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One of the biggest obstacles we have faced in the last three years has been the difficulty in obtaining data by which to know the truth – data which has not been twisted, falsified, or kept secret. Collecting and compiling this crucial information has always been the job of government agencies. Of course, they are not being helpful in providing the population with data we need, which would contradict or undermine the government narrative and objectives.

For a reason I do not understand (since most governments worldwide are pushing the same agenda), there has often been more opportunity to obtain useful data from outside the US. In these articles, information from Australia paints a devastating picture of the destruction that the governments have wrought on their populations.

Exhibit A: (Excerpted from piece published today on The Expose, link below.)

Secret Australian Government Data confirms the Country suffered a devastating 5162% increase in Excess Deaths in 2022 compared to the height of the COVID Pandemic in 2020 

Secret data, strangely given to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) by the Australian Government, confirms the first 38 weeks of the year 2021 saw a shocking 1,452% increase in excess deaths following the rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the same period in 2020.

Sadly, as the months passed, the situation only worsened.

By 2022, the nation was hit by a devastating blow following the repeat rollout of the Covid-19 injections, with a shocking 5,162% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of the year, compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020 which was the alleged height of the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.

But instead of the people of Australia being in shock and disbelief at this devastating increase in excess deaths, they are carrying on with their lives, none the wiser as to what has happened.

Why?

Because their Government and the Mainstream Media have so far refused to reveal the devastating truth, and are instead publishing and broadcasting propaganda and lies on a daily basis.

The data reveals the following:

Australia suffered 11,068 excess deaths in 2021 and then a shocking 22,730 excess deaths by week 38 of 2022. This is in stark contrast to 2020, when only 1,306 excess deaths were recorded during the alleged height of the Covid pandemic and prior to the rollout of the Covid injections.

This means Australia suffered a shocking 1,640% increase in excess deaths in just 38 weeks throughout 2022 compared to 53 weeks throughout 2020.

But if we compare the data available on excess deaths in 2022 against the first 38 weeks of 2020 and the first 38 weeks of 2021, we are able to reveal the true severity of the situation in Australia.

As we know, Australia suffered a shocking 22,730 excess deaths by week 38 of 2022.

But according to the same data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Australia suffered 6,706 excess deaths by week 38 of 2021, and only 432 excess deaths by week 38 of 2020.

This means Australia suffered a shocking 1,452% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of 2021 following the rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020, at the alleged height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and prior to the rollout of a single Covid-19 injection.  

But the above numbers pale in comparison to the tragic situation that unfolded throughout 2022.

Australia suffered a shocking 5,162% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of 2022 following the repeat rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020, at the alleged height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and prior to the rollout of a single Covid-19 injection.  

These aren’t independent estimates. They are official Government of Australia authorized figures. And further figures published by the UK Government strongly suggest Covid-19 vaccination is the biggest contributing factor to this huge rise in excess deaths across Australia.

The very thing that you were told would end the alleged pandemic and put a stop to the alleged huge rise in deaths across the world in 2020, has ended up having the opposite effect.

Instead of reducing deaths, COVID vaccination has increased deaths exponentially.

Read full article on this link.

Exhibit B: This is VERY POWERFUL. Please watch the short video clip:

Click here to view the video

Exhibit C: See this.

Exhibit D: Exclusive: 2X higher death rate post-vax in Australia nursing home!

Steve Kirsch wrote in January: I invite every fact checker in the world to fact check me on this one. I have the name of the facility. It’s critically important that this be validated so that the world is informed of the risk.

He says:

After I posted a story of a large geriatric practice in the US which experienced a 2X increase in all-cause mortality post-vaccine (all of the excess deaths were attributed to the vaccine), I received an even more extraordinary story of a nursing home in Australia where the death rate post-vaccine more than doubled after the vaccines rolled out (from 3 to 4 per year to at least 24 over a 12 month period) which killed 33% of the residents of the facility:

Steve says: I am in contact with the poster and have the name of the nursing home where this took place.

Fact checkers can reach out to me at the Contact me link and I’ll get right back to you!

But let’s not stop there…. let’s give these fact checkers even MORE data to explain away! 

Do you know whether the death rates in your local nursing home went up or down after the vaccine? If you do, then…

Please fill out this survey.

And let’s see if these nursing home anecdotes are a fluke or the norm!

I’ve never had a nursing home that would share this data with me, they all clam up and cite HIPAA compliance as their (completely lame) excuse for not sharing mortality numbers, so I have a suspicion that I’m right.

Have you ever heard of a nursing home touting lower all-cause mortality post-vax? I haven’t. Let’s see if anyone has.

The formal survey results can be viewed here.

(This nursing home survey was published in January. Steve has all the responses on the link above. Here’s the first one, for example.)

Link to Steve’s original article.

May it be G-d’s will that this glimpse of truth help open more eyes, that were closed until now.

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Background

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.

The IMF does not distinguish between what is artificially induced and what would be natural economic fluctuations. 

Let’s look at the situation in a few European countries.

The UK economy: Flatlined in February 2023, no growth in GDP.

• The UK has committed £2.3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine
• One in four children in the UK are living in poverty (27%)
• UK records western Europe’s highest inflation
• Major UK supermarkets have started rationing the sale of some staple fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes (March 2023).

Germany: How the German economic machine broke down

• Ukraine war ([self-made] energy crisis)
• Supply-chain blockages
• Aging workforce
• End of the decades-long reign of Germany’s export-focused manufacturing
• Ukraine aid: $14.2bn

France: GDP growth softened for a second successive time in quarter-on-quarter terms in Q4. They say, the weaker expansion was driven by the Ukraine war (energy), a contraction in private consumption.

• Fixed investment and export growth declined.
• Growth in public spending more than doubled.
• Ukraine war assistance: $1.3bn

United States: Meanwhile, the US is profiting from this war when it comes to the European Union and Europe as a whole. Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer, because they say, Europe is forced to follow US mandates on “sanctioning” Russia and on supplying Ukraine with money and weapons, paid by the European tax-payers. 

Why does Europe follow Washington’s orders like a herd of sheep?

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PressTV: Has the disruption caused by Putin’s war with Ukraine tipped several European economies into a recession, with inflation rocketing and a devastating squeeze on energy supplies?

Peter Koenig (PK): Not at all. President Putin has nothing, but zero to do with the European downfall. 

What is happening in Europe, in one word, is suicide, Europe is committing willingly economic suicide.

When I’m saying “Europe”, I am not referring to the people of Europe. They are upset. This is one of the reasons they are in the streets or on strike, from France to Germany, to Italy to the UK to Greece – and more.

Europe is sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine in the form of weapons or so-called “budget support”. As a parenthesis, in the meantime we know where some of this budget support ends up – in the pockets of Mr. Zelenskyy and his cronies, as has been revealed by many mainstream media in the past few days. Zelenskyy and his buddies have embezzled at least US$ 400 million. Probably much more.

This is EU and US taxpayers money that could be spent at home, to create jobs, support social programs as the EU economy – and to a lesser degree also the US economy is falling into an abyss.

And this for a war which the west instigated – this must be clearly said and understood. President Putin has drawn a red line for many years, warning NATO not to move to Russia’s doorsteps, and Ukraine was the redline.

Just imagine, Russia would build military bases in Mexico or Central America. No need to talk about the consequences.

This war started of course much earlier than 24 February 2022. It started with the also Western instigated, US organized Maidan Coup of 22 February 2014 in Kiev (Ms. Victoria Nuland: “F*ck Europe”, remember?).

It was followed by two Minsk “Peace Agreements”, brokered by France and Germany with Ukraine, but was, to the surprise of everyone but Zelenskyy, according to Mme. Merkel’s – then German Chancellor – own and open admission a few months ago, never meant to be adhered to. Instead, it was meant to prepare and arm Ukraine for a much more serious war, a war of attrition with Russia, the one, we, the world, and especially Europe, are living now.  

Imagine that kind of open treachery?! No laws, no respect. It is just unbelievable what the west has turned to and become. A nest of crime against humanity, hardly known in recent history. It screams for judgment, à la Nuremberg 2.0.

Now the US and NATO are literally fighting a proxy war through Ukraine against Russia, intent to kill as many Russians as possible and to weaken Russia.

For the last at least 100 years – at least since WWI – Russia / the Soviet Union has been in the crosshairs of the west, notably the US, to be conquered and dominated, not because of an ideology the west doesn’t like (in fact, these neocons couldn’t care less) but to take over this vast land area, about 17.1 million square kilometers, or 11% of the world’s land mass, because of its enormous riches in natural resources.

So far, they have miserably failed in two WWs and they will fail again this time, by destroying another country, the Ukraine.

PressTV: What is the general outlook for future of economy in the EU, particularly UK, France and Germany with the energy crisis and Ukraine war in the background?

PK: As long as the European Commission – as it is structured today – stays in power and as long as the key European leaders are “implants” of the World Economic Forum – WEF – and its backstage strongmen Financial Cult supporters, the outlook for Europe is bleak.

Just to name a few of the implants, so people around the world get an idea:

• Ursula Von der Leyen, unelected President – accent on unelected
• Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor, and before him, Angela Merkel
• Emmanuel Macron, President of France
• Mark Rutte, Netherlands…
• And many more

They all display some dictatorial, some even tyrannical trends.

They are all graduates of the WEF’s Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL).

Not too long ago, Klaus Schwab had boasted that he and the WEF are proud having been able to infiltrate governments around the world with the WEF’s Young Global Leaders.

That says it all.

Currently I am staying in a country that has a WEF implant as President, Peru — Dina Boluarte is a WEF YGL. Maybe you have followed what has been happening in Peru since last 7 December when the Parliament, led by then VP, Boluarte, removed the elected President, Pedro Castillo, put him in prison without a trial. Yes, without a trial.

Ms. Boluarte has since assumed Presidency against countrywide protests and calls for immediate new elections (to no avail). She has Schwab’s and Washington’s support – and all the money and if needed military support that comes with it.

Under the WEF’s Global Leaders, justice has been eradicated. Not just in Peru. Look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and not least, the European Union.

Not to forget, Christine LaGarde. She literally runs the European Central Bank like a European Economic prison.

She has recently been recorded saying that not only Central Bank Digital Currency – or CBDC — is the future, but she added already now, paying for anything with 1000 Euros in cash is forbidden, it will be punished by fine – and even prison. Yes, you heard right, even prison.

This is economic tyranny. Under such tyranny no economy can thrive. 

And more, the introduction of CBDC, if it happens, which I still doubt, would put an enormous brake on the economy of those countries that eliminate cash, or the traditional electronic transfer system because CBDC is only about control, absolute control. And no investor wants to be controlled to the last penny he spends.

Maybe the CBDC clowns don’t realize that. Or, alternatively, that is precisely what they want. The last straw to ruin western economy. It fits perfectly into Schwab’s / WEF’s Great Reset, alias UN Agenda 2030, “creative destruction”, to rebuild for a small elite, served by a limited number of transhuman serfs with chip implants so they can be made to act like robots – as Klaus Schwab had already predicted in a 2016 interview with the Swiss French TV. Unfortunately, that two-minute interview clip has since been “fact-checked” away.

You also mentioned the energy crisis, food shortages and massive inflation.

There is no real energy crisis. 

Not buying already contracted gas from Russia — because Russia must be “sanctioned”, Washington says so – is nothing but a self-made energy crisis, or as I said before: economic suicide.

The energy crisis is entirely fake, has been fabricated in order to ruin the European economy – which, as mentioned before, is part and parcel of the Great Reset. Done on purpose by the EU / EC WEF implants.

The Great Reset is about destroying the current economy and resetting everything to zero; then starting anew, rebuilding with a massively reduced population under a global elite.

Most of the people, I believe would not like this, if they knew.

This interview is meant to spread this information to as many people as possible, so they may act, the way they feel they must act to survive. 

We would not have an energy crisis in Europe if Europe would not be following like sheep the US model, would not have “sanctioned” Russia for the war in Ukraine – a war that was entirely instigated by Washington and NATO and stupidly followed by the EU.

Can you imagine, the purposefully suicidal Europe “sanctions” Russia by not buying Russia’s cheap energy, the energy that has been the engine for much of Europe’s economic success? This is “de-industrializing” Europe, especially Germany which now must buy energy from the US and elsewhere at double the price.

A huge colony of German business people and corporations do not like this scenario at all. There may be hope.

Interestingly, Mr. Putin in the past had often repeated, he for his side, would respect the energy supply contracts with Europe, whenever Europe is ready. These offers were of course ignored by Brussels and the EU leaders (orders from NATO and Washington), and never covered by the mainstream media.

And one more thing you should know: Washington / NATO destroyed the Nord Stream Pipelines in full accord and connivance with the German Chancellor and with Ursula Von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. There is not the slightest doubt that at least these two corrupt criminals were in on the deal, maybe more.

PressTV: With the Strikes going on in the UK and France as well as the cost-of-living crisis in Germany, what is the solution for these governments in the short run?

PK: The short answer – these governments, UK, France, Germany et al. should resign immediately and call for new elections.

Shortages of food, goods, and service, as well as the so-called cost-of living crisis, also called inflation, have directly to do with the manufactured “shortage” of energy. It’s economics 101. When you reduce the offer but keep the demand, prices go up.

There are reports that in the UK, supermarket shelves ordinarily filled with fruit and vegetables are empty. Imagine what you could do with the billions sent to ultra-corrupt Ukraine to help kill people, and use these funds instead to buy food for the UK locals.

New elections by the people, for the people – not by the WEF.

You may bet, the strikes would stop, almost immediately.

And the manufactured chaos would also end instantly. 

Democratically-elected new governments should listen to the people.

That’s why they are called “democracies”.

But as everybody can see, there is not a single country left in the so-called west which deserves the term “democracy”.

Not one. There is not a shred of democracy in the west – if there ever was.

Maybe newly people-elected governments should lean back and think, before they contemplate their own power, and instead think about how the power of the people can be implemented so that people, and not a small elite, prosper.

It is as good as guaranteed; this would make a drastic change for the better.

It would dismantle these unelected powerful structures like the WEF, and all the financial giants behind it, and would bring forward the will of the people – all that what is meant, when we talk about democracy.

And, of course, key for all this to become a success story is dismantling the entire US / CIA / Rockefeller created EU. A corrupt, dictatorial structure.

Yes, you heard correctly, the European Union was never a European idea. 

PressTV: And finally, what should be done, in your viewpoint?

PK: The simplest, and especially in the medium to long run, the most effective solution would be what was mentioned already before:

• Get rid of the European Commission
• Dissolve the entire European Union – and get back, or rather jump forward, to the individual, autonomous and sovereign nation states we had until 2000 with their own individual currencies
• Countries could make their own internal arrangements among themselves, including currency swap-agreements
• And dedollarizing each country’s economy.

Every country’s own dedollarized currency would be a piece of freedom to ally with whomever they decide – Russia, China, even the US if they still felt it could be useful.

One thing is for sure, the economy would immediately reverse its trend – with excellent prospects for the European economy’s recovery and with a rapid economic growth.

And never, ever accept Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). It is the absolute control mechanism. It will be programmable, can be turned on or off, or even made to expire, according to your behavior. The reigning elite can let you starve, by cutting you off your – I repeat – YOUR money.

An economy can only thrive when it’s free. Yes, it needs regulation, but certainly not control by a tyrannic elite.

This would totally discourage investments and any other initiative.

And one more thing – the Future is in the East. Iran has already realized this and is doing well.

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

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

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Muslims, Christians and Jews have peacefully celebrated major religious holidays around the world during this month everywhere but in Jerusalem, the city sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths. Therethe Israeli government has curbed Muslim and Christian worship, Israeli colonists have exerted increasing pressure on Palestinian residents of the holy city and Israeli extremists have insulted and abused Christians and Muslims.

Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa declared that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu‘s hard right-wing government has encouraged extremists to harass Christian clergy and vandalise Church property, stepping up pressure on the region’s ancient Christian community to abandon Palestine to the Israelis.

“The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, have become something new,” Pizzaballa told the Associated Press. “These people feel they are protected [and] that the cultural and political atmosphere now can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians.”

Upon the proclamation of the state 75 years ago, Israel pledged to respect all faiths and allow freedom of worship.  Israel has failed to honour this commitment.  During this Easter season, Israel limited to 1,800 the congregation attending the holy fire ceremony on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the Saturday before Easter.  Traditionally 10,000 people have taken part in this service in the vast church.  The Israeli government claimed it instituted the limitation for safety reasons.

Nuns standing at the entrance of a church were spat upon by black-clad Orthodox Jews while Christians carrying a wooden cross to commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion were cursed by a Jewish man.  Last month, a religious Jew attempted to torch a church and two Israeli teenagers destroyed crosses on graves at a Protestant church.  All these incidents were filmed on phones or caught by security cameras.

One hundred years ago there were some 73,000 Palestinian Christians in Palestine, accounting for 10 per cent of the total, and 20 percent in Jerusalem. It was estimated in 2019 that the number had fallen to 2 per cent with only 2,000 Christians left in the Old City.  Since Israel’s occupation covers three-quarters of this period, it is largely to blame for the exodus of Christians.

It is striking that the Western Christian world shows little or no interest in what is happening in Jerusalem where the Christian faith was born and first took root more than 2,000 years ago.  US evangelical Protestants, who are highly influential on that country, largely support the right in Israeli and honour Israeli colonists and Jewish extremists. As the US is the only country which can exert influence on Israel, this leaves Palestinian Christians in the lurch.

Jerusalem’s Muslims are better off, largely because Muslims account for the 98 per cent of Palestinians. They have no option but to challenge Israel over official, colonist and extremist efforts to intrude in and take over Muslim places of worship, particularly Al Haram Al Sharif Mosque compound on the acropolis of Jerusalem.

On Friday, presumably the last in the holy month of Ramadan, some 250,000 worshippers entered Al Haram for prayers, filling Al Aqsa Mosque and the vast courtyard.  Tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians without hard-to-obtain Israeli permits to enter occupied Jerusalem were permitted to enter the city and Al Haram. While women and girls of all ages were allowed, males between the ages of 12 and 55 were banned. For most West Bank Palestinians Fridays in Ramadan are the only days they can visit the city and exercise their right to pray in al-Aqsa, the courtyard and nearby streets. This is not the freedom of religion Israel was bound to uphold.

Israeli police, border police and troops were clearly ordered to exercise maximum restraint last Friday, which was also celebrated across the region as Quds (Jerusalem) Day. This is because bad Israeli behaviour on April 5th generated widespread outrage and global bad publicity for Israel.

Before dawn on that day Israeli security forces raided the prayer hall in Al Aqsa where worshippers had locked the doors to spend the night in prayer and contemplation without being disturbed. The Israelis forcibly entered the mosque, firing tear gas and sponge tipped bullets and clubbing protesting Palestinians. Furnishings and stained-glass windows were broken.

In an attempt to defend al-Aqsa, angry Palestinians threw stones and threw firecrackers at the armed Israelis in helmets and bullet-proof vests.  Three dozen Palestinians were injured and 400 were thrown to the ground with their hands tied behind their backs where they laid for hours until carted off for interrogation and possible detention.  Was this the freedom of religion Israel is meant to uphold?

Fortunately, the entire scenario was caught on video by Palestinians while they were under attack and circulated widely on the Internet.  Despite an international uproar over Israel’s brutal incursion, the Israeli security forces conducted a less dramatic and damaging raid the next morning.

The Israelis justified the raids by saying they had to prevent Palestinians from attacking Israeli religious zealots who were set to enter Al Haram or from throwing stones and firecrackers at devout Israelis praying at the “Wailing Wall”, the stone wall which supports the compound on one side.  Jews believe this wall is the only surviving relic of the Second Jewish Temple erected on this site.  It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD during a Jewish rebellion.  

The upshot of the row over the well documented April 5th raid was that non-Muslims were barred from entering al-Haram during the last 10 days of Ramadan and Israel permitted West Bankers continue visiting Jerusalem on Friday the 7th and 14th.  Palestinians from Gaza are banned from visiting mosques and churches during holy days. This is not freedom of religion.

The April 5th exposure of Israeli brutality against Muslim Palestinians and weeks of protests against the plan of Netanyahu’s extremist- dominated Cabinet to pass legislation to undermine Israel’s supreme court has put his latest government in jeopardy.  There are indications that he is trying to restrain coalition members for whom “restraint” is a forbidden word.

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Featured image: Msgr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa the day of his episcopal consecration (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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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. Cease-fire negotiations have never truly begun, while NATO has only strengthened its forces thanks to Finland’s new membership (with Sweden soon likely to follow). Still, tens of thousands of people have perished; whole villages, even cities, have been reduced to rubble; millions of Ukrainians have poured into Poland and elsewhere; while Russia’s brutish invasion rages on with no end in sight.

The hope, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is that the Western allies will continue to furnish money, tanks, missiles, and everything else his battered country needs to fend off Putin’s forces. The war will be won, according to Zelensky, not through backroom compromises but on the battlefield with guns and ammo.

“I appeal to you and the world with these most simple and yet important words,” he said to a joint session of Great Britain’s parliament in February. “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”

The United Kingdom, which has committed well over $2 billion in assistance to Ukraine, has so far refused to ship fighter jets there but has promised to supply more weaponry, including tank shells made with depleted uranium (DU), also known as “radioactive bullets.” A by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is a very dense and radioactive metal that, when housed in small torpedo-like munitions, can pierce thickly armored tanks and other vehicles.

Reacting to the British announcement, Putin ominously said he would “respond accordingly” if the Ukrainians begin blasting off rounds of DU.

While the UK’s decision to send depleted-uranium shells to Ukraine is unlikely to prove a turning point in the war’s outcome, it will have a lasting, potentially devastating, impact on soldiers, civilians, and the environment. The controversial deployment of DU doesn’t pose faintly the same risks as the actual nuclear weapons Putin and his associates have hinted they might use someday in Ukraine or as would a potential meltdown at the embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in that country. Still, its use will certainly help create an even more lethal, all too literally radioactive theater of war — and Ukraine will end up paying a price for it.

