw-women and which have proven to be ideal for conflicts in the regional seas.They are armed with “caliber” missiles and they “work” perfectly. Diesel electric submarines, it turns out, are indispensable for these kinds of conflicts. 

DV: You call her a Warsaw-woman?

IKK: Its name remains from the USSR, but of course it is now a completely different combat system.For example, the Americans gave up on diesel electrics and it turned out that they were wrong.The Poles, who had one such vessel, scrapped it as unnecessary, and then when they realized their mistake, they bought submarines from Norway and later complained to us that they had bought “debris” from submarines. The Ukrainians had one that they did not want to service in Russia, but bought the batteries from the French. It turned out that the batteries did not fit, and then they literally gave us that submarine.

DV: There is a lot of talk about some new Russian Shkval torpedo that moves through the water at enormous speeds?

IKK: It is not a completely new weapon, it is more than 20 years old. The bow part of this torpedo has its own generator that runs on a mixture of gas and is actually an underwater rocket. Around herself, while sailing, she produces a shell that allows her super speeds. The squall actually functions as a gun and cannot be guided due to its speed. The advantage is that a surface ship cannot escape it.

DV: They say that the advent of hypersonic weapons ended the era of aircraft carriers?

IKK: The Americans are the strongest with 12 aircraft carriers and played a major role in the Cold War. Churchill interpreted that power: “The Navy exists and a lot of things don’t actually happen”!Even during the Cold War, we did not build carriers, and we had several smaller cruisers that had airplanes on board. A few years ago we started talking about it again, but the truth is that it is good, but for one carrier you have to have three zones of anti-submarine defense only. Then a special system of basing and overhaul. All in all expensive and unnecessary.

DV: What was Russia’s strategy against carriers?

IKK: Let’s say stop them with a bouquet of tactical nuclear bombs and you don’t have to hit the ship – you will sink the whole fleet. With hypersonic, it’s even easier. 

DV: The five Pacific countries, led by the USA, created the AUKUS-Pacific NATO with a powerful fleet?

IKK: I have no information about what they are doing. Our surprise check of the Pacific Fleet, which is now being carried out by our submarines and ships, is an opportunity to show the Americans what we mean. It is certain that they would not perform the exercise if we had nothing to show them.

“Borei“ class submarine

*

The best person who knows what happened to the Kursk submarine Navy Captain Igor Kirillovich Kurdin was born in 1953 in the city of Polari, in the family of submarine commander Kirill Borisovich Kurdin and Nadezhda Yevgenievna Kurdin (Kolesnikov), a participant in polar convoys in the Great Patriotic War. In 1975, he graduated with honors from the Submarine Military Academy, majoring in “Submarine missile weapons”. He served on the strategic nuclear submarine missile cruisers of the Northern Fleet. He commanded and sailed for exactly 20 years and one day.

Today, he is the head of the association “St. Petersburg Club of submariners and Navy veterans”. He was awarded the Order “For Service to the Homeland and the Armed Forces of the USSR” and has 14 decorations on his chest. One is the “Rubin” commemorative medal – for raising the sunken APK KURSK – handed over at the request of the relatives of the fallen crew.

 *

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is licensed under Fair Use; all other images in this article are from the author

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

By itself no human activity has – yet – altered or substantially affected the climate of the world as a whole.” – Sir Crispin Tickell, 1977 (1)

Sir Crispin Charles Cervantes Tickell, descendant of Thomas Huxley and of paleontologist Mary Anning, was born in 1930. Crispin’s father, Jarred Tickell, penned dozens of novels and screenplays; including bestsellers. Crispin’s mother also wrote professionally.

Crispin graduated atop the Class of ‘52, Christ Church, Oxford. Two years with the Cold Stream Guards readied him for a Foreign Office career traversing the British Antarctic Territories, The Hague, Mexico City, and Paris.

The Duchy of Lancaster’s selection of Crispin as Private Secretary lifted him to the Royal circle. (Elizabeth knighted Crispin as the two sailed aboard Britannia.) In 1977 he became Chef de Cabinet to the President of the European Community. From 1984 to 1987 he ran Britain’s Overseas Development Administration. From 1987 to 1990 he was Britain’s UN Ambassador; and, ex officio, Britain’s Security Council rep.

During ‘retirement’ Tickell served as:

  • Warden of Green College, Oxford, 1990-7
  • President of Royal Geographical Society, 1990-3
  • President of Marine Biological Society, 1990-2007
  • Chair of the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Panel, 1994-2000
  • Chancellor of Kent University, 1996-2006

A lifelong conservationist Tickell prompted PM Major to launch the Darwin Initiative – a state-funded quango missioned to protect wilderness in poor locales. Crispin presided over the African tree-planting NGO, Tree Aid.   

A population control hawk, Tickell patronized and publicized Optimum Population Trust (Population Matters). In 2007 he told the BBC he wanted Britain’s population slashed from 60 to 20 million.  

Tickell facilitated the Tory’s weaponizing of Climate Change in their war with coal-miners; a project culminating in a total coal phase-out. Tickell met privately with Thatcher in 1984 to discuss “global warming.” From that moment Thatcher became the climate campaign’s most effective agent. Tickell is oft described as her Climate Envoy.     

In 1986, alongside Republican Party supremo John Topping (and the American Gas Association), Tickell co-founded the Washington DC-based Climate Institute – the first NGO with “climate” in its name; and the first dedicated exclusively to Climate Change. Tickell chaired this NGO from 1990 to 2002, and from 2012 until his 2022 death. The seminal Climate Institute, now buried beneath the jungle it sowed, hosted a three-day “Preparing for Climate Change” confab in October 1987 that attracted 300 well-healed participants. A similarly themed March 1988 symposium drew reps from 40 embassies.

*

Tickell wrote Climatic Change and World Affairs while a Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Affairs (1975-6). The Center (est. 1958) fostered analysis of the world system by worldly scholars and officials.

The first book written under Center auspices was Brzezinski’s Soviet Bloc (1960). Their second, Kissinger’s Necessity for Choice (1961), proved the first of several by that author. Morton Halperin, Seymour Lipset and Samuel Huntington also contributed. Harvard University Press published most of the Center’s oeuvre while some tomes bore Oxford, Princeton, Yale and Stanford imprints. These books became must-read university texts across the Anglosphere. Center interests encompassed: the Cold War, higher education (especially student rebellions), land reform and military governance (especially in Latin America). Around the time of Tickell’s Fellowship the Center issued:  

Big Business in the State (1974), Organizing the Transnational (1974), Multinational Corporations and the Politics of Dependence (1974), Politics of International Monetary Reform (1976), International Politics of Natural Resources (1976), Oil Crisis (1976), Raw Materials Investments and American Foreign Policy (1977), Bankers and Borders (1977), and Storm Over Multinationals (1977). (2)

Tickell’s manifesto was their 119th publication; their first on climate. Appearing simultaneously, albeit not under Center auspices, was the Central Intelligence Agency’s The Weather Conspiracy: the Coming of the New Ice Age. Tickell notes:

“Vulnerability to climatic change is increasingly recognized as a crucial element both in economic management within states and in relationships between them. In the United States the Central Intelligence Agency was one of the first to try and assess the political and economic implications for the shifting balance of world power.” (3)

Further evidence of a trend can be culled from Tickell’s Suggested Reading:

  • Inadvertent Climate Change (1971), MIT
  • Calder’s The Weather Machine (1974), BBC
  • Weather and Climate Change; Food Production and Interstate Conflict (1974), Rockefeller Foundation
  • Understanding Climate Change (1975) US National Academy of Sciences (4)

Said books were part and parcel of government-led initiatives involving the World Meteorological Organization and International Council for Scientific Unions. These entities created the Global Atmospheric Research Program (GARP) to sponsor conferences on climate physics, climate modelling, and paleoclimatology. GARP’s US subsidiary found lodgings at MIT, NASA and Colorado’s National Center for Climate Research. Across the pond:

“In Britain the Climate Research Institute at the University of East Anglia and the Meteorological Office have done pioneer work across the whole field.” (5)

*

Weather warfare worries walked climatology to the fore. According to Tickell:

“Beginning in 1963 and continuing until 1972 the United States experimented with various means of environmental warfare…” (6)

Examples:

  • …attempts over five years to intensify normal monsoon rainfall so as to wash out North Vietnamese supply trails.” (7)
  • “…the Central Intelligence Agency tried to dry out the Cuban sugar crop by seeding clouds which could otherwise have brought rain to Cuba.” (8)

Tickell brandishes: the creation of floods, droughts and hailstorms; inducing lightning strikes; and blowing holes in the ozone layer.

News of the existence of this Pandora’s Box of horrors focussed international attention on the need to keep the lid as tightly shut as possible.” (9)

In December 1974, the UN resolved to prohibit influencing climate for military purposes. In August 1975, Americans and Soviets co-proposed banning weather warfare to the Conference on Disarmament. As Tickell’s manuscript went to press, many rallied behind this proposal. (10)

*

Tickell’s “CALL FOR ACTION” chapter recommends consolidating climate and weather institutes (Tickell thought there were too many) into one omnibus “World Climate and Meteorological Organization” capable of cataloging climate research; convening climate conferences; and counselling governments. (11) The treaty chartering this organization must stipulate:

“…mandatory obligations in some parts of the agreement and voluntary adherence to a code of good behaviour.” (12)

And:

“…develop a framework which could be strengthened and enlarged as circumstances later required.” (13)

Moreover:

“International acceptance of even a few mandatory obligations would only be a beginning.” (14)

“We can even imagine the institution of a kind of international thermostat for the management of the world’s climate.” (15)

Although utilizing UN imprimatur the organization shouldn’t be UN-controlled:

“However disagreeable it may sound, the countries or group of countries able to exercise leverage in this respect in the possible circumstances of the future are those who grow and export a surplus of foodstuffs, in particular grain. At present, this group includes Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, and could include members of the European Community. It would be much easier and more generally acceptable if they were to exercise leverage to support provisions of an international agreement than for motives which could be interpreted as selfish….” (16)

Tickell wrote as Anglospheric and European states withheld foreign aid from countries resisting birth control programs. Tickell advocated withholding grain from countries resisting the climate agenda.  

One ulterior motive was surveillance. Tickell envisioned regular “climatic censuses” to which all “governments should provide full and honest information” with data gaps filled by satellites and other meteorological instruments (balloons, buoys etc). There would be climate truants, namely:

“China, whose statistics are suspect, and the Soviet Union, for whom secrecy is a disease…” (17)

Efforts to woo Russians went unrequited.

*

Tickell’s list of activities this climate authority might suppress deviously mixes absurdly dangerous ideas with benign proposals only environmentalists oppose. In the first category, along with weather weapons, we find:

  • Hurricane dispersal
  • Towing Antarctic icebergs
  • Permanent diversion of ocean currents
  • Spraying sea ice with soot to warm the planet
  • Burning sulphur in the upper atmosphere to cool the planet

Amidst these wild cards Tickell shuffles:

  • Oil drilling in the Arctic
  • Diverting rivers for irrigation
  • Supersonic commercial air travel
  • Deforestation to expand farmland

*

Deemed the brightest mind available, Harvard tapped Tickell to survey the state of climate science. The saliant takeaway is Tickell’s acknowledgement of the uncertainty pervading the field. Passages reflecting humanities’ climate benightedness abound:

  • “…of all the aspects of the earth’s environment, the climate and its variations, natural and otherwise, remain one of the least understood. It is an area where vital information is still lacking, where scientists can both passionately and plausibly disagree…” (18)
  • What conclusions can be drawn from this summary description of the processes of climatic change? Perhaps the first is to underline the fragmentary nature of our knowledge and the immense difficulty in assigning causes to effects… there are many factors in this complex system of which we know little and there are probably others of which we know nothing.” (19)

Fast-forward 15 years and climate scientists, sans interim eurekas, express pathological confidence that CO2 emissions cause catastrophic global warming! 

*

Tickell equivocates between warmers and coolers; listing to the latter. He signs-off:

“The pleasantly warm moment we now enjoy… will not last forever.” (20)

He earlier warns those basking in clement weather:

in a time span of 500 years or longer, this warmth was distinctly abnormal. It was cooler before, and between 1945 and 1970 it became cooler again. Indeed the period between 1900 and 1945 may have been the warmest in a thousand years.” (21)

Tickell leans heavily on Nigel Calder, a scientist convinced “the trend is clearly towards glacial conditions.” (22). (Calder died a vociferous critic of anthropogenic global warming.) Nature, not humanity, causes cooling. Tickell thrice summons the Little Ice Age (1645-1715) when fairs adorned a frozen Thames; and he links this cooling to dips in solar radiance.

He presents the standard cooler case:

“…dust, which is rapidly blown high and wide, casts a veil over the atmosphere, and, depending on the size, color and shape of the particles, shuts out more solar radiation from outside than it shuts in terrestrial radiation from below.” (23)

Then adds: “most authorities doubt it…” (24)

Regarding “man-made aerosol particles” he opines:

“…here even the best authorities can arrive at opposite conclusions. One believes that aerosol particles should have recently cooled the northern hemisphere by about 0.5 C., thus counteracting the rise in temperature caused by carbon dioxide; while another does not rule out the possibility that they have recently had a warming effect at the surface in same area.” (25)

He pours ink on the long-abandoned hypothesis that “urban heat domes” warm the entire atmosphere. (Alarmists forsook this because it implies warming bias at weather stations engulfed by urban sprawl.)

Of human-induced warming culprits Tickell considers CO2 most significant, cautioning:

“How much the observed increase in carbon dioxide has in fact warmed the lower atmosphere is in dispute. Some calculations show it should have warmed it by 0.2 C. to 0.3 C., but if so, other factors must have been operating the other way. (26)

*

If men will breed like rabbits they must be allowed to die like rabbits.” (27)

Tickell approvingly relays this quip from A. V. Hill while deeming the “present dizzying expansion of human numbers” as “the biggest threat we face.” (28) Population phobia spawns many passages:

  • …maximum exploitation of land and other resources for the production of food can prove hazardous if not dangerous to present as well as future generations if it is based on the notion of a stable environment and ignores the climatic dimension…” (29)
  • What place should climate factors have in this depressing equation? Perhaps the single most important one is that overpopulation, with all that it implies, greatly diminishes our ability to respond to change.” (30)

Democracy and the insatiable mob undergird this crisis:

  • No responsible, still less, elected government could lightly sacrifice a short-term and direct advantage in terms of wealth and employment for its people to avoid a long-term, indirect and uncertain disadvantage for the human race of life as a whole.” (31)
  • “…as populations and demands on resources continue to increase, governments will be under mounting domestic pressure to put national requirements first to ensure their own survival….” (32)

*

Tickell disgorges stock Malthusian-conservationist tropes about: Nature’s balance; the frontier’s end; tipping points; and, precautionary principles. The Great Dread is population pressure prompting rushes to the hinterland that undermine land values within, and the political reach of, metropolitan states. Tickell wrote just after Ehrlich’sPopulation Bomb and the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth broke records for sales and impact. Pre-1980s policy wonks pitched restricting: population growth, land development and energy usage, without recourse to climate scares. Tickell’s favorite scientist, Stephen Schneider, coined “climatic limits to growth” so climatologists could join the fray.  

Prescient as he appears, the climate campaign isn’t what Tickell envisioned. The “Energy Transition” (hydrocarbon fuel phase-out) is now center and motor of climate politics. Tickell’s CO2 concerns were bycatch of his trawling for larger climatic pretexts that might enable the under-development agenda. Although eclipsed by geo-politically orientated energy independence aspirations, uber-green motivations remain explicit, important drivers of the climate crusade.  

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

William Walter Kay is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

  1. Tickell, Crispin. Climactic Change and World Affairs; Harvard University Press, 1977, p 26
  2. Ibid p 71-5
  3. Ibid p 11-2
  4. Ibid p 65
  5. Ibid p 51
  6. Ibid p 60
  7. Ibid p 60
  8. Ibid p 60
  9. Ibid p 60-1
  10. Ibid p 61
  11. Ibid p 57
  12. Ibid p 58
  13. Ibid p 54
  14. Ibid p 58
  15. Ibid p 43
  16. Ibid p 59
  17. Ibid p 52
  18. Ibid p 12
  19. Ibid p 35
  20. Ibid p 61
  21. Ibid p 13
  22. Ibid p 39
  23. Ibid p 40
  24. Ibid p 23
  25. Ibid p 29
  26. Ibid p 29
  27. Ibid p 36
  28. Ibid p 36
  29. Ibid p 44-5
  30. Ibid p 37
  31. Ibid p 37
  32. Ibid p 53

Featured image: Crispin Tickell in 2011. (Licensed under OGL v1.0)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Cracking Sir Crispin Tickell’s Time Capsule: A Critique of “Climatic Change and World Affairs”
  • Tags:

The ANZAC Myth, a Cult of Imperial Dependence

April 25th, 2023 by Prof. Tim Anderson

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

In commemoration of ANZAC Day, first published by GR on April 25, 2015. 

The 25th of April 2015 will mark the centenary of an Australian and New Zealand attack on the Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli (present day Turkey), a failed operation carried out on behalf of the British Empire. The ‘ANZAC spirit’ has since been presented as a founding element of Australian national identity.

However the significance of the ANZAC myth lies not so much in its assertion of youthful sacrifice, bravery and mateship, as in a loyal and unthinking obedience to the military adventures of a great power. We have generated a sense of dependent obligation to participate in the next imperial war, seemingly blind to the slaughter and misery that brings other peoples.

It is no accident that, one hundred years after the disastrous Gallipoli operation, Australian troops are again being sent to the Middle East. While in 1915 the ‘First Australian Imperial Force’ was used by the British Empire to attack the Ottoman Empire, in 2015 the ‘Australian Defence Forces’ are being used as part of an extended North American operation to control the entire Middle East.

Australian armed forces have rarely been used to defend Australia, but frequently to assist imperial operations. There were not independent decisions to deploy the First and Second Australian Imperial Forces, during the great wars of the 20th Century. In 1939 Prime Minister Robert Menzies said:

‘Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that … Great Britain has declared war upon [Germany], and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.’

That is, Great Britain made the decision and Australia followed.

In 1942, after Imperial Japan evicted Imperial Britain from Singapore, we exchanged the British dummy for a North American suppository. From this time on there was barely a single aggression by Washington which Australia did not celebrate if not directly support.

In the case of the terrible American war in Vietnam, which stole more than 2 million lives, Washington fabricated a pretext for escalation (the Gulf of Tonkin incident) and Menzies (again PM, 25 years later) wrote South Vietnam’s ‘invitation’ for Australia to participate.

Fragmentation of command was an enduring feature of a military that engaged almost exclusively in ‘joint’ operations. Only in the 1970s did Australia create a unified command of its own defence forces.

Every nation has its own creation myth, often some deft mixture of fact and fantasy. In the case of the USA an ‘empire of freedom’ was born in a republic which deployed the largest system of slavery in human history, with an economy dependent on human slavery. Washington, Jefferson and many other founders of that republic were slave owners to the day they died.

Australia’s own creation myth, using the ANZAC disaster, is a ‘White Australia’ construction, as Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds wrote in their 2010 book What’s wrong with ANZAC? It denies indigenous culture and affirms a cult of imperial dependence, celebrating nihilistic sacrifices for the great power.

The military traditions of many countries recognise sacrifices made in defence of independence nations. The ANZAC myth is something quite different.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The ANZAC Myth, a Cult of Imperial Dependence

Black Lives Remain in Danger Throughout the United States

April 25th, 2023 by Abayomi Azikiwe

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Even after three years of mass demonstrations and urban rebellions in the United States, law-enforcement agencies and the entire legal system are still “justifying” the shooting deaths of African Americans and other oppressed peoples.

Jayland Walker, 25, was killed on June 27, 2022, after being chased outside his vehicle by the Akron, Ohio police. Walker was shot 46 times by eight different officers. All together the eight police officers fired 96 shots within 6.7 seconds. Walker had no criminal record and was employed as a delivery driver for DoorDash.

These police officers involved in the killing said they felt threatened by Walker who was running away after leaving his vehicle. The law-enforcement agents said that Walker had fired a shot at them during the chase.

At the time of his shooting death, Walker did not have any firearms on his person. A weapon was retrieved from his vehicle which he had abandoned in an effort to save his own life. It would take another ten months for a special grand jury to decide on April 17 that the killing of Walker did not warrant indictments against the officers.

The official story provided by the Akron police indicated that a state investigation collected evidence since the killing of Walker. The evidence from this state-directed inquiry was turned over to the grand jury appointed by Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost which voted not to charge the police with any crimes.

People have been demonstrating in Akron since last June. Several high-profile activists were arrested while protesting the conduct of the Akron police in the weeks following Walker’s death.

In the aftermath of the grand jury decision not to indict the police, there have been daily demonstrations in Akron. Hundreds took to the streets hours after the grand jury decision and the days that have followed.

Many drove their vehicles through the streets, stopping at strategic locations resulting in traffic being halted. Later on April 19, the Akron police and Summit County sheriff deputies fired pepper spray and tear gas in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

Nonetheless, activists regrouped and continued to protest in the city. The city administration has blocked off the area around the municipal headquarters downtown designating several blocks as a so-called protest zone.

In the immediate aftermath of the grand jury decision, the family of Walker announced that they would file a civil wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Akron. Community activists have made statements to the media saying that the culpability of the police officers in the killing of Walker was unquestionable.

In response to the firing of chemical irritants on the crowds demonstrating against the grand jury decision, one organization called the Akron Bail Fund announced it would file a civil lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order against law-enforcement agencies preventing them from utilizing excessive force. Later in the week on April 21, the City of Akron announced that the police would refrain from using chemical irritants on peaceful protesters.

Akron police chief Steve Mylett was quoted by the Beacon Journal saying he would reserve judgment on his law-enforcement personnel until an investigation was carried out. Mylett emphasized that:

“I am waiting on video footage from a few of our partner law enforcement agencies to help clarify some confusion. Before I explain what happened, I need to be sure of the timeline of events. If information is released prematurely and without the facts, that misinformation could cause irrevocable damage. As soon as I can confidently determine the exact circumstances of how [Wednesday] evening unfolded, I will make that information available to the public. If we made mistakes, we would improve upon them, and if the officers’ actions were reasonable, we would share that information as well.” 

Some local elected officials criticized the police for the attacks against protesters on April 19. Ward 5 City Councilwoman Tara Mosley refuted the police version of events which declared the demonstration as an unlawful assembly.

Mosley issued a statement on April 20 saying:

“There are no reports of any injuries or property damage before the officers declared the assembly to be unlawful. What, then, was unlawful about this assembly? The city claims that the officers issued orders to disperse because ‘officers were having bottles thrown at them from marchers.’ But, from the available evidence — and there is much of it online — the protests were peaceful before the officers ordered the people to disperse. The people were calling for accountability. Nothing more, nothing less. The people were protesting the Jayland Walker decision. They were crying out for healing. They were standing up for their neighbors and community and families and children. This assembly was not unlawful; it was demanding to be heard.”

The officers involved in the killing of Walker remain on administrative leave. The police department is now saying that since the grand jury investigation has concluded they will conduct their own internal probe into the circumstances surrounding the death of Walker.

African American Youth Shot Outside Kansas City Home

Ralph Yarl, 16, an honor student and member of the Missouri State Band, was trying to pick up his twin younger brothers in north Kansas City, Missouri on April 13 when he walked up to the porch of a home which was the wrong address. After ringing the bell and waiting, an 84-year-old white man, Andrew D. Lester, fired a shot through the exterior door striking Yarl in the head.

After Yarl was already down, the assailant then shot the youth again in the shoulder. Yarl stumbled away from the house seeking assistance from the neighbors. His family members reported that the youth was turned away from three homes before someone brought a towel out of a house and called the emergency medical services and the police.

Miraculously, Yarl did not suffer fatal injuries. The bullet fragments from a .32 caliber handgun failed to lodge into the critical areas of his brain which could have caused sudden death. Yarl was released after several days in the hospital and is recovering at home.

The Yarl family are originally from the West African state of Liberia. They immigrated to the U.S. several years ago.

This recent act of racist violence further fueled mistrust and fear throughout African American communities across the U.S. Yarl’s family and their attorney demanded the arrest and indictment of the shooter.

Lester was initially brought to a police station on April 14 for questioning and was released without being charged in the shooting. Outrage over the incident, in all likelihood, prompted the filing of charges against Lester on April 18 although he has been released on $200,000 bond. It was not immediately clear if Lester was represented by an attorney.

The 16-year-old’s father, Paul Yarl, told the media that his son spent three days in the hospital and was able to walk out of the facility on April 16. The father, who lives in Indianapolis, after hearing of the shooting from Ralph’s mother, drove immediately to Kansas City.  

In an interview with CBS television on April 18, Cleo Nagbe, Ralph Yarl’s mother, discussed the traumatic impact of the shooting of her son. According to an Associated Press report:

“During an interview Tuesday (April 18) with ‘CBS Mornings,’ Yarl’s mother, Cleo Nagbe, said her son is in good spirits but that the trauma remains evident. She said he is ‘able to communicate mostly when he feels like it, but mostly he just sits there and stares, and the buckets of tears just roll down his eyes.’ ‘You can see that he is just replaying the situation over and over again, and that just doesn’t stop my tears either,’ she said.” 

The U.S. continues to be a place of danger for people of African descent. In fact, historically, the U.S. was built on the forced removal and genocide of the Indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans over a period of 250 years.

Consequently, in order for racism and national oppression to be eliminated, the entire system of oppression and exploitation must be transformed. Countless local, state and federal investigations of similar incidents involving law-enforcement and vigilantes have failed miserably to end the violence and create a peaceful atmosphere for African Americans and the oppressed peoples living in North America.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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

Featured image is from the author

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Black Lives Remain in Danger Throughout the United States

Blood, Golf and Saudi Arabia: The LIV Tournament in Adelaide

April 25th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The recently concluded LIV Tournament in Adelaide was a matter of bread, circuses and golf.  It was something of a triumph for the chief sponsor: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and, more notably, the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Critics, and criticism about the regime and the blood spattered House of Saud, were generally forgotten. 

This vulgar display of denial and indulgence was typified by the face of Australian golf, Greg Norman. After three days of competition at The Grange, The Advertiser ran with the painful headline: “LIV-ing the dream: Golf’s boom weekend for SA.” The South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, who scandalously threw his state’s money into a mix also funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (his government refuses to say how much), was also glowing. “To everyone who turned up and showed what Australia is about – thank you.”  

When questioned about the Riyadh connection and its blotchy human rights record, the insufferable South Australian Tourism Minister, Zoe Bettison, proved to be a well of useless information. “I’m aware of the issues that people have raised,” she stated.  “But each and every one of us here uses equipment [and] different businesses every day that the Saudis are invested in.”  Presumably she does not mean hacksaws, which, in Saudi hands, have a habit of finding their way onto the necks of critical journalists.  

Golfing professionals such as the unprincipled Mammon follower Dustin Johnson also expressed delight at the way the tournament had gone. “The support we’ve had from the fans and the city … awesome.  Obviously, the crowds were unbelievable this week, so it was a lot of fun.” 

Peter Uihlein dreamily speculated about future numbers, burgeoning in their promise: 90,000 attendees over three days in the 12th event would surely mean even greater numbers by the 40th or 50th?  “People lose sight of that a little bit. This is literally the 12th event. The sky is the limit.” 

There were efforts made by the organisers to mimic their PGA Tour rivals, who, to be fair, are also corrupt, but not in the capital punishment-killing journalists sense of the term.  A ticket to the “Cellar Door” Marquee back of the 12th green, Guardian Australia reports, was called the “Watering Hole”; the PGA equivalent would have been the “Party Hole” in Arizona. The price of admission: $1200. For that price, those attending the sports wash session could also be bored by Norman, Premier Malinauskas, and former Australian Treasurer and US ambassador Joe Hockey, talk about golf as “a force for good”. 

The Kingdom has made no secret of its use of sport in softening a cruel, barbaric image, rinsing it in the progressive tones of sporting improvement. Obscene amounts of cash have and are being put into sporting tournaments by Riyadh’s Public Investment Fund. And they have such charming ignoramuses as Norman to play the role of useful, distracting dolt, able to bring on board other dolts bedazzled by the dosh. 

In the first season of LIV Golf events, each regular-season event’s total value was counted at $25 million, split between $20 million for the individual event, and $5 million for the team competition. The winner’s earnings came in at $4 million, with the last-placed participant getting $120,000.

There have also been the individual mercenaries, the condottieri of the golf circuit. They have taken the manna from Norman, and encouraged to forget the bloodthirsty, vicious tendencies of the medieval House of Saud; focus, instead, on a more tangible hatred golfers can understand: the PGA tour organisers. It is those stuffed shirts Norman has never forgiven in undermining his previous efforts to run a tournament, and it is an animosity that he has bred from. 

In Adelaide, when asked about what the PGA boss Jay Monaghan might feel about the tournament, Johnson was instant in his reaction. “We don’t give a damn how he feels. We know how he feels about us, so it’s mutual.” 

Others, like Bruce Koepka, focused on the golf-as-golf theme: players on the LIV circuit and the PGA tour were playing the same game. At the recent Masters, he could “run into 15 (PGA) Tour guys if [he] wanted to in a day and nobody really had any negative feedback, any negative thing to say – and that would be the time to say it.”  

One can never accuse professional golfers of shaking the tree of knowledge, and 2020 US Open Winner and LIV participant Bryson DeChambeau proved that point. “We talked about that [Saudi sportswashing] last year, and we already kind of kicked that to the kerb.  It’s something that I truthfully believe is inaccurate.”  

When asked last week if he had ever had a conversation with bin Salman, the man US intelligence agencies are certain ordered the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, nothing was forthcoming. “No, I have not,” he replied

As to why such a meeting had never happened, the answer was childish, though far from endearingly so. “Because I’m the chairman and CEO of LIV Golf Investments, and that’s where I focus. I focus on golf.  I’ve been involved with golf … as a player, as well as golf course design. I’ve built golf courses in third-world countries. I’ve built golf courses in Communist countries.”  Here we have the Albert Speer of golf, dedicated to the building enterprises, riding high, and without fear. Speer, at the very least, faced a tribunal and received due punishment.

There have been a few indignant spoilsports. Human Rights Watch researcher Joey Shea made a few ripples in the ABC for noting that, “Saudi Arabia has experienced some of its worst periods for human rights in its modern history.” In March 2022, she reminds us, 81 people were executed in one day. 

Strangely enough for a state Liberal opposition leader, David Speirs had also detected some principle in the tangle of sporting sponsorship. Why take “dirty money” from a “despotic”, fundamentalist government while condemning Russia?  

