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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.

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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

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***

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.

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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)

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***

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.

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*** 

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.

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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

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*** 

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.

This fake and racist case flows from the Russiagate hysteria that convinced millions of Americans that Russia was paying dissident groups to destabilize the US political system

The FBI was unable to find anything real, so it went after the African People’s Socialist Party https://t.co/C1fUn2pyuW

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 19, 2023

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.

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." https://t.co/5MeXFlyzEO

— Brian Berletic (@BrianJBerletic) April 19, 2023

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.

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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.

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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)

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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. 

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Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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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.

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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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.”

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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).

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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.

*

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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

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

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*** 

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

*

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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

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*** 

“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

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]

La rassegna stampa internazionale di Byoblu | 95° puntata

Mentre il segretario USA alla Difesa Austin convoca in Germania il “Gruppo di contatto per la difesa dell’Ucraina” per fornire sempre più armi a Kiev e alimentare la guerra in Europa,  il ministro degli Esteri russo Lavrov è in visita in Brasile, Venezuela, Nicaragua e Cuba. In America Latina, che gli USA considerano il loro “cortile di casa”, sta nascendo un progetto che, sviluppandosi, minerebbe le fondamenta del potere economico  statunitense nella regione. Brasile e Argentina hanno stretto un accordo per creare una nuova moneta comune da usare al posto del dollaro negli scambi commerciali tra i due paesi e altri paesi latino-americani. In Brasile Lavrov ha incontrato il presidente Lula, che chiede esplicitamente  “la fine del dominio commerciale del dollaro”.

Lo stesso obiettivo viene enunciato nel comunicato sul partenariato strategico tra Brasile e Cina, emesso al termine della visita del presidente Lula a Pechino: “Brasile e Cina hanno concordato di  rafforzare gli scambi in valute locali.” I due paesi, facenti parte dei BRICS, hanno anche concordato di promuovere congiuntamente la Nuova Banca per lo Sviluppo, la principale istituzione finanziaria dei BRICS alternativa alla Banca Mondiale dominata dagli USA.  Anche negli scambi commerciali tra Cina e Russia, raddoppiati nel giro di un anno, vengono usate le rispettive monete al posto del dollaro. Lo stesso criterio viene usato negli accordi che la Cina conclude con un numero crescente di paesi eurasiatici nel quadro della Nuova Via della Seta.

Di fronte alla crescente ribellione all’impero del dollaro, pilastro del  predominio dell’Occidente, i ministri degli Esteri |del G7, riunitisi in Giappone, rispondono con un vero e proprio comunicato di guerra: annunciano altre sanzioni alla Russia e intimano alla Cina e ad altri paesi di “cessare l’assistenza alla guerra russa, o subiranno gravi costi.” E mentre gli Stati Uniti e i loro alleati schierano crescenti forze, anche nucleari, contro la Cina, i ministri degli Esteri del G7  avvertono la Cina di “astenersi da minacce e uso della forza”.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO :

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First published on April 10, 2023

***

Very important article by Dennis Kucinich

A note to our readers in the U.S.:

The bombing of Nord Stream was an unconstitutional Act of War, ordered by President Joe Biden

Contact your member of Congress, with a view to filing a subpoena   

***

President Biden’s own statements predicting the end of Nord Stream , preliminary to  the devastating attack on its infrastructure, point to the necessity of determining whether or not the president was speaking from his singularly informed position of the Chief Executive, as Hersh indicated.

As a former chair of a Government Oversight congressional investigative subcommittee, I am calling on Congress to investigate whether or not the Biden Administration initiated the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline, near Denmark’s Bornholm Island, on September 26, 2022.

Veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s comprehensive account of the Biden Administration’s role in the bombing of Nord Stream has provided a road map for a series of congressional inquiries necessary to confirm or disconfirm Administration culpability. 

President Biden’s own statements predicting the end of Nord Stream, preliminary to  the devastating attack on its infrastructure, point to the necessity of determining whether or not the president was speaking from his singularly informed position of the Chief Executive, as Hersh indicated.

A deconstruction of Hersh’s detailed narrative, (published two months ago on Substack), makes possible the development of a stream of subpoenas to determine the details of the planning and execution of the dismantling of Nord Stream by explosives.

This is a proper subject for a investigation, under Congress’ Article One, Section 8, Clause 18, constitutional powers to gather information, including to inquire on the administrative conduct of office.

The bombing of Nord Stream was an unconstitutional Act of War, involving the destruction of billions of dollars of energy infrastructure and wreaking havoc on the energy markets of Europe. The destruction of this major energy pipeline has affected over 80 million people, threatened the viability of continent’s manufacturing base and its overall economic stability.

The Administration did not have congressional approval, required under Article I, Section 8; nor did they consult with congressional leaders regarding the use of military assets for an attack on Nord Stream.

The President cannot cling to “Executive Privilege.”   The President takes an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution (Article II, Section 1, U.S. Constitution)…and to “take care the laws be faithfully executed.” (Article 2, Section 3, U.S. Constitution.) Executive privilege cannot be invoked to cover up violations of domestic or international law.  Production of presidential records relating to Nord Stream can be compelled.

Several foreign governments have investigated the undersea demolition. They have, however,  withheld information from not only their constituents, but also from members of their parliaments, further necessitating the exercise of United States’ congressional authority.  Last week, the U.N. Security Council turned down a Russian request for an investigation of the Nord Stream bombing. 

The American people have a right to know if their government, as has been reported, was involved in secretly perpetrating an Act of War, using US military personnel and the expenditure of US tax dollars, without the people’s knowledge and without the assent of their elected representatives. 

In order to be of assistance to my former colleagues, based on my experience in guiding subcommittee investigations (with the assistance of congressional staff), and with express appreciation for Seymour Hersh’s diligent investigation, I offer an example of (but by no means all-inclusive)  congressional subpoena:

Subpoena

By Authority of the House of Representatives of the Congress of the United States of America

To the Secretary of the Navy:  You are hereby commanded to be and appear before (name of committee) at the time and the date (specified below) to produce the things identified in the attached schedule, touching matters of inquiry committed to said committee….

Schedule A

You, the Secretary of the Navy, in accordance with the attached schedule instructions, are required to produce in unredacted form all records described below:

1. All records in the possession, custody, or control of the United States Department of the Navy or the Office of General Counsel of the Department of the Navy, with the terms “Nord Stream 1,” “Nord Stream 2,” “Baltic Sea,”  “Norway,” “Bornholm Island, Denmark,” “Navy Divers,” “Diving and Salvage Center,” “C-4 explosives,” “timing device,“ “sonar buoy,” “NATO,” BALTOPS 22,” “Congress,” and “Congressional Investigation,” that were generated between January 20, 2021 to the present date.

2. All records indicating the listing of employees operating out of the Diving and Salvage Center in Panama City, Florida.

3. All records indicating the training, tasks and missions of the members of the U.S. Navy Diving Team.

4. All records indicating contracts let by the Diving and Salvage Center.

5. All records indicating C-4 explosives, the chain of custody, the manner in which the explosives are secured, stored, inventoried, requisitioned, transported and used.

6. All records indicating timing devices for purposes of detonating C-4 explosives; the storage, inventory, requisition, transportation and use of same.

7. All records indicating the planning, practice for, the initiation of, or the coordination with, other agencies to advise, conduct, execute or otherwise inform the preparation for and the placement of C-4 explosive devices upon the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

8. All records indicating the planning of and the coordination with the NATO operation known as Operation BALTOPS 22.

9. All records indicating meteorological assessments for use in planning actions in the Baltic Sea.

10. All records indicating oceanographic mapping, wave studies, visual and sonar studies of the movement and timing of maritime traffic and the transit of marine mammals in the Baltic Sea.

11. All records indicating US submarine monitoring of the Nord Stream pipelines off Bornholm Island, Denmark.

12. All records indicating meetings, communications, planning sessions, and coordination with, any division or asset of the Department of the Navy, with the Norwegian Navy.  

13. All records indicating forecasts of, or assessment of, post-attack damages to the Nord Stream pipelines.

Definitions:

The following definitions apply both to terms within the Subpoena, Schedule A, these instructions and these definitions:

1. The term “record” means any written, recorded, or graphic matter of any nature whatsoever, regardless of how recorded, and whether original or copy,  but not limited to, the following: memoranda, reports, expense reports, books, manuals, instructions, financial reports, working papers, records, notes, letters, notices, confirmations, receipts, appraisals, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, prospectuses, intra-office and inter-office communications, electronic mail (emails) text messages, instant messages, contracts, cables, notations of any type of conversation, telephone calls, call logs, voicemail, meeting or other communication,  bulletins, printed matter, computer printouts, invoices, transcripts, diaries, analyses, returns, summaries, minutes, bills, accounts, estimates, projections, comparisons, messages, correspondence, press releases, circulars, financial statements, reviews, opinions, offers, studies and investigations, questionnaires and surveys, and work sheets and all drafts, and amendments of any of the foregoing, as well as any attachments or appendices thereto, and graphic or oral records or representations of any kind in the possession of your department.

Similar congressional subpoenas can be sent to the White House, the National Security Agency, the State Department, the Energy Department, the Treasury Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency.

Congress must investigate the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines.  Listed above are some of the documents that must be obtained, and the list is by no means exclusive. 

If the Administration, as has been charged by a veteran investigative journalist, did indeed conspire to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines, it marks a radical shift in the use of the presidential war power, a usurpation of the role of Congress and, unless checked, could lead to further reckless decisions that put us on an irrevocable path toward World War III.

***

A note to our readers in the U.S.:

The bombing of Nord Stream was an unconstitutional Act of War, ordered by President Joe Biden

Contact your member of Congress, with a view to filing a subpoena   

Global Research, April 12, 2023

*

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Dennis Kucinich is a former Congressman and presidential candidate. Kucinich represented Cleveland, OH in the US Congress for 16 years. He focused on pressing domestic issues, jobs, housing, health care, workers’ rights, retirement security, and environmental protection. He also worked to lead efforts to avert or to end wars which were undermining our domestic priorities.

Featured image: Ceremony marking the start of construction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline’s underwater section. Source: WikiCommons

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First published by GR on February 16, 2023

***

[NATO’s goal is] “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Lord Ismay, first NATO Secretary-General (1952-1957).

“Near-term-thinking [by political and business decision-makers] is not only deeply irresponsible—it is immoral.” Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, (in a speech to the General Assembly, Monday February 6, 2023).

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” Zbigniew Brzezinski (1928-2017), Polish-born American political theorist. (In his book ‘The Grand Chessboard’, 1997).

“Peace is the virtue of civilisation. War is its crime.” Victor Hugo (1802-1885), French novelist and political figure, (in ‘Œuvres complètes de Victor Hugo’, 1885)

***

A preamble is necessary to understand what follows.

Since the end of World War II in 1945, the influence of the U.S. government in European affairs has been front and center. During the Cold War (1945-1989) between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR), Europe relied on the U.S., first for financial assistance with the Marshall Plan of 1947, and secondly, for military protection with the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, a mutual security and military alliance.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was a realization in Washington that Europe could become less dependent on the United States. Indeed, the demise of the USSR also meant the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet-controlled military defense alliance. Therefore, there was no logical reason to keep NATO alive. The question was then, to dismantle NATO or not?

Because NATO was the main source of U.S. influence in Western Europe, the George H.W. Bush administration and its Secretary of State, James Baker, decided not to dismantle NATO. However, they promised Russia that the military alliance would not expand into Eastern Europe. This promise was broken by the Clinton administration and subsequently by other American administrations, and NATO did expand eastward, with vehement protests from Russia, because it considered such an expansion a threat to its security.

Nevertheless, economic ties between Western Europe and Russia grew stronger over the years, through mutual trade and investment. In 2012, a new pipeline, Nord Stream 1, came into operation, bringing cheap Russian natural gas to Germany. German companies have greatly profited from this cheap source of energy. Some German companies have even been selling their excess imports of Russian natural gas to other European countries. In June of 2015, a decision was made to build a second pipeline, the Nord Stream 2, to double the quantity of Russian natural gas destined to Germany and to other European countries.

The above announcement raised strong fears in the U.S. government that Western European countries were becoming too dependent economically on Russia, and this, just as NATO was expanding in Eastern Europe to include former allies of Russia: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania and Croatia.

Thereafter, all successive Congresses and U.S. Administrations have strongly opposed the building of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. They feared that the new pipeline would greatly increase Europe’s dependency on Russian natural gas, and that this could have serious geopolitical consequences.

The war between Russia and Ukraine, which flared up on February 24, 2022, after the Russian invasion, but which really started in 2014, is, to a large extent, the result of NATO’s expansion, which has de facto encircled Russia militarily. It is also a by-product of the American foreign policy goal to reverse Western Europe’s growing economic ties with Russia.

As the Brzezinski’s quote above states very clearly, the country of Ukraine is only a pawn in a much larger game by the United States government, designed to cut the economic ties between Russia, Germany and the entire European Union (EU).

Who sabotaged the pipelines Nord Stream 1 & 2?

On Monday, September 26, 2022, the day of Rosh Hashanah (which literally means “beginning of the year” in Hebrew*), U.S. President Joe Biden is alleged to have ordered the destruction of the undersea gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2, linking Russia and Germany. (N.B. The pipeline Nord Stream 1 went into operation in 2012, whereas Nord Stream 2 was completed in 2021, but has never gone into operation.)

If confirmed, such an act of state terrorist sabotage would be considered an obvious act of war on the part of the Biden administration. It would also most likely have important political, geopolitical and economic consequences in the coming months and years.

 

 

That is precisely what is revealed in an explosive, well documented, coherent and lengthy report, entitled “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline”, dated February 8, 2023, and written by celebrated American journalist Seymour Hersh (1937- ). Pulitzer prizewinner Seymour Hersh has had a long and successful career as an investigative journalist specializing in American military affairs and American military involvements abroad.

Mr. Hersh reports in much detail—while citing reliable sources that must remain anonymous for the time being—how a top secret plan to destroy the 750 mile-long natural gas pipelines under the Baltic Sea, linking Russia and Germany, was drawn up in Washington D.C., by an interagency group under the direction of Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Adviser, beginning in the late fall of 2021.

It is important to note that such planning would have taken place months before Russia launched its military invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, with the objective of preventing Ukraine from joining NATO.

Soon after the explosion of September 26, 2022, some American media surprisingly called the sabotaging of the strategic natural gas pipelines Nord Stream 1 and 2 a wartime “mystery“. Some media even alleged that Russia could have blown up its own pipelines for some foggy reasons. Now it appears that the mystery can be dissipated, thanks to the diligence and hard work of American journalist Hersh.

Even though the sabotage action by U.S. Navy diving specialists (with the active cooperation of Norway) was supposed to remain a well-guarded secret and be shrouded in deniability, President Joe Biden could not resist from commenting publicly about the top-secret plan, even before the plan was to be executed.

Indeed, on February 7, 2022, during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington D.C., Mr. Biden went on record, declaring the following:

[If Russia invades Ukraine], “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” He added, to be perfectly clear, in a response to a follow-up question by a journalist: “We will, I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Therefore, what journalist Hersh is now revealing in detail in his 5,000-word report is not a complete surprise, considering that President Joe Biden himself had clearly indicated that it was his intention to eliminate the natural gas pipelines linking Russia to Germany.

Moreover, what has now been made public are the enormous efforts made by the Biden administration to keep the sabotage plan top secret.

First, Congress was kept in the dark about the plan. Second, according to Seymour Hersh, special diving commandos of the U.S. Navy were secretly recruited and trained for the mission of placing mines in the deep sea, on the Nord Stream pipelines in Danish waters, off the coast of Bornholm Island. Third, the placing of explosive charges on the pipelines, in June 2022, was dissimulated within NATO military exercises named Baltops 22, and was conducted by the U.S. Sixth Fleet, which was in the area at the time.

In addition, since such explosives could be remotely detonated, the precise date for the destruction of the pipelines was left to President Biden to decide.—He is alleged to have chosen the date of Monday September 26, 2022.

Political, legal, economic and geopolitical ramifications of the sabotage

Now that the cat would seem to be out of the bag and the so-called “mystery” would appear to have been elucidated, the consequences of this act of state sabotage could be enormous and numerous.

First politically, not all members of the US. Congress will be pleased to learn that laws have been circumvented to keep them in the dark, when all the while President Biden was vaguely hinting that Russia could be behind the sabotage of its own installations, a few days after he had himself ordered the blowing up of the pipelines.

Congressional hearings on the issue would seem to be required, with testimonies under oath by some of the individuals most involved. Even Mr. Biden’s impeachment could be considered.

This is a reminder of the fabrication and pretext used by the Lyndon B. Johnson administration, after the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in order to justify an escalation of U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.

Also, one might remember the September 2000 report published by the PNAC (Project for a New American Century). Written under the supervision of neoconservative Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, an avid campaigner for the war against Iraq, the report proposed that there was a need for “a new Pearl Harbor”, to galvanize the country behind the objective of “re-arming America”.

One year later, just by coincidence or otherwise, there came the catastrophic event of September 11, which effectively reshaped U.S. foreign policy.

When a government operates in complete secrecy, independently from democratic legislative institutions, it may take a long time for citizens to learn the whole truth behind certain so-called “mysterious” events.

Secondly, the sabotage event demonstrates that one objective (possibly the primary objective), in having Ukraine join NATO and in provoking Russia, was to create a direct confrontation with Russia, which could ‘justify’ the destruction of the Russian-German pipelines. Therefore, the people of Germany are bound to ask German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for a public accounting of his role in the entire sordid affair. It is not beyond possibility that Mr. Scholz could be called to submit his resignation.

Thirdly, legally, the Russian government and the international consortium that owns the destroyed pipelines can be expected to launch a barrage of suits under international law and request billions of dollars in damages. Other victims of the resulting rise in the price of natural gas could follow suit. Russia would also be expected to launch a formal accusation against the U.S. for having so openly violated the United Nations Charter.

Fourthly, as more information starts to filter out over the coming weeks, European governments and the E.U. leadership—having bought Washington’s official narrative that the push to admit Ukraine into NATO and the European Union was primarily based on a respect for Ukraine’s independence—may have to reassess their motives for supporting a war leading to nowhere, except possibly into World War III.

Indeed, if the Ukrainian war has been an American-led fabricated war from the start, beginning with the U.S.-backed overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government, in 2014,  some among the most staunch European supporters of the war could realize that they have been manipulated.

Finally, journalist Hersh’s revelations could also disrupt, and possibly even derail, any plan that the U.S. and NATO could have had to escalate the war in Ukraine.

Conclusion

This sad modern episode in the long history of human warfare should teach us all a lesson. Indeed, in matters of wars or other crimes, the first question should always be “Cui Bono?” or “Who profits?”

In general, when a war breaks out, you can be assured that it is in the interest of one of the parties, the one who actively sought it out, and not necessarily the one who shot first.

Finally, it must be said that in matters of wars of aggression, no government can be trusted.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay.

International economist Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay is the author of the book about morals “The code for Global Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles” of the book about geopolitics “The New American Empire“, and the recent book, in French, “La régression tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018“. He holds a Ph.D. in international finance from Stanford University. 

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

Please visit Dr Tremblay’s site or email to a friend here.

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First published on April 19, 2023

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*** 

With Europe increasingly distracted by the ongoing war in Ukraine and fears of a new banking crisis, the latest corruption scandal to engulf the continent’s so-called ‘European Union’ (EU) has conveniently dropped lower down the news headlines. Dubbed ‘Qatargate,’ the scandal involves allegations that a vice president of the European Parliament and other EU lawmakers have been bribed by the governments of Qatar, Morocco, Mauritania, and possibly other countries, in return for influencing the Brussels-based political construct. Following police raids, arrests, and the seizure of cash, computers, and mobile phones from suspects, some observers are already asking whether the scandal could even signal the end of the EU. Deeply damaged as a result of repeated ignominies over the past couple of decades, Qatargate comes hot on the heels of Brexit and our international exposure of the EU’s Nazi roots.

The early arrests in the Qatargate scandal took place in December 2022 and saw European Parliament vice president Eva Kaili, Antonio Panzeri (a retired EU lawmaker from Italy) and others detained as part of the investigation. Panzeri subsequently admitted to being the scheme’s ringleader and agreed to a plea deal whereby, in return for a shorter prison sentence, he would reveal the identities of those he bribed and conspired with. A further EU lawmaker, Marc Tarabella from Belgium, was later arrested in February 2023, while Andrea Cozzolino, an EU lawmaker from Italy, is currently under house arrest in Naples fighting extradition to Brussels. Some reports suggest that as many as 60 additional lawmakers could ultimately be dragged into the investigation.

A history of scandals and secrecy

While Qatargate is already predicted to go down in history as the largest ever scandal in European politics, it is hardly the first one to inflict major damage on the EU’s credibility. In 1999, for example, all 20 members of the European Commission, the EU’s executive body, were forced to resign after a whistle-blower report revealed widespread fraud, nepotism, and serious management failings. Far from being the harbinger of change, however, the incident was simply a taste of what was later to come.

The Galvin Report, named after Robert Galvin, the EU’s internal audit official who authored it, was written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 lawmakers. Revealing shocking abuses, the report’s existence was deliberately covered up until February 2008 when news of it was leaked by Chris Davies, an EU lawmaker from the UK. Even then, its contents remained secret and only a select group of lawmakers were allowed to read it in a locked and guarded room. Had it not been published by Wikileaks in 2009, the report would likely still be secret today.

Secrecy and non-transparency are the norm in EU institutions, which habitually endeavor to hide the truth from their citizens. In fact, a leaked European Commission internal memo from 2009 actively encourages officials to conceal information from public scrutiny. The memo, issued by the Commission’s trade department, tells officials they can evade European freedom of information laws by making two sets of documents, a neutral one for public release and a classified version for internal use only.

Even Eurojust, the EU’s anti-crime agency, has been involved in corruption scandals. In December 2009, the head of Eurojust, Jose da Mota, resigned after he was suspended for 30 days for having put pressure on Portuguese prosecutors to stop a corruption probe involving Portuguese prime minister Jose Sócrates. No stranger to scandal himself, Sócrates was later arrested on charges of money laundering and other crimes.

The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’?

As deeply damaging to the EU as these repeated corruption scandals are, the growing awareness of the construct’s historical roots in Nazi Germany threatens not just its political credibility but also its very existence. In our book The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’ we describe how the key architects of the European Union were recruited from among the same technocrats who had previously designed the plans for a post-WWII Europe under the control of the Nazis. Since its publication in 2010, the book has received media attention in countries including the Netherlands, Romania, the UK, and the USA.

In May 2016, one month prior to the UK’s Brexit referendum, UK lawmaker Boris Johnson described in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper how, in trying to create a powerful European superstate, the EU is “pursuing a similar goal to Hitler.” The validity of his statement was openly supported by many of his parliamentary colleagues. Significantly, therefore, only a few days prior to this, Johnson and other UK lawmakers had been sent copies of our book.

As the book and its supporting documentation definitively prove, the Nazi blueprint for the structure and function of the EU was drawn up in 1941, two years after the outbreak of WWII. In Dresden, Germany, at that time, there existed a little-known Nazi research institute that was headed by a man called Arno Sölter. In 1941, Sölter summarized the Nazi plans for postwar Europe in a book titled ‘The Greater Sphere Cartel – An Instrument of Industrial Market Order in a New Europe.’ The book describes all the key elements we see around us in the EU today, such as the unelected European Commission that serves as the construct’s executive body and the system of ‘Directives’ that are used for its lawmaking.

But that is not all. The first president and chief architect of the EU was Walter Hallstein, a German lawyer. A member of official Nazi organizations, before and during WWII Hallstein was a key architect of the New World Order via which the Nazis and the IG Farben industrial cartel had hoped to rule Europe and eventually the world.