The Radioactive Lions of Babylon

Stuart Dyson survived his deployment in the first Gulf War of 1991, where he served as a lance corporal with Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps. His task in Kuwait was simple enough: he was to help clean up “dirty” tanks after they had seen battle. Many of the machines he spent hours scrubbing down had carried and fired depleted uranium shells used to penetrate and disable Iraq’s T-72 tanks, better known as the Lions of Babylon.

Dyson spent five months in that war zone, ensuring American and British tanks were cleaned, armed, and ready for battle. When the war ended, he returned home, hoping to put his time in the Gulf War behind him. He found a decent job, married, and had children. Yet his health deteriorated rapidly and he came to believe that his military service was to blame. Like so many others who had served in that conflict, Dyson suffered from a mysterious and debilitating illness that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.

After Dyson suffered years of peculiar ailments, ranging from headaches to dizziness and muscle tremors, doctors discovered that he had a severe case of colon cancer, which rapidly spread to his spleen and liver. The prognosis was bleak and, after a short battle, his body finally gave up. Stuart Dyson died in 2008 at the age of 39.

His saga is unique, not because he was the only veteran of the first Gulf War to die of such a cancer at a young age, but because his cancer was later recognized in a court of law as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs.

“My feeling about Mr. Dyson’s colon cancer is that it was produced because he ingested some radioactive material and it became trapped in his intestine,” Professor Christopher Busby, an expert on the effects of uranium on health, said in his court testimony. “To my mind, there seems to be a causal arrow from his exposure to his final illness. It’s certainly much more probable than not that Mr. Dyson’s cancer was caused by exposure to depleted uranium.”

The U.S. Department of Defense estimated that American forces fired more than 860,000 rounds of DU shells during that 1991 war to push Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s military out of Kuwait. The result: a poisoned battlefield laced with radioactive debris, as well as toxic nerve agents and other chemical agents.

In neighboring southern Iraq, background radiation following that war rose to 30 times normal. Tanks tested after being shelled with DU rounds had readings 50 times higher than average.

“It’s hot forever,” explains Doug Rokke, a former major in the U.S. Army Reserve’s Medical Service Corps who helped decontaminate dozens of vehicles hit by DU shells during the first Gulf War. “It doesn’t go away. It only disperses and blows around in the wind,” he adds. And of course, it wasn’t just soldiers who suffered from DU exposure. In Iraq, evidence has been building that DU, an intense carcinogenic agent, has led to increases in cancer rates for civilians, too.

“When we were moving forward and got north of a minefield, there were a bunch of blown-out tanks that were near where we would set up a command post,” says Jason Peterson, a former American Marine who served in the first Gulf War. “Marines used to climb inside and ‘play’ in them … We barely knew where Kuwait was, let alone the kind of ammunition that was used to blow shit up on that level.”

While it’s difficult to discern exactly what caused the Gulf War Syndrome from which Dyson and so many other soldiers suffered (and continue to suffer), experts like Rokke are convinced that exposure to depleted uranium played a central role in the illness. That’s an assertion Western governments have consistently downplayed. In fact, the Pentagon has repeatedly denied any link between the two.

“I’m a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission,” Rokke, who also suffers from Gulf War Syndrome, told Vanity Fair in 2007. “I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use DU safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can’t do this safely in combat conditions. You can’t decontaminate the environment or your own troops.”

Death to Uranium

Depleted uranium can’t produce a nuclear explosion, but it’s still directly linked to the development of atomic weaponry. It’s a by-product of the uranium enrichment process used in nuclear weapons and fuel. DU is alluring to weapons makers because it’s heavier than lead, which means that, if fired at a high velocity, it can rip through the thickest of metals.

That it’s radioactive isn’t what makes it so useful on the battlefield, at least according to its proponents. “It’s so dense and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor — and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” says RAND nuclear expert and policy researcher Edward Geist.

The manufacturing of DU dates back to the 1970s in the United States. Today, the American military employs DU rounds in its M1A2 Abrams tanks. Russia has also used DU in its tank-busting shells since at least 1982 and there are plenty ofaccusations, though as yet no hard evidence, that Russia has already deployed such shells in Ukraine. Over the years, for its part, the U.S. has fired such rounds not just in Kuwait, but also in Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Syria, and Serbia as well.

Both Russia and the U.S. have reasons for using DU, since each has piles of the stuff sitting around with nowhere to put it. Decades of manufacturing nuclear weapons have created a mountain of radioactive waste. In the U.S., more than 500,000 tons of depleted-uranium waste has built up since the Manhattan Project first created atomic weaponry, much of it in Hanford, Washington, the country’s main plutonium production site. As I investigated in my book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, Hanford is now a cesspool of radioactive and chemical waste, representing the most expensive environmental clean-up project in history with an estimated price tag of $677 billion.

Uranium, of course, is what makes the whole enterprise viable: you can’t create atomic bombs or nuclear power without it. The trouble is that uranium itself is radioactive, as it emits alpha particles and gamma rays. That makes mining uranium one of the most dangerous operations on the planet.

Keep It in the Ground

In New Mexico, where uranium mines were primarily worked by Diné (Navajo People), the toll on their health proved gruesome indeed. According to a 2000 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, rates of lung cancer in Navajo men who mined uranium were 28 times higher than in those who never mined uranium. The “Navajo experience with uranium mining,” it added, “is a unique example of exposure in a single occupation accounting for the majority of lung cancers in an entire population.”

Scores of studies have shown a direct correlation between exposure to uranium and kidney disease, birth defects in infants (when mothers were exposed), increased rates of thyroid disease, and several autoimmune diseases. The list is both extensive and horrifying.

“My family had a lot of cancer,” says anti-nuclear activist and Indigenous community organizer Leona Morgan. “My grandmother died of lung cancer and she never smoked. It had to be the uranium.”

One of the largest radioactive accidents, and certainly the least reported, occurred in 1979 on Diné land when a dam broke, flooding the Puerco River near Church Rock, New Mexico, with 94 million gallons of radioactive waste. The incident received virtually no attention at the time. “The water, filled with acids from the milling process, twisted a metal culvert in the Puerco and burned the feet of a little boy who went wading. Sheep keeled over and died, while crops curdled along the banks. The surge of radiation was detected as far away as Sanders, Arizona, fifty miles downstream,” writes Judy Pasternak in her book Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajo.

Of course, we’ve known about the dangers of uranium for decades, which makes it all the more mind-boggling to see a renewed push for increased mining of that radioactive ore to generate nuclear power. The only way to ensure that uranium doesn’t poison or kill anyone is to leave it right where it’s always been: in the ground. Sadly, even if you were to do so now, there would still be tons of depleted uranium with nowhere to go. A 2016 estimate put the world’s mountain of DU waste at more than one million tons (each equal to 2,000 pounds).

So why isn’t depleted uranium banned? That’s a question antinuclear activists have been asking for years. It’s often met with government claims that DU isn’t anywhere near as bad as its peacenik critics allege. In fact, the U.S. government has had a tough time even acknowledging that Gulf War Syndrome exists. A Government Accountability Office report released in 2017 found that the Veterans Affairs Department had denied more than 80% of all Gulf War illness claims by veterans. Downplaying DU’s role, in other words, comes with the terrain.

“The use of DU in weapons should be prohibited,” maintains Ray Acheson, an organizer for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. “While some governments argue there is no definitive proof its use in weapons causes harm, it is clear from numerous investigations that its use in munitions in Iraq and other places has caused impacts on the health of civilians as well as military personnel exposed to it, and that it has caused long-term environmental damage, including groundwater contamination. Its use in weapons is arguably in violation of international law, human rights, and environmental protection and should be banned in order to ensure it is not used again.”

If the grisly legacy of the American use of depleted uranium tells us anything, it’s that those DU shells the British are supplying to Ukraine (and the ones the Russians may also be using there) will have a radioactive impact that will linger in that country for years to come, with debilitating, potentially fatal, consequences. It will, in a sense, be part of a global atomic war that shows no sign of ending.

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Joshua Frank, a TomDispatch regular, is an award-winning California-based journalist and co-editor of CounterPunch. He is the author of the new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America (Haymarket Books).

Featured image: Chernobyl by Ian Bancroft is licensed under CC BY 2.0 / Flickr

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Australia and the US will hold their largest bilateral exercise this year, with approximately 30,000 military personnel expected to participate.

The 14-day Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023 will be conducted from July 22 to August 4. Drills will be held in Queensland, the Northern Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia.

Exercise Talisman Sabre

In its tenth iteration, Exercise Talisman Sabre will involve multi-domain firepower demonstrations, land combat, amphibious and airborne operations, and large-scale logistics.

The exercises will be administered across different defense and nondefense training areas.

Australian, US, and partner nation ships sail during Exercise Talisman Saber 2017. Photo: LSIS Helen Frank/Australian Ministry of Defence

“Talisman Sabre 2023 will be the largest ever iteration of the exercise in terms of both geographic span and also partner nation involvement,” Exercise Talisman Sabre Director Brig. Damian Hill said.

“Considerable planning has gone into a safe and productive exercise for all participants.” 

“This year’s exercise will demonstrate our ability to receive large volumes of personnel and equipment into Australia from across the Indo-Pacific and stage, integrate and move them forward into the large exercise area.”

Bolstering Military Cooperation

Joining partner countries include Japan, the UK, Germany, Canada, France, Indonesia, Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, and New Zealand.

Representatives from Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines will be present to observe the exercise.

“Talisman Sabre is a practical demonstration of our enduring Alliance with the United States, through deepening cooperation in training and innovation,” Australian Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles stated.

“Australia is excited to host what will be the largest ever iteration of Talisman Sabre this year, involving more of our partner nations than ever before.”

“Talisman Sabre reflects a shared commitment to enduring relationships between trusted partners, and a stable Indo-Pacific through an upholding of the rules-based order.”

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Featured image: Australian warfighters firing machine guns during Exercise Talisman Saber 2017. Photo: CPL Mark Doran/Australian Ministry of Defence

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Just after Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, President Biden walked into the East Room of the White House and condemned the invasion with a barrage of adjectives: unprovoked, unjustified, brutal, without cause, premeditated, unnecessary. One of these quickly rose to prominence. Following Biden’s initial statement, government spokespeople, the mainstream media, professional pundits and many others routinely call the war in Ukraine “unprovoked.”

It is a well-chosen term, a rhetorical bon mot, and central to the official story that sole responsibility for the war in Ukraine belongs to Russia and Putin alone. It is also a term that gets continually reinforced by rampant speculation seeking the origin of the invasion in Putin’s brain: Is he insane? Terminally ill? Suffering form a messiah complex? Obsessed with reconstituting Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union. Based on patchy, ambiguous or often no evidence, the list is potentially endless but always dubious.

The overriding function of presenting the war in Ukraine as a crime perpetrated by one country, even by one allegedly whacked-out leader, is to relieve the U.S., NATO and actors within Ukraine of even the slightest responsibility for the war. Russia and Putin are the only perpetrators; everyone else is either an innocent bystander or an unfortunate victim—so goes the official story.

A much-needed antidote to this story is provided by Benjamin Abellow’s recent book, How The West Brought War To Ukraine. Based on the critiques of a range of scholars, U.S. government officials and military observers, and on his own investigations and interpretations, Abelow shows in compelling detail how the official story misleads. His short, seventy-one-page book is a compendium of the many ways that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked.

In the current political climate dominated by the official story, saying any such thing easily gets one tagged an apologist for Putin or Russia. Abelow makes clear, however, that he is a neither a fan of Putin nor a supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Without specifying what they were, Abelow contends that Russia and Putin had alternatives to war. The implication, of course, is that these alternatives should have been pursued. Since they were not, considerable responsibility for the horrifying and condemnable war in Ukraine, insists Abelow, falls on Russia and Putin.

But Abelow departs from the official story by showing that others were also responsible for the war in Ukraine. Although beyond the scope of and never mentioned in Abelow’s book, these would include various political actors within Ukraine itself, all of whom have been amply and deftly explored in Richard Sakwa’s Frontline Ukraine. Abelow’s focus is on the many ways in which the war in Ukraine was provoked by the U.S. and NATO.

Here are a fraction of the provocations that Abelow examines:

During German reunification in 1990-91, U.S. and NATO officials assured Soviet leaders that NATO would never expand into Eastern Europe. Despite such initial assurances and subsequent Russian complaints about having been duped, NATO proceeded to expand right up to the borders of the Russian Federation. Western assurances were never reduced to writing, but their abrogation undermined Russian trust in Western promises. Many prominent diplomatic experts, including George F. Kennan, famous for formulating the Cold War policy of containing Communism, warned that disregarding Russia’s real security concerns and pushing NATO eastward was foolhardy and would likely lead to war.

As NATO expanded, the U.S. and NATO engaged in a variety of actions that Russian leaders would predictably see as militarily threatening. The U.S.withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic and the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaties, and then ignored Russian attempts to negotiate a bilateral moratorium on deployments. The U.S. deployed nuclear-capable missile launch systems in Romania and planned them for Poland and perhaps elsewhere. The U.S. and NATO conducted live-fire rocket exercises in Estonia to practice striking targets within Russia, and the U.S. and NATO conducted massive 32-nation military training exercises near Russia’s border.

In Ukraine specifically, the U.S. and NATO exacerbated the country’s internal divisions. The U.S. involved itself in the 2014 coup against the democratically elected President of Ukraine and in the choice of his replacement. Instead of pressing for a negotiated settlement between Ukraine’s post-coup government and pro-Russian autonomists in the Donbas, the U.S. poured armaments into Ukraine, stepped up military training of Ukrainian forces, and supported ultra-nationalist and anti-Russian (some Neo-Nazi) groups and militias,

Even on the precipice of war in late 2021, the U.S.and NATO refused to renounce plans to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. Indeed, the U.S. refused to even discuss the question.

Abelow makes two convincing points about these U.S. and NATO provocations:

• First, if Russia had committed even some of the above actions above close to U.S.borders, the U.S. surely would have gone to war, even nuclear war, as it almost did during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviets installed missiles in Cuba.
• Second, but for these provocations by the U.S. and NATO, it is virtually inconceivable that Russia would have invaded Ukraine in 2022. The war in Ukraine, with all its horrors and its potential for escalating and spinning out of control, would not today be raging.

Abelow’s conclusion about the war in Ukraine is notable: “when all is taken into account, primary responsibility lies with the West, in particular with the United States.” I agree, but it is not necessary to go so far to recognize the importance of Abelow’s arguments. Any reader of Abelow’s book who is not irreversibly blinded by the official story has to see that responsibility for the war in Ukraine is at least shared.

This point is not of just historical interest. For the official story informs not just the question of how the war in Ukraine began but also of how it might be ended. Since the U.S., NATO and Ukrainian spokespeople persist in viewing Russia and Putin as the war’s sole perpetrators, they insist that the war cannot end until Russia is totally defeated, strategically weakened and forced to return all previously Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. Such goals are not only unrealistic, they block any serious effort to end the war through negotiations.

Realistically, the only alternatives to negotiations now are a long, simmering slog back and forth through Ukrainian fields and towns, a slog that will eventually grind down both sides and grind up their fighters and civilians, or another endless and escalating war that may spread uncontrollably beyond Ukraine and that may end us all in Nuclear Armageddon.

Despite its misleading nature and it ugly consequences, however, the official story is likely to persist. Erasing the official story and ending the war in Ukraine will require more than books like Abelow’s. It will require pushing peace initiatives like China’s (a topic for a future essay), which despite U.S. and NATO attempts to discredit it as biased toward Russia, is remarkably even-handed in seeing the war in Ukraine as a shared responsibility between Russia and the U.S. and NATO. Beyond that, ending the war in Ukraine will require sustained opposition by a growing peace movement, a peace movement that will surely find Abelow’s short book extremely useful. 

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Frank T. Fitzgerald is a long-time social justice and peace activist and a retired sociology professor. He has written two books on the Cuban Revolution and numerous articles on politics and society. In recent years, he has worked as a non-veteran member of Veterans for Peace and as a member of the editorial board of the journal Science & Society. He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is licensed under Attribution (CC BY 2.0)

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Last year, we discussed the declaration of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that censorship was needed to combat what he called the “infodemic.” It was a jarring position given the censorship of experts and scientists who have now been vindicated in raising questions over mask protection to natural immunities to school closings to the origins of Covid 19. Nevertheless, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf added his own voice to call for censorship. Califf declared that life expectancy rates are being suppressed due to “misinformation.” His call for action against ill-defined “disinformation” or “misinformation” is being echoed throughout the Biden Administration.

In a CNBC interview,  Califf lashed out at “health misinformation” which he said was one of his top priorities to address through “specific authorities at FDA, FTC and other areas.”

Califf noted:

“You think about the impact of a single person reaching a billion people on the internet all over the world, we just weren’t prepared for that. We don’t have societal rules that are adjudicating it quite right, and I think it’s impacting our health in very detrimental ways.”

He does not elaborate on what would be those “societal rules” for “adjudication” of access to information. However, it holds a familiar ring for free speech advocates.

In recent months, the Twitter Files revealed an extensive and secret effort by the FBI and other agencies to censor citizens on social media. I testified on that effort. New emails uncovered in the ongoing Missouri v. Biden litigation reportedly show that the Biden Administration’s censorship efforts extended to Facebook to censor private communications on its WhatsApp messaging service.

We also know of backchannel communications with the CDC and other agencies. As officials like Califf call for continued crackdowns, there is no recognition of how the government worked to silence opposing views that have been vindicated in recent months.

For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”

When a Chinese researcher told Fox News that this was man-made, the network was attacked and the left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her a “pants on fire rating.”

The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children. The closing of schools and businesses was challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.

The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat and what the WHO called our “infodemic.”

A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination.  Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections.

What is most striking about Califf’s comments is the failure to address how censorship in the last three years may have increased public health risks by suppressing opposing or dissenting scientific views. Indeed, just this week, a new British study came out directly refuting CDC guidance on masks and suggesting that, while not appreciably reducing the risk of serious Covid symptoms, masks may have caused health problems. Other studies have rejected the mask efficacy argument though this remains a matter of intense debate.

The point is that there is now a debate after social media companies allowed people to discuss these views and the media is no longer labelling dissenters as conspiracists or racists.

Before we continue to make these government efforts a top priority, we should have a public debate over the means used to combat misinformation and what constitutes misinformation. That should start with a full investigation of past government efforts to censor or blacklist individuals or groups.

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Featured image: Portrait of Robert M. Califf, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Biden. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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During the days leading up to Saturday April 15, there were indications of a possible showdown between the two official military structures in the Republic of Sudan.

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.

Nonetheless, beyond the public statements by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the SAF and his counterpart in what is often referred to as a paramilitary or militia formation, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemeti) of the RSF, there were large troop movements among both structures. The date originally slated for the signing of the agreement between the military and the designated civilian leadership was postponed until after April 6.

Although the RSF is described by some elements in the international press as a militia, its leader, General Hemeti, had been appointed as the second-in-command of the latest iteration of the militarily dominated Transitional Sovereign Council. Hemeti has been involved in negotiations with regional and foreign governments while appearing alongside General al-Burhan as the public face of the Sudanese state.

A combined effort by Hemeti and al-Burhan resulted in the toppling of the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP) administration of President al-Bashir in early April 2019. The former president remains in custody as the current security crisis worsens for the majority of the people living in the country.

The initial Sovereign Council represented a coalition of leaders from the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), which grew out of the demonstrations and rebellions beginning in December 1918, combined with the military leadership. During the period between the establishment of the original Sovereign Council in mid-2019 to the coup of December 2021 led by the military, an interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok served as a figurehead to the transitional structure.

After being held under house arrest by the Generals, Hamdok was reinstalled by the military as PM where he served for several weeks until he finally resigned. All during this period, the resistance committees continued to hold mass demonstrations demanding the immediate transition to civilian rule. The suppression by the military of the rights of mass organizations to hold demonstrations and participate equally within the national dialogue, made many people domestically and outside the country highly skeptical about the intentions of both the RSF and SAF.

After the announced postponement of the renewed political agreement, the power dynamics were such that fierce fighting erupted in key areas of Sudan, a nation with a population of 47 million. In the capital of Khartoum there are clashes surrounding the presidential palace, the military headquarters, international airport and other areas. There are also reports of clashes between the RSF and the SAF around the strategic Port Sudan on the Red Sea along with Merowe in the north of the vast country.

Several Egyptian Air Force personnel stationed at the airport in Merowe were detained by the RSF. There were claims that the home of the European Union (EU) envoy was attacked by the RSF, says the SAF in a press statement. A convoy of United States diplomatic personnel were also fired on in their vehicles during the third day of the fighting.

Sudanese speaking from inside the capital of Khartoum say that their power had been disconnected since April 15, the first day of the clashes. One woman said her household had a solar-powered battery which allowed the family to recharge their mobile phones.

There are critical shortages of food and water in the capital and other areas. Reports indicate that many hospitals have been evacuated due to safety concerns. There have been two failed attempts at a temporary ceasefire to allow a humanitarian corridor where the injured could leave the capital of Khartoum. Three employees of the World Food Program (WFP) were killed and two others were injured during clashes between the RSF and the SAF in the northern Darfur region.

In regard to the detention of the Egyptian Air Force technicians, Sudan Tribune said:

“The Rapid Support Forces announced on Wednesday (April 19) that the 27 military officers and technicians of the Egyptian Air Force, who were arrested in Merowe last Saturday, will be released as soon as possible. The RSF had stormed the military air base where the military trainees had been stationed five days prior. The RSF released a video on Wednesday showing an officer standing with two Egyptian officers and the other detainees sitting on the ground of a large room. The militia officer announced that all the detainees had been transferred to Khartoum and were unharmed. One of the Egyptian officers stated that they were safe and would return to their home country probably today. The RSF also released a statement confirming that all Egyptian military personnel present at the Merowe base are safe.” 