Malinauskas had a reply for his sparring opponent: Speirs had supported the Harvest Rock Festival, run by Live Nation, yet another Public Investment Fund recipient. No matter, retorted Speirs. “We’re paying for print advertising, social media advertising … we’re normalising the Saudi regime.” That normalisation, at least at the State level in Australia, is nigh complete.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University.  He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from LIV Golf

Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela Revisited

April 25th, 2023 by Barbara Nimri Aziz

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

 

 

 

 

It was only when I started reading a collection of this remarkable African leader’s prison letters (records from 1962 to 1990) gathered in a judiciously edited 600-page book that I began to grasp the powerful character behind the freedom fighter, prisoner and South African president. 

Many of us have seen the films “Long Walk to Freedom” and “Mandela”; perhaps we’ve read one of his biographies, autobiographies, collections of essays, and consulted quotations and websites devoted to Nelson Mandela. So we understand a lot about this man’s political and ideological struggle before his incarceration and after his election as South Africa’s president in 1994. 

But this collection of 255 prison letters offers another layer of the man’s personality—one that reminds us of a community beyond his ANC comrades, namely, a family of individuals with whom he was intimately and regularly involved. He carried these people with him into captivity throughout their 27 years of separation. They live with him within his letters. 

Perhaps because of the editorial demands of translating some of the correspondence, locating documents from various sources, clarifying names, and arranging permissions The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela was released only in 2018 (Liveright Publishing, NY). The volume’s interest to historians, civil rights activists and all who celebrate his achievements is clear. Yet within this chronicle, as I read letter after letter, I discover new dimensions of its author. I didn’t expect to learn so much more about Mandela. Not conditions of Robben Island, Pollsmoor and other jails where he was captive; I’m enjoying a deeper insight into the man’s personality and thereby into his ultimate triumph.

As illustrated in The Prison Letters

To start, from excerpts of just four items from the early years of Mandela’s imprisonment at Robben Island, here’s a hint of what this treasure offers.

To Commissioner of Prisons Pretoria (undated letter but possibly October, 1965; ed.)

I am grateful for the concession you made on 13th October, 1965 when you informed me that you had no objection to us exchanging study books among ourselves. This relief will considerably reduce the expenses for prescribed text books … …if the privilege to study us to be of any value, certain conditions are absolutely essential.

17 Feb 1966 Darling, (wife, Winnie Madkizela-MandeIa) 

I should be pleased if you would kindly instruct Mssrs. Hayman and Aronsohn not to proceed with the action against the prison authorities. On 8th February, I had an interview with the chief magistrate of Cape Town who came on the instruction of the Secretary for Justice…I have passed the Hoer Africaanse Taaleksamens and have now enrolled for Africaans-Nederlands Course I with the University of South Africa… my funds have run out…please do not pay from your account.

Tons and tons of love to you darling and a million kisses. Tell Thembi, Kgatho, Maki, Zeni and Zindzi that I miss them very much and send them my love, devotedly Dalibunga

31 Aug 1988 The American Journal of International Law

Dear Sir: I have not received the July 1966 issue of the American Journals of International Law. Presumably because my subscription has lapsed … … I am preparing to write an examination in public International Law shortly and should, therefore, be pleased if you can kindly advise me…

(see further passages below)

Perhaps in the latter part of this chronicle, I will find Mandela’s detailed ill treatment and conditions of imprisonment. Yet I’m not inclined to rush through the remaining 300 pages to search for that. I remain absorbed in each letter, and thereby in the routine but precious lives of his community: he spares no details in comforting and advising those outside how to overcome their daily struggles and ambitions; he offers concrete help to friends and relatives, including those abroad; he directs his attorneys and gathers financial support for his children’s education; he advises his wife through her trial and prison ordeal; he patiently writes prison authorities requesting attention to what he knows are his rights, even as a condemned man; he negotiates the completion of advanced law degrees and learning Africaans, the language if his oppressors. These letters overflow with respect and affection, detailing Mandela’s goodwill and, always, his expectation that he will meet them soon.

Wisely, this volume’s editor does not try to summarize the 27 years that Mandela’s epistolary record covers, but offers useful notes on the dozen or more collections from which these were drawn. In barely 20 pages of introductory remarks, we are given essential background: the stages of imprisonment, limitations on meetings with family, speculation regarding missing letters– those confiscated, never delivered, destroyed, or discovered years later. With this framework, the content of the letters in this volume becomes more remarkable. Mandela never knew if his letters would reach their destination, why others’ replies went missing, why a meeting was cancelled. Artfully, perhaps cunningly, he copied most of his letters before sending, and as evident in this collection, he refers his correspondents to earlier letters he’d sent and to whom. Tracking some of his undelivered materials was again a special contribution of this volume.

All the letters possess a remarkable intimacy, whether they’re recording Mandela’s feelings or relaying specifics about the lives of family and friends, or if they’re directed to officials. He knows of course that everything is censored. 

One might be tempted to fast forward to the more dramatic entries recording his mother’s and son’s death and his wife’s imprisonment. Still, each letter has its strength and genuineness. Each missive, even those about his law studies or his damaged glasses, is revealing. He is never the victim, and apparently never bitter. His long report to the Robben Island Commissioner in July 1976 about censored letters, irregular visits, and other conditions is a skillfully composed document. Comforting his daughter or reporting administrative defects of the prison, his exceptionality seeps out of every line. More than his oft-quoted words, this collection explains Mandela’s positivity and clarity of mind.

This is not a collection to be skimmed through. So, while perusing the final 300 pages, expecting to be equally captivated by every entry, here are a few more excerpts from some letters from Robben Island between 1964 and 1970. 

8 September 1966. The Commanding Officer, Robben Island

I have broken the lens of my reading glasses and I should be pleased if you would kindly arrange for the glasses to be sent for repair to …

2 November 1967,

Dear Cecil (former Golden City Post Editor). I need R150.00 for my studies. May I exploit you. During the last four years I parasited on Winnie. She has been out of employment since April ’65… I must burden you with another… my son Makgatho, was expelled from St Christopher’s Manzini, apparently after a student strike there. He now attends a local school. I fear that the sudden change may affect his progress. He may also feel lonely ad unhappy….I was happy to know of the rapid growth and expansion of the enterprise you have piloted so skillfully…looking forward to the day when I will again see you and enjoy the happy moments we have spent together in the past…. PS please inform Winnie that in arranging the next visit, she must give preference to Madiba or Makgatho…

16 November 1969,

Dade Wethu (Winnie Mandela) I believe that on Dec. 21, you and 21 others will appear in the Pretoria Supreme Court under the Sabotage Act…it would seem that you would require me to give evidence on your behalf….. unjust and contrary to the elementary principles of natural justice to force you to start a long and protracted trial on a serious charge without arrangements having first been made for us to meet… there will be those whose chief interest will be to seek to destroy the image we have built over the last decade. Attempts may be made to do now what they have repeatedly failed…

1 May 1970 (To Mandela’s youngest daughter, Makaziwe)

My darling: I am pleased to hear from Kgatho that you have passed your JC examinations and that you are now proceeding with matric. The good progress that you are making in your studies shows that you are a talented and keen student… I hope that in your next letter it will be possible to give me the symbols that you obtained in each subject… in your undated letter which reached me on the 15th November last year, you say that you no longer want to be a scientist because funds will not be available… I did hear that mom Winnie is in jail and I agree with you that it will be a longtime before she comes out. …I cannot give you a clear and straightforward answer as to who is taking care of the children. But you, Kgatho, Sisi Tellie, Makazi Niki, and our numerous friends are there to look after them.

8 June 1970

Our dear Ma, In July 1967 Major Kellerman, then Commanding Officer of this prison, gave permission for me to write you a special letter of condolence on behalf of all of us here on the occasion of the passing of the late Chief (Albert Luthuli, former president-general of the ANC) Under normal circumstances we would have certainly attended the funeral to pay homage directly to the memory of a great warrior as he passed from the stage into history…

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author


“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

Tutti gli articoli di Global Research possono essere letti in 51 lingue attivando il pulsante Traduci sito sotto il nome dell’autore.

Per ricevere la newsletter quotidiana di Global Research (articoli selezionati), fare clic qui.

Fai clic sul pulsante di condivisione in alto per inviare tramite e-mail/inoltrare questo articolo ai tuoi amici e colleghi. Seguici su Instagram e Twitter e iscriviti al nostro canale Telegram. Sentiti libero di ripubblicare e condividere ampiamente gli articoli di Global Research.

***

Andrew Bridgen, membro del Parlamento britannico, definisce il nuovo Regolamento Sanitario Internazionale (RSI) e il Trattato sulle Pandemie dell’OMS come un’inaudita presa di potere, che priva tutti i 194 paesi dell’OMS, i paesi membri e il mondo intero della loro sovranità sulle questioni sanitarie nazionali.

Il nuovo RSI e il Trattato sulle pandemie trasferirebbero al Direttore generale dell’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità (OMS) l’autorità di decidere cosa sia una pandemia e cosa meriti lo status di Emergenza Sanitaria Pubblica di Preoccupazione Internazionale (PHEIC) e, letteralmente, come debba essere trattata qualsiasi questione di salute – un mandato illimitato di dettami.

Il Direttore generale dell’OMS può imporre un divieto assoluto e una punizione per l’uso di farmaci “vietati dall’OMS”, anche se di provata efficacia. Questo è esattamente ciò che è accaduto durante la COVID. I medici e le farmacie non potevano prescrivere, raccomandare e vendere farmaci efficaci contro la COVID, perché l’OMS li aveva vietati.

Questo potere dell’OMS verrebbe ampliato come legge internazionale, o meglio come ” Ordinamento basato su regole”, il nuovo termine tirannico scelto dall’élite, per aggirare letteralmente qualsiasi legge nazionale e internazionale.

Sia il RSI che il Trattato sulle pandemie saranno votati dalla prossima Assemblea Mondiale della Sanità, che si terrà dal 21 al 30 maggio 2023. La votazione è prevista per il 24 maggio 2023. Per l’approvazione è necessaria una maggioranza di due terzi da parte dei 194 delegati.

Guardate questo video di 20 minuti in cui Andrew Bridgen, membro del Parlamento britannico, spiega al Parlamento britannico perché il nuovo RSI dell’OMS e il Trattato sulle pandemie devono essere respinti.

Questa autorità universale sulle questioni sanitarie mondiali sarebbe nelle mani di un non medico, né scienziato della salute, il Direttore Generale dell’OMS impiantato da Bill Gates, il Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, che in precedenza era membro del Consiglio di Amministrazione di GAVI, l’Alleanza per le Vaccinazioni e stretto partner dell’OMS. GAVI è una creazione di Bill Gates e da lui finanziata.

L’OMS è registrata come agenzia delle Nazioni Unite, cosa che in realtà non è. L’OMS è stata creata nel 1948 per volere di David Rockefeller (1915 – 2017), noto eugenista e globalista, per controllare la “salute” – e la morte – della popolazione mondiale.

L’OMS gode di piena immunità dai procedimenti penali e i suoi dipendenti più anziani godono di uno status diplomatico e di esenzione fiscale in Svizzera.

L’OMS è finanziata per oltre l’80% da fonti private, soprattutto dall’industria farmaceutica, dalla Fondazione Gates e da altri sponsor privati. L’OMS lavora palesemente per gli interessi dei suoi donatori, per lo più l’industria farmaceutica e Bill Gates, anch’egli eugenista, e non per il popolo.Abbiamo visto come l’OMS abbia gestito male – o meglio, in modo criminale – il COVID dall’inizio del 2020, con blocchi mondiali, allontanamenti sociali, tremenda paura, distruggendo le economie, i mezzi di sostentamento delle persone, e causando la morte, non per il COVID ma per le malattie indotte dalla paura, la depressione e la miseria, per una malattia che nel peggiore dei casi è molto simile all’influenza annuale. E per un virus che a tutt’oggi non è MAI stato isolato.

E successivamente, nel dicembre 2020, imponendo e costringendo tutti i governi del mondo a obbligare i propri cittadini a farsi iniettare quello che hanno definito un vaccino, un vaxx di prova a modifica genetica di tipo mRNA, mai testato prima.

Le persone sono state minacciate e hanno perso il lavoro, sono state bandite dai luoghi pubblici – e molto di peggio – se non si fossero sottoposte a questi vaxx non testati, pericolosi e persino mortali.

Secondo gli ordini dell’OMS, il COVID ha colpito il mondo intero, tutti i suoi 194 Stati membri in un colpo solo, legittimando così la dichiarazione di lockdown generale in tutto il mondo il 16 marzo 2020. Si tratta di un’impossibilità assoluta. Anche se esistesse un virus – ripeto, il “virus” COVID non è MAI stato isolato – un virus non colpisce l’intero pianeta nello stesso momento.

A partire dal 16 marzo 2020, la Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (JHSPH) riporta 179.165 “casi COVID” confermati in 155 Paesi, con 7.081 decessi. La JHSPH è ampiamente finanziata dalla Fondazione Bill e Melinda Gates. Queste cifre, anche se fossero vere, sarebbero ben lontane da giustificare qualsiasi blocco globale.Già il 30 gennaio 2020 l’OMS aveva dichiarato il COVID un’emergenza sanitaria pubblica di rilevanza internazionale (PHEIC).

Per coincidenza, dal 21 al 24 gennaio 2020 si è svolto il famigerato incontro di Davos, il World Economic Forum (WEF). 

Il DG dell’OMS Tedros, Gates, gli intermediari del potere e la struttura del potere mondiale, Big Pharma, Big Finance, la maggior parte delle Nazioni Unite e altre organizzazioni internazionali erano presenti al WEF 2020, quando è stata decisa la pandemia, con chiusure globali, indossamento di mascherine e tutte le misure e i dettami sociali umilianti.

Queste “decisioni” sono state prese a seguito di una prima prova a tavolino, denominata Evento 201, che ha simulato un virus “corona”, alla quale erano presenti anche tutti gli attori chiave internazionali, finanziari e farmaceutici, il 18 ottobre 2019 a New York, appena tre mesi prima che si verificasse la famigerata e irreale “epidemia”.

I poteri dietro il WEF hanno incaricato l’OMS di commettere questo colossale e mai visto crimine contro l’umanità, un virus “corona”, in seguito chiamato dal DG dell’OMS Tedros COVID-19.

Questo retroscena sul crimine COVID dell’OMS contro l’umanità è solo un’anticipazione di ciò che potrebbe accadere se il nuovo Regolamento Sanitario Internazionale (RSI) e il Trattato sulle Pandemie, ad esso strettamente collegato, dovessero passare al voto dell’Assemblea Mondiale della Sanità il 24 maggio 2023. Per la ratifica sarebbe necessaria una maggioranza di due terzi.Se accettato, il nuovo RSI e il Trattato sulle pandemie diventerebbero legge da applicare in ogni Paese da parte dell’OMS nel 2024.

Se approvati, i membri dell’OMS approverebbero una “regola” che elimina un diritto umano fondamentale, il diritto delle persone a decidere del proprio corpo.

Non c’è molto tempo per fare pressione contro questo ” ordinamento basato su regole”. Fate tutto il possibile perché il vostro governo voti contro questa presa di potere tirannica, che porterebbe l’umanità in una prigione sanitaria mondiale a cielo aperto.

Se il nuovo IHR e il Trattato sulle Pandemie saranno approvati, noi, il Popolo, dovremo intraprendere le azioni necessarie e chiedere massicciamente, in modo organizzato e pacifico, ma implacabile e deciso, ai nostri governi di uscire dall’OMS, con effetto immediato.


Leggi la versione originale in inglese:

WHO’s Worldwide Power Grab: Beware of the New International Health Regulation and Pandemic Treaty, a Health Tyranny Never Heard of Before in Human History

By Peter Koenig, April 23, 2023


Nota per i lettori: fare clic sul pulsante di condivisione in alto. Seguici su Instagram e Twitter e iscriviti al nostro canale Telegram. Sentiti libero di ripubblicare e condividere ampiamente gli articoli di Global Research.

Peter Koenig è un analista geopolitico ed ex economista senior della Banca Mondiale e dell’Organizzazione Mondiale della Sanità (OMS), dove ha lavorato per oltre 30 anni in tutto il mondo. Tiene conferenze presso università negli Stati Uniti, in Europa e in Sud America. Scrive regolarmente per riviste online ed è autore di Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; e co-autore del libro di Cynthia McKinney “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – 1 novembre 2020).

L’immagine in primo piano è di Stop World Control

  • Posted in Italiano
  • Comments Off on Ultimo Appello Al Mondo Per Impedire All’OMS Di Imprigionare L’umanità

The EU Wants War with China

April 25th, 2023 by Karsten Riise

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

This is devious.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell asks European navies to patrol the Taiwan Strait. Everybody knows that a couple of EU naval ships in the Taiwan Strait will make no military difference what-so-ever. The unspoken objective is that these EU war ships could be confronted by China in a Taiwan-conflict incident. 

That would instantly put the EU in military conflict with China. That in turn, would break all trade between the EU and China during a Taiwan conflict. THAT is the purpose.

Beijing will foresee it and try to play soft with the EU. China might try to ignore the provocation of EU war-ships from Lithuania, Denmark, or Finland, because they will all be so small. But if the US gets involved in hostilities, the EU ships around Taiwan will join the fight too and get sunk anyway. Once a Taiwan conflict starts, what can Beijing do to save the EU ships if they join the US in a fight against China?

This is a US-EU Neocon attempt to put a stick into Beijing’s attempt to play soft with the EU, if or when a conflict breaks out on Taiwan. If a conflict breaks out, and China hits any of the EU war-ships, no matter if from Portugal or Denmark, the EU will be forced to break trade-ties with China. It will be like blowing up the Nord Stream. The Neocon deep-state prevented Germany from buying gas from Russia, even if the German people wanted to. This new plot involves setting the EU population up to get hurt again, this time in a conflict against China.

The EU fleet to Taiwan is a Neocon plot is directed against the EU’s own people. Lock the peoples of the EU into the US conflict with China knowing that they will get gravely hurt. The German auto-industry will lose China, its coming biggest market. The French will lose tourism, sale of Airbus aircraft, nuclear technology, fashion, wine, and food to China. This is Tony Blinken’s concept of “trade denial” from Blinken’s 1987 book “Ally vs. Ally”. US Secretary of State Blinken hasn’t changed since he wrote the following words back in 1987:

“For a number of influential policy makers, the time seems opportune to engage the Soviet Union in a round of economic warfare.

Regardless of the price that might have to be paid by the economies of Western Europe and the American business community, ensure that the pipeline [the trade] not be built because it is incompatible with the policy of trade denial which Washington sought to implement against the Soviet Union”


Break trade with China, even when it hurts your own people.

Germany is desperate to keep trading with China. France is eager too, as we just saw with Macron’s huge business delegation to Beijing. The US will never accept that. EU countries will not be allowed (sic) to play neutral in the escalating Taiwan conflict.

Trade with China is to be broken at all cost, just like the Nordstream. And Josep Borrell plays together with the US to break any chance of EU trade neutrality vis-a-vis China. And plenty of small US-directed EU countries like Lithuania and Finland will play along. Denmark too, as I know them.

Borrell wants to put the EU into a “war time mentality.”: 

“Your own people must bear even immense suffering to hurt the enemy”.

EU war ships to the Taiwan Strait is therefore an extremely important event.

You always use a fuze to ignite a bomb. The fuze in itself is just a tiny explosion, but it is used to set off a big explosion.

Like a fuze, a few small EU war ships from Portugal or Denmark in the Taiwan Strait can do little harm in themselves. But their destruction in conflict is meant to trigger a big explosion of EU hostility, unlimited EU war against China in trade, finance, sanctions, perhaps even distant blockade of traffic to China.

The US is moving Taiwan towards independence, and China will go to war to stop it. The EU wants to join a US war with China for the sake of Taiwan.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Small EU navies in battle for Taiwan – Karsten Riise and Amin Moshrefi, Unsplash CC0

Epidemic of 15-19 Year Olds Dropping Dead in Schools and Dorms Across USA and Canada in April 2023

By Dr. William Makis, April 24, 2023

Found dead in dorm or residence. Cardiac arrest and died while at school. Died after having migraine at school. Died in early morning hours. Died after “brief illness”. Died during tennis practice at school. None of this is normal. All these deaths must be investigated for the possibility of post COVID-19 mRNA vaccine sudden cardiac death or any role that the jabs may have played in these deaths.

Axes Powers of a New Global Cold War? China, Russia, India Versus US, EU, Japan

By Gilbert Mercier, April 24, 2023

Since 2014, which marked the first Russian intervention in Ukraine, a new global geopolitical dynamic has amplified under conflicting impulses. The areas of direct, or more often proxy conflicts, have been in many senses contained with some sort of cynical pressure-cooker mechanism.

Is Biden Taking the World Closer to Nuclear Armageddon?

By Don Hank, April 24, 2023

James Corbett, in his Corbett Report, ran a rather thorough review of the history of Israel’s nukes and how the US helped cover up their existence while all the while backing Netanyahu’s lies about a supposed Iranian nuke development program.

Twitter Files: Twitter Loves Dr. Fauci and Big Pharma “Marketing Strategy”

By Paul D Thacker, April 24, 2023

In a separate Twitter File, a senior Twitter attorney, who interfaced with the FBI on enforcement and removal of “disinformation,” praised Fauci to Twitter’s lawyers as America’s “leading trusted voice” on COVID-19.

The Tower for Twitter? UK Minister Calls for Jailing Social Media Bosses Who Do Not Censor Speech

By Jonathan Turley, April 24, 2023

Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear.

The Geopolitics of “Soft Power”

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, April 24, 2023

From the time after 1945, as consequences of the bloody result of WWII, international, transnational, and supranational multilateral institutions and organizations became valued by the international community more and more primarily as a certain mechanism of the rule of international law for the sake to preserve the stability and functioning of the international system in global policy and IR.

Video: Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize Winning Inventor of PCR “Test”. Died in August 2019

By Kary B. Mullis, RealHistoryChan.com, and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 24, 2023

A brilliant scientist and inventor, Kary Mullis, died just before the outbreak of the Covid-19 HOAX. His PCR duplication / amplification process (intended as a research tool only), earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

9/11 Revelations – Is Washington Now Throwing Riyadh Under the Bus?

By Gavin OReilly, April 24, 2023

Recently released court filings outlining how two of the 9/11 hijackers had knowingly or unknowingly been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation, confirmed what was already open knowledge.

The White House and Billionaires Are Getting Serious About “Blocking Out the Sun”

By Arjun Walia, April 24, 2023

The unquestionable doomsday narrative has permeated mainstream culture for decades as absolute truth. This allows for drastic measures to be justified under the guise of goodwill. Geo-engineering, unfortunately, could be one of them.

US Hegemony No Longer Threatens the World

By Renee Parsons, April 24, 2023

While the world teeters on a potential WW III scenario in Ukraine with the Biden Administration as full time participants, the US government and its Congressional Uniparty continue to enflame its pro war passion with reckless talk of US military involvement against two of the most powerful nuclear nations on the planet – both at the same time.    

  • Posted in NO READ MORE LINK
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Epidemic of 15-19 Year Olds Dropping Dead in Schools and Dorms Across USA and Canada in April 2023

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

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

Visit and follow us on InstagramTwitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

We repost this article from 2022 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark in commemoration of ANZAC Day.

Secular religions are hard to battle in terms of their misplaced assumptions.  In some ways, they are even harder to fight than those based on mythical gods and superstitious foundations, many drawn from desert religions and sandy practice.  ANZAC, the name of the Australian New Zealand Army Corps, hardly sounds promising as the basis of a religion.  But since the needless, bungled operation in the Dardanelles that led to the slaughter of Australian and New Zealand Troops in April 1915, along with Turkish, British and French soldiers, the acronym has become scented, meaningful and powerful.

At first, it all seems rather daft.  These troops, for the most part ignorant of geography and certainly of the myriad nature of European power relations, found themselves invading the Ottoman Empire in a chess move thought up by Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty.  If the Ottoman Empire could be defeated, Imperial Germany would lose a key ally and be exposed on its flank.  The mission failed in spectacular fashion and allowed Kemal Atatürk, future leader of secular Turkey, to distinguish himself.

During the First World War, Australia, with a population of 5 million, lost 62,000 men from 416,809 enlistees.  Of those, 156,000 were wounded or taken prisoner.  Over 3,000 men returned with tuberculosis and infected the population accordingly.  The debilities of unrecognised shellshock reigned.  This loss disfigured the country irreparably, dulling its optimism for reform.  Australian communities turned inward, solemnly pouring savings into the creation of memorials across the country.

In its modern sense, Anzac Day has become, over the years, a parade for amnesia rather than reckoning, a ritual that rejects peace makers and conciliators in favour of the war mongers and undertakers.  Disturbingly, the war mongers are allowed to skip merrily away from responsibility and celebrate character before the bullet and the shell.

Before Turkish fire, Australian soldiers were performed heroically and foolishly, adventurers in invasion meeting their demise before the ill-planned stratagems of their superiors.  They were material for the empire, dolts for the cause, and discharged their roles well.  They proved themselves suitably unthinking for the purpose of slaughter.  “These raw colonial troops,” wrote British war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, “proved worthy to fight side by side with the heroes of Mons, the Aisne, Ypres and Neuve Chapelle.”

The geography, loyalty, and circumstances of the Anzac Myth have troubled a number of Australian historians over the years.  Marylyn Lake, in a public lecture given at Melbourne University’s free public series in 2009, was convinced that, “Australia’s identity shouldn’t be built on deaths in foreign fields.”

For Lake, the myth is an umbilical cord and retardant, a bar to the realisation of maturity.  “The myth will remain our creation story until the nation is reborn, until we have the courage to detach ourselves from the mother country, declare our independence, inaugurate a republic, draw up a constitution that recognises the first wars of dispossession fought against indigenous peoples.”

Anzac might have disappeared after seemingly running out of oxygen during the 1960s and 1970s.  The divisive Vietnam War, with its various opponents in Australia, did not help.  Then came the decades of revival, which also saw a scrubbing of complexity as to why Australians had ever volunteered in the first place for craven leaders guided by paranoia.

The Anzac myth became bound to notions of noble, stoic “mateship”, characterised by Peter Weir’s 1981 film Gallipoli.  There were cruel and mentally vacant officers, and strikingly brave foot soldiers going to their death with an unquestioning valour.  It was all about, as one implausible assessment goes, “brave soldiers keen to prove themselves as representatives of a fledgling  nation, albeit one with an ignominious convict past”.

After 1996, during the years of the conservative Howard government, commemorations and war time lessons (or mis-teachings), became the norm.  The Department of Veteran Affairs became a big fan of ahistorical instruction and hagiographical slurry.  In padding and developing the myth, it was important to exclude a number of things.  Anti-war movements vanished.  The records of criminally incompetent generals and politicians were nowhere to be seen.  The misogyny underlying the ideology could also be left alone.

Anzac traditions must, in their calling, resist self-examination and questioning.  They are grotesque sentiments about mangled bodies and foolish decisions, sparing of military leadership and dooming the bloodied soldier.  And if questions are asked, they often end up in the kind of execrable analysis that John Roskam of the Institute of Public Affairs offered in 2007.  “War is often necessary,” he wrote with faux meaning, “and Australians have answered the call.”  Even if the call is misguided or an incitement to unlawful conduct.

Roskam mentions the Iraq War, which began as an illegal invasion in 2003, and refuses to accept the awkward reality that Australian soldiers were inculpated by the operation.  He can only offer a dottily pathetic observation: “One of the things that Anzac Day represents is the willingness of Australians to stand up for what they believe in.”  How utterly noble.

Future unthinking Australian soldiers are likely to supply the raw material for more wars, including one in the Pacific.  It is bound to be a foolish encounter, most likely led by the United States, and likely to result in few returns.  Defence Minister Peter Dutton has been very happy to promise the laying down of Australian lives so that the US may feel secure, even if he is not entirely sure what the whole business about Taiwan is about.

The Australian Prime Minister of the day will be able, along with the cabinet, to say that it was all a job well done, presuming they survive such a conflict.  And any moral twinge of sadness will be remedied by ceremonial, tear-soaked largesse, in addition the $498 million pencilled in for converting Canberra’s Australian War Museum into a militarist wonderland.  The unaccountable will continue to send the unthinking into battle.

*

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

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The birth of a bipolar world order?

Since 2014, which marked the first Russian intervention in Ukraine, a new global geopolitical dynamic has amplified under conflicting impulses. The areas of direct, or more often proxy conflicts, have been in many senses contained with some sort of cynical pressure-cooker mechanism. If empires always seek hegemony, sane geopolitics imply balance to avoid slipping into World War scenarios. We have presently reached a Cold War-like balance between two blocs: the West and their satellites on one side, against BRICS nations and their affiliates on the other side. In the best case scenario, this new cold war could give birth to a lasting bipolar world order: curiously enough, following pretty closely Orwell’s cartography of Oceania & Eurasia.

The West is defined by the US empire and its vassals

The two axes of powers must be explained more precisely. On one side “the West” includes US, UK, EU, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Australia. The command headquarters of this imperial structure are of course located in the United States of America. The empire’s military muscle is NATO. As for the junior members such as the UK, European Union and Japan, they are, despite some claims of the contrary the vassals of big Uncle Sam.

One factor could be viewed as a miscalculation by Vladimir Putin. In many ways his decision last year to start a military operation in Ukraine had a paradoxical effect. The intervention was an attempt by Russia to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO & the EU, but this has failed as Western military gears as well as direct assistance have poured in. Just like in Afghanistan in the 1980’s Russia was effectively sucked into a West proxy war. Meanwhile, NATO has found a new raison d’etre with Finland now officially a member and Sweden soon also to become one. The general paranoia used in Western media to depict Putin as the ultimate bogeyman has worked wonders on Europe’s public opinion.

BRICS and Affiliates

On the other side it is more complex as China’s dominance is more subdued than that of the US. Besides the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China & South-Africa, other nations are gravitating into the same geopolitical orbit: notably Iran, Venezuela and African countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso.

While China is clearly the biggest power within BRICS, the other two major players, which are Russia and India, also are heavyweights on an overall geopolitical and economic scale.

Russia holds vast reserves of energy products, such as gas and oil, and since the European sanctions has quickly worked on redirecting its energy production both towards China and India. India, which has become the most populous country on Earth, has just like China a considerable manufacturing power as well as a huge internal market for products and services. In other words, neither China nor India have to rely mainly on exports to sustain their respective economic growth.

Non-alignment is dead

The concept of non-alignment in a multipolar world, dear to the likes of Tito and de Gaulle, has unfortunately become a geopolitical faux pas at best, or a risky behavior for a small state wanting to stay independent at worst. Because of a lack of political will and leadership, the European Union has basically capitulated from asserting itself as a third block to become a provincial entity of the US empire. The notion of true non-alignment might have run its course in this new bipolar order.

As matter of fact, one of the Ukraine war’s major side effects has been to speed up the process of obedient realignment of the EU to the US.