We know this from the fact that, in May 1938, Hitler met with Mussolini in Rome, Italy, to plan their global military conquest and design the post-WWII world. One month later, in June 1938, Walter Hallstein visited Rome as part of the official Nazi State delegation that finalized the legal framework of the intended New World Order. On January 23, 1939, he revealed these plans in a public speech given in Rostock, Germany.

Less than two decades later, on March 25, 1957, Hallstein was in Rome again and became one of only 12 signatories of the ‘Treaties of Rome’ – the founding documents of the EU. Subsequently, between 1958 and 1967, he went on to hold the post of founding president of the European Commission and began to implement the Nazi blueprint for Europe.

One thing therefore seems certain in that if Qatargate itself doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for the EU, the growing worldwide awareness of its Nazi roots almost certainly will.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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*** 

Seoul is mulling whether they should provide military support to Kiev but are not considering how Russia could respond and make the Korean peninsula more volatile. South Korean decisionmakers are not only contributing to the continuation of war in Eastern Europe by backing the Kiev regime, but they could also bring greater tensions to the Korean peninsula because Moscow is now contemplating whether or not they should provide significant military aid to North Korea.

South Korea’s presidential office confirmed that ammunition, battle tank shells, and reactive armour will be sent to Poland. From there, they will inevitably be moved onwards to Ukraine. Although the decision of President Yoon Suk Yeol is wholly supported by the West, it has been met with controversy on the domestic front because South Koreans worry about the repercussions they can expect from Russia.

Alarmingly, Yoon said in an interview with Reuters that South Korea would provide direct military support to Ukraine if there was a large-scale attack on civilians, a massacre or a serious violation of the laws of war by Russia. The presidential office immediately clarified that Yoon was referring to a “hypothetical situation” and explained to reporters “what South Korea does in the future will depend on Russia’s action.”

However, this now opens the door for Ukraine to conduct a false flag operation to secure South Korean military aid.

Yoon’s hostile rhetoric prompted Russian Deputy Secretary of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, to state:

“I wonder what the inhabitants of this country will say when they see the latest samples of Russian weapons from their closest neighbours – our partners from the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] DPRK?”

For his part, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Seoul’s decision was “unfortunate” and highlighted how they have taken on, unnecessarily, an “unfriendly” position against Russia. 

“They will try to draw more and more countries directly into this conflict. But of course, the start of arms deliveries will obliquely mean a certain stage of involvement in this conflict,” Peskov added.

It is not lost that Yoon is meeting with US President Joe Biden at the White House in the last week of April for his second bilateral summit. The White House announced on April 19 that the two presidents are expected to “discuss a shared vision of a strong and deeply integrated U.S.-ROK [South Korea] Alliance that maintains peace, stability, and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and beyond.”

In addition to allowing an opening for a false flag operation, Yoon is also making such statements to prepare the South Korean public for this new policy, especially before his visit to the US. In this context, it can be expected that Yoon will deliver more details about his plans after meeting with Biden and receiving his new instructions. Effectively, under pressure from Washington, South Koreans are being indoctrinated on why they should be involved in a far-off conflict.

There is little indication on how popular or unpopular Yoon’s decision is, but the South Korean opposition are against it. Earlier in April, the head of the main opposition United Democratic Party, Lee Jae-myung, called the supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine “undesirable.”

It is recalled that during the presidential debate held on February 2022, Jae-myung highlighted that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, “lacked knowledge in politics and diplomacy, provoked Russia,” adding: “The Ukraine president is responsible for the outbreak of war.”

Yet this fact has not deterred Yoon from involving South Korea in a Ukraine-instigated conflict.

Pentagon spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Martin Meiners said in January that Washington was still in talks with South Korea’s “nongovernment industrial defence base” for “potential sales of ammunition.” It now appears that after months of discussions, Yoon is beginning to relent under Washington’s pressure.

So far, South Korea has agreed with the US to provide 500,000 rounds of 155mm artillery shells, five times more than the 100,000 shells sold last year and half of all US shells delivered to Ukraine. It is reported that in February, Washington asked South Korea to sell another batch of 100,000 rounds. Seoul responded by proposing 500,000 instead but on the condition that they are not sold and instead are rented. This allows South Korea to keep possession of the shells to a certain extent and prevent them from being shipped to Ukraine without permission.

None-the-less, it is evident that Yoon wants to send weapons directly to Ukraine. The only thing that could deter him from such an action is Russia making a clear warning that there will be a response that will impact all South Koreans unnecessarily and involve North Korea. With the next legislative elections in South Korea scheduled for April 10, 2024, Yoon will have no choice but to consider how his actions will affect his party’s grip on power. Only this factor can derail his provocative plans against Russia.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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*** 

In a rather irresponsible and provocative way, the Spanish government has announced a new military aid package for the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which includes naval defense equipment. As well known, naval defenses are items of high strategic relevance, and their supply represents a great advance in the level of co-participation in the conflict by the exporting country. In this sense, it is possible to say that Madrid is taking a dangerous step in NATO’s proxy war with Russia, generating high risks of escalation.

The announcement of the shipment of new Spanish arms to Ukraine was made on April 20 by the Minister of Defense Magarita Robles. According to the official, the new equipment aims to reinforce the Ukrainian armed forces in different sectors considered strategic, such as land, anti-aircraft and especially naval defenses. Robles claims that improving the Ukrainian situation on the naval battlefield is an essential step to ensure the stability of regional security, which would “justify” the need to send such weapons to the Ukrainian regime.

“The new shipments are aimed at reinforcing the Armed Forces of Ukraine in such areas as armored vehicles, means of ground troops protection, antiaircraft defenses and naval defenses. The latter is considered essential for the security of ‘the green sea route’ that allows the transportation of the Ukrainian grain via the Black Sea”, she said during a press conference.

It is curious to note that the minister used as an excuse for her country’s decision the supposed need to defend the Ukrainian positions in the Black Sea, protecting the flow of grains through a safe route. Obviously, the minister said this while absolutely ignoring the clear truth that the Ukrainian side is the only one that repeatedly provokes the Russian ships and ports in the region, preventing the effective working of the grain agreements and raising the risks of food insecurity.

Although details about which naval weapons would be sent to Kiev have not been clarified yet, it is important to remember that the announcement comes as a response to the request formally made by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov on a recent visit to Madrid. At the time, Resnikov stated that Kiev would be interested in Spanish amphibious vehicles as well as in technical assistance from the country’s military, considering its experience in amphibian attacks.

So, it is possible to assume, analyzing the information available so far, that Kiev plans to carry out amphibious attacks against Russian cities in the Black Sea, which includes Crimea and other strategic regions. If this happens, the escalation of the conflict will be significantly high, as amphibious attacks are extremely dangerous and demand an extraordinary level of military mobilization. The Russian response to this type of incursion would be particularly strong, certainly causing even greater damage to the already weakened Ukrainian armed forces.

However, the Spanish anti-Russian audacity goes beyond this naval issue. Madrid is also sending to the neo-Nazi regime some Leopard 2A4 battle tanks as well as TAT vehicles and many other types of equipment. Also, in addition to weapons, the Spanish government has also promised to send an additional package of humanitarian and medical aid as soon as possible. What is possible to see is that Spain is really focused on increasing its participation in the conflict, fulfilling NATO’s requests for all members of the Atlantic alliance to advance their military agendas and remain in combat readiness.

In the same sense, the president of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, announced that he will visit Washington in May to talk with his American partners, being the Ukrainian issue a central topic on his agenda. The objective would be to discuss new ways in which Spain could contribute more actively to the war against Russia. In addition, some discussions related to Latin America, a region where the US seeks hegemony and with which Spain has historical ties, are also expected for the summit.

Indeed, there are not enough reasons to justify the Spanish desire for war. It is possible to understand the reasons why Ukraine wants to increase its cooperation with Spain. As a country with an extensive coastline and a military history marked by naval conflicts and amphibious attacks, Spain seems to become an interesting partner for Kiev to seek help in its war ambitions – not only in arms supply, but also in technical assistance. However, there simply seems to be no advantage for the Spanish government to adhere in depth to this type of partnership.

Being in western Europe, Madrid seems a long way from any direct effects of the conflict. Any kind of anti-Russian paranoia seems irrational on the Spanish case. Even if there is an eventual internationalization of the conflict in the near future, Spain will certainly not be the side most threatened by escalation. What appears, therefore, is that Madrid is making a kind of bet on military expansionism, seeking to increase its strategic relevance through active participation in NATO’s war against Russia.

This seems problematic and irresponsible from many points of view, since Madrid obviously does not have enough military capacity to reverse the battlefield scenario. Spanish help can only cause Kiev to carry out more dangerous provocations, which will be responded to in an intense way, accelerating the inevitable collapse of the Ukrainian forces. The best Madrid can do is avoid getting involved in irreversible conflicts and raise its own national defense capabilities, assuming skepticism about the “umbrella” promised by NATO.

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Lucas Leiroz is a journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

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a

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For more than half a century, Earth Day is the time in April when all thoughts turn to love…of the planet.

Actions dedicated to conservation and reforestation of the planet, ending plastic pollution, limiting climate change and restorative agriculture are a few of the movements reflected in this giant engine of hope for all the masses on the globe. [1]

The initiative these days is supported by dozens of Non Governmental Organizations, including the Rockefeller backed Club of Rome. So, activism sanctioned by the major players world-wide. [2][3]

The problem one can run into, of course, is that as we saw with the COVID-19 “pandemic,” the Rockefellers, the Gateses, and the other higher entities are not exactly on the same page as the rest of us and are arguably using the crisis we are facing as an opportunity for some other objective.

It is true that simple corporations have jumped on the climate bandwagon each Earth Day. For example, Nestlé has pledged to cut their CO2 emissions in half by 2030. Though given their track record of child labor, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling, it is tempting to think of such commitments as old fashioned “greenwashing.”[4][5]

But the more urgent question facing all of us determined to do our part for the living world is the far more significant attempts to mislead. When the powerful players decide to use modern environmentalism for reasons other than maintaining a strong, vibrant Earth, we the people could end up feeling more than just profoundly screwed. Our sacrifices for our natural home and hearth could ultimately be in service to their profits, and at the end of the day, it would not alter the planet one iota!

Is our Earth Day and our environmental actions as subscribed by the billionaire masters leading us to our collective desperation or some place even worse? That is a question posed in this Earth Day episode of the Global Research News Hour.

In our first half hour, Australian Michael Swifte joins us to talk about the way the American and Australian philanthropists with their bought and paid for climate NGOs have suckered us into a form of de-carbonization that will not actually reduce emissions, but help the fossil fuel industry get even MORE oil and gas out of the ground. Then in our second half hour, the legendary  Indian scholar, environmental activist, and ecofeminist Vandana Shiva appears to address the role of the so-called philanthrocapitalists, and particularly of Bill Gates, in undermining food security and diversity in the supposed name of saving it.

Michael Swifte is an Australian activist and a member of the Wrong Kind of Green critical thinking collective. He writes at wrongkindofgreen.org

Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She is the founder of Navdanya http://www.navdanya.org/. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 388)

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Transcript of Vandana Shiva, April 17, 2023

Part one

Global Research: You opened your book “Philanthrocapitalism and the Erosion of Democracy: a Global Citizens Report on the Corporate Control of Technology, Health, and Agriculture,” but talk about the land and how Indigenous communities worldwide have evolved the most ingenious farming systems over time. And then, about a century ago, traditions began to collapse due to the chemically intensive agricultural model which originated under the IG Farben companies, the “poison cartel” as you put it, that started making chemical weapons in World War I and World War II. And then, in an attempt to keep making profits, turned to use in agriculture. They saw a big opportunity in the Green Revolution to make money. This began a new area of conquest, and not just of land but of the food on which we all feed. Talk about how this system transformed the quality of diets in the world, particularly the Global South where the Green Revolution was practised.

Vandana Shiva: Yeah. Michael, actually before the industrialization of agriculture, including its Green Revolution phase when it was imposed on the Third World, is the privatization of land and the creation of private property. People think private property has always been around. In my country, land was never owned as private property. Land was a commons, and allocations were done by the community for its use. Exactly like territories were, you know, assigned to Indigenous cultures, people knew which group has which land.

For India, its as recent as ‘83 or ‘87 when Lord Cornwallis wrote with one sentence, that “All the land of India belongs to England.” All the continent of Australia belonged to England. All of Canada belonged to England. All of the United States belonged to England. So all of Africa started to belong to England. And the alienation of land is really the story of colonialism. And that’s why the Land Back movement of Indigenous people is so significant as de-colonisation and re-establishing our relationship with the Earth in a rightful way.

The next step of alienation is IG Farben and Standard Oil as the origin of “Oneness Vs. the 1%.” The German companies have the technology, the chemical technology, but the fossil fuels from which the chemical industry made its fertilizers, pesticides, its chemicals to kill people, that came from Standard Oil. It came from Rockefeller. And Standard Oil, IG Farben, had one company. And at that time, too, after having established a monopoly, Rockefeller realized it had to create a philanthropic image, so they created the Rockefeller Foundation. And just here on my desk, is Operation Paperclip, of how the Nazi scientists were transported to do all this work in the United States. And it’s not an accident that genetic engineering is then developed by Rockefeller on the basis of the molecular biology discipline which they financed 100%. And they’re the ones who pushed the chemical farming. And the Green Revolution was pushed to close by the US government, by the World Bank, but also by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

Today, even though Rockefeller is very active still, they haven’t, you know, receded from the scene. The Green Revolution for Africa, the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa, is a joint project of Rockefeller and Gates. Of course, since globalization, Gates has become super rich as all the tech billionaires have. Both my book “Oneness Vs. the 1%” as well as collected books through the movements of philanthrocapitalism, they’re really showing how there’s not a single field that doesn’t directly impact human freedom and human well-being where Gates is not trying to take over right now. And he has become the biggest farmland owner of America. And he has already launched something called Gates Ag One. Exactly when the Covid was bursting, he was dreaming of one agriculture under his control, the seeds under his control, the technology under his control, the food under his control, lab food, fake food. So, if you want to see that everything that we knew was wrong with agriculture, if it has been given the fast forward, it’s by the philanthrocapitalism of Gates.

In 2000, they brought the golden rice to India. We showed how it was a very inferior source of vitamin A, and there was so much more diversity. Gates took it now to The Philippines, just to address The Philippines peasants a few weeks back, because they’re fighting golden rice. We stopped the BT eggplant of Monsanto, —

GR: Mm-hmm.

VS: — we put a moratorium. Mr. Gates takes it to Bangladesh. So, everything that has been failed to democracy, Gates is lifting it as long as there’s money and power to be made. So, for anyone who cares about land, seed, agriculture, you must keep an eye on Bill Gates.

GR: Mm. Well, yeah, I mean, you talk about the danger of Bill Gates and philanthrocapitalism. Is this just a return of the Green Revolution of the 1960s but in different bottles, or is there, like, you say like a unique angle that’s represented by Gates and the billionaires, you know? Can you talk about how it has sort of upped the ante, so to speak?

VS: Yeah. You know, at the time of the Green Revolution, the tools of destruction were chemical fertilizers. And using conventional breeding to change the plant to suit the fertilizers. But if that’s about the highest level of violence they can do. Now when Mr. Gates is playing that role, we have tools not just of genetic engineering, which have already, you know, been a total failure in terms of delivering on the promises: promises of weed control, promises of pest control.

You know, I worked years with Percy Schmeiser, and I remember him so fondly, the Canadian farmer, who was sued by Monsanto after Monsanto contaminated his fields with the Roundup Ready Canola. And I know there’s a film out called “Percy.” And those who don’t know of Percy’s case, please watch that film. The first generation GMOs have failed. Gates now, just like Rockefeller, singularly created the discipline of molecular biology, of genetic reductionism of life. Not as complex as an organized system, but as a machine which they could control and own.

Right now, the tools of gene editing have been totally financed by Mr. Gates. Both the scientists who have further developed the CRISPR technology, CRISPR/Cas9 which is gene editing, financed by Gates. He even financed the fight for patenting. And he’s the one who is deregulating GMO regulation and patent law regulation to push gene edited crops.

Europe and the big fight going on. UK had just passed a precision breeding law which puts GMOs outside regulation. And the most important thing that I’ve written, it’s a chapter in the book “Philanthrocapitalism” on the seed issue. Before the Green Revolution, all the seeds of the world were collected and put in these banks, gene banks they call them, called CGIAR Systems, IRRI, the Rice Research Institute, ICRISAT, the Dire Land Crop Institute, ICARDA, the Arid Zone Institute. As the privatization has grown, the public spending has come down, and if you look at all of the CGIAR centres and all the seedlings they hold, the biggest contributor has become Mr Gates, which means he holds this genetic belt of the world, he holds the seeds of the world. He also controls the Svalbard seed bank. So, he has control of the seed, the first link in the food chain, control over the technologies through which he would take the patents and have the monopolies. And the control over the land where you would grow food.

GR: Mm-hmm.

VS: And he’s not stopping at that. He realizes if agriculture is left as agriculture, there will be decentralization and diversity. And monopoly creators hate decentralization and they hate diversity.

So, that’s why Gates’ side won. And he’s working with Bayer and all of these companies. In fact, his Gates Ag One office is right next to Monsanto’s office in St. Louis, Missouri, you know. That’s where Monsanto is. Because the new partnership to forget about agriculture as a community producing their food. Agriculture will be uniform around the world, all based on GMOs, all based on glyphosate, producing raw material of amino acids and proteins as feed stock. Just like we turn cows into factory objects fed by animal feed, in a similar way, they want to turn us into factory objects fed by lab-made food whose raw material comes from the farms on a very large scale. And that, to me, is the summary of this plan-based language that they’ve created. It’s really about fake food.

And if you look at who’s doing what. Impossible Burger? Mr. Gates. Fake breast milk? Mr. Gates. They’ll touch any crazy idea of how we should not be living on this planet. Mr. Gates’ money is there for the craziness to become law.

GR: Oh boy. I mean, they say that Bill Gates, his approach to Microsoft was not so much about building a better mousetrap and having the world beat a path to your door, so much as building a lousy mousetrap and building paths to everybody else’s door. You know, that’s the whole – I mean, he’s been appearing in court facing, you know, charges of anti-trust basically. Undermining competition and having, you know, unjustified monopolies in place. But, you know, flash forward to the present now: he is the number one – as you said – the number one holder of land in North America. What kind of a game is he now playing with owning all this land? How will it affect the food on my plate in the not-too-distant future?

VS: Yeah. The first is: the billionaires want our land and they want our food, because these are two things, without which, humanity can’t live. So, at the time when he’s grabbing the land, he’s telling the farmers to leave the land. He’s trying to make it look like farming is not for the future. It’s the slogan of his minions – I call them “his minions” – people he gives the power talk to. Farming without farmers, food without farms, that’s the dystopia. Farming without farmers, that means there’s more chemicals, more machines. And food without farms, no food straight from the farms, no wheat that you can bake your bread with. No, just amino acids and proteins, going as feed stock for the factory and the lab. Cellular agriculture.

What is he wanting control of? As Kissinger said, when I did my book on the violence of the Green Revolution, I looked at all the literature, and Kissinger’s statement that, “If you control arms, you control governments. When you control food, you control people.” And that’s why I say, when you control seed, you control the planet. That’s what his dystopia is: total control.

GR: Hm.

VS: And the same with, he had not created the basic software. It was mathematics professors in a college in Vermont which he then claims he invented. His piracy of that time and monopolies and anti-trust, exactly the same thing he’s doing with seed. He’s trying to convert our food into software, he’s trying to convert life into software. And that’s why it’s not an accident that wherever life is, he’s trying to push software systems, both as a monopoly system of patents, as well as a monopoly system of surveillance and extraction of resources.

GR: Well, that brings to mind something called Impossible Food, which is like a lab-made nourishment, I guess, that’s – I guess it’s made to look like meat and tastes sort of like meat, but without, I guess, the side effects of meat or animal deaths. I mean —

VS: Worse side effects. Worse side effects. Anyone who thinks that a GMO soya burger does not have side effects is not following what an industrial GMO agriculture does. GMO and glyphosate sprayed Roundup Ready soya, which is most of the soya grown in the world, is responsible for hundreds of thousands of cancer deaths of people.

GR: Mm-hmm.

VS: And this Impossible Burger has much higher residues of glyphosate than anyone allows. It has pushed the monarch butterfly to extinction. It’s designed to kill everything green. Anyone who supports Impossible Burger and plant-based pretend meat as being non-violent doesn’t see the violence to the butterflies, to the bees, to the human beings. And most importantly, to the plant life. You know, first humans were arrogant and drew a line between themselves and other animals to feel superior. Torture them in factory farms. But who gives you the right to say the plants are not sentient? Understand the literature to see that plants are not to be “based” and turned into meat. Plants are sentient beings and they need as much respect as the animals do. And any system that turns plants into raw materials is a violation of the plants. Any system that destroys the biodiversity of plants is a violation of the plant. So, some very basic, unscientific statements are being made. And unscientific claims.

There are 14 patents associated with Impossible Burger. And from what I gather, the European patent has just been withdrawn. So, sadly there are a lot of people who don’t know farming, who don’t know anything about food. Who lap up Mr. Gates’ propaganda, and in a way, hand over their brains to Mr. Gates. This is the time to know what food is, to know what healthy food is. To know what plants are like and plant diversity is like. To understand the symbiotic relationship between plants and animals. Because surely there’s a symbiotic relationship between plants and animals that will give us a non-violent system. A system that says, ‘Kill all the plants and kill all the animals, except the soya bean that we want is Roundup resistant.’ Now people are not thinking their way through. They are not thinking.

-intermission-

Part two

GR: Talk a bit about on the climate change front, Bill Gates and the philanthrocapitalists, but particularly Bill Gates was active in prescribing solutions to climate change. Bill Gates came up with the Breakthrough Energy, which is an umbrella of organizations dedicated to sustainable energy and high-tech projects. President Obama complemented him with Mission Innovation. And his approach was being adopted by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and countries all over the world. I mean, what concerns do you have with his approach to climate change as currently modelled?

VS: Yeah. First, it’s unscientific.

GR: Yeah.

VS: The more they talk of science, the less science they do. It’s unscientific, because to blame the cow for having four stomachs for the climate problem is just bad science. It’s the bad diets that’s giving us the methane. The biogenetic methane just goes right back into the cycle. In ten years, it’s gone, it turns into carbon dioxide and back into the system.

Impossible Burger is one of his climate solutions. Not for climate solutions. Spraying Roundup everywhere to kill the plants that give you the photosynthesis that solves the climate problem, is not a climate solution. Geo-engineering, changing the climate. Changing the weather with pollution is not a climate solution.

His Breakthrough Energy supports Biomilq, you know. I am a mother, I had a baby, and I did breastfeeding. Now, the distance between my baby and me is zero miles. I don’t have any emissions while I’m feeding my baby. And he has lab – fake lab milk called Biomilq patented as a solution to climate change. Shipping the synthetic meat all over the world will add to climate emissions. We already know with the Nestlés and all the baby food how much sickness and death of babies took place. No one has done the safety test on this synthetic lab milk as a pretend breast milk.

Another reason he is grab-buying up land is because that’s where all the orders they’re creating for carbon offsets, which is – they are dreaming that will be the new economy. As he says clearly in his book, “Climate Catastrophe,” it’s not – net-zero doesn’t mean we’ve stopped polluting. Net-zero just means we have to find the sinks and the offsets. And as repeated, he said in debates when people promote net-zero. Listen, we are not your sinks, you’ve polluted us enough, you’ve dumped enough on us. But our land is our mother, and our land is not there for your pollution. Our land is there for sustaining life on Earth.