Egypt has maintained a solid relationship with Sudan over the years. President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is a former military leader who later ran and became head-of-state after leading a coup against the previous government of Muslim Brotherhood member President Mohamed Morsi. After the uprising of 2011, a national election was held the following year resulting in the ascendancy of Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi only served as president for one year until the coup in June 2013. Morsi was imprisoned where he died several years later.  

The military forces in Egypt and Sudan are heavily entrenched in the administrative apparatus of the states. Therefore, it is not surprising that there has been tremendous resistance in Khartoum and Cairo against the realization of democratic rule.

Regional and International Implications of the Sudan Conflict

There has been considerable diplomatic attention paid to the Republic of Sudan by several African Union (AU) member-states for obvious reasons. Sudan prior to its partition in 2011 was the largest geographic nation-state on the continent.

The vast country shares borders with seven other African states making it a gateway to northern, eastern, and central regions of the continent. Sudan is rich with oil, natural gas and gold. The Port of Sudan on the Red Sea is the focus of a planned development project involving the Russian Federation. RSF leader and the former deputy within the military-dominated Transitional Sovereign Council, General Hemeti, traveled to Moscow in February 2022 where he held high-level discussions with the Russian Federation leaders.

A stable democratic and progressive government in Sudan could make a powerful contribution to the overall struggle for African unity and development. With the adoption of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by many states throughout the continent, Sudan utilizing its natural wealth and strategic geographic location would play an indispensable role.  

It is for this reason that the imperialist states and their allies within the Gulf region have over the years interfered in the internal affairs of the country. The previous President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had faced sanctions as well as indictments issued by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court (ICC). Even prior to the ascendancy of al-Bashir as the head-of-state in 1989 as a result of a military coup, the U.S. sought to secure Sudan as a willing or unwilling partner in the desire to maintain global hegemony.

Under the previous U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, interim Prime Minister Hamdok during 2020 was pressured into accepting the “normalization” of relations between Khartoum and the State of Israel. This was done despite the constitutional prohibition of such relations based upon the Israel Boycott Act signed into law in 1958, just two years after the national independence of the country from British imperialism.

The establishment of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv carried along with it pledges to not support terrorism. Sudan had been on the list of state sponsors of terrorism as defined by the U.S.

Hamdok had agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars from Sudanese government funds to the families of victims of terrorist attacks which did not even take place inside Sudan. All of these western-oriented foreign policy decisions would ultimately lead to loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, among other western financial institutions.

Nonetheless, irrespective of which armed structures or bourgeois politicians that are favored by Washington, it will take a united front of the masses of Sudanese workers, farmers, youth and professionals to overturn military rule. The removal of the military as the principal governing unit within the state will provide the ability for a genuine democratic debate inside the country.

The regional organizations of East Africa along with the AU, EU, U.S. and United Nations are all calling for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan. In addition, these regional and international organizations have warned other states about providing support to either side in the conflict. A high-ranking military official in Sudan has accused two regional states of providing military assistance to the RSF without specifically naming them. (See this)

The eruption of the internal conflict within the Sudanese military structures should serve as a warning to the AU. Efforts to unify the continent and to “silence the guns” must continue to be a priority for the continent and its people.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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It’s been well over a month since the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) Su-27SM3 masterfully downed a USAF MQ-9 “Reaper” drone that was spying on regions in southern Russia. The incident occurred on March 14, when the US drone flew just 70 km off the coast of Crimea. At the time, the VKS noted that the MQ-9 had its transponders off while heading toward Russian airspace in what was a clear violation of the agreed protocols for avoiding escalation. At the time, the Pentagon insisted that the drone was “merely conducting routine operations in international airspace over the Black Sea and posed no threat to anyone”. However, as it soon became clear, MQ-9 (presumably the latest Block 5 variant) was carrying out ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) over critically important Russian military infrastructure.

This was certainly a red line for Russia, as it’s perfectly aware that the information acquired through ISR close to Russian airspace is shared directly with the Kiev regime, enabling precision strikes. At the time, top Russian officials such as Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, stated that the incident proves the US is directly involved in the conflict. And indeed, this was certainly causing thousands of Russian military and civilian deaths even before February 24, 2022, because the Pentagon has been providing ISR to Kiev since 2014. Only a few days before the incident, the Neo-Nazi junta forces conducted numerous attacks on civilian settlements in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts (regions), killing and/or injuring hundreds.

The US warhawks were furious at the Biden administration for “allowing the Russians to shoot down our drones”. Some have even called for the Pentagon to “respond in kind”. Thankfully, there are still high-ranking officers in the US military that are perfectly aware of just how bad an idea that is, so these suicidal requests were promptly denied. What’s more, the latest reports indicate that Washington DC has not only drastically reduced the presence of its ISR platforms in areas close to Russia, but has even completely halted the flights of its extremely expensive RQ-4 “Global Hawk” spy drones, the data published by the Flightradar24 tracker website shows. According to its archive of tracks, the last time a US “Global Hawk” drone flew over the Black Sea was on March 21.

Since then, US drones based in Sicily haven’t approached even the Black Sea airspace, let alone the military installations in southern Russia. Before the start of Moscow’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, the Pentagon flew approximately 10 ISR missions per month, spying on Russian troops in Crimea. During the March 21-April 20 period, US “Global Hawk” drones made only three flights from the airbase in Sicily, severely undermining the amount of real-time battlefield data they could provide to the Kiev regime. Worse yet, these missions were conducted from within Romanian airspace and at a distance of over 400 km from Crimea. This is beyond the range of “Global Hawk’s” systems, capable of receiving clear images of an area at a maximum range of 200 km.

“Following the incident with the American Reaper drone, which fell into the waters of the Black Sea on April 14, ‘Global Hawks’ made only two more flights over the Black Sea — on March 17 and March 21 — both at a range no closer than 140 kilometers from the southern coast of Crimea. Apparently, the US command considered further flights in this area impractical. On the one hand, the amount of information received by a drone at such a range is sharply reduced; on the other hand, after March 14, the American side faced the danger of losing such equipment, and a Global Hawk is several times more expensive than a Reaper and is loaded with the most advanced equipment,” a military expert told Sputnik.

Indeed, the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” drones are among the most expensive hardware in the US military. The latest Block 40 variant costs over $130 million apiece, a mind-boggling figure for a single drone. The aircraft is a HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) ISR platform that provides direct support to US forces worldwide. It can fly for up to 36 hours at a range of up to 22,000 km, giving it an unprecedented loitering time and covering approximately 100,000 km² of any given surveyed area in a period of 24 hours. For reference, this is the size of South Korea or Iceland. RQ-4 “Global Hawk” is equipped with various ISR equipment such as radars, optical tracking systems and infrared sensors, all of which have been used extensively to spy on Russian forces in Ukraine.

Weapons such as the HIMARS (among others) are fed battlefield data directly from platforms such as the “Global Hawk”. This means that hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries caused by the aforementioned US weapons across the newly integrated Russian regions were entirely intentional, making them an unadulterated war crime. On the other hand, NATO ISR assets have also contributed to the vast majority of Russian military deaths, prolonging the conflict. The US and NATO don’t even need to fire a single bullet to kill Russian soldiers and civilians. However, while the Kiev regime forces are pulling the trigger, it is the political West’s “eyes” that are targeting them and even issuing commands. Considering these facts, downing NATO’s ISR platforms most definitely saves thousands of lives.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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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. President Biden dismissed the leaks as revealing nothing of “great consequence.”

What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while going badly for Russia too, so that neither side is likely to break the stalemate this year, and this will lead to “a protracted war beyond 2023,” as one of the documents says. 

The publication of these assessments should lead to renewed calls for our government to level with the public about what it realistically hopes to achieve by prolonging the bloodshed, and why it continues to reject the resumption of the promising peace negotiations it blocked in April 2022. 

We believe that blocking those talks was a dreadful mistake, in which the Biden administration capitulated to the warmongering, since-disgraced U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and that current U.S. policy is compounding that mistake at the cost of tens of thousands more Ukrainian lives and the destruction of even more of their country.

In most wars, while the warring parties strenuously suppress the reporting of civilian casualties for which they are responsible, professional militaries generally treat accurate reporting of their own military casualties as a basic responsibility. But in the virulent propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine, all sides have treated military casualty figures as fair game, systematically exaggerating enemy casualties and understating their own. 

Publicly available U.S. estimates have supported the idea that many more Russians are being killed than Ukrainians, deliberately skewing public perceptions to support the notion that Ukraine can somehow win the war, as long as we just keep sending more weapons.

The leaked documents provide internal U.S. military intelligence assessments of casualties on both sides. But different documents, and different copies of the documents circulating online, show conflicting numbers, so the propaganda war rages on despite the leak.   

The most detailed assessment of attrition rates of troops says explicitly that U.S. military intelligence has “low confidence” in the attrition rates it cites. It attributes that partly to “potential bias” in Ukraine’s information sharing, and notes that casualty assessments “fluctuate according to the source.”

So, despite denials by the Pentagon, a document that shows a higher death toll on the Ukrainian side may be correct, since it has been widely reported that Russia has been firing several times the number of artillery shells as Ukraine, in a bloody war of attrition in which artillery appears to be the main instrument of death. Altogether, some of the documents estimate a total death toll on both sides approaching 100,000 and total casualties, killed and wounded, of up to 350,000. 

Another document reveals that, after using up the stocks sent by NATO countries, Ukraine is running out of missiles for the S-300 and BUK systems that make up 89% of its air defenses. By May or June, Ukraine will therefore be vulnerable, for the first time, to the full strength of the Russian air force, which has until now been limited mainly to long-range missile strikes and drone attacks.

Recent Western arms shipments have been justified to the public by predictions that Ukraine will soon be able to launch new counter-offensives to take back territory from Russia. Twelve brigades, or up to 60,000 troops, were assembled to train on newly delivered Western tanks for this “spring offensive,” with three brigades in Ukraine and nine more in Poland, Romania and Slovenia. 

But a leaked document from the end of February reveals that the nine brigades being equipped and trained abroad had less than half their equipment and, on average, were only 15% trained. Meanwhile, Ukraine faced a stark choice to either send reinforcements to Bakhmut or withdraw from the town entirely, and it chose to sacrifice some of its “spring offensive” forces to prevent the imminent fall of Bakhmut.

Ever since the U.S. and NATO started training Ukrainian forces to fight in Donbas in 2015, and while it has been training them in other countries since the Russian invasion, NATO has provided six-month training courses to bring Ukraine’s forces up to basic NATO standards. On this basis, it appears that many of the forces being assembled for the “spring offensive” would not be fully trained and equipped before July or August. 

But another document says the offensive will begin around April 30th, meaning that many troops may be thrown into combat less than fully trained, by NATO standards, even as they have to contend with more severe shortages of ammunition and a whole new scale of Russian airstrikes. The incredibly bloody fighting that has already decimated Ukrainian forces will surely be even more brutal than before.

The leaked documents conclude that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” and that the most likely outcome remains only modest territorial gains.

The documents also reveal serious deficiencies on the Russian side, deficiencies revealed by the failure of their winter offensive to take much ground. The fighting in Bakhmut has raged on for months, leaving thousands of fallen soldiers on both sides and a burned out city still not 100% controlled by Russia. 

The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other in the ruins of Bakhmut and other front-line towns in Donbas is why one of the most important documents predicted that the war was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate.”

Adding to the concerns about where this conflict is headed is the revelation in the leaked documents about the presence of 97 special forces from NATO countries, including from the U.K. and the U.S. This is in addition to previous reports about the presence of CIA personnel, trainers and Pentagon contractors, and the unexplained deployment of 20,000 troops from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Brigades near the border between Poland and Ukraine.

Worried about the ever-increasing direct U.S. military involvement, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz has introduced a Privileged Resolution of Inquiry to force President Biden to notify the House of the exact number of U.S. military personnel inside Ukraine and precise U.S. plans to assist Ukraine militarily.

We can’t help wondering what President Biden’s plan could be, or if he even has one. But it turns out that we’re not alone. In what amounts to a second leak that the corporate media have studiously ignored, U.S. intelligence sources have told veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that they are asking the same questions, and they describe a “total breakdown” between the White House and the U.S. intelligence community.

Hersh’s sources describe a pattern that echoes the use of fabricated and unvetted intelligence to justify U.S. aggression against Iraq in 2003, in which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan are by-passing regular intelligence analysis and procedures and running the Ukraine War as their own private fiefdom. They reportedly smear all criticism of President Zelenskyy as “pro-Putin,” and leave U.S. intelligence agencies out in the cold trying to understand a policy that makes no sense to them.

What U.S. intelligence officials know, but the White House is doggedly ignoring, is that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, top Ukrainian officials running this endemically corrupt country are making fortunes skimming money from the over $100 billion in aid and weapons that America has sent them. 

According to Hersh’s report, the CIA assesses that Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskyy, have embezzled $400 million from money the United States sent Ukraine to buy diesel fuel for its war effort, in a scheme that involves buying cheap, discounted fuel from Russia. Meanwhile, Hersh says, Ukrainian government ministries literally compete with each other to sell weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers to private arms dealers in Poland, the Czech Republic and around the world.

Hersh writes that, in January 2023, after the CIA heard from Ukrainian generals that they were angry with Zelenskyy for taking a larger share of the rake-off from these schemes than his generals, CIA Director William Burns went to Kyiv to meet with him. Burns allegedly told Zelenskyy he was taking too much of the “skim money,” and handed him a list of 35 generals and senior officials the CIA knew were involved in this corrupt scheme. 

Zelenskyy fired about ten of those officials, but failed to alter his own behavior. Hersh’s sources tell him that the White House’s lack of interest in doing anything about these goings-on is a major factor in the breakdown of trust between the White House and the intelligence community.

First-hand reporting from inside Ukraine by New Cold War has described the same systematic pyramid of corruption as Hersh. A member of parliament, formerly in Zelenskyy’s party, told New Cold War that Zelenskyy and other officials skimmed 170 million euros from money that was supposed to pay for Bulgarian artillery shells. 

The corruption reportedly extends to bribes to avoid conscription. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel was told by a military recruitment office that it could get the son of one of its writers released from the front line in Bakhmut and sent out of the country for $32,000.

As has happened in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and all the wars the United States has been involved in for many decades, the longer the war goes on, the more the web of corruption, lies and distortions unravels. 

The torpedoing of peace talks, the Nord Stream sabotage, the hiding of corruption, the politicization of casualty figures, and the suppressed history of broken promises and prescient warnings about the danger of NATO expansion are all examples of how our leaders have distorted the truth to shore up U.S. public support for perpetuating an unwinnable war that is killing a generation of young Ukrainians.

These leaks and investigative reports are not the first, nor will they be the last, to shine a light through the veil of propaganda that permits these wars to destroy young people’s lives in faraway places, so that oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine and the United States can amass wealth and power. 

The only way this will stop is if more and more people get active in opposing those companies and individuals that profit from war–who Pope Francis calls the Merchants of Death–and boot out the politicians who do their bidding, before they make an even more fatal misstep and start a nuclear war.

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

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022. They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Asten / Flickr CC

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At an over-excited anti-imperialist website, there is a fresh burst of hype about BRICS de-dollarisation. This is the second time since January that Ben Norton has made spectacular predictions about the end of US$ hegemony. And even at CounterPunch yesterday, two otherwise sensible commentators – Richard Wolff and Ramzy Baroud – chimed in with uncritical endorsement of the BRICS as a potential vehicle to undermine yankee-centric imperialist power.

Also, anytime there’s turbulence in global finance and the $ can be attacked, there will be a raft of personal-finance commentators who make money from investment churn, as well as pro-gold investment sites, and these hucksters really love the BRICS as a challenger – but more on them later. And Steve Forbes and Jim O’Neill have chimed in with a dash of cold water. Can’t trust any of them, but see the next email.

There are obvious temptations to headfall down this slippery slope. The geopolitical situation today appears new and different because of the alleged upscaling of multipolarity. But it’s not easy to translate these fast-shifting political and territorial alliances into monetary and currency strengths. Indeed what I’m reading now is all too reminiscent of 2014 just after the BRICS’ Fortaleza summit, when ‘alternatives’ to the IMF and World Bank were announced. At that point, a few others of my old friends also drank the BRICS kool-aid in their desperate thirst for alternative financial arrangements.

And we can always count on Pepe Escobar to be the most excited lad:

Russia and China are showing to the Global South that what American strategists had in store for them – you’re going to “freeze in the dark” if you deviate from what we say – is no longer applicable. Most of the Global South is now in open geoeconomic revolt… the most important vector is that both China and Russia, each exhibiting their own complex particularities – and both dismissed by the West as unassimilable Others – are heavily invested in building workable economic models that are not connected, in several degrees, to the Western financial casino and/or supply chain networks.

I should repeat that – in part because I worked inside the Fed on-and-off, in Washington and Philadelphia, from 1981-85, at the time the chair, Paul Volcker, was felling more Africans through economic violence than did Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold combined – you can count on me to be near the head of the queue seeking the end of US$ hegemony.

But in the just same skeptical way that Yanis Varoufakis posed the problem in Havana a few weeks ago, would we really expect anything fundamentally different, from the BRICS?

“Our New Non-Aligned Movement will fail if we give it a narrow role of bringing together the G77 and the BRICS in opposition to the West. We need to beware not only the functionaries in Washington or London or Brussels, who work tirelessly so that nothing changes, but also government officials in the pocket of capitalists in the Global South, including China, who use the US trade deficit to exploit their people, their country, and then stash their dollarised surplus value within the circuits of Wall Street and the City of London.”

Unfortunately, the article below by Norton draws off a brief, superficial interview Dilma Rousseff gave a few days ago to yet another bland, unthinking CGTN reporter. The line of argument unfolds in the tradition of overenthusiastic lefties who view the world as a series of nation-state conflicts – especially featuring the Rest against the West – instead of as diverse interstate, intrastate, class, social and political-ecological struggles in the context of overall capitalist crisis tendencies.

The best Dilma could offer was this generalisation:

We need a mechanism – a so-called anti-crisis mechanism – which must be counter-cyclical and support stabilization. At the same time it is necessary to find ways to avoid foreign exchange risk and other issues such as being dependent on the single currency such as the US dollar. The good news is that we are seeing many countries choosing to trade using their own currencies. China and Brazil for instance are agreeing to exchange with RMB in the Brazilian Real at the NDB we have committed to it in our strategy for the period from 2022 to 2026. NDB has to lend 30 % in local currency and so 30 % of our loan book will be financed in the currencies of our member countries. That would be extremely important to help our countries avoid exchange rate risks and shortage in finance that hinder long-term investments else here.

Not mentioned is that there is already such an anti-crisis mechanism, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which has not been used, and in any case it is ultimately just a way for the IMF to gain greater leverage since the CRA is tied to IMF ‘stabilisation’ packages which are pro-cyclical and ultimately destabilising.

As for the request for the NDB “to lend 30% in local currencies,” hang on, that means, firstly, 70% will be financed with Western currencies – typically the US$, which is extremely expensive unless the $ crashes, and yet with global financial instability underway it seems the $ is sticking to its relatively high post-2020 levels  – and even the 30% in local currencies will not be provided in local interest rates, but instead be correlated to a rate consistent with expected devaluation (in relation to a basket of international currencies).

To maintain its international credit rating up, the BRICS NDB treasury would logically demand from borrowers much higher interest rates, in a period where we can expect four of the five BRICS to continue suffering currency depreciation. As the chart to the right shows, the Rupee went from 44/$ in 2008 to 75/$ in late 2021; and in the same period, the Ruble fell from 25/$ to 75/$; the Rand fell from 9/$ to 17/$; and the Real went from 2.2/$ to 5/$. Only the Renmimbi held steady.

As the blue area-graph below shows, the US$ was strongest in the 1980s, thanks to Volcker – and indeed had to be manipulated downwards by G7 finance ministers led by Baker and Brady in the U.S. And then it rose again during the 1998 Long Term Capital Management crash and the 2000-01 U.S. stock market dot.com collapse.

The collar bumped up again for the 2008 global financial meltdown. Then as the global commodity super-cycle ended in 2014-15 it spiked, as it did in 2020 with Covid lockdowns and in March 2022 with Putin’s Ukraine invasion.

The point is obvious: if there’s trouble in the world, even if it emanates from the U.S. as so many banking crises have, the $ gets a boost from investor flight to the supposedly safe $. Today, on an index basis that was 150 in 1985, the $ is still at 102, which is much higher than the average of the last 45 years, when it had dipped to as low as 72 on that index.

How about the sales of U.S. Treasury Bills by Beijing as an indicator? True, in January 2021, China owned $1.095 trillion of the total $28 trillion U.S. national debt – and last month the figure had dropped below $850 billion. But as was pointed out by Reuters, in reality China has been net buyers of $-denominated securities. The apparent decline in T-Bills was partly due to:

“valuation effects – recall that Treasuries had their worst year in decades last year – accounted for $114.4 billion, meaning the real decline in China’s holdings was ‘only’ $59.5 billion. This does not necessarily equate to outright selling. Some – probably most of it – was due to bonds maturing and not being reinvested. Meanwhile, China’s holdings of U.S. agency bonds last year rose by $50.9 billion and valuation effects accounted for $34.8 billion. This means the real increase was $85.9 billion, substantially more than the decline in Treasuries holdings. “Every holder of U.S. Treasuries in 2022 saw significant valuation losses. China’s losses are large but hardly unique,” said Brad Setser, an economist who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Maybe the big story is there is no sign that China’s dollar holding portfolio has changed much. There has been no significant shift since 2015-16.”

