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Bill Gates, writing in the NY Times, is worried that we’ll make the same mistakes again. What mistakes are those you ask? Lockdowns? Unnecessarily testing absolutely everybody? Quarantining the healthy? Of course not! Old Bill wants all of those things but more quickly and with a lot more money definitely not going through his pockets.

He likens the situation to a city with firefighters. With well trained and funded firefighters, if a fire breaks out, they respond quickly and they stop the fire from spreading. That all sounds reasonable but what happens if a fire only happens every hundred years or so? The firefighters will get restless and perhaps they might even start a fire or two to see some action. They signed up to be heroes, not to just sit around waiting for something that most likely will never happen in their working life times.

Even if the bored firefighters didn’t actually start a fire, they would certainly exaggerate the risks of one. And you can understand it from their point of view. They are constantly training to save people’s lives, they don’t want to have wasted their time pencil pushing.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), probably together with Mr Micro Soft, is trying to set up a ‘Global Health Emergency Corps’. This military sounding network will consist of the world’s top health emergency leaders, conducting drills to practice for pandemic outbreaks. And as with the bored firefighters, how long before new pathogens are exaggerated out of all proportions or worse?

Mr Gates wants all countries to have large-scale testing capabilities to check human waste for the latest virus. But the more we test and the more we look for new viruses, the more we will find and the more new pandemics there will be. Blamed on climate change of course, not the increased testing.

He says it’s important we look for lots of different types of pathogens too. However, over the last 20-30 years we have seen how many new viral scares there have been. Fortunately, none of them killed many people and there wasn’t much panic due to lack of social media and unrefined propaganda. Now, however, they have all the tools in place. They have seen what works and what doesn’t. What causes fear and what encourages others to prolong the panic. We will have a new global pandemic every five years if the same modellers and doomsters are in charge.

If a positive sample is found, Bill wants the Emergency Corps to deploy a rapid response team “to find people who might be infected”. You’ve been writing on Substack and you just sneezed, you might be infected, into quarantine prison for you.

Bill says we need professional corps from every country and region. They can’t be volunteers, they must be compensated for responding to transnational threats. It sounds more and more like an army the more he writes.

The Emergency Corps must be led by people like the heads of national public health agencies, he says. Because public health agencies have done such a great job this time round.

Emergency Corps will make sure countries and health systems are coordinated in advance of an emergency, so that everything runs smoothly during times of crisis. What he means here is that what he says goes and countries will no longer have sovereignty. You might have elected an anti-lockdown politician but Bill says we need a lockdown and the Emergency Corps will enforce that decision.

And obviously money is a key driver in all of this as well.

Bill says this is a trillion-dollar problem and we must invest in the Global Health Emergency Corps. Furthermore, wealthier countries need to step up and provide the funding. You will be paying for your own demise through further lockdowns and business closures. You won’t be able to afford your groceries but you’ve paid the wages of the Emergency Corps who are dragging you into quarantine after your neighbour ratted on you for coughing one too many times.

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Background

As reported by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, President Xi’s special plane arrived at the Moscow Vnukovo Airport around 13:00 local time. As he stepped out of the plane, President Xi was warmly greeted by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko and other senior Russian officials by the ramp.

The Russian side held a grand welcome ceremony at the airport. The military band played the national anthems of China and Russia. President Xi Jinping inspected the honor guard of the three services and watched the march-past.

President Xi Jinping delivered an arrival statement, extending warm greetings and best wishes to the Russian government and people on behalf of the Chinese government and people. He stressed that China and Russia are friendly neighbors connected by shared mountains and rivers. Our two countries have consolidated and grown the bilateral relationship on the basis of no-alliance, no-confrontation and not targeting any third party, and set a fine example for developing a new model of major-country relations.

The growth of China-Russia relations has not only brought tangible benefits to the people of our two countries, but also made important contributions to the development and progress of the world.

President Xi noted that both being major countries in the world and permanent members of the UN Security Council, China and Russia play important roles in international affairs.