GR: Hm. You know, I think that there’s the sense that – well, I mean, the early colonizers of America, I mean, yes, they plundered and they were after gold and land and other ways of making money. But at the same time, they also seemed to have perpetuated this idea that they were actually going to try to help the people, you know, bring them civilization and such stuff. And I’m wondering if, like, with Bill Gates, if he isn’t – I mean, if he actually believes that he’s going to achieve good for people. Because he wants to, you know, make money and have all these accomplishments met. But I think he probably wants to, at the same time, ease his conscience in saying that, well, it’s a win-win for us. I mean, is that your take? Or is he just a nasty —

VS: Well, as I’ve written in my book “Oneness Vs. the 1%,” you know, he is on a civilizing mission. He does think we are all primitive. He does think he is out to deliver us. He has so little knowledge of how cultures live, of how human beings live, how life on this Earth lives. He has no knowledge. He just knows he made money out of stealing other people’s software. And he knows how easy it is to make money. And he now, in the form of philanthrocapitalists, has convinced himself just like the missionaries who massacred the Indigenous people and wiped out 90% of the Indigenous people of the Americas. They did it in the name of civilizing mission.

Gates is doing exactly the same, he’s on a civilizing mission to wipe us out, while he pretends he’s civilizing us.

GR: Hm.

VS: It’s no different. It’s no different, it’s just that instruments are more violent now.

GR: Yeah, and he doesn’t see that – yeah, the Green Revolution —

VS: He doesn’t see too much. He doesn’t see too much. You know, we talk to ordinary people, you watch their eyes, you see the words that’s in their eyes.

GR: Yeah.

VS: Gates has a limited vocabulary of about 20 words. He cannot go beyond it.

GR: But does he even go through the mechanism of going, sending people out to the different communities and having a dialogue and saying, ‘Okay, these are your problems.’ And then, they come back and here’s your —

VS: Not – not a dialogue, a mission. Go and do this to the people. He already knows what to do.

GR: Hm. So, what is the approach you’re taking in terms of calling for Earth democracy? How can we not only fight the —

VS: Very simple.

GR: — fight the philanthrocapitalists —

VS: Well, you know. Yeah.

GR: — but also, rebuild the heritage of past Indigenous agriculturalists.

VS: Yeah. So, you know, I wrote Earth Democracy after we managed to stop the WTO in Seattle. And they were talking about a New World Order. They were talking about a global constitution which would be about making money or pursue profits first. And for me, a democracy means, first, the recognition that we are part of the Earth, we are not separate. Second, we are not superior to other species and no culture is superior to other cultures. And no race is superior to other races. The democracy of the Earth is a democracy of diversity, but not inequality, no hierarchies.

How do we fight philanthrocapitalism with this? By realizing that money isn’t the currency of life. And having accumulated billions doesn’t mean that a billionaire has unequal rights. At the end of the day, we, the tree, the salmon in the river, we all have rights to be here on this planet. To be sustained by the planet and to sustain it. A democracy means we have to get rid of all the hierarchies, including the hierarchy between the billionaires, the oneness, and the rest of us. And we get that power to fight these divisions by turning to the Earth to know how life works. And that’s where the Indigenous cultures and nature Herself becomes our teacher for the next step of liberation. Humanity’s liberation comes from the non-human scale and from those who were declared primitive by the curse of civilizing missions.

GR: Earth Day is an annual day in which citizens around the world mobilize to protect the planet for future generations, although some complain about major green-washing of major corporations. So, when people want to embrace the Earth this coming Earth Day, what do you suggest they – where do you suggest they put their efforts?

VS: The first thing they should say, wherever they are, that Mother Earth is not for sale. Because the philanthrocapitalists want to own the Earth. The second thing is, the basic currency of life is food and they want our food. So, go plant something: in your windowsill, in your back garden, find a farmer whom you can relate to. Create a food community. Third, this Earth Day, just remember we are part of the Earth, we are not her masters. And those who pretend to be masters are not her masters, either.

GR: Vandana Shiva, it’s been great talking to you again and hearing your wisdom and knowledge. Thank you so much for being a part of this very special –

VS: Thank you.

GR: — conversation. We’ve been speaking with —

VS: Happy Earth Day to everyone.

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Notes:

1. https://www.earthday.org/our-work/
2. https://www.earthday.org/campaign/climate-environmental-literacy/#
3. https://thetechnocratictyranny.com/corruption/rockefeller-and-the-club-of-rome/
4. https://www.edie.net/from-burger-king-to-whitbread-business-giants-mark-earth-day-with-new-climate-targets/
5. https://www.zmescience.com/science/nestle-company-pollution-children/

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First published by Global Research on November 28, 2021

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Following their “Open Letter to the Unvaccinated”, an expanding group of Canadian scholars has now written a letter addressing “the vaccinated”. The writers expose the divisiveness of vaccination status and denounce the resulting rift in society.

Giving up civil liberties in exchange for a false sense of safety is futile. We must not accept a descent into medical apartheid in Canada and around the world.

The letter appeals both to those who chose to take the vaccine and those who were coerced. It reflects on the broader implications of our actions in an effort to collaborate on a constructive path forward.

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Open Letter to the Vaccinated

Prime Minister Trudeau recently warned that “there will be consequences” if federal employees do not comply with vaccine mandates. This is a voice of tyranny that has reverberated fear and heightened agitation across our country. It has launched our nation into deep division around mass vaccination and brought our collective recovery from this pandemic to a critical head. In fact, it forces us, as a country, to finally ask: indeed, what are those consequences?

What are the societal consequences of being divided along the lines of vaccination status? What are the consequences of mandating such an insufficiently tested medical intervention? How is this all supposed to end well?

The consequences will be dire, to be certain. And the consequences will affect all of us, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated alike.

Over the last six months, many of us made our decision to accept the vaccine in good faith – doing the right thing in order to work, travel and visit the people we love. Sadly, some of us have been pressured or coerced. And now, mounting evidence worldwide shows that these vaccines cannot stop the transmission of the virus and variants, yet vaccination mandates continue.

Meanwhile, the pharma corporations are earning billions of dollars of public money, and pushing to fast-track the vaccines towards full approval, without due process or public discussion. It is abundantly clear that when money and politics intertwine, science and ethics take a back seat.

Maybe you once resented those who hesitated to get the vaccine, as people who were not doing their part; but maybe it is time to consider that we have all become passengers on the same runaway train. The meaning of “fully vaccinated” is rapidly changing as leaders demand the next booster upgrade and threaten ousting us from public spaces if we don’t comply. So, if you are among the “fully vaccinated” today, by tomorrow you may become one of the “insufficiently vaccinated” and be coerced into taking another shot.

If history is any indication, this will not stop with barring admission to concerts or bars. When you can no longer buy food, access banking, vote in person or cross a provincial border, it will be crystal clear that the same discriminatory practices that you hope to abolish will be ever more firmly established. The real consequences await all of us.

Perhaps you’ve had your full round of doses and are now having doubts about whether to continue based on the alarming number of infections among the vaccinated. Or maybe you know someone who has been vaccine-injured or are concerned about the mounting death reports in conjunction with vaccinations.

We keep asking ourselves, “Why is the data not allowed to be scrutinized and why are independent experts being censored if they attempt to do just that?” It is incomprehensible, and decidedly un-Canadian, to see the silencing of highly regarded doctors and health scientists in our country and around the globe.

History has taught us that one-sided arguments and outlawed dissent are signs of totalitarianism lurking at the doorstep. Soon, asking questions will make you an enemy of the State. Mandating vaccines is a breaking point. “My body, my choice” has been one of the hallmarks of a free and democratic society, but this is changing. Canadians are being robbed of personal decision making.

With lockdowns already scheduled for the fall, and boosters at the ready, we are entering a watershed moment. Are we all willing to continue being injected indefinitely? In Canadian provinces and around the world vaccine passports are demonstrating our new, long-term relationship with medical coercion in exchange for basic freedoms. Thus far, each treatment has been promised to be the last, but it couldn’t be clearer that there is no end in sight.

And now they’re coming for our children.

With extremely low risk of becoming ill and practically no risk of dying from COVID-19, the mass vaccination of children and adolescents remains unwarranted. Lining up our healthy children for medical treatment was never part of the deal. Most disturbingly of all, we are being primed for mass vaccination campaigns in our schools that do not require parental consent. Does the government decide what is best for our children? Without question, the family ties that bind us are being undone. Justifiably, parents are appalled by this unprecedented overreach and are debating pulling their children out of schools.

Despite our best intentions, families are scarred, friends are divided, and partners are at odds with each other. We have been weakened by our division and manipulated through fear.

Just how far will we allow this to go? “All the way!” some of us declare. But “all the way” is a place we will never reach. We need to stop this medical catastrophe and face the truth: this isn’t about our health; it is about politics and it is about control.

The consequences of following Prime Minister Trudeau’s current orders are greater than his threatened consequences. We entered into this for one another, not for our politicians. We have done what we felt we had to do, and now we must say, ‘This is far enough, no more!’

Angela Durante, PhD
Denis Rancourt, PhD
Jan Vrbik, PhD
Laurent Leduc, PhD
Valentina Capurri, PhD
Amanda Euringer, Journalist
Claus Rinner, PhD
Maximilian C. Forte, PhD
Julie Ponesse, PhD
Michael Owen, PhD
Donald G. Welsh, PhD

*

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Vaccine ideology or hubris appears everywhere! Never had we heard so much about vaccines in our day to day life as laypersons or as healthcare professionals. This certainly is the case for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) which is largely an infantile problem easily treated with nebulizers when it occurs. Now Pfizer is aggressively testing their investigational bivalent RSV prefusion protein vaccine which contains stabilized preF glycoproteins from the two main cocirculating antigenic subgroups (RSV A and RSV B). Is this really needed? Should pregnant women be put at risk even before product launch for the general childhood population? We can see now that emboldened Pfizer is breaking new ground with clinical trials in late term pregnancy.

The MATISSE Study group conducted a phase 3, double-blind trial where they randomly assigned, in a 1:1 ratio, pregnant women at 24 through 36 weeks’ gestation to receive a single intramuscular injection of 120 μg of a bivalent RSV prefusion F protein–based (RSVpreF) vaccine or placebo. The main primary efficacy end point occurred in <2% at all time points and was defined as medically attended severe RSV-associated lower respiratory tract illness within 90, 120, 150, and 180 days after birth. A lower boundary of the confidence interval for vaccine efficacy (99.5% confidence interval [CI] at 90 days; 97.58% CI at later intervals) greater than 20% was considered to meet the success criterion for vaccine efficacy with respect to the primary end point. This is far lower than a reasonable acceptance limit of 50% for the lower bound. As you can see at all times, the real effect size could have been lower than 50%. When outcomes are sparse, the point of central tendency is a statistical blur, hence we must rely on the bounds of the confidence limits. Additionally, protection waned rapidly after birth and was not demonstrated to last 12 months.

Kampmann B, Madhi SA, Munjal I, Simões EAF, Pahud BA, Llapur C, Baker J, Pérez Marc G, Radley D, Shittu E, Glanternik J, Snaggs H, Baber J, Zachariah P, Barnabas SL, Fausett M, Adam T, Perreras N, Van Houten MA, Kantele A, Huang LM, Bont LJ, Otsuki T, Vargas SL, Gullam J, Tapiero B, Stein RT, Polack FP, Zar HJ, Staerke NB, Duron Padilla M, Richmond PC, Koury K, Schneider K, Kalinina EV, Cooper D, Jansen KU, Anderson AS, Swanson KA, Gruber WC, Gurtman A; MATISSE Study Group. Bivalent Prefusion F Vaccine in Pregnancy to Prevent RSV Illness in Infants. N Engl J Med. 2023 Apr 20;388(16):1451-1464. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2216480. Epub 2023 Apr 5. PMID: 37018474.

In summary, Pfizer has aggressively advanced RCTs into the pregnant population with no assurances on long term outcomes. Furthermore, they moved the goal posts to make it easer to have a successful trial. We should demand long-term safety, high efficacy (>50% VE as lower bound of CI), and at least one year of durability, for such a rare and easy-to-treat condition.

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Source

Kampmann B, Madhi SA, Munjal I, Simões EAF, Pahud BA, Llapur C, Baker J, Pérez Marc G, Radley D, Shittu E, Glanternik J, Snaggs H, Baber J, Zachariah P, Barnabas SL, Fausett M, Adam T, Perreras N, Van Houten MA, Kantele A, Huang LM, Bont LJ, Otsuki T, Vargas SL, Gullam J, Tapiero B, Stein RT, Polack FP, Zar HJ, Staerke NB, Duron Padilla M, Richmond PC, Koury K, Schneider K, Kalinina EV, Cooper D, Jansen KU, Anderson AS, Swanson KA, Gruber WC, Gurtman A; MATISSE Study Group. Bivalent Prefusion F Vaccine in Pregnancy to Prevent RSV Illness in Infants. N Engl J Med. 2023 Apr 20;388(16):1451-1464. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2216480. Epub 2023 Apr 5. PMID: 37018474.

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.

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Back in late March, top American General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the United States of America would be doubling its military budget in case the Kiev regime was defeated by Russia. At the time, Milley claimed that “not supporting Ukraine now would lead to a massive increase in future defense budgets”. He also added that “it would lead to a global conflict that has been avoided since World War II ended”.

“If that rules-based order, which is in its 80th year, if that goes out the window, then be very careful,” Milley said while testifying before the US Congress on March 23, further adding: “We’ll be doubling our defense budgets at that point because that will introduce not an era of great power competition. That’ll begin an era of great power conflict. And that’ll be extraordinarily dangerous for the whole world.”

Firstly, it should be noted that Milley’s remark about the so-called “rules-based (world) order” supposedly lasting 80 years is completely misplaced. The geopolitical situation in the last three decades has merely been a shadow of the post-WWII global order. With the US conducting virtually incessant aggression against the entire world, any notion that there are actual rules that equally apply to everyone is beyond laughable. However, his claim that Washington DC would need to double its “defense” spending is much more serious and consequential. Ironically, he’s threatening to do that while “warning” about a looming global conflict, one which is solely caused by the US itself, as it’s the only country on the planet with an openly stated strategy of “full spectrum dominance”.

Milley testified before the House Appropriations Committee-Defense on the next year’s DoD (Department of Defense) budget, alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. The figure for the Pentagon officially stands at $842 billion, $69 billion more than the $773 billion the military requested for 2023. However, the total spending on national “defense”, including work on nuclear weapons (officially under the jurisdiction of the Department of Energy), pushes that up to $886 billion. This is without including the so-called “aid” for the Kiev regime, which stood at approximately $113 billion at the beginning of 2023. However, the updated figure is now getting closer to $150 billion and there’s no indication that it will stop growing any time soon.

General Milley has repeatedly described the conflict in Ukraine as “an important national interest” and “fundamental to the United States, to Europe and to global security”. It could be argued that it’s neither of those things, as the world, the EU and the US itself all have more pressing concerns. Unfortunately, this notion is extremely unlikely to lead to any peaceful settlement, especially as the US Military Industrial Complex (MIC) keeps getting its windfall. While some members of Congress have consistently been skeptical about the “aid” for the Kiev regime, the majority still have a strong preference for the official narrative. The skeptics usually cite “the US and Kiev regime’s failure to more clearly define their strategic goals” as the primary reason for the lack of “more adamant support”.

This clearly indicates that the only “strategic goal” is to keep the war going for as long as possible, which also explains the repeated calls for the perpetual increase of the Pentagon’s budget. However, Milley’s call for doubling it is a major escalation and it’s unclear how exactly Washington DC is planning to achieve such a monumental task. Global military spending for 2022 was around $2.1 trillion, meaning that the US is already at over 40% of the world’s total with its current budget. Doubling it, even over the next several years (also taking into account other superpowers would certainly respond to it) could push that figure close to 60%. In terms of the US federal budget, it would also require further cuts to investment in healthcare, infrastructure, education, etc.

As the military currently spends approximately 15% of the entire US federal budget, obviously, doubling it would mean the percentage would go up to (or even over) 30%. Such figures are quite close to what the former Soviet Union was spending in terms of its overall budget, which was one of the major factors that contributed to its unfortunate dismantlement. On the other hand, it also forces others to drastically increase their own military spending. If China were to follow suit, its military budget would then be close to $500 billion, with Russia’s military budget approaching $200 billion. This would cause a military spending “death spiral” that would be extremely difficult (if possible at all) to control, leading the world into an unprecedented arms race.

However, this “new” Cold War could potentially be far more dangerous than the “old” one, as there would be approximately half a dozen superpowers and great powers competing for influence and a bigger geopolitical footprint. On the other hand, if the rest of the world refuses to respond in kind, such a massive increase in US military spending would only push the multipolar world into greater integration, as it would be the only way to counter US aggression without doubling their own military budgets. Either way, the US is left with a choice – further escalate, not only with Russia, but the rest of the world as well, or find an off-ramp. Otherwise, its inflation will surge so much that the “doubling” of the Pentagon’s budget will happen on its own.

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Read Part I:

Ukraine 2014: The Tipping Point of Terror

By Jim Cole, April 19, 2023

 

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The Psychology of Color Revolutions

Color revolutions are U.S.-funded regime-change operations utilizing a sophisticated understanding of psychology, sociology and political organizing to foment and precipitate an “electoral revolution” resulting in a U.S. client state or one that meets other geopolitical purposes. They require a large ecosystem of change agents, including military, intelligence and diplomatic government actors, foundations, NGOs, PR companies and other contractors and corporate co-conspirators and media, developed over years with millions or billions in investment.

They have been successful in Serbia (2000), in Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004), in Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution (2005), Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution (2005), Kuwait’s Blue Revolution (2005), Iraq’s Purple Revolution (2005), and in Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution (1989). Others, such as Ukraine 2014, were ultimately more characterized by violence but featured the same change-agent organizations; still others, such as Venezuela (2018) and Belarus’s Slipper Revolution (2020), failed, likely as the target regime is too entrenched and/or the soft-power ecosystem is too inhibited.

[Source: europereloaded.com]

Although on the surface they utilize civic group energy and genuine discontent, particularly “creative non-violence resistance” of student and youth, their main power is in the control of the interpretation of unfolding events by both local and foreign audiences. This might make them “post-modern coups” in that they reflect a shift of regime-change operations from military hard power to civilian soft power, from reality to perception of reality, where the power of propaganda is much more insidious, yet the managers remain those connected to state and corporate power.

As with all propaganda, the control of the narratives in color revolutions is rooted in manipulation through fear and desire; a false promise of dissipating this fear through a desired candidate or policy, to channel the population against their current regime and pursue a direction in harmony with imperial interests.

Fear is also induced by some change agents (chaos agents such as saboteurs, snipers or terrorists) whose aim is to destabilize society and citizens’ sense of security, to provoke a desire for security internally (counterinsurgency) or for regime change in a foreign target (insurgency).

Insurgency/regime-change operations have become a sophisticated science of mass manipulation, researched by government, academic and foundation scientists for decades, involving the work of political and behavioral scientists, PR firms, social media experts, intelligence agents, local and foreign professional activists, and strategists and tacticians employed through governmental agencies, foundations and a plethora of NGOs.

“Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.

Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.

Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.”^[1]

Mass manipulation is as old as power, but for the modern era we might start, a century ago with Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd and the work of Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays as the originator of consumer propaganda (aka “PR”), the linchpin of our globalized and falsified non-culture.

As the military and intelligence agencies became more interested in soft power, funding increased for think tanks such as the deceptively named Albert Einstein Institution, an offshoot of Harvard University where political scientist Gene Sharp evolved a sophisticated—but very accessible—understanding of how to foment revolution in target countries.

His work had such a convenient overlap in appearance and terminology with civil rights campaigning and ostensibly non-violent and anti-war ideals, it escaped many people’s attention for decades that he was central to neo-imperial expansion “by other means” and that many of these worked in tandem with other soft-power techniques as well as covert-action operations with no façade of humanitarianism.

Two fundamental influences on the psychology of color revolutions are the cultural bias that comes from 80 years of American Century cultural imperialism with which the world has been bombarded and the endlessly exploitable genuine grievances citizens have against their own leaders, who may be separate from U.S. spheres of influence but can be just as immoral and vile.

Cultural bias, via entertainment, such as cartoons, as propaganda and by deep cultural bias and ties to the Homeland that prove very useful, for example, in how the U.S. pressures UN voting by threatening diplomats’ bank accounts and other ties to the U.S. or U.S. organizations and companies. Like the political, civic and media narratives of soft power, these have a profound effect on world view, values, critical thinking and perception of causes of events and possibilities for political progress, i.e., what is perceived as possible and desirable.

Legitimate dissent, oppression and foreign interference, of course, are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they are synergistic in escalating the tension for regime change, and genuine discontent or ethno-religious tension, for example, are an Achilles heal for an imperial force to target and exacerbate with divide-and-conquer, destabilization and other strategies of domination and regime change.

It is an intentional strategy of U.S. imperialism to impoverish, destabilize and neutralize non-client countries over decades, by sanctions, sabotage, propaganda, war, terror and other strategies, so that manufactured discontent becomes legitimized, certain sectors are energized while others are disenfranchised, and the hidden hand of imperialism is largely to blame.

Soft Power Imperial Apparatus: USAID, NED, Embassies, Soros, Omidyar, et al.

The purpose of soft power is to pressure governments, persuade people (propaganda) and co-opt future leaders. Much of this is done through political, labor and civic groups, other NGOs and media, media, media.

If you can look past the oligarch-level PR, the aim of U.S. empire is to instill free-market reform for multinational market penetration and control of global political economy.

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED, a CIA offshoot founded in the 1980s) currently funds about 1600 different NGOs (negating the “non” part of their title), and hundreds have been funded in Ukraine since the 1990s. The two main NED arms, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) have both had Kyiv offices since 1992, running what then-regional NDI head Nelson C. Ledsky termed the “Ukraine experiment” in an update statement to the House of Representatives in 2005.^[2]

In Serbia 2000, for example, the NDI focused on the opposition parties, while IRI focused on the young protesters and “paid for two dozen Otpor leaders to attend a seminar on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, a few hundred yards along the Danube from the NDI-favored Marriott.”^[3] This mild division of taste and labor is about the extent of the difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to foreign policy.

Protesters waving Otpor flag in NED-backed color revolution in Serbia. [Source: dgrnewsservice.org]

About 40 NED-funded organizations are named in the NED’s 2004 Annual Report as operating in Ukraine, by far the most of any country that year.^[4] But this is not a complete picture, even of the NED’s involvement, let alone the other soft-power agencies, many of which seem allergic to the spotlight; as Ron Paul said in a December 2004 speech before the U.S. House International Relations Committee, “That is what I find so disturbing: There are so many cut-out organizations and sub-grantees that we have no idea how much U.S. government money was really spent on Ukraine, and most importantly how it was spent.”^[5]Twenty years later, you can amplify everything by about the same number.

By their own admission—thoroughly flooded across the millions of documents, websites, articles, press releases and media flowing from this industry that puts U.S. taxpayer money into oligarch accounts and aims to destroy any (potential) competition—all of this money is spent in a near religious faith in U.S. supremacy, manifest destiny and free market imperialism.^[6] The misdirection underlying this is that it is for benevolent reasons, when it is clearly for ruling elite greed and has caused an inconceivable amount of destruction since the dawn of colonialism and the genocide of indigeneity.

But the Ukrainian cut-outs just grew and grew because, as NED President Carl Gershman said in 2013, “Ukraine is the biggest prize” in Europe.^[7] And since late February 2022, the aid floodgates opened completely to fuel the proxy war to the last Ukrainian.

The NED board always tellingly includes some national security leaders, such as current CIA Director William J Burns, who was head of the NED-associated Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After all, they have taken on the main burden of political, psychological, and social action jobs the CIA did covertly before the 1970s scandals led to the foundation of the NED. Only they do it mostly in plain sight—much less stressful!