European leaders with their respective media propaganda divisions (either state or corporate controlled) have managed to convince the bulk of their public opinion that the ogre Vladimir Putin and Russia had to be defeated in Ukraine as if the hordes from a memory of the Red Army were about to invade Europe.

The Ukraine war has been sold in Europe as a war of necessity to counter an existential threat that was never really there. Public opinion largely bought it, and the financial rewards are pouring into the coffers of the military-industrial complex, as well as US and Qatari energy businesses of natural gas liquefaction, to replace the well-organized Russian gas supply Europe used to get before the sanctions against Russia.

Ukraine war cannot be won on the battlefields

Despite what most people are lead to believe in the West, a military victory by Ukrainian forces, even with full logistic support from NATO in equipment and training is quasi impossible. After all, a lesson should be learned from Afghanistan where the Taliban managed to defeat the mighty alliance.

If the EU and the United States cared for the welfare of Ukrainians, they would come to the realization that only a diplomatic solution can resolve the crisis. A sine qua non condition of diplomacy is that it requires concessions on all sides.

For example, let’s take the case of Crimea. It has a complex history. During the 15th century Crimea was under control of the Ottoman Empire. In 1783, the Russian Empire of Tsarina Catherine the Great annexed Crimea after a conflict with Turkey. Lastly, under the authority of Nikita Khrushchev, the USSR gave Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Therefore, Crimea was Russian for 171 years while it was Ukrainian for only 60 years. The weight of history, in this case, should tilt the balance in favor of Russia.

Military-industrial complex Uber Alles

Wars have always been capitalism‘s best friend. Ultimately they are seldom about the lofty notions of patriotism but systematically about profits. Ukraine’s Western proxy adventure is no exception. As matter of fact, it has been a gargantuan bonanza for the global military-industrial complex and its stockholder war profiteers. Case in point: since Russia started its military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, the United States has spent $30 billion in military equipment which was shipped to Ukraine. This is according to the US Department of Defense.

For its part the European Union is planning a 74 billion Euros increase in military spending within three years. This trend of huge increase in military spending affects all the EU 27 members, as they are allocating bigger shares of their respective GDPs to this weapons race. In December 2022, the European Defense Agency proudly announced that EU defense spending had surpassed 200 billion Euros for the first time in the union’s history. What an accomplishment!

Needless to say, military-industrial consortium and their unscrupulous stockholders have collected huge dividends from the death and destruction business. Stocks in the so-called aerospace & defense area of the market have been incredibly profitable for investors and are therefore in high demand. On average, most defense-company stocks have seen their values increase by 25 to 30 percent since February 2022.

Naturally, in terms of military spending, the United States represents the lions’ share with a whopping 38 percent of the global military spending. It is an astronomical $800 billion a year or 3.1 percent of the US GDP. Unfortunately other major powers are catching up. In second place comes China with $293 billion or 1.7 percent of its GDP; then India with $76.6 billion; the UK with 68.4 billion; Russia with $65.9 billion or 3.1 percent of GDP; France and Germany with $56 billion each; and Japan with $54 billion. In France, despite a very concerning debt, the Macron administration has announced that 413 billion Euros will be spent on the military between 2024 and 2030.

Taiwan: the Ukraine of the far-east?

With Russia sucked into what can be called a military quagmire in Ukraine, one has to wonder if the Oceania empire, with its Washington nevralgic center, would not indeed want to take advantage or even provoke a Chinese move to take over Taiwan, in accordance to the One-China precept. This could create a Ukrainian-like situation for China in Taiwan. Instead of having the obedient EU to absorb part of the cost in the West, in the Pacific it could be US vassals such as Japan, South-Korea and Australia that could get involved into a proxy war with China, and therefore increase their military spending in US equipment. Trillions of dollars would be wasted in resources to allow the chess masters of geopolitics to keep playing their mindless criminal games. Everywhere, the brutal “Russian roulette” folly of capitalism, either state or corporate, would thrive while all populations suffer.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on News Junkie Post.

Gilbert Mercier is the author of The Orwellian Empire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NATO

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

James Corbett, in his Corbett Report, ran a rather thorough review of the history of Israel’s nukes and how the US helped cover up their existence while all the while backing Netanyahu’s lies about a supposed Iranian nuke development program.

From this tell-all report it is clear that Iran is not a threat. Israel is the real threat.

A lot of people believe Biden is taking the world closer to nuclear Armageddon than it’s ever been before, and they are right. With his war in Ukraine, which started on the Maidan in 2014, he is dancing the danse macabre with a nuclear power. And he couldn’t care less.

But who supports this threat from Israel? The same Uniparty that supports the threat of nuclear war in Eastern Europe, namely, the US regime.

So will Trump drag us back from the brink and make the world a safer place?

Unfortunately, it was Trump who pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal, without any plausible reason except the desire to dazzle his terminally gullible fanboys and pick up a few more votes. And Trump couldn’t  care less if the Middle East explodes, literally.

The IAEA repeatedly assured that Iran had no plans to build a bomb. The US officially agreed.

Yet Israel kept haranguing that Iran was building a bomb.

And all the while, Israel had hundreds of undeclared nukes!

Trump knew that when he pulled out of the Iran deal that Israel was the real threat, with its estimated hundreds of nukes and that pulling out made the Middle East and the world a powder keg – or might we say, plutonium keg?

But Trump knew much of the US grassroots were brain-dead enough to fall for his tall tales, the taller the better.

The US, on both sides of the aisle, is involved in this nuclear threat up to its eyeballs and if a nuke ever explodes in the Middle East, don’t ask how it happened. Look no further than the Shining City on a Hill aka the Indispensable Nation aka the Exceptional Nation aka the Uniparty.

Neither of the political parties in this lovely citadel will save you.

In a bitter irony, there may be one thing that saves the world from a nuclear Armageddon in the Middle East and that is the vast stockpile of Iran’s precision long-range missiles.

Because with these non-nuclear armed missiles –which constitute a “deterrence”– should Israel ever decide to unleash attacks on Iran, that country has the potential of taking out every single US base in the Middle East (along with Tel Aviv and Haifa, as outlined by Iranian Brigadier General Kiomars Heidari).

Remember: Trump had no answer to the retaliatory strike launched as payback for the cowardly murder of General Qassem Soleimani and his cohorts in Baghdad. A murder that was justified with a lie.

Washington knows that, likewise, it has no adequate face-saving answer to the annihilation of the US illegal presence in Iran’s backyard.

Tel Aviv also knows this and that is why it has so far not risked an attack on Iran.

But the US and Israel are pathocracies, and anything can happen.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from American Free Press

Golpes y más golpes al dólar

April 24th, 2023 by Hedelberto López Blanch

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

When Elon Musk tweeted “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci” last December, Fauci went on Fox News and said he had no clue what the Twitter CEO was talking about.

“A lot of people are spouting out a lot of things about me and Twitter,” Fauci told Fox News. “I’ve never had a Twitter account. I don’t intend on having a Twitter account, and I’ve had nothing to do with Twitter. So I don’t know what they’re talking about when they say that.”

Fauci made similar claims during an almost 7-hour deposition. While under oath, the then-medical advisor to President Biden denied using Twitter or even paying attention to social media.

“I don’t do social media.”

“Since I don’t have a Twitter account, I don’t see tweets.”

“I’m so dissociated from social media … I’ve never gotten involved in any of that.”

“The social media and Twitter, I told you, I don’t have a Twitter account. I don’t tweet. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do anything.”

Not true according to a new Twitter File uncovered during a visit to Twitter’s San Francisco HQ that shows Anthony Fauci…taking over the White House’s Twitter account. “Dr. Anthony Fauci did an account takeover for @WHCOVIDResponse,” reads a Twitter internal COVID-19 monthly update.

Twitter’s monthly update also documented work they did with Johnson and Johnson on “messaging strategy” to help market their pharma client’s COVID-19 vaccine—action that happened only months after Twitter began removing and labeling tweets that they deemed vaccine “misinformation.” By the summer of 2021, Johnson and Johnson began a full court press, marketing multiple pharma products on Twitter.

In a separate Twitter File, a senior Twitter attorney, who interfaced with the FBI on enforcement and removal of “disinformation,” praised Fauci to Twitter’s lawyers as America’s “leading trusted voice” on COVID-19.

Click here to continue reading.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from The DisInformation Chronicle

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Twitter Files: Twitter Loves Dr Fauci and Big Pharma “Marketing Strategy”

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

As previously discussed, after Musk decided to buy Twitter, Hillary Clinton called upon European countries to force social media companies to censor Americans.  The European Union quickly responded by threatening Musk and other executives. Now, Technology and Science Secretary Michelle Donelan has announced plans to jail social media executives if they fail to censor so-called “harmful” content on their websites. The government, of course, will determine what is deemed too harmful for citizens to see or hear.

Donelan is seeking speech arrests under the UK’s Online Safety Bill, a draconian censorship bill that would effectively ban end-to-end encryption for private internet users.

The bill uses Britain’s broadcasting regulator Ofcom to censor “all forms of expression which spread, incite, promote or justify hatred” based on various progressive characteristics, including transgenderism. So the government can censor anyone who it views as promoting or justifying hatred against virtually any group. Those who do not censor can now be rounded up by Donelan and her minions.

According to a report by The Telegraph, companies will also face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenue should they dare to ignore Britain’s demands to preemptively delete or obscure posts violating its coming censorship regime.

The decline of free speech in the United Kingdom has long been a concern for free speech advocates. A man was convicted for sending a tweet while drunk referring to dead soldiers. Another was arrested for an anti-police t-shirt. Another was arrested for calling the Irish boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend a “leprechaun.” Yet another was arrested for singing “Kung Fu Fighting.” A teenager was arrested for protesting outside of a Scientology center with a sign calling the religion a “cult.”

Recently we discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crackdown on free speech.

Donelan is only the latest voice of a rising generation of censors. These officials proudly parade their intent to silence or jail those with dissenting views. Yet, they do so in the name of tolerance. This is why free speech is in a free fall in Europe and why we must remain vigilant in this country to resist figures like Clinton who want to bring European censorship to our shores.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: London, United Kingdom. Portrait of Minister of State, Michelle Donelan. 10 Downing Street. (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

The Geopolitics of “Soft Power”

April 24th, 2023 by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

If we are taking into consideration the relations between IR and diplomacy, founded on the contractual relations between the states, it can be argued that soft power in this case mostly depends on. From the time after 1945, as consequences of the bloody result of WWII, international, transnational, and supranational multilateral institutions and organizations became valued by the international community more and more primarily as a certain mechanism of the rule of international law for the sake to preserve the stability and functioning of the international system in global policy and IR. State authority can achieve soft power within the framework of institutional power, by designing institutions, agenda-setting, or creating the will of the coalition as a whole – like the policy of the USA within NATO, for instance.

In principle, there are five focal factors on which the soft power of the state authority directly depends within the framework of the international, transnational, and supranational institutions:

  • The state authority has to be familiar with the norms and rules of multilateral international, transnational, and supranational institutions. Most of those institutions are today still indispensable factors for the sake of the operation of international communication and IR regardless of the fact that some of them are unfair, corrupted, and unequal.
  • The state authority has to learn to set agendas not merely and visibly for its own selfish interest, but as well as for more broader public interest at least concerning the target group of the countries for the very practical reason that only the agenda which represents the greater number of public interest and political aims is having real chances to be accepted by others. Nevertheless, the process of setting the agenda surely reflects a discourse power but at the same time it as well as requires a state authority to have strong communication skills in order to create consensus in a group especially in the case when exists divergent and/or diametrically opposite views.[i]
  • The workable, attractive, and finally successful design solution for a problematic issue that is created by a state authority during the discussion usually attracts the representatives of other states or institutions/organizations to follow it and, consequently, increase its soft power.[ii]
  • Credibility-saving is as well as of extreme significance to the soft power of the state authority in any kind of multilateral international institution like the national image in IR is a crucial element or factor of soft power. In practice, for instance, if the state authorities more comply with international rules and norms, usually the reputation of their countries is rising and, therefore and consequently, they can create stronger social and political capital which can enhance the soft power of their governments in the international society.
  • An action by the state authority founded rather on inclusive interests than self-interests is increasing its soft power in IR. Contrary, selfish patriotic nationalism is becoming usually a disadvantage concerning the accumulation of soft power.[iii]

The soft power of any state government depends mostly on three fundamental resources:

1) The culture of the state, i.e., its people;

2) The political system of the state; and

3) The foreign policy of the government.

All three of these resources can be more or less attractive or not attractive for others for different political, ethnonational, confessional, or ideological reasons. For instance, soft power founded on the attractiveness of the government’s foreign policy can be fruitful only if others see it as legitimate according to the norms and rules of international law and having moral authority.

Nevertheless, there are parenthetical conditions that are the focal factors in determining whether the resources of soft power are going to be translated into the behavior of attraction that can influence others and direct their policies toward favorable outcomes. It has to be clearly noticed that with soft power, what the target thinks is of extreme importance followed by the target matters as much as the agents.

In many practical cases, culture is an important resource of soft power but usually and especially by the countries of Great Powers (GP).[iv] Culture, in general, is the pattern of social behaviors by which certain groups are transmitting knowledge and values to other groups, and it is functioning on multiple levels.[v] However, many cultural aspects are universal, some of them are national or very particular to social strata or small groups (for instance, ethnocultural minorities).

One of the crucial features of culture is that it is never static, and different cultures are interacting in different ways. For Western policymakers, one of the cardinal questions in this matter is: Can Western cultural attraction reduce current extremist appeals in Islamic societies? Many researchers, especially Americans, see in this case an unbridgeable cultural and civilizational divide. However, in Iran, for instance, Western music and films are popular with many youngsters like in some other Islamic states. That is a way how the Western cultural soft power is promulgated in Islamic culture and society.

However, culture, political values, and foreign policies are not the only resources that are producing soft power but they are cardinal. For instance, military resources are able to produce soft power too like hard power policy. The same is in many practical cases around the world true of economic resources which are used to attract the policy of a certain state.

A successful economy is a very significant and powerful resource of attraction under the umbrella of soft power, like both Japan and China in the case of the Asia-Pacific region, for instance, have each discovered. The economic power is able, at the same time, to provide the resources that are proper to be used as hard power inducements in the form of aid or coercive sanctions. In reality, however, it is very difficult to make difference in what part of an economic or financial relationship is comprised of hard and soft power. For instance, the centralized bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels of the European Union (EU) is keen to describe the desire by other (East European) states to join the EU as a sign of the EU’s soft power (primarily seen in financial aid).[vi]

Many realists argue that the difference between hard and soft power is a contrast between realism and idealism, but, in essence, there is no contradiction between realism and soft power. In other words, soft power cannot be considered a form of liberalism or idealism as it is, in essence, a form of power or one way of getting desired results in politics. Nevertheless, legitimacy is a powerful reality and, consequently, competitive struggles over international legitimacy became a significant part of enhancing or depriving actors of soft power. 

In soft power policy are no state authorities involved as diplomacy in our time includes a variety of non-state actors like different corporations, organizations, institutions, NGOs, etc. all of them have to a certain degree soft power of their own. In practice, even individual celebrities can use their soft power. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] The 39th President of the USA, James Earl (“Jimmy”) Carter (1977−1981) increased the American soft power and, in general, the image of the USA in IR when in 1978 he achieved the Camp David agreement which established peace between Israel and the leading Arab nation – Egypt. That was the most enduring diplomatic act of reconciliation in the Middle East since the 1940s. 

[ii] For example, Chinese authority’s constructive role in the 1955 Bandung Conference in seeking common ground while reserving differences to meetings of participants, became a key factor of conference’s success and, consequently, the reputation of China and its soft power expanded in the countries of the third world (mainly Africa).

[iii] For instance, today’s Chinese very positive and attractive influence in the African continent is partially due to the accumulated soft power in the 1960s as many African nations did not forget China’s timely and disinterested aid to them at that time. Nevertheless, the soft power of China in the African emerging market countries is as well as originating in Chinese business activities which are naturally guided mainly by narrow self-interest. 

[iv] The fundamental division of the world states according to their impact on global affairs is just into two basic categories: 

  1. The category of the GP (several top-powerful states).
  2. The category of non-GP (middle power and low- or non-influential states).

A GP state is such a state that is considered to be a member of the most powerful and influential group of states in a hierarchical order of the world state-system. Today, this term is related to the state that is regarded to be among the most powerful states in the global political system [Richard W. Mansbach, Kirsten L. Taylor, Introduction to Global Politics, Second edition, London−New York: Routledge, 2012, 578]. 

The most problematic issue in the categorization of the states within the world state-system is applied criteria. Nevertheless, the criteria which define one state to be or not to be a great power is usually, at least from the academic point of view, of the following basic ten-point conditions:

  1. A GP state is such a state that is on the top-rank level of military power, having the real capacity to protect and maintain its own security and to influence the politics of other states or other actors in international relations.
  2. A GP state is a state that can be defeated militarily only by another member of the GP club or by an alliance of some of the states coming from this club.
  3. A GP state is from the economic perspective of a powerful state. This condition is necessary but, however, in some cases (like today Japan or the USA at the time of its isolationist period of foreign policy) is not and sufficient condition for the GP status. This is a quantitative condition for the status of a GP. The other quantitative conditions are a certain level of GDP, GNP or GDI or the size of its armed forces. The economic conditions can be and of qualitative nature like a high level of industrialization or the capability to make and to use nuclear weapons.
  4. A GP state has rather global, but not merely regional or continental, spheres of influence and interest. It means that a GP is such a state that possesses, exercises as well as defend its own interest throughout the globe.
  5. A GP state has to be at the front rank in regard to its military power and therefore it has to enjoy both certain privileges and duties dealing with global peace and international security.
  6. Probably, the most important feature of a GPs states is that they adopt and apply a „forward“ foreign policy having rather actual but not only potential impact on international affairs and other states or groups of them. It practically means that a GP state can not adopt a foreign policy of isolationism [Martin Griffiths, Terry O’Callaghan, Steven C. Roach, International Relations: The Key Concepts, Second edition, London−New York, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2008, 134−135; Andrew Heywood, Global Politics, London−New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, 7. On the GP, see more in (Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1987). On the historical role of the GP in international relations, see in (Bear F. Braumoeller, The Great Powers and the International System: Systemic Theory in Empirical Perspective, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012)].
  7. The members of the GP club tend to share a global outlook that is founded on their own national interests far from their homes.
  8. The GPs have the strongest military forces and strongest economies to support their GP status. However, their strongest economic status is guaranteed by the combination of several inter-related factors: 1. Their large population, 2. Rich natural resources, 3. Most advanced technology, and 4. Highly educated labor force [Joshua S. Goldstein, International Relations, Fifth Edition, New York: Longman, 2003, 95].
  9. The GP cannot easily lose its status in IR even after heavy military defeat due to its size, manpower, and long-term economic potentials.
  10. The GP form alliances with smaller and weaker client (quisling) states.

A GP status to some state can be and formally recognized by the international community as it was the case by the League of Nations in the interwar time or by the United Nations Organization (UNO) after WWII up today (five veto-rights permanent member states of the Security Council – China, Russia, France, the USA, and the United Kingdom). A GP status of these five „extraordinary“ members of the UNSC is guaranteed by their practice of unanimity. In other words, a concept of the GP unanimity holds that on all resolutions and/or proposals before the UNSC, a veto by any one of these five (privileged) states can be used that practically means that one GP state can block further work of the UNSC on a certain issue [Steven L. Spiegel et al, World Politics in a New Era, Third Edition, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2004, 696]. Undoubtedly, one of the critical features of any GP state is its power projection that is a considerable influence, by force or not, beyond state’s borders, i.e. abroad, that less powerful countries could not match (for instance, the NATO military aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 conducted in fact by the USA).

The GP states are interconnected within a Great-Power System that is the set of special relationships between and among this privileged club of the most powerful global actors in IR. Those special relations are conducted by their own rules and patterns of interaction as the GP have very extraordinary ways of behaving and treating each other. This special way is, however, not applied to other states or other actors in global politics and the system of IR.  

[v] About this issue, see more in [Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books: New York, 1973].

[vi] See more in [Martin Wolf, “Soft Power: The EU’s Greatest Gift”, Financial Times, 2005-02-02].

Featured image is from Brand Finance

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Lula is essentially saying that the comprehensive expansion of Brazilian-Russian economic relations is dependent on Russia compromising on those national security goals that it seeks to advance through its ongoing special operation in Ukraine, which Moscow officially regards as existential. This stance contradicts everything that the multipolar community stands for, thus placing Brazil on the West’s political side in the Russian-US dimension of the New Cold War despite its growing ties with China.

The global systemic transition to multipolarity has seen dozens of countries abandoning the Western-centric paradigm of International Relations that’s infamous for its imposition of unilateral conditions onto others and the influence that zero-sum thinking places on policy formulation. Brazil formally counts itself as one of those states that’s focused on building a more equitable world order, particularly in joint coordination with its BRICS partners, yet President Lula just discredited it during his trip to Portugal.

While there, RT reported that he placed conditions on his visit to Russia that was extended to him by President Putin via Foreign Minister Lavrov during the latter’s recent visit to Brazil. Lula’s chief foreign policy advisor recently revealed in a lengthy interview about his boss’ worldview that he doesn’t have any plans at the moment to go there or to Ukraine, but the Brazilian leader clarified on Saturday that he might reconsider if those two make tangible progress towards peace.

He probably thought that this would make him look “balanced”, “neutral”, and “pragmatic”, but while this approach will likely earn him a proverbial pat on the back from his Western partners, it completely discredits his country’s foreign policy in the eyes of Russia and the rest of the multipolar community. The reason for this assessment is that this second category of countries doesn’t believe in imposing unilateral conditions onto their partners, let alone those that involve their relations with third parties.

What Lula just did shows how closely aligned his worldview is with the US’ ruling liberalglobalist Democrats with whom he reportedly proposed launching a global influence network during his trip to DC in February per Politico’s recent report citing congressional figures who attended that meeting. Instead of concocting a “publicly plausible” pretext to “politely” turn down his counterpart’s invitation to attend mid-June’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Lula is making demands of President Putin.

He’s essentially saying that the comprehensive expansion of Brazilian-Russian economic relations is dependent on Russia compromising on those national security goals that it seeks to advance through its ongoing special operation in Ukraine, which Moscow officially regards as existential. This stance contradicts everything that the multipolar community stands for, thus placing Brazil on the West’s political side in the Russian-US dimension of the New Cold War despite its growing ties with China.

About those, Lula’s grand strategy (which can be learned more about in detail through the preceding two hyperlinked analyses) is basically to “balance” between its top Chinese and US partners – however clumsily – via de-dollarization with the first and proselytizing “wokeism” with the second. Relations with Russia are considered expendable since its importance in this paradigm pales in comparison to those two’s, being mostly relegated to the sphere of cooperation on commodities (including energy).

Even though Brazil and Russia have shared interests in accelerating financial multipolarity, especially through BRICS’ new reserve currency project, Lula clearly let his ideological preference for the West take precedence over this by imposing the conditions that he just did for participating in mid-June’s event. There’s absolutely no chance that Russia will compromise on its national security goals in Ukraine just so he’d consider showing up at that investment forum so it should be taken for granted that he won’t go.

While his side’s propagandists might try to spin this by reminding everyone that he won’t go to Ukraine either unless it and Russia make tangible progress towards peace, Brazil’s relations with Kiev aren’t anywhere near as important for the global systemic transition as its ones with Moscow are. It can therefore be said that Lula isn’t just holding bilateral ties with Russia hostage via his unilateral demand, but is thus also slowing down the pace at which their shared financial multipolarity goals unfold.

What’s so damning about this insight is that every objective observer now knows that Brazil can’t be relied upon during Lula’s third term since he’s formulating foreign policy under the influence of outdated Western-centric paradigms due to his ideological alignment with the US Democrats. No member of the multipolarity community can take their ties with that country for granted, not even China, since there’s always the chance that the US will pressure him to replicate this unfriendly policy against them too.

Should a hot conflict break out in the South China Sea or across the Taiwan Strait for example, then it’s expected that Lula would also unilaterally reduce Brazil’s ties with China on the false pretext of wanting to come off as “balanced”, “neutral”, and “pragmatic”. After all, US-led NATO is actively waging a proxy war on Russia through Ukraine right now, yet he didn’t let that prevent him from visiting DC in early February or Portugal this weekend. This shows that he’s indeed hypocritically applying double standards.

Considering this, his peace rhetoric can be seen as nothing more than a cover for his political alignment with the US against Russia in the most geostrategically significant conflict since World War II. It’s just a tactic for deceiving wishful thinkers in the Alt-Media Community and facilitating his propagandists’ gaslighting operations aimed at manipulating popular perceptions about the truth of his foreign policy. By placing conditions on his visit to Russia, Lula proved that ties with that BRICS country are expendable.

Barry Humphries: Misunderstood Anarchist of Culture

April 24th, 2023 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

 

He was always a step ahead, his mind geared not only for the next move, but the next sequence. He also smelt it, anticipated the audience reaction, shaped the prejudice in context for consumption. He created an antipodean version of dada art. He confused, baffled and enraged audiences with his polymathic, panoramic reach.  

The genius of the late Barry Humphries first took root in Britain, along with a flowing of other Australian expatriates who had made Blighty their home. It became evident in Britain’s most famous, remorseless panner of reputation and issue, the satirical magazine Private Eye, that weedkiller of inflated reputations. There, another genius of comedy, Peter Cook, understood a kindred spirit. At Cook’s suggestion, Humphries ran a comic strip that made him famous and eventually found celluloid expression: The Adventures of Barry McKenzie.

The reception of the comic strip in Australia, with its slang-fluent, rough protagonist stomping through the Mother Country, was a foretaste of things to come. Compiled in three book collections, the first two were banned by the Customs Department under the Customs Prohibited Import Regulations.The silly justification was section 4A, which prohibited the importation of works and articles deemed blasphemous, indecent, or obscene, or unduly emphasising matters of sex, horror, violence or crime, or are likely to encourage depravity.  

The harebrained nature of this measure, one that could only have been appreciated by Humphries, was that selections from Private Eye, including “Barry McKenzie’s Naughty Night”, were already available in the country in the 1965 publication Penguin Private Eye.

Her Dame Edna Everage (Mrs Norm Everage to some) act, hewn from the dull, insular terrain of Moonee Ponds in Victoria, was always going to be an uneven sell for home audiences. In the sex-suppressed Anglosphere, with its hypocrisies of gender, control and concealment, it was brilliant, a poking, full frontal display of the bigoted housewife giving bigotry a lengthy outing.

The bricks of the mythmakers are now being assembled, an effort to build a mausoleum of deception. Always be suspicious of the “he was much loved by all” tag; they usually have a fair share of aggrieved, envious enemies.  

There are, however, clues in the coverage.  Humphries was a “comedy export” – read, not palatable in straitlaced, monochrome Australia, a bit too salty, or gamey, for local consumption. He tested his various alter-egos – the barely tolerable Edna, the monstrous, dribbling Sir Les Patterson and so forth – on foreign soil.  (Rarely mentioned in tributes is his more complex, rounded character, Sandy Stone.) Contrary to the hagiographically saccharine accounts now clogging news outlets and tributes, Australians did not like what they saw of themselves.  The BH treatment was harsh, unsparing, and relentlessly Juvenalian. 

With ever increasing notoriety, he would become the target of stock standard accusations. He was unfair to women. He toyed with race. He was insensitive and lacked empathy. None of these viewpoints appreciated Kurt Tucholsky’s observation made in 1919 that satire, in its essence, is unfair: “the just,” goes the Biblical expression, “suffer with the unjust.”

In November 1978, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal criticised Humphries for his “put down of middle-aged women” (Canberra Times, Nov 3, 1978). One irony-free Tina Namow of the Women’s Studies Collective at Flinders University was a case in point, spending time combing through commercials with alleged sexist import. She was delighted to stumble across Dame Edna’s portrayal of women in the Whirlpool advertisements, duly charging the effort as “incompetent”. “To add to the insult, he then makes racist statements such as ‘grubby little foreigner’ during the commercial.”

In 1994, he was criticised by Canberra academic Bill Mandle for being at it again. Dame Edna had become an international figure, no longer a suburban dweller of Moonee Ponds. No distinction is drawn between the artist performer from the individual off the stage and out of the persona.  The representation is the artist. “Humphries is relentlessly consistent in his hatreds: women free is a caricature, is a threat.  Women must be domesticated and sexually submissive.” This careless misreading is done from the wrong end of the comic impression; it is precisely that received image of woman Dame Edna is mocking, that they, in that macho Australian world, could not be truly free. 

In the United States, a country known for small pockets of irony rather than lashings of it, Humphries also found himself in hot water, though it hardly seemed to scald him. The February 2003 issue of Vanity Fair caused much rage. It featured Dame Edna’s views in a satirical column about a reader’s concern about the pressures of learning Spanish. “Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk? The help? Your leaf blower?” Again, we see rigid hypocrisy exposed in the outrage. To satirise society’s divides, the exploitation, and the manipulation, is to invite trouble. 

The whole episode certainly puzzled, and depressed, the Pulitzer Prize winner Liz Balmaseda, writing in Hispanic (Mar 2003). “Let’s get this straight (trying to be funny Liz?): It takes one loopy character in ill-fitting garb to rally us into militancy?” Well, yes.  She goes on to write in blessed tones about the constructive role played by the Australian performer. “In a way, I’d say God bless Dame Edna. In one swoop, she exposed the worst of the ‘mainstream’ media AND the misguided militancy of its targets.” 

For all his exploits, Humphries was also considered too much for the organisers of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival in 2019. (As a measure of cravenness, the organisers have refused to officially mark the passing of a figure that singularly did so much to establish and sustain the event.) The festival’s most prestigious offering, since 2000 named the Barry Award, was scrubbed of the illustrious name. It became, instead, the far more anodyne Melbourne International Comedy Festival Award.  

The reason? Remarks made about the transgender movement. “How many different kinds of lavatory can you have?” Humphries rhetorically asked The Spectator in a 2018 interview. “And it’s pretty evil when it’s preached to children by crazy teachers.”    

Having stated that transgenderism was “a fashion”, his detractors proceeded to accuse him of not going along with it. That Australian comedian of sorts, Hannah Gadsby, who won the Barry Award in 2017, suggested he loved “those who hold power, hates vulnerable minorities and has completely lost the ability to read the room.That’s not a comedian, that’s an irrelevant, inhumane dick biscuit of the highest order.”

Thankfully, the persistently courageous Miriam Margolyes took issue with the Festival organisers’ decision to cancel the protean dick biscuit, accurately pointing out that he was not “properly appreciated by Australia”, let alone the crony-cringing set at the MICF. “He’d had more talent in his little finger than they did in their whole bodies, all of them.”  