In a world of volatility and transformation, China will continue to work with Russia to safeguard the international system with the UN at its core, the international order underpinned by international law, and the basic norms of international relations based on the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. China will work with Russia to uphold true multilateralism, promote a multi-polar world and greater democracy in international relations, and help make global governance more just and equitable. He is confident that the visit will produce fruitful results, and inject fresh impetus into the sound and steady growth of China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for the new era.

These are the PressTV questions.

PressTV: How important is this visit and what message is it sending?

Peter Koenig: It is important these days for the world to know that there is a close association between the two countries and close friendship by the two leaders.

It again signals that China and Russia are moving towards a multi-polar world and that China is cooperating with Russia in finding a solution of PEACE for Ukraine.

President Xi’s trip to Moscow is of further significance, because the global situation calls for an intensified understanding of the wider context of what is going on in the world. Sino-Russian relations are key for addressing the external challenges that both countries face.

In February 2022, Moscow launched military operation in Ukraine, seeking to eliminate the Nazi-regime, and the Nazi remnants in the country, widely called the Azov Battalions, who were fighting for Hitler’s Third Reich; as well as to defend and protect the self-declared independent Donbass Region which was under constant assault from Ukraine military and terror groups since the 2014 Maidan coup (more than 14,000 people were killed during this period, at least half of whom women and children); and finally, to show the world that President Putin was – and is – serious when he drew a red line with regards to NATO moving ever closer to Moscow.

In the course of the year this has turned out to become a proxy war between the US / NATO and Russia. The west, especially NATO countries is heavily involved by supplying Ukraine with by now close to 130 billion dollars-worth of weaponry and cash, supposedly to run the overly indebted and corrupt Ukraine Administration.

Never mind, that only about a third of the weapons supplied by the west are used at the front. The vast majority ends up on the black market. These weapons might eventually hunt the west in the form of “terrorist attacks”.

This is well-known by the west, since Ukraine has hardly any trained military personnel to handle these weapons, and simply because the country is so corrupt that the money generated on the black market with this weaponry will flow into the pockets of politicians and military cadre.

Nevertheless, the two leaders are also expected to talk about how to achieve a lasting peace in the region. China had proposed a comprehensive and valid 12-point Peace-Plan ready for negotiations, but Washington – yes Washington and NATO, not Ukraine leadership, have rejected the plan before it was even discussed.

The west does not want peace. They want to weaken Russia as much as possible, before possibly launching an all-out attack on Moscow. This is what the ten-year long “hidden war” (1991-2000) by father Bush did to Iraq. It weakened the country to pave the way for the 2003 criminal “shock and awe” attack.

Destroying Russia has been the plan for over a century, to take over and control Russia, an extremely resources-rich country.

WWI and WWII were made for it. Hitler was funded by Washington to invade and conquer Russia. Hélas, he failed, but the tragic result were 25 to 30 million Russian deaths.

PressTV: Before the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping met in the Chinese capital. The two pledged ‘no limits’ to the Russian-Chinese partnership. This partnership has grown over time but recently it has become even closer and stronger. How important of a moment is this for the two countries relations?

PK: Well – as stated above, this meeting between the two presidents is of utmost significance.

It sends a clear message to Washington but also to Europe that there is no limit to the cooperation between the two countries.

And it shows that there is an independent Powerhouse, without that powerhouse wanting to have supreme power over the world, as Washington pretends to have for itself.

Russia and China are not seeking hegemony, but are rather aiming at a multi-polar world. The nefarious neocon plan of a One World Order, propagated by the World Economic Forum (WEF) is the opposite of what China and Russia are aiming to promote: Peaceful cooperation among sovereign countries, aiming at using their own political, financial, and human resources to forge associations in trade, manufacturing, research, infrastructure development and more.

Many western countries are drifting eastwards, as we speak, with the idea of abandoning the western dominated, sanction-prone hegemonic, coercive, and war-mongering world.

Existing eastern organizations, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are attractive and sought after for integration; case in point is Iran – and others.

BRICS-plus are strongly seeking integration into the eastern politico-economic fold. The “plus” stands first for Iran who is a prime candidate to join the BRICS alliance, as well as SCO. But it refers also to at least a dozen more western candidates.