Back to the question of whether BRICS Bank loans should be in US$ or in local currency. This is a point made long ago by a prior BRICS Bank president from India, K.V. Kamath. Here’s how I wrote it up in 2016:

According to the SA foreign ministry’s Dave Malcolmson, there is strong political will to engage in non-dollar lending. Malcolmsen (2016) reported to Parliament about a 2015 presentation by KV Kamath, the NDB President. Amongst the innovative features of the NDB, “The actual challenge in respect of loan payments for developing countries pertain moreover to that of the currency fluctuation which increases the loan repayment terms (usually in USD) rather than agreed interest rates for such loans. He emphasized the importance of raising loans in local currencies to lessen such a burden.” Yet in its first five years, the vast majority of the $8 billion in NDB loans were dollar denominated, even though these were mainly projects characterized by local-currency expenditures. There were minimal import requirements in loans for transportation (29 percent), energy (26 percent), water/sanitation/irrigation (22 percent), social infrastructure (15 percent), and cleaner production (8 percent).

The bigger dilemma, though, is whether the BRICS are reconstituting from their lowest point, a year ago, when Bolsonaro dragged the bloc down into ‘spalling’ territory, in the context of Putin’s indefensible invasion of Ukraine and ongoing Sino-Indian border conflicts. Here’s hype from Baroud:

As BRICS strengthens, it will have the potential to help poorer countries without pushing a self-serving political agenda, or indirectly manipulating and controlling local economies. As inflation is hitting many western countries, resulting in slower economic growth and causing social unrest, nations in the Global South are using this as an opportunity to develop their own economic alternative. This means that groups like BRICS will cease being exclusively economic institutions. The struggle is now very political…The BRICS countries, in particular, are leading the charge and are set to serve as the facilitator of rearranging the world’s economic and financial map. 

This is Richard Wolff’s question:

Will some multinational new world order emerge and shape a new world economy? The most interesting possibility and perhaps the likeliest is that China and the entire BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of nations will undertake the construction and maintenance of a new world economy. The war in Ukraine has already enhanced the prospects of such an outcome by strengthening the BRICS alliance. Many other countries have applied or will soon apply for entry into the BRICS framework. Together, they have the population, resources, productive capacity, connections, and accumulated solidarity to be a new pole for world economic development. Were they to play that role, the remaining parts of the world from Australia and New Zealand to Africa, Europe, and South America would have to rethink their foreign economic and political policies. Their economic futures depend in part on how they navigate the contest between old and new world economic organizations.

The problem, as I just witnessed last week at the IMF/World Bank protests, is that the new BRICS are still tied into the “old world” mode of neoliberal corporate multilateralism. The failure by Russia to go through with its recent threat to offer an alternative as Bank President to Ajay Banga – Washington’s predator choice to replace the climate-denialist Trump appointee David Malpass – is just one indicator. Nor have the BRICS made any obvious attempt to change IMF/Bank lending policies or ideology. The BRICS Bank’s and Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank joining financial sanctions against Putin is another indicator of financial-imperial stickiness.

The one anti-imperialist move by a BRICS leader against finance, was Putin’s default on international debt last year, but he really did want to pay back those loans, but was – he claimed – prevented from doing so by western financial sanctions. The only other defaults on foreign debt by BRICS countries were by Boris Yeltsin in 1998, by Brazil’s Jose Sarney in 1987 and by SA’s PW Botha in 1985 – but in each case it was due to lack of immediate hard currency.

Back in 2016, here’s the way it looked when I wrote up these same points for Third World Network:

BRICS finance ministers regularly expressed dissatisfaction with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) governance, notwithstanding having collectively spent $75 billion on the IMF’s recapitalization in 2012. To the surprise and disappointment of many BRICS supporters, however, the CRA actually empowers the IMF because, if a member country is in need of more than 30 percent of its borrowing quota it must first go to the IMF for a structural adjustment loan and conditionality before accessing more from the CRA. For South Africa, whose foreign debt rose from around $30 billion in 2003 to $150 billion a dozen years later – i.e., more than 40 percent of GDP, which puts it in the debt-crisis danger zone – this would mean that only $3 billion is available from the CRA before recourse to the IMF would be necessary. (In 1985, the last time this debt ratio was hit, the then leader of apartheid South Africa found it necessary to default on $13 billion in short-term debt payments coming due, to close the stock exchange and to impose exchange controls.)

Moreover, both the CRA and NDB are US dollar-denominated lenders, instead of establishing a fusion mechanism for their own monies: the real, ruble, rupee, renmimbi and rand. Such BRICS subservience would, remarked financier Ousmène Jacques Mandeng of Pramerica Investment Management in a Financial Times blog, ‘help overcome the main constraints of the global financial architecture. It may well be the piece missing to promote actual financial globalisation.’[1] As Brazil’s Ministry of Finance reminded in July 2015, the CRA ‘will contribute to promoting international financial stability, as it will complement the current global network of financial protection. It will also reinforce the world’s economic and financial agents’ trust.’[2]

Nevertheless, a great deal of the BRICS bloc’s credibility amongst progressive international political commentators rests upon aggressive rhetoric about potential global financial interventions. According to Horace Campbell, ‘Ultimately, in the context of the present currency wars, the CRA will replace the IMF as the provider of resources for BRICS members and other poor societies when there are balance of payments difficulties.’[3] Mark Weisbrot argued that the CRA ‘has the potential to break the pattern not only of US-EU global dominance but also of the harmful conditions typically attached to balance of payments support.’[4] According to Walden Bello, both the CRA and NDB ‘aim to break the global North’s chokehold on finance and development.’[5] Radhika Desai argues, ‘The BRICS are building a challenge to western economic supremacy.’[6] And after the Ufa summit, according to Mike Whitney of CounterPunch, ‘The dollar is toast. The IMF is toast. The US debt market (US Treasuries) is toast… Ufa marks a fundamental change in thinking, a fundamental change in approach, and a fundamental change in strategic orientation.’[7]

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Cometh the new platform, cometh new actions in law, the fragile litigant ever ready to dash off a writ to those with (preferably) deep pockets.  And so, it transpires that artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, for all the genius behind their creation, are up for legal scrutiny and judicial redress.  Certainly, some private citizens are getting rather ticked off about what such bots as ChatGPT are generating about them.     

Some of this is indulgent, narcissistic craving – you deserve what you get if you plug your name into an AI generator, hoping for sweet things to be said about you.  Things get even comical when the search platform is itself riddled with inaccuracies.

One recent example stirring interest in the Digital Kingdom is a threatened legal suit against the OpenAI chatbot.  Brian Hood, Mayor of Hepburn Shire Council in the Australian state of Victoria, was alerted to inaccurate accusations about bribery regarding a case that took place between 1999 and 2004.  It involved Note Printing Australia, an entity of the Reserve Bank of Australia.  Hood had worked at Note Printing Australia and blew the whistle on bribes being made to foreign authorities.  He was never charged with the crime itself. However, answers generated by ChatGPT suggested otherwise, including the claim that Hood was found guilty of the said bribery allegations.

In a statement provided to Ars Technica by Gordon Legal, the firm representing Hood, more details are given.  Among “several false statements” returned by the AI bot are claims that Hood “was accused of bribing officials in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam between 1999 and 2005, that he was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of false accounting under the Corporations Act in 2012, and that he authorised payments to a Malaysian arms dealer acting as a middleman to secure a contract with the Malaysian Government.”

James Naughton, a partner at Gordon Legal, is representing Hood.  “He’s an elected official, his reputation is central to his role,” stated the lawyer.  “It would potentially be a landmark moment in the sense that it’s applying this defamation law to a new area of artificial intelligence and publication in the IT space.”

In March, Hood’s legal representatives wrote a letter of concern to OpenAI, demanding that they amend the outlined errors within 28 days, threatening a defamation action against the company in the event they refused to do so.

The question here is whether ChatGPT’s supposedly defamatory imputations might fall within the realm of liability.  The bot’s functionality on generating facts is currently sketchy, and any user should be familiar with that fact.  That said, opinions on the subject of reputational liability remain mixed. 

Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School does not regard the notion as outlandish.  “It matters not, for purposes of legal liability, whether the alleged lies about you or someone else were generated by a human being or by a chatbot, by a genuine intelligence or by a machine algorithm.”

Robert Post of the Yale Law School looks at the matter from the perspective of the communication itself.  Defamation would not take place at the point the information is generated by the bot.  It would only happen if that (mis)information was communicated or disseminated by the user.  “A ‘publication’ happens only when a defendant communicates the defamatory statement to a third party.”

Not so, claims RonNell Andersen Jones of the University of Utah.  “If defamatory falsehood is generated by an AI chatbot itself, it is harder to conceptualise this within our defamation law framework, which presupposes an entity with a state of mind on the other end of the communication.” 

In terms of defaming a public figure, “actual malice” would have to be shown – something distinctly at odds in the ChatGPT context.  Jones points us in a possibly different direction: that the function, or otherwise, of such a system could be seen through the prism of product liability. 

Those based in the US might resort to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that most remarkable of provisions that provides internet service providers immunity from legal suits regarding content published by third parties on the site.  The appeal of the section is evident by how many attacks have been made against it, be it from campaigning liberal celebrities with bruised reputations or Donald Trump himself.

But the original drafters of the law, Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, and former Rep. Chris Cox, a California Republican, are of the view that chatbot creators would not be able to avail themselves of the protection.  “To be entitled to immunity,” Cox suggested to The Washington Post, “a provider of an interactive computer service must not have contributed to the creation or development of the content at issue.”

When Ars Technica attempted to replicate the various mistakes supposedly generated by ChatGPT, they came up short.  Ditto the BBC.  This might suggest that the generated errors have been corrected.  But over the next few weeks, if not months, expect a number of thick, all-covering disclaimers to ensure that AI bots such as ChatGPT are not subject to liability. 

As a matter of fact, ChatGPT already has one: “Given the probabilistic nature of machine learning, use of our Services may in some situations result in incorrect Output that does not accurately reflect real people, places, or facts.  You should evaluate the accuracy of any Output as appropriate for your use case, including by using human review of the Output.”  Whether this satisfies technologically illiterate courts remains to be seen. 

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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Relating to the situation in Ukraine, it can be revealing to look at perceptions of its ongoing developments from abroad. Even to non-military observers located hundreds of miles away, it has become increasingly clear as the current conflict continues unabated that this heavily favours the Russian military, with its much greater reserves of manpower and equipment than the NATO-supplied AFU. 

In the western European state of the Republic of Ireland, where the author lives beside the capital city Dublin, this island nation has traditionally had friendly ties with the United States; in large part because of Ireland’s position on the map, at the very edge of western Europe where begins the Atlantic Ocean. 

Across the Atlantic, the next countries within reach of Ireland are the US and Canada. In the not too distant past hundreds of thousands of Irish people, out of feelings of necessity, emigrated in ships to North America. Often it was those faced with difficult choices such as in the Great Famine years, 1845–52, during which more than 1 million Irish citizens perished out of a total population in 1845 of 8.5 million. (1) 

Famine Memorial in Dublin (Licensed under the Public Domain)

For many the scenario was either starvation or moving overseas. The Irish population has still not fully recovered from the Great Famine, and today on the whole island (Republic and Northern Ireland) there is 7 million people. 

The self-serving policies of Ireland’s powerful neighbour, Britain, made worse the effects of the famine, in which the Irish public was overly reliant on a single food source, the potato, whose crops in Ireland were failing in the mid-19th century. This was because of an airborne fungus-like microorganism that had originated in Latin America, and which was transported in vessels over the Atlantic to Europe (2). London could have reduced some of the suffering by importing food products to Ireland, but chose to act in a different manner. 

The British authorities were obviously not the direct cause of the famine itself. A previous famine, that struck Ireland in the early 1740s, killed up to 20% of the country’s population, which was caused mainly by prolonged extreme cold which wiped out crops; per capita the “Great Frost Famine” killed more Irish residents than the later disaster. 

Famines occur regularly in human history and have affected various nations, including major powers like Russia. The Irish and Russians may have more in common than they realise. The two countries have experienced hardships through famines and the actions of expansionist forces – Russia being subjected to invasion from the armies of conquerors such as Napoleon and Hitler, and Ireland suffering from the actions of British monarchies. 

With present day events while the British, like the Americans and some other NATO states, have been fervent in providing military and technical assistance to Kiev, most Irish people prefer their country to maintain its normal position of strict neutrality. A survey from April 2022 revealed that 66% of Irish voters want the country to preserve its neutrality, and to resist joining entities like NATO. (3) 

A majority of Irish (55%) also do not want the country to send military aid to Kiev, a policy which has continued. There have not been concerted displays of public support for the Zelensky regime, or for the Western-backed AFU. The absence of Ukrainian flags along Irish streets, including in Dublin’s many suburbs, tells its own story.

Having said that, the Irish on occasion have voiced considerable sympathy for Ukrainians, including majority support (70%) for Western sanctions (4). This can at least partially be explained by lack of historical awareness of the Ukraine crisis, and mainstream media bias. 

The Irish press is concentrated mostly in the hands of a few liberal elites, who by their nature have positive attitudes towards US hegemony. There is little media criticism and scrutiny of NATO expansion to Russia’s frontiers, which has been an overwhelming cause behind the tensions regarding Ukraine, along with the Ukrainian army’s assaults against the Donbass region which have been taking place for years. The long-standing media failures relate to Irish and Western media in general. 

The media censorship ensures that Irish citizens are poorly informed of Ukraine’s actual history, which must be the case in other western European countries and in North America. Ukraine is of course historically a Russian territory, dating back many generations into Russia’s long history as a state. The mass media in Ireland, supported by the liberals and globalists, also avoid encouraging debate concerning the neo-Nazi ideology present in Ukraine, along with the terrorist activities relating for example to far-right Ukrainian units such as the Azov, Aidar, Dnipro and Donbas battalions, etc. 

The lack of discussion on these issues has meant that the neo-Nazism/terrorism, linked to the regime in Kiev, is not forefront in the public mind. However, Paul Murphy, an Irish member of parliament (MP) with the political alliance People Before Profit–Solidarity, has publicly criticised neo-Nazism in Ukraine, specifically the Azov Battalion which he described as “an openly racist fascist regiment” (5). Murphy refused to applaud Zelensky when the latter spoke online to the Irish parliament (the Dáil) in April 2022. 

Also remaining silent when Zelensky appeared on the screen were the MPs Richard Boyd Barrett, Gino Kenny and Bríd Smith (6). Another Irish politician, Clare Daly, a member of the European parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency, has been critical of NATO and EU policies. Last summer, Daly was blacklisted by Kiev’s secret service who say she is favourable to Russia. 

In February 2023 a Ukrainian “Edelweiss” unit was named by Zelensky, which again evokes images of Nazi Germany. In the first year (1933) of Hitler’s rule, an opera song was created with the dictator’s personal approval titled, “Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower is the simple Edelweiss” (German translation, Adolf Hitler’s Lieblingsblume ist das schlichte Edelweiss). 

The song was sung by Harry Steier, a well-known, pro-Nazi opera tenor; it was a hit in Nazi Germany and popular among Hitler’s inner circle. Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s former Minister for Armaments, recalled how “From then on [1933] the edelweiss was officially ‘the Führer’s flower’” (7). While the edelweiss has been closely linked to Hitler, this flower was further used as a symbol by Wehrmacht and SS mountain regiments, like the Gebirgsjäger, light infantry Nazi mountain troops. Zelensky’s “Edelweiss” unit happens to be a mountain regiment as well. 

Nazism in Ukraine is not a recent phenomenon, and even predates World War II. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a terrorist militant group, was very closely aligned to Nazi ideology. The OUN had been founded in 1929, four years before Hitler came to power in Germany and when the German Nazi Party was a small organization. Stepan Bandera, a supporter of Nazism and himself a terrorist, joined the OUN at its outset in 1929. Upon the OUN’s establishment that year, it was headed by Yevhen Konovalets, a far-right military commander. 

Bandera’s OUN and Nazi officials at joint Celebration dedicated to the establishment of Ukrainian Statehood in Western Ukraine, 7 July 1941. Occupied Eastern Poland. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin said in November 1937 that Konovalets was “an agent of German fascism”. This was accurate because Konovalets was working for the Wehrmacht intelligence agency, the Abwehr (8). From the early 1920s, Konovalets had led a paramilitary terrorist faction called the Ukrainian Military Organization. 

Bandera was rising rapidly through the OUN ranks, and had become its chief propaganda officer as far back as 1931. A decade later as the Third Reich was preparing its invasion of the USSR, Bandera, now the OUN’s leader, convened meetings with Nazi agencies (the Gestapo and Abwehr) relating to the development of Nazi Ukrainian brigades to fight against the Soviet Army. In the spring of 1941, Bandera’s OUN was receiving funding from the Third Reich and personal protection from the Gestapo and Abwehr. 

The day after Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union began, 23 June 1941, Bandera wrote a letter to Hitler outlining his desire for an “independent Ukraine” under the Third Reich’s protection. A week later, 30 June, as German troops were invading the western USSR, Bandera declared Ukrainian independence and the OUN proclamation stated, “Glory to the heroic German army and its Führer, Adolf Hitler”. The OUN assisted in spreading Nazi propaganda among the local people, depicting Hitler as the “liberator” of Ukraine. Bandera’s “Minister of Foreign Affairs” Volodymyr Stakhiv also wrote a letter to Hitler, asking him to support “our ethnic struggle”. (9) 

Bandera, along with his fellow Nazis and nationalists, participated in the genocidal activities of the SS death squads, killing many tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners-of-war (10).

Bandera’s dream was of a fascist Ukraine which could act according to its own wishes. 

After World War II, Bandera and the OUN were supported by the Anglo-American intelligence services, the CIA and MI6. The MI6 admitted that Bandera had “a terrorist background” and possessed “ruthless notions” but continued to assist him. In 1949, the MI6 flew some of Bandera’s agents into western Ukraine. The MI6 first contacted Bandera in April 1948 through Gerhard von Mende, a Baltic German and unrepentant Nazi (11). Von Mende was collaborating too with the CIA. US army intelligence (the Counterintelligence Corps) had already shown an interest in working with Bandera in September 1945. (12) 

In the 21st century, Bandera’s name has undergone continued rehabilitation in Kiev. On 22 January 2010, president Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title “Hero of Ukraine”. Petro Poroshenko, another former leader in Kiev, is likewise a supporter of Bandera. Poroshenko did his best to distort history on 20 June 2022 when he said, “Stepan Bandera never was a Nazi collaborator”. 

This is not altogether surprising, when considering that the far-right had paved the way for Poroshenko to enter office in the first place. During mid-February 2014, neo-Nazi forces from organizations like Right Sector, Svoboda and Patriot of Ukraine occupied important buildings in Kiev, such as the Central Post Office and the State Committee for Television and Radio (13). Among them were militants wearing uniforms of the SS Galicia division, which had fought alongside the Nazis against the Soviet Union during World War II. 

The above far-right groups then joined forces in Kiev – they were placed under the command of Dmytro Yarosh of the neo-Nazi Right Sector (14); and they subsequently stormed Kiev’s parliament building (Verkhovna Rada) on the night of 21 February 2014, forcing the legally elected president Viktor Yanukovych, whose life was in danger, to depart Kiev. A former professor at Columbia University in New York, Tarik Cyril Amar, acknowledged that the “extreme right” in Kiev had performed a “highly effective” role in the coup. (15) 

Zelensky, who succeeded Poroshenko in May 2019, is also an admirer of Bandera and went so far as to place him in the bracket of Ukraine’s “indisputable heroes”. Zelensky said in April 2019, “There are indisputable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain part of Ukrainians, and this is a normal and cool thing. He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine” (16). During his election campaign in early 2019, Zelensky said he wanted Ukraine to join both NATO and the EU, and he has held the same opinions throughout his time in Kiev.

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes 

1 “Scientists finally pinpoint the pathogen that caused the Irish Potato Famine”, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 May 2013

2 Ibid. 

3 “Two thirds of voters support keeping Ireland’s neutrality in new poll”, The Irish News, 16 April 2022

4 Ibid. 

5 “Paul Murphy TD condemns ‘openly racist’ battalion as he defends not applauding Ukraine leader”, Sunday World, 7 April 2022

6 Ibid. 

7 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition, 1 June 1997) p. 47 

8 Christopher Hale, Hitler’s Foreign Executioners: Europe’s Dirty Secret (The History Press, 11 April 2011) p. 143 

9 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019) p. 157 

10 Ibid., p. 156 

11 Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence and the Cold War (National Archives and Records Administration [ 2010]) p. 81 

12 Ibid., p. 78 

13 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 207 

14 Ibid. 

15 Ibid. 

16 “Volodymyr Zelensky on Stepan Bandera: ‘He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine’”, Le Canard Républicain, 13 March 2022

Featured image is from Gepolitica.RU

***

The United Nations Security Council room has been a scene of espionage.

The massive leak of a trove of highly classified US intelligence reports, described as one of the country’s most remarkable disclosures of secrets in the past decade, has also revealed a more surprising angle to the story.

Washington not only collected information from two of its adversaries, Russia and China, but also from close allies, including Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and Israel.

The United Nations, long watched by multiple Western intelligence agencies, was also one of the victims of the spying scandal that broke out this month.

According to the British public channel BBC, one of the reports from the US intelligence services recounts a conversation between the Secretary General, António Guterres, and his deputy, Amina Mohammed.

Guterres expresses his “dismay” at a call by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for Europe to produce more weapons and ammunition for the war in Ukraine.

The two senior UN officials also discussed a recent summit of African leaders, at which Amina Mohammed described Kenyan President William Ruto as “ruthless” and said: “I don’t trust him.”

In response to questions at the daily briefings, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters that “the secretary-general has been in this job for a long time, and in the public eye, and he is not surprised by the fact that that there are people spying on him and listening to his private conversations…”.

What does surprise him, he said, is “the malfeasance or incompetence that allows those private conversations to be distorted and made public.”