The weak response from festival director, Susan Provan, was a model answer from managerial followers of the cancel-culture credo. “Some years ago, the award for most outstanding show was re-named to reinforce the equality and diversity that our Festival community has always championed.” The prerogative of the inclusive is always to exclude. 

Ironically enough, the various characters of Humphries are meant to read the room in precisely the way that Gadsby misunderstands. It was a reading that came with an acid bath, the just having to suffer with the unjust. It should never be forgotten that Humphries, in departing, left the landscape a glorious, often misunderstood anarchist of culture. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is licensed under CC BY 2.5

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Barry Humphries: Misunderstood Anarchist of Culture

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

CIA finances black operations with arms and drug business.

It has always been like that. In Cambodia, the export of opium exploded when the US military entered the country. The CIA was behind the opium export to finance local warlords in Cambodia. When the US military left Cambodia, the drug industry subsided. The same happened in Afghanistan. When the US military entered Afghanistan, opium exports boomed to finance US supported warlords. The US did the same, secretly sold weapons to Iran, and used drugs to fund murder squads in the dirty American war against Nicaragua. These things have been overwhelmingly documented.

Drugs and arms in the black market are the standard way for the CIA to raise huge amounts of money without asking Congress – with no oversight.

It is therefore unsurprising, when Seymour Hersh reveals, that weapons to Ukraine are secretly reexported by Ukraine. See this.

But we have to look beyond the phenomenon of secret Ukrainian exports of US supplied weapons. This is not just, as Hersh implies, about a few Ukrainian colonels doing their own corrupt business. It’s controlled from the very top, from CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia and the US national security council.

So, we have to approach the Ukrainian reexport of US arms from a different angle:

We must ask ourselves, what operations, what units, are being funded by the USA through Ukraine’s reexport of US arms?

Learning from CIA’s history, we can make a very safe assumption. The Ukrainian reexport of US weapons is used for two purposes: (1) Arm and hire Paramilitary Nazi groups inside Ukraine, to control Ukrainians by terror. (2) Fund Ukrainian terror operations abroad, like the murder of Darya Dugina in Moscow and the recent terror bombing killing Vladlen Tatarsky and injuring 42 people, incl. 6 in critical condition, in St. Petersburg.

The US is not just closing its eyes to this – it is behind it.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MR Online

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Old CIA Ways – Arms and Drugs. “The Re-Export of U.S. Weapons”
  • Tags:

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Recently released court filings outlining how two of the 9/11 hijackers had knowingly or unknowingly been recruited into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation, confirmed what was already open knowledge.

In July 2016, the infamous ‘28 Pages’ section of the official inquiry into the intelligence services activities before and after 9/11 was declassified, outlining the role that high-ranking Saudi officials and intelligence officers had played in the attacks by providing financial and logistical support to the hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

Indeed the Al-Qaeda organisation itself has its roots in Operation Cyclone, a Cold War-era CIA programme involving the arming, funding and training of Wahhabi militants known as the Mujahedeen, who were then sent on to wage war on the Socialist government of previously-Western friendly Afghanistan in 1979. One of the most well-known of the Mujahedeen was none other than Osama Bin Laden.

The 9/11 attacks also served as the pretext for the US to pursue an aggressive foreign policy in line with the aims of Project for the New American Century, a highly-influential Neoconservative think tank which envisaged the United States maintaining global hegemony through radical changes in its military and defence policy, including the removal by force of then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. In ominous fashion, a September 2000 report by the PNAC predicted that the implementation of such policy changes would be slow and incremental, and that only an event on the scale of Pearl Harbour would allow for rapid upheaval, with such a catalyst conveniently occurring a year later in New York and Virginia.

In further ominous foreshadowing, retired four-star General Wesley Clark would later recount how on a visit to the Pentagon in the days following 9/11, an unnamed military official had informed him that the decision had been made for the US to go to war with Iraq, despite there being no evidence to link Baghdad to the attacks. In a subsequent follow up meeting a few weeks later when the US had begun bombing Afghanistan, the same official informed Clark that a further six countries – Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran – would be targeted in response to 9/11, despite each one, like Iraq, having no established connection to the attacks.

The timing of the latest release of court documents highlighting Saudi involvement in 9/11 is also highly suspect.

Last month, in a seismic geopolitical shift, it was announced that the Gulf Kingdom and its long-time regional rival Iran, had resumed diplomatic ties in a deal brokered by China. Less than two weeks later, it was announced that Saudi Arabia would also seek to restore diplomatic ties with Syria in talks mediated by Russia, effectively signalling the end of US hegemony in the region.

The release of documents relating to Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11 in the same timeframe suggests that ties between Washington and what was perhaps its most strategic ally in west Asia after Israel – also with known connections to the 9/11 attacks – have now began to go cold following Riyadh’s pivot towards Beijing and Moscow; and in response, Washington has now began to publicise Saudi Arabia’s role in 9/11, possibly in a bid to isolate Riyadh on the world stage.

Indeed, the US throwing former allies under the bus in light of new geopolitical developments has a historical record.

Iran, once a key US-ally in the region, has been the subject of Western sanctions and threats of war since the 1979 Islamic Revolution saw the US and UK-backed Shah Pahlavi overthrown and replaced with Ayatollah Khomeini, with a Syria-style coup attempt currently ongoing in the country.

Neighbouring Iraq would effectively be used as a US-proxy during the Iran-Iraq war that began a year later, with then-Middle East envoy to the Reagan administration and future PNAC member, Donald Rumsfeld, infamously meeting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad in 1983 in order to reiterate US support. Two decades, Rumsfeld would serve as Secretary of Defense in the administration of George W. Bush that would go on to invade Iraq, with Hussein subsequently being executed in the aftermath.

Now, with Riyadh’s pivot eastwards and the publication of documents relating to its role in 9/11 in the same period, it would appear that this historical trend is now beginning to take place in Saudi Arabia.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon.

Featured image is from The Greanville Post

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Events in the Middle East have been moving fast — a ‘decade of change’ has been compressed into barely a few months: A world-shaping Entente has been sealed between Putin and Xi Jinping; China has mediated an accord between Iran and Saudi Arabia. President Raisi will meet King Salman after Eid; serious ceasefire talks have begun in Yemen. China, and Russia, have persuaded Turkey and Saudi to rehabilitate President Assad; the Syrian FM has visited Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has shifted towards China; OPEC+ has shrunk crude supplies. And everywhere from the Global South to the Middle East, the US dollar as a trading currency is being dropped in favour of national currencies. 

A new paradigm is consolidating.

At the geo-political plane, the humpty-dumpty of western hegemony in the Region has fallen from the wall and lies shattered on the ground. All the ‘king’s (neo-con) men’ will not put humpty together again.

And, at another higher plane, an axis of voices across the region (on Al-Quds day) spoke compellingly, and with one united voice, that the Israeli ‘egg’ had better be careful, lest it fall and break, too.

The Israeli security establishment — albeit in coded terms — sees the prospect in a matching dark vein. Moshe Yaalon, a former defence minister, recently said that the ‘radicals’ within the Israeli government want a ‘big war’; and when “Israel” wants a war, it usually gets one; and that war will come on the back of the Palestinian issue, Yaalon suggested. ‘Coincidentally’, Israeli military Intelligence says the same:  chances of ‘real war’ this coming year will spike.

Put simply, events in “Israel” are no longer in any one person’s ‘control’. The ‘newly’ empowered forces of Settler Zionist zealotry and of the religious Right to enact ‘Israel’ on the ‘Land of Israel’ are not about to ‘vanish’ the scene. They are pursuing no rational Enlightenment geo-political project, but the ‘Will of Yahweh’. And that constitutes an altogether different dynamic.

The Jewish radicals have waited decades to reach office. They have the numbers now, and are loath to let this window of opportunity slip their hands.

The US is putting enormous pressure on PM, Netanyahu, to abandon the Judicial ‘Reform’, which however constitutes the key-stone undergirding the whole ‘Land of Israel’ edifice: A project that is predicated upon ‘re-taking’ all of the West Bank from Palestinian ‘hands’. An enterprise that has the potential to shake the region to its very core — and to trigger war.

It is an enterprise into which, the Israeli Right suspects, and the Supreme Court very well could insert a ‘wrench’. And they would be right.   

President Biden however, needs a Middle East ‘conflict’ on top of the war in Ukraine, at this juncture, like a ‘hole in the head’. Former PM Sharon was prescient some two decades ago in foreseeing that US power in the Region would wane and that the US ultimately would prove powerless to block “Israel” from ‘seizing’ the biblical Land of “Israel”. That insight probably has become actualised in this precise ‘moment’.  

It is possible of course that Netanyahu will try to back down. The PM often has preferred caution. But realistically, can he retreat?

He is hostage to his coalition partners – should he wish to avoid jail – from which only his present government line-up can shield him. Absent that protection, court proceedings inevitably will result.   There is no sign of other coalition partners willing to partner with Netanyahu — almost at any price.

It is not difficult to understand the origins to the radical Mizrahi intransigence over the Supreme Court. Those favouring a Jewish state, rather than a (secular) balanced ‘democratic’ state, have the numbers. They had them in the 2019 election cycle. The Haredim, the national-religious, and Mizrahim should have had enough votes to secure 61 Knesset seats (a majority). 

But over the course of four election campaigns, the ‘Right’ failed to materialise their majority — as the Palestinian Arabs Knesset members entered the coalition-forming game to block the Right (which includes the Mizrahim) from capitalising on their numerical superiority.  

Minister Smotrich wrote at the time in a Facebook post that were this situation to persist, the Right would forever remain a minority.

It is the desire for ensuring the majority achieves power that lies behind the agenda to neuter the Supreme Court and expel Arab parties from the Knesset. Then — and only then — can the Ashkenazi secular-liberal Establishment be overcome (in this perspective), and a Jewish State on the biblical Land of “Israel” be instantiated.

If that State also happens to be ‘democratic’, that’s okay — but any democratic attribute would be entirely subsidiary to its ‘Jewishness’.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Alastair Crooke is Director of Conflicts Forum; Former Senior British Diplomat; Author.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Both Sides in the Middle East Region Now See ‘Big War’ as Possible
  • Tags: ,

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

On April 7, after three days and several hours of meetings, Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a joint declaration between France and China. The declaration contained much of interest on trade, nuclear war, the war in Ukraine, the food crisis, climate change, and more. 

But the most important line may be a short nineteen-word sentence that appears early in the document. In a section on “promoting global security and stability,” China and France declared that “They seek to strengthen the multilateral international system under the aegis of the United Nations, in a multipolar world.”

Multipolarity is the world-vision and language that frequently appears in China-Russia joint declarations. Now France has signed a document that, together with China, offers a multipolar world as an alternative to the unipolar world sought by the U.S. It is one thing for China, Russia, or the other members of multipolar international organizations like BRICS or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to call for balancing U.S. hegemony in a multipolar world. It is quite another for a key NATO ally to make the call.

This potentially seminal statement suggests a fundamental divide between France and the U.S. The U.S. seeks to maintain a unipolar world with America at its head, with no “potential future global competitors”—in the language of the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance—and Europe as its subordinate partner. The joint declaration suggests that France seeks to break from that project. 

A world with several poles and all countries, large or small, having an equal voice has long been advocated by China and Russia. After his meeting with Macron, Xi said that Europe is an “independent pole in a multipolar world.” It is not surprising that Xi walked away from their meetings making such assertions. It is quite another thing for Macron to walk away from their meetings asserting the same world view. In an interview aboard his plane, departing from Beijing, Macron said that Europe must achieve “strategic autonomy” and become a “third superpower.” He advocated for a Europe that is not a junior partner in a U.S.-led unipolar world but for a Europe that “can be the third pole.”

“Quite a few” European leaders may “think like Emmanuel Macron,” according to European Council president Charles Michel. “There is indeed a great attachment that remains present—and Emmanuel Macron has said nothing else—for this alliance with the United States. But if this alliance with the United States would suppose that we blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States on all issues, no.”

Macron is neither breaking from the U.S. nor opposing it. He has said that France is “an ally of the Americans. We are not equidistant between China and the United States,” adding that they don’t always “have the same interests.” Macron maintains that “Strategic autonomy means assuming that we have similar views with the United States, but,” he says, “whether it’s on Ukraine, the relationship with China or sanctions, we have a European strategy.” Assertions of alliance aside, Macron is breaking from the American worldview and key foreign policy goal of a U.S.-led unipolar world.

That French, or perhaps even European, strategy has lately not had the same interests as U.S. strategy on a number of key issues, including Ukraine and sanctions on China. 

Contrary to the American refusal to negotiate NATO expansion to Ukraine or Russia’s security concerns, Macron has said that the West “must address, as President Putin has always said…the fear that NATO comes right up to its doors, and the deployment of weapons that could threaten Russia.” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has similarly said that “all questions of common security could be solved and discussed.”

Although the U.S. has pressured the European Union to re-examine its trade policies with China to align them with American interests, Macron was accompanied on his trip to Beijing by about fifty French business executives, including the chief executives of Airbus and the French electricity company EDF. While the U.S. has encouraged an economic break from China, Macron has objected that “any decoupling, or ‘de-linking,’ is not good for Europe, given the vast economic interests at stake.” The joint declaration with China spoke of the promise “to promote economic cooperation.” 

German Chancellor Scholz has also recently traveled to Beijing in the company of the chief executives of Volkswagen, BMW, BASF, Bayer and Deutsche Bank. With Macron, Scholz says that “even in changed circumstances, China remains an important business and trading partner for Germany and Europe—we don’t want to decouple from it.”

But the divergence of interests and strategies that may most directly concern the U.S. and its pursuit of maintaining a unipolar world is Macron’s insistence that Europe “must not depend on the extraterritoriality of the dollar.” The U.S. has recently demonstrated in Cuba, Iran, and Russia, the speed and power associated with the ability to weaponize the dollar. Several countries and regions, including Russia, China, India, Iran, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Latin America, BRICS, and the Eurasian Economic Union, have all expressed interest in and even made moves towards partially escaping the U.S. dollar.

Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. A move to other currencies would weaken American influence. Such a desire is not a surprise coming from China or Russia; it may be more of a surprise coming from France and Europe. It may also be more of a challenge to a U.S.-led unipolar world. 

That short sentence near the top of the joint China-France declaration may be the most important policy statement to come out of Macron’s trip to China. It may signal a foundational shift in the global movement toward a multipolar world.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ted Snider is a columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft as well as other outlets.

Featured image is from Frederic Legrand – COMEO/Shutterstock

The Most Dangerous International Treaty Ever Proposed

April 24th, 2023 by Molly Kingsley

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Human history is a story of forgotten lessons. Despite the catastrophic collapse of European democracy in the 1930s, it appears that the tale of the twentieth century – in which citizens, cowed by existential threats, acquiesced in the rejection of liberty and truth in favour of obedience and propaganda, whilst allowing despotic leaders to seize ever more absolutist powers – is perilously close to being forgotten.

Nowhere is this more evident than in relation to the apparent nonchalance which has greeted two international legal agreements currently working their way through the World Health Organisation: a new pandemic treaty, and amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations, both due to be put before the governing body of the WHO, the World Health Assembly, in May next year. 

As concerned scholars and jurists have detailed, these agreements threaten to fundamentally reshape the relationship between the WHO, national governments, and individuals.

They would hardwire into international law a top-down supranational approach to public health in which the WHO, acting in some cases via the sole discretion of one individual, its Director General (DG), would be empowered to impose sweeping, legally binding directions on member states and their citizens, ranging from mandating financial contributions by individual states; to requiring the manufacture and international sharing of vaccines and other health products; to requiring the surrender of intellectual property rights; overriding national safety approval processes for vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics; and imposing national, regional and global quarantines preventing citizens from traveling and mandating medical examinations and treatments. 

A global system for digital ‘health certificates’ for verification of vaccine status or test results would be routinised, and a bio-surveillance network whose purpose would be to identify viruses and variants of concern – and to monitor national compliance with WHO policy directives in the event of them – would be embedded and expanded.

For any of these sweeping powers to be invoked, there would be no requirement for an “actual” health emergency in which people are suffering measurable harm; instead it would be sufficient for the DG, acting on his or her discretion, to have identified the mere “potential” for such an event.

It is hard to overstate the impact of these proposals on Member States’ sovereignty, individual human rights, foundational principles of medical ethics, and child welfare. As currently drafted, these proposals would deny UK sovereignty and governmental autonomy over health and social policies and, through the indirect impacts of forced lockdowns and quarantines and because each Member State would be required to commit a staggering minimum of 5 percent of national health budgets and an as yet unspecified percentage of GDP towards the WHO’s pandemic prevention and response, also over critical aspects of economic policy.

The proposed new powers would cut across not only the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. They would signal a new watershed in our understanding of cornerstone human rights: an express amendment to the IHR deletes language currently reading “[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be with full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons” to replace it with a nebulous confirmation that “[t]he implementation of these Regulations shall be based on the principles of equity, inclusivity, coherence…”.

Provisions requiring (my emphasis) – in particular – the WHO to develop fast-tracked regulatory guidelines for the “rapid” (aka relaxed) approval of a broad range of health products including vaccines, gene-based therapies, medical devices and diagnostics threatens, in the view of legal jurists, “long fought-for standards of medical law aiming to ensure safety and efficacy of medical products,” and should be of particular concern for parents.

Indeed, nothing in these documents would oblige the WHO to differentiate its binding directions for their impact on children, thus allowing for indiscriminate measures including mass testing, isolation, travel restrictions and vaccination – potentially of investigational and experimental products fast-tracked to accelerated approvals – being mandated for healthy pediatric populations on the basis of a real or “potential” health emergency declared unilaterally by the DG.

As if this weren’t troubling enough, what makes it more so is that, as Thomas Fazi writes, “the WHO has fallen largely under the control of private capital and other vested interests.” As he and others explain, the evolving funding structure of the organisation and in particular the influence of corporate organisations focusing on pandemic response solutions (predominantly, vaccines), has steered the WHO away from its original ethos of promoting a democratic, holistic approach to public health and towards corporatised commodity-based approaches which “generate profit for its private and corporate sponsors” (David Bell). Over 80 percent of the WHO’s budget is now ‘specified’ funding by way of voluntary contributions typically earmarked for specific projects or diseases in a way that the funder specifies.

History lesson

“History can familiarise, and it should warn,” states the prologue to Timothy Snyder’s book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. If only we were minded to be taught, there would be lessons to be learned of how far down the path of tyranny pandemic authoritarianism has already taken us and of how, if the WHO’s plans proceed, the Covid pandemic may yet signal just the beginning.

“Anticipatory obedience is a political tragedy,” cautions Lesson One, and indeed it now would seem that the voluntary obedience given so heedlessly by global citizens in 2020-22 – to wear masks, to be locked down, to accept novel vaccinations. All of these measures, and more, now embedded in the proposals as potentially mandatory directives, binding on both Member States, and therefore on individual citizens.

“Defend institutions,” advises Lesson Two, for “institutions do not protect themselves,” a sobering reminder in light of the WHO’s self-designation in these proposals as the “guiding and coordinating authority of international public health response[s]:” a designation which would expressly elevate that organisation above national ministries of health and elected, sovereign parliaments.

Lesson Three, “Beware the one-party state,” reminds us that “parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start.” The WHO does not masquerade as a political party but nor will it need to after ordaining itself as the exclusive global controller not just of the identification of pandemics and potential pandemics but of the design and execution of pandemic responses, while also granting itself a vast health surveillance network and a global workforce – funded in part by the taxpayers of the nations over whom it shall tower – commensurate with its new supreme status.

Remembering professional ethics – Lesson Five – would have been sage advice in 2020 but much though we might lament the abandonment of medical ethics from our vantage point of 2023 (“if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent,” rues Synder in relation to the tyranny of the 20th century) the WHO proposals would ensure that such deviations from foundational pillars of medical ethics – informed consent, disregard for human dignity, bodily autonomy, freedom from experimentation, even – can become an accepted norm, rather than an abhorrent exception.

Beware, warns Synder, of the “the sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances; …be alive to the fatal notions of emergency and exception.” Positioned as a necessary next step for achieving global public health coordination and cooperation, the WHO’s proposals would erect a permanent, global surveillance infrastructure and bureaucracy whose raison d’être will be to seek out and suppress health emergencies. 

The funding for this network will originate from the private and corporate interests that stand to gain financially from the vaccine-based responses they envision, so the opportunities for private exploitation of public health crises will be huge. And, by broadening and bringing forward in time the circumstances in which those powers might be triggered – no longer is an ‘actual’ public health emergency required, merely the ‘potential’ for such an event, we can expect the threat of the exceptional state of emergency to become a semi-permanent feature of modern life.

“[B]elieve in truth” says Lesson Ten – for “to abandon facts is to abandon freedom,” apt indeed for our Orwellian era of doublethink, its slogans granted the status of religion and its ideology posing as integrity: “Be safe, be smart, be kind” (Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General, 2020). What would Orwell make, one wonders, of the UK’s Counter Disinformation Unit and the US’s Ministry of Truth, or of proposals which not only permit but require the WHO to build institutional capacity to prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation – and so anoint it as the single source of pandemic truth? 

What would Hannah Arendt make of 2020-22’s intrusion of the State into the private lives of individuals and families and the ensuing prolonged periods of isolation and – through adopting forced isolation and segregation as respectful public health tools – the elevation of such destruction of private life to a globally accepted norm? “Take responsibility for the face of the world,” says Snyder in Lesson Four. Could there be any more potent symbol of society’s visible manifestations of loyalty to its new normal than the world’s masked faces of 2020-1?

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is a quote no less true for being incorrectly attributed to Jefferson, but having lived amongst the debris of failed Covid authoritarianism for three years. Perhaps we are too close now to understand how far from liberal democracy we’ve already fallen. 

Even if one wholeheartedly agreed with the WHO’s focus on pandemic preparedness and the interventionist responses provoked, to grant such sweeping powers to a supranational organisation (let alone one individual within that), would be astonishing. That, as the pandemic response so brutally illustrated, the profit-optimised version of the greater good pursued by the WHO often clashes with child health and welfare, sets us up to commit a grotesque misdeed against our children and young people.

Snyder’s most important lesson might yet be “to stand out – the moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken.” The UK has been sufficiently consumed with national sovereignty to pull out of the EU – a poster child for democracy compared to the unelected WHO; it would surely be unthinkable now to wave through proposals which would see the UK cede its sovereignty over key national health, social and economic policies to the WHO.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Molly Kingsley is a co-founder at UsForThem, the parent campaign group formed in May 2020 to advocate against school closures. They have since been joined by tens of thousands of parents, grandparents and professionals across the UK and beyond, advocating for children to be prioritized in the pandemic response and beyond.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The UK government has released official figures that show a shocking truth: the fully vaccinated population accounted for 92% of Covid-19 deaths throughout the entirety of 2022, and 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths in England over the past two years.

The figures were published by a UK government agency, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), on the 21st of February 2023.

The report, titled ‘Deaths by Vaccination Status, England, 1 April 2021 to 31 December 2022′, can be accessed on the ONS site here, and downloaded here.

The new report contains figures on mortality rates by vaccination status for all-cause deaths, deaths involving Covid-19, and deaths not involving Covid-19.

By looking at Table 1 of the dataset, we can see that the vast majority of Covid-19 deaths occurred among those who had received three or more doses of the Covid-19 injection.

But this isn’t just an anomaly.

The figures show that Covid-19 deaths among the unvaccinated population have become almost negligible, while deaths among the vaccinated population have become more significant over time.

For instance, in May 2021, there were 205 Covid-19 deaths among the vaccinated population and just 84 among the unvaccinated population.

However, fast forward a year, and we find that Covid-19 deaths increased by 450%, with 1,494 among the vaccinated and just 96 among the unvaccinated.

It’s shocking to see that, despite the mass booster campaign in the winter of 2021, the injections did nothing to alleviate the huge number of deaths among the vaccinated population.

In fact, the data suggests that the booster campaign actually made things worse.

Source Click to enlarge

The figures show that 25,758 out of 28,041 Covid-19 deaths in England between 1st January 2022 and 31st December 2022 were among the fully vaccinated population.

Shockingly, this means that the fully vaccinated population accounted for 92% of all Covid-19 deaths throughout the year 2022.

Meanwhile, there were 45,191 Covid-19 deaths in England between 1st April 2021 and 31st December 2022, and 38,884 of those deaths were among the fully vaccinated population, while just 6,307 deaths were among the unvaccinated population.

This means the fully vaccinated population have accounted for 86% / 9 in every 10 Covid-19 deaths over nearly two years.

This raises an important question: are the Covid-19 injections really up to 95% effective at preventing death?

The figures suggest otherwise.

It’s concerning to see that news like this is being swept under the rug by the mainstream media.

What else are we not being told?

It’s time for us to take responsibility for our own health and make informed decisions about our bodies.

We must not blindly follow the recommendations of authorities without looking at the data and questioning what we’re being told.

It’s clear from these figures that something is not working, and it should have been addressed over a year ago.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

Featured image is from The Expose


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Pfizer Killed Your Friends & Family for Profit – 92% of COVID Deaths Were Among the Triple+ Vaccinated in 2022 According to UK Gov.
  • Tags: , ,

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

We are constantly hammered with the idea that the catastrophic perspective of “man-made global warming” and/or climate change represents an unquestionable scientific “consensus.

This comes regardless of the fact that, as explained by renowned climate change scientist Roy Spencera,

“The so-called consensus comes from a handful of surveys and abstract-counting exercises that have been contradicted by more reliable research.”

There are a plethora of climate scientists and experts in the field who do not agree with the picture that’s being painted, but their voices continue to be drowned, unheard and unacknowledged within the mainstream. They are not suggesting we aren’t harming our environment, but take issue with the politically motivated doomsday predictions.

The unquestionable doomsday narrative has permeated mainstream culture for decades as absolute truth. This allows for drastic measures to be justified under the guise of goodwill. Geo-engineering, unfortunately, could be one of them.

Geoengineering refers to a set of emerging technologies that could manipulate the environment and partially offset some of the impacts of climate change. One of these methods is called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which would dump substances like black carbon, sulphur dioxide, metallic aluminum, aluminum oxide, barium titanate and more into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight away from the Earth.

Just last year, The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announced that it is coordinating a five-year research plan to study ways of modifying the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth. The idea is getting more urgent attention in the unquestionable ‘worsening climate crisis.’

Not many details about the plan have been released, but it comes as a result of researchers wanting the U.S. government to put together a bigger solar geoengineering research program than what was already in place.

“It’s increasingly clear that putting a bunch of aerosols in the stratosphere could decrease the global average temperature,” said Chris Field, the director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He chaired a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) committee that recommended in 2021 that the Biden administration fund a federal research program into the technology.

“The future really depends on getting an ambitious response to the climate crisis put in place. And we just need to be really open to recognizing that some kinds of approaches that are fraught with downsides might still deserve to be considered just because the alternatives are so serious.”

For the new program, funding is likely going to increase significantly over the next few years and involve multiple federal agencies. In 2021 NASEM recommended a $200 million research program.

Over 60 researchers from prominent institutions recently published a letter calling for a more rigorous study into the strategy, as well as small-scale field experiments, while a U.N. report suggested the time had come to start investigating whether SAI could help to combat the climate crisis.

But this type of thing is not new. As far back as 2011 the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank released a national strategic plan on “the potential effectiveness, feasibility and consequences of climate remediation techniques.” That year U.N. climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa debated the topic heavily.

In 2010 the World Meteorological Association explained,

“In recent years there has been a decline in the support for weather modification research, and a tendency to move directly into operational projects.”

Does this mean that geoengineering has actually been “operational” already for a number of years?

A United States government document printed at the request of the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in November of 1978 states:

“In addition to specific research programs sponsored by Federal agencies, there are other functions related to weather modification which are performed in several places in the executive branch. Various federal advisory panels and committees and their staffs – established to conduct in-depth studies and prepare comprehensive reports, to provide advice or recommendations, or to coordinate Federal weather modification programs – have been housed and supported within executive departments, agencies, or offices.”

Strange.

Billionaires Are In Too 

As far as billionaires go, Bill Gates backed a project by Harvard University scientists to test an idea to spray calcium carbonate into the atmosphere in the skies over Sweden in 2021. Thankfully the project was halted after local Indigenous groups and environmentalists made enough of a buzz. Gates has long been a proponent and supporter of geoengineering.

Jeff Bezos used Amazon’s supercomputer by modelling the effects of plans to inject huge amounts of sulphur dioxide (SO2) into the atmosphere later that year.

Dustin Moskovitz, the founder of Facebook, put $900,000 into funding for scientists in Mali, Brazil, Thailand, and other countries to study the potential effects of solar geoengineering.

At the Munich Security Conference in February 2022, George Soros spoke about the existential risk that climate change poses to human civilization, as well as his support for stratospheric aerosol injection over the Arctic to reflect the sun’s light away from Earth.

When the former CIA director John Brennan brought up the topic at a Council on Foreign Relations conference in 2016, the subject also received widespread attention,

“Another example is the array of technologies, often referred to collectively as geoengineering, that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI: a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do. An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures, and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels.”

The good news is that a large portion of the mainstream scientific community is extremely hesitant about even attempting this. Countless scientific publications have outlined the dangers that could be associated with such activity, many of them creating an even more toxic environment by littering large parts of our planet with even more toxic chemicals. The health consequences for both animals and humans could be catastrophic, not to mention the environmental ones.

More than 400 climate scientists are firmly against proliferating calls for solar geoengineering research and its potential development. They’ve warned in an open letter that the increasing normalization of SRM technologies as a possible climate fix is a cause for alarm — one that could have dangerous and unexpected consequences.

“We call for immediate political action from governments, the United Nations, and other actors to prevent the normalization of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option. Governments and the United Nations must assert effective political control and restrict the development of solar geoengineering technologies at planetary sale. Specifically, we call for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.”

It’s good to see such resistance in what appears to be the continual normalization of exploring geoengineering as a solution. It’s frustrating to fathom that this type of activity could one day be normal, especially given the fact that there is a plethora of science and evidence that calls into question our current perspective of climate change and what causes it.

As stated earlier in the article, this conversation is not allowed to be had, similar to how so many scientists, doctors and experts in the field were not allowed to question government policy for all things COVID.

In that open letter, the scientists also state that,

Given the increasing normalization of solar geoengineering research, a strong political message to block these technologies is required. An International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering is needed now.

My only concern here is that we continue to ask big politics and government to change and hear our voices. We continue to rely on these forces to implement change as if we live in a democracy. The systems we have in place represent nothing more than the illusion of democracy. They’re an oligarchy.

Political policy regarding major issues that plague our planet today is in the hands of a few oligarchs. Over time, they try their best to influence the collective mind to support initiatives they desire, which are not often used for what they claim to be solving.

What’s The True Motive?