These nations not only are intending to free themselves form Washington’s political hegemony, but also from the US-dollar dominance and dependence.

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – a President Xi idea, launched in 2013 in Kazakhstan and Indonesia – will be an excellent tool for eastern integration. China for the past year or so has reoriented BRI towards the BRICS countries.

It is likely that Presidents Putin and Xi Jinping will also talk about the process and development of BRI, in order to further Eurasia’s development and integration in a peaceful manner. In fact, it is likely that Eurasia – the largest contiguous landmass of 55 million square kilometers – an old / new market – may have a special place in the two leaders discussions.

It would fit their overall strategy – away from Globalization and towards a multi-polar world. How Europe, floating between west and east, will react, remains to be seen. If Europeans are interested in their survival, there is no other way than opening up and reestablishing strong relations with Russia and China – and becoming part of a new Eurasia market and socioeconomic development area.

PressTV: While western countries led by the United States have been pressuring and provoking Beijing and Moscow at increasing levels, it seems the two are moving closer together. Analysts believe that the US itself has invigorated this alliance, and the closer ties between Russia and China is a response to the Washington’s antagonizing behavior and is in competition with the US and its own alliances. Do you see in that light as well?

PK: Yes, I do believe that the western antagonism against Russia and China played an important role in bringing the two countries closer together. By now, however, their friendly and strategic relationship has generated its own dynamics, independent of western aggressions.

The ramifications of this strategic alliance and the personal friendship of the two leaders, generates motivation and trust of western countries to detach from the western warrior economy and join the east.

This trend becoming increasingly visible is a sort of competition between east and west. It is, however, not one based on aggression, but rather one that is evolving by its own.

PressTV: The meeting is focusing on bi-lateral ties, but much has been projected on China’s proposal for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. How much sway do you think Beijing has right now to effect negotiations regarding Ukraine?

PK: This is difficult to say. Russia has always expressed their willingness to negotiate.

On the other hand, NATO and Washington have just said within the last 48 hours that there should be no negotiations. It clearly shows who calls the shots on Ukraine. It is certainly not Zelenskyy. Ukraine has long ceased being a sovereign country. Since the Maidan Coup, in February 2014, instigated by Washington, NATO and the EU, Ukraine is no longer an independent nation.

Under these circumstances it is not easy to achieve peace.

To any thinking person, it is clear that Ukraine will never win this war, no matter how many arms they get from the west. In all this mega anti-Russia propaganda, the people of Ukraine are suffering. Especially those who do not have the means to leave the country. At the end of 2021, before the war began, Ukraine had a population of 43.8 million.

Today, there are barely more than 30 million left in the county. And it’s those left in the war-torn country, who are suffering from the conflict, and this not so much from Russia’s aggression, as President Putin has given clear instructions to Russia’s military, to avoid to the extent possible civilian targets, including people and infrastructure.

By independent journalists’ account, often Ukrainian troops destroy their own neighborhoods, including with Ukrainian casualties, to blame destruction and victims on Russia. Western media pick up the lie and propagate it in the west as truth about Russian aggression.

It would indeed be a miracle, if the two Presidents were to find a solution on how to embark on Peace negotiations. But sometimes miracles do happen.

PressTV: On the issue of Taiwan, under Joe Biden the US has been more vocal of military support in favor of Taiwan. What is Washington pursuing here? Is it trying to prod China into giving a dramatic response? What does China and Russia’s growing alliance mean for the US and its policies in South-East Asia?

PK: It is unlikely that Washington will begin supplying Taiwan with weapons. This would bring about a live confrontation. As retired U.S. Army Colonel, Douglas Macgregor has said on many occasions, the US cannot afford another war, not financially, not by military personnel, nor by war technology. So, whatever the US is saying and boasting about is probably nothing more than propaganda bluff.

Besides, what the western media never report on, is the close relationship the two parts of China already have, in terms of tens of thousands of Taiwanese regularly working in mainland China and vice-versa. Also, there is a massive exchange of investments on both sides which further links the two entities of the same nation together, so that Taiwan will eventually peacefully integrate into mainland China.