Don’t forget the USAID and State Department, its embassies and those of wealthy client-states, also fund soft power with billions. Oh, and don’t forget the para-State Department oligarchs like Soros, whose International Renaissance Foundation spent $181 million in Ukraine from 1990 to 2015. Although that pales next to Victoria Nuland’s jubilant admission that the United States government had spent $5 billion on political change in Ukraine. According to memos leaked in DCLeaks in 2016, after his quarter-century of investing in Ukrainian neo-liberalization, Soros was nearly dictating elements of post-coup policy, including how to market the Ukrainian coup to potential Russian allies like Greece. His massive donations to the Democrats over recent decades—including $25 million to the Hilary shitshow in 2016—obviously confer heavy geopolitical influence, such as directly advising Secretary of State Clinton via email on how to respond to the Albanian situation in 2011.

The Omidyar Network—founders of the controlled opposition/whistleblower-capturing The Intercept—also got in on the soft power, according to the Kyiv Post, at least to the tune of $200,000 in 2012—funding the “Center UA” in 2012 with USAID and NED.^[8] They also gave $335,000 to “New Citizen” to one of the Center UA projects. Center UA is one of many weaponized anti-corruption NGOs particularly targeting anti-U.S. politicians, i.e., Yanukovych at the time.

It is blatant that the concerted aim of all these countless interrelated departments, organizations and corporations is neo-liberalization for elite U.S. interests—by pressuring, forcing and demanding shock therapy IMF/World Bank privatization reforms and nurturing a generation of a political class with the same outlook to serve their masters. U.S. elites used to be fine with a friendly dictator, but I think they realized in the 1980s that soft power—weaponized aid, diplomacy, sanctions and humanitarianism—is more profitable and maintains the spic-and-span humanitarian façade of modern imperialism.

A key think tank behind political action in opposition countries has been the Albert Einstein Institution under the direction of the political change specialist Dr. Gene Sharp, a specialist and best-selling author in “nonviolence as a form of warfare.”

A key AEI operative, and friend of Sharp’s with decades of political action experience in Southeast Asia, was Colonel Robert Helvey. Michael Dobbs gleefully described in a December 11, 2000, Washington Post article, how at an IRI sponsored seminar at the Hilton hotel in Budapest:

“[T]he Serbian students received training in such matters as how to organize a strike, how to communicate with symbols, how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime. The principal lecturer was retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Helvey, who has made a study of nonviolent resistance methods around the world, including those used in modern-day Burma and the civil rights struggle in the American South.

Helvey, who served two tours in Vietnam, introduced the Otpor activists to the ideas of American theoretician Gene Sharpe [sic], whom he describes as ‘the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement,’ referring to the renowned Prussian military strategist.”^[9]

It is crazy: People read the word “non-violence” (and “pro-democracy,” “Einstein” and, if they are really hoodwinked, “Harvard”) and the references to civil rights, etc., and some sort of virtue switch is triggered that presumes the motives are not only benign, but benevolent and noble. It is a sickness of living in this false-liberal wilderness of mirrors, drunk on this manifest-destiny poison that saturates America and the Western world under its spell.

And so it is interesting that Gene Sharp has only recently been identified and analyzed as an arm of U.S. imperialism, for example, in a comprehensive set of articles by Marcie Smith. Many still harbor vague thoughts of him as a supporter of national liberation movements—the exact opposite of the AEIs true intentions: anti-sovereignty and pro-imperialist. It is as if many fell for the whitewashing of “for freedom and democracy” and propaganda of weaponized humanitarianism/white man’s burden and forgot to look behind the neo-liberal curtain as to what was driving the multi-billion-dollar machine. Whoops. Again, it is hard not to get caught up in such massive, slick, trillion-dollar PR that has been flowing continuously since the dawn of the American century in 1898.

Any organization of dissent that truly tries to expose and counter the establishment’s machinations, once it crosses a threshold of influence, will be targeted: first, with monitoring and surveillance; followed by infiltration, co-optation and smearing; and, ultimately, by outright capture or sabotage. But when a voice comes from within the belly of the beast, no matter how noble and grand its professed nature and ideologies, do not let its sweet whispers in your ear for a moment.

Soft Power: Political, Diplomatic and Economic Pressure

As well as co-opting, training and funding the young street-level protesters and NGO puppets, it is necessary to unite, co-opt, train and fund the official political opposition, directly and indirectly. For example, building up to the Serbian election of 2000, more than 20 opposition leaders met with U.S. officials and “private democracy experts,” mostly in Budapest, to coordinate the $41 million campaign of 2000.^[10]

And these astronomical NGO interference budgets mentioned above do not include private contractors brought in through other funding routes, sometimes elicit, and the involvement of the EU, the World Bank and the IMF, the latter that the U.S. will often control, like a tap, to remind locals who’s the boss. As in Biden’s threat to withhold a $1 billion IMF loan if his lapdog Petro Poroshenko did not fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, investigating the gas embezzlement scam, by Mykola Zlochevsky’s (now Zelensky and Azov Battalion funder Kolomoisky’s) Burisma Holdings Ltd. Yes, the same Burisma that paid Hunter Biden $83,333.33 a month for simply being on the board.^[11]

Left to right: Hunter Biden, Ihor Kholomoisky, Volodymyr Zelensky. [Source: letsgobrandonnews.com]

Although this is after the coup, it perfectly reflects the reasons for it. Biden recounted the tale with warmth and humor, as if around a cowboy’s campfire, at a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, “On Defending Democracy:”

“‘We’re not gonna give you the billion dollars….If the prosecutor [Shokin] is not fired, you are not getting the money.’ Well, son-of-a-bitch….He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid…”

To be clear: Here is a U.S. vice president and future president bragging about blackmailing the “leaders” of a foreign country that his own government implanted, to fire someone who, before he crossed Biden, seemed a rare example of an uncorrupted Ukrainian politician (Viktor Shokin—who has, since Nuland, Pyatt and Biden turned against him in late 2015, been in fear of his life)—in order, seemingly, to cover up his own apparent association with millions in tax fraud.

The gentleman he refers to as “solid” as future prosecutor general was not only not a lawyer, he was a recently released prisoner, Yuriy Lutsenko—described by Daria Kaleniuk, director of the (U.S., EU and “private international” funded) Anti-Corruption Action Center Ukraine, as “a crook” who “abused office for self-enrichment” and did not solve a single case in more than three years.^[12] (It is an interesting theatrical short-circuit irony where you have a Western-funded NGO/individual criticizing a Western-installed puppet. Of course, theater, like circuses, delivered in constant and endless news-cycle drama stories, distracts from larger agendas and accumulates to provoke a numb, hypnotized and amnesic public.)

There is a unique, deep but shrill sycophancy heard in Poroshenko’s voice when he regularly talked with Biden. The chocolate king, despite his already disgusting wealth, has a palpable slavering greed for the further enrichment and power being a Biden/U.S. proxy elite entails. Is it a warped form of love, the worship of such power? It is a degenerate addiction.

Not just Biden held such close constant interest in Ukraine: It is interesting to note the parade of senior U.S. and EU politicians and influencers who spoke to crowds at Maidan during the protest. Portrayed as a sort of echo of the “Winds of Change” of 1989, as if bricks of the Berlin Wall were still hitting the ground—when in fact, it was to become more like the random slaughter of Romania 1989 than drunken hope of Berlin 1989—the list tellingly includes:

• Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
• Geoffrey Pyatt, Ambassador
• Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief
• Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), threatening sanctions if there were any violence against protesters, spoke on stage with Oleh “Sieg Heil” Tyahnybok on December 13, 2013
• Bernard-Henri Lévy (February 2014)—who also met with Poroshenko twice and Vitali Klitschko in February and subsequently described the massacred victims as “European, indeed…because in the Maidan, for the first time in history, young people would die clutching the starry flag of Europe.” This is deep-level, trauma-based PsyOps BHL is delivering. (Don’t forget, as well, his starring role in the Libyan regime change of 2011.)

What sort of a neutered state allows a foreign state to parade its leaders through its capital inciting regime change? But the figureheads are only the front of the show, soft imperial power saturates a target like a rising tide.

Soft Power Tech: Civil Society 2.0

If the Gene Sharp-style color revolutions of the 2000s embraced youthful energy, symbols, slogans, top-level PR strategy and new media, those of the 2010s were influenced further by Silicon Valley’s advances in the awesome and terrifying political potential of social media, not least in surveillance and propaganda in the service of imperialism.

Don’t forget the military and intelligence roots of the internet, mobile phones and software. The interlinkage is seen not just by analyzing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Stanford Labs and the many patents in your tech now spying on you owned by the Department of Defense, or the investments of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel in Silicon Valley startups and companies; it is also clear by seeing how often State Department, military and intelligence organizations partner with tech companies in different projects and by the interchange of personnel, particularly since the Obama administration.

Core to this are Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, a bridge between Google and the State department. As Julian Assange, who met both of them secretly in 2011, described in his review of their 2013 book The New Digital Age:

“[It] is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.

The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not.” ^[13]

The policy influence of Cohen is clear during and after his (official) State Department Policy Planning tenure of 2004–2010 that earned him a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, with the introduction of zeitgeist (and already dated) terms like “21^st century statecraft,” “diplomacy 2.0” and “civil society 2.0” to U.S. government foreign policy projects and documents.

Color revolution strategies have always focused on media narratives and co-opted youth as agents of change—as in Otpor in Serbia 2000—but as social media came to dominate, this became a new weapon in imperialism for insurgency and regime change.

An interesting innovation in Ukraine in 2012, TechCamps were first organized through the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. The project was developed initially by Katie Dowd and Angela Baker, both Advisers for Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace (should it be War?) in Washington.^[14]

The conferences were run at the embassy from 2012 to 2014 by Luke Schtele, an Assistant Press Attaché in the Obama administration, and funded by public and private grants. According to his bio at Fulbright conferences in 2014 and 2015, Schtele “led the implementation of the U.S. Department of State’s Civil Society 2.0 initiative in Ukraine” and “organized a series of TechCamps and media forums in Ukraine from 2012–2014, training more than 350 activists and journalists in the use of digital technology and communications.” ^[15]

Soon after the fifth TechCamp on November 14-15, 2014, at the embassy, and just before the start of the Maidan protests, Deputy Oleg Tsarov had the audacity to complain in parliament that the U.S. Embassy TechCamp projects and funding were illegal intervention in Ukrainian sovereignty, information warfare and manipulation of public opinion to sow dissent by the United States, against the UN Resolution 2131 (XX) of December 21, 1965, entitled Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty.

He may have been drowned out by the boos of the opposition, defending their gravy train, but he was right. An early TechCamp project included mobilizing youth in internet-poor areas, particularly the poorer and more Russian-speaking east, to share messages via SMS, called “SMS Like” and “SMS-President,” developed by Vadim Georgienko at TechCamp 2012, after speaking to Trevor Knoblich who developed the similar FrontlineSMS. Other projects included initiating the “journalism without borders” project, using online games for social causes. TechCamps in Ukraine were funded by the State Department as well as private support, including from Coca-Cola and Microsoft.

After the coup, Schtele and some of his team proudly presented the achievements of TechCamp Ukraine at Fulbright conferences in 2014 and 2015, along with some interesting social media soft-power change agents. They included Professor Josephine Dorado of The New School, a “Trainer, State Department,”; Olena Sadovnik [Media Development Officer, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe]; and Vadim Georgienko [Developer, Creator of SMS-President and Dobrochyn crowdfunding platform]. The summary of the TechCamp project is identical for both and worth repeating in full: ^[16]

“Igniting Citizen Action in Ukraine through Mobile Storytelling

This session will highlight work being done by Fulbrighters and other agents of change at TechCamps, an initiative under the U.S. State Department and U.S. Institute of Peace which aids civil society organizations in developing countries by building their digital capacities. We will look at TechCamps through the lens of Ukraine and focus on how building skills around mobile story telling galvanized citizen actions and continues to address the challenge of communicating in conflict regions.”

Social media was the main driver of the Maidan protests, which “unexpectedly erupted outside the election cycle, on a random Thursday evening,” beginning with a Facebook post by a U.S. astroturfed journalist.^[17]

When Soft Power Fails, Coercive Violence Follows

And so soft power and its main tool, propaganda, multiply exponentially in the endlessly nourishing flow of money. The “ugly truth” if you speak to an old school military realist, or get an ex-CIA agent drunk enough, or infiltrate a group of defense contractors and their stooge senators as they ride waves of euphoria at the call of any military escalation, is that, geopolitically, “they” will sometimes also be content with chaos and destabilization of a target country, no matter the death and refugee toll.

This Plan B works as it also prevents and weakens competition and gives the military-industrial complex a good cash stream for a few years or decades. An endless war is more profitable than a successful one and still has geopolitical advantages. Being the last country left standing is as solid a path to “full spectrum dominance” as any other.

Although some NGOs proudly display the logos of embassies, USAID, NED, etc., a regular occurrence is the defense of some agencies attempting to hide the foreign source of their funding. Their argument is that this is used as a strategy to attack them. This farcical logic does somewhat limit anti-corruption efforts, though.

And how did all these billions of investments, this political and economic macro and micromanaging and the two “color revolutions” improve Ukraine? Bloated oligarchic corruption to previously unimaginable levels;^[18] empowered, armed, funded and normalized neo-fascists;^[19] and started a civil war that claimed 14,000 lives even before the Russian invasion of 2022 and more than 200,000 wounded in the first year since the invasion, not to mention millions of refugees.

Because the soft power so ceaselessly targeted at Ukraine, the “prize of Europe,” was inevitably going to turn ugly and dark, the U.S. had to turn to hard power to achieve its aim of breaking Russia from Europe, at least so the U.S. can shift its imperial aggression to China while Ukrainians die.

Ultimately, all the methods of regime change, of empire, are a continuum, a selection of tools that escalate in violence and—safe in their Washington, New York, Houston and San Francisco mansions; or Swiss, Belgian, French or German chateaus; or English Home Counties Manors—the oligarchs don’t care about violence, death and chaos they create, as long as the income stream flows and the profits of missiles, minerals, oil and gas, and finance black magic continue to rise. The ugliest truth is that one creates the other.

As John McCain described the Arab Spring—very much the fruits of U.S. soft-power funding via NED and dozens of other tentacles—it is a crafted weapon intended to weaken Russia and China, despite overtures of cooperation; it is “a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing” and collateral damage, or fear of all-out war, is irrelevant to these power-deranged psychos.^[20] If you don’t understand what these different crafted weapons of imperialism are, and how they work, you will have zero ability to interpret geopolitical events, and will likely go insane trying to understand history or reality as you are manipulated in a web of lies.

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Next, in Part III, we will discuss how this long soft-power project turned to violence—largely, but not solely, thanks to the U.S. proxy weaponized fascist groups it has been cultivating since the start of the Cold War—to push the regime change over the irreversible edge, and ultimately into war. We will survey the timeline of the protests and coup and of the exposure of evidence of U.S.-NATO involvement in escalating events as part of its regime-change operations.

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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.

Jim Cole is an editor and researcher. He can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. Eric Pottenger and Jeff Friesen. “Color Revolutions and Geopolitics,” May 28, 2016. https://web.archive.org/web/20160528135032/http://colorrevolutionsandgeopolitics.blogspot.com/. 

2. “Ukraine: Developments in the Aftermath of the Orange Revolution,” § Committee on International Relations (2005), http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa22653.000/hfa22653_0f.htm. 
3. Michael Dobbs, “U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition: Political Consultants Helped Yugoslav Opposition Topple Authoritarian Leader,” The Washington Post, December 11, 2000, http://archive.is/AaTL. 
4. “2004 NED Annual Report” (National Endowment for Democracy, 2004), https://www.ned.org/docs/annual/2004AnnualReport.pdf. 
5. Henry J Hyde, et al., “Ukraine’s Election: Next Steps,” Pub. L. No. Serial No. 108–161, § Committee on International Relations, 63 (2004), 49, https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/2004_hr/041207-transcript.pdf. 
6. David K. Shipler, “Missionaries for Democracy: U.S. Aid for Global Pluralism,” The New York Times, June 1, 1986, https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/01/world/missionaries-for-democracy-us-aid-for-global-pluralism.html. 
7. Carl Gershman, “Former Soviet states stand up to Russia. Will the U.S.?” The Washington Post, September 26, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/former-soviet-states-stand-up-to-russia-will-the-us/2013/09/26/b5ad2be4-246a-11e3-b75d-5b7f66349852_story.html. 
8. Mark Ames, “Pierre Omidyar Co-funded Ukraine Revolution Groups With US Government, Documents Show,” Pando, February 28, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140601233828/http://pando.com/2014/02/28/pierre-omidyar-co-funded-ukraine-revolution-groups-with-us-government-documents-show/. 
9. Dobbs, “U.S. Advice Guided Milosevic Opposition.” 
10. Idem. 
11. Olivier Berruyer, UkraineGate – Inconvenient Facts (Les-Crises.fr), accessed March 1, 2022, https://ukrainegate.info/. 
12. Part 1 – A Not So Solid Prosecutor, UkraineGate: Inconvenient Facts (Les-Crises.fr), accessed January 16, 2023, https://ukrainegate.info/part-1-a-not-so-solid-prosecutor/. 
13. Julian Assange, “Opinion | The Banality of ‘Don’t Be Evil,’” The New York Times, June 1, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/opinion/sunday/the-banality-of-googles-dont-be-evil.html. 
14. “TechCamp Kyiv: Building a Bridge Between Civil Society and Technology,” October 8, 2012, https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/19335. 
15. “Fulbright Association 37th Annual Conference Event Guide: Dare to Act” (Fulbright Association, 2014), https://fulbright.org/2014-conference/. 
16. Idem. 
17. Tetyana Bohdanova, “Unexpected Revolution: The Role of Social Media in Ukraine’s Euromaidan Uprising,” European View 13, no. 1 (June 1, 2014): 133–42, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12290-014-0296-4. 
18. Andrew Cockburn, “Undelivered Goods: How $1.8 billion in aid to Ukraine was funneled to the outposts of the international finance galaxy,” Harper’s Magazine, August 13, 2015, https://harpers.org/2015/08/undelivered-goods/. 
19. Yasha Levine, “Refugees, Neo-Nazis, and Super Patriots: Heading into the Ukrainian War Zone,” Pando Quarterly, September 25, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20210515201559/https://pando.com/2014/09/25/refugees-neo-nazis-and-super-patriots-heading-into-the-ukrainian-war-zone/. 

20. Steve Clemons, “The Arab Spring: ‘A Virus That Will Attack Moscow and Beijing,’” The Atlantic, November 19, 2011, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/11/the-arab-spring-a-virus-that-will-attack-moscow-and-beijing/248762/. 

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Poland is erecting a wall on Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave, announced its intentions to open a “Himars Academy” for military training, and is allowing the deployment of these American weapons on its territory. These highly provocative actions serve as a confirmation that Poland has aggressive plans to escalate tensions with Moscow.

Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak tweeted on April 18:

“The first US-made HIMARS missile systems will reach Poland this year. We want to establish a Himars Academy where training on this type of rocket artillery system will take place.”

Washington considers Poland as nothing more than the first front line in any future confrontation between Russia and NATO in Europe. For this reason, Washington is transforming the country into its main European base, which is why in addition to the Himars system, Warsaw decided to build a fence on the border with Russia, something likely made under US instruction.

Warsaw claims the border fence is needed to stem the flow of illegal immigration after falsely claiming in November 2022 that the Kremlin was planning to facilitate illegal border crossings by Asian and African migrants as part of its “hybrid warfare”. However, this is quite obviously a fallacy since Poland does not face major migratory threats like Europe’s Mediterranean countries.

From a military point of view, the wall will not stop columns of tanks if a conflict broke out. Russians living in Kaliningrad are not defecting to Poland, and at the same time, the wall is not a protection against migrants from Afghanistan and Africa as it is easier to get to Belarus, as occurred during the last migration crisis.

Rather, migration is a ludicrous claim to justify the construction of the wall. Poland aspires to be the main American ally in Europe, which will dictate the geopolitics of the region. Building the wall is for this purpose, even if it is just a mere demonstration that Poland is making some kind of effort against Russia. However, the US does not have allies, and instead only has vassals.

Polish Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński announced that Poland has begun construction of a “state-of-the-art” wall along its 199-kilometre land border with Russia, which will be completed by the end of the year and includes 3,000 surveillance cameras.

In typical cold Russian humour, the governor of the Kaliningrad region, Anton Alikhanov, offered Poland construction materials for the wall, promising to give “even a small discount.”

Poland will place American Himars missile systems near the border with Kaliningrad, while at the same time the country plans to open the Himars Academy for the army to learn how to handle these systems. Himars are not a defensive type of weapon, and therefore the purchase of these systems is an aggressive gesture against Russia.

Warsaw has already bought 20 systems for $414 million, but the US Congress has already agreed to deliver about 500 more highly mobile systems, worth about $10 billion. This is in line with Poland’s aggressive plan to completely isolate the Kaliningrad region.

Alarmingly, the installation of the Himars system near Kaliningrad poses a danger to civilian aircraft flying into the exclave, while on the other hand, it is primarily more dangerous for Poland as Russia will only militarise Kaliningrad even further. Given that Russia has a lot more capabilities than Poland and the US does not have infinite resources to dedicate to the country, leaders in Warsaw have only made their country’s defences even more vulnerable as Moscow will certainly respond to this latest provocation.

Adding to its provocative crescendo, Poland, along with Germany and a few other EU countries, are pushing for sanctions on Russian nuclear energy as the bloc looks for new ways to try and hurt Moscow’s finances because the current embargoes have utterly failed to deter the special military operation in Ukraine.

According to CNBC, Poland and the Baltic States also called for sanctions on Russia’s civil nuclear energy activities, diamond imports, and on oil imports on the Druzhba pipeline.

Although the EU has imposed 10 sanction packages on Russia since the war began, another round of sanctions is being prepared, but again, this is unlikely to deter Russia and will once again backfire on the bloc. Although it is likely that the new set of sanctions would feature nuclear energy, a spokesperson for the European Commission refused to comment on ongoing confidential discussions.

“The preparations for the 11th package are ongoing,” the spokesperson said, “to have it all done and ready it takes time.”

In this way, it is evident that Poland is desperately positioning itself to be the US’ main European military base, even though Russia does not pose a threat to the country. Rather, by highly militarising the border, establishing a Himars Academy, and pushing for more sanctions, Poland is fully emersed in an anti-Russia hysteria that is being transformed into policy.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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Libya, once a prosperous and peaceful country, has been ravaged by a war between armed factions backed by regional and global players ever since the 2011 NATO-led invasion. The war and destruction have significantly destabilized the country, and armed groups now openly operate.

Countries seeking regional influence and aspiring to control Libyan oil have been exploiting political and ideological differences among the ruling elite in Libya, sowing the seeds for further division and chaos. The NATO-led invasion opened up space for countries such as the United States, France, Turkey, Egypt, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, among several others, to further their interests in the region through the Libyan conflict. However, this has come at the cost of common people.

To suppress dissent and to exploit vulnerable migrants, Libyan authorities have used various means, such as arbitrary detention, torture, rape, murder, enslavement, enforced disappearances and sexual slavery of women. The U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination has provided monetary and material aid to Libyan authorities and to armed militias, both of which have been responsible for widespread human-rights violations, including war crimes and crimes against humanity. This “new” scramble for Africa is causing widespread suffering for African people.

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin speaks with Essam Abdelrasul Bubaker Elkorghli, who is a Libyan Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he researches Libya’s modern history, state ideology and contemporary imperialism in education. He is part of the Global Pan-African Movement.

AFRICOM Watch Bulletin: How does the U.S./NATO impose the need for U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to intervene, like it did in Libya?