Call me conspiratorial but this begs the question, are there ulterior motives involved in geoengineering that put more power and control into the hands of the global elite? Are there geopolitical advantages to controlling the weather of some nations, and does it come at the expense of others?

Around the world a growing number of researchers are exploring what solar engineering might mean for their regions, even if their home countries are unlikely to deploy the technology.

Other nations are already doing it. China announced that it’s planning a rapid expansion of its weather modification program. Most people probably didn’t know that China even had a weather modification program. The changes include modifying the climate in an area that is more than one and a half times the size of India, covering an area of over 5.5 million square kilometres (2.1 million square miles).

I’ve been looking into this topic for more than a decade, and despite its more recent popularity and “legitimization,” I believe geoengineering at a large scale has been occurring for decades. It’s not easy to acknowledge that much of our weather, and perhaps some major weather events/disasters may have been artificially created, but that’s a topic for another article.

A 1996 report conducted by top military personnel in the U.S., titled “Weather as a Force Multiplier; Owning the Weather in 2025,” reveals the supposed urgency to implement these programs:

“Current demographic, economic, and environmental trends will create global stresses that provide the impetus necessary for many countries or groups to turn this weather-modification ability into a capability.

In the United States, weather-modification will likely become a part of national security policy with both domestic and international applications. Our government will pursue such a policy, depending on its interests, at various levels.”

Because this is a national security issue, if large-scale geoengineering is and has been occurring, it may be under the realm of Special Access Programs. These programs are considered so sensitive that they are exempt from reporting requirements to Congress.

In other words, they are probably highly classified, not to protect national security, but more likely to protect the fact that what is happening is extremely controversial, unethical and not necessary.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

NATO’s Weapons Are Leaking to Black Market – Western Journalist

April 24th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Confirming what several other analysts had already been reporting since the beginning of Western military aid campaign to Ukraine, an important American informant pointed out that several weapons sent by NATO are being sold on the black market. The result of this process is that weapons that should be used by the Ukrainian armed forces end up in the hands of foreign contrabandists, with no control over what will be their final destination.

The most recent report was made by the well-known and respected American journalist Seymour Hersh. Even though he is a Pulitzer Prize winner and former New York Times informant, Hersh has recently suffered several reprisals and “cancellation” attempts for leaking evidence of crimes committed by the US government, such as the terrorist attacks against the Nord Stream gas pipelines. In the same vein, he now said that Western-supplied weapons to Kiev were actually “flooding” the military black market in countries like Romania and Poland.

“Poland, Romania, other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we [the US and allies] were shipping for the war to Ukraine (…) Often, it wasn’t generals, it was colonels and others, who were given shipments of some weapons, [who] would personally resell them (…) to the dark market”, he said during a recent show of his journalistic program “Going Underground”.

The most serious point of Hersh’s words was when he reported that the western media itself would be aware of these crimes. The journalist told his interlocutors that western newspapers were being prevented from publishing reports on this topic, since the central objective of the western media at this moment is to raise public support for NATO’s war against Russia. Hersh commented that, in a recent documentary called “Arming Ukraine”, the CBS team would be about to publicize all the crimes of corruption involving NATO’s weapons, however the authors were forced to rewrite the words to be spoken during the video.

Hersh also tells that the contained an interview with Jonas Ohman, founder of an important pro-Ukrainian NGO. Ohamn told journalists at the time that only 30% of Western military aid was reaching the frontlines, suggesting that there was a wide network of corruption surrounding these weapons. However, the group responsible for the promotion of the film removed Ohman’s speech. According to Hersh, CBS’ leaders explained to the documentary’s producers that this type of content could not be shown because “we’re on the side of Ukraine. We all hate Russia.”

Indeed, Hersh’s words only confirm what has been said by Russian officials since last year. A large amount of the arms sent to Kiev are leaked to serve the interests of criminal networks, which profit from illegal military trade at exorbitant prices. However, the main problem was not even mentioned by Hersh: the real destination of these weapons, which goes far beyond illegal groups in Poland and Romania.

In fact, these weapons are almost always put on the route of terrorism, with the black market fueling criminal networks around the world. In October last year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had already said that “NATO military supplies intended for the Kiev regime end up in the hands of terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, Southeast Asia”.

It is important to remember that some African governments also reported last year that extraordinary amounts of weapons had reached their territories, supplying terrorist groups, which confirms the words of the Russian authorities. In this sense, it is expected that new cases of armed insurrections by terrorist groups will occur in several countries in the near future, possibly using NATO weapons. This becomes particularly serious and worrying when we remember that common Western weapons, such as Stinger shoulder-launched missiles, in Hersh’s words, can “shoot down an airplane at considerable height.”

What remains to be seen is whether the providing of NATO weapons to the black market is a mere “accident” or whether the alliance’s officials really want to use the Ukrainian excuse to arm terrorist groups around the world. It is well known that the Pentagon uses the services of criminal and terrorist organizations around the planet to serve its interests, promoting rebellions against legitimate governments, occupying strategic territories and starting civil wars. Ukraine itself is one of these cases, with local neo-Nazi militias having been supplied with Western weapons for years to kill Russians in the Donbass. The same happens at some level on all continents, where there are paramilitary and terrorist groups working for American intelligence.

With so many reports that most of these weapons are not reaching Ukraine’s frontlines, it is possible that there really is a deliberate intention on the part of NATO’s intelligence to promote a global strengthening of criminal groups considered “allies”. This will allow Washington to maintain strong proxies in other regions of the planet, despite the imminent defeat on Ukrainian soil. This is something to be investigated in depth.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

EU Navies to Face Off China Over Taiwan

April 24th, 2023 by Drago Bosnic

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

In yet another move set to cement the European Union’s status as a geopolitical pendant of the United States, its foreign policy chief Josep Borrell openly stated that he wants the armed forces (or, in this particular case, navies) of EU countries to patrol the increasingly contested Taiwan Strait to “help protect” Taiwan. Borrell gave a more detailed account of the plan for the first time in an opinion piece he authored for the French weekly Journal Du Dimanche. He insisted that the “peace and stability” of China’s breakaway island province is of “crucial importance” for the EU. Borrell also added that the island “concerns us economically, commercially and technologically” and reiterated the “urgency for the EU navies to ensure its protection”.

Borrell’s exact words were: “I call on [the EU] navies to patrol the Taiwan Strait to show Europe’s commitment to freedom of navigation in this absolutely crucial area.”

This comes mere days after a delegation from the US, including the bulk of its MIC (Military Industrial Complex) announced they would visit Taiwan and “discuss its defense”. Even more interestingly, Borrell mentioned “the economic, commercial and technological importance” of Taiwan, which falls perfectly in line with what a Republican congressman from Texas, Michael McCaul, recently said on air with Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press, when asked about why the US should “defend Taiwan”. McCaul bluntly stated that the US would go to war over China’s breakaway island province on the basis of “protecting the world’s semiconductor supply“, although he was quick to revert to the official narrative after Todd tried to clarify it.

However, Borrell’s comments are significantly more consequential, as McCaul, despite his extremely powerful position as the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, doesn’t directly shape the US foreign policy. On the other hand, Borrell is one of the troubled bloc’s top officials and such statements will surely not be taken too kindly in Beijing. China has never meddled in the internal affairs of a single EU member state, in stark contrast to Brussels. For its part, the EU has directly meddled (and still does) in the questions of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and now Taiwan. All three areas are China’s provinces with varying degrees of autonomy and Beijing (rightfully) considers them to be a matter of its internal affairs.

Borrell’s controversial (at best) statements seem to be indicative of a major (and rapidly growing) divide between the EU as a (geo)political entity and its top member states. The EU’s head diplomat might have been seeking a counterargument to French President Emmanuel Macron’s recently revealed stance voiced earlier in the month that boils down to the EU essentially minding its own business, taking care of its own numerous issues and just leaving China alone. At the time, coming off a visit to Beijing where he met with the Chinese leadership, including President Xi Jinping himself, Macron had stressed that Europe must not be “a direct vassal” of US policy on Taiwan and that it has to achieve the goal of its own “strategic autonomy”.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron stated, adding: “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worst thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the US agenda and a Chinese overreaction… …If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up… …we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals.”

The traditionally Russophobic Poland took this as a sign of “capitulating” to “Putin’s ally” China, as Warsaw is a staunch supporter of US interests in the EU. Recently, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki slammed Macron’s “controversial” comments on Beijing, made just after he met Xi Jinping. At the time, Morawiecki openly mocked the French President’s call for “strategic autonomy”. And while Macron’s stance can hardly ever be considered “pro-Chinese” (provided he even had honest intentions), still, even a semblance of anything that could remotely be seen as “anti-American” is virtual “heresy” in Warsaw. As previously mentioned, this only reinforces the notion of just how divided the EU is.

Obviously, as already stated, Borrell’s comments serve to counterbalance Macron’s stance, but the way in which the EU’s top diplomat chose to do that is as geopolitically unwise as it could possibly be. How is Beijing supposed to react to such rhetoric, particularly in light of US plans to deliver 400 anti-ship missiles to the government in Taipei and accelerate the delivery of over $19 billion worth of other weapons? And this is to say nothing of the effective forming of a “global NATO” or at the very least its Asia-Pacific version in the form of AUKUS, which at some point might even see more active participation of other US vassals and satellite states, including the EU itself. Coupled with NATO aggression against Russia, calling the foreign policy framework of the political West unwise can only be described as an understatement.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

There truly seems to be an epidemic of sudden deaths in schools across USA and Canada recently. Here are the most recent tragic cases.

Jena, LA – 15 year old Jena High School student Kameron Shelton died in class at 11am on April 18, 2023 (click here)

Milwaukee, WI – 19 year old Marquette University Student Kamrin Ray was found dead in residence on April 17, 2023

A Marquette University student died at a residence hall Monday night. First responders found him unresponsive on the bed by his roommate and pronounced him deceased. (click here)

Charlotte, NC – 18 year old Myers Park High School Senior Barron Alexander Harris died early morning of April 16, 2023 (click here)

Barron Alexander Harris was known by friends for “his loyalty, engaging personality, and loving spirit.” It’s not known how Harris died.

Montague, PEI – 16 year old high school (Ecole Francois-Buote) student Samuel Russell Campbell, died suddenly in school on April 14, 2023. (click here)

The École François-Buote community continued to mourn Saturday after a student at the Charlottetown school suffered a “sudden and unexpected death” on Friday.

Tipp City, OH – 17 year old Tippecanoe High School student Carson Robbins died on April 14, 2023 after a “brief illness” (click here)

Ithaca, NY – 19 year old Cornell University Student Matthew Friedman was found unresponsive in residence and died on April 12, 2023 (click here)

Bethesda, MD – Unnamed student at Walter Johnson High School passed away “very suddenly and unexpectedly” on April 12, 2023 (click here)

Boise, ID – 17 year old Timberline High School tennis player Justin Smith collapsed unexpectedly during tennis practice on April 10, 2023 and died in ER at 6:20pm. (click here)

Dallas, TX – Episcopal School of Dallas Student died overnight on April 5, 2023 (click here)

Berkeley, CA – 16 year old Berkeley High School student Lillia Bartlow went home from school on March 24, 2023 after suffering a migraine and died unexpectedly at home

Mukilteo, WA – 18 year old high school student Chloe Nuttbrock died suddenly of aneurysm in early March 16, 2023 (click here)

Image

Rice Lake, WI – 6 high school student deaths (posted on April 21, 2023)

My Take…

Found dead in dorm or residence. Cardiac arrest and died while at school.

Died after having migraine at school.

Died in early morning hours.

Died after “brief illness”.

Died during tennis practice at school.

None of this is normal. All these deaths must be investigated for the possibility of post COVID-19 mRNA vaccine sudden cardiac death or any role that the jabs may have played in these deaths.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Epidemic of 15-19 Year Olds Dropping Dead in Schools and Dorms Across USA and Canada in April 2023

US Hegemony No Longer Threatens the World

April 24th, 2023 by Renee Parsons

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

While the world teeters on a potential WW III scenario in Ukraine with the Biden Administration as full time participants, the US government and its Congressional Uniparty continue to enflame its pro war passion with reckless talk of US military involvement against two of the most powerful nuclear nations on the planet – both at the same time.    

Being deeply embroiled in Ukraine has not stopped those same US decision-makers from unceasingly beating the drums of war against China.  With a political establishment legendary for its refusal to accept responsibility for another costly defeat, the truth of Ukraine’s demise has remained concealed from the American public as questions of US military prowess  are little more than imagined superiority. 

At the same time, the once globally dominant US economy is staring at a potential economic bankruptcy beyond modern experience, threatening to reek unimaginable fiscal pain and suffering throughout every American family in the entire country.  Unable to come to terms with their own past tyranny and rather than accept the reality that the US is in an economic war with China, the Biden Administration prefers to spin an economic challenge into a military war since we all know that war is good for business. The 2023 $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act included $10 Billion for security assistance and weapons procurement for Taiwan.

Even as the fight is on in the House to make necessary cuts to the trillion dollar budget, it is the bloated military budget over the last two decades that has brought  the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Was it worth twenty years in Afghanistan and inflicting a devastating war on the people of Iraq and Libya because their Presidents dared to suggest moving off the dollar in favor of their own currency. Both Hussein and Gaddafi suffered the same fate.

The fact that the US has “been at peace” for a mere sixteen years out of its two hundred and fifty year history at a cost of $6 trillion since 2001, confirms the US as the “most warlike nation in the history of the world,” according to former President Jimmy Carter.   Confirming how the US has found itself insolvent as wars are always budget busters, Carter explained that the US has been intent on forcing American principles on every other country including a US-imposed rules-based order rather than an order based on international law respecting each nation’s sovereignty.  It was Carter who articulated the One China Policy concept and provided diplomatic recognition to China in 1979 which is still in effect today acknowledging that the government of the People’s Republic of China as “the sole legal Government of China.” He pointed out that China has not been in military conflict since the Vietnam War and with their ‘peace dividend,’ Carter explained “China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.” In 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reiterated the One China Policy acknowledging Taiwan  as a part of China.

With war hysterics against China on the rise, Col. Douglas MacGregor shared with Tucker that there will be “no war with China unless the US starts it.” MacGregor added that:

“This is the most reckless and irresponsible administration in living memory. We don’t have anyone who qualifies as a Statesman.  Statesmanship involves advancing American interests at the least cost to the American people. Beijing will not allow Taiwan to become a garrison state for American armed forces and if they think we are going to intervene to defend that island in event of a dispute, then we will be at war with China. We are not prepared for that; we are now provoking China over an issue that is .. strategically important to them” like the Crimea is to Russia.    

While former UN weapons Inspector Scott Ritter makes the point that China is creating a normalization strategy by ending war once and for all” as the BRICS are exploding with economic growth and innovative technology as it “redefines the world” beginning with the Saudi Arabia – Iran agreement. In addition, Ritter cites that with a population of one billion, China raised 300 million citizens out of poverty as the American middle class is shrinking.

Ritter goes on to suggest that “America is not as strong as you think! A war with China is one the US can’t win!” “The Good news is China does not want a war with America; or Taiwan; they are looking for peaceful resolution. The bad news is America wants a war.”

If Americans are frustrated when they read “Made in China” they can thank the US Congress in the mid-1990’s for enacting NAFTA which shipped millions of American manufacturing jobs overseas with no clue about the economic ramifications. Today there is resentment about the Chinese vast technological widgets they produce but there is no one to blame but Congress. There is an alarming unfamiliarity amongst the pro-war China crowd who are not aware that the CCP were victors of the 1949 Chinese Civil war maintaining possession of mainland China. It was at that point that Taiwan was occupied by Chiang Kai Sheik’s Nationalists at which time the US government began its long history of arms, financial and political support. 

Taiwan is an island one hundred miles off the Chinese coast and not a separate ‘break-away’ province although Taiwan developed its own constitution and democratic elections – not unlike how Hawaii is a separate state of the United States yet makes its own laws but remains under the sovereignty of the US. The Chinese Exclusion Act was the one and only time that federal legislation explicitly suspended immigration for a specific nationality – not counting FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans. It was not until the Act was repealed in 1943 which permitted a quota of 105 Chinese immigrants annually to enter the United States.

Today. the American population is being heavily lobbied to believe that Taiwan is essential to US national interest as if distinct from Ukraine which is clearly not in the US interest. The difference is that the US is in an economic war with China while the US is economically and militarily on the ropes. True to America’s concept of being the world’s hegemonic superior, there is an innate resistance to the concept of a planet without internal interference, devoted to prosperity for all nations, expanding trade and economic ties and technological innovation.

Among those efforts to spread WWIII with China includes Steve Bannon provoking the America First base to believe that the “CCP is not the legitimate government of China” or that war with China is imminent or desirable. Do those threatening views of WW III represent President Trump’s current thinking? Is Trump planning to campaign on war with China? 

The US response to perceived China aggression has been to send the US Seventh fleet to routinely conduct operations in the South China Sea as if there is no geopolitical limitation to the US Navy flaunting its ownership of the Taiwan Straits. To rely on the amateur Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Pentagon militarists as objective sources about why Taiwan is essential to US national interest is sheer lunacy since the United States and China have no high level diplomatic communication. How is it not confrontational for the US Seventh fleet to dare intrude into Chinese waters?

As denounced by US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, former US Representative and Obama White House Chief of Staff has flailed that China’s economic “coercion is important” and that one anonymous source concluded that China’s emerging leadership as “worrisome.Rep.  Michael McCaul, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair while on an Asian junket commented that ‘“Coercion is core to China’s economic model” making ‘coercion’ the new ‘buzz’ word to describe China. McCaul went on to suggest that “We protect Taiwan by arming and training them — and by being prepared to defend them if necessary.” 

Accompanying McCaul to Taiwan were Reps. French Hill, R-Ark., Michael Lawler, R-N.Y., Ami Bera, D-Calif., Young Kim, R-Calif., Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, Guy Reschenthaler, R-Pa., and Madeleine Dean, D-Pa.

As Speaker McCarthy met with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan in California a plane banner flew over head with “One China, Taiwan is part of China”, rather than choosing to make the more objectionable personal trip to Taiwan as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi visit had set off alarm bells in China. A long game player rather than expecting instant gratification, China’s response to McCarthy’s meeting has been more muted as former Taiwan President Ma Ying-Joeh was visiting the Chinese mainland citing “People on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are [ethnically] Chinese people, and are both descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors.” 

McCarthy was accompanied by uniparty lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party including Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and ranking Member Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) as well as Reps. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), Chair of the Ways and Means Committee; Julia Brownley (D-Calif.); John Curtis (R-Utah); Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.); Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa); Trent Kelly (R-Miss.); John Moolenaar (R-Mich.); Seth Moulton (D-Mass.); Adrian Smith (R-Neb.); Michelle Steel (R-Calif.); Haley Stevens (D-Mich.); Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.); Rob Wittman (R-Va.) and Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).

As American neo cons continue to fault any country (especially Russia or China) that dares challenge the US omnipotent status based on its bullying history and wasteful squandering of its own resources, the BRICS (Brazil/Russia/India/China/So. Africa) are in a rapid stage of development as they solidify their base in preparation for a major expansion of multi polar emerging economies including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Argentina and Algeria among others: all are committed to intergovernmental cooperation based on non-interference in internal matters, peace, pursuit of prosperity and security with free exchange of trade  as all are dependent on relinquishing the Dollar with formation of a BRICS joint financial infrastructure creating its own separate currency. 

Regarded as US allies, both French President Emanuel Macron and Brazilian President Lula, no doubt reading the tea leaves that  US hegemony is flagging, both distanced themselves on a recent visit to China. Lula confirmed that he is on board with BRICS and its Shanghai-based New Development Bank to replace the American Dollar as well as China’s efforts to terminate US global dominance suggested that the US “stop encouraging war and start talking about peace.” Brazil also signed up for  the CIPS, the Chinese payment settlement system alternative to SWIFT. While Macron said that Europe had “no interest in an acceleration of the crisis in Taiwan and should pursue a strategy of independence.”

In a recent Washington speech, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen accused China of ‘unfair economic” practices suggesting  a broad set of tools at US disposal that included heavy-handed sanctions and yet admitted that the use of economic leverage to weaponize US currency could undermine the hegemony of the Dollar. Yellen assured that “we will not compromise on the protection of human rights” which are “foundational to how we engage with the world.”  

The US and its militarists remain in denial that it has brought the global reserve currency crisis on itself by cultivating an unrealistic self-aggrandizement of their dominance, and may not yet fully understand that that the war in Ukraine has shaken the world to no longer  be willing to accept US hegemony just as a war with China is unthinkable.  As the US is coming unglued with little official recognition of the brewing crisis or discussion on a potential response to save the Republic,  an impending alternative economic system is threatening the dollar, a flagrant misuse of sanctions against Russia and others as a means of control and suppression has only fueled antagonism to cut ties with the US and encourage de-dollarization

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on US Hegemony No Longer Threatens the World
  • Tags:

Anti-Meat Propaganda Roundup: Drinking Milk Is ‘Unsettling’ and Racist

By Ben Bartee, April 20, 2023

As I have previously documented at The Daily Bell, one of the major ongoing projects of the technocrat globalists at the WEF is to force the peasants to swap meat for mealworms, ostensibly for the sake of combatting “climate change.”

Grim Outlook for Ukraine

By Karsten Riise, April 24, 2023

Ukraine is today pressed back to a corner of only a few city-blocks in Artemovsk. Ukraine holds just 1,400 m x 2,400 m in western Artemovsk. Like a melting ice flake, Ukraine every day loses 200 meters on each side.

Biden DOJ Indicts Four Americans for “Weaponized” Free Speech

By Caitlin Johnstone, April 24, 2023

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says “weaponized” the First Amendment rights of Americans.

Video: The Global Pandemic Treaty: What You Need to Know. James Corbett

By James Corbett, April 24, 2023

The World Health Organization has already begun drafting a global pandemic treaty on pandemic preparedness. What form will it take? What teeth will it have? How will it further the globalists in cementing the biosecurity grid into place? James breaks it down in today’s episode of The Corbett Report podcast.

Brain Aneurysms as a Serious and Common COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Injury in Young People

By Dr. William Makis, April 23, 2023

A month ago, on March 20, 2023, I wrote a substack about brain aneurysms killing young people. (click here) There have been many new incidents since then, requiring another article. Actor Jamie Foxx had a “brain bleed” or brain aneurysm on April 11, 2023, and remains hospitalized.

Africa’s Economic Development: Exploring Geopolitical Complexities and Contradictions

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, April 23, 2023

Within the context of rapidly geopolitical changes and the Russia-Ukraine crisis, African leaders have to absolutely rethink and take strategies to save their straddling economy. Both situations have created increasing problems across the world.

The Winds of Change Are Blowing Through Damascus

By Steven Sahiounie, April 23, 2023

The winds of change are blowing through Damascus, as the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived on April 18 in Damascus, Syria on his first visit since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011.

Time Must Not be Allowed to Run Out on Julian Assange

By Kim Petersen, April 23, 2023

Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices.

Rebellion Grows Against the Dollar Empire

By Manlio Dinucci, April 23, 2023

While US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin convenes the “Contact Group for the Defence of Ukraine” in Germany to supply more and more weapons to Kyiv and fuel the war in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. In Latin America – the USA considers Latin America its “backyard” – a project is emerging and its development would undermine the foundations of US economic power in the region.

The Corona Wars Have Engulfed the Globe: The Naive Belief in Governmental Benevolence

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, April 23, 2023

Despite a list of State atrocities over the lifespan of our human species that is nearly infinite, we here in the post-World War II West, refuse to countenance the idea of a murderous power elite masquerading as government for the good of all.

The Art of Deception: Learning to Speak One-Percent

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, April 23, 2023

Succession is one story about the real America. It shows the workings of a society at its highest levels. It is self conscious in that it has no illusions about the American Dream. Instead it shows a society that is brutalised by its own successes that are leading to a greater disparity between wealth and poverty.

  • Posted in NO READ MORE LINK
  • Comments Off on Selected Articles: Anti-Meat Propaganda Roundup: Drinking Milk Is ‘Unsettling’ and Racist

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner is out with another report on the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a UK-based group which targets and blacklists conservative websites in order to drain them of revenue and support by working with “advertisers and the ad tech industry in assessing the reputational and brand risk when advertising with online media outlets and to help them avoid financially supporting disinformation online.”

As Kaminsky reports, software giant Oracle announced on Wednesday that it will no longer collaborate with GDI, which has received just under $666,000 from the US State Department between 2020 and 2021. The news comes one day after GDI was cited in a lawsuit against the Biden administration which claims the government has colluded with big tech to censor free speech.

This same British entity, which has two affiliated United States nonprofit groups that have come under fire for shielding information from their 2021 tax forms, was cited in a Tuesday friend-of-the-court brief filed by Alliance Defending Freedom in State of Louisiana v. Biden — a lawsuit filed in May 2022 that claims the government has colluded with Big Tech to stifle discourse online. -Washington Examiner

“All signs point to a growing government influence over social media,” reads the brief. “The Biden Administration admitted as early as 2021 that it was flagging and reporting posts on Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms as COVID-19-related ‘misinformation.’ A recent report found that the U.S. State Department sent $330 million [sic] to The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization that is attempting to discredit and blacklist many conservative news outlets for peddling ‘disinformation.'”

Kaminsky notes that the brief mistakenly attributes $330 million sent to the National Endowment for Democracy to the GDI, when in reality the NED has granted money to GDI out of the $330 million. Following the Examiner‘s reporting on the grants, the NED announced in late February that they were cutting off funding to GDI.

Louisiana v. Biden was brought forth by Republican attorneys general Jeff Landry of Louisiana and then-Missouri’s Eric Schmitt, now a senator for The Show-Me State. The lawsuit alleges that the Biden administration infringed on the public’s First Amendment Rights through its efforts working with Big Tech employees to engage in content moderation related to election integrity, COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s infamous abandoned laptop, and more.

For instance, Landry released a document in January showing that the White House urged a Facebook employee in April 2021 to restrict posts about Fox News host Tucker Carlson claiming that there have been efficacy issues with “vaccines.” The White House also told Facebook in May 2021 that “slowing down” posts appearing to be “anti-vax” would be “reasonable,” and also urged Twitter to remove a post by anti-vaccine critic Robert Kennedy, Jr., who recently announced his Democratic bid for White House in 2024, documents show. -Washington Examiner

“Government should be freedom’s strongest defender, not its greatest threat,” said senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Travis Barham, in a Wednesday statement. “Americans don’t look to the White House or Silicon Valley to discover and express the truth. That’s not the role of government, and it certainly isn’t the role of Big Tech.”

Oracle, meanwhile, told the Examiner that it would no longer maintain a relationship with GDI, which they had previously announced a 2021 collaboration with in order to engage in “brand safety.”

“After conducting a review, we agree with others in the advertising industry that the services we provide marketers must be in full support of free speech, which is why we are ending our relationship with GDI,” said Michael Egbert, vice president for corporate communications at Oracle.

Microsoft has similarly launched an internal investigation into its partnership with GDI after ad industry whistleblowers revealed how conservative sites were being blacklisted by the Microsoft-owned Xandr as “false/misleading” , “reprehensible/offensive” , or “hate speech.”

Meanwhile, GDI’s co-founder and CEO Clare Melford was sent a letter on Tuesday by Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), who demanded its two affiliated nonprofit groups in the U.S. release a “complete and unredacted list of donors.The letter came days after a Washington Examiner investigation revealed that the private AN Foundation, also known as the Disinformation Index Foundation, and its affiliated public charity, Disinformation Index Inc., are shielding items like board members, officers, and donors from tax forms, while claiming to be “harassed” under a little-known federal exemption law. -Washington Examiner

“This is outrageous,” said Paul Kamenar, counsel to the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative watchdog that plans to file an IRS complaint against both GDI groups, in a statement last week.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from ZH

A Counter-Proposal: Restrict the Restrictors

April 24th, 2023 by Thomas L. Knapp

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

The RESTRICT Act — currently winding its way through Congress — would empower the US Commerce Department to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate and mitigate transactions” that “pose an undue or unacceptable risk to U.S. national security or the safety of U.S. persons.”

The RESTRICT Act’s more common name in the popular consciousness is “the TikTok ban,” even though the bill doesn’t mention TikTok and pretty much allows the US government to ban (well, try to ban, anyway) any Internet app which the government finds inconvenient to its purposes in any given way at any given time.

What’s a “transaction?” The bill defines it as “any acquisition, importation, transfer, installation, dealing in, or use of any information and communications technology product or service, including ongoing activities such as managed services, data transmission, software updates, repairs, or the provision of data hosting services.” In other words, any action taken on the Internet.

Oh, and despite some contrary claims by “fact checkers,” the use of Virtual Private Networks. The bill explicitly covers any “transaction”  “designed or intended to evade or circumvent the application of this Act,” and VPNs are certainly designed to do exactly that.

What determines whether a transaction endangers “national security?” A politician or bureaucrat has to assert that it involves an “adversary” (not an “enemy” — the US hasn’t declared war on another nation in more than 80 years) of the United States, namely  China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, or any other country the Secretary of Commerce might happen to take a sudden dislike to.

What are the penalties for conducting prohibited “transactions?” Civil fines of up to $250,000, criminal fines of up to $1 million, and prison sentences of up to 20 years.

Politicians love to quack about “buy American,” but in this case they seem to be intent on going with an import. The RESTRICT Act is just a clone of the Great Firewall of China (and the Internet restrictions imposed by those other “adversaries”).

My mother taught me to never complain about something without proposing an alternative, so here goes:

Instead of letting the politicians RESTRICT us, why don’t we RESTRICT them in their attempts to “reduce” us, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, “under an absolute despotism?”

How? Well, that’s the sticky part. The Constitution, even with a clearly written First Amendment has clearly failed to protect us from the depredations of the political class such as the unambiguously unconstitutional RESTRICT Act. So has choosing “representatives” in “elections.” They’re the very people pulling this kind of shenanigans on us!

What they’re trying to do, in so many words, is use legislation to make peaceful revolution impossible. And as JFK warned us in 1962, doing that makes violent revolution inevitable.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Tony Blair’s visit to Egypt in April 1998 was his first trip to the Middle East since being elected prime minister the previous year. 

In Cairo, Blair promoted British arms exports, attended the signing ceremony of a new energy deal with British Gas and announced the creation of an Egyptian British Business Council, telling a business audience that “we should do more together”. 

The strategy marked a step change from British policy under Blair’s predecessor, John Major. In July 1995, with Major’s Conservative government still in power, the Foreign Office wrote that “we have friendly but not [sic] particularly substantive relationship with the Mubarak regime”, declassified files show.

The Blair government sought to remedy two problems that had arisen between the two countries.  

These were described in February 1998 by Dominick Chilcott, foreign secretary Robin Cook’s private secretary, who wrote: “Mubarak is said to have [taken] umbridge at the lack of high level contact with the government since the election and has been exercised about the presence of Islamic extremists in London”. 