On a more global scale, virtually every major power is in the UN spy game, including the Americans, the Russians (and the Soviets during the Cold War era), the French, the British, and the Chinese.

During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, the UN was a veritable battleground for the United States and the now-defunct Soviet Union to spy on each other.

American and Soviet spies were known to hang out all over the building: in the committee rooms, in the press box, in the delegates’ lounge and, most importantly, in the UN library, which was a delivery point for sensitive political documents.

The extent of Cold War espionage at the United Nations was exposed in 1975 by a US Congressional Committee, named after Democratic Senator Frank Church, who chaired it while investigating abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Among the evidence presented to the Church Committee at the time was the revelation that the CIA had placed one of its Russian lip-reading experts in a press box overlooking the Security Council chamber, so that he could follow the movements of the lips of the Russian delegates, as they consulted each other in whispers.

Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Professor of Global Governance at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs who has written extensively on UN policy, told IPS that “it is not surprising that US intelligence services are spying on the 38th floor. It’s an old practice.”

“There’s almost nothing they don’t monitor,” he added, adding that it should be a relief that Washington “takes the UN seriously enough” to spy on it. “The rationale for surveillance would be more intriguing,” he said.

“Is the Secretary General pro-West (has criticized the Russian war), or pro-Russia (according to some rumors)?” could be one question the spies are trying to answer.

In his 1978 book, “A Dangerous Place,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former United States envoy to the United Nations, described the cat-and-mouse game of espionage taking place in the bowels of the world body, and in particular in the UN library.

In October 2013, when Clare Short, Britain’s former Minister for International Development, revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (1997-2006), bugging his office just before the disastrous US invasion from Iraq in March 2003.

Upon learning this, the top UN leader was enraged that his talks with world leaders had been compromised.

As Short told the BBC, while talking to Annan on the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat building, he thought: “Oh my, there will be a transcript of this and people will know what he and I are saying.”

The United Nations, along with the 193 diplomatic missions of its member countries, housed in its glass-enclosed building in New York, have long been a veritable battleground for espionage, wiretapping and electronic surveillance.

As early as September 2013, then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, undoing diplomatic protocol, launched a withering attack on the United States for illegally infiltrating its communications network, surreptitiously intercepting phone calls, and breaking into the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations.

Justifying her public criticism, she told delegates that the problem of electronic surveillance goes beyond a bilateral relationship. It affects the international community itself, she remarked, and demands a response from it.

Rousseff launched her attack even as then-US President Barack Obama was waiting his turn to address the General Assembly on the opening day of the annual high-level debate. By tradition, Brazil is the first annual speaker, followed by the United States.

“We have made our disapproval known to the US government, and we demand explanations, apologies and guarantees that such procedures will never be repeated,” she said.

According to documents released by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the illegal electronic surveillance of Brazil was carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that NSA technicians had managed to decrypt the UN’s internal videoconferencing system (VTC), as part of their surveillance of the world body.

The combination of this new ONU access and codebreak encryption led to a dramatic improvement in the quality of VTC data and the ability to decrypt VTC traffic, according to NSA agents.

In the article entitled “How the United States spies on Europe at the UN,” Der Spiegel claimed that, in a little less than three weeks, the number of decrypted communications increased from 12 to 458.

Subsequently, there were new espionage allegations, but this time the Americans were accused of using the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Baghdad to intercept Iraqi security intelligence in an attempt to undermine, and perhaps overthrow, the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein.

The accusations, reported on the front pages of The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, only confirmed the longstanding Iraqi accusation that UNSCOM was “a den of spies”, mostly American and British.

Created by the Security Council immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, UNSCOM was mandated to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and to destroy that country’s ability to produce nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.

However, UNSCOM chief Richard Butler of Australia vehemently denied allegations that his inspection team in Iraq had spied on the United States. “We’ve never spied on anyone,” Butler told reporters.

Asked to respond to reports that UNSCOM may have helped Washington gather sensitive information on Iraq to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime, Butler replied: “Don’t believe everything you read in the press.”

At the same time, The New York Times carried a front-page story quoting US officials as saying that “American spies had worked undercover on UN weapons inspectorate teams to uncover secret Iraqi weapons programs.”

In an editorial, that newspaper stated that “using UN activities in Iraq as a cover for US espionage operations would be a sure way to undermine the international organization, embarrass the United States and strengthen Mr. Hussein.”

“Washington crossed a line it should not have crossed if it placed US agents on the UN team with the intent of gathering information that could be used for military strikes against targets in Baghdad,” the editorial said.

Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary General who headed its Department of Public Information, told IPS that tracking international officials has evolved with greater digital capability.

He added that what was mainly done by security officers expanded to become a public exercise.

At first, he said, some UN landmarks, such as the Delegates Lounge, were targeted by multiple countries, even with devices across the East River in Queens, or in the lounge adjacent to the UN garden and a short walk away. distance from permanent missions and residences of UN diplomats.

A senior UN official once said that the closer he got to the secretary-general’s residence, in the Sutton Place neighborhood, the more obvious the radio surveillance became.

As a climax, a personal memory: When the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) held its annual awards ceremony in December 2013, one of the most prominent videos was a hilarious parody about clumsy spying attempts taking place inside the lowest levels, high of the Secretariat and even the offices of the 38th floor of the then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016).

When I took the floor, as one of the UNCA winners for my reporting and analysis for IPS, I gave the secretary general, who was standing next to me, some unsolicited advice: if you want to know if your phone line has been tapped, I jokingly told him, you just have to sneeze hard.

A voice on the other end would instinctively and politely reply: “Bless you.” “And you’ll know that your phone is bugged,” I said between laughs.

*

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Thalif Deen is IPS United Nations bureau chief and North America regional director, has been covering the UN since the late 1970s. A former deputy news editor of the Sri Lanka Daily News, he was also a senior editorial writer for Hong Kong-based The Standard. He has been runner-up and cited twice for “excellence in UN reporting” at the annual awards presentation of the UN Correspondents’ Association. A former information officer at the UN Secretariat, and a one-time member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions, Thalif is currently editor in chief of the IPS UN Terra Viva journal. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, he has covered virtually every single major UN conference on population, human rights, environment, social development, globalization and the Millennium Development Goals.

Featured image is from edgarwinkler / Pixabay

***

Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream. Just like the New York Times’ report from last month, this latest one from a collection of Northern European media outlets is therefore also nothing more than an information warfare provocation.

A joint “media investigation” by the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden just claimed that Russia has been using at least 50 civilian ships to spy on the North Sea for the past decade in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage sometime in the future. Kremlin spokesman Peskov denied these allegations and accused those countries of trying to distract from last September’s Nord Stream terrorist attack.

Screenshot from Politico

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh cited unnamed US administration sources to report in early February that Biden personally authorized that attack, which most folks already figured but it was nevertheless extremely newsworthy for this to come from someone as reputable like him. Around a month later, the New York Times (NYT) ran a story claiming to have uncovered the alleged culprit, which they said was a rogue group of people who weren’t connected to any government.

“The US’ Latest Disinfo Campaign About The Nord Stream Terrorist Attacks Was Preplanned”, however, since the argument can compellingly be made that the US planted the seeds of an alternative narrative to rely upon as a backup plan in the event that the truth started leaking out like it did in Hersh’s report. It’s within this context that the Scandinavian states’ “media investigation” was published, thus extending credence to similar concerns that it’s also nothing more than a distraction from that journalist’s work.

After all, those outlets claimed that Russia has supposedly been spying on the North Sea through these means for the past ten years, and it’s extremely unlikely that they suddenly stumbled upon relevant “evidence” in support of that conclusion at this particular point in time. Rather, they were almost certainly fed this information by those countries’ intelligence services, with possible input from NATO as a whole and/or its US leader.

It’s unclear whether there’s any truth to their report, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there’s at least a kernel thereof since it’s a clever way to spy on the NATO-controlled North Sea. That, however, doesn’t mean that this was being done in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage there sometime in the future. This part of their report was probably included purely to revive the completely ridiculous narrative that Russia was the one responsible for the Nord Stream terrorist attack.

Whatever the purpose of Russia’s alleged spying in those waters may have been, it’s highly unlikely to have concerned sabotage except as an absolute last resort in the event of a conventional war with NATO. The reason behind this assessment is that only a state-level actor or a false flag “non-state” one connected to a state actor is capable of carrying out such acts, especially in waters that are completely controlled by and under the total surveillance of that US-led bloc, and doing so would be an act of war.

It’s with this in mind that Peskov’s denial should be taken seriously since it’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia is plotting impending acts of sabotage there that it would definitely be caught committing red-handed in the fringe scenario that this is attempted. This doesn’t mean that Moscow wasn’t possibly spying on NATO’s naval activities in the North Sea, but just that this wasn’t done for the purpose of plotting sabotage except as an absolute last if it ever formally went to war with that bloc.

Considering this, Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream. Just like the NYT’s report from last month, this latest one from a collection of Northern European media outlets is therefore also nothing more than an information warfare provocation.

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This article was originally published on Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

***

At present, it has become customary to speak of NATO’s expansion “towards Eastern Europe”, which, while effective, is a reductionist concept. The truth is that since the end of the bipolar world, the United States, believing itself to be the master of the world, has used NATO to expand throughout the planet. Proof of this is the signing of the AUKUS Treaty (Australia, United Kingdom and United States), the creation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) formed by Australia, India, Japan and the United States and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia) as instruments of NATO’s military expansion in Asia and Oceania.

The same is happening in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the United States is initiating an aggressive expansion plan throughout all latitudes and longitudes of the region. The following three installments will provide data to confirm the above assertion.

Part I

At the end of last year, the United States had installed 12 military bases in Panama, 12 in Puerto Rico, 9 in Colombia, 8 in Peru, 3 in Honduras, 2 in Paraguay, as well as installations of this type in Aruba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Cuba (Guantanamo), and Peru among other countries, at the same time that it is orienting its search for the total coverage of the land and maritime surface of the region.

In Argentine territorial waters and in the Malvinas Islands, which were usurped by the United Kingdom, there is a NATO presence integrated in a system formed by bases on the islands of Ascensión, Santa Elena and Tristán da Acuña which “guards” the entire Atlantic from the north to the Antarctic area.

According to a report of the US Department of Defense quoted by the Venezuelan portal Misión Verdad, since May 2022 the United Kingdom is forming a “strategic triangle of control” of the southern tip of South America. While south of the Malvinas, nuclear submarines are operating. In addition, “France and the United States regularly organize joint military maneuvers in the region”.

Richardson is presented her four-star flag by Army chief of staff General James C. McConville at her promotion ceremony, October 18, 2021 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

During the last few years, and especially after the arrival of Laura Richardson as head of the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command in October 2021, the levels of Washington’s aggressive interference in the region have ostensibly increased. This coincided with the arrival to power of Joe Biden who has implemented an active policy of substitution of the traditional (and natural) protagonism of the State Department in diplomatic activity, which began to be occupied by the Pentagon, the National Security Council and even the CIA. An increasing number of officials from these agencies are occupying ambassadorial posts in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The U.S. strategy is aimed at strengthening its presence in the region. In perspective, the South Atlantic has become particularly important given its proximity to Antarctica, which is regulated by a treaty that ended in 1941, the Amazon, the planet’s main reserve of oxygen and biodiversity, and the triple frontier where the Guarani aquifer, the world’s largest water reservoir, is located.

This is what makes sense of the United States’ attempts to reinstate the cold war in the region, this time against China and Russia. This logic explains the decision to urge six Latin American countries to donate their Russian military equipment to Ukraine, excluding – of course – Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from this request. Richardson warned that after China, Russia is the number two adversary of the United States in the region, stressing the great strategic value of the region for her country.

The U.S. general has called China a “malign state actor” after 21 of the 31 countries in the region have joined China’s Belt and Road initiative, at the same time as Beijing’s investment in critical infrastructure such as deep-water ports, space research or telecommunications, with 5G networks and the company Huawei, has increased.

Richardson highlighted the “protective” role that the United States will play in the region because being good neighbors means “taking care of each other” which “obliges” Washington to take charge of fighting against organized crime networks involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, unregulated logging and illegal mining and especially “because it is a region rich in resources and rare earths, with the so-called Lithium Triangle that has 60% of the world’s reserves (in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile), a metal very necessary for technology”.

In the same way, Richardson has said that the United States is interested in oil (given the large reserves found in Guyana and the largest in the world in Venezuela) as well as copper and gold in the region, and that the United States is also preoccupied by the fact that oxygen and 31% of the Earth’s fresh water is found in the Amazon. For all these reasons -according to her- China, which has become the main trading partner of several countries in the region, must be kept at a distance.

This logic is part of the “integrated deterrence” strategy of the United States, a renewed form of the National Security Doctrine which proposes to bring together under the Pentagon’s leadership “all the civilian and military capabilities of governments, businesses, civil society and academia of the United States and all its allies”.

At the XV Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas held in Brazil in July 2022, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin presented this strategy to his peers in the region. Two months later, in September, Richardson insisted on it before 14 military chiefs at the South American Defense Conference.

The interest of the United States has a regional perspective based on the need for its control since 200 years ago when the Monroe Doctrine was enunciated. But in the global perspective, Latin American armed forces constitute a combative potential that cannot be underestimated. In 2018, Brazil had 334,000 active military personnel, Colombia had 200,000 and Argentina had 51,000.

NATO has 3.5 million active military and civilian personnel. According to the CELAG think tank, Brazil and Colombia alone would contribute more assets to NATO than the European members annexed in the 1990s. In this sense, it is worth making a comparison, considering that Argentina, for example, has assets similar to those of Bulgaria (24,800) and the Czech Republic (25,000) combined.

In order to better understand this situation and the intense imperial activity to control the Latin American and Caribbean space, it is worth reviewing the way in which the intervention of the United States and NATO has been materializing in some countries of the region:

Paraguay

The Master Plan for the Navigability of the Paraguay River is an initiative of the Paraguayan government to “maximize the use of this navigable waterway”, but it was the U.S. Ambassador Marc Ostfield who made the announcement. The work is being supported by U.S. capital and will be carried out thanks to the services of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which generated great concern in Argentina, which considers that such a decision will mean a control of the territory by foreign forces. Needless to say, the importance of the area, which is part of the La Plata Basin, the fifth largest fresh water reserve in the world in terms of extension, is obvious.

Likewise, Washington does not cease in its long-standing intentions to install a military base in the Triple Border (Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil), with the excuse of combating international terrorism and drug trafficking. In this context, attempts to militarize the region and change the “rules of the game” so that the United States can establish territories under its permanent control are considered extremely dangerous in Argentina. Likewise, some local political leaders have expressed concern that their region is being drawn into a logic of confrontation between the United States and China.

Although the Paraguayan government has said that the project involves “cooperation with specialists from the United States” which will include the study of the rivers, but does not contemplate cooperation of a military nature, the total subordination of Asunción to the United States casts doubt on this assertion. In geopolitical terms, it is also considered that Paraguay is the only country in South America that does not have relations with China.

Argentina

From the Argentine perspective, Asuncion’s decision to attract the U.S. armed forces to advance the navigability of the Paraguay River is related today to the growing food trade, which, in the context of the war in Ukraine, became strategic.

The purpose of the waterway is to allow the navigation of large vessels with large volumes of cargo 365 days a year, rectifying the route and eliminating islands and other obstacles. The presence of U.S. Army specialists gives the project a very different character from what was originally presented as a civilian project.

On the other hand, the United States has shown concern because the Argentine State intends to carry out a new bidding process for the dredging of the Paraná River (which receives waters from Paraguay) and some of the companies that will try to win it are of Chinese origin.

For the United States, the Triple Border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is of paramount importance. The Southern Command stated that it had identified sources of financing for “terrorist organizations” based in West Asia, mentioning the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. To counter this alleged threat, a multilateral mechanism called 3+1 was created with the three South American countries and the United States.

Credit: US Southern Command

Washington has also shown great interest in Argentine Patagonia. In that framework last August 8, the US ambassador in the country attended in the city of Neuquén (located about 1140 km southwest of Buenos Aires) a meeting with representatives of the most powerful oil corporations in the world.

Four years earlier, in 2018, the construction of various facilities was announced, in a fiscal property under the direction and financing of the U.S. Southern Command. Although its embassy in Argentina hastened to inform that the works were part of a “humanitarian aid” project whose objective was to improve Neuquén’s capacity to respond to natural disasters, Neuquén’s civil society has rejected such an idea, since it has been characterized by secrecy, lack of information and absence of communication regarding what Argentina has obtained in exchange for the cession of such territory in an area that is considered of high strategic value.

The project, characterized as a “camouflaged military base” according to a report by journalist Ariel Noyola Rodríguez published in the RT portal, is part of a continent-wide strategy that has been characterized as a novel form of military intervention in the region: the “Humanitarian Assistance and Natural Disaster Response” program, sponsored by the U.S. Southern Command,

On the other hand, it cannot be ignored in this analysis that part of the Argentine territory is occupied by NATO forces. Between 1500 and 2000 British military personnel are stationed in the Malvinas, some of them permanently, as well as the latest generation of fighter-bombers.

Part II

Colombia

As a “global partner” of NATO, Colombia enjoys privileged attention from the war alliance. As an expression of this, in recent times, the United States is making great efforts to install a naval base on Gorgona Island in the Colombian Pacific, which are not stopped in spite of the great rejection of scientists and civil organizations in the region that intend to safeguard a set of rights that would be violated. These organizations consider that the U.S. agency financing the works of the base (U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) generates a loss of sovereignty since it would place the island under the power of another State.

According to the State Department, the Biden administration also contemplates the purchase of boat engines for an amount of 2.6 million dollars to improve the operational capacity of the Coast Guard on the island.

Piedad Córdoba, senator for the ruling Historic Pact, spoke out in early December against any U.S. interference in Colombia through the installation of military bases or through the deployment of its armed forces, and has asked President Petro to cancel the project. Córdoba has stated that it would be strange that the United States pays so much attention to a project like this, if it is not understood that for the United States the Pacific Basin region has a strategic character, which is “expressed through the deployment of the Fourth Fleet and the Southern Command with the installation of military bases, among them, the one on Gorgona Island”.

The senator also expressed the opinion that the concretion of the works in Gorgona, which in fact would mean the installation of the ninth U.S. military base in Colombia, could provoke similar damages to those occurred in the Philippines, Panama and Puerto Rico, where Washington has managed to install military bases.

Also in Colombia, at the beginning of December, the president invited the armed forces of the United States and NATO to the Amazon to cooperate in safeguarding the territory and combating drug trafficking. It was argued that the machinery, equipment and personnel brought in to carry out the work could be reused as “police to protect” the environment, changing the traditional logic of the fight against drugs. To this end, he proposed the use of U.S. Black Hawk helicopters to put out fires, arguing that such an action would symbolize a “complete change in what has always been U.S. military aid”.

In this context, at the end of August, during the government of Gustavo Petro, the armed forces of the United States and Colombia carried out joint exercises within the framework of NATO. In this context, Petro received General Richardson who made a five-day visit to the country. Richardson was full of praise for “our number one security partner in the region”, describing Colombia as the “hub of the entire southern hemisphere” which she said was “free and secure thanks to Colombia’s stabilization efforts”.

In this regard, Petro affirmed -whether with innocence or feigned ignorance is not known- that he had “achieved something: the conversation with NATO -of which we are members, although we have a very rare status, we are involved, I think we are the only Latin American country participating- to take this alliance to the care of the Amazon rainforest, providing technological collaboration in this”.

The struggle for the defense of the Amazon as a subject of military intervention

The idea of using the fight for the environment as an instrument of intervention is quite old. As early as 1989, Al Gore stated: “The Amazon is not your property. It belongs to all of us. In this vein, in 2019, in the midst of the fires in the Amazon, French President Emmanuel Macron called on the G7 countries to intervene: “It is an international crisis,” he said, which was echoed even by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, recalling his time as leader of a NATO member country. The Q&A social network Quora rhetorically queried, “Why doesn’t NATO invade Brazil to save the Amazon?”

But President Petro is not so naive as to assume that the U.S. and NATO have good intentions in the Amazon. He has publicly criticized the U.S. drug war policy by pointing out its obligations as the world’s largest consumer. Petro stated: “What I am trying to do is to take the dialogue with the United States to a different axis, which is the issue of the climate crisis and hence the importance of the Amazon rainforest. With the United States we have achieved the creation of the first military unit with Black Hawk helicopters”.

Richardson’s visit to Colombia was part of a tour of several countries in the region with the express purpose of counteracting the influence of China and Russia, and to promote the isolation of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.

In November Petro reported that French President Emmanuel Macron offered him “help” to preserve the Amazon. It should be recalled that France has an overseas department in French Guiana, bordering Brazil and just 500 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River. In this territory is located the launching base for spacecraft used by the country and by Europe. Without knowing the content of the offer or the counter offer to be granted by Colombia, the agreement between the two countries places France in a position of influence at both ends of the strategic basin.

Map of the Amazon River drainage basin with the Amazon River highlighted. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ecuador

Last December, the United States approved a law aimed at strengthening cooperation with Ecuador in defense matters. This instrument, called the Ecuador-U.S. Partnership Act 2022, is part of the U.S. National Defense Spending Authorization Act and follows the recently approved open skies agreement, with a view to reducing tariffs, increasing travel and trade and stimulating job creation related to air bridges between the two countries.

All this is intended to be understood as a trade promotion strategy, but the resources committed by the United States (US$858 billion) will be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, which clearly establishes its orientation.

Earlier, in September of last year, General Richardson also visited Ecuador where she met with President Lasso and led the South American Defense Conference Southdec 2022 for two days, in order to coordinate “mechanisms for the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking”.

Uruguay

Last February 3, the outstanding Uruguayan political analyst Julián González Guyer published in the magazine Brecha de Montevideo an article in which he informed that the US Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Stone, the most modern vessel of the US Coast Guard would enter the port of Montevideo for 10 days.