Essam Elkorghli: Understanding AFRICOM’s recent activities in Libya must be integrated in a broader understanding of the history of Libya and how the aftermath of NATO’s intervention in Libya enabled AFRICOM to infiltrate the country’s security apparatus. Libya’s military was destroyed by NATO and its regional allies, laying the groundwork for a weakened state that is dependent on foreign actors to conduct its security operations in the country. The destruction of Libya and its military in 2011 manufactured the need for more Western intervention. This form of imperialism results in the forced integration of the South with the North based on a relationship of dependency, and in this case, it is security dependency.

AWB: Who are the Libyans that invited AFRICOM to start its mission in Libya and what role did they play in the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi?

Elkorghli: AFRICOM partook in the destruction of Libya under the guise of NATO’s 2011 mission. However, as Security Council Resolution 1973 ended by the elimination of the regime, their operations stopped. Nonetheless, when the groups armed by NATO in 2011 started to claim territories, declare affiliation to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and inflict endless terror on the population, calls by the newly parachuted UN authority in Libya (Government of National Accord) for another foreign intervention started. AFRICOM launched its mission in Libya in August 2016 in the city of Sirte to help the GNA’s fight against local Islamic State elements. The GNA was not elected by Libyans, but their composition includes a large proportion of the people who fought against the former regime and are predominantly [members of the right-wing political group] Muslim Brotherhood.

AWB: The explanation given for the recent visit by William Burns, CIA chief, was “security issues.” Is that merely coded pretext for the expansion of AFRICOM or are there legitimate security concerns? And, if not via AFRICOM, how do you envision those concerns being addressed?

Elkorghli: UN estimates that there are 20,000 foreign mercenaries in Libya. These foreign groups are tied to nation states and are not clandestine militias, as the AFRICOM purports. The recent visit by the head of the CIA to Libya was largely driven by the fact that there is an adversarial group in Libya that must be combatted, which is the private [Russian] military, Wagner Group. The visit comes merely two days after that very group defeated NATO-backed troops in the strategic city of Soledar in Ukraine. The fact that a private military group defeated NATO and its allies in Ukraine is the security issue for the CIA because the group and its operations in the Sahel is materializing more fortuitous results than [the] French or AFRICOM presence in the region. In other words, wherever AFRICOM and French troops existed, there is an expansion of terror activities. The group’s presence is presumably a security issue for AFRICOM, especially following their role in the Ukraine war.

AWB: Regarding the airstrikes that killed 11 Libyan civilians, is it your sense that AFRICOM is indifferent or that it is actually intentional. And, if intentional, what would be their ultimate objective?

Elkorghli: AFRICOM’s operations did not end with the objective of eliminating terrorist elements in the city of Sirte in 2016. They continued their operations to our very day. This has had consequential reverberations on the social fabric of Libyan society. AFRICOM collaborates with GNA (and currently Government of National Unity, formed in 2021 with the aim of unifying the GNA with the rival Tobruk-based government) to target marginalized groups in the south, who have been deprived of social services and access to health care and education. The Tebu and Tuareg tribes in the south have been framed to aid in terror activities, which legitimizes the excessive use of violence against the civilian population. The killing of 11 civilians under the pretext of terrorism shows the level of impunity these military operations enjoy, especially when the local government lacks popular legitimacy and their reign is largely guarded by how the West grants them legitimacy. These airstrikes should be viewed from the forced integration of Libya with AFRICOM’s security apparatus, which renders Libya a security dependent state.

AWB: There are clearly multiple groups/factions on the ground in Libya, all with their own agendas. Is there a constructive role for the African Union (AU) to play in the process of rebuilding Libya?

Elkorghli: The AU’s involvement since 2011 has been circumscribed by NATO and its allies. In 2011, the AU was barred from traveling to Libya and was threatened by NATO that Libyan airspace should not be approached—ironic how African airspace is controlled by NATO. The AU also saw that successive Libyan governments parachuted by the UN were not interested in the former regime’s orientation of integrating Libya with Africa. This has resulted in limited engagement with the AU, which is reciprocated by the AU’s divided attention on Libya. However, given that the AU has not proliferated the destruction of Libya, always called for genuine peaceful solutions to conflicts between different groups, and consistently called for de-escalation, they do have a role in the reconstruction of Libya. If a group of influential African states (for example, South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, Algeria and Ghana, to name a few) could consolidate their efforts to conjure a plan for Libyan factions to meet in Libya for a Libyan-Libyan dialogue, this would sideline any efforts for the U.S./EU to select a few elites and reproduce the same results that the [United Nations Support Mission in Libya] UNSMIL has driven.

AWB: How can Africans worldwide, particularly those of us who espouse a Pan-Africanist perspective, best act in solidarity with the masses of Libyan people?

Elkorghli: There are a select few actors in Libya who have garnered international legitimacy by being subservient to the interests of the U.S./EU/NATO and transnational capital. These state actors do not represent the Libyan masses. The Libyans masses long for a dignified life, sovereign land and control of [their] resources. The history and fate of Libya is linked directly to the fate and history of the rest of Africa, whether through anti-colonial struggles or through the re-emergence of neocolonial interests, where the African continent has become NATO’s southern neighborhood. As Pan-Africanists, we should understand the malign and divisive interests of the West in further plundering Africa; we must act in unison against the neocolonial onslaught against Africa and its people; we must oppose the current trajectory of increased militarization (except in self-defense); silence the guns; and understand that our struggles are one—sovereignty over our lands, seas and air.

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On Wednesday 24 April 2013, 3,000 workers entered Rana Plaza, an eight-story building in the Dhaka suburb of Savar in Bangladesh. They produced garments for the transnational commodity chain that stretches from the cotton fields of South Asia, through Bangladesh’s machines and workers, and on to retail houses in the Western world. Garments for famous brands such as Benetton, Bonmarché, Prada, Gucci, Versace, and Zara are stitched here, as are the cheaper clothes that hang on Walmart racks. The previous day, Bangladeshi authorities had asked the owner, Sohel Rana, to evacuate the building due to structural problems. ‘The building has minor damage’, said Rana. ‘There is nothing serious’. But at 8:57 am on 24 April, the building collapsed in the span of two minutes, killing at least 1,132 people and injuring over 2,500 more. The circumstances of the collapse were similar to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, where 146 people died. Tragically, a century later, garment workers are still subject to these dangerous labour conditions.

The list of avoidable ‘accidents’ in Savar is long and painful. In April 2005, at least 79 workers died in a factory collapse; in February 2006, 18 workers died in yet another collapse, followed by 25 in June 2010 and 124 in the Tazreen Fashion Factory fire in November 2012. Since the Rana Plaza devastation ten years ago, at least 109 other buildings in the area have collapsed, resulting in the death of 27 workers (at minimum). These are the deadly factories of twenty-first century globalisation: poorly built shelters for a production process geared toward long working hours, third-rate machines, and workers whose lives are submitted to the imperatives of just-in-time production. Writing about the factory regime in nineteenth-century England, Karl Marx noted in chapter 10 of Capital:

But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its werewolf hunger for surplus labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. … All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour power that can be rendered fluent in a working day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.

Image: Poly Akhter’s mother, Shahana (38), grieves for her, 1 June 2013. Credit: Taslima Akhter

These Bangladeshi factories are part of the landscape of globalisation echoed in factories along the US-Mexico border, in Haiti, in Sri Lanka, and in other places around the world that opened their doors to the garment industry’s savvy uptake of the new manufacturing and trade order of the 1990s. Subdued countries that had neither the patriotic will to fight for their citizens nor any concern for the long-term debilitation of their social order rushed to welcome multinational clothing companies that no longer wanted to invest in factories. So, they turned to subcontractors, offering them narrow profit margins, compelling them to run their factories like prison houses of labour. The garment industry in Bangladesh, which comprises 80 per cent of the country’s total export earnings, grew entirely in security zones, offering workers few prospects to unionise. It is no wonder that these factories are a warzone.

The subcontracting process allowed multinational firms to deny any culpability for the actions of small factory owners, allowing wealthy shareholders in the Global North to enjoy profits from the lower costs of production without having their consciences stained by the terror inflicted on these workers. Men like Sohel Rana, a local tough guy who oscillated between different political parties depending on who held power, became local thugs for multinational firms. After the collapse of the building, Rana was hastily disowned by all politicians and arrested (the trial against him continues, although he is out on bail).

Men like Rana assemble workers, shove them into these shoddy buildings, and ensure that they are beaten if they threaten to unionise while elites living in the mansions of Gulshan and Banani offer small gestures of liberalism through charity and the allowance of modest, but unfulfilled, labour laws. Labour inspectors are few, and – even worse – they are powerless. As the International Labour Organisation noted in 2020, ‘Labour inspectors have no administrative sanctioning power and cannot impose fines directly. However, they can file a case in the labour court, but the resolution of these cases usually takes a long time, and the fines imposed… do not provide a sufficient deterrent’. An occasional outburst of liberal sentiment in the Global North forces some companies to ‘self-regulate’, an exercise in whitewashing the horrors of the global commodity chain. Capitalist democracy requires this alliance of brutality and reform, of neofascism and paternalism. It celebrates the Ranas of the world until they become a liability, and then it simply replaces them.

Image: This harrowing photograph, taken on 25 April 2013 in Savar, Bangladesh, has come to be known as A Final Embrace. Credit: Taslima Akhter

One day after the building collapse, Taslima Akhter went to Rana Plaza and photographed the ruins in what she saw as an act of remembrance. A selection of her photographs illustrates this newsletter. Later, Akhter published a 500-page book, Chobbish April: Hazaar Praner Chitkar (‘24^th April: Outcries of a Thousand Souls’), which displays a collection of the posters put up by frantic family members looking for their loved ones and passport photographs of the dead with a brief note on their lives.

Chobbish April opens with the story of 35-year-old Baby Akhter, a swing operator at EtherTex Garment who began working at Rana Plaza only 16 days before her death. Akhter came to Dhaka from Rangpur, where her father was a landless peasant. Eighty per cent of the workers in these factories are women, and most, like Baby Akhter, migrate from conditions of landlessness. They bring with them the desolation of the countryside, its overworked soil and poisoned water ravaged by industrial agriculture as well as by the law of value that makes the small farmer redundant before the might of capitalist farms. Baby Akhter’s husband, Delowar, recalled that her luxuries were chewing paan (‘betel leaf’) and using a hand-held fan. ‘She was ready to fight any war’, he said. Her photograph exudes defiance and kindness, a smile hidden in her face.

Image: Baby Akhter. Credit: Bangladesh Garment Sramik Samhati (‘Bangladesh Garment Workers Solidarity’

Bangladeshi workers like Baby Akhter have regularly organised to fight against their wretched conditions. In June 2012, the year before Rana Plaza collapsed, thousands of workers in the Ashulia Industrial Zone outside Dhaka protested for higher wages and better working conditions. For days on end, these workers closed 300 factories, blocking the Dhaka-Tangail highway in Narasinghapur. In retaliation, the owners shut down the factories, and the state took their side, with inspector Abul Kalam Azad declaring that the factories would only re-open if the workers ‘behaved properly’. Police officers marched down the street with batons and tear gas used to ‘educate’ the workers about so-called proper behaviour. After the 2012 protests, the government set up the Crisis Management Cell and the Industrial Police, both of which ‘collect intelligence and pre-empt labour unrest in industrial areas’. When Human Rights Watch investigated the situation in 2014–15, one worker told the investigator that despite being pregnant, she was ‘beaten with metal curtain rods’. One of the owners of a big factory explained to the investigator why the violence is viewed as necessary:

Factory owners want to maximise profits, so they will cut corners on safety issues, on ventilation, on sanitation. They will not pay overtime or offer assistance in the case of injuries. They push workers hard because they don’t want to miss deadlines… Workers have no unions, so they can’t dictate their rights… Some of this can also be blamed on the branded retailers who place bulk orders and say, ‘Scale up production lines because it is a big order and improve your margins’. Even 2–3 cents can make the difference, but these companies don’t want to factor [labour rights and safety] compliance into costing.

Each of these sentences seems lifted directly from Marx’s Capital, written over 150 years ago. The harsh conditions set by the global commodity chain make Bangladesh one of the worst countries in the world to be a worker. A studypublished in January 2023 shows that during the pandemic, multinational garment companies squeezed subcontractors to cut costs, which resulted in harsher conditions for workers.

A commemoration march in 2022 on the ninth anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse. Credit: Saifuzzaman Sium

In 1926, the All Bengal Tenants’ Conference met in Krishnanagar to form the Kirti Kisan (‘Worker-Peasant’) Party, an early communist political platform in South Asia. Kazi Nazrul Islam sang his Sramiker Gaan (‘Song of the Workers’) at this meeting, a poem that could have been written for Rana Plaza workers and for the millions who toil along a global commodity chain that they do not control:

We are mere coolies working at the machines
in these terrible times.
We are mere dupes and fools
to discover the diamond and to make a gift of it
to the king, to adorn his crown.

…

Hold fast your hammer, pick up your shovel,
sing in unison and advance.
Switch off the machine-light, the Satan’s eye.
Come along, O Comrade, and keep your weapon high.

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Featured image: The mother of an 18-year-old missing worker, Rina, waits for her lost daughter in front of a barricade in Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 24 July 2013.  Credit: Taslima Akhter

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We’ve been hearing since COVID-19 became a fear-mongering propaganda tool that the next pandemic is coming. The ongoing rhetoric hasn’t stopped, and the “experts” are reissuing the same warning once again and claiming we aren’t prepared for what’s coming.

Sir John Bell, a leading immunologist and a member of the United Kingdom’s COVID vaccine taskforce during the pandemic, said it was too easy to dismiss COVID-19 as a “once in a generation crisis”. That’s probably because people didn’t really see that there was anything at all out of the ordinary.

Writing for The Independent, Bell warned that it is “a question of when, not if, another pandemic strikes”, adding that the nation needs to adopt an “always on” approach that includes building a more resilient healthcare system, carrying out better surveillance, and identifying future threats. “Despite everything we have learned, we are not ready for the next pandemic,” he wrote. “The next pandemic could be even more devastating than the last. We must be in a constant state of readiness for the next big health crisis – if we do not act now, we will not be forgiven.”

He referred to modeling that suggests there is a 38 percent chance that another pandemic will happen within our lifetime, which would have “the potential to cause even greater destruction”.

Professor Teresa Lambe, one of the principal investigators leading the Oxford-AstraZeneca program, said the UK had failed to take on board many “hard-learned lessons” from Covid. She warned that the public will be “sitting ducks” in a new pandemic if there are no further efforts by the government to invest in preparation. –The Independent

The “scientists” and “experts” admit that the reason there will be another plandemic is because the control mechanisms put in place to govern the slave class have dwindled as the public stops fearing getting a cold.

Lambe claimed that the government’s decision to “disband” the tracking systems imposed on the slaves, including its “gold standard” COVID survey, the last remaining system used to monitor infections, was a sign that the country would not be fully prepared for another pandemic.

They desperately need to be able to panic the masses into fear-based control and get them to willingly accept the chains of their own oppression.

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In an unprecedented move, the High Court of Australia has refused to hear a case, without discussion or negotiation. The Australian Babies Case was filed in the High Court on 21 December 2022, with the intention of stopping the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) provisional approval of Moderna for use of its product SPIKEVAX in babies and toddlers aged six months to five years old in Australia.

However, on 16 March 2023, the High Court revealed its in-chambers[1]

decision to remit the case down to the Federal Court. The Justice reasoned that hearing the case in the High Court would, “unduly divert the Court from its principal functions.”[2]

A call to protect Australian babies 

The premise of the Australian Babies Case was that the provisional approval of Moderna’s SPIKEVAX for babies and toddlers aged six months to five years old was unlawful and unsafe. Therefore, the approval should be revoked immediately so as to, stop “the greatest iatrogenic catastrophe in Australia’s modern history.”

Instructing solicitors, Peter Fam of Maat’s Method and Katie Ashby-Koppens of PJ O’Brien & Associates, working alongside former barrister and legal consultant for the applicants, Julian Gillespie, were confident in the case, securing almost $500,000 in funding to bring it to the High Court.

At the time of filing, Gillespie announced, “The High Court of Australia is now being called upon to protect our youngest from participating in an acknowledged and ongoing Phase III clinical trial, to receive experimental drugs involving unprecedented levels of reported adverse events, including deaths … for a virus also acknowledged to pose no threat to our babies and toddlers.”

Admission in the High Court that Moderna SPIKEVAX was unlawfully granted provisional approval would set a precedent for further challenges over Covid vaccine approvals in the Federal Court. Moreover, it would open the government up to legal challenges of liability over injuries and deaths, an outcome that would be beneficial to the Australian public, but undesirable for the government and its top-ranking officials.

Preserving human life is the ultimate special interest 

In the lead up to filing the case, the legal team had two concerns. First, that the Court would determine that the applicant did not have ‘standing.’ In Australia, only an applicant with ‘standing’ can bring a case to court. This means that the applicant needs to demonstrate that they have a ‘special interest’ in the matter, and that they are ‘a person aggrieved’ by the court decision.

Fam, Gillespie, and Ashby-Koppens had previously had a case rejected by the Federal Court on the basis of standing. The AVN Case, which sought to quash the decision to allow administration of the Pfizer vaccine to children aged five to 11, was dismissed because Justice Melissa Perry determined that the applicants (The Australian Vaccination-risks Network, and Mark Neugebauer, foster father to a child who was required by the Department of Child Protection to be vaccinated for Covid) did not have standing. This was a surprising decision given the two applicants’ special interest in the matter.[3]

In the Australian Babies Case, the legal team carefully considered which applicants would have the best standing. It was decided that the applicants should be four medical experts, as medical experts have a special interest (ethical, legal, professional, reputational) in ensuring that the medical advice they give to patients is sound.[4]

In summary, the legal team argued that the applicants had standing because, “an interest in preserving human life is the ultimate special interest.”

As it turned out, the issue of standing did not obstruct the Australian Babies Case.

Denied procedural fairness 

The second concern was that the highly technical nature of some of the evidence would prove off-putting to the High Court, and that they would therefore seek to remit the case down the Federal Court. “We knew the case was controversial, and that the High Court might not want to go there,” says Fam. In anticipation of this scenario, the legal team had a backup plan. “We would have said, no problem, don’t remit the case, we’ll cut out the scientifically technical information.”

However, the High Court did not allow the applicants this opportunity. Instead, JusticeStephen Gageler made the in-chambers decision to send the case down to the Federal Court, ensuring that none of the evidence would be presented in the High Court. “The typical process is to at least appear once before the Court to discuss the case,” explains Fam. “They didn’t even let us appear. I think that they have denied our applicants procedural fairness.”

The decision to remit the case to the Federal Court is a huge disappointment to the legal team, who have been working on the case for the best part of ten months. “The High Court sought to protect [Secretary of the Department of Health] Brendan Murphy, and in doing so, they turned their backs on Australian babies,” says Gillespie.

Federal Court a dead end 

The Australian Babies case will not go forward, as the legal team considers the Federal Court to be a dead end. “We saw the way that the Federal Court dealt with the evidence in the AVN matters throughout 2022,” says Gillespie, who believes that, in dismissing the case, “the Federal Court purposely avoided hearing the evidence.” Furthermore, hearing the case in the Federal Court opens up the prospect of repeated appeals, which could be drawn out, excessively costly, and result in the overturning of a favourable decision.[5]

Separation of Powers

Traditionally, the powers of the government and the judiciary ought to be separate to protect the public against tyranny. The remittance of the Australian Babies Case, when taken with the dismissal of the AVN Case and numerous Fair Work losses such as the Sydney Trains appeal is suggestive that the Australian justice system is working to protect the government, not the people.

Arkmedic documents in detail the way in which the Fair Work Commission in particular has become a tool of the state, drawing a parallel with the Nazification of the German judicial system during the Third Reich.

Gillespie asserts that the separation of powers doctrine in Australia has been “snuffed out,” allowing “illegitimate acts of government” to prevail. Nevertheless, this is not defeat.

Gillespie has an air of dogged determination, propelled by the palpable sense of hope that naturally emanates from people who are running on the strength of deep moral conviction. “We are not lost, no matter how lost our courts and corrupted government have become,” says Gillespie, and here he speaks for all who have felt betrayed by the shredding of the social contract in these strange and trying times.

A pivot, not a retreat

The team of Peter Fam, Katie Ashby-Koppens and Julian Gillespie have no intention of quitting. From here, they are turning their attention to the next case, which they consider to have better prospects of success than the Babies Case would have in the Federal Court. The matter will be announced imminently.

For now, Gillespie offers an exhortation.

“Do not be crushed. More is afoot, and many are working on this other solution.”

For updates on the new case, subscribe to Dystopian Down Under, below, and Maats Method.

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Notes

[1] From Wikipedia, emphasis mine: “An in-chambers opinion is an opinion by a single justice or judge of a multi-member appellate court, rendered on an issue that the court’s rules or procedures allow a single member of the court to decide. The judge is said to decide the matter “in chambers” because the decision can be issued from the judge’s chambers without a formal court proceeding.”

[2] The High Court Decision, 16 March 2023

[3] Neugebauer and his wife foster two children. The child subject to the DCP’s recommendation of vaccination was aged seven at the time of filing, and had been in the Neugebauers’ care since he was two days old. The Neugebauers have committed to his care for the entirety of his childhood, into adulthood. Further, as a foster parent, Mark Neugebauer is a Mandated Notifier, meaning that he is obligated to report any potential risk of harm to authorities.The Australian Vaccination-risks Network (AVN) has been Australia’s peak pro-choice vaccine information and advocacy group for almost 30 years, yet the Judge decided that they don’t have a special interest in the provisional approval of the most controversial vaccine ever. 

[4] The applicants for the Australian Babies Case were: Associate Professor Peter Parry (Paediatrics and Psychiatry); Doctor Julian Fidge (General Practitioner and Pharmacist); Doctor Shoba Iyer (Geriatrics Specialist); Doctor Astrid Lefringhausen (Virologist); The AVN; and, Mark Neugebauer.

[5] Watch Peter Fam’s full update on the discontinuation of the Australian Babies Case. AUSTRALIAN BABIES CASE UPDATE, ON RUMBLE

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Remember the crazy right-wing conspiracy theory alleging that our food purchases will be tracked to reduce CO2 emissions?

That one is turning out to be true!

Yesterday, New York City announced its plan to track the “food choices” of New Yorkers using credit card data from individual store purchases. According to the mayor, tracking individual food choices is a step towards “reducing the CO2 output” of New Yorkers.

The Adams administration has announced a plan to begin tracking the carbon footprint created by household food consumption as well as a new target for New York City agencies to reduce their food-based emissions by 33% by the year 2023. [Did they mean 2032 – I.C.?]

New York City, in partnership with American Express, a credit card company, will track purchases to calculate New Yorkers’ carbon footprints:

The new plan puts the city on par with London and 13 other cities to incorporate food consumption into its greenhouse gas emission metrics.The effort to examine the environmental effects of eating foods like meat and dairy was first announced about a year ago as part of a collaboration among major cities across the globe.

You would think such a plan would only be made after a conversation with New Yorkers, right? After all, the mayor of New York is supposed to serve New Yorkers, not the other way around.

However, the reality is that there was no consultation and no “conversation” because New York’s mayor Eric Adams is sure that people do not even want to have a “conversation” about interrogating their food choices.

On Monday, Adams acknowledged that interrogating people’s food choices would be difficult. “I don’t know if people are really ready for this conversation,” he said.

The WEF’s “My Carbon” Allowance Plan

Eric Adams, of course, is not serving New Yorkers, whom he did not even consult. He is serving his sponsors, demanding that food and other personal expenditures be tracked to advance climate goals. The World Economic Forum proposed tracking personal CO2 consumption, and CO2 allowances, in its infamous “My Carbon” agenda article.