“The lack of contact at the highest level galls the Egyptians”, Chilcott added. 

Chilcott, now Britain’s ambassador to Turkey, was referring to Mubarak’s accusation that the UK was harbouring Islamic militants, who had targeted Egypt in November 1997 when terrorists killed over 60 people in Luxor. 

Mubarak specifically pointed to Yasser al-Sirri who had been convicted in absentia in Egypt in 1994 for attempting to assassinate its prime minister and was living in the UK after applying for asylum.

Despotism

British officials had few illusions about Mubarak, who had held absolute power for 17 years since the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. In advance of Blair’s visit, Sir David Blatherwick, the UK’s ambassador in Cairo, wrote a long analysis of the situation in Egypt, describing it as “in effect a paternalistic despotism”. 

He noted that Mubarak, who was “shrewd” and “well informed”, was also “very much in control of what happens in Egypt”.

Blatherwick had earlier written that “Mubarak is Pharaoh”, adding that “all important decisions, and many others, go to him personally” and that “he is surrounded by people who (mostly) protect him from bad news or unwelcome advice”. 

But the ambassador added that “Mubarak’s survival, or failing that the survival of the regime, is in our interest”. Not the least of the reasons for this was “the potential of the Egyptian market” and “the good scope for business here”.

Under John Major, the Foreign Office had written that in Egypt the “political system is dominated by the ruling party” while “opposition parties have been rendered impotent by government restrictions”. Added to this were “allegations of corruption involving ministers and members of Mubarak’s own family”.

‘Tight grip of the security apparatus’

Mubarak’s repression was well-documented. In its annual review of Egypt for 1998, Human Rights Watch wrote: “Authorities showed no sign of loosening the tight grip of the security apparatus, and documentation of its impunity — including torture, deaths in custody, ‘disappearances’, and abysmal prison conditions — filled the pages of reports published by Egyptian human rights organisations”. 

It added: “Nor did the government take any significant steps to provide additional space to independent institutions, or peaceful political opponents and critics.” 

None of this seemed to matter to Blair. The briefing documents that have been declassified pay scant attention to such concerns or to human rights. Rather, in a speech in Cairo on 18 April, Blair chose to directly praise the Egyptian dictator. 

He said: “Egypt has been a pioneer in promoting peace and stability across the region. I pay tribute to the leadership he [Mubarak] has shown”.

Lobbying for BAE

Briefs prepared for Tony Blair urged him to “raise defence sales prospects” given that Egypt was an “enormous importer of military equipment”. These “prospects” included military radios, armoured vehicles and Hawk aircraft, officials wrote. 

When Blair met Mubarak for 90 minutes on the first day of the trip he told him “defence cooperation was… good” and that he would ask the ambassador “to follow up some points in more detail”. 

Blair did so himself. Following his visit, he directly lobbied Mubarak on behalf of BAE Systems – or British Aerospace Defence Systems as it was then called. On 20 July 1998, the British prime minister wrote a personal letter to Mubarak asking Egypt to buy military radios from BAE. 

“My purpose in writing is to support this British bid”, Blair wrote, adding that “BAE has an excellent product”. The deal would be “an excellent opportunity to strengthen further the industrial partnership between our two countries”, he added.

Blair’s government subsequently approved 550 arms exports licences worth £65m to Egypt.

Letter from Tony to Blair to Hosni Mubarak, 20 July 1998, in National Archives

Energy business

British Gas (BG) chief executive David Varney wrote to Blair in early April 1998 asking if he would attend the signing of a new deal with his corporation to set up the Nile Valley Gas Company while he was in Egypt.

After Blair did so, Varney thanked him saying “Your presence was invaluable in raising BG’s profile in Egypt”. 

The brief prepared for Blair by officials noted that a key aim of his visit to Egypt was “to develop our economic relations with what is emerging as an important market”. Egypt was one of the government’s 12 target markets and, in particular, “big new reserves of gas off the north coast are coming on stream (Shell and British gas are both deeply involved)”, Blatherwick wrote. 

The new body that Blair launched to promote trade and investment – the Egyptian British Business Council – was “warmly welcomed by the Egyptians”, one UK official wrote. 

The UK side of the new council was headed by the chair of HSBC, Stephen Green, and it consisted of senior executives from corporations such as Shell, British Gas, Unilever and Barclays. 

The council’s vice chair was Sir Peter de la Billiere, the former director of the SAS who was now with the merchant bank, Robert Flemings Holdings. De la Billiere clearly had high level access to the Egyptian regime: one declassified document shows he personally met Mubarak in March 1997. 

Note from Cherie Blair to Suzanne Mubarak, 22 April 1998, in National Archives

Cherie thanks the president

Blair’s wife, Cherie, accompanied him on his visit and the declassified files contain a draft written note from her to Mubarak’s wife, Suzanne. 

Cherie Blair thanked Suzanne Mubarak for her hospitality, writing: “I so enjoyed seeing the pyramids and the wonderful flight in the helicopter. Please thank the President from me”. 

In the note, written on Downing Street headed paper, Cherie Blair also told Suzanne Mubarak she hoped “to persuade Tony to consider a family holiday in Egypt”.

She evidently succeeded. Four years later, in 2002, Tony and Cherie holidayed at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh “as a guest of the Egyptian government”. The return flights were paid for by Mubarak’s government.

‘Laid the foundations’

After the visit, Blair wrote to Mubarak thanking him for the “wonderful hospitality” and saying: “I… believe we have laid the foundations for even better and closer relations between Britain and Egypt”. 

Blatherwick agreed, saying that before Blair’s visit “the Egyptians were tending to feel that we were not interested. They have been delighted to find this is not so”. 

Mubarak also became more muted about the presence of Egyptian militants in London. By October 1998, trade secretary Peter Mandelson’s assistant private secretary, Zhada Bibi, was writing that “political and economic ties with Egypt are strengthening”.

The UK government continued to back the Mubarak regime under Blair and his successors. Just before Mubarak was overthrown in the popular ‘Arab spring’ protests of 2011, Blair described the beleaguered Egyptian leader as “immensely courageous and a force for good”. 

The deepened relationship Blair established was also a precursor to that with the country’s current pharaoh, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. Blair welcomed the Egyptian army’s seizure of power in 2013 which brought Sisi to power and then went on to advisehim. 

The UK has supplied Egypt with £297m worth of military equipment under Sisi’s regime, which has created an unprecedented human rights crisis in the country. 

BG was acquired by Shell in 2015. It is their interests, alongside BP’s interests in Egypt, that UK foreign policy now promotes, while Whitehall largely ignores the country’s increasing human rights disaster.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.

Featured image: Tony Blair with Hosni Mubarak. (Photo: Peter Macdiarmid / Getty)

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on How Tony Blair Sealed UK Relations with Egypt’s Dictatorship
  • Tags: ,

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

US and NATO officials met at Ramstein Air Base in Germany yesterday to coordinate new arms deliveries to Ukraine ahead of a planned Ukrainian spring offensive, a day after NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg went to Kiev and said Ukraine should join NATO.

These provocative actions all point to the growing risk of an escalation in which the leading NATO imperialist powers would intervene in the war to directly attack Russia. Indeed, were Ukraine admitted into the NATO alliance today, it could invoke Article 5 of the alliance treaty to demand that all NATO member states declare war on Russia. The immediate actions decided by NATO, to set up supply lines to deliver battle tanks and other heavy arms to Ukraine, also raise the risk of a clash between Russian and NATO forces.

“Ukraine’s future is in NATO. All allies agree on that,” Stoltenberg said on Thursday in Kiev. He added that Ukraine’s NATO membership would be “high on the agenda” of NATO’s July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, and that NATO has already spent €150 billion on arming Ukraine. “Allies are now delivering more jets, tanks and armored vehicles,” he said. “NATO stands with you today, tomorrow and for as long as it takes.”

Russian government spokesman Dmitri Peskov replied that Ukraine’s joining NATO would “pose a serious and significant danger to our country, to the security of our country.”

Arriving in Ramstein for the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting yesterday, Stoltenberg pledged to “ensure that Ukraine prevails” in the war. He confirmed that Ukraine functions militarily as part of NATO in all but name, saying: “I also expect NATO allies to agree a multi-year program to help Ukraine transition from Soviet-era equipment, standards, doctrines to NATO standards and doctrines, and to ensure full interoperability between Ukrainian forces and NATO forces.”

Significantly, Stoltenberg suggested NATO is not confident that Ukraine’s spring offensive will end the war, and is planning a broader conflict. He said, “Hopefully, the Ukrainians are able to make a lot of progress and you can have a just and an enduring peace soon. But no one can say that with certainty. So we need to be prepared for the long haul.”

He made clear that already massive arms deliveries will be escalated: “Maybe it sounds a bit more boring, but … this is now a battle of attrition, and a battle of attrition becomes a war of logistics.”

Stoltenberg said NATO must “ensure that Ukraine has the military strength, the capabilities, the deterrence to prevent new attacks, because you have to remember that the war didn’t start in February last year. The war started in 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, and when Russia for the first time moved into eastern Donbas. And then we had the full-scale invasion in February [2022].”

After the meeting, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley gave a press conference. Austin denounced “Russia’s reckless and lawless invasion” of Ukraine in February 2022 and said: “In just a few short months, the Contact Group has delivered more than 230 tanks, more than 1,550 armored vehicles and other equipment and munitions to support more than nine new armored brigades.”

Austin and Milley were repeatedly questioned by NATO reporters on the state of the Ukrainian armed forces and whether the planned spring offensive could start. Milley said that, beyond tanks and artillery ammunition, for Ukraine “the most critical thing right now, is that air defense system, to make sure that it is robust, it’s rigorous, it’s deep … That’s the most important, critical military task right now. That was the theme of this entire day, was air defense, air defense, air defense, to make sure that Ukraine can defend its airspace.”

He also said that US Abrams tanks, on which Ukrainian troops will begin training in two weeks, “they’ll be very effective. But I would also caution, there’s no silver bullet in war.”

One of the principal technical difficulties facing NATO tank deliveries to Ukraine is the massive logistics chain of parts and supplies necessary to keep Abrams or Leopard tanks in combat. Yesterday, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius announced that Germany, Poland and Ukraine have signed an agreement to build a hub in Poland to repair Leopard tanks sent to the war in Ukraine. The cost of building the hub is estimated at around €200 million.

NATO officials and media are presenting their utterly reckless policy of NATO military escalation against Russia based on relentless propaganda lies. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine last year is based on a reactionary Russian-nationalist strategy that enormously escalated the fighting in the region. But this invasion was not a sudden, unprovoked act of aggression; nor was the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

The war in Ukraine is the product of decades of imperialist war and intrigues made possible by the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This not only paved the way for decades of NATO wars near the former USSR’s southern and western borders, in Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Central Asia. It also let US and NATO officials spend billions of euros on building up far-right, anti-Russian Ukrainian-nationalist groups who ultimately carried out a NATO-backed putsch in Kiev in 2014.

The vote to rejoin Russia in Crimea, which is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking, came after the newly-installed NATO-backed regime in Kiev sent far-right militias to attack Russian-speaking areas in southern and eastern Ukraine. The areas of Donetsk and Luhansk in the largely Russian-speaking Donbas seceded amid fighting between local militias and far-right Ukrainian militias like the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Fighting continued in the region until the Russian invasion last year.

Now, NATO officials are investing enormous resources in the planned spring offensive to retake parts of southern and eastern Ukraine held by Russian troops. This aims above all to fill the gaps in Ukrainian forces left by catastrophic losses they suffered fighting Russian troops around Bakhmut, after which Ukrainian losses are estimated to run into the hundreds of thousands.

While the spring offensive itself poses an enormous risk of escalation into direct Russia-NATO clash if it is successful, many indications suggest that it could lead to a debacle for Ukraine. The only way to avoid a complete Ukrainian collapse would then be for NATO powers to directly intervene in the conflict against Russia.

After the publication two weeks ago of leaked US military documents suggesting that Ukraine is in a far weaker position than the US press has admitted, many reports indicate that the Ukrainian forces may be heading for a bloody defeat.

El Pais—a daily close to Spain’s ruling social-democrats, who have aggressively participated in the NATO war, arming the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion—admitted that Russian forces outgun Ukrainian forces 10 to 1 in heavy artillery. While Ukraine is straining to receive hundreds of NATO tanks, Russia is thought to still have several thousand operational tanks and nearly 10,000 tanks in reserve despite losses suffered in the war.

Moreover, it added that Ukrainian forces, many newly-recruited and given brief training on complex weapon systems, are walking into the largest defensive works built in Europe since World War II.

It wrote, “Nothing like it has been seen in Europe since 1945: … 800 kilometers of trenches, anti-tank ditches, dragon’s teeth (reinforced concrete obstacles to hinder armored vehicles), concrete machine-gun nests and bunkers today form a defensive line protecting the territory occupied by Russia in Ukraine. Since last summer, the invading forces have been constructing a massive defensive barrier to hold off the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive.”

The response of the NATO powers to fears of a looming Ukrainian debacle is to threaten escalation. Polish officials have repeatedly stated that they would be prepared to enter the conflict, with Polish Ambassador to France Jan Emeryk Rościszewski telling the French LCI station: “If Ukraine does not defend its independence, we will have no other choice, we will be forced to enter the conflict.”

These events point to the imminent danger of the eruption of a Third World War across Europe, and the urgent necessity of mobilizing the working class and youth in a movement against imperialist war.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from Stop the War

Grim Outlook for Ukraine

April 24th, 2023 by Karsten Riise

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Grimmer Every Day

The situation for Ukraine looks grimmer every day.

Zelensky as late as 7 March 2023 promised on CNN that Ukraine would “de-block” Russia’s siege of Artemovsk (Bakhmut) because a Russian conquest of Artemovsk would create an “open road” for Russia in eastern Ukraine. According to several reports, Zelensky concentrated no less than 80,000 troops for the purpose of “de-blocking” Artemovsk. Now, 1½ months after Zelensky’s promise on CNN to “de-block” Artemovsk – what has Ukraine achieved? Only humiliating losses.

Ukraine is today pressed back to a corner of only a few city-blocks in Artemovsk. Ukraine holds just 1,400 m x 2,400 m in western Artemovsk. Like a melting ice flake, Ukraine every day loses 200 meters on each side. Russia is also advancing north around Artemovsk, strengthening Russia’s flanks and creating Russian physical control of the last supply road 506. Meanwhile, Russia also presses Ukraine everywhere else on the 600 km frontline. Ukrainian losses are regularly more than 400 dead in Artemovsk alone per day. Ukraine’s loss of Artemovsk in a week is a foregone conclusion.

West Getting Afraid

Even the Washington Post (WaPo) shows a map of Russia’s progress around Artemovsk, and WaPo is becoming scared and angry at Zelensky about the inevitable loss of Artemovsk (Bakhmut). This is a sign of things to come. Why should Ukraine ever be able to achieve any battle-field gains, if Ukraine cannot even hold Artemovsk after keeping and losing all its troops inside the city, and committing 80,000 troops for their rescue? Nervousness is spreading in the West, and everybody in Kiev and Washington is now busy downplaying expectations of any Ukrainian battlefield gains. Kyiv Post warns that Ukraine’s upcoming “biggest counteroffensive” may no longer be able to take Crimea. Kyiv Post is even getting panicky that lack of progress in Ukraine’s upcoming “biggest counteroffensive” will only result in extreme casualties and an “extinction level” of collapse for Ukraine:

Unsuccessful offensives, particularly with high casualties, will have a catastrophic impact upon continued commercial, economic, humanitarian, military, and political support for Volodymyr Zelensky. It could be a near but not quite … extinction-level event for the government of Ukraine in terms of maintaining support from outside of Ukraine. See this.

Ukraine’s much-touted “counteroffensive” looks like a pre-programmed disaster. Zelensky may not survive it. With Ukraine running out of air defense missiles and artillery shells, and Russia stepping up the use of cheap 500 kg and 1,500 kg guided glide bombs, even The New York Times is adjusting the Western public to a Ukrainian military failure: 

But the reinforcements [of NATO equipment] still fall short of what even American military planners have assessed that Ukraine needs to make the most of an offensive expected to begin in coming weeks to retake more territory captured by the Russians. See this.

NATO’s secretary-general Stoltenberg has become so tired and worn down by Western troubles in the Ukraine war, that he has refused to stay on his post even for a single year more, once his term expires.

The World Is Watching

The whole World is beginning to expect the spectacle of the West going down in flames in Ukraine.

India makes a clear-eyed assessment: There is no “stalemate”. Ukraine and the West are going down. Ukraine is a WW I type of attrition, where movements in the lines on the ground do not truly reveal the losses and who is winning. Like Germany in 1918, Ukraine’s break-down will come suddenly once Ukraine and NATO run out of men, equipment, and will to fight-on.

China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Africa have undoubtedly reached the same conclusion.

Watch out for the domino-effect, when the illusion of US power meets reality in Ukraine.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. 

Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from South Front

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

The Biden administration’s Department of Justice has just charged four members of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) for conspiring to act as agents of Russia by using speech and political action in ways the DOJ says “weaponized” the First Amendment rights of Americans.

The Washington Post reports:

Federal authorities charged four Americans on Tuesday with roles in a malign campaign pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda in Florida and Missouri — expanding a previous case that charged a Russian operative with running illegal influence agents within the United States.

The FBI signaled its interest in the alleged activities in a series of raids last summer, at which point authorities charged a Moscow man, Aleksandr Viktorovich Ionov, with working for years on behalf of Russian government officials to fund and direct fringe political groups in the United States. Among other things, Ionov allegedly advised the political campaigns of two unidentified candidates for public office in Florida.

Ionov’s influence efforts were allegedly directed and supervised by officers of the FSB, a Russian government intelligence service.

Now, authorities have added charges against four Americans who allegedly did Ionov’s bidding through groups including the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement in Florida, Black Hammer in Georgia, and an unidentified political group in California — part of an effort to influence American politics.

AFP reports that the conspiracy charges carry a sentence of up to ten years, with three of the four APSP members additionally charged with acting as unregistered agents of Russia which carries another five years.

“Russia’s foreign intelligence service allegedly weaponized our First Amendment rights – freedoms Russia denies its own citizens – to divide Americans and interfere in elections in the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen in the DOJ’s press release regarding the indictments, adding, “The department will not hesitate to expose and prosecute those who sow discord and corrupt U.S. elections in service of hostile foreign interests, regardless of whether the culprits are U.S. citizens or foreign individuals abroad.”

Looks like the United States has decided to dispense with those freedoms as well.

The superseding indictment containing these charges consists of a lot of verbal gymnastics to obfuscate the fact that the DOJ is prosecuting US citizens for speech and political activities in the United States which happen not to align with the wishes of the US government. The grand jury alleges that the aforementioned Ionov “directed” these Americans to “publish pro-Russian propaganda” and “information designed to cause dissention in the United States,” which is about as vague and amorphous an allegation as you could possibly come up with.

For the record Omali Yeshitela, the founder and chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party and one of the four Americans named in the indictment, has adamantly denied ever having worked for Russia. Earlier this month before charges were brought against him, the Tampa Bay Times quoted him as saying, “I ain’t ever worked for a Russian. Never ever ever ever. They know I have never worked for Russia. Their problem is, I’ve never worked for them.”

But it’s important to note that this should not matter. Under the First Amendment the government is forbidden to abridge anyone’s freedom to speak however they want and associate with whomever they please, which necessarily includes being as vocally pro-Russia as they like and promoting whatever political agendas they see fit, whether that happens to advance the interests of the Russian government or not. The indictment alleges that the four Americans engaged in “agitprop” by “writing articles that contained Russian propaganda and disinformation,” but even if we pretend that’s both (A) a quantifiable claim and (B) a proven fact, propaganda and disinformation are both speech that the government is constitutionally forbidden from repressing.

It’s not reasonable for the government to just dismiss the First Amendment on the grounds that it is being “weaponized”. You can’t have your government dictating what speech is valid and what counts as “agitprop” and “disinformation”, because they’ll always define those terms in ways which benefit the government, thus giving more power to the powerful and taking power away from the people. You can’t have your government dictating what political groups are legitimate and which ones are tools of a foreign government, because you can always count on the powerful set such designations in ways which benefit themselves.

There’s also the brazen hypocrisy of it all. The US government is constantly engaging in foreign influence operations with outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up to help foment coups and color revolutions and advance US information interests overtly in ways the CIA used to do covertly.

As commentator Brian Berletic noted on Twitter,

“The US through the National Endowment for Democracy has created armies of organizations carrying out malign influence operations around the world including here in Thailand. When the Thai government attempts to stop this activity, the US embassy shouts ‘free speech.’ Thailand’s government and others around the world could easily cite this move by the US Justice Department to target and uproot US-funded organizations doing exactly this and worse.”

So for the US government to now claim it’s legitimate to start throwing US citizens in prison for a decade because they published “propaganda” for another country is absurd, and more than a little scary. The most powerful government in the world needs more political dissent at home, not less, and here they are trying to turn it into a crime.

When they claim the members of the APSP published “propaganda” and promoted “dissention”, what they really mean is that they engaged in speech and political activism that the US government does not like. The spinmeisters will try to spin it, the legal mumbo-jumbo will try to obfuscate it, but that’s what’s happening. Don’t let them conceal this from you. They’re not worried about Russian propaganda, they’re worried you’ll stop listening to US propaganda.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image is from the author

China, Russia Circle Wagons in Asia-Pacific

April 23rd, 2023 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

First published on April 19, 2023

***

The official visit by Chinese State Councilor and Defence Minister General Li Shangfu to Russia on April 16-19 prima facie underscored the two countries’ emergent need to deepen their military trust and close coordination against the backdrop of worsening geopolitical tensions and the imperative to maintain the global strategic balance.

The visit carries forward the pivotal decisions taken at the intensive one-on-one talks  between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow through March 20-21. In a break with protocol, Gen. Li’s 4-day visit was front-loaded with a “working meeting” with Putin — to quote Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. (here and here)

Li is no stranger to Moscow, having previously held charge of Equipment Development Department of the Central Military Commission who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 for purchasing Russian weapons, including Su-35 combat aircraft and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems.

Song Zhongping, prominent Chinese military expert and TV commentator, forecast that Li’s trip would signal the high level of bilateral military ties with Russia, and lead to “more mutually beneficial exchanges in many fields, including defence technologies and military exercises.”

Last Wednesday, US Commerce Department announced the imposition of export controls on a dozen Chinese companies for “supporting Russia’s military and defence industries.” The Global Times hit back defiantly that “as China is an independent major power, so is Russia. It’s our right to decide with whom we will carry out normal economic and trade cooperation. We cannot accept the US’ finger-pointing or even economic coercion.”

Putin said at the meeting with Li on Easter Sunday that military cooperation plays an important role in Russia-China relations. Chinese analysts said Li’s visit is also a signal jointly sent by China and Russia that their military cooperation will not be impacted by the US pressure.

Putin had disclosed in October 2019 that Russia was helping China to create an early missile warning system that would drastically enhance the defensive capacity of China. Chinese observers noted that Russia was more experienced in developing and operating such a system, which is capable of identifying and sending warnings immediately after intercontinental ballistic missiles are launched.

Such cooperation demonstrates a high level of trust and requires a possible integration of Russian and Chinese systems. The system integration will be mutually beneficial; stations located in the North and West of Russia could provide China with warning data and, in turn, China could provide Russia with data collected at their Eastern and Southern stations. That is to say, the two countries could create their own global missile defence network.

These systems are among the most sophisticated and sensitive areas of defence technology. The US and Russia are the only countries which have been able to develop, build and maintain such systems. Certainly, close coordination and cooperation between Russia and China, two nuclear-armed powers, will profoundly contribute to world peace in the present circumstances by containing and deterring US hegemony.

It cannot be a coincidence that Moscow ordered a sudden check of the forces of its Pacific Fleet on April 14-18, which overlapped Li’s visit. The inspection took place against the background of the aggravation of the situation around Taiwan.

Indeed, in early April, it became known that the American aircraft carrier USS Nimitz approached Taiwan; on April 11, the US began a 17-day military exercise in the Philippines involving over 12000 troops; on April 17, news appeared about the dispatch of 200 American military advisers to Taiwan.

The US Global Thunder 23 strategic exercises at Minot Air Base in North Dakota, (which is the US Air Force Global Strikes Command) began last week where a training was conducted to load cruise missiles with nuclear warhead on bombers. The images showed B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers being equipped by the flight technical personnel of the base with AGM-86B cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads on the underwing pylons!

Again, exercises of US aviation and fleet forces have been increasingly noticed in the immediate vicinity of Russian borders or in regions where Russia has geopolitical interests. On April 5, B-52 Stratofortress circled over the Korean Peninsula allegedly “in response to nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.” At the same time, South Korea, the US and Japan conducted trilateral naval exercises in the waters of the Sea of Japan with the participation of aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. 

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev recently drew attention to Japan’s growing capability to conduct offensive operations, which, he said, constituted “a gross violation of one of the most important outcomes of the Second World War.” Japan plans to purchase around 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US, which can directly threaten most of the territory of the Russian Far East. The Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is working on developing Type 12 land-based anti-ship missiles “in order to protect the remote islands of Japan.”

Japan is also developing hypersonic weapons designed to conduct combat operations “on remote islands,” which Russians see as options for Japan’s possible seizure of the Southern Kuriles. In 2023, Japan will have a military budget exceeding $51 billion (on par with Russia’s), which is slated to increase to $73 billion.

Actually, during the latest surprise inspection, the ships and submarines of Russia’s Pacific Fleet made the transition from their bases to the Japanese, Okhotsk and Bering Seas. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said, “in practice, it is necessary to work out ways to prevent the deployment of enemy forces to the operationally important area of the Pacific Ocean – the southern part of the Sea of Okhotsk and to repel its landing on the Southern Kuril Islands and Sakhalin Island.”

‘Loudly on the quiet…

Surveying the regional alignments, Yuri Lyamin, Russian military expert and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a leading think tank of the military-industrial complex, told Izvestia newspaper:

“Considering that we have not settled the territorial issue, Japan lays claim to our South Kuriles. In this regard, checks are very necessary. It is necessary to increase the readiness of our forces in the Far East…

“In the context of the current situation, we need to further strengthen defence cooperation with China. In fact, an axis is being formed against Russia, North Korea and China: the USA, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and then it goes to Australia. Great Britain is also actively trying to participate… All this must be taken into account and cooperation should be established with China and North Korea, which are, one might say, our natural allies.”

In highly significant remarks at a Kremlin meeting with Shoigu on April 17 — while Li was in Moscow — Putin noted that the current priorities of Russia’s armed forces are “primarily focusing on the Ukrainian track… (but) the Pacific theatre of operations remains relevant” and it must be borne in mind that “the forces of the (Pacific) fleet in its individual components can certainly be used in conflicts in any direction.”

The next day, Shoigu told Gen. Li, “In the spirit of unbreakable friendship between the nations, peoples, and the armed forces of China and Russia, I look forward to the closest and most successful cooperation with you…” The Russian MOD readout said:

“Sergei Shoigu stressed that Russia and China could stabilise the global situation and lessen the potential for conflict by coordinating their actions on the global stage. ‘It is important that our countries share the same view on the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape… The meeting we have today will, in my opinion, help to further solidify the Russia-China strategic partnership in the defence sphere and enable an open discussion of regional and global security issues.”

Beijing and Moscow visualise that the US, having failed to “erase” Russia, is turning attention to the Asia-Pacific theatre. Suffice to say, Li’s visit shows that the reality of Russia–China defence cooperation is complicated. Russia–China military-technical cooperation has always been rather secretive, and the level of secrecy has increased as both countries engage in more direct confrontation with the US.

The political meaning of Putin’s 2019 statement on jointly developing a ballistic missile early warning system extended far beyond its technical and military significance. It demonstrated to the world that Russia and China were on the brink of a formal military alliance, which could be triggered if US pressure went too far.

In October 2020, Putin suggested the possibility of a military alliance with China. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ reaction was positive, although Beijing refrained from using the word “alliance”.

A working and  effective military alliance can be formed quickly if the need arises but their respective foreign policy strategies rendered such a move unlikely. However, real and imminent danger of military conflict with the US can trigger a paradigm shift.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Featured image: “Working meeting” between President Vladimir Putin (R), visiting Chinese State Councilor & Defence Minister Gen. Li Shangfu (L) and Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Moscow, April 16, 2023 (Source: Indian Punchline)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

A month ago, on March 20, 2023, I wrote a substack about brain aneurysms killing young people. (click here)

There have been many new incidents since then, requiring another article.

Actor Jamie Foxx had a “brain bleed” or brain aneurysm on April 11, 2023, and remains hospitalized

Early reports suggested Jamie Foxx had a brain bleed or brain aneurysm rupture. Jamie remains hospitalized a week later with doctors unable to find an explanation for what happened to him.

Was he COVID-19 vaccinated? Yes.

Leeds, UK – 35 year old TV Actress Martelle Edinborough had surgery on April 17, 2023 to treat a brain aneurysm that was “always tiny and stable” (click here)

King’s Mountain, NC – 29 year old Tara Martin died from a brain aneurysm on April 16, 2023 (click here) 

Warren, OH – 39 year old Ryan Eugene Petrick died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on April 13, 2023 (click here)

Valencia, Spain – 26 year old hair stylist David Cooper suffered a brain aneurysm on April 12, 2023 

Coeur d’Alene, ID – 51 year old Jessica Lee Harrison-Poteet died on April 10, 2023 after a sudden brain aneurysm at home (click here)

Red Hook, NY – Mark Yokota had a massive brain aneurysm rupture and died on April 8, 2023 

Oakland, CA – Daniel Potter suffered a sudden brain aneurysm rupture and died on April 8, 2023 (click here)

St. George, UT – 46 year old Chelsea Andersen died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on April 7, 2023 (click here)

Sherman, TX – Dallas salon owner and singer Shelley Luther had a brain aneurysm on April 5, 2023 (click here)

Tasmania, Australia – 36 year old Anna Tieman died of a brain aneurysm on April 4, 2023 (click here)

Alamogordo, NM – 22 year old dental assistant Nicole Marie Prieto died on Mar. 31, 2023 from a ruptured brain aneurysm (click here)

Caen, France – 24 year old Louis Laine had a brain aneurysm on March 28, 2023 and is in a coma (click here) 

30 year old World Champion Skier Pavel Krotov died on Mar. 24, 2023, when a brain aneurysm burst in his sleep (click here)

My Take… 

There have been so many collapses and deaths from brain aneurysms in the past few weeks, I was not able to fit them all into this article.

All COVID-19 vaccines which are based on the SARS-CoV2 spike protein, damage blood vessels and cause aneurysms.