According to the article, the US vessel would remain in Uruguayan waters for ten days under the argument of “carrying out training exercises in search and rescue operations at sea and control of jurisdictional waters with the National Navy”. But in reality the objectives of the USCGC Stone are different, namely “to obtain information about the South Atlantic and, in particular, the activity of Chinese fishing vessels in the area”.

This is the second trip of the vessel to Uruguay, after the first one, made two years before to carry out “patrolling and support activities for the interdiction of illegal fishing in the waters of Guyana, Brazil and Uruguay”, although the scheduled visit to Argentina was cancelled.

On this occasion, as on the previous one, the public explanation about the objectives of the visit has been surrounded by contradictions between what has been reported by the national government and the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo.

González Guyer concludes by pointing out that while the learning that the Uruguayan Navy could have obtained is insignificant, the US ship would have gathered “a significant volume of information about our coasts, jurisdictional waters and adjacent areas. Also, about our Navy and its officers”.

For several decades, the Uruguayan Navy has been trained by the United States to act as a force dedicated to “protect” the entrance to the Río de la Plata, giving privileged space to the U.S. Navy in this aspect. The two visits of the Stone to Uruguay in such a short period of time can be inscribed in this logic.

But along with this, the Stone developed patrol missions in the South Atlantic, together with three other ships, establishing in fact a greater control over a strategic triangle in the South Atlantic and the Strait of Magellan between Montevideo, Malvinas and the 3rd Naval Zone of the Chilean Navy based in Punta Arenas.

Part III

Guatemala

Although in 2021 the US Congress issued a decree prohibiting the delivery of funds to the armies of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras until there were improvements in the fight against corruption, the Department of Defence used a subterfuge to circumvent this decision by using an item that is not restricted.

Image source: Dialogo Americas

The donation of J8 military vehicles that the US gave to the Guatemalan government to combat drug trafficking was actually used to provide perimeter protection to private security agents who burned down peasant farmers’ houses in El Estor, Izabal, in 2021. This donation was registered in the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme, which is the largest military assistance programme approved by Congress. Likewise, in 2018, the government of Jimmy Morales used them to intimidate the US embassy itself and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which emerged from an agreement between the UN and the country’s authorities.

A few years later, the US Congress limited donations of vehicles to the Guatemalan army, given the history of their use. In the current government of Alejandro Giammattei, nine Democratic congressmen asked the Biden administration for explanations, but the response was silence in the face of the US armed forces’ decision to strengthen the Guatemalan army.

In this context, on 13 October, the US embassy in Guatemala City announced the donation of 95 vehicles, including trucks, vans and motorbikes, valued at US$4.4 million. According to the website Prensa Comunitaria, the source of this money is a Department of Defense (DOD) budget line approved in 2019, during the administration of former president Donald Trump.

In a commentary written by researcher Adam Isacson on the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) website, he states that “the grant was funded through a DOD foreign military capacity building authority established in 2017 as Section 333 of Title 10 of the United States Code”.

A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report dated March 2022 makes it known that “The FY 2021 operations budget prohibits aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, while conditioning 50% of other State Department security-related appropriations to these countries on their governments combating corruption, protecting Human Rights, and addressing other congressional concerns.”

Isacson claimed that “a DOD programme was being used to provide a category of assistance that Guatemala cannot receive through the State Department’s main military assistance programme”, as an alternative budget was used to fund Guatemala’s military by bypassing congressionally mandated limitations that the DOD disregarded and disregarded.

Panama

In October last year, General Richardson arrived in Panama on her second trip to the country in less than five months. On this occasion, the reason for the visit was to hold a “bilateral security meeting”. On her first trip of the year, in June, the head of the Southern Command discussed security issues and the regional migration crisis with the Panamanian authorities. She also participated in the High Level Security Dialogue (HLSD) between Panama and the United States, which was held in that country.

The migration issue was at the centre of the deliberations at a time when Panama was facing a migration crisis. In the context, only a few days earlier, a new policy had come into force in the United States that legalised the expulsion of Venezuelan nationals who attempted to enter through the land border with Mexico or who had arrived irregularly in Panama.

On this issue, the director of Panama’s National Migration Service (SNM), Samira Gozaine, reported that they were “clamouring to the US embassy to help us, to assist us economically as they do with other countries. For the US, the migration crisis generated by its own policies has become a great opportunity for intervention and “legal” interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region.

Brazil

During a visit to Brazil in September last year, General Richardson stated that there was an “outline” of a joint military force between her country and Brazil with helicopters to – allegedly – fight fires in the Amazon jungle.

According to Uruguayan analyst Luis Vignolo, “the information went unnoticed, perhaps not coincidentally, while the mainstream media looked in other directions”. But the truth is that there were strong military rapprochements between the two countries during the government of Jair Bolsonaro. Three months earlier, during the IX Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles, California, between 6 and 10 June, Brazil and the United States announced a bilateral rapid response group to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, for which a high-level working group made up of authorities from both countries was created.

Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, 2016 (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

By way of background, in August 2019, Donald Trump had designated Brazil as an “extra-NATO preferential ally of the United States” to the delight of Bolsonaro and his vice-president, retired general Hamilton Mourão. According to Vignolo, “Mourão referred in this context to the role of the Brazilian armed forces as a guarantee against the seizure of power by those he considers enemies, in what could be considered a warning against the opposition to the right-wing government”.

The violent eruption of fascist gangs a few days after Lula’s inauguration -just as had happened two years earlier in Washington with the prominence of Trump supporters- and the attitude of the armed forces to the event, seemed to set the tone for how the military would behave in the performance of Lula’s presidential duties, generating a threat accepted by the most reactionary sectors of the US establishment and by important sectors of its armed forces that consider their Brazilian counterparts to be important allies for the strategic control of the region.

Lula will have to confront US and European interests over the Amazon, especially now that his “shift” towards centrist positions has brought him closer to the Democratic Party that controls the US administration and European social democracy, which governs in countries like Germany and Spain, with whom he has established privileged ties that could facilitate the rapprochement of their armed forces to Brazil for a supposed “sustainable management” of the Amazon. In fact, Lula has already invited them to “invest” in ecologically sustainable projects in the region and has assured that this will be done with respect for Brazilian sovereignty. However, there is little detail on this.

The well-informed analyst and writer Andrew Korybko, who has done a lot of research on ‘hybrid wars’, has warned that ‘a fraction of the PT could be used by the US for its meddling purposes’. He has also expressed the view that US intervention in Brazil will not cease under the new Lula government, but will change form, taking on a kind of “radical destabilisation” to provide pretexts for NATO to intervene and ‘save’ a politically handcuffed Lula”.

Korybko believes that “all the elements for a total destabilisation of Brazil are in place, given the structural problems of the economy, the low parliamentary weight of the ruling party and the serious polarisation on the streets between Bolsonaro’s supporters and Lula’s supporters”.

Bolivia

The secessionist plan in Bolivia is longstanding. It had a moment of realisation after the US-backed coup against President Evo Morales in 2019 and has recently resurfaced in the form of a violent “civic strike” organised by a fascist paramilitary group in the department of Santa Cruz which is part of the Bolivian Amazon that constitutes 43% of the national territory.

The main operator of US policy against Bolivia has been Mark Falcoff, the Bush administration’s Latin America adviser. In his article ‘Bolivia’s Last Days’, published in American Outlook in May 2004, Falcoff ‘predicted’ the ethnic division of Bolivia following the wave of popular uprisings that led to the overthrow of President Sánchez de Lozada in 2003.

In his article, Falcoff notes that: ‘… it is a fundamental fact about Bolivia to know that it is a society divided along two great fault lines: race and geography’. Falcoff contrasts the situation in “Andean, poor, drug-crop-producing, violent, underdeveloped and levantistic Bolivia with prosperous Santa Cruz, which generated 51 per cent of the country’s income and received only ‘a small percentage’ of the profits generated by oil and gas”.

Falcoff therefore recommended a new Constitution that should “remedy the need to decentralise authority and resources” accompanied by “a true attempt at a federal solution, with a regional redistribution of resources and a rational energy policy”.

The plan that led to the coup d’état against Evo Morales and the recent fascist attempt to repeat it were part of this logic, although operational modifications have now been made without changing the objective of overthrowing the government. In the Pentagon’s sights – as General Richardson has openly made known – are the gigantic lithium deposits, which are not in the country’s Amazonian region, but in the Andean highlands. The exploitation and subsequent industrialisation of lithium by non-US foreign companies is causing concern in Washington, which is not relenting in its attempts to destabilise the country.

Peru

On 18 January 2023, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte and Prime Minister Alberto Otárola sent a letter to José Daniel Williams, President of the Peruvian Congress, requesting approval to authorise “the entry of naval units and foreign military personnel with weapons of war into the interior of the Republic”. This should be read as the entry of US military forces at a time of large mobilisations against the government that has overthrown President Pedro Castillo and usurped power, which has been resisted by important sectors of the population who have been subjected to strong repression. These actions have had the open and clear support of the US embassy and government.

Mexico

At the last minute, as this work in three instalments was coming to a close, information arrived that two representatives of the US Republican Party, Dan Crenshaw and Michael Waltz, presented a document to their country’s Congress to authorise the Armed Forces to carry out operations against Mexican cartels, without the acceptance of the US government.

In fact, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected the possibility of the United States deciding “who is the good guy and who is the bad guy”, assuming itself to be the “government of the world”, with the power to intervene by force in any country on the planet.

Conclusions

To conclude, it is worth bearing in mind that the adoption by the United States of its new military concept of “integrated deterrence”, in which it expresses supposedly “shared values” with Latin America that in reality do not exist, is aimed at incorporating the countries of the region into its global war against China and Russia.

This “integrated deterrence” is a sort of pooling of the resources of the countries of the Americas to fight a supposedly common enemy. Washington calls for “unity” to confront the enemy it has unilaterally defined as the enemy, which is not necessarily the same as Latin America and the Caribbean, which should rather opt for neutrality and the search for peace.

The head of the Southern Command said it very precisely in Ecuador when she stated that “China’s advance is a national security problem”. She added that the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean should “work together as a team, playing our respective positions in a harmonious and highly effective way to resolve this problem”.

As has been seen, the instruments are varied, the actions manifest different dimensions and characteristics, but all aim to keep the region subject to Washington’s strategic control.

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Featured image is from Anti-bellum

***

“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” — George Washington

What the police state wants is a silent, compliant, oblivious citizenry.

What the First Amendment affirms is an engaged citizenry that speaks truth to power using whatever peaceful means are available to us.

Speaking one’s truth doesn’t have to be the same for each person, and that truth doesn’t have to be palatable or pleasant or even factual.

We can be loud.

We can be obnoxious.

We can be politically incorrect.

We can be conspiratorial or mean or offensive.

We can be all these things because the First Amendment takes a broad, classically liberal approach to the free speech rights of the citizenry: in a nutshell, the government may not encroach or limit the citizenry’s right to freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and protest.

This is why the First Amendment is so critical.

It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of retaliation, arrest or incarceration.

Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone’s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.

When expressive activity crosses the line into violence, free speech protections end.

However, barring actual violence or true threats of violence, there is a vast difference between speech that is socially unpopular and speech that is illegal, and it’s an important distinction that depends on our commitment to safeguarding a robust First Amendment.

Increasingly, however, the courts and the government are doing away with that critical distinction, adopting the mindset that speech is only permissible if it does not offend, irritate, annoy, threaten someone’s peace of mind, or challenge the government’s stranglehold on power.

Take the case of Counterman v. Colorado which is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Under the pretext of clamping down on online stalking, Colorado wants the power to be able to treat expressive activities on social media as threats without having to prove that the messages are both reasonably understood as threatening an illegal act and intended by the speaker as a threat.

While protecting people from stalking is certainly a valid concern and may be warranted in this particular case, the law does not require speech to be a “true threat” in order to be criminally punished. The Supreme Court has defined a “true threat” as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”

Indeed, Colorado’s stalking law is so broad that a person can be charged with stalking for repeatedly contacting, surveilling or communicating with an individual in such a way that a reasonable person would feel serious emotional distress.

In the absence of any substantive guidelines on what constitutes a true threat on social media, such laws could empower the government to misinterpret any speaker’s intent and meaning in order to criminalize legitimate political speech that is critical of government officials and representatives.

Case in point: in Oklahoma, a street preacher who expressed his moral outrage over public drag queen performances that occur in front of children and churches that endorse same-sex marriage was given a five-year restraining order and threatened with arrest after citing Bible verses on social media about God’s judgment of sin.

The Rutherford Institute has taken on the case, warning that the ramifications of it going unchallenged could render anyone who quotes the Bible a criminal if it makes a listener feel unsafe or threatened or judged.

This is what it means to criminalize free speech: it turns those who exercise their free speech rights into criminals.

This criminalization of free speech, which is exactly what the government’s prosecution of those who say the “wrong” thing using an electronic medium amounts to, was at the heart of Elonis v. United States, a case that wrestled with where the government can draw the line when it comes to expressive speech that is protected and permissible versus speech that could be interpreted as connoting a criminal intent.

The case arose after Anthony Elonis, an aspiring rap artist, used personal material from his life as source material and inspiration for rap lyrics which he then shared on Facebook.

For instance, shortly after Elonis’ wife left him and he was fired from his job, his lyrics included references to killing his ex-wife, shooting a classroom of kindergarten children, and blowing up an FBI agent who had opened an investigation into his postings.

Despite the fact that Elonis routinely accompanied his Facebook posts with disclaimers that his lyrics were fictitious, and that he was using such writings as an outlet for his frustrations, he was charged with making unlawful threats (although it was never proven that he intended to threaten anyone) and sentenced to 44 months in jail.

The question the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide in Elonis was whether his activity, in the absence of any overt intention of committing a crime, rose to the level of a “true threat” or whether it was protected First Amendment activity.

In an 8-1 decision that concerned itself more with “criminal-law principles concerning intent rather than the First Amendment’s protection of free speech,” the Court ruled that prosecutors had not proven that Elonis intended to harm anyone beyond the words he used and context.

That was back in 2015.

Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Elonis, Corporate America has taken the lead in policing expressive activity online, with social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube using their formidable dominance in the field to censor, penalize and regulate speech and behavior online by suspending and/or banning users whose content violated the companies’ so-called community standards for obscenity, violence, hate speech, discrimination, conspiracy theories, etc.

The fallout is as one would expect.

The internet has become a forum for the government—and its corporate partners—to monitor, control and punish the populace for speech that may be controversial but is far from criminal.

Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.

In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom (of religion, speech, assembly, press, redress, privacy, bodily integrity, etc.) but only when it favors the views and positions they support.

In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.

Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.

In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the ramifications are so far-reaching as to render almost every American an extremist in word, deed, thought or by association.

You see, the government doesn’t care if you or someone you know has a legitimate grievance. It doesn’t care if your criticisms are well-founded. And it certainly doesn’t care if you have a First Amendment right to speak truth to power.

It just wants you to shut up.

Yet no matter what one’s political persuasion might be, the right to disagree with and speak out against the government is the quintessential freedom. When exercised regularly and defended vigorously, these First Amendment rights serve as a bulwark against tyranny.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: A US government propaganda poster from the 1940s (Source: Multipolarista)

***

Classified documents allegedly leaked by Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira have revealed that the US is closely spying on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and is not happy with his engagement with Moscow.

Several documents detail Guterres’ communications, including one that accuses him of “undermining” efforts to take action against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The document addresses his communications with Moscow regarding the grain deal that unlocked Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

To broker the deal between Moscow and Kyiv, the UN agreed to help facilitate the export of Russian fertilizer and grain, which has been hindered by Western sanctions despite exemptions for agricultural goods.

The document reads:

“UN Secretary-General Guterres is taking steps to accommodate Russia in an effort to protect the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which he considers a pivotal UN success and key to addressing global food insecurity, and his actions are undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine.”

The document was likely written either in late February or early March before Russia and Ukraine agreed to extend the grain deal on March 18. It says in early February, Guterres “urged Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a letter to renew the BSGI before its term expires on March 18 and Guterres emphasized his efforts to improve Russia’s ability to export, even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals, according to FISA-derived signal intelligence.”

Leaked document that shows US intelligence on Guterres

Signal intelligence refers to information obtained by intercepting communications. In response to the revelation that the US was spying on Guterres, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told Al Jazeera that he is “not surprised by the fact that people are spying on him and listening in on his private conversations.”

“What is surprising is the malfeasance or incompetence that allows for such private conversations to be distorted and become public,” Dujarric said. Other documents detailed private communications between Guterres and his deputy.

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

***

A federal judge today ruled in favor of oil giant ConocoPhillips by denying a motion for preliminary injunction brought by environmental groups as part of a lawsuit challenging the Willow project in Alaska’s Western Arctic. The ruling allows construction activities planned for the remaining three weeks of the construction season, including constructing roads and a gravel mine as a first step toward developing a massive oil-extraction operation.

The road construction and gravel mining plans are slated for high-density caribou winter habitat, which will disturb the herd and affect hunters in the area. The request was part of a lawsuit filed last month by Earthjustice on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA, and by the Center for Biological Diversity and Natural Resources Defense Council.

In the lawsuit, the environmental groups said the Interior Department’s March 13 approval of the Willow project was unlawful because it failed to consider reasonable alternatives, such as limiting the project’s harm to the climate and the most environmentally sensitive areas in the Western Arctic. The Interior Department also failed to adequately consider the greenhouse gas emissions from future fossil fuel extraction that the project would make possible.

This project is the beginning of widespread fossil fuel extraction that ConocoPhillips has planned for the region, which could contain up to 3 billion barrels of oil in addition to the 600 million barrels in the Willow project area. Willow alone is expected to produce 260 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years.

The groups issued the following statements in response to today’s ruling:

“It’s heartbreaking that ConocoPhillips has been allowed to break ground on Willow before the court has fully assessed whether the project is lawful,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “But this case isn’t over, and we’ll keep fighting to protect struggling Arctic wildlife and our climate from this disastrous project. We’re hopeful we’ll get the Willow project’s approval thrown out once again.”

“Although the White House and Department of Interior were not persuaded to stop Willow despite the advocacy of more than 5 million individuals, we are now using the power of the law to restore some balance. While this particular round of the legal challenge did not produce the outcome we had hoped for, our court battle continues,” said Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney in Earthjustice’s Alaska Regional Office. “We will do everything within our power to protect the climate, wildlife, and people from this dangerous carbon bomb. Climate scientists have warned that we have less than seven years to get it right on climate change, and we cannot afford to lock in three decades of oil drilling that will only serve to open the door to more fossil-fuel extraction.”

“Today’s decision is a disappointment, but we remain undeterred,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Defenders of Wildlife’s Alaska Program director. “We remain committed to protecting the western Arctic and look forward to the court’s full consideration of the Willow project, including its impacts to polar bears threatened with extinction and massive carbon emissions that will worsen the climate crisis for decades to come.”

“We are disappointed that the court decided to allow development of this dangerous carbon bomb while our litigation plays out,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth. “However, the fight has just begun. We are confident in our claims that the administration failed to fully assess the range of environmental, social and economic damages that Willow will have. From harming local caribou herds and subsistence communities to fueling the climate crisis, the federal government must revisit its decision to greenlight this disastrous project.”

Teshekpuk Caribou, Northeast National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. Photo by Bob Wick (BLM) Image is available for media use.

“Allowing ConocoPhillips to bulldoze forward with construction of the largest oil and gas project on public lands before the lawsuits are settled is needlessly destructive,” said Natalie Mebane, climate campaign director at Greenpeace USA. “As the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. cannot afford Willow or any new oil and gas projects if we’re going to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. New projects will take years if not decades to complete. They do nothing to meet current energy needs. It will only deepen our dependence on expensive fossil fuels while destroying our climate, harming our health, and polluting communities.”

“Willow is a climate bomb that would lock in decades more dependence on fossil fuels, at the very time we need to shift to cleaner energy options,” said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council. “It would do irreparable harm to irreplaceable resources. It has no place in our energy future. Its approval was unlawful. We look forward to making that case before the Court.”

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Featured image: Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. (Photo: USFWS/Flickr cc)

***

On a calm Wednesday morning, Allam Abdulhaq was cleaning his small shop in the Mreij Street in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, when he found himself in the middle of a violent Israeli undercover raid.

It took him a few moments before he realised that a group of telecommunication workers that had arrived in his neighbourhood moments earlier was in fact an Israeli forces unit preparing to detain Palestinian fighter Mohammed Hamdan.

The raid, on 22 March, came as part of a series of similar Israeli military raids into various West Bank towns and neighbourhoods that aimed to detain or assassinate wanted Palestinian resistance fighters.

Many of these raids resulted in the killing of several Palestinians, in what Palestinian officials have described as a series of “massacres“.

In a trembling voice, Abdulhaq recalled the events of that morning.

“I saw two young men dressing like workers of the telecommunication or the electricity company. They were carrying equipment and their clothes were covered in dust and dirt,” the 55-year-old shop owner said in a trembling voice as he recalled the events of that morning.

“One of them spoke to his colleague in Arabic then bought a bottle of water. A few moments later, a car with a ladder strapped to its roof arrived and four men got out. They asked the two young men: ‘Ready?’. They responded, ‘Yes, ready’.

“The four then headed to the delivery company in front of my shop, and the other two remained near my shop.

“A few minutes passed before Hamdan came running out of the company, followed by the four men who pointed their guns at him and shot him, then started yelling and cursing him using obscene words.”

While Abdulhaq was watching the incident unfold, the two young men pointed their guns to his head, forcing him to turn his back on the scene.

However, he tried to take a look to see if Hamdan, who was shot in the thigh, was still alive.

“I thought that it was a family problem or some kind of row, until military reinforcements arrived in a bus that was carrying undercover agents and Israeli forces. Only then did I realise that what was going on was a military raid to detain a wanted Palestinian man,” Abdulhaq told Middle East Eye.