That’s what President Xi has often predicted, there will be a peaceful integration of Taiwan into the PRC –  the People’s Republic of China.

Joe Biden’s talk about an independent Taiwan, and his sending Congressional and business “missionaries” to Taiwan for holding “strategic talks” with Taiwan’s leadership, is nothing but provocation. Beijing is well-aware of it – taking such US “advances” with calm.

More worrisome may be the hundreds of US military bases surrounding Russia and China, especially in the South China Sea. Nevertheless, the South China Sea is still controlled by China, no matter how many US war vessels circulate on a regular basis through the South China waters.

PressTV: Having in mind the recent rapprochement between Iran and Saud Arabia that was mediated by China, will Beijing’s links with nations in the region begin to enhance?

PK: China’s diplomatic overture, bringing the two feuding nations, Saudi Arabia and Iran again together, is President Xi’s extraordinary diplomatic gain. We just hope it will last and that it will also bring lasting Peace to Yemen.

This success is also a sign that China is indeed well-seen in the Middle East, and, yes, it is well foreseeable that China will in the future have more impact in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world – also in Latin America – with her diplomatic approach – more so than the west.

China has clearly stepped on the world stage as a power that is trusted. Many countries, in the west, as well as in the east – trust China and are happy to be able to abandon their western allies to join the peaceful and cooperative east. Again, the Belt and Road is an excellent tool to bringing the world closer together, to bring about international cooperation, while maintaining each country’s sovereignty.

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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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What if there was a new approach to global affairs where wars and regime change were a thing of the past and was replaced with diplomacy and respect?  Let’s face it, the last five centuries or so, European and American hegemonic ambitions have basically made the world a dangerous place.  From European colonialism in Latin America and Africa to the genocide of indigenous tribes in the Americas set the foundation of Western dominance for centuries to come.  Since the Spanish-American War of 1898, the US and in many cases, its NATO allies has started wars and even supported dictators and terrorists all over the world including Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Lebanon, Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua and elsewhere.  They even imposed devastating economic sanctions, regime change against sovereign governments on a worldwide scale, in other words, Western dominance has been a global disaster.   

You can say what you want about China, it is true that the one-party system has many problems internally like many other countries, but when it comes to establishing peace among nations, China so far has been successful.  The normalization of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a big deal, but anti-China hawks from both sides of the aisle in Washington and the Mainstream Media especially Fox News has downplayed the developments. In fact, skepticism has flooded the US mainstream media,

Fox news headlined with ‘China-brokered talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran a ‘troubling’ development, former DNI warns’ and ‘China denies hidden motives after brokering talks between Saudi Arabia, Iran’while CNN led with ‘Isolated Iran finds ally China reluctant to extend it a lifeline’ and MSNBC ‘The China-brokered Saudi-Iran deal has big repercussions for the Middle East — and the U.S.’  and of course, The New York Times with‘China-Brokered Deal Upends Mideast Diplomacy and Challenges U.S.’ in other words, the US establishment is in panic mode.  It’s hard for me to say this but the Associated Press (AP) had a more realistic view in an article with a headline that seems more rational, ‘Iran, Saudi Arabia agree to resume ties, with China’s help’:

Iran and Saudi Arabia agreed Friday to reestablish diplomatic relations and reopen embassies after seven years of tensions. The major diplomatic breakthrough negotiated with China lowers the chance of armed conflict between the Mideast rivals — both directly and in proxy conflicts around the region

The developments do have implications on Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen:

The deal, struck in Beijing this week amid its ceremonial National People’s Congress, represents a major diplomatic victory for the Chinese as Gulf Arab states perceive the United States slowly withdrawing from the wider Middle East. It also comes as diplomats have been trying to end a long war in Yemen, a conflict in which both Iran and Saudi Arabia are deeply entrenched

This new development can lead to another peace deal that can end that horrific war which has claimed the lives of more than 130,000 Yemenis according to the United Nations estimates.  Yemen is also experiencing a hunger crisis with more than 23 million people who need food and medical supplies.  The US-backed Saudi war has destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure including hospitals, schools, factories, roads, and bridges.  It is fair to say that China’s peace initiative between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a positive development.