I believe post COVID-19 mRNA vaccine brain aneurysms will be killing young people at a high rate, and it will take some time for doctors to figure this out and admit it.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Brain Aneurysms as a Serious and Common COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Injury in Young People

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Within the context of rapidly geopolitical changes and the Russia-Ukraine crisis, African leaders have to absolutely rethink and take strategies to save their straddling economy. Both situations have created increasing problems across the world. The underlying causes are well-known and therefore allowing its possible effects to largely influence the already-stressed economic development processes will spell disaster and tragedy for Africa and its 1.4 billion population. 

Several years have elapsed after the United Nations declared Africa’s political independence. Archival records show that Russia not only supported African countries in liberating themselves from the yoke of colonialism and attaining political independence but also facilitated in the UN General Assembly adopting in 1960 the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. It was precisely May 25, now more 60 years ago, but still Africa is far away from attaining its economic freedom despite the huge natural and human resources there. The resources are untapped, development remains shabby while about 60% of the population impoverished.  

Some say leadership attitudes and approach are holding back development in Africa, others blame external factors including the opaque relations adopted by foreign players. Without an effort to negotiate and identify development priorities, without an effort to cut off self-centric attitudes we will be prolonging our economic development and growth for another century. If we attribute our under-development to imperialism and colonialism, why not then primarily blame African leaders, their executive cabinets and the legislative organs. Does Africa need weak these public institutions and civil society, and leaders with obsolete and parochial ways of managing our economy? 

At this stage of Africa’s development, is it necessary to examine thoroughly how the geopolitical changes are influencing Africa’s unity and development, how it is impacting on African countries across the continent. In practical terms, the time has arrived to look at the development processes and review obstacles, control and monitor the participation of foreign players and now think of our role in the emerging new world order, as well as the implications for Africa.

On the other hand, a number of external players are swiftly dividing Africa and its desire for sustaining unity that has already been attained these several years by using anti-Western slogans and rhetoric, using political confrontation and consistently urging African countries to employ hatred for some foreign entities’ participation in Africa’s economy. There are glaring indications that Africa is sharply divided, diverse conflicts are taking its heavy toll on developments there.

The African Union simply lacks a unified approach to the continent’s development. Strengthening African unity has long been a sought-after goal that has never been fully achieved.

As the need for regional integration and the reasons for past failures become better understood, new efforts are being made to hold economic and political ties between countries. In order to foster an integrated development, regional organizations have been created in different parts of Africa. But on the whole, they have done little to improve developments in their respective regions. In many cases, African leaders continue to have most extensive bilateral relationships with their former colonial powers. On the opposite direction, Russia and China are critical of Western and European connections to Africa. At least, China has given appreciably huge support especially upgrading infrastructure. Russia has now embarked on fighting “neo-colonialism” which it considers a barrier on its way to regain part of Soviet-era influence in Africa.

In terms of working with Africa, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, during her weekly media briefing on March 23, indicated that African countries need to consolidate their political independence and sovereignty while overcoming acute socioeconomic issues and development. She expressed appreciation and respect for the sovereign equality of states and non-interference in their internal affairs. But on the other side, lashed at the aggressive policies of the United States, its approach towards Africa. She also blamed African leaders for their inability to employ “common sense” and in their own interests and, most importantly, within the principles of the supremacy of international law, especially in the current geopolitical changes rapidly shifting from the unipolar system to multipolar world order.

She said:

“Russia’s active work on the African track is a significant part of the entire scope of measures to develop constructive cooperation with a great number of countries that pursue an open and balanced foreign policy guided by common sense and their own interests and, most importantly, within the principles of the supremacy of international law and indivisible security with the central and coordinating role of the United Nations.”

According to her explanation, Russia advocates for a more equitable and democratic international order that will promote reliable security, the preservation of unique cultural-civilizational identity and equal opportunities for the development of all states. This can only be guaranteed within the framework of a multipolar system of international relations and cooperation based on a balance of interests of developing world. In a nutshell, Africa’s future has to be in line with this overall global development.

Due to its Western and European dreams which it has pursued for the past three decades following the collapse of the Soviet era, Russia is shifting while charting multipolar configuration and now moving to Africa. It is consistently expressing the desire to fight growing neo-colonial tendencies, obviously the most difficult task reminiscent of the Cold War times, in the continent to win support and sympathy from African leaders and among the 1.4 billion people, while Russia has invested little in the development of infrastructures, in the industrial sector and other employment-generating sectors across Africa.

In the context of development processes, African leaders are aware of the necessity to prevent the revival of neo-colonialism, the destructive attitude towards resources. The fight against neo-colonial tendencies should remain exclusively as a challenging task for African leaders, the regional organizations and the African Union. Russia should focus on what it could concretely do in the various economic sectors rather than continue accusing the United States and Europe for the under-development, economic obstacles and political problems across Africa. Experts say African leaders, with the political mandates from their electorates, should take the sole responsibility for African problems and find African solutions within their professional skills and competencies.

It implies that Russia is under-rating, down-grading African leaders and their development policies for allowing the growth of neo-colonialism. By advising African leaders what political direction is necessary to adopt, Russia is directly interfering in the internal politics of Africa. In practical terms, African leaders are answerable to their electorate, and the electorates have the duty of making objective assessment of their governments’ performance. It is widely acknowledged that state institutions are weak, and most high-level decisions relating to mega-projects first have to be discussed by parliament, or get the necessary approval from the cabinet. The system of checks and balances are still questionable in many African countries. 

Some experts say the world needs cooperation rather than fragmentation. Cooperation rather than confrontation is the basis for emerging multipolar world. For instance, Ivan Timofeev, Russian International Affairs Council’s Director of Programs and also Head of “Contemporary State” program at Valdai Discussion Club, writing under the headline “Can Russia Really Break Away from the West?” argued that long before relations between Russia and the West spiralled into a comprehensive political crisis, Russian leadership and officials were enthusiastically voicing ideas about developing ties with the rest of the world. 

After the Soviet collapse, especially from the 1990s, former Foreign Minister Evgeny Primakov pursued most activities within the framework of a multi-vector foreign policy. The gradual growth of contradictions with the West accelerated the formation of ‘pivot to the East’ ideas, although their implementation was slow. However, the current crisis in relations between Russia and the West, for all its appearances, is irreversible, and has driven an increase in the number and quality of ties with countries which are outside the control of the United States. Nevertheless, Russia itself is unlikely to be able to cement and consolidate them alone. However, it exemplifies the very possibility of challenging the political West on fundamental issues. Not everyone is ready to follow the same path, but the very fact of its presence is an event which has a global dimension. 

The task is to create reliable opportunities for modernisation through interaction with the non-Western world. Here, success is far from guaranteed. The ‘world majority’ is closely embedded in Western-centric globalization, although the existing system has its own problems. Russia’s links with its Western neighbours have been accumulating for centuries. Even such a powerful crisis like today’s cannot cut them overnight. Within the West itself, there is both an ideological and a purely material stratification. Behind the facade of general political slogans lies an extremely heterogeneous political and mental space. 

According to Ivan Timofeev, it is necessary to take into account the fact that the countries of the world majority which are friendly to Russia, still have their own national interests. They are unlikely to sacrifice them simply for the sake of friendship with Russia. Many non-Western countries maintain close relations with the West. A considerable number of them still benefit from Western-centric globalization. Moreover, many use a modernising process according to the Western model, preserving their cultural identity, and if possible, political sovereignty, but do not hesitate to use Western standards in the fields of economics, production, management, education, science, technology, et cetera. Rather, Russia will have to engage with a variety of cultures and ways of life.

Last year, I attempted to have an insightful understanding of the geopolitical changes, the emerging multipolar configuration and its implications for Africa. Whether it means Africa has to break away from the United States and Europe? During the discussions with Dr. Mohamed Chtatou, an experienced professor of Middle Eastern politics at the International University of Rabat (IUR) and Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, told me how Africa can develop itself away from the greed of some developed nations and still maintain contacts with them. He clearly underscored the system of approach, noting further that there is no easy answer to this question, as it is a complex issue that involves many different factors. However, there are some steps that Africa can take to promote sustainable development and reduce the influence of developed nations. Here are a few of the steps Dr. Mohamed Chtatou suggested:

Promote good governance: African nations should work to establish transparent and accountable systems of governance that promote the rule of law, protect human rights, and combat corruption.

Invest in education and human capital: Developing the skills and knowledge of the African people is crucial to building a sustainable and prosperous future for the continent. Investing in education, health care, and other social services can help to build a strong and healthy workforce.

Support local industries: African nations can promote economic development by investing in local industries, rather than relying solely on exports of raw materials. This can create jobs, generate income, and promote sustainable growth.

Foster regional integration: African nations can work together to promote regional integration and reduce dependency on external actors. This can involve developing common trade policies, investing in regional infrastructure, and promoting cooperation on issues of mutual interest.

Encourage foreign investment on African terms: African nations should strive to attract foreign investment on their own terms, by negotiating fair and equitable deals that benefit both the investor and the host country. This can help to promote economic development and reduce dependency on aid.

In view of its abundant resources, its ambitious youth, its vibrant society, and its geo-strategic potential, Africa needs to achieve unity and full integration, at once, to face the immense greed of the developed world and to defend its interest in the best possible ways.

Dr. Mohamed Chtatou further discussed the question of increasingly growing neo-colonialism and related tendencies in Africa. The use of the term neo-colonialism first became widespread, particularly in reference to Africa, shortly after the decolonization process following the end of World War II, which came after the struggle of several national independence movements in the colonies. Colonialism is a policy of occupation and economic, political or social exploitation of a territory by a foreign state. Neo-colonialism refers to a situation of dependence of one state on another. This dependence is not official, as is the case between a colony and a metropolis.

The brutal exploitation of the populations as well as the appropriation of the resources of the continent by the countries of the North are at issue. This is what justifies that today, France and other Western countries are implementing actions, notably by helping the development that colonization had slowed down. Neo-colonialism in Africa refers to the indirect and continued domination of African countries by former colonial powers, or by other external powers, through economic, political, and cultural means. Some aspects of neo-colonialism in Africa include:

Economic exploitation: African countries are often forced to rely on exports of raw materials, while importing manufactured goods at higher prices, leading to a one-sided economic relationship.

Political interference: External powers often interfere in the political affairs of African countries, supporting leaders who are favorable to their interests, and opposing those who are not.

Cultural domination: The cultural influence of former colonial powers can still be felt in Africa, as Western cultural values and norms are often seen as superior to traditional African values.

Debt dependency: Many African countries are burdened by debt, which often originated from loans given by external powers. These debts can lead to dependency and compromise their sovereignty.

Land and resource grabbing: External powers or corporations often acquire large amounts of land or resources in African countries, often displacing local populations and leading to environmental degradation.

There may be some contradictions and complexities when discussing and analysing Africa within the context of geopolitical changes. In terms of business, the United States and Europe stand as the traditional markets for Africa’s exports, earn significant revenues fro these markets, and therefore difficult to abandon over night. Most of the European capitals and the cities in the United States are popular holiday destinations for the African elites and the middle-class and business people. The diaspora is closely knitted by family culture. These are the essential features that unite them. The relationships were distinctively different during the political independence struggle, and now much relates to economy. 

In most cases, it is further argued that Africans speak most European languages, more or less understand the Western and European culture, with all the diversity of the West. This is one greatest ultimate advantage for preserving their cultural identity, and if possible, political sovereignty. It simply facilitate establishing and maintaining ties with friendly ties with Western and European countries.

The design for an alternative has to significantly address development concerns and the population’s living standards, these are the primary task of African leaders. Obviously, Africans are making fundamental decisions in the areas of economic development, thus external players with investment capital and entrepreneurial partnership are seen likely able to cement and consolidate their desires for strong society in the global dimension. These have to be located within the frame of the African Union concept.

In other words, the African Union is far from its objectives and, contrary to its reference model, is not prospering. This sad fact raises several questions, both about African integration and about the legitimacy and usefulness of the African Union. The topic seems all the more relevant as African nations see regional integration as an important opportunity to introduce political stability and increase trade. In this regard, Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana and one of the founding fathers of African unity said: 

“There can be no real independence and economic independence and true economic, social, political and cultural development of Africa without the unification of the continent”. But how should this unification take place? Is the African Union, based on the European Union model the only solution for Africa? Is it capable of curing Africa of all its ills? What if regional integration under the European model is not adapted to Africa?

Most African experts believe that for Africa global stability is a necessary factor for growth, but it must first take control over its own growth agenda. Of course, Africa has to forge an intra-African trade and investment, modern agriculture and focus on industrialising as basis for the newly created single market. As Jakkie Cilliers, Head, African Futures and Innovation, ISS Pretoria, in April 2023 argued “the continent will suffer if current efforts to instrumentalize Africans in this divided world continue.”

In his view, especially at this new stage, “Africa needs debt relief, Chinese trade and investment, expanded relations with the EU, capital from the US and more trade with the rest of the global south. It needs an agricultural revolution to ensure food security and accelerate trade integration to provide a larger, more attractive domestic and foreign capital market. Fully implementing the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement can unlock more rapid growth than any other scenario.” Meanwhile, as the elephants fight, the grass suffers, according to Jakkie Cilliers, Head of African Futures and Innovation at the Institute of Security Studies, Pretoria in South Africa.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS) and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

Сви чланци Глобалног истраживања могу се читати на 51 језику тако што ћете активирати дугме Преведи веб локацију испод имена аутора.

Да бисте добили дневни билтен Глобал Ресеарцх-а (изабрани чланци), кликните овде.

Кликните на дугме за дељење изнад да бисте е-поштом/проследили овај чланак својим пријатељима и колегама. Пратите нас на Инстаграму и Твиттеру и претплатите се на наш Телеграм канал. Слободно поново постављајте и делите чланке Глобалног истраживања.

***

Uvod u tematiku

Gradjani u našim zemljama nisu zadovoljni aktuelnom situacijom u svetu: rat Zapada protiv Rusije kojem se ne sagledava kraj, koji bi mogao da preraste u atomski rat dve super sile na evropskom tlu, i brojni drugi ratovi: samo borba i ubistva. Na to se nadovezuje sve veće siromašenje siromašnih društvenih slojeva i briga za budućnost. Vidi: Paul C. Roberts: „Does America Have a Future?“ („Da li Amerika ima budućnost“) (1).

Šta činiti? „Ići na barikade“, ili prihvatiti ćutke ludilo?  O tome je nosilac Nobelove nagrade za mir Martin Luter King rekao u svom istorijskom govoru 4. Aprila 1967: “Doći će vreme, u kojem će ćutanje biti izdaja“ (2).

Prema dr. Gerdi Fellay, švajcarskoj psihoterapeutkinji, su se Maks Horkhajmer i Teodor Adorno, dva čuvena filozofa, „Frankfurtske škole“ posle Drugog svetskog rata zbog pokleknuća Geteove i Šilerove otadžbine pred Firerom predala sudbini. Na to je Fridrih Libling (1893-1982), osnivač  Psihološke „Ciriške škole“, ovoj dvojici intelektualaca, prema zabeleškama Gerde Fellay, uputio sledeći psihiloški odgovor: „Čovečanstvo mora da usvoji rezultate psihološkog istraživanja da bi stvorilo život dostojan čoveka. (3).

Predmet psihološkog istraživanja je duhovno-duševni život čoveka, njegova priroda, njegovo duševno stanje i njegovo ponašanje. Ako čovek spozna sebe i svoje bližnje, on menja svoj način gledanja na državnu stvarnost i celokupni društveni poredak. Rezultati psihiloškog istraživanja ukazuju na put.

Zbog toga ću ja kao psiholog i nadalje slovom i rečju poučavati o psihološkoj nauci i pozivati da zajednički koračamo tim putem. Kao učenik švajcarskog psihoterapeuta Fridriha Liblinga ja sam lično doživeo šta to znači usvojiti rezultate psihološkog istraživanja. Kao pioniru u oblasti naučne psihologije glavna preokupacija Liblinga je bila da ljudima ulije nadu u život dostojan čoveka u svakom pogledu.

Promena sveta zahteva promenu čoveka

Pošto je istorija delo ljudi, stoga promena sveta mora da proistekne iz njih samih. Ljudi moraju da upoznaju svoju sopstvenu prirodu, svoje duševno stanje, svoje svesne ili polusvesne predrasude kao i načine reakcije, svoje i svojih bližnjih.

Tako bi oni tebalo da mogu da procene, kako će oni sami i kako će njihovi bližnji reagovati na konfliktne krize i buduće ratove. Šta da urade muškarci “sposobni za odbranu”, ako eventualno u kuću uleti naredba za mobilizaciju? Da li će oni odmah krenuti ili postoje ličnosti koje mogu da se usprotive naredbi “odozgo” i da kažu NE, tako da se drugi mogu orijentisati prema njima?

Po pravilu mi smo svi jedinstveni: Ministarstvo rata, političari, crkva, teolozi – kao i mi, gradjanke i gradjani.

Tako se majke povinuju svom refleksu poslušnosti i dozvoljavaju bez gundjanja da se njihovi sinovi upute na “polje časti”. Ako onda stigne vest o smrti, majka “ponosna u tuzi” nosi crni povoj na ruci. Majci i sinu nedostaje hrabrost da ne ide u rat. Već je otac ili neki drug član porodice ostao u nekom ratu na takozvanom „polju časti“.

I sveštenik blagosilja oružje rata, koje Drugi sa one strane granice, a koji su takodje Hrišćani uništavaju. On time prećutno sledi uputstvo svoje crkve i ovim postupkom postaje mizeran uzor mladima. I nezaposleni se vredno prijavljuju za ratnu službu, jer misle da nemaju drugi izlaz.

Pri tome je svaki rat, u kojem se drugi narodi prisiljavaju i potčinjavaju, dobar posao. Industrija oružja zuradjuje „zlatan nos“, dok gradjani sve više osiromašuju. Uprkos tome i dalje se naoružava; to se neguje i ne poriče.

Sve je profit, kud god da pogledamo. Ne postoji ništa gde on ne igra ulogu u našem društvenom poretku. Kako to da naša deca, na primer, imaju posla sa drogama? Kako oni do njih dolaze? Kad to ne bi bio dobar posao, ne bi smo imale droge ni brige zbog njih; tržište bi bilo prazno. Ali na to se niko ne obazire. Mnogi mladi propadaju zbog droga, oni doslovce idu u smrt.

Ako se osvrnemo po svetu, konstatujemo da ljudi bez izuzetka zbog tradicionalnog vaspitanja nisu zdravi, već su psihički iritirani. Oni nisu bolesni, već samo nisu pravilno prosvećeni. Ne moraju ih lečiti, već im se mora pomoći da sebe spoznaju.

Ako nam uspe da problem Čovek spoznamo u svoj njegovoj dubini, naučićemo da pravilno vidimo , šta se dešava sa nama ljudima. Da li, na primer, samo vladari sveta i njihovi političari započinju i vode ratove – ili smo i mi, gradjanke i gradjani, za rat.

Da bi se to istražilo, potrebno je mnogo vremena i strpljenja. Sva pitanja moraju da se „do kraja“ promisle. To je za život i duhovno zdravlje svakog od nas od izuzetnog značaja. Mi onda imamo kompas. 

Rezultati psihološkog istraživanja pokazuju nam put

Medicina je tek onda napredovala kada je smela da istražuje i upoznaje funkciju pojedinih organa tela. Crkva je najpre bila protiv toga da se čovek istražuje. Tek kada je spoznata neophodnost da se ljudima može samo onda pomoći ako se upoznaju funkcije raznih organa, medicinari su krali leševe da bi to saznali. 

Dok medicinska nauka istražuje ljudsko telo, psihološka nauka istražuje duhovno-duševni život čoveka.

Psihološka nauka je nauka o čoveku, o ljudskoj prirodi: kakav će postati, kakav će porasti i kako će se onda snaći u životu.  Iskustva mu pre svega prenose roditelji i nastavnici. Čovek je onda proizvod svojih doživljaja i utisaka u detinjstvu.

Već u prvim godinama života – sa pet do šest godina -, kada dete dodje u vrtić, ono ima kompas. Ono tada zna kako treba da se ponaša. Ono ima mišljenje i o drugom detetu, ocu, majci i braći i sestrama. Ono već ima svoje karakterne osobine i zna svoje mesto u svetu.

Ali, ako se čoveku pomogne kako treba i može da rešava svoje probleme, on će dobiti drugačiji, realističniji vidik. Najvažniji problemi su njegov osećaj života, njegovo mišljenje o sebi samom, svom partneru, njegovo ponašanje prema deci, njegovo  mišljenje o susedima, zajednici i državi.

To bi bilo obrazovanje u psihološkom smislu.

Ako je čovek jednom spoznao i razumeo osećanja i načine reakcije čoveka, kao i to kako on odrasta, onda će čovek razumeti i samog sebe, drugoga, društvo i ceo svet. A, ako naučimo da razumemo čoveka, onda ćemo razumeti i problem rata, jer možemo i razumemo da ocenimo naše sopstvene postupke i postupke bližnjih, šta se dešava u nama i u njima. Onda ćemo naći odgovor na pitanje: da li su to ljudi kao mi koji su za rat, ili su to sasvim drugi ljudi? Mi onda imamo sasvim drugačiji način mišljenja i osećaja.

Pošto su ljudi od strane svih institucija – počev od vaspitanja kod kuće i u školi , sve do regrutne škole i „polja časti“ – programirani po njihovim predstavama, teško im je ukazati na nerealna ili „pogrešna“ shvatanja i pomoći im.

Oni se tako programiraju da rade sve što vlastodršci od njih zahtevaju. Tako je nemački narod od oko 100 miliona ljudi – narod pesnika i mislilaca – sve odobravao i klicao Adolfu Hitleru. Svi su ga sledili – počev od pape, katoličke crkve i drugih crkava sve do naučnika, filozofa i psihologa, radnika i socijalista. Oni su bili tako „dobro“ programirani da su dozvolili da budu odvučeni u smrt.

Zbog toga treba svim ljudima preneti psihološko znanje o sebi samima i o bližnjima. Ali mi još živimo u jednom svetu u kojem se čovek nije prepoznao. On je sve istražio, ali nije prepoznao sebe samog, svoju prirodu, svoje duhovno stanje i svoje načine reagovanja.

Prosvećivanje i vaspitavanje kao profilaksa (preventiva)

Pošto se život dostojan čoveka priprema u glavama i srcima ljudi, ljudi sutra postupaju onako kako danas misle. Zbog toga je prosvećivanje od velikog značaja. Smisao prosvetiteljskih napora je čišćenje ljudske svesti od inidvidualnih i kolektivnih predrasuda, od ideološke pozadine mnogih katastrofa čovečanstva.

Budućnost naše kulture će bitno zavisiti od toga, da li ima dovoljno „prosvetitelja“, koji su u stanju da stanovništvo oslobode od odgovarajućih predrasuda.

Intelektualci imaju u tome veliku odgovornost. U vremenu, u kojem se pretnja o samouništenju čovečanstva atomskom bombom čini mogućom, potrebni su nam više nego ikada „slobodni duhovi“, koji nas uče šta je istina, a šta je laž.

Važnije još od prosvećivanja je problem vaspitavanja. Dubinsko psihološko istraživanje je učinilo lako prepoznatljivim ogroman domet vaspitavanja. Mi danas znamo da je čovek do te mere produkt svog vaspitanja, da smemo da se nadamo da pomoću psiholoških metoda vaspitavanja, koje se odriču autoritarnog principa, možemo da vaspitamo ljude koji će biti zaštićeni od upletenosti u zabludu o moći.

Ako vaspitavanje u roditeljskoj kući i školi bude lišeno autoritarnog ponašanja koje izaziva strah, primene sile kao i neprimerene razmaženosti i ako se okrene istinskom razumevanju za dečji duhovni život, onda će ono stvoriti tip čoveka koji nema više „podanički mentalitet“ i shodno tome neće više biti savitljiva alatka u rukama vlastodržaca u našem svetu.

Uvažavanje od strane vaspitača ličnosti deteta i njegovo prijateljsko poklanjanje poverenja vaspitaču daće vredan doprinos izgradnji jednog humanog društvenog poretka i stvaranju života dostojnog čoveka.

*

Напомена за читаоце: кликните на дугме за дељење изнад. Пратите нас на Инстаграму и Твиттеру и претплатите се на наш Телеграм канал. Слободно поново постављајте и делите чланке Глобалног истраживања.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Haensel je školski rektor, dr. pedagogije i diplomirani psiholog. Posle završenih univerzitetskih studija radio je kao naučni saradnik u obrazovanju odraslih. Kao penzioner imao je privatnu ordinaciju kao psihoterapeut. U svojim knjigama i stručnim člancima  zahtevao je svesno etničko-moralno vrednosno vaspitanje kao i vaspitanje o zajedničkoj pripadnosti i miru. Za zasluge za Srbiju dobio je od Beogradskog i Novosadskog univerziteta republičku nagradu „Kapetan Miša Anastasijevic“. 

Fusnote

(1)   https://freeassange.rtde.me/international/167034-denkt-nicht-an-die-zukunft-es/

(2)   https://www.globalresearch.ca/this-madness-must-cease/4460

(3)   Fellay,Gerda (1997/2010). Friedrich Liebling. Leben und Werk-eine Einführung. (Dissertation). New York, Paris, Bern i Sitten (Švajcarska), str. 16

  • Posted in English, Srpski
  • Comments Off on Čovečanstvo mora da usvoji rezultate psihološkog istraživanja da bi stvorilo život dostojan čoveka“

The Winds of Change are Blowing through Damascus

April 23rd, 2023 by Steven Sahiounie

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

The winds of change are blowing through Damascus, as the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan arrived on April 18 in Damascus, Syria on his first visit since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011.

Syria has suffered a decade-long regional isolation from the US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change, which utilized the Muslim Brotherhood as foot soldiers.  The Arab world has suffered from the western engineered “Arab Spring” and is now in the process of reclaiming independence and solidarity among those who had formerly met as brothers in the Arab League. 

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad traveled to Tunisia on April 17 and met with his counterpart Nabil Ammar shortly after his arrival.

Earlier this month, Tunisian President Kais Saied ordered the appointment of an ambassador to the Syrian capital, Damascus. It followed the decision of the Syrian government to reopen its embassy in Tunis and appoint an ambassador.  

Tunisia was also the subject of a US-NATO attack for regime change which used the Muslim Brotherhood, until the current President has stopped the country from being controlled by Radical Islam.

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad arrived on April 13 in Jeddah to meet Saudi Foreign Minister Farhan. Both countries are seeking “a political solution to the Syrian crisis that preserves the unity, security and stability of Syria.” This was the first visit to Saudi Arabia by a Syrian foreign minister since 2011.

The high level talks discussed “facilitating the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland, and securing humanitarian access to the affected areas in Syria”.

On April 14, delegates from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan met in Jeddah at Saudi Arabia’s request.  The discussion centered on Syria’s return to its position in the Arab League, which will meet on May 19 in Riyadh.  Qatar has voiced opposition to Syria returning to the group, and that stems from Qatar’s role as an American puppet used to finance the terrorists used in Syria.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) shocked the world on March 10 with a Saudi-Iran normalization agreement signed in China. Restoration of relations with Syria is a natural next step in the process of Vision 2030, the initiative designed by MbS which is based on peace and prosperity for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors.

Syrian President Assad has visited the UAE and Oman.

In March, Saudi Arabia and Syria began discussing restoration of diplomatic relations, bringing Syria back to the Arab League, and providing humanitarian aid to the earthquake victims since February 6.

Saudi Arabia has a long history of close relations with the US, and depending on them for security, which is by treaty.

However, both before and after taking office, President Donald Trump repeatedly ridiculed and humiliated the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its leaders.

While MbS visited the US, Trump called the Saudi King and said, “King, we’re protecting you. You might not be there for two weeks without us. You have to pay for your military; you have to pay.”

Earlier, during Trump’s campaign for office, he told his followers that the Arab Gulf leaders are wealthy, and should be ‘milked like cows’ for cash, and when no longer needed, should be slaughtered.

Trump was not satisfied with the half a trillion dollars he took from Saudi Arabia during his visit there: he demanded more.

The American humiliation of Saudi Arabia, its King and his son, MbS, carries a clear threat. Saudi Arabia has controlled the world oil prices through OPEC, previously keeping it at a price that pleased Washington. However, when President Joe Biden visited MbS to ask for him to increase oil production from the OPEC levels, MbS held firm to his decision, and did not acquiesce, or bow down to pressure from Biden. 

The current geopolitical shift championed by MbS is the result of many factors, and not taken lightly. When the Aramco facility was attacked and put out of production for months, the Kingdom had to wonder why the American security and defenses failed.  

US President Barack Obama, pushed Riyadh to sign contracts valued at $115 billion between 2011 and 2015, which meant Saudi Arabia accounted for 10 percent of the total sales of American weapons. At the same time, Obama’s attack on Syria for regime change was using Saudi Arabia as a financier. 

The US State Department has issued statements denouncing the restoration of Arab relations with Syria. The American regime change project ended in failure, and hundreds of thousands dead, injured and millions of refugees abroad.  Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria are just a few of the failed projects cooked up at the US State Department, what some people call the “Deep State”. 

Saudi Arabia has a new vision, which depends on independence from foreign meddling and control. There is a new Middle East emerging, and it is nothing like what President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had demanded in 2006. 

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from MD

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Winds of Change are Blowing through Damascus
  • Tags: ,

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

 

 

 

 

Despite whatever charges Julian Assange may be accused of, it is well known that the WikiLeaks publisher was targeted for exposing the war crimes of the US government. In an upside-down Bizarro World, the screws are being ever so gradually tightened on Assange by the war criminals and their criminal accomplices. It is, in fact, a slow-motion assassination being played out before the open and closed eyes of the world. — “The Slow-motion Assassination of Julian Assange

The above was written in 2020. Little has changed. In the foreword to Guilty of Journalism by Kevin Gosztola, American journalist Abby Martin writes, “Assange was only publishing the leaks. He never committed any crime. He only published evidence of the crimes.” (p xiii)

Assange’s “crime” is exposing the crimes of the US; especially revelatory was the Collateral Murder video where US troops in an Apache helicopter gleefully gunned dead 12 civilians on a street in New Baghdad. The murderers remain scot-free. For exposing war crimes, Assange and Chelsea Manning have been punished.

Kevin Gosztola who has followed much of the judicial proceedings against Manning and Assange presents his knowledge of the cases, in particular that of Assange, in Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case against Julian Assange (Seven Stories Press, 2023).

What is readily apparent is that the releases by WikiLeaks triggered a tsunamic vendetta. This has resulted in a brazen miscarriage of justice manipulated by a red-faced United States with the connivance of allied nation states such as Australia; Sweden; Britain; after a change of presidents, Ecuador; and the bystander nations of the world.