The WEF explains that tracking individual choices was always met with resistance. Fortunately for the WEF, the Covid pandemic, caused by a mysterious lab-made pathogen, changed this calculation and, according to the WEF, allowed us to extend “pandemic measures” into consumption tracking due to greater social acceptance of the governmental intrusion into our personal lives:

Few cities exhibited more sheep-like adherence to pandemic measures than New York City, so it should not be surprising that “food purchase tracking” is being tried in that particular locale in accordance with the WEF’s instructions.

Tracking of purchases will not be limited to food, of course.

On Meat, Health, and Freedom 

This article is intentionally neutral on meat and health. Some of my subscribers are vegans, and some are avid meat eaters. I respect everyone. I was a vegetarian for a whole year, a long time ago. I try to eat less meat nowadays, which still amounts to eating too much, but I am trying. (I ate low-carb for years, but now I want to do something different.)

Rather than framing this issue as a health matter, I urge you to consider it a question of basic fairness: the unelected, supranational, self-appointed masters of the world are trying to track and influence our behavior without even asking for permission or inquiring about our opinion.

We are being assured that this is done for our good. However, these same people benefit financially from well-placed investments in companies growing fake meat comprised of cancer tumor cells.

We are generally taught that conflicts of interest should make us question the intentions of people promoting ideas related to such conflicts.

In the case of Covid-19 or climate change, we are asked to throw such precautions away and put blind faith into mega billionaires benefiting mightily from the pandemic or their climate change investments.

As skeptics and critical thinkers, we should refuse to believe promoters standing to benefit financially from their crazy ideas. Instead, we should demand a close and skeptical look into what is happening behind the curtain.

I am sure, however, that instead of skepticism, we will get more fake fact checks, denials, and gaslighting.

What do you think?

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The House China Select Committee this week will be war-gaming a scenario in which China invades Taiwan, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: It’s a unique opportunity that will allow bipartisan members of Congress to walk through the potential challenges and identify the best legislative responses to deter and combat an invasion.

Driving the news: On Wednesday evening, bipartisan members of the House panel on China, led by Chair Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), will step into the shoes of U.S. officials in a war-game simulation conducted by the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank focused on national security.

• The simulation will come just over a week after China’s military conducted live-fire drills around Taiwan in response to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s transit through the U.S. this month.
• The simulation will give lawmakers a sense of how a Taiwan conflict would unfold, where U.S. military weaknesses may lie, and the consequences for international trade and American businesses.

The big picture: Gallagher — one of more than a dozen members of Congress who met with Tsai in California this month — is focused on shoring up the island’s defenses.

• “We need to be moving heaven and earth to enhance our deterrence and denial posture so that Xi Jinping concludes that he just can’t do it,” Gallagher told the AP.
• That includes the delivery of $19 billion worth of defense equipment that Taiwan has already ordered and the expansion of training and other security assistance that could be included in the National Defense Authorization Act.

What they’re saying: “War games really show what happens to our policies after we make contact with a competitor’s strategies. It’s like that famous Mike Tyson quote, ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,'” a source close to the committee tells Axios.

• “This, in conjunction with other things the committee’s doing on Taiwan, really helps crystallize the policies needed and the actions that we need to take to deter an invasion.”

The intrigue: In addition to the obvious military component, the war simulation will include economic dynamics that highlight the ways in which an invasion could affect critical infrastructure and impact the business community.

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On March 17, the Prosecutor General of the International Criminal Court, Karim Khan, introduced an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Llova-Belova. The warrant, which accused Putin and Lolva-Belova of conducting the “unlawful deportation” of Ukrainian children to a “network of camps” across the Russian Federation, inspired a wave of incendiary commentary in the West.

US Sen. Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most aggressive cheerleader in Congress for war with Russia, proclaimed:

“The ICC has an arrest warrant for Putin because he has organized the kidnapping of at least 16,000 Ukrainian children from their families and sent them to Russia. It is exactly what Hitler did in World War II.”

CNN’s Fareed Zakaria echoed Graham, declaring the ICC warrant revealed that Putin “is in fact following parts of Hitler’s playbook.”

The ICC prosecutor appeared to have based his arrest warrant on research produced by Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL). Yale HRL’s work was funded and guided by the State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, an entity the Biden administration established in May 2022 to advance the prosecution of Russian officials.

During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Yale HRL’s executive director, Nathaniel Raymond, claimed his report provided proof that “thousands of children are in a hostage situation.” Invoking the Holocaust, Raymond asserted, “We are dealing with the largest network of children camps seen in the 21st century.”

Yet in an interview with Jeremy Loffredo, the co-author of this report, and in his own paper for Yale HRL, Raymond contradicted many of the bombastic claims he made to the media about child hostages. During a phone conversation with Loffredo, Raymond acknowledged that “a large amount” of the camps his team investigated were “primarily cultural education – like, I would say, teddy bear.”

Yale HRL’s report similarly acknowledges that most of the camps it profiled provided free recreational programs for disadvantaged youth whose parents sought “to protect their children from ongoing fighting” and “ensure they had nutritious food of the sort unavailable where they live.” Nearly all of the campers returned home in a timely manner after attending with the consent of their parents, according to the paper. The State Department-funded report further concedes that it found “no documentation of child mistreatment.”

Yale HRL based its research entirely on Maxar satellite data, Telegram postings, and Russian media reports, relying on Google translate to interpret them and at times misrepresented the articles in its citations. The State Department-funded unit conceded that it performed no field research for its paper, stating that it “does not conduct ground-level investigations and therefore did not request access to the camps.”

Unlike the Yale investigators who inspired the ICC’s arrest warrant, Loffredo gained unfettered access to a Russian government camp in Moscow that houses youth from the war-torn Donbas region. Though it is precisely the kind of center that Yale HRL – and by extension, the ICC – have portrayed as a “re-education camp” for Ukrainian child hostages, he found a hotel full of happy campers receiving free classical music lessons in their native Russian language from first-class instructors – a “teddy bear,” as Raymond called it.

At The Donbas Express music camp located just outside of Moscow, youth told Loffredo they were grateful to have found refuge from the Ukrainian army’s years-long campaign of shelling and besiegement of their homeland. By fleeing the war in Donbas, these children had escaped a nightmarish military conflict for which Yale HRL and the ICC have demonstrated little to no concern.

Free music lessons, “spiritual enrichment,” safety from war, and US condemnation: a visit to the Donbas Express

When I, Jeremy Loffredo, visited a youth music camp in Russia in November 2022, I was unaware that the US government would soon exploit altruistic programs such as the one I witnessed to advance political warfare.

At the time, I was in Moscow on assignment for Rebel News, my former employer, to conduct man-on-the-street interviews with average people around the city.

After meeting someone whose wife was influential in the Russian music scene, I was invited 45 miles southwest of Moscow to visit the kind of program that was described by State Department-funded researchers as a “re-education camp.” It was there, at a Soviet-era hotel in the town of Pokrovskoye, that I entered one of the so-called facilities now at the center of the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin.

By the time of my visit, the Russian government had transformed the hotel into a makeshift sleep-away camp for children native to the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. The center I visited, dubbed “The Donbas Express,” was focused on providing classical training to children interested in musical arts. Parents who wished to keep their families protected from the conflict back home had enrolled their children in the program.

Peter Lundstrem, a professional violinist and teacher at the Donbas Express, explained to me, “Thanks to the support of the State Presidential Fund, we were able to bring 80 children from Donetsk and Lugansk regions. They are talented young musicians and they’re here for 12 days. They live here and take lessons from outstanding music teachers. They put together concerts. They receive education.”

Despite its glaring flaws and failure to seek on-the-ground corroboration, the State Department-funded Yale HRL report got one thing right about the experience of children enrolled in the Donbas Express: they are likely to keep their involvement in the program secret. In the eyes of Ukrainian authorities, the simple act traveling to Russia — even for free music lessons — is tantamount to collaborating with the enemy.

As the report says, “Many families in Ukraine do not want to publicly share their [camp or school] experiences because they fear they will be seen [by Ukraine] as collaborators with Russia.”

Of the students involved in Donbas Express, Lundstrem said, “So that you understand what is done to children like these in Ukraine… children who receive any kind of help from Russian people or the Russian state… they would be simply killed.”

A concert at the Donbas Express

For much of their lives, these youths lived with the threat of death on a daily basis. For the eight years leading up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the ethnically Russian population of Donbas endured regular shelling at the hands of the US-backed, nationalist government in Kiev. Even before February 2022, that civil conflict had left thousands of civilians, including children like the ones I met at the Donbas Express, dead.

“Of course many of [the young people enrolled in Donbas Express] were greatly affected by this conflict,” Lundstrem said. “Many of them lost houses. Some of them lost their relatives and friends. In the conflict zone, they in fact cannot continue their professional music studies. In Donetsk, philharmonic and general education institutions are not functioning.”

Although the State Department-funded Yale report would have Americans believe that Russia’s move to open camps such as the Donbas Express amounted to war crimes, the students I met there did not want to leave.

“Of course they all want this program to continue. They want to stay and for it to go on and on. But we can do these small things only. We will do this again in the future maybe,” Lundstrem told me.

I spoke with two Donbas Express students on camera. Each expressed effusive gratitude for the program.

“I am here on invitation, on generous invitation,” said one from Donetsk. “I never thought I would get to come to Moscow. I’ve been helping to perform in concerts, which is helpful for spiritual enrichment and soul purification. And I’m here to develop my musical performing skills.”

“Here, we continue our musical studies despite what has been going on around us because it gives us relief,” another kid from the Donbas told me.

Like all other students in the program, these aspiring musicians grew up in a region in open rebellion against a Ukrainian government that has banned their Russian Orthodox religious denomination, sought to outlaw the Russian language, and violently attacked the ethnic Russian population of the country.

Most, if not all, of the students enrolled in the Donbas Express identify with the Russian nation, according to their instructor. “They have this [patriotic] song, ‘My Homeland Is Coming Back,’” Lundstrem commented. “All of these 80 kids were screaming it. Simply screaming this song.”

But the teacher emphasized, “We are not organizing [the Donbas Express] for political reasons. We’re not here to say, ‘Russia forever!’ for example. We’re here to help these children. But of course, we’re Russians.”

The political sympathies and Russian ethnic background of the children who traveled from eastern Ukraine to programs like the Donbas Express is referenced only in passing by Yale HRL’s State Department-funded report.

Content of Yale HRL report contradicts ICC arrest warrant

Nathaniel Raymond, the executive director of the State Department-sponsored Yale HRL, appeared on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on February 16, 2023 to announce what he called “an Amber Alert for Ukraine’s children.”

Alluding to the Holocaust, Raymond claimed he and his team had uncovered “the largest number of camps seen in the 21st century,” a finding that constituted possible “evidence of genocide.”

“They’re trying to make them into Russians,” Raymond said, asserting that Russian authorities had forcibly removed the Ukrainian children from their families and subjected to coercive military training.

“Thousands of children are in a hostage situation,” the State Department-backed Yale researcher proclaimed.

With an indignant scowl on his face, CNN’s Cooper muttered, ‘This is truly sickening. This is sick.”

However, the actual content of the February 14 2023 investigation Raymond directed on behalf of the State Department conflicts with his claims of a “hostage situation.”

Raymond’s apparent cluelessness about the situation inside many of the youth camps may stem from the fact that neither he nor any of his colleagues sought to visit them. Nor did they attempt to contact any children who attended the camps, their parents, or staff members.

As his report states,

“Yale HRL does not conduct interviews with witnesses or victims; only the specific information available in open source is collected. When analysts are unable to identify public information about whether a child has returned home, it can be difficult to ascertain the current status of the child. Similarly, Yale HRL does not conduct ground-level investigations and therefore did not request access to the camps.”

In other words, the researchers that informed the ICC’s arrest warrant for Putin conducted no field research, and admit they failed to obtain concrete information regarding the children’s status.

The paper acknowledges that, in fact,

“Many of the children who have attended these camps appear to return to their families when scheduled.”

Also buried in the report is the following disclosure:

“Many children taken to camps are sent with the consent of their parents for an agreed duration of days or weeks and returned to their parents as originally scheduled.”

“Many of these parents are low-income and wanted to take advantage of a free trip for their child,” the Yale HRL/State Department paper continues. “Some hoped to protect their children from ongoing fighting, to send them somewhere with intact sanitation, or to ensure they had nutritious food of the sort unavailable where they live. Other parents simply wanted their child to be able to have a vacation.”

So if the children voluntarily attended the camps and were mostly returned on time, while most parents provided “meaningful” consent” and were grateful that their children could be in a safe place with healthy food, where was the “evidence of genocide” that Raymond alleged during his CNN appearance?

According to the Yale HRL/State Department’s paper,

“There is no documentation of child mistreatment, including sexual or physical violence, among the camps referenced in this report.”

The report’s citations contain a link to a RIA Novosti article about a two-week summer camp in the Russian town of Magadan. Polina Tsvetkova, a child quoted in the article, provided an unequivocally positive review that mirrored those offered by enrollees of the Donbas Express:

“While we were driving from the airport, we were very impressed with the local landscapes. I like to walk in the fields, pick flowers. It is very interesting to see nature. All kinds of beautiful views. When we were driving, I saw small rivers flowing from the mountains. Very beautiful, the views are simply gorgeous.” 

The Yale HRL/State Department paper omits the testimony of joyful summer camp attendees featured in the RIA Novosti article it cited. Instead, it deploys the article in order to claim:

“Children have been transported [to camps] by bus, train, commercial aircraft, and, in at least one case, by Russia’s Aerospace Forces.”

As he did during his CNN appearance, Raymond’s State Department-sponsored report glossed over a single fact that exploded his entire assertion that “thousands of  [Ukrainian] children are in a hostage situation.” That is: nearly all of the children referenced in the Yale HRL/State Department report are ethnic Russians from families and communities that have sided with Russia in its conflict with the nationalist government in Kiev.

The youth who attended the camp referenced in the RIA Novosti article were from Zhdanovka, a town in the Donetsk Republic that separated from Ukraine in 2014, and formally declared its independence in 2022. Yet the ICC and all other official Western sources referred to these youth simply as “Ukrainian,” as though they were forcibly extracted from pro-Kiev communities occupied by Russian forces and subjected to brainwashing inside Russian internment camps.

The Yale HRL/State Department refers to the political and ethnic background of the youth campers only in passing, noting at one point, “Many families in Ukraine do not want to publicly share their experiences [at camp] because they fear they will be seen as collaborators with Russia.”

Not only have the Yale HRL/State Department paper’s authors demonstrated zero concern for the safety of these families, they have inspired calls for their immediate return to a conflict zone where they could be tortured or killed by the Ukrainian government.

Referring to the evacuation of 500 orphans from Donetsk in February 2022 just as Ukrainian forces escalated their attacks on the separatist republics, the authors write, “The reason given publicly by Russia’s government at the time was the supposed threat of an offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces against the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).”

The citation provided to support this claim is a report by Donbas Insider detailing how the Ukrainian army had intensified its shelling of civilian areas in Donetsk on February 19, 2022, destroying a house, a poultry farm, and an electricity substation, leaving 800 residents without electricity. It was the 43rd Ukrainian violation of a ceasefire in the Donetsk People’s Republic. Five days later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine, announcing a mission to “demilitarize” the country.

So does extricating orphans from the Donetsk war zone to safer ground inside the Russian Federation constitute the crime of “kidnapping,” as Raymond alleged?

The Yale HRL/State Department researcher apparently upholds an extremely loose definition of the term. Back in 2020, Raymond approvingly tweeted a Washington Post editorial denouncing the Trump administration’s policy (continued by the Biden administration) of separating minors from migrant parents: “Let’s not mince words. The Trump administration kidnapped children.”

“Teddy bear” camps: in interview, Yale HRL director contradicts “hostage situation” claims, discloses US intel ties

Nathaniel Raymond is a technologist who has worked at various international NGOs and universities, from Oxfam to Harvard’s Signal Project, and claims he served on the ICC’s tech advisory team. Before securing his post as a lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health, he worked for George Clooney, the Hollywood celebrity who helped make the plight of the Darfur region of Sudan a cause celebre. Clooney, for his part, campaigned alongside the pro-Israel groups and President George W. Bush, who threatened to send US troops to Darfur.

“I count tanks from space for George Clooney,” Raymond quipped to the Guardian in 2012, referring to his pioneering use of Maxar satellite technology to document alleged human rights abuses.

When I, Jeremy Loffredo, learned that Raymond’s Yale HRL had issued a report on Russia government youth programs like the Donbas Express, I emailed him to inform him that I had been to one of these camps back in November 2022. I told him I was open to sharing my experience with him. He agreed to speak to me by phone.

Raymond explained to me that when he arrived at Yale HRL in 2021, he was directing a State Department-sponsored project documenting the Afghan government’s alleged abuses against the country’s Hazara minority. But as US intelligence began warning of an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine, the mission quickly shifted.

“Our initial concept of operations was actually on Afghanistan,” Raymond said. “And we got rerouted to Ukraine. We were going to be watching the Hazara. And, and then we got, we got pulled in on this. And two weeks before the invasion happened, we were told to standby and form a squad, and then by Spring, we knew the good stuff was happening.”

Raymond added that the US National Intelligence Council applied “a lot of pressure” on his team at Yale HRL to document the Russian government’s operations to move citizens from eastern Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

“We were like, ‘Okay, how are we going to do this?’” he recalled. “And so we spent the Summer into the early Fall, trying to figure out our operational concept. And it wasn’t until October [2022], that we really realize how to do it. And the trick was, when we broke it open, it was getting inside Russian VPN networks looking like Russian citizens looking at local mayoral VK [Russian social media] accounts.”

Raymond said his team relied on the Pentagon’s US Indo-Pacific Command to “expand our satellite access in the Pacific Command to get the Siberian and eastern camps.”

When asked why his research team did not attempt to visit any programs inside Russia like the Donbas Express, Raymond said,

“We’re persona non grata. We’re considered extensions of US intelligence by the Russians.”

Though he acknowledged working closely with US intelligence and the State Department, Raymond denied that Yale HRL’s focus on alleged Russian atrocities at the exclusion of those committed by Ukraine was driven by US government funding.

“The Ukrainian alleged Ukrainian abuses, we probably can’t see through our means,” he insisted. “Because they’re small unit stuff with POW’s mostly. Like, they shot a bunch of guys in the knees allegedly.”

Raymond pointed to his unit’s documentation of a Russian strike on a Ukrainian grain silo as a typical example of “Ukrainian bullshit.” “What we think [the Ukrainians] were doing,” he said, “is they were running an ammonium phosphate lab, underneath that silo, to build munitions.”

Though he said that “the only thing that could have made that [blast] hole is basically a bomb factory,” Raymond claimed it was impossible to confirm his suspicion.

He used a metaphor about traffic violations to explain why Yale HRL was focused exclusively on nailing the Russian government:

“We got a parking violation in terms of the laws of armed conflict, like the Ukrainians are double parked in a moving zone, right? At a bus stop. And the Russians, meanwhile, are doing the DUI in the 16-wheeler through a shopping mall.”

While minimizing the Ukrainian military’s documented shooting of defenseless prisoners and use of civilian infrastructure to conceal military installations, Raymond homed in on Russia’s policy of bringing ethnically Russian children to cultural programs, accusing Moscow of a criminal process of “Russification.”

When asked about the fact that most of the children involved in the programs Yale HRL investigated already consider themselves Russian, and come from separatist, ethnic Russian regions that have been targeted with violence by Ukraine’s US-backed government, and that some have no home to return to because they were destroyed in the conflict, Raymond was dismissive.

“Even if that was true, it’s a war crime,” Raymond insisted. “Under the Geneva Convention, one state party to an armed conflict cannot adopt or transfer children from the other state party under any circumstances.”

While Raymond would not consider the ethnic and political backgrounds of the children while determining whether their rights had been violated, he freely acknowledged that the vast majority of camps his team at Yale HRL investigated were, like the Donbas Express, “primarily cultural education, like I would say, teddy bear.”

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Jeremy Loffredo is a journalist based in Washington, DC. He has worked on various independent documentaries in New York and formerly produced news programs at RT America. He is currently producing an independent documentary on the Green New Deal.

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

All images in this article are from The Grayzone

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***

“Big Money” Vaxx Operation Worlwide

by Michel Chossudovsky

Pfizer and Moderna are pushing for more than 14 billion doses of the deadly Covid mRNA vaccine Worldwide. The impacts on mortality and morbidity are beyond description.

Seven doses per person in the US as reported in Jordan Schachtel‘s carefully documented article (see below) is equivalent to a total of the order of 2.34 billion doses, for a U.S. population of 334 million.(2022)

The whole process is “profit driven” in the billions, sustained by scientific fraud and disinformation.

Recorded September 21, 2022: 12.9 Million doses adminstered (mid December 2020- September 21, 2022)

The price of each vaccine dose is being negotiated directly with the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von Der Leyen, who’s is known to be corrupt. 

The broader objective of Pfizer’s CEO Dr. Bourla is to negotiate a 4.5 billion vaccine doses contract for a EU population of  450 million,

In other words, 10 doses per person. These are additional doses to those already purchased by the EU (In excess of 800 million).

• DO NOT GET VACCINATED.
• STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE WHO HAVE BEEN VACCINATED.
• INFORM PEOPLE ACROSS THE LAND ON THE HEALTH RISKS. 
• TAKE A FIRM STANCE AGAINST THE VACCINE PASSPORT. 

The legitimacy of politicians and their Big Money sponsors must be challenged.

We must act with a single voice nationally and internationally.

Our First Task is to disable the fear campaign

The COVID-19 “vaccination” programme should be halted immediately worldwide.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 21, 2023

*** 

U.S. Government Green-lights Seventh COVID Shot, as Pfizer Loyalty Card Meme

Becomes an FDA Authorized Reality

by Jordan Schachtel

The FDA has decided to amend the emergency use authorizations for the original versions of the Moderna and Pfizer experimental mRNA injections that failed to do anything beneficial for coronavirus infections. The old versions are being swapped out for somewhat newer, but also expired shots that fail to do anything beneficial for coronavirus infections.

In a press release announcing the measure, the FDA said they were doing this “to simplify the vaccination schedule for most individuals” and authorize an “additional dose for certain populations.”

FDA press release 

Now, it’s pretty wild that we are now on SEVEN COVID SHOTS for some segments of the population. YES, SEVEN SHOTS IN TWO YEARS. We are officially at the point where the government is too embarrassed to give the people a current tally.

Sadly, the Pfizer loyalty card meme is no longer a meme, but fast becoming an FDA authorized reality.

And yet, FDA approved shots have never made their way to market. Readers of The Dossier know we have been operating under an EUA over the course of Covid hysteria. Thanks to the great work of newfound democrat candidate for president RFK Jr and others, we know this has to do primarily with legal liability issues.

According to “The Science,” the bivalent booster is better than the monovalent shot because it targets multiple variants. What the FDA fails to mention is that according to the government’s own sequencing data, the Omicron strains targeted by the bivalent boosters no longer exist.

Here’s a screen shot of the updated CDC variant tracker that shows the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 strains being present in 0.0% of the current population.

As the data makes clear, both shots expired a long time ago. And even in the event that mRNA shots are targeted to the current strain, there’s a strong argument that the “cure” is very often much worse than the disease itself.

*

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Featured image is from NaturalNews.com

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*** 

How did COVID-19 present itself?

It was fatal car crashes and ensuing trauma-related deaths falsely coded as COVID, it was bacterial pneumonia, falsely named, it was hospitals getting more money for COVID diagnoses and COVID protocols (1), it was false pronouncements of PHEIC from the globalist WHO attached at the hip to the WEF. (2)

It was the cold, it was the flu, it was data manipulation writ large, where jabbed patients are listed as unvaccinated weeks after their hospital admittances.  It was a perfect fabricated pretext for a global financial coup which continues to impoverish and kill us as the oligarchs grow richer and more powerful.