Regarding the Russia-Ukraine war, China has taken an important step in trying to establish a peaceful outcome with a 12-point plan published by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called ‘China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis’ which pinpoints key elements that includes respecting the sovereignty of all countries, abandoning the Cold War mentality, resolving the humanitarian crisis to stopping unilateral sanctions are the necessary steps needed to resolve the ongoing conflict.   

One other important element in the 12-point plan is to reduce the threat of a nuclear conflict between Russia and the US-NATO alliance, “nuclear weapons must not be used, and nuclear wars must not be fought. The threat or use of nuclear weapons should be opposed. Nuclear proliferation must be prevented, and nuclear crisis avoided. China opposes the research, development, and use of chemical and biological weapons by any country under any circumstances.”

These developments are important first steps in achieving peace and prosperity around the world.  A multipolar world order is taking place where new powers are trying to bring peace to a world where death and destruction has been the norm for the last five hundred years of European and American dominance.  Any new developments that can lead to peace should be welcomed with open arms, but Western powers, especially the US are committed to their endless wars, economic sanctions and their regime change agenda so that they can continue their drive to create a world order consistent with the absurd idea of the World Economic Forum’s plan to establish a Great Reset that will only benefit the globalist cabal.

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

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Pilot Josh Yoder reports: “I’m being notified by passengers on a Southwest flight departing Las Vegas that the captain became incapacitated soon after takeoff this morning. He was removed from the flight deck and replaced by a non Southwest pilot who was commuting on that flight. This is now the fifth pilot incapacitation that I’m aware of in the past two weeks. I will post more details as they become available.” (click here)

Fifth pilot incident this month…

March 13, 2023 – Emirates Flight EK205 MXP-JFK diverted due to pilot illness hour and a half after take-off (click here)

March 11, 2023 – United Airlines Flight 2007 GUA-ORD diverted due to “incapacitated pilot” who had chest pains (click here)

March ?, 2023 – British Airways pilot collapsed in Cairo hotel and died, was scheduled to fly Airbus A321 from Cairo to London (click here)

March, 3, 2023 – Virgin Australia VA-717 flight Adelaide to Perth was forced to make an emergency landing after First Officer suffered heart attack 30 min after departure. (click here)

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

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“We are speaking now with thousands of those in the 9/11 truth movement who are waiting for somebody to stand up and run for president on this platform because we feel that it is the single most important issue of our time.” (Richard Gage)

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Richard Gage: We have an incredible opportunity for you today, Emanuel Pastreich, who is running for president, and is a brilliant scholar. We are speaking with him today because he’s a 9/11 aware candidate – [with some very specific demands!].

Why does he claim that this is the time to push the ugly truth about 9/11 from the margins into the mainstream of American politics?

Who exactly was behind the 9/11 attacks?

We will ask what is his “Fear No Evil” campaign.

There are indeed some fearless leaders in the 9/11 truth movement. This one is running for president, the only candidate who made 9/11 truth a plank on his platform.

He got our attention right away and he’s earned my respect.

He’s president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Korea, Tokyo and Hanoi, and has been a university professor for two decades.

Pastreich declared his candidacy for President of the United States as an independent in February 2020.

Originally, a scholar of Asian studies, he writes on both East Asian classical literature and current issues in international relations and technology.

Emanuel suggests that COVID-19 will be replaced. This is not good news by the way, because he says it is already being replaced by artificial food shortages, planned inflation, the end of money, the promotion of mass surveillance, implementation of social credit and other totalitarian economics, and other strategies for control.

We’re very fortunate to have a deep thinker like Pastreich as our guest today, and we hope he lights away forward through the dark path that the deep state has paved with 9/11.

Emanuel Pastreich: Hello Richard and Gail, it’s an honor to be here.

Gail Gage: Thank you. The honor is ours.

Richard Gage: We want to hear from the mind that produced those statements. But first let us ask you a simple question.

Emanuel Pastreich: There are no simple questions.

Richard Gage: How did you become aware of the truth about 9/11, and when did that happen?