Three weeks after the raid, Abdulhaq seems to still be in shock.

“I was terrified. I have diabetes and I was in a miserable state, so my brother, who is a doctor, called an ambulance,” he recalled.

“I cannot forget the voice of Mohammed Hamdan shouting as he was being detained: ‘Say hello to my daughters’. I cannot get him out of my mind.”

Disguised to assassinate

Since 2021, the Israeli army has intensified its raids into West Bank towns, where detention and assassination operations are usually conducted by undercover special forces.

Israeli soldiers would appear in Palestinian neighbourhood dressed like locals – including disguised as Muslim clerics, workers, journalists, or medics – to conduct highly secretive military operations.

The undercover forces have since managed to enter Palestinian towns using trucks and vehicles that carried names of Palestinian companies and food factories, or cars with Palestinian number plates.

Surprisingly, most of the raids were conducted at peak hours in overcrowded markets and neighbourhoods, turning them into battlefields.

One month before the undercover raid in Nablus, on 22 February, Israeli forces stormed the city and killed 11 Palestinians.

Disguised as clergy and holding prayer rugs in which they had hid their weapons, Israeli undercover forces entered a crowded market, and headed to the Grand Salahi Mosque, according to eyewitness accounts.

The special forces then left the mosque and moved towards a nearby building where Palestinian fighters were said to be located, before they were joined by large military reinforcements.

The house was besieged, and missiles were fired at the building, while Israeli snipers were spotted in the vicinity.

An Israeli military helicopter was also seen hovering over the city.

Undercover in broad daylight

Three weeks later, on 16 March, a similar raid was conducted in the West Bank city of Jenin, although with some variations.

On a busy Thursday afternoon on Abu Baker street, where Jenin’s central market is usually crowded before the weekend, four gunmen alighted from a vehicle and opened fire at the crowd of shoppers and pedestrians, as they targeted two Palestinian resistance fighters.

The two men – identified as Nidal Khazem, 28, and Youssef Shreim, 29 – had left the Jenin camp that day, where they had been in hiding, to visit a barber shop and a sweet shop in the city.

They were on a motorcycle when they were killed, along with two others, including a 16-year-old boy. Twenty three others were also wounded in the raid, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

“Everyone was screaming and crying and running everywhere. Women and children were terrified, while men were trying to protect us and get us inside the shops to avoid being shot,” said Sora Abu al-Rob, who was leaving a dental clinic when the incident occurred.

“I decided to go back to the clinic. I thought that maybe it would be safer than the street. But the clinic’s window was directly overlooking the roof of the opposite building, where resistance fighters hid behind water tanks and clashed with the special forces.”

Abu al-Rob and other patients in the clinic took shelter from the shooting in one of the corridors.

Before visiting the clinic, Abu al-Rob had met with friends she had not seen in seven months.

“We walked in the city’s neighbourhoods and talked about how much we love it, and about the intimacy we feel being in it. But this intimacy vanished in the blink of an eye, and turned into fear and horror,” she recalled.

“[When the shooting started] I tried to reach out to my friends to make sure they were ok, but I could not,” she said.

“[Military] raids are nothing new to the Palestinian people, but they are usually conducted on the outskirts of cities and neighbourhoods.

“What made it horrific that time was the fact that it occurred in the middle of an overly crowded market.”

Following the incident, Abu al-Rob said in a Facebook post:

“This is a scene that we do not get used to, no matter how many times it occurs. These grieving voices do not disappear with time. This huge loss does not fade with time. Rather, they generate fear, hatred, long revenge, and perhaps…a little hope.”

‘You’re a Palestinian, you’re a target’

As soon as a raid begins, Mohammed Ordonia, a football coach and photographer, puts on his paramedic suit and rushes to the field to treat the wounded.

In such events, Ordonia says that he and his fellow paramedics “forget the fear” as their first concern and priority becomes “saving lives”.

The 28-year-old paramedic and several of his colleagues, who were part of a medical relief team of 25, were present in the the Bab al-Saha area in Nablus the day of the 22 February raid.

“We had been dispersed across multiple areas to ensure that we could respond to any injury cases throughout the areas of clashes,” Ordonia told MEE.

“We treated a large number of wounds caused by live bullets, rubber bullets, and tear gas canisters.”

Ordonia said that during military raids, Israeli forces do not differentiate between paramedics, civilians, and resistance fighters.

“You’re a Palestinian, you’re a target. Paramedics are always in the occupation’s bank of targets,” he added.

His fellow paramedic, Hamza Abu Hajar, was seriously wounded in the liver and spleen while he was trying to treat a wounded Palestinian in December.

“I do not stop thinking of what would happen if I were to be in his place one day,” Ordonia said. “But once we receive the call to save the wounded, and the moment I wear my paramedic suit, I perform ablution and pray, then I rush to the field. At that moment, these thoughts stop, and I forget about death.”

In many cases, ambulances are targeted by Israeli gunfire or prevented from evacuating the wounded and reaching the hospitals.

“Many of the wounded arrive in private cars rather than ambulances. In such events, the youth of the camp, who also resist the occupation, work as paramedics,” said Nawal Anboussi, a public relations officer at the Ibn Sina Hospital, adjacent to Jenin camp.

The aftermath of grief

Away from street battles, a different type of battlefield takes place in hospitals during raids.

“As soon as the raid begins, the hospital near the scene of the incident prepares to receive the wounded. Doctors from all departments are called upon to ensure that they are fully equipped to receive and treat all injuries, working tirelessly to save lives,” Anboussi said.

The emergency rooms become crowded with victims and their families who rush to the hospitals to see whether their sons are among the victims, and whether they are alive.

The wounded arrive one after another, leaving doctors exhausted in their attempts to save those who are seriously wounded. Their voices can be heard echoing throughout the hospital, calling for blood donations, or asking nurses to transfer the wounded to operating rooms or intensive care units.

“Relatives of the wounded wait in the emergency department, not knowing if their fathers, brothers or sons would survive. But the harshest scene I have experience was when I comforted a mother of a seriously wounded young man, telling her that he was going to survive, only to know, ten minutes later, that he had passed away,” Anboussi recalled.

“There are only a few moments between the hope of survival and the fear of loss.”

Last year, Anboussi took part in shrouding Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after she was assassinated by Israeli forces, an experience she still cannot believe she had lived through.

“I was shocked by what happened, and as I was shrouding her, I still could not believe it. Everyone who saw me that day told me that I appeared to be unwell.”

A few hours after each military raid, and after the special forces retreat, doctors continue to perform their utmost to save the wounded, while the dead are mourned and buried.

The entire city usually falls into a state of deep grief, and shops close down as most West Bank cities observe a general strike. 

Military funerals are held for resistance fighters who are killed during clashes with Israeli forces to honour their struggle against the occupation, and scores of residents go to the streets to attend funerals, chanting for Palestine and the victims, and threatening the Israeli occupation with retaliation.

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Featured image: A graffiti of Naji al-Ali’s Handala on the West Bank separation wall

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A new study from Sweden showed that a previously healthy woman developed symptoms of “microwave syndrome” shortly after a 5G cell tower was installed 60 meters — nearly 200 feet — from her apartment.

According to the study, published April 10 in the Annals of Clinical and Medical Case Reports, the 52-year-old woman developed “severe health problems” — including “unbearable” pain, headache, dizziness, loss of immediate memory, confusion, fatigue, anxiety, nose bleeds and issues with her lungs, stomach and urinary system.

The woman temporarily relocated to another home with low radiation levels and no 5G exposure, at which point almost all of her symptoms disappeared. When she moved back to her apartment, the symptoms returned.

The study’s findings mirror the results of two prior case reports, conducted by the same researchers, which showed that non-ionizing radiation from 5G — well below levels allowed by authorities — can cause health problems in individuals with no prior history of electromagnetic sensitivity, the authors said.

The case reports’ lead author, Dr. Lennart Hardell — an oncologist and world-leading scientist on cancer risks with the Environment and Cancer Research Foundation — said the symptoms seen in the three case reports first appeared when a 3G or 4G tower was replaced by a 5G tower, indicating that 5G radiation is “devastating” for some individuals for whom it leads to “a whole range of medical problems,” he said.

Hardell and co-author Mona Nilsson measured “extremely high” microwave radiation levels — much higher than levels recommended by scientists — outside and inside the woman’s apartment.

They included a drawing that showed the location of the cell tower (A) in relation to the woman’s apartment (B).

On the woman’s balcony, they measured 2,5000,000 μW/m2 (microwatts per square meter) as the peak value — the highest reading the meter could register, an indication that the radiation level may have been even higher, they said.

Inside the apartment, they measured a peak value of 758,000 μW/m2 with sharp variations — or pulses — over one minute, which they displayed in a graph.

Credit: Lennart Hardell and Mona Nilsson

“These measurements are very alarming,” said Nilsson, managing director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation. “They confirm the concerns raised by hundreds of scientists that 5G would lead to an increase in exposure to microwave radiation — which has already been proven harmful at levels lower than governmental limits.”

It’s not just 5G’s high radiation levels that are problematic — it’s the highly repetitive nature of the pulsating 5G signal that harms people’s health, the authors said.

“In medicine, you have a recovery period,” Hardell said. “It takes [the] cellular system time to recover from something that’s bad for it.”

For instance, he said, research on radiation treatment for fighting cancer has shown that the radiation has a stronger biological effect when one treatment is given in the morning and one in the afternoon — rather than just once a day — because cells do not have time to recover.

“Here we have the same problem,” Hardell added.

Complete ‘darkness and silence’ on part of the media

The researchers determined that medical problems surfaced when people were “passively exposed” in their own homes, Hardell emphasized.

“That’s not to be tolerated in a democratic society, in my view,” he said. “The deployment of 5G needs to be stopped and the 5G existing stations need to be dismantled.”

The study coincides with the Biden administration’s April 12 launch of a $1.5 billion telecommunications “innovation fund” to “help to ensure that the future of 5G and next-gen wireless technology is built by the U.S. and its global allies and partners.”

Hardell — who has conducted epidemiological research on environmental toxins since the 1970s — said when he was publishing the world’s first case reports on the health effects of Agent Orange “people were actually mad” that large herbicide companies were spraying the chemicals in forests.

“The media was on their toes and really reported about all these things, which led to more studies,” he said.

But that’s not the case with 5G, he said. “There is complete darkness and silence in the media about this problem … the governments ignore this completely, and there is no political or media pressure on politics to do anything about this.”

Hardell said it is “almost forbidden” in Sweden to discuss or publish about the health implications of 5G, he added.

Industry profits — not public demand — driving expansion of 5G

Nilsson said it’s “madness” for a society to expose the public to 5G radiation without an established track record of safety.

The 5G rollout is driven by the telecommunication industry’s desire for profits, she said. “That’s the driving force. It’s not the public demand.”

“We need to dismantle and reduce the use of this wireless technology because it’s clearly harmful … and we need to start looking at alternatives and use more of the cabled internet and cabled communication, which is safe,” Nilsson added.

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

Featured image is from CHD

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Joe Biden’s administration keeps boasting about how successful international sanctions have been in punishing Russia for invading Ukraine. But that boast is increasingly hollow, both with respect to the extent of international unity and the success of the sanctions. Instead of being a success story, the U.S.-led sanctions campaign against Russia is fast becoming another example of a chronically failed tactic.

The administration’s propaganda about widespread global support relies primarily on 2 resolutions condemning the invasion that the UN General Assembly approved, one in March 2022 and the other in February 2023. However, both resolutions were purely symbolic, toothless measures. They did not commit member states to take any action. Nevertheless, more than one-fifth of the UN members, including such key players as China, South Africa, and India, defied Washington’s pressure and cast negative votes or abstentions.

A more graphic and substantive indication of the unwillingness of countries not already in Washington’s geopolitical orbit to join the crusade against Moscow is their refusal to impose economic sanctions. Except for the NATO bloc and long-standing U.S. security dependents in East Asia, the global map is nearly devoid of countries that have adopted punitive measures. Such absence of support throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America is especially striking.

Western sanctions have damaged Russia’s economy, but they have been decidedly less effective than Washington’s boasts would imply. After a brief, sharp decline, the Ruble has become one of the stronger currencies internationally, making a mockery of President Biden’s prediction that it would soon become “the rubble.” Russia also remains a key export power in terms of both energy and food. Indeed, the Kremlin has been markedly successful in shifting its exports from European markets to those in other regions. Most notably, it has replaced Saudi Arabia as China’s largest source of oil and natural gas. Collaboration on that issue is just one sign of an emerging bilateral alliance between the Asian giants – a development that gives US military planners nightmares.

The faltering of the U.S.-led strategy of economic sanctions against Russia should not come as a surprise. Similar campaigns have a long track record of being an ineffective foreign policy tool. North Korea has not capitulated to Washington’s demands despite massive economic pressure since the middle of the twentieth century. US sanctions against Cuba, now in their seventh decade, and against Iran, now in their fifth decade, have produced similar frustrations for US policymakers.

The seminal scholarly work of Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, documented how sanctions rarely achieved their policy goals. More recent editions of the book confirm the conclusion with even greater certainty. Sanctions inconvenience the targeted regime – and create substantial suffering for innocent people in that country – but they seldom compel the regime to capitulate or even make major concessions. As Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott demonstrate, that outcome is especially true when the issue at stake is a high-priority matter for the country’s political leadership.

The habitual ineffectiveness of sanctions is reason enough to reject such a policy option, but their pervasive cruelty should be an even more compelling reason. Unfortunately, US and other Western officials seem oblivious or callous about that problem. The ongoing sanctions against Russia have undoubtedly injured tourist shop owners in Saint Petersburg, where cruise ships now are barred from stopping. Yet how driving a middle-age seller of nesting dolls into bankruptcy is supposed to compel Vladimir Putin to cease his war against Ukraine remains a mystery.

Undoubtedly the most shocking example of insensitivity about the collateral damage that economic sanctions inflict was a comment that Madeleine Albright made in the mid-1990s. CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl cited accounts that the U.S.-led international sanctions against Iraq, still in effect years after the Persian Gulf War, had cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked if the policy had been worth such a price, Albright responded: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” It was a stunningly callous comment, but there is little evidence that Albright’s successors in either Republican or Democratic administrations have adopted a more enlightened attitude.

Continuing to impose economic sanctions that inflict suffering on innocent civilians is a policy unworthy of a decent country. The United States and NATO need to abandon that course with respect to Russia and the other targets of Washington’s wrath.

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Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute. He also served in various policy positions for 37 years at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Declassified documents from 1998, when the UK and US bombed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, show Tony Blair was consistently informed military action was unlawful without UN authorisation. But he told parliament Britain had “the proper legal authority”.

Tony Blair and his closest advisers were consistently informed by British legal advisers in 1997 and 1998 that attacking Iraq would not be lawful – but still went ahead in authorising four days of bombing in December 1998.

The declassified British documents at the National Archives show Blair was already set on taking military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime throughout 1998 in the absence of legal arguments to justify it. 

The Labour prime minister’s dismissal of legal objections to his 1998 bombing campaign – known as Operation Desert Fox – was a direct precursor to his stance over the invasion of Iraq five years later in 2003, which was also deemed illegal.  

The four-day bombing campaign on Iraq from 16 to 19 December 1998 by the US and British militaries sought to degrade Iraq’s ability to store and produce weapons of mass destruction. 

Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait in 1990 and used chemical weapons against Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. During much of 1998, he was refusing to provide full access to international inspectors who had been mandated by the UN in 1991 to monitor and remove Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile capabilities. 

US president Bill Clinton was widely criticised for ordering the December bombing as a distraction from the ongoing impeachment proceedings against him over sexual harassment charges and his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. 

‘Essential precondition’

The British files show Blair was told for over a year before the 1998 bombing that using force in Iraq would only be lawful if a new UN Security Council resolution were to be passed saying Saddam was in “material breach” of Iraq’s previous commitments. 

Blair’s private secretary, John Holmes, informed his boss on 12 November 1997 that British law officers and foreign secretary Robin Cook “are convinced we have a serious problem about using force unless the Security Council declares that Iraq is in ‘material breach’ of previous resolutions. That may be unattainable.” 

Holmes’ minute also indicated some of Blair’s own thinking. 

He wrote to Blair:

“The lawyers will also be inclined to fuss constantly about how far whatever force we use is related to Iraq’s offence and proportionate. Like you, I have doubts about how far international law can really be used in the way the lawyers want to use it… but it will be very hard to dismiss the legal arguments altogether”. 

Holmes then added that “it is probably sensible to prepare to deploy British forces” but cautioned that “we will need a careful press line”.

Two days later, on 14 November, the prime minister was expressly told by John Morris, the Attorney General, that “an essential precondition” to using force would be a Security Council “statement”. 

Morris’s only qualification was that “exceptional circumstances could arise” where the international community as a whole, in the absence of a statement, agreed that Iraq “had in effect repudiated the ceasefire and that a resort to force…was the only way to ensure compliance with the ceasefire conditions”.

Holmes, who went on to become an ambassador and then chair of the Electoral Commission, told Blair on the same day: “As I have said before, we can regard these legal arguments as misplaced but they cannot be ignored. The resignation of a Law Officer, if it came to that, would be pretty bad. They therefore need to be kept on board”. 

But then he also added: “We must certainly try to consult them before we do anything serious, if at all possible, even if you have to override their views”.

‘Sound legal basis’

As military planning to strike Iraq continued into 1998, ministers considered the legality of allowing US aircraft to bomb the country using the British-occupied island of Diego Garcia, a military base in the Indian Ocean. 

The Attorney General again wrote to Blair on 12 February reaffirming that “the lawfulness of attacking specific targets in Iraq also depends on there being a sound legal basis for the use of force”. 

Michael Pakenham, the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told Holmes: “The Law Officers are declining to give clearance to the targeting plans because, as set out in the Attorney General’s minute of 12 February to the prime minister, they do not feel that they are yet in a position to pronounce on the lawfulness of the overall operation”.

Pakenham then added: “it would be helpful if the prime minister could have a private word with the Law Officers”.

Blair penned a personal note to John Holmes on this bundle of papers, saying: “I still find the law officers advice unconvincing”. 

He added: “There must at the very least be an argument that the S.C. [Security Council] has agreed there is a breach. The only issue is can we use force and why not if it is the only way to compliance.”

‘New resolution’

Also on 12 February 1998, the Foreign Office’s legal adviser, Sir Franklin Berman, weighed in. He wrote to his department’s senior civil servant stating: “The only valid claim to employ force (in this case) is under the authority of the Security Council…My view is that a new resolution in suitable terms is a sina qua non”. 

He added: “The Ministerial Code requires Ministers to comply with the law, including international law…I cannot believe that Ministers would wish to order British servicemen into action unless their legal advisers were able to assure them that it was legally justifiable”.

Letter from Sir Franklin Berman to Foreign Office Permanent Undersecretary, 12 February 1998, in National Archives, PREM 49/294/1

Blair was again told of the Foreign Office view two days later, on 14 February, in a meeting with his Solicitor-General Charles Falconer. 

He told Blair that in the Foreign Office “some lawyers argued very strongly that it would be the first time since 1956 that the UK had used force without the backing of the Security Council Resolution” – referring to Britain’s ill-fated invasion of Egypt over Suez. 

“Some lawyers might feel strongly enough to resign”, Falconer warned Blair, since they might be expected to implement decisions “that they believed were incompatible with international law”. 

According to the minutes of the meeting, Blair replied saying “he could not believe that there was not an alternative case to be made, even if the issue was not clear-cut”. 

‘Preferable’

Five days later, on 19 February, Blair, Cook and defence secretary George Robertson attended a briefing by Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) Sir Charles Guthrie and Air Marshal John Day on “targeting plans for operations against Iraq”. 

The minutes note that the “CDS mentioned that he was worried about the legal side; he hoped this could be sorted quickly”. 

The minutes then state: “The prime minister noted that the legal advice was that securing another SCR [Security Council Resolution] was preferable.” 

It added: “The key issues, though, were whether Saddam was in breach of SCRs [Security Council resolutions] and whether force was a legitimate response to that breach…The prime minister concluded that…he did not want to have everything depending on securing a further Resolution”.

In fact, Blair had been told by then that a further resolution was essential, not preferable. His last comment implied that he would be prepared to use military force without such a resolution – which is indeed what happened later in the year.

‘Exceptional circumstances’

One note in the bundle of papers – which is undated but likely to be from February 1998 – appears to be from officials ahead of a meeting between Blair and Attorney General John Morris. It suggests how Blair pressed Morris to legally justify the use of force.

Headlined “Speaking Notes for the Prime Minister: Iraq – The Legal Position”, it begins by saying: “I fully appreciate that the legal basis for use [sic] of military force against Iraq must be properly assessed before force is authorised”. 

It refers to Morris’s memo of 14 November 1997 pointing out that it “helpfully indicated” there could be “exceptional circumstances” in which the use of force could be justified without a Security Council statement. It then says: “I trust that you can confirm now that my description of what would constitute ‘exceptional circumstances’ is correct”.

In the note, the justification for claiming that “exceptional circumstances” were prevailing was that Saddam Hussein was in breach of various Security Council resolutions – essentially, the argument Blair eventually relied on in attacking Iraq in December of that year.   

The files that have been declassified do not appear to contain the minutes of that meeting. 

‘The bottom line’

The problem for Blair and his officials – in 1998 as in 2003 – was that they knew UN member states, especially the permanent five on the Security Council, would not endorse a resolution citing a “material breach”. 

As Cook’s principal private secretary, Dominick Chilcott, wrote to Holmes on 16 February 1998, neither France nor Russia would support such a resolution authorising the use of force. “The negative implications for international support if we resort to military action without a new resolution would be serious”, Chilcott warned.

None of this stopped Blair and military action appeared imminent by late February. 

On 20 February, a top secret note written by David Fisher in the Cabinet Office noted the US was “currently planning a 40 hour campaign involving several waves of attacks” including using cruise missiles and B52 bombers flying from Diego Garcia. 