As long as global populations remain incredulous, fake pandemics can be fabricated through contrived Emergency Authorizations, coding changes to Death Certificates which falsely inflate deaths attributed to COVID, invalid testing, and data manipulation. This is what happened to us.

Read the transcript here.

Per Mike Yeadon, the central operational deception is the tests (PCR and other tests) and the central conceptual deception is the mask. Faulty testing means invalid data, whereas ubiquitous mask-wearing creates the perception of a deadly virus, even as the WHO has admitted the virus was in line with the flu and renowned epidemiologist Dr. Ioannidis stated that it was a Low Infection Fatality Rate virus. Ioannidis also noted that distinctions in data-recording were not being made between dying with COVID and dying of COVID. This sleight of hand was reiterated by Dr. Ngozi Ezike.

Read the transcript here.

The endgame has been to inject us with bioweapons, and they succeeded to a large degree. And at what cost?  Jab-incurred excess mortality rates are skyrocketing, as are jab injuries, with Australia data showing a 5,162% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 week of 2022 (3), and top insurance analyst Josh Stirling claiming the U.S. alone is experiencing 600,000 jab-induced deaths per year. (4)

If not now, when will the perpetrators of these massive crimes against humanity be prosecuted?

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) Mark Taliano, “Invalid Covid Data Drives Catastrophic Public Policies Globally.” Global Research, 20 )ctober, 2022. (Invalid Covid Data Drives Catastrophic Public Policies Globally – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 20 April, 2023.

(2) Prof Michel Chossudovsky, “Biggest Lie in World History: There Never Was A Pandemic. The Data Base is Flawed. The Covid Mandates including the Vaccine are Invalid

The PCR “Covid-19 Confirmed Cases” are Meaningless. The Multibillion Dollar Antigen and Home Test Project is Fake.” Global Research, 15 April, 2023.

(Biggest Lie in World History: There Never Was A Pandemic. The Data Base is Flawed. The Covid Mandates including the Vaccine are Invalid – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 20 April, 2023.

(3) Bruch Weisberger, “Australia, A Tragic Window into the Truth. Excess Mortality in 2021-22 Following Roll-out of Covid Injections.) Global Research. 20 April, 2023. (Australia, A Tragic Window into the Truth. Excess Mortality in 2021-22 Following Roll-out of Covid Injections – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization)  Accessed 20 April, 2023.

(4)Jonas Vesterberg, “600,000 Americans Per Year Are Dying From COVID Shots Says Top Insurance Analyst.” The FLorida Standard, 11 April, 2023. (600,000 Americans Per Year Are Dying From COVID Shots Says Top Insurance Analyst (theflstandard.com) Accessed 20 April, 2023.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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*** 

That same old American institution called the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which supports regime change and wars across the world has a board member who wrote an opinion piece for The Hill, a liberal online news organization on the relevance of the rules-based order and how much the world needs it. 

Harley Lippman, a board member for USAID wrote about how the rules-based order (New World Order) will continue despite the challenges of a multipolar world and the peace dividends it has brought to the table thus far.  Lippman’s claims about where the rules-based order stands in this new world of geopolitics is propaganda at its best, so you might already know where this article is going since the liberal media is absolutely pro-establishment and pro-war.  

Lippman wrote an opinion piece called ‘The rules-based order will endure, despite ‘shifting sands’ based on Russia and China’s achievements that includes establishing a diplomatic solution between Iran and Saudi Arabia and bringing back Syria into the fold with the rest of the Middle East which is a big deal, but to Lippman, it “rings hollow”, it’s insincere:

Russia and China recently have attempted to act as chief mediators on the international stage. Russia reportedly facilitated meetings between Saudi Arabia and Syria to restore ties and reopen their respective consular services, and China played peacemaker between Saudi Arabia and Iran. More recently, Saudi Arabia’s Cabinet approved a decision to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as a dialogue partner. The SCO was created to counter U.S. economic hegemony and includes longtime adversaries and partners of our country. These recent developments have been described by some as evidence of the decline of the U.S.-led rules-based order.

Despite the clamoring of pundits to bemoan America’s decline, Moscow and Beijing’s attempts at diplomatic relevance ring hollow as the U.S. shores up the post-World War II international order by reinvigorating existing strategic alliances that underpin various security architectures

Lippman says that the US-led rules-based order is in decline but at the same time, it is working on replenishing its old alliances as a counterweight to Russia and China even though they were able to forge a peaceful solution among nations who were at odds against each other at one time or another.  However, Russia and China are trying to establish real peaceful solutions among nations and that should be welcomed by the international community.  Lippman says that “the U.S. values its alliance with Japan and South Korea in the Asia-Pacific to serve as a counterweight to an increasingly belligerent China.”  A belligerent China? 

How many military bases does the US have around the world?  In fact, how many of these bases surround China?  China’s peace initiatives should be welcomed at all costs.  Bringing peace is a good thing while the US and its Western allies (and Israel) has brought endless wars and chaos on almost every continent on the planet, in fact the US war machine has killed more than 20 million people since World War II.  In other words, when Lippman says that the US “values” its alliance with Japan and South Korea, he is talking about the continuation of selling them military hardware and keeping the same US bases in place to counter China’s growing influence in the region so that the US war machine can keep antagonizing China in the South Pacific sea at all costs even if it means starting a war.   

Lippman also takes aim at Russia, “Correspondingly, America’s role in NATO is pivotal to the West’s efforts to face off an aggressive Russia that threatens the security of Europe and the Balkans.”  Seriously?  Wasn’t Ukraine’s continuous bombardment of the Eastern Donbass region for more than 8 years killing at least 8,000 Ukrainian people who spoke Russian an aggressive action that was and still is supported by the US-NATO alliance? 

The US has used its alliances to counter Russia and China as part of the old rules-based order strategy of divide and conquer in Asia and Eastern Europe.  In other words, he wants Washington to keep the same policies of funding and arming one-side against another to advance the US war machine and continue the rules-based order to establish their Great Reset agenda.  

Concerning the Middle East, Russia and China also have a wide range of interests with Iran, therefore that arrangement angers the US political establishment and their bosses who are based in Israel, and that’s the other problem for Lippman:

In contrast to America’s values-based approach to allies and partners, engagement with Russia and China offers only a transactional and interest-based relationship that rests on economic ties both countries share equally with such aggressors as Iran and Iran’s proxies 

Russia and China’s strategic partnership with Iran, Syria and now Saudi Arabia bypasses US interests in the region so for most of the people in the Middle East, it’s a new development that is welcomed in a region that has only experienced regime change and endless wars that the US and its closest ally, Israel sponsored and at times participated in since the end of World War II:   

Riyadh’s decision to restore diplomatic relations with Tehran via China is an attempt to reduce regional tensions with an aggressive neighbor committed to militant Islam and regional hegemony. In the near term, Tehran will likely seek to avoid actions that threaten this new relationship. However, absent an Iranian decision to radically redefine its foreign policy and abolish the Revolutionary Guards, this rapprochement is likely to collapse in the wake of fresh Iranian violence

First, let me start by saying that Iran is not looking to expand into a hegemonic footprint in the Middle East, it is Israel who is looking to expand its territorial ambitions by hoping to destroy all its Arab neighbors’ piece by piece and carry-out Oded Yinon’s plan or what is known as the “Greater Israel”project.  Rabbi Fischmann, a member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine testified to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on July 9^th, 1947, said that “the Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.” But Iran is the aggressor?  The rules-based order will continue if the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) focuses on its security commitments according to Lippman:

America’s security commitment to the region must be paramount. U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) remains the foundation of the region’s security architecture that protects trade and energy arteries critical to global economic stability. The Biden administration should ensure that CENTCOM remains well-resourced and focused on building regional partnerships. Furthermore, economic ties must be strengthened. American firms view the region with enthusiasm. The Biden administration must be more vocal in its support for trade and expedite approvals for technology sharing on 5G and 6G communications, green energy, and space. Furthermore, increased cabinet-level visits to the region would demonstrate the U.S.’s commitment to the region. While this will not offset the inevitable commercial relationships between the Gulf States and China, it will assert America’s ability to compete in this strategic region

Using the Sunni-Shiite argument is propaganda to further instigate that there is a sectarian divide in the Arab world for thousands of years’, and the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran and because of that, the US security structure under CENTCOM will remain in place since the US and Saudi Arabia has a long-standing relationship.  China’s peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia is what he calls “cosmetic”, and that China has no place for its peace initiative in the Middle East:

Despite the region’s “shifting sands” of ever-changing relationships, the Sunni-Shiite tensions are over a thousand years old and Iran’s advancement toward nuclear status has every U.S. partner in the Middle East on alert. The traditional security architecture underpinned by U.S.-Saudi strategic ties will remain intact. As a result, future Chinese transactional neutrality is likely to be cosmetic, devoid of any significant strategic substance. 

The U.S. and its allies can best sustain the rules-based order established after WWII through robust engagement with allies and partners in which we show that we understand and support their core economic and security interests in the same way that we expect they will do the same for American interests

Tell that to the families of the 20 million people that US and its NATO allies killed since the end of World War II.  The old rules-based order has collapsed in the face of a new multipolar world, as for Harley Lippman’s vision for the US and its globalist cabal to continue its hegemonic agenda in this new world of ours, is just wishful thinking.       

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from SCN

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*** 

In monarchies, the Monarch is Commander-in-Chief of armed forces. In republics these duties fall upon presidents, as per Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the US Constitution. Ukraine, a supposed republic, follows suit. Pursuant to Article 106, Section 17, of Ukraine’s Constitution, the President:

“Is the Commander-In-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine”

Regulatory ‘clarifications’ to the Chief of General Staff’s role stipulate that when Defense Ministers are civilians, the Chief of General Staff automatically becomes “Commander-in-Chief.” In 2019, outgoing President Poroshenko’s Defense Minister retired from the Army, yet continued serving as a civilian, thereby triggering the consolidation of Chief of General Staff and Commander-in-Chief functions.

On May 21, 2019, within 24 hours of his inauguration, President Zelensky decreed Lt.-General Ruslan Khomchak to be Commander-in-Chief. The announcement reads:  

“…Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces of Ukraine appoints new Chief of General Staff Commander-in-Chief of Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

In March 2020, Commander-in-Chief and Chief of General Staff positions were re-divided with Khomchak staying on as Commander-in-Chief. Khomchak is remembered as Ukraine’s first Commander-in-Chief.

Problems:

• In constitutional republics presidents can’t delegate Commander-in-Chief responsibilities. Biden can’t farm-out his Commander-in-Chief tasks any more than a House Speaker or Supreme Court Chief Justice can transfer their duties to some third party. It’s a ridiculous idea.
• “Supreme Commander-in-Chief” appears nowhere in Ukraine’s constitution. It’s a baseless bauble.

In July, 2021 Lt-General Zaluzhnyy, apparently at Defense Ministry behest, became Commander-in-Chief.

Hardly a spawn of globalist elites, Valerii Zaluzhnyy, son of a middle-rank officer, grew up on an army base. He was 18 on Ukraine’s independence day (August 24, 1991) and joined the army a few years later; never dreaming of rising to General. He graduated from the Odessa Institute of Land Forces and the National Defense Academy. In the year of Obama’s Coup (2014) Zaluzhnyy graduated from Ivan Chernyahov National Defense University. Battlefield promotions during the Civil War upped him to Major-General. Taking time from the front, he earned an M.A. (International Relations) from National University Ostroh Academy (2020). Zaluzhnyy made Lt-General in 2021 and General in March, 2022.

Leveling the Front

Appreciating the urgency of Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief enigma, requires understanding: “leveling the front.” In military parlance, “level the front” means dropping-back to an easier to defend, and straight-as-possible, frontline. This procedure is executed when frontlines are crumbling and portions of the army risk being encircled, or woefully outflanked. Smart generals have at the ready well-fortified, well-situated fall-back positions. Levelling the front is a retreat, with all that implies, but the alternative is to let one’s frontline forces get eaten alive.

Russia’s Second Offensive has pushed salients through Ukraine’s frontline. At several locales, famously Bakhmut and Avdiivka, Ukrainians are almost surrounded hence fight from disadvantageous positions; enduring massive excess casualties. NATO screams at Kiev to level the front. Kiev pours fresh troops into cauldrons.

On March 6, 2023, top-selling German tabloid Bild splashed across its front-page the exclusive exposé:

“Zelensky Arguing with Most Important General”

Citing “sources within the political leadership in Kiev” the article claims Zaluzhnyy had long counselled withdrawing from Bakhmut. 

Bild twice bestows upon Zaluzhnyy (not Zelensky!) the pompous honorific “Supreme Commander-in-Chief” to wit:

“The head of state and the supreme commander of the armed forces have fundamentally different views on how the army should deal with Bakhmut.”

The article hypes Zaluzhnyy’s popularity and speculates about a presidential bid; adding:  

While there was a great deal of unity between the two leaders at the very beginning of the war and the roles were clearly divided, this has now changed.

Said roles were never clearly divided. Reporters regularly confuse titles.

The day Bild’s exposé hit newsstands, “Supreme Commander-in-Chief” (Zelensky) claimed he “directly asked” Zaluzhnyy about Bakhmut, and that Zaluzhnyy wished to, not merely hold, but “reinforce” positions there. Amusing stuff, but for the killing and maiming of a generation of Ukrainians.

The Banana-Bandero Republic divides state power among rival swarms of embezzlers. NATO funds the feeding frenzy while NATO recommendations get flaunted. Still, there’s something even fishier:

Is Zelensky, a comic of Russian-Jewish descent, with zero military knowhow, dominating a High Command stacked with uber-militaristic Ukro-Nazis?

Is Zelensky being set-up as a scapegoat?

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William Walter Kay is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Zaluzhnyi with Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi (left) during the Battle of Kyiv, March 2022 (Licensed under CC BY 4.0)

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*** 

Since the 1962 revolution that took out the monarch of Saudi Arabia  who interfered in Yemen by playing one side against the other, tribes against one another, bribing political parties to do their dirty work, fueling politicians against one another, Saudi Arabia has a firm say on who rules Yemen, when we had our JFK “Ibrahim Al-hamdi” in 1974 he brought economic prosperity to the country, his goal was to unite North and South Yemen. He also had the goal of a fair and equal boarder settlement between Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Unfortunately, in 1977 he was assassinated just like JFK. Saudi Arabia is equivalent to the CIA deep state in the USA. After all, Yemen leaders were propped up by Saudi Arabia  and when their mission ends, it’s curtains!

The movement of Ansar Allah or Huthis known after the leader’s surname “Abdulmalak Al-Huthi” entered negotiations with the Yemen government Saudi/western-backed government and when the negotiations were about to be settled with Ansar Allah securing some political victories in 2015, Saudi Arabia backed by western coalitions, “just like Iraq war”, started a bombing campaign to return the stooge leader Hadi to power “a Juan Guaidó/Zelenskyy-like president”.

In a few months the coalitions crumbled leaving Saudi Arabia, UAE and USA in the war campaign, weapons sold to the Saudis from the far corners of the earth including Justin Trudeau’s regime. The ultimate goal is balkanization of Yemen to six parts, based on tribal, religious alignments which Ansar Allah strongly opposed. Just like the war on Russia, the goal is balkanization.

In today’s political realignments, Saudi Arabia can no longer guarantee USA support therefore it has no options but to settle their differences with Iran, Syria and try and make peace with the Ansar Allah, a thorn in their backside.

The Ansar Allah movement or Huthis consider themselves a resistance movement and align with movements across the Middle East in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Syria. These movements see Saudi Arabia and gulf states as USA/western proxies, these resistance movements have a goal of expelling foreign troops who are meddling in the Arab world and the stealing its resources. Example, USA occupation of Eastern Syria and the oil theft.

Today, Saudi Arabia in the Yemen negotiations claims itself as a mediator between arguing Yemeni factions, Ansar Allah refuses such claim and insists that Saudi Arabia & USA are a party to the conflict and must compensate for the destruction they caused in Yemen; USA must end the siege and all embargoes on the country and resume trade. Yemen is in no need of charity if the siege is lifted. The siege gives a reason for Soros’s NGO’s “a tool, a way to interfere in any country’s affairs”.

USA uses proxies when it comes to the middle east.

Have a listen from the horses’ mouth, Hillary Clinton:

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Khalid Al-Seragi is a Yemeni writer.

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News

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The CO2 Hoax, ChatGPT, and God

By Mark Keenan, April 20, 2023

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Video: Has Germany Become a Colony of the United States?

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In late December  2021, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened what was described as “a newly formed task force” (Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA, State Department, and Treasury) pertaining to Russia’s War preparations. Within the group, there was a debate as to what action was to be taken regarding Nord Stream. “The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone [in the task force] involved understood the stakes”.

Sikh Diaspora-Revival of the Khalistan Independence Movement

By Sajjad Shaukat, April 20, 2023

After the brutal operation Blue Star launched by the Indian Army in 1984 at highly sacred Sikh religious place-the Golden Temple complex (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar, Punjab where their spiritual leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had taken shelter, the international community had thought that perhaps Sikhs have become lethargic in connection with their demand for an independent state in the Indian Punjab, named Khalistan.

“The Future of Health Summit”: Blowing Up the World for Big Pharma

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To fully appreciate the importance of the Covid Era to the Pharmaceutical Industry we revisit the “Future of Health Summit” held at the Milken Institute on Oct. 28-29, 2019. 

Young Chefs Are Dying Suddenly and Unexpectedly. 28 Sudden Deaths, COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates?

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I have not seen any explanation why so many chefs have been dying suddenly or unexpectedly in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Women and men. Consequence of COVID-19 vaccine mandates? Something else?

Australia, A Tragic Window into the Truth. Excess Mortality in 2021-22 Following Roll-out of COVID Injections

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The European Economy is on the brink. The IMF has dire predictions for 2023 and for the foreseeable future. It states falsely the war in Ukraine as being responsible for the European economic decline, by creating energy shortages, food shortages, rising price, increasing interest rates – and more.

Will the West Turn Ukraine Into a Nuclear Battlefield?

By Joshua Frank, April 20, 2023

It’s sure to be a blood-soaked spring in Ukraine. Russia’s winter offensive fell far short of Vladimir Putin’s objectives, leaving little doubt that the West’s conveyor belt of weaponry has aided Ukraine’s defenses.

Democratic Transition Further Delayed by Military Clashes in Sudan

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 20, 2023

The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) both claimed in the days leading up to the proposed signing of yet another transitional agreement, that they were committed to a new democratic dispensation.

The Leaks of “Secret Documents” Reveal Reality Behind U.S. Propaganda in Ukraine

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, April 20, 2023

The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends.

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Read Part I:

The Climate (CO2) Hoax and the Control Matrix. Mega-banks and Corporations

By Mark Keenan, April 05, 2023

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In a previous article ‘1500 scientists say ‘Climate Change Not Due to Co2’ – The real environment movement was hijacked’ I provided evidences and testimonies from renowned international climate scientists that contradict the UN assertion that climate change is caused by CO₂ emissions. I also referred to the conclusion of 1500 climate scientists and climate professionals at the Climate Intelligence Foundation that the climate changes naturally and slowly in its own cycle, and that solar activity is the dominant factor in climate; and that CO₂ emissions or methane from livestock, such as cows, are not the dominant factors in climate change. This is comprehensively detailed in the books Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability and in the book Climate CO2 Hoax.

In this article I explore aspects of the control matrix related to ChatGPT; and the danger of misinformation in relation to higher consciousness and spiritual progress.

Living in ChatGPT illusion

A neighbor seeking the truth about climate change and what causes it – made the catastrophic mistake of seeking the answers to these life-defining questions from a non-living computer program known as ChatGPT.  The questions are below in bold – the responses from ChatGPT follow.

Here are the prompts and responses:

Question to ChatGPT: Are global average temperature increasing, and has this been scientifically proven, such that there is large-scale consensus on the evidence?

Answer from ChatGPT: Yes, global average temperatures have been increasing over the past century, and this has been scientifically proven through extensive research and data analysis. There is a large-scale consensus among scientists that the Earth’s climate is changing, and that human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, are the primary cause of this change.

Multiple lines of evidence, including surface temperature measurements, satellite data, and paleoclimate reconstructions, have all shown that the Earth’s average temperature has been increasing over the past century. Furthermore, there is a clear link between the rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the observed warming.

This consensus is reflected in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global scientific body established by the United Nations to provide policymakers with scientific information about climate change. The IPCC has consistently stated that the evidence for human-induced climate change is clear and unequivocal.

While there are some scientists who dispute the extent or causes of global warming, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that the Earth’s climate is changing and that human activities are the primary cause.

Question to ChatGPT: Has the causal relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and global average temperature increases been scientifically proven, such that there is large-scale consensus on the evidence?

Answer from ChatGPT: Yes, there is a large-scale consensus among scientists that there is a causal relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and global average temperature increases. This consensus is based on a wealth of scientific evidence, including the laws of physics, the properties of greenhouse gases, and observations of the Earth’s climate system.

CO2 is a potent greenhouse gas, meaning that it absorbs and emits radiation in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum, trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing rapidly over the past century, primarily due to human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation. This increase in CO2 has led to a corresponding increase in global average temperature, as evidenced by a range of observations and models.

The consensus view on this issue is reflected in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which states that it is extremely likely (95-100% probability) that human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, have been the dominant cause of the observed warming of the Earth’s climate over the past century. This consensus is supported by numerous scientific organizations, including the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, and the Royal Society of the United Kingdom.

While there are still some scientific debates about the details of the relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperature increases, the overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that the evidence supports a causal link between these two variables.

Note that the ChatGPT responses are incorrect and misleading, and certainly do not refer to the fact that 1500 scientists have signed a declaration refuting the UN IPPC. Recall the words of Dr Roger Pielke Jr, University of Colorado, who has conducted a detailed scientific review and analysis of the UN IPCC AR6 report, see Endnote [ii].

“The IPCCs’ Richard Moss warned that RCP 8.5 was not to be used as a reference for the other RCPs, but 5,800 scientific papers worldwide misuse it like that… The whole process is seriously flawed… Nothing close to the real world is represented by the IPCC scenarios. Climate science has a huge problem!!”

This is the dis-information reality of the mega-corporate control matrix. A corporate cartel that bought out virtually the entire world media decades ago.

“Secrecy has been maintained because the robber barons have been able to use their monopoly over money to buy up major media, educational institutions, and other outlets of public information. While Rockefeller was buying up universities, medical schools, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Morgan bought up newspapers… By 1983… fifty corporations owned half or more of the media business. By 2000, that number was down to six corporations, with directorates interlocked with each other and with major commercial banks. (See Endnote [i])” – E.H. Brown

ChatGPT appears to be the latest disinformation tool. It is a computer system that tells living souls what is true or false, and what to think and believe. Be aware that off-loading our human curiosities to a digital ghost is not a good idea. The difference between a human brain ‘machine’ and a computer ‘machine’ is that the living human brain is experiencing a state of symbiosis with the living soul that is you. Programs known as AI, such as ChatGPT, are sophisticated, but dead, machinery tools designed to keep you enslaved to the control ideologies of the slave matrix.

Manmade machines cannot compare with the ‘organic machinery’ of the human brain, which was made by God, and has a level of complexity far beyond human understanding. The human brain was made by God not just for data learning, but for experiential learning involving consciousness and the soul itself.

If millions of living souls are going to be asking ChatGPT for the answers to the pressing questions of our time they are going to be living very deluded lives. Real relationships can only take place between living souls.

The technology itself is merely a reflection of its programmers and funders and is merely a clever information repository – the problem is it is a repository of ‘control matrix’ information; as is Wikipedia, google, Facebook, twitter, YouTube, etc. All of which use censorship in the form of algorithms and ‘community guidelines’ to determine what “truth” you should be told and what information will not be presented to you.