Emanuel Pastreich: Oh, well, I took two semesters of physics in high school.

Richard Gage: Oh, dear.

You never should have done that.

Emanuel Pastreich: That was my mistake, I guess. The very moment that I saw the crash on TV it clear to me that the mainstream narrative made no sense. But I was also aware of the struggles going on within the federal government at the time, that might have led to this act—so it wasn’t a total surprise.

Richard Gage: Let’s talk about your education and your profession.Take us a little deeper.

Emanuel Pastreich: So I was born in Nashville, grew up in Saint Louis. And I was a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for about eight years.

I decided as an undergraduate at Yale that the future was going to be Asia and that we needed Americans who understood Asia well. So, I was trained in Chinese as an undergraduate; then I studied in Japan for six years, and then I studied it in Korea for many years as well. I wanted to understand Asia well, as a professor in the United States.

Bring on more 9/11-Aware Guests!

So that effort shaped me. I think it was good to be out of the corrupt stream of American culture for a few years in my life as well. That gave me a bit of distance from the collapse of American society. It’s often invisible to many people—unless you’re able to pull away from it for a while.

I had a very strong sense when professor at the University of Illinois that I had been so lucky to get such a good education. I come from, not a rich family, but a privileged family. I was able to attend Yale and Harvard. My father and my mother are intellectually oriented. So I felt a profound obligation to my society.

These things we get like education are not just entitlements, they’re privileges. It’s our responsibility, as intellectuals, to stand up, to take risks when we called upon to do so.

That sense of obligation is where all the trouble started. I was at University of Illinois during 9/11, and the other events, before and after (most of which people still are afraid to speak of).

Richard Gage: And you’re thinking that way. I mean, tell us when did your thinking diverge? When did you realize that your fellow schoolmates and graduates from these Ivy League colleges were not fulfilling the responsibilities that they had to society, as you write in your essay, “The Treason of the Intellectuals?”

Emanuel Pastreich: I think it’s an extremely serious issue because we cannot expect the working man, the working woman, to be able to understand complex issues of physics, or international relations, or economics. They depend upon educated people to play that role of interpreter, and so the decision of the intellectual elites, whether lawyers, diplomats, journalists, or professors, to side with the “powers that be,” the super-rich and against the working man, the working woman, in the United States, was a profoundly disturbing shift.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened.

9/11 was a critical historical moment in that process, but we can trace it back to Oklahoma.

There was a series of planned events from Oklahoma, through the December 2000 Supreme Court Ruling on the Bush-Gore election, that set the stage for 9.11.

And I felt, as a professor, I had to talk about this profound crisis. Needless to say, there was a price to be paid for that decision.

Richard Gage: Let us go back to the 2000 Supreme Court ruling.

Emanuel Pastreich: The Supreme Court ruling on the election of George W. Bush was a landmark in American institutional decay. The Supreme Court had no authority to make a ruling on the election in the first place.

It was an operation to seize control by appointing George W. Bush as President. Now, George W. Bush did not make all the decisions.

Hidden powers started to make day-to-day decisions behind the scenes as never before after that ruling.

Richard Gage: How was the United States run then?

Emanuel Pastreich: We are talking about, at the most fundamental level, a cultural decadence and indulgence, a decline in our civilization, that made it possible to push the envelope for criminal governance in the United States.

Now, humans are depraved creatures to start with, as we know from the Bible, but it got much, much worse, after that Supreme Court ruling–setting the stage for 9.11.

Richard Gage: We are speaking now with thousands of those in the 9/11 truth movement who are waiting for somebody to stand up and run for president on this platform because we feel that it is the single most important issue of our time.

Emanuel Pastreich: Absolutely.

Richard Gage: What result of 9/11 has caused you the greatest concern?

Emanuel Pastreich: I think the rise of invisible governance was the most serious result of it. We have a small group of private equity funds, the strategy teams and intelligence teams for various multi-billionaires, and those representing major multinational corporations who are behind everything. They have confused us profoundly by planting half true, half untrue, narratives about 9/11 to confuse us.