The US seeks to try Assange under the Espionage Act, a relic from WWI designed to control the release of information (see chapter 4). Yet, such a prosecution of Assange is hampered by the US Constitution, as the First Amendment protects the freedom of the press. Prosecuting a publisher/journalist would entail grave implications for journalism and publishing in the US.

The book’s title, Guilty of Journalism, is apt. It speaks to the legal perturbations to eliminate a perceived threat to the US’s full-spectrum hegemony. For a hegemon to operate unhindered, it must control the medium and its messages. Thus, the US asserts that Assange is not a journalist, this despite Assange being recognized as a journalist by the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists, being a member of the International Federation of Journalists, being published in several media around the world, and having been awarded several prizes for his journalism. It is akin to blithely stating someone is not a lawyer despite having a law degree from a recognized law school, having passed the bar exam, having worked as a lawyer for several years, and having been celebrated for her accomplishments as a lawyer. It is patently a non sequitur to reject evidence purely on someone’s say-so.

The US government prefers to keep its sordid business in some dark corner under wraps. Assange and WikiLeaks, however, cast a light on the inner workings of governments. Many people hold a principle that states the people have a right to know what their governments are doing in their name.

The US persists in its claim that Assange is not a journalist. He is depicted variously as an anarchist or a hacker posing as a journalist. Ponder this: if a teacher hacks computer systems at home in the evening, is she no longer a teacher? Nonetheless, WikiLeaks publishes journalism and the monopoly media (Gosztola uses the term “prestige media” in his book) has even indulged in publication of the WikiLeaks‘s releases.

The US also holds that Assange is guilty of “aiding the enemy” and asserts that the information published by WikiLeaks would be used by enemies such as Al Qaeda.

Gosztola quotes Assange’s civilian defense attorney David Coombs: “No case has ever been prosecuted under this type of theory, that an individual by nature of giving information to a journalistic organization would then be subject to [aiding the enemy].” (p 51)

There seems to be a causal link missing in the chain of the US legal strategy: if the US personnel had not been committing undeniable war crimes, then there would have been no story to be published about it in the media. No war crimes, no story, then no need to fear alleged succor being provided to an enemy. A question then: who is primarily culpable in this chain of events?

Harvard professor Yochai Benkler found that there was no evidence “that any enemy had, in fact, used WikiLeaks.” (p 57) Nonetheless, Gosztola noted that judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly had eased the burden of proof for prosecutors with her ruling that they need not show that information could potentially damage the US. (p 66)

Gosztola writes, “It does not matter who received the information. It does not matter if damage occurred as a result of the disclosure or publication of the information. It is all the same to DOJ prosecutors.” (p 79)

WikiLeaks was branded a “non-state hostile intelligence service” by then director of the Central Intelligence Agency Mike Pompeo. (p 87) One ought to consider the nature of the organization previously headed by Pompeo vis-à-vis WikiLeaks. Douglas Valentine wrote a book that lays out what the CIA is: The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Sounds an awful lot like the pot calling the kettle black; except WikiLeaks is no kettle. “WikiLeaks has a perfect in document authentication and resistance to all censorship attempts.”

Besides, some might consider any claims by a character such as Pompeo to be rich given that he once chuckled: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.”

A question: “Who to Believe: The CIA and Corporate Media or WikiLeaks?

The criminality of the US government is such that its intelligence services considered assassinating Assange; spied on him while in asylum; relied on the testimony of a sociopath — Sigudur Ingi Thordarson, known for engaging in sex with underage boys — to fraudulently smear Assange; subpoenaed witnesses to appear before the fishing expeditions of a grand jury (for which Chelsea Manning was again imprisoned and fined daily for refusing to testify). They even deprived Assange of his razor so that when he was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy he appeared with an unkempt beard. (p 107)

If only stolen razors were the extent of the criminality of the US authorities, but Gosztola brings to light additional crimes in chapter 9: “Retaliation for Exposing Torture, Rendition, and War Crimes.” Guilty of Journalism seamlessly segues into the next chapter detailing what happens to those brave souls who expose the rampant criminality of the state. The US prison system, to be generous, is sorely lacking in decency for the humanity, health, and sanity of those housed within its walls.

Gosztola examines the behavior of the moneyed media and its lies of omission and commission. Assange and WikiLeaks were heavily criticized for putting lives at risk, but: “Notably, WikiLeaks never called attention to any names in the war logs, but prestige media did so, as they helped the US government stir panic, which distracted from the contents of the historical records.” (p 206)

Media allegations lacked evidence, and later the entire fiasco would morph into the prestige media’s discredited Russiagate conspiracy. (ch 13)

Currently, Assange finds himself still incarcerated in the maximum security Belmarsh Prison in southeast London awaiting the outcome of an appeal against extradition to the US, where the deck will be stacked against him should he be sent there. In the US, Assange will be charged under the Espionage Act which, in actuality, is a contrived criminal indictment for exposing criminal acts.

Assange is one man, one man who has had the might of the American government and the supporting machinery of several nation states, who feel aggrieved and antagonized by the media exposures in WikiLeaks, arrayed against him. Assange is not alone. He is beloved by family and friends; he is backed by colleagues in WikiLeaks; he is vital to the readers of WikiLeaks missives; and he is supported by many independent media, attested to by Guilty of Journalism.

The irony and perversity of the vicious web in which Assange is entangled is laid bare in Guilty of Journalism. People who care about access to information, who want their governments to honor their constitutions and operate transparently, and who care about justice ought to read Guilty of Journalism, become further informed, and add their voices to justice for Julian Assange and to all the others who have sacrificed themselves to bring to light the corruption and crimes of governmental nexuses and the complicit prestige media.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Seven Stories Press

Rebellion Grows Against the Dollar Empire

April 23rd, 2023 by Manlio Dinucci

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

While US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin convenes the “Contact Group for the Defence of Ukraine” in Germany to supply more and more weapons to Kyiv and fuel the war in Europe, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is visiting Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. In Latin America – the USA considers Latin America its “backyard” – a project is emerging and its development would undermine the foundations of US economic power in the region. Brazil and Argentina have signed an agreement to create a new common currency to be used instead of the dollar in trade between the two countries and other Latin American countries. In Brazil, Lavrov met with President Lula, who explicitly calls for “the end of the commercial domination of the dollar”.

The same objective is stated in the statement on the strategic partnership between Brazil and China, issued at the end of President Lula’s visit to Beijing: “Brazil and China have agreed to strengthen exchanges in local currencies.” The two BRICS countries also agreed to jointly promote the New Development Bank, the main BRICS financial institution alternative to the US-dominated World Bank. Even in trade between China and Russia, which doubled in the space of a year, the respective currencies are used instead of the dollar. The same criterion is used in the agreements that China concludes with an increasing number of Eurasian countries in the framework of the New Silk Road.

Facing the growing rebellion against the dollar empire, the pillar of Western dominance, the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting in Japan responded with a veritable war statement: they announced more sanctions against Russia and warned China and other countries to “stop assisting the Russian war, or they will suffer severe costs.” And as the United States and its allies deploy growing forces including nuclear ones against China, G7 Foreign Ministers are warning China to “refrain from threats and use of force.”

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

This article was originally published on byoblu in Italian.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from Shutterstock

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Rebellion Grows Against the Dollar Empire

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

Those who accepted lockdowns, virtuously donned their masks, and eagerly lined up for the jabs and the boosters –  people who think that I’m crazy to suggest that the COVID measures adopted by New Zealand were as reprehensible as they were inefficacious – the people who have swallowed hook, line and sinker the lies of State over lo these many years – share one important characteristic, perhaps the one that defines their unwillingness to think for themselves.

They cannot bring themselves to believe that their governmental authorities are capable of evil.

You see, it’s that simple. 

Despite a list of State atrocities over the lifespan of our human species that is nearly infinite, we here in the post-World War II West, refuse to countenance the idea of a murderous power elite masquerading as government for the good of all.

But how did such a conviction in the truthfulness of the State occur? How can so many be so certain of the unfailing goodness of the West?

Yes, this is a Western phenomenon – the advanced democratic, virtuous and egalitarian West of superior moral values, led by America.  It is, furthermore, directly linked to the Second World War – and, in particular, to a myth fostered by the Western victors, which goes like this:

In genocidal Nazism, the most heinous and exceptional evil was concentrated.  We who vanquished this  evil are therefore good, and will always be good, regardless of our occasional peccadilloes. State-sponsored evil is a phenomenon of Nazi Germany, and it has been laid to rest.

America in the Fifties, when I was born, through the Seventies as I grew into myself, provided comfort, opportunity and even wealth for the lower and middle classes, factors that contributed to a feeling that life was good and that the country creating such an environment was also good.

When JFK was murdered by the CIA/Deep State of the time, most looked the other way and naively bought the fish tale of a lone marksman and a magic bullet.

When the Twin Towers – AND WTC Building 7, let’s not forget – collapsed at freefall speed into their footprints as pulverized rubble on 9/11, no amount of uncanny physics and just plain common sense and eyewitness reports of multiple explosions could unconvince a majority that a rag-tag group of fanatic hijackers guided by an Arab mastermind from a Middle Eastern cave were to blame.

The incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 that became the pretext for American escalation in Vietnam was as much of a lie as the Colin Powell’s 2003 assertion at the United Nations that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. How many lives were lost, how people were displaced, how much misery ensued as a result of these callous and willful deceptions?

You see, the American government could never be guilty of such heinous crimes, never.   Other countries of the English-speaking West and most of Europe, though quick to expose Soviet criminality and the profligate depredations of Communist Mao, turned a blind eye to American State terrorism and murder, and refused to acknowledge the coterie of covert agencies engaged in secret destructive operations against their very own citizens.

So, here, and in our very now, a transnational terrorist and genocidal operation on a scale never yet seen – I am referring of course to the Corona Wars – has engulfed the globe. The COVID jab is killing us softly, and sometimes loud, and everywhere, and yet people who themselves have experienced the dangerous adverse effects of this agent cannot or will not connect the dots.

For example, a fully jabbed and boosted neighbor of mine recently developed a deep venous thrombosis and, two days later, a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. At the time not one medical practitioner queried the role of the jab as a causative or contributing factor, she informed me.  A week later, however, her healthcare personnel had miraculously grown wiser and managed to come up with a theory: they blamed it on COVID, from which she had recovered months before.  No surprise, I suppose. COVID, long or short or in-between, is the perfect fall-guy to take the rap for any jab-related malfeasance.

As I’ve written and spoken about many times before, good doctors here in New Zealand – who questioned the wisdom of universal inoculation, who offered treatments, who tailored their care to an individual’s needs, and who stuck to the necessity of informed consent – are being hounded, harassed and persecuted by a vacuous and corrupt medical council in league with a private organization based in Dallas, Texas – the Federation of State Medical Boards.

One exceptionally responsible and informed physician was recently put through the ordeal of a week-long Health Professionals Disciplinary Tribunal for the mortal sin of undermining public confidence in the Pfizer jab by discussing COVID prevention and treatment. Yes, you read that correctly.

Gaslighting, witch hunts – so it goes.

But allow me to return to my thesis.  Since when did people fall lock, stock and barrel for the obvious deceptions of their overlords? And how, and why?

I grew up in an America full of promise – for its citizens at least.  An avid hard-working soul could acquire a superb education without mortgaging his or her lifetime of labor. Gas was cheap, travel was easy and the open road could be a dream. 

Psychologically speaking, the concentrated evil of the Holocaust, with the Nazi death camps and inconceivable horror, would become a convenient repository  of all that was morally reprehensible, all that was bad, while our Good Leaders would ensure that we might live under their benevolent protective shield. Heck, even the nuclear incineration of two Japanese cities was consecrated as an act of merciful necessity.

On the long narrow road ahead how many of us will be left to mourn the fearful, the ignorant, the naive, or the just plain selfish who, nurtured in a transient era of Western abundance, sacrificed good sense to an illusion, refused to make a peep about the obvious, and in a cavalier ‘yep, yep’  created a society along the apartheid fault lines of vaccination?

Fear, ignorance, naivete, selfishness – these are the Horsemen of our New World Order apocalypse.

To fight them off we need a little courage, wit and love: it’s truly that simple.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mercola

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on The Corona Wars have Engulfed the Globe: The Naive Belief in Governmental Benevolence
  • Tags:

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

These days, there are far stronger morals, ethics and honorable behavior in the Mexican drug cartels, than in Canada’s entire healthcare leadership.

We’ve just reached 150 Canadian doctor sudden deaths, since COVID-19 vaccines rolled out on Dec.14, 2020.

Canadian Medical Association, which continues to push the toxic Pfizer and Moderna mRNA jabs on its own doctor members, has chosen to mark this milestone with a full page Pfizer ad on the back cover of its April 2023 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal, presumably in exchange for a few pieces of silver.

Click here for an enlarged view

Click here

Former Canadian Medical Association President (2018-2019) Dr.Gigi Osler spent the entire pandemic promoting Moderna mRNA vaccines and was rewarded by Justin Trudeau with an appointment to the Canadian Senate on Sep. 26, 2022:

Click here for an enlarged view

Shockingly, that is Senator Dr.Gigi Osler illegally promoting the Moderna mRNA vaccine using her daughter, while she mocks the COVID-19 vaccine injured in a May 2021 TikTok video captioned “We believe in Moderna – testing magnets on my newly (Moderna) vaccinated daughter”. She “did not get magnetized”.

Perhaps not so funny to those who were injured or died from the Moderna mRNA jab.

Click here for an enlarged view

CMA Leaders who pushed Pfizer & Moderna mRNA vaccines were extremely well compensated:

Current CMA President Dr. Alika Lafontaine, who ignored the sudden deaths of 150 Canadian doctors (who are CMA members), has big hopes and dreams of becoming Prime Minister of Canada one day.

On Sep. 26, 2022 he wrote in regards to Dr.Gigi Osler’s promotion: “Hoping to see a CMA President as Prime Minister one day too”. He is the current CMA President. Does he hope to replace Justin Trudeau?

Click here for an enlarged view

But before he becomes Prime Minister of Canada, CMA President Dr. Alika Lafontaine made sure to cross out my photos of the faces of his dead Canadian doctor colleagues with a big red “X”. Not a very classy act for a future PM.

Canadian Senator Dr. Gigi Osler was a bit more subtle – she reposted a hit piece that was done on me by Global News in January 2023, which mocked the sudden deaths of Canadian doctors by claiming that a 25 year old Global News reporter, Ashleigh Stewart, “solved” most of these doctor deaths without a single autopsy report.

Dr. Gigi Osler has no idea that the number of Canadian doctor sudden deaths is now 150/

It amazes me that these Canadian doctor “leaders” sold their souls, their medical ethics and their Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm”, for so little. Was it worth it?

They certainly believe it was.

150 Canadian doctors who died suddenly or unexpectedly since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in Dec. 2020:

Click here for an enlarged view

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.

Featured image is from Vaccines.news


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

The Art of Deception: Learning to Speak One-Percent

April 23rd, 2023 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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

Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

*** 

“In ancient Rome, at one point, they wanted to make all the slaves wear something so they could identify them. Like a cloak or whatever. But then they decided not to do it. And do you know why? Hmm? Because they realized if all the slaves dressed the same, they would see how many of them there were, and they’d rise up and kill their masters. But the point is, if-if we wanna survive, you and I, then… we need a hell of a lot of little folks running around shitting us data, you know, for the eyeballs, for the revenue, for the scale.”  (Succession S03 E09)

Introduction

The popular series Succession is nearing its final episodes as the battle for control of a conglomerate heats up. The story centres around an ageing father and his children who are in a battle for succession. The series is well made with sharp dialogue that demonstrates the ruthless attitudes of the Roy family. The use of deception in their struggle for power is straight out of the Sun Tzu and Machiavelli playbooks of old. However, differences arise over who should have access to these playbooks when we examine the political ideas and philosophy of Leo Strauss who has a very different perspective on what the public should know and not know.

“Tom: Greg, this is not fucking Charles Dickens world, okay? You don’t go around talking about principles. We’re all trying to do the right thing, of course we are. But come on, man! Man the fuck up!”  (Succession S02 E02)

Succession

Succession is into its fourth and final season now and has proved to be a very successful series showing the life of a billionaire family in the USA. The family is headed up by Logan Roy (“king”) who is aging but cannot decide which of his offspring he wants to take over his position in the company.

Image: Brian Denis Cox in 2016 who plays Logan Roy

Three of Logan’s children, Kendall, Roman, and Siobhan (Shiv), are employed by the company, Waystar RoyCo, a global media and entertainment conglomerate.

There is also Connor, Logan’s oldest son; Marcia Roy, Logan’s third and current wife; Tom Wambsgans, Shiv’s husband and Waystar executive; and Greg Hirsch, Logan’s grandnephew who is also employed by the company.

The family has an extraordinarily rich lifestyle with ‘PJs’ (Private Jets), helicopters and fast boats taking them to their meetings, offices and houses around the world. They have their every whim catered to and take it all for granted as they maneuver and jockey for position to be the next leader of the company.

Their emotional and physical distance from ordinary people and their own workers is shown by their callous attitudes and obnoxious language that is demonstrated repeatedly throughout the series. The other characters of this series Connor, Tom, and Greg, are shown to regularly vacillate from greed to obsequiousness as they also try to retain their powerful positions in the constantly changing battle scenarios of the corporate wars.

Thus, none of the main characters of Succession are sympathetic. The audience may briefly empathise with some of the personal aspects of their lives but then their egoistic behaviour and ruthless attitudes soon destroy what little pity and care they may have aroused in the viewers.  

The Roy kids have learned every trick in the book on how to manipulate, deceive, and use divide and rule tactics from their merciless father.

The rich dialogue of Succession is full of the language of the one-percent. For example, Roman tries to impress his father in a meeting with a combination of the latest jargon and his familiarity with the methods of elite maneuvering for profit:

“Rom: I actually do have a pitch on this, Dad. Financialization. Float hot. I mean, keep news for political power, for market manipulation capability. But the rest, we play the markets with you and me up in a little pod above the city, fucking start ups and shitting on pension funds. Highly maneuverable, highly mobile.

Logan: And in terms of getting rid of Sandy and Stewy?
Oh, fuck ’em. Scare ’em off.

Logan: As in?
As in, you know…Scooby Doo it, Dad. You just dress up as ghosts in the theme park. Um, you know, we just use the lawyers, the PIs, the honey-trap hookers, all the unpleasant people at our disposal. Call in all the favors. Fucking President Raisin, all the Senate cock sucks who owe us. Fucking kill, kill, kill.”

(Succession S02 E01)

The professionals and unprofessionals that they have ‘at their disposal’ are due to the use of unlimited wealth to determine a positive outcome for their ambitions.

Apart from the obvious bully boy tactics, deception is a major element in their strategies to maintain and grow their influence and power.

For example in the case of Vaulter, a media website that is acquired by Waystar RoyCo, Kendall and Roman are tasked by their father to review Vaulter’s performance. They use different types of deception to learn about the company. Roman ‘slums’ it and goes drinking with some of the staff:

“ROM: Speaking of hiding shit, I took a couple of their staffers out, I got them shitfaced, and apparently, they’re looking to unionize, and fucking soon.
-Oh, yeah?

ROM: Pay transparency, bargaining rights. Just nasty, tangly shit. And it’s not a body pit, whatever the fuck a body pit is. It’s a fucking muesli pit, and doesn’t fit with our core, you know… values. So now I’m thinking we just shutter the fucker.”

(Succession S02 E02)

Ken pretends all is fine to Lawrence Yee, the founder of Vaulter, but then suddenly announces to the floor his real intentions:

“KEN: Yeah. You’re… You’re all fired. So, if you can leave your laptops where they are, and hand in your passes, security will be coming around now. I’ve been through everything you’ve shown me. Food and weed, those are the only two verticals driving revenue, so we’re folding them in and, uh, yeah, you’re all free to leave.
-This is a joke.

KEN: You have 15 minutes to gather your belongings and exit the building. Separation agreements will be handed around shortly. One week of severance per year served, with full non-disclosure. Post your little videos. You get three days.
-What the f…

KEN: Unused vacation days will not be reimbursed. Health benefits will be terminated at the end of the month. That’s it. I’d like to thank you all for your hard work.

YEE: What the fuck is going on?

KEN: Yeah, sorry about the, uh, cloak and dagger. I just needed some time to untangle all your shit, find the profit centers, keep the union off our back. We’re already fully operational on seven.

YEE: Why?

KEN: Because my dad told me to.”

(Succession S02 E02)

Suddenly the real side of Kendall is exposed as his familiarity with the language of corporate tricks and laws  rolls off his tongue. The patriarchal, hierarchical aspect is interesting to note as he tells Yee he did it because his dad told him too.

Reporting his deed back to Logan, he discusses his deception of the Vaulter staff and dealing with press coverage:

“KEN: Okay, it’s done. Vaulter’s dead. Four-hundred and seventy-six off the payroll, full-timers, freelance… I, uh, negotiated an early break from the lease and hired an editor and five interns for the two remaining verticals, the rest will be user-generated, reviews, upload pics, all that stuff.
Also, I harvested a ton of ideas from the Vaulter staff before they left. IP and start-up ideas. Most of it’s, you know, bullshit but… you never know.

Logan: We’ll say you tried to keep it alive. Valiant efforts, et cetera.

KEN: I’m good. I’ll wear it.”

(Succession S02 E02)

All in a day’s work, with very little consideration of the disastrous effects that sudden unemployment could have on the Vaulter staff. The consolidation of profit and power is primary, and the ruthlessness of the process does not enter into the minds of Logan and Kendall.

Thus, we are shown how the one percent operate and any empathy with the characters is pointless. Some reviewers criticised the series because there were no sympathetic characters, missing the point that Succession is a kind of exposé of contemporary elite behaviour, similar in some ways to Machievelli’s sixteenth century book, The Prince (1513).

“In his loafers made from the skin of… I don’t know, what is that? Human rights activists?” (Succession S02 E06)

Niccolò Machiavelli

Image: Portrait of Machiavelli (1469-1527) by Santi di Tito

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (1469–1527), was an Italian diplomat, author, philosopher and historian who lived during the Renaissance. He wrote The Prince (Il Principe) around 1513 as a political treatise on how to gain and retain power.

Machiavelli’s advocacy of fraud and deceit in the process of gaining power ensured his fame as a ruthless advisor to the elite classes. However, while many would see Machiavelli as a self-serving immoral opportunist, this may not have been the case. Erica Benner writes:

“Just a year before he finished the first draft of his “little book”, the Medici swept into Florence in a foreign-backed coup after spending years in exile. They were deeply suspicious of his loyalties, dismissed him from his posts, then had him imprisoned and tortured under suspicion of plotting against them.”

She notes that “Machiavelli’s writings speak in different voices at different times” and that “Francis Bacon [1561–1626)], Spinoza [1632–1677] and Rousseau [1712–1778] – had no doubt the book was a cunning exposé of princely snares, a self-defence manual for citizens. “The book of republicans,” Rousseau dubbed it.”

Machiaveli emphasized the importance of deception in the tactical toolbox of the power-hungry elites. He urges never to “attempt to win by force what can be won by deception” and that the “vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

But deception is only part of the strategy, it is also important that “people should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.”

In Succession, the careful planning of the Roy boys is climaxed with a sudden coup de grace ensuring that the Vaulter staff are reeling and have no avenue left open for action.

“Logan: Will you sit out front today, Kerry? I need to know what the temperature is amongst the shit-munchers.” (Succession S03 E05)

Sun Tzu

Machiavelli updated elite strategies that had been around a long time. For example, writing in The Art of War, Sun Tzu declared that “All warfare is based on deception.”

Image: Qing-era representation of Sun Tzu

Sun Tzu was a Chinese military general, strategist, philosopher, and writer who lived during the Eastern Zhou period of 771 to 256 BCE.

He is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, “an influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thinking. Sun Tzu is revered in Chinese and East Asian culture as a legendary historical and military figure.”

While there has been much debate over the historicity of Sun Tzu, there is no doubt over the influence of The Art of War over the centuries on generals and theorists like, for example, the influence it had on Mao’s writings about guerrilla warfare.

Sun Tzu’s advice on deception is comprehensive: “Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”

Whoever Sun Tzu was, he was writing at a time when knowledge was pretty much the monopoly of the elites. Machiavelli, on the other hand, lived during a revolutionary time for knowledge dissemination. For example, “before the invention of printing, the number of manuscript books in Europe could be counted in thousands. By 1500, after only 50 years of printing, there were more than 9,000,000 books.”

This was why the philosophers of the The Scientific Revolution (c16-c17) and the Age of Enlightenment/Reason (c17-c19)  saw The Prince as ‘a cunning exposé of princely snares, a self-defence manual for citizens’.

However, this exposé did not go down well with Leo Strauss, the most popular twentieth century philosopher of the new conservative elites.

“CONNOR: Oh, no, no, no, no. I can pull out the old megaphone anytime I want and I can say, “Hey! Guess what? I recall my father was a nasty, racist, neglectful individual. What was it that they used to say around here? No Blacks, no Jews, no women above the fourth floor.” (Succession S03 E04)

Leo Strauss

Image: Photo of Leo Strauss (1899–1973)

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) was a German professor who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he wrote many books on philosophy, and taught classical political philosophy, mainly at the University of Chicago. His conservative ideas struck a chord with many public intellectuals, politicians and think tank professionals, some of whom were ex-students of his. His work has been the subject of much debate on his ideas and intentions.

For example, Shadia Drury, analyses his work and style of writing as intentionally obscure to ensure that his ideas on political power would only be understood by the few. In The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss, Drury writes that Strauss was “an atheist and moral nihilist who advocated the use of religion, morality, and family values as useful political tools by which to placate and manipulate the masses [and] believed that the best form of government is the absolute but covert rule of a ‘wise’ elite independent of the law”. [1]

To do this Strauss called for “a reconsideration of the “distinction between exoteric (or public) and esoteric (or secret) teaching”. He argued “that serious writers write esoterically, that is, with multiple or layered meanings, often disguised within irony or paradox, obscure references, even deliberate self-contradiction.” He believed that this protected the philosopher from “the retribution of the regime”, but it could be argued that it was more likely to protect the philosopher from the retribution of the masses – as Drury sets out to show.

Drury notes that Strauss is critical of Machiavelli because “by abandoning the esoteric nature of philosophy, Machiavelli undermines philosophy itself” and turns “it into an object of mass consumption”. [2]

This opened the way to the Enlightenment which Strauss is critical of because enlightenment leads people to think for themselves and this is not good for the powers-that-be. Drury writes:

“Machiavelli’s dissemination of philosophy to the masses opens the way to the Enlightenment, nay, it is identical with the Enlightenment. Enlightenment is ‘the project’ of modernity par excellence: its goal is to fight against the Kingdom of Darkness. It believes falsely, that mass enlightenment is the solution to man’s political dilemmas. Moreover,this modern project is conceived as a conscious and heroic effort on man’s part to take control of his destiny and to master Fortuna. According to Strauss, Machiavelli replaces the biblical God with Fortuna, and the Christian idea of providence with the modern idea of not trusting to chance, and taking one’s fate in one’s own hands.” [3]

Even though Strauss rejected revelation he did not want to undermine religion because “religion is necessary to maintain order by ensuring that citizens obey the laws”. [4]

For Strauss religion and philosophy are two opposites with very different aims:

“[I]n Strauss’s view religion and and philosophy are opposites that cannot and should not be reconciled. The life of faith is the life of blind unquestioning surrender, whereas the life of philosophy is that of free enquiry. The faithful are steeped in delusions whereas the philosophers rejoice in the truth. Religion prohibits contemplation because it knows as soon as one reflects, one will recognize that religion is a fraud. However, if one reflects further, one will realise the necessity of such swindles and the wisdom of the prophets who create them for love of mankind. Realizing this, the philosophers must keep their atheistic truth hidden; they must live a dual life endorsing publicly what they know is a noble fiction. […] [T]his dual life causes them no grief; on the contrary it fills their life with laughter, inside jokes, subtle winks and pregnant pauses.” [5]

Thus, it seems that while Machiavelli wrote to reveal power, Strauss wrote to conceal power. Strauss criticises Machiavelli for making public the strategies of the elites, risking the enlightenment and possible revolt of the people.

Strauss liked to keep it simple. Adam Curtis shows in his documentary, The Power of Nightmares, that Strauss liked the TV series Gunsmoke because: “The hero has a white hat; he’s faster on the draw than the bad man; the good guy wins. And it’s not just that the good guy wins, but that values are clear. […] Good and evil.” [Professor Stanley Rosen, Pupil of Leo Strauss 1949]

Strauss also liked Perry Mason, the TV series about a lawyer: “The extremely cunning man who, as far as we can see, is very virtuous and uses his great intelligence and quickness of mind to rescue his clients from dangers, but who could be fooling us—because he’s cleverer than we are. Is he really telling the truth? Maybe his client is guilty!” [Rosen]

Therefore the masses could be taught to unite “against a common evil, and set about creating a mythical enemy”, which in the USA, for example, under Reagan was the Soviet Union, while at the same time never really knowing if what they are being told is the full story.

Drury argues that Strauss teaches that “perpetual deception of the citizens by those in power is critical because they need to be led, and they need strong rulers to tell them what’s good for them”.

The creation of myths that divert the anger of the masses away from their own elite perpetrators is balanced by positive myths that puff up the nation’s pride in the very same elites. This is the rule of the wise, and revealing its inner workings was frowned upon by Strauss.

“ROM: Hail, my fellow toilerman. I have returned from real America, bearing the gift of sight.

SHIV: How was summer camp?

ROM: Hmm? What’s that? Didn’t catch that. I’ve been down in the salt mines so long with my fellow Johnny Lunchpails, I no longer speak One-Percent.”

(Succession S02 E05)

Conclusion

Succession is one story about the real America. It shows the workings of a society at its highest levels. It is self conscious in that it has no illusions about the American Dream. Instead it shows a society that is brutalised by its own successes that are leading to a greater disparity between wealth and poverty. It shows the growing distance between the masses and the elites that has developed over the last few decades, the contradiction between the idea of the nation and its reality. The ideal nation promoted by the elites is being split apart by global agendas that are consuming more and more of the nations resources to the detriment of its citizens:

“SHIV LAUGHS: Okay, big picture… we’re at the end of a long American century. Our company is a declining empire
– inside a declining empire.
– Amen, brother.”

(Succession S03 E02)

Nobody knows where this is all leading but one can be sure that the wise men are working on it in a race to stop the masses from becoming completely fed up and taking matters into their own hands.

The verdict on Succession? Machiavelli would probably have loved it; Strauss would most likely have hated it.

*

Note to readers: Please click the share button above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here.

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

Notes

[1] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. ix
[2] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 130
[3] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 131
[4] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 52
[5] The Political Ideas of Leo Strauss by Shadia B. Drury (Palgrave Mcmillan, 2005) p. 60