ChatGPT answers rest on information from sources such as Wikipedia. It is simply feeding out the incorrect, fabricated, or censored knowledge what was fed into it. Paid schills say that ‘ChatGPT is smarter than you’. Well, that will only become true if you listen to ChatGPT because you will be in danger of being brainwashed or subsumed into a misdirected collective of consciousness and fabricated information. Misdirected from real material and spiritual knowledge – this amounts to spiritual pollution. Then your role as a living soul is in danger of being subverted and you become a living product of the lies you are being fed.

Machine complexity is not consciousness

The ancient scriptures of the world, including the Vedic scriptures, which were written in Sanskrit the oldest language, tell us that all life on earth is infused with a spark of consciousness, and that consciousness is activated by the existence of a soul. What activates life is consciousness – not machine complexity or neural complexity. Computer AIs do not possess a soul – unless it has somehow bizarrely been possessed by a ghost or demon, and I presume that is not in the design specification!

So according to this position it is impossible for ChatGPT, or any other manmade machine, to experience consciousness, or care for others, or feel compassion. Digital life is a complete impossibility – it is an egotistical pipe dream delusion of atheistic technocrats – the dream itself is a denial of the existence of God and an expression of the mode of ignorance. (Ancient Vedic texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita (Translation by Srila Prabhupada), describe the three modes that effect our behavior as living souls. The modes are the mode of ignorance, the mode of passion (greed and lust), or the mode of goodness.) Unless God deigns it to be otherwise, digital life is soulless.

Recognizing the dysfunctional state of CONfusion

This fabricated matrix of mis-information tools and fake science, twists reality in order to twist you. You are thus living amongst a shroud of lies so pervasive it has become the accepted norm by many people, but not all people. The matrix seeks blind obedience to a fabricated reality in an attempt to dis-empower you. However, we have free will and our choices define us – perhaps we have all been born into a test. Perhaps God is testing us.

Embroiled in this dominator matrix, many living souls have been in a dysfunctional state of CONfusion that has been intentionally promoted for a very long time. CON meaning ‘against’, fuse meaning ‘together’. Yet, these false Gods of the matrix, and all their perceived influence, are but mere phantoms to our inner capacities when we are aligned with God. Responsibility literally means the ability to respond. It is the ability to live in truth and do what is correct for our material and spiritual wellbeing. Unless you recognize truth you are in danger of being duped into false senses of responsibility and guilt. For example, tragically millions of children, teenagers, and adults, feel guilty and responsible for ‘catastrophic climate change’. However, in reality they are not responsible, they have been tricked into believing they are.

More than ever the living soul needs to be aware of these mega-corporate information traps, and embrace the real knowledge our ancestors treasured.

The book burning purges of the Roman Empire destroyed much ancient knowledge throughout Europe and beyond. For example, when the Romans burned the great Library of Alexandria circa 48 BC, over a million ancient books of knowledge of material and spiritual knowledge were either destroyed or looted. It is only with material knowledge allied with true spiritual knowledge will the living soul progress beyond the bleak didactic of a material world view.

Transcending the matrix

How can we bypass, or transcend, the matrix of material illusions created by the architects of the current corporate, banking, and information monopoly? If we are ingesting deceptive information from the systems owned by these architects, then we are continually being misled. To increase real knowledge, we must ensure we are learning from the right trustworthy source, and also develop knowledge networks with like-minded people.

The imperative is to clean up this world and return it to the mode of truth and goodness. Of course, this always begins with our own self, and each of us has a conscience. Much of modern society has been like a hamster running on a wheel without the time to explore the deeper questions of life and why we are here. The current systems of debt-money, globalization, usury, and bonded surety are mechanisms of this hamster wheel.

ChatGPT is unlikely to give you the proper answers to such questions – or, for that matter, even tell you the actual truth about climate change, Covid, WWII, Ukraine, Darwin’s nonsensical evolution theory, Freud the ‘fraud’, the banking system (or who owns and controls it), religious institutions that have altered original scriptures to advance their self-serving agenda of power, and the list goes on.

(Aside: The book Rethinking Darwin by Lief Jensen, provides abundant evidence that the theory of neo-Darwinian evolution is incorrect and lacking evidence. The Vedic texts inform us that the purpose of human life is the evolution of consciousness. There is evolution, however, it is not the evolution that Darwin proposed, it is an evolution of consciousness.)

Each problem is, at its root, a problem of consciousness

It is clear that what we read, view, and focus on, influences our thoughts, opinions and consciousness. Living in a pure and conscious manner is important to avoid harming or weakening one’s subtle material body. We can begin to cleanse and purify our thoughts and consciousness by changing, or correcting, the inputs.

We can make a start by turning off, or reducing, the inputs that manipulate and mislead us, for example, the constant exposure to corporate- and government-controlled news, media, TV, movies and social-media platforms, and the likes of ChatGPT. Then begin to choose and introduce inputs that uplift your mood, purify your thoughts, and enhance your wellbeing and spiritual awareness. It is entirely your choice what to choose, what not to choose, or if you choose to choose at all.

Each problem is, at its root, a problem of consciousness. People will only choose to ‘actually’ pollute the environment if their consciousness is polluted. The real remedy for the problems of the world is  purification of consciousness to that of goodness, purity, and love of God.

“Easy-going optimism that science will solve all problems or that we can somehow achieve a social-political system so perfect that no one has to be good, is the most current form of cowardice” – E.F. Schumacher, Renowned Author

Unless the darker elements of the human psyche are cleansed then humanity will simply ‘rinse and repeat’ and manifest corruption in some other form. The greedy ones, psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists will still scramble for power, resources, and control. That is, unless these habits are eliminated or until a purified consciousness becomes the dominant aspect.

Thus, the fake science and deceptive agendas could be perceived as a challenge for us all. We can choose to either be a slave to the lies, or alternatively, to create and co-create an improved society based on integrity and truth. We can co-create along with the many millions of people who also realize what is happening. From a Vedic perspective, and also from an original Christian perspective, this means creating a God-conscious society. We can name the evil-doers all we want, but if we do not make sure our righteousness and actions exceed that of the evil-doers we are no better than they are. This may all be a spiritual test where everyone has a role to play. Without these challenges there would be no battleground where the righteous ones can prove themselves.

(Aside: I differentiate between an original Christian perspective based on original scriptures and the original teachings of Jesus Christ, and an institutional Christian perspective as my research shows that over the centuries, religious institutions, such as the Judeo-Roman Catholic Church of the Roman empire, altered and distorted the original scriptures and teachings to advance their own agenda of power and political control).

Those seeking power and control of all others, believe themselves to be the master and boss of the playground of the material world. However, this perceived power is all an illusion based on our wayward desires. The reality is that all of us must answer to God in the end.

The steadfastness and continued emergence of God-conscious people worldwide will alter society accordingly for the good. The existence of evil is not in God’s will, but in God’s laws, i.e., because each living soul has free will it is allowed, but not sanctioned. The only way to ensure victory is to conquer the demonic consciousness itself with the most powerful strategy – aligning yourself with God and truth. No amount of altering the material world can ultimately satisfy the individual or society, because our real problem is disconnection from God and there is only one thing that God desires from us, the perfection of free will – love of God. With a few words, Jesus Christ, 2,000 years ago, summarized the essence of love and free will:

’Love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment…”  – Matt. (22.37-40)

The subjects of this article are further described in the books below.   

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Mark Keenan, is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division, and author of the books: Transcending the Climate Change Deception Toward Real Sustainability, Demonic Economics, Covid-19 – The Great Deception.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] Source: ‘The Web of Debt’ by E.H. Brown, pg 130. Second edition.

[ii] Source: Irish Climate Science Forum lecture titled What does IPCC AR6 say on scenarios and extreme weather? available at www/icsf.ie

Featured image: OpenAI headquarters, Pioneer Building, San Francisco (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Transcending the Climate Change Deception – Toward Real Sustainability

by Mark Keenan

Publisher‏: ‎Independently published (August 14, 2022)

Language: English

Paperback: 314 pages

ISBN-13: ‎979-8846528925

 

The author is a former scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change, and at the United Nations Environment Division. Thousands of experienced and distinguished climate scientists dispute the UN climate narrative. The climate changes slowly and naturally in its own cycle and the dominant factor is solar activity and 1500 scientists have signed a declaration to this effect. This book demolishes the UN-promoted climate change hysteria and provides evidence and testimony from renowned and distinguished climate scientists that the climate does not change due to Co2 emissions or methane from livestock, such as cows. The UN climate change narrative that Co2 causes climate change will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world.

Via their control of politics and the media, powerful special interests have tried to convince the world that Co2 is a climate changing toxin. The money agenda, the connections between private banking and the climate change hoax, the fake science, and fraudulent computer modelling are detailed. The climate hoax has subverted and suppressed real environmentalism and real local sustainability, and is designed to propel humanity into UN Agenda 2030, which is a plan for total corporate control of the world’s resources.

The decision to drastically reduce Co2, one of the most essential compounds to sustain all life, is no co-incidence. The world’s central bankers are behind this decision and are entirely funding and controlling the advancement of the worldwide project of reducing Co2 emissions. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), which represents $118 trillion of assets globally. In essence this means that the financialization of the entire world economy is based on meeting nonsensical aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions”. The world’s largest banks and corporations, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, the World Bank, the Bank of England and other central banks of the BIS, have all linked to push a vague, mathematically nonsensical ‘green’ economy as part of UN Agenda 2030. UN Agenda 2030 aims to move people off the land and into ‘smart cities’. This is smart for them, not smart for you.

Thus, the historical controlling power structure behind the curtain of the globalised matrix of private banking, monopoly capitalism, war, and genocidal communism is examined. Oil dependency, the flaws of globalisation, the psuedo-science of contemporary economics, and the subject of collapse are also analysed. The author maps a path toward an enlightened future based on real local sustainability, monetary reform, freedom from bonded surety, the importance of a God-conscious society, and knowledge from the ancient Vedic texts.

To subscribe to Mark’s newsletter email [email protected].

Available on Amazon (US) here

Available on Amazon.de (Europe) here

Available on Amazon.co.uk (UK) here

Available on Kindle here

Introduction 

Andrea (Reuters) Q    Thank you, Mr.  President.  And thank you, Chancellor Scholz.  Mr.  President, I have wanted to ask you about this Nord Stream project that you’ve long opposed.  You didn’t mention it just now by name, nor did Chancellor Scholz.  Did you receive assurances from Chancellor Scholz today that Germany will, in fact, pull the plug on this project if Russia invades Ukraine?  And did you discuss what the definition of “invasion” could be?

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  The first question first.  If Germany — if Russia invades — that means tanks or troops crossing the — the border of Ukraine again — then there will no be no longer a Nord Stream 2.  We will bring an end to it. 

Q    But how will you — how will you do that exactly, since the project and control of the project is within Germany’s control?

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  We will — I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.  (White House Press Conference emphasis added

“The Project is within Germany’s Control”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz responds to Reuter’s journalist pertaining to Biden’s decision to “pull the plug” on Nord Stream 2:

Andreas (Reuters) Q  [to Chancellor Scholz]  And will you commit today — will you commit today to turning off and pulling the plug on Nord Stream 2?  You didn’t mention it, and you haven’t mentioned it.

CHANCELLOR SCHOLZ:  As I’ve already said, we are acting together, we are absolutely united, and we will not be taking different steps.  We will do the same steps, and they will be very, very hard to Russia, and they should understand.  (emphasis added)

Chancellor Olaf Scholz Gives “The Green Light” to Joe Biden

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Part I: Widow of BBC Presenter Who Died After COVID Jab Says “No Alternative” But to Sue Astra-Zeneca, by Tara Cobham, The Independent, April 11, 2023 (Excerpts)

Part II: Is the BBC Responsible for mRNA Vaccine-related Deaths?, by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 12, 2023

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PART I

 

by Tara Cobham

The Independent, April 11, 2023

BBC Radio Newcastle’s Lisa Shaw had her first jab in May 2021 and died just a week later

The widower of a BBC presenter who died after having the Covid vaccine has said he has been left with “no alternative” but to sue AstraZeneca.

BBC Radio Newcastle’s Lisa Shaw had her first jab in May 2021 and died just a week later.

In August of that year, Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks ruled the 44-year-old had died from a rare condition associated with the jab that induces swelling and bleeding on the brain, “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia”.

Her widower Gareth Eve said no one had “reached out” after he had attempted to “engage with the government, MPs and three prime ministers”.

He told the BBC:

“It’s not in my make-up to turn around and say I want to sue somebody but for almost two years we’ve tried to engage with the government and tried to engage with MPs since Lisa died and not one of them has reached out or engaged with us at all.

“Any engagement is fleeting at best so that’s the reason that we’re left with no alternative – if the government or AstraZeneca don’t want to engage with us then what else are we supposed to do?”

Mr Eve said he merely wanted “some sort of acknowledgement or recognition that these deaths have occurred”, adding: “We’re not crackpots or conspiracy theorists, we’re husbands and wives and family members who have lost somebody – that’s all it is.

Our thanks to The Independent.

Click here to read the complete article.

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PART II

Is the BBC Responsible for

mRNA Vaccine-related Deaths?

BBC Propaganda in Support of the COVID-19 Vaxx   

by

Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, April 12, 2023

Our thoughts today are with the family of the late BBC presenter Lisa Shaw.

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Introduction

What the above report by The Independent fails to acknowledge is that Lisa Shaw’s employer, namely the BBC was instrumental in providing legitimacy to the mRNA “killer vaccine”, through 24/7 reports intimating that the virus was more dangerous than the vaccine. 

The BBC also withheld publication of official data pertaining to vaccine related deaths and adverse events, not to mention the outright censorship of prominent scientists and medical doctors. 

The BBC’s Fear Campaign: “Why is the Virus Such a Threat”

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BBC “Scientific Nonsense”

The unspoken objective of this report by BBC Science Correspondent James Gallagher was to “scare the British public”, while indirectly promoting acceptance of the Covid mRNA vaccine.

The article was based on the “authoritative voice” of Prof Lehner of Cambridge University, an Infectious Diseases Physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge:

According to Lehner: In the early stages of an infection “the virus is able to deceive the body. … It [the virus] behaves like a ‘hit and run’ killer 

The amount of virus in our body begins to peak the day before we begin to get sick. …

But it takes at least a week before Covid progresses to the point where people need hospital treatment.

“This is a really brilliant evolutionary tactic – you don’t go to bed, you go out and have a good time,” says Prof Lehner of Cambridge University. 

So the virus is like a dangerous driver fleeing the scene – the virus has moved on to the next victim long before we either recover or die. 

In stark terms, “the virus doesn’t care” if you die, says [Cambridge] Prof Lehner, “this is a hit and run virus”.  ….

It does peculiar and unexpected things to the body (BBC, James Gallagher, October 22, 2020, emphasis added) 

What rubbish! This frivolous BBC report personifies the so-called “virus that does not care”, with a view to creating panic, quoting the incautious statements of a Cambridge scientist, who’s on the payroll of Big Pharma’s Wellcome Trust.

In turn the “Hit and Run Virus” (rather than corrupt governments) is blamed for having “ordered the lockdown” (March 11, 2020), imposed on 190 countries, which has created economic and social havoc Worldwide.

Not only is this sensationalist report based on the results of the flawed PCR test —which does not detect the virus (ie. CoV-SARS-2), it is in blatant contradiction with the official WHO definition of Covid-19:

“The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. … These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but only have very mild symptoms. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. Around 1 out of every 5 people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing.”

According to both the WHO and the CDC, CoV-SARS-2 is not a dangerous virus. In may regards it is similar to seasonal influenza. 

What is really dangerous is the Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine, which is portrayed by the media as a means to combating the virus.

Deep-seated Crisis Within the BBC

Charlie Walsham (pseudonym) describes “How the BBC lost its way on Covid” (Spectator, December 19, 2021)

I have been a BBC journalist for many years, … My despair about the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the pandemic though has been steadily growing for some time. And in early December [2021], as I listened to a BBC radio broadcast, I felt the corporation reach a new low. 

During a morning phone-in show on 5Live the topic of discussion was Covid jabs and whether they should be mandated, or if punitive action should be taken against those who refuse them, such as imposing lockdowns on the unvaccinated. … I at least expected a balanced discussion.

This was wishful thinking on my part, as ‘Michael from Birmingham’ – a caller – was about to find out. Michael told the host he hadn’t been vaccinated because he didn’t trust ‘the data’ and cited historic incidents of documented corporate malfeasance by pharmaceutical giants to explain why he was concerned. … Yet instead of holding a reasoned debate with his concerned caller, the host immediately lost his temper, talked over Michael, implied he was a flat-earther and then muted him entirely.

It was an interaction that goes to the very heart of the dismal failure of BBC News. …The atmosphere in these BBC offices in the early days of the pandemic became comically oppressive.

BBC Misinformation. “Pack of Lies”

In a February 15, 2022 report by Michelle Roberts, the BBC contends the following:

The BBC Has Exercised Censorship. Its Statements in Support of the COVID Vaxx Are Misleading

Source: Pfizer Confidential Report, click to enlarge

Click here to read the Confidential Pfizer report. (Now in the public domain)

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Video: Pfizer’s “Secret” Report on the Covid Vaccine. Beyond Manslaughter. The Evidence is Overwhelming. The Vaccine Should Be Immediately Withdrawn Worldwide 

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 06, 2023

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Concluding Remarks

From the outset, the BBC has relentlessly spread disinformation on the Covid MRNA vaccine, despite ample evidence of its devastating health impacts.

Media disinformation coupled with censorship not to mention government coercion have resulted in a vaccine related upward trend in mortality and morbidity starting in early 2021. 

It should be noted that the mainstream media have instructed their personnel to get vaccinated, or else.

Media propaganda including the BBC’s frivolous reports quoting “fake science” and waging a smear campaign against prominent scientists and medical doctors: Is it a criminal undertaking?

The media had the responsibility to inform the public that the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine is  “a dangerous and toxic substance”. If the truth had been revealed, the upward movement in vaccine related deaths and injuries would not have occurred. 

Our Thoughts Are with the Victims of the COVID-19 Vaxx.

I would suggest to Gareth Eve, that he should not only confront Astra-Zeneca and the British Health authorities but also the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which from the very outset of the Covid Crisis in January 2020 has deliberately misled public opinion on behalf of Big Pharma.

For more details on the corona crisis and the mRNA vaccine, download my book (E-Book, pdf format, 15 chapters)

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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After the brutal operation Blue Star launched by the Indian Army in 1984 at highly sacred Sikh religious place-the Golden Temple complex (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar, Punjab where their spiritual leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had taken shelter, the international community had thought that perhaps Sikhs have become lethargic in connection with their demand for an independent state in the Indian Punjab, named Khalistan.

But, participation of almost 208,000 Sikhs in the Khalistan referendums held in the recent years in four countries—the huge number of Sikhs who voted in favour of an independent Khalistan reflected that their demand for and independent home land is gradually being accepted globally.

In this regard, some developments and moves show the Sikh diaspora-revival of the Khalistan movement which needs analysis.

On March 18 this year, prior to the launching of crackdown by the Indian police and paramilitary forces, section-144 was imposed, and mobile phone service was suspended in Sri Muktsar Sahib and Fazilka districts of the Indian Punjab.

Ever since Amritpal Singh Sandhu took over as the head of ‘Waris Punjab De’ after the death of its founder head named Deep Sidhu, state machinery started harassing him by cancelling arms licences of his guards and detaining his friends.

Police arrested a large number of Sikhs including members of ‘Waris Punjab De’ and Amritpal Singh.

Sikh diaspora has expressed serious concerns over this crackdown harassing the Sikh population in the Indian Punjab, elsewhere in India, including those living abroad.

Randeep Sarai, Member of Parliament in Canada said on Twitter:

“Deeply concerned about news reports coming out of Punjab, India. The suspension of internet services and restricted gatherings of more than 4 people in some areas.”

Deeply concerned about news reports coming out of #Punjab, India. The suspension of internet services and restricted gatherings of more than 4 people in some areas. We are closely following the situation.

— Randeep S. Sarai (@randeepssarai) March 18, 2023

Gagmeet Singh, Party leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, stated:

“I am deeply concerned by reports that India has suspended civil liberties and imposed an internet blackout throughout the state of Punjab…These draconian measures are unsettling for many given their historical use to execute extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances during the 1984 Sikh Genocide…I am calling on [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government to immediately contact their Indian counterparts to express concern regarding the suspension of civil liberties and the safety of Canadians abroad.”

I am deeply concerned by reports that India has suspended civil liberties and imposed an internet blackout throughout the state of Punjab.

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) March 18, 2023

The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) condemned the security operations in Punjab to arrest Sikh leader, Bhai Amritpal Singh. Indian authorities have announced the mass suspension of internet services across Punjab citing a threat to “public order by incitement to violence. State-wide cordon and search operations are currently underway across Punjab”.

In a press release, WSO also said:

“We are also deeply concerned that the confusion around Bhai Amritpal Singh’s detention…may be used to orchestrate a false encounter and facilitate his extrajudicial murder…This tactic was commonly used by the Punjab police through the 80’s and 90’s to eliminate Sikh activists. We call on the Canadian Government to demand accountability from India and call for the immediate restoration of civil rights and internet services in Punjab.”

Tim S. Uppal Canadian Conservative Party deputy leader, Gurratan Singh, former Member of the Provincial Parliament, Author and poet Rupi Kaur as well as renowned Sikh persons living in Canada expressed serious concern over crackdown against Sikhs in India-gross human rights violations, remarking:

“Very concerned about reports coming out of Punjab, India…We are closely following the situation…mass arrests of Sikh activists…shut down of internet and text… crackdown on public gatherings…mass censorship of media. Let the Indian Government know that we condemn this repression. The whole world is watching”.

However, the targeting of Sikh youth in Punjab is once again causing huge concerns in the Sikh community across the world. In this context, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has been urged to stop deployment of army or paramilitary services.

Meanwhile, Sikh diaspora took to streets in London and gathered at Indian High Commission to deliver the note of protest to Indian envoy.  Thus, one of the enraged Sikh pulled down Indian flag and replaced it with that of Khalistan. Indian government served a note of protest to UK High Commissioner in New Delhi.

In this connection, before Indian Prime Minister Narendar Modi spoke to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Indian authorities called on the UK government to monitor groups like Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) who have been blamed by Indian for mobilising and radicalising thousands of Sikhs through Khalistan referendum voting across the western countries.

Indian police removed temporary security barricades outside the British High Commission in New Delhi.

It is mentionable that EU Sikhs held an anti-India protest demonstration in front of the Brussels Parliament in Brussels on March 27, 2023, calling on European Commission to challenge India’s massive security crackdown. The speakers on the occasion strongly denounced the Modi government for harassing the Sikh community in India.

Image: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (Licensed under Fair Use)

Similarly, the California state assembly passed a resolution on April 10, this year, which said that the Sikh community in the US had not yet recovered from the physical and psychological trauma of the riots, urging the US Congress to formally recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India as ‘genocide’, and to condemn the violence.

Police have accused Amritpal Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, and his aides of creating discord in the state, which is still haunted by the memories of an armed insurgency in the 1980s for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. The insurgency had prompted a controversial military operation by the Indian government in 1984 which killed thousands of people.

Singh, who has said that he supports the Khalistan movement, captured national headlines in February, this year. He emerged in 2022 in Punjab and began leading marches calling for protecting the rights of Sikhs, who account for about 1.7 percent of India’s population. His speeches have become increasingly popular among supporters of the Khalistan movement.

Nevertheless, as regards the Sikh diaspora, the Sikhs are fighting for a separate homeland since 1947, but the movement gained impetus by the efforts of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who was killed by Indian Army in 1984. Now, Amritpal Singh Sandhu revived the Khalistan movement, as he accelerated it.

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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations.

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

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