It was assumed the UK would participate: “We assess that of the 23 UK tactical aircraft involved in the operation we may lose one UK aircraft”, Fisher noted. Yet military action was not undertaken in February. 

In July 1998, Michael Pakenham wrote a confidential note entitled “The Legal Use of Force”. He said the Foreign Office legal team was continuing to advise that “the bottom line remains that in most foreseeable circumstances, a Resolution of the UN Security Council is required before the use of such force can be authorised”. 

He added that “acting against UN principles or without UNSCRs [UN Security Council resolutions] may in the short term meet some immediate need but is in the long term wholly contrary to our interests”. 

‘Hard to avoid hitting him’

Tensions continued throughout 1998 and on 14 November Blair authorised striking Iraq but British and US forces were stood down at the last minute as Saddam agreed to permit inspections. 

“In my view, it is clear that Iraq would not have retreated from this confrontation unless it had been faced with the credible threat of force”, Blair wrote to his EU opposite numbers.

Just before Iraq’s climb-down, the prime minister had held a meeting with Cook, Robertson and Guthrie in which he affirmed: “The time had now come for military action to be taken against Iraq”. 

There was no direct discussion of legal issues, according to the minutes of that meeting, except that it was agreed to justify the use of force “not because he [Saddam] was in technical breach of UN Resolutions but because he posed a real and imminent threat to peace and security in the region”. 

This was a de facto acknowledgement that the threshold demanded by Britain’s legal advisers – new Security Council authorisation – had not been met.

A Cabinet Office note of 20 November 1998, less than a month before the bombings, stated that: “At present, the legal basis for military action in the event of further non-cooperation would rest on the Security Council’s ‘flagrant violation’ language in UNSCR [UN Security Council Resolution] 1205”. 

This resolution was adopted at the UN on 5 November and condemned Iraq’s failure to act consistently with previous UN resolutions. It did not, however, authorise the use of force.

Blair wrote to former foreign secretary David Owen on 7 December, referring to the climbdown of 14 November saying: “If there is a next time, I will have no hesitation in ordering the use of force once again.”

In one of numerous telephone calls with Clinton in the following week, Blair told him on 11 December that “if he [Saddam] refused more inspections this weekend, it would be hard to avoid hitting him”. 

Wave of attacks

Five days later, the US and UK struck Iraq in a wave of air attacks. Almost 100 sites were attacked by US and British aircraft, with cruise missiles fired from US navy ships and B-52 bombers.

The bombing was widely criticised. Even General Peter de la Billiere, a former head of the SAS who commanded British forces in the 1991 Gulf war, questioned the political impact of the bombing campaign, saying aerial bombardments were not effective in driving people into submission, but tend to make them more defiant.

When Blair announced military action to parliament on 17 November, he said: “I have no doubt that we have the proper legal authority, as it is contained in successive Security Council resolution documents”. 

This was misleading as he had been consistently advised that further UN authorisation was needed permitting the use of force.

Thus British officials justified their action by claiming that other UN resolutions passed in 1998 revived the authorisation to use force provided in Resolution 678, a remnant of the Gulf War passed eight years earlier, in 1990. 

But since these other resolutions did not explicitly authorise the use of force, the UK argument was a spurious one. The 1998 bombing was supported in the 15-member Security Council only by the US, Japan and Portugal.

Five years later, in 2003, the UK and US relied on the same resolution – 678 – to justify their invasion when they again failed to secure a further Security Council resolution authorising the use of force.

Special relationship

The files suggest Blair in 1998 was motivated more by maintaining relations with the US than by upholding international law, as in 2003. 

In a meeting with his senior advisers on 15 November 1998 the prime minister said that if the US pressed ahead with military action against Iraq even after the initial climb-down, the UK should still participate “in view of the extreme damage that would otherwise be caused to US/UK relations”.

On the same day, Clinton told Blair on the phone that military action against Iraq “might have to be used”. Blair replied saying he agreed and that Clinton “could count on our support throughout”. 

If Saddam was unwilling to cooperate, “we would have to enforce our will”, Blair said, adding “even if there were some differences between us on the legal front”. 

This was significant in that the files show US officials, unlike those in the UK, believed they had legal justification to strike Iraq. Blair was intimating to the US president he was prepared to override British legal concerns. 

Blair mentioned this to Clinton the day following legal advice from his Attorney General, John Morris, saying a Security Council statement was “an essential precondition” to using force.

By early 1998, as Washington and London were also close to striking Iraq, Blair told Solicitor-General Charles Falconer on 14 February that “it was inconceivable that we would refuse the Americans the use of the base at Diego Garcia. At the very least this had to be legally possible”.

The government has not declassified all the files relating to this period. It is keeping secret several of the Iraq files from the prime minister’s office, including threedocument folders covering the the end of 1998 and early 1999.

Tony Blair was approached for comment.

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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.

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Currently, we are witnessing a phenomenon, largely ignored or misinterpreted in the Western media, a phenomenon which some had thought unthinkable in 21^st Century Europe, namely, an open and direct attack by a regime on a religious denomination with the aim of destroying it. As stated in the petition presented recently on this site, the Canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (which has the largest number of followers) has been faced with a campaign of delegitimisation, bullying, humiliation and destruction/violent takeover of its properties by the unrecognized “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” backed by the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service). As spun by the anti-Russian Western media, this wave of religious destruction, indeed extermination, is a consequence of Russian “aggression”. This of course is not only fallacious but represents a conscious attempt to protect the spiritual descendants of the criminals who have been attacking Russian and Serb Orthodoxy for over half a century. 

The same thing happened in the West’s break up of Yugoslavia when In December 2019 Montenegro’s parliament passed a law titled “On freedom of religion,” the legislation gave a portion of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s property to the canonically non-recognized Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which was created in 1993. The Serbian Orthodox Church effectively lost the right to all of its buildings that were built before 1918.

The Russian Special Operation in the Ukraine has given rise to a myriad analyses and speculations about the essence of the conflict. Many analysts favour geopolitical (e.g. the mastery of the Eurasian landmass, ocean-rimmed vs. land-based empires), unipolarity vs. multipolarity, economic (dollar’s dominance, oil, war for resources), political (rise of China, India and the “Third world”, future of neoliberal “democracy”, threat to world peace), military (hybrid and next-generation warfare) and cultural interpretations (weaponisation of artificial national identities). 

All of these factors are of critical importance but underneath all of these layers of explanation lies another cause, which while almost completely ignored by most experts and commentators is of great significance – the religious element. For the purpose of this short essay, I shall call this factor “psycho-religious disposition”. 

Although dismissed by modern thinkers as a vestigial superstition and primitivism of previous ages, it is the religious dimension that allows one to connect the dots and place the conflict in a proper historical context. One’s psycho-religious disposition is not confined to religious beliefs and church attendance. It is a psychological disposition that is jointly formed by deep civilizational influences and by the dominant religion to which a person is exposed. In the case of Russia, this has created a mentality or a national psyche that is warm (if not demonstrative), non-materialistic and spiritual. At the same time though, the experience of many wars and tragedies has resulted in a certain toughness and ability to endure the unendurable. A good description of this uniquely Russian moral psychology was given by the Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison who had conducted extensive research into the geology of Russia. In 1853, speaking at a rally against Britain’s participation on the Crimean war, he said:

“Even as Russia expands her possessions at the expense of her neighbouring colonies, unlike the other colonial powers she gives to these her new acquisitions more than she takes from them (italics mine). This is not because it is driven by some kind of philanthropy or anything like that.

The original aspirations of all empires differ little, but wherever a Russian man appears, everything miraculously takes an entirely different direction. The moral norms developed by the Eastern Slavs since pre-Christian times do not allow the Russian person to violate someone else’s conscience and infringe on the property which does not belong to him by right.

More often out of an ineradicable sense of compassion rooted in him he is ready to give up his last shirt than to take it away from someone else. Therefore, no matter how victorious the Russian weapons may be, in purely mercantile terms, Russia always loses.”

Thus Murchison described the Russian understanding of religion and morality. In general, while the Russian empire pursued earthly goals, its essence was not extermination, enslavement or forced religious conversion but a live-and-let-live attitude which has ensured that today almost 200 ethnic groups co-exist peacefully in Russia, having preserved their languages and customs. 

It is this combination of old Slav traditions (connected to ancient India) and Orthodox Christianity that has compelled the Russians to stand up against hegemony and tyranny many times in their history and defend their country against massive invasions from both the East and in particular the West.

Despite being Caucasian and largely “European”, the Russians have always been treated with suspicion and disdain by the West. A pathological combination of fear, hatred and contempt has coloured Western attitudes ever since the Western Slavs were cleansed from Germanic lands starting in 8^th Century N.E.

The Russian people refused to bow before the Teutonic knights and Roman Catholic priests. They also stubbornly refused to worship Mammon – the two unforgivable sins in the eyes of an increasingly expansive and “mercantilist” West. I do not intend to idealise Russia, only to offer hints as to why it has been the target of three crusades in the last 100 years. The first one began in 1914 and was motivated by the Austro-German ambition to curtail Russia’s influence in the Balkans and neutralise it as a great power. It could be said that this crusade was led by “Central Europe” – as Germany and Austria-Hungary liked to describe themselves. The religious character of this war was reflected in the full support of Pope Pius X for the Austro-German war aims, inhuman crimes of the Roman Catholic Austrians against Orthodox Serbs and Ruthenians as well as the establishment of a wholly artificial Ukrainian state by the German General Staff, based on a manufactured Galizian Uniate nationalism which provides the black thread connecting all three genocidal invasions. 

The second crusade in 1941 (which was even named after a crusading Holy Roman emperor Friedrich Barbarossa) involved a Franco-German European Reich led by a Roman Catholic—Adolf Hitler (note the growth of the Crusading power relative to 1914). The consequences of this, probably the greatest crime in modern history (60 million dead of whom up to 30 million were Slav), are well known. The stirrings of Ukrainian nationalism of 1918 transmogrified into an orgy of mass slaughter and terror by the followers of a Uniate Fuehrer Stepan Bandera and his henchmen. The 13^th Waffen SS Division Galizien was blessed by the leader of the Ukrainian Uniates, Andrey Sheptytsky. The horrific slaughter of approximately 100,000 Poles of Volyn has been erased from the collective memory of the current Polish establishment which leads the world in Catholicism-inspired Russophobia. 

Although in 1945 it seemed that the evil of Nazism had been defeated forever, the Crusade against Soviet Russia continued unabated with the death of Franklin Roosevelt. In a couple of years, the United States took over the role of the crusading empire from Hitler’s Germany. A largely Roman Catholic CIA took over the Ukrainian and Western Byelorussian terror networks with the help of Reinhardt Gehlen and continued the campaign of the destabilisation of Russia by all methods short of war. MI6 was involved too since most of the Nazi Galizien veterans had been sent to England following the intervention of Pope Pius XII who described them as “good Catholics”, and then to Canada. Further, the British controlled the Prometheus stay-behind networks in the Baltics and elsewhere. 

In other words, World War II never ended. It only went underground as long as the Soviet Union existed. This “Cold war” was given “spiritual” leadership by the Vatican and especially Pius XII and John Paul II. The former was labelled “Hitler’s Pope” by English Catholic historian John Cornwell and the latter was directly involved in Ronald Reagan’s CIA’s anti-Soviet operations in Poland. Together with assorted Austro-German politicians (Waldheim, von Habsburg, Kohl, Kinkel and Genscher), he played a pivotal role in the destruction of Yugoslavia which resulted in a total cleansing of the remaining Serbs from Croatia in 1995. The key development in this interlude was a gradual rapprochement between the former enemies—Anglo-Americans and Germans—which would enable the next Crusade.

To the naïve among us, it appeared that the animosities of the 20^th Century would peter out with the fall of the Soviet Union. It was not to be. The Western stay-behind networks took over the Baltic states, Poland and the Ukraine where Banderite extreme nationalism started to raise its ugly head again. 

The rabidly Russophobic Ukrainian emigres in Canada became active in infiltrating the newly independent country and preparing it for integration into the EU in NATO. Thanks to Rodney Atkinson, we know that the EU is practically a copy of Hitler’s Europe whose expansion to the Russian borders was made possible by the American military backing provided through NATO. Both organisations were stuffed with rehabilitated Nazis and both grew like aggressive tumours on the back of a weakened, supine Russia.

The growing threat to Russian security became acute in 1999 when NATO unconscionably and illegally attacked Yugoslavia and bombed it for 78 days. Aside from the suffering and death inflicted on the people of this country, the invasion was important for two reasons. First, Germany invaded a country for the first time since World War II and second, a Slav Orthodox country was attacked by a united West—also for the first time. This time, German Europe was led by the Americans and the British who exhibited extraordinary zeal in punishing the Serbs by creating a malignant quasi state called Kosovo on Serb territory. This was the key moment in world history which elucidated the process underlying the increasing anti-Russian and anti-Serb belligerence. From two “Central Powers”, Russia’s enemy expanded to include most European countries and finally—the entire West (plus vassals).

Why did all this happen given that the West faced a different Russia each time: an Empire, a socialist federation and finally, a capitalist one? As Russia contracted, its enemy expanded throughout the century, and it became clear as early as 1999, that no matter what form Russia took, its existence was unacceptable to the West. 

This raises the question of what is “the West”? Simply, it is an amalgam of Roman Catholicism and a defanged, purposeless establishment Protestantism which has long ceased to “protest” against Catholic imperialism and has happily joined forces with its arch enemy in order to fight Russia—which never acted as an aggressor towards it. The symbiotic relationship between the two Western interpretations of Christianity can be understood only as a form of the Stockholm syndrome on the part of the Protestants as well as the increasing affinity of the Anglo-Americans for Catholic Nazism as a potent anti-Communist force. Either way, the “united West” is a frightening prospect for anybody who loves freedom and abhors tyranny. 

To support my thesis, NATO has been advancing towards Russian borders only to reach the lines occupied by Hitler’s forces in the summer of 1941. This it achieved by using the Ukrainian Nazis and Uniates as the core of its proxy force which finally came to power via a CIA-funded coup in 2014. That year marked the beginning of the third and in my view, last, Crusade. The West started equipping, training and propagandising the Ukrainians (who are mainly of Russian descent) into a frenzy of anti-Russian hate. “Einsatztruppen” drafted from the Uniate (Orthodox who seek union with Rome) west of the Ukraine were sent to the Donbas to kill and terrorise civilians. While even the lethargic Russians started to realise that they must prepare for the inevitable, a tragic stab in the back came from the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (the nominal leader of World Orthodoxy) who in 2019 granted autocephaly to the unrecognised schismatic “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” thus completing his work on weakening the Russian Orthodox Church and the Canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church which he had begun decades ago.

The religious essence of this conflict was revealed recently. The following picture has been widely circulated on social media. On the door of one of the churches forcibly taken over by the SBU and the nominally Orthodox schismatics, a new statement of the Nicene Creed (The Symbol of Faith of Orthodox Christians) was displayed. Here is the original statement of the Nicene Creed formatted to correspond to that in the picture below:

1. I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible; 
2. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, through Whom all things were made;
3. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man;
4. Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried;
5. Rising on the third day according to the Scriptures,
6. And ascending into the heavens, He is seated at the right hand of the Father;
7. And coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
8. His Kingdom shall have no end; (missing from the Ukrainian version)
9. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke through the prophets;
10. In one, holy, catholic (in the sense of universal), and apostolic Church;
11. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
12. I expect the resurrection of the dead;
13. And the life of the age to come. Amen.

Point 9 of the Creed (shown as point 8 in the picture) contains the infamous Filioque clause—the trigger for the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. Specifically, the clause states (in Ukrainian): I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, Who proceeds from the Father and from the Son (compare with the highlighted statement in the original). Orthodox churches do not accept “and from the son” (Filioque) suggesting that Bartholomew’s fake Orthodox Church is a crypto-Papist project, a weapon with which to destroy Orthodoxy in the Ukraine by turning the schismatic Orthodox church into an adjunct of the Vatican. The meaning is clear and confirms my contention that the aim of the united West is to crush Russia and that the important part of that aim is the conversion “with fire and sword” of the Orthodox Slavs who are naturally sympathetic towards Russia.

Bartholomew’s and the Vatican’s crusade fought by NATO weapons and Ukrainian bodies has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and threatens to ignite a global nuclear war. This crusade led by the millennial enemies of Russia and Orthodoxy will be the last one. The Russian people and those who love justice must not allow the evil of religious Nazism to keep festering in the West as a permanent threat not only to Russia but to the people of the West themselves.

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Brussels is punishing Belgrade for not signing the agreement in Ohrid by allowing separatist Albanian authorities in Pristina to hold local elections in Serbian-majority northern Kosovo. The European Union is allowing the election despite Serbs not participating in them because the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) has not been formed yet.

Effectively, the EU is disappointed by the non-participation of Serbian political parties in the northern Kosovo elections which are scheduled for April 23. The EU spokesperson said that it is the duty of Pristina and Belgrade to prioritise the return of Kosovo Serbs to institutions at the central and local level. However, the Serbian List and other parties representing Serbs in Kosovo declared that they will not participate in the mayoral elections if the ZSO is not formed before that.

This is a flagrant violation of the most basic human rights as the Serbian people cannot choose their own representatives through an institution, such as the ZSO, in their own indigenous homeland. The EU wants to destroy the idea of the ZSO or establish such a zone where Serbs cannot independently choose their representatives. This is a clear violation of democratic rights.

Serbian representatives left all Kosovo institutions in November last year, including positions in the Government and Assembly of Kosovo, as well as those in the judiciary and in the Kosovo Police. This was due to the Albanian separatist government’s decision to re-register cars.

The EU and its partners claimed in November that they are committed to de-escalating tensions and that the Serbs should fulfill their obligations and return to local institutions, adding that it is imperative to return to a situation in which Kosovo Serbs actively participate in local authorities, the police, and the judiciary.

“We call on Serbia and Kosovo Serb representatives to respect their Dialogue obligations and return to the Kosovo institutions to fulfil their duties, including in the Police, Judiciary and local administrations,” the EU said, adding that “the EU also calls on Kosovo to start immediately steps to establish the Association/Community of Serb Majority Municipalities.”

“The Kosovo Assembly has ratified the Brussels Agreement and Kosovo’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Association/Community needs to be established. Therefore, its establishment is a binding legal obligation for Kosovo. Continued failure to implement this obligation undermines the principle of Rule of Law and damages Kosovo’s reputation and credibility,” the statement added.

Although the ZSO was agreed by the Brussels Agreement all the way back in 2013 and confirmed by the European proposal and the annex from Ohrid, there has been no progress on the issue.

European Union spokesman Peter Stano said on April 18 that the EU has formed a Joint Monitoring Committee to oversee the implementation of the Agreement on Normalisation of Relations and that a new round of high-level dialogue will be held on May 2 in Brussels.

For their part, the US State Department, when asked about the implementation of the agreement made in Ohrid on March 18, stated that they expect both parties to fulfill their obligations and implement earlier agreements from the dialogue, including the Community of Municipalities with a Serbian majority.

Yet, this is only a faux concern for Washington as the Albanian separatists are implementing what the Americans call terror tactics – they create a new problem right before some agreements in order to talk about that problem, and then when they de-escalate that problem, they say it is a concession and expect a favour in return.

Separatist institutions in Kosovo actively allow Serbians to be terrorised. In this way, it is evident that any conventions on human rights, that are supposedly defended by Western Europe and the US, do not apply to the Serbs of Kosovo. All this occurs under the watchful eye of the NATO-led KFOR, the United Nations Protection Force, and the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo.

However, the truth is that there is no will in the West, above all the US, to prevent Pristina from such behaviour. At the same time though, they want to close the Kosovo issue, which is why they are trying to impose the Franco-German plan by force. The plan suggests UN membership for Kosovo, without opposition from Serbia. In return, Serbia would receive more EU funds and a fast track to bloc membership. However, not only is this unacceptable for Serbs, but it would be in direct violation of Serbia’s constitution, which explicitly rejects the recognition of Kosovo.

Due to Belgrade’s refusal to give up on its historic homeland, the EU is now punishing the Serbs by allowing separatist authorities to conduct elections in Serbian-majority municipalities and without the participation of Serbs.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Introductory Note by Michel Chossudovsky

The crimes committed by Hashim Thaci had been ordered by US-NATO. The KLA was supported by the CIA and Germany’s BND (Bundes Nachrichten Dienst). 

From the very outset those crimes against the people of Serbia and Kosovo were committed on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. The KLA had extensive links to organized crime involved in drug trafficking. In the wake of the 1999 war, 24 years ago, a Mafia State was installed in Kosovo.

The bombing of Yugoslavia ceased on June 10th. On that same day 10, June 1999, the US decided to establish in Kosovo its US military base Camp Bondsteel which constitutes “the largest and the most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe, since the Vietnam War”.

And then 21 years later, the Hague Prosecutor stated that Hashim Thaci (who had served as a proxy US-NATO “Prime Minister” and “President” of Kosovo) was a “war criminal”. His links to NATO, the Pentagon and the US State Department (including Madeleine Albright) were simply not mentioned.

M. Albright and H. Thaci, 1998

In 1999, while the bombings of Yugoslavia were ongoing, segments of  the European and American “Left” including  Znet and Democracy Now among others had portrayed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), as “Freedom Fighters” pointing to their so-called Marxist-Leninist roots:

“I am sympathetic to the argument that says that if people want to fight for their rights, if they are not asking others to do it for them, then they ought to be provided with the weapons to help them succeed. Such an argument seemed to me persuasive with respect to Bosnia.”

My thoughts are with people of the former Yugoslavia, whose country was destroyed and dismantled by US-NATO.

US-NATO war crimes are amply documented, The 70 page “indictment” against Hashim Thaci should be used to indict US-NATO for extensive crimes against humanity.