They knew from the beginning that they’re not going to be able to keep this secret. They had to create a whole series of conspiracy theories, all of which are partially true, but none of which really explains the bottom line.

Some say, “The CIA did it.” Well, I have no problem with that assumption. But what we want to know is which unit in the directorate of operations, which working group, which team, following which chain of command, was responsible. Who gave the orders to whom? If we don’t have the names, if it is still classified, then what possible configurations were there? It can only have been done in a very limited number of ways.

Those documents are still there. They haven’t disappeared. But most of the people in the discussion are not asking the right questions: who was it , in DoD and in CIA, who got which internal directive from which supervisors, and how were those directives linked to the lobbying efforts, the bribery, of multinational corporations, private equity funds, and a handful of multi-billionaires who hatched this scheme?

I am concerned about the vagueness with which people approach the question of 9/11.

Richard Gage: Well, let’s ask some sharper questions then.

Emanuel Pastreich: I don’t have all the answers, but we can put them together between us.

Richard Gage: What are you going to ask? Yeah, in a real investigation that you would run, I presume, as president.

Emanuel Pastreich: 9.11 truth is in my platform and I’ve given several speeches on the topic. It’s a gangrene that has infected our whole society. There are two issues. 9.11 was like a stiletto stab. It barely leaves a trace on the surface, and the skin heals up immediately so you cannot see the point of penetration. But beneath the surface, horrific, deadly infections are brewing.

Making the chain of command visible will require us to declassify a large number of documents, perhaps overnight. We do not have time to file hundreds of freedom information act requests over 20 years.

Our lawyers must take the strong position that because everything that was done was criminal, therefore everything must be declassified immediately.

The second part of the project is healing the American psyche, the American mind, the sick American culture.

That is the more important part because so many people know that there was something wrong about 9/11. The story doesn’t make sense; and yet they’re unable to address it.

When I bring up the topic in conversation, their response is silence. They don’t say I’m wrong; they’re just silent.

It is the intellectual or cultural equivalent of rape, child abuse, or incest in that we were violated. The government, the universities, the media, and the authority figures all around us like doctors, in the case of COVID-19, engineers, in the case of 9/11, all lied to us and they seduced us.

The resulting trauma, just like incest or rape, is so great that the individual is unable to come to grips with what has taken place. Therefore treating this trauma is the other key. We need to grasp the facts, reveal the chain of command, the specific chain of command through which the actions were taken. And then we must address the deep psychological trauma for Americans.

Richard Gage: Let’s jump into what you can actually accomplish as President. We have those who are calling you a vanity candidate. What is your response to them?

Get a Real 9/11 Investigation

Emanuel Pastreich: Right. Well, so I started this campaign back in 2020 when it became clear that in the Biden- Trump election there was not going to be a legitimate result, that it was going to be a “selection.”

I wanted to give Americans an alternative, a real one. So I addressed COVID-19 and 9/11, and other issues like money, that politicians will not touch.

I made my declaration on February 13, 2020, and then I was marooned in Korea, far from the United States, by February 23rd. So my real campaign in the United States didn’t last very long. There was a tremendous price to be paid for this act by me and my family.

I was basically unemployed for two out of the last three years, that made running for president more difficult–and people were afraid to support me directly–even if they secretly sympathized.

That is the price you must pay. I accept that.

The first six months in Korea I was completely unemployed. I lived in this temple in the mountains. And then I got a job working for a think tank focused on city planning. They tried to help me out but I was unemployed again after a year. So I moved to the countryside, got a tiny room, cut my expenses to nearly zero, and spent all my time writing speeches, reading, and thinking about what we need to do.

That was the best strategy for running for president possible. I never begged billionaires for anything.

Even though I was blocked out of the mainstream, even though I was not referenced anywhere by the newspapers, I believed then that if I continued to write speeches that were powerful, drawing on the tradition of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass, if I made my point in a succinct, logical, and rational manner, that there would be an audience and that I could get traction over time.

After 14 months, Global Research started publishing my speeches for a general audience and I got the attention that I needed to be a serious candidate.

My platform is not just about 9/11. But 9/11 cannot be separated from the attempt to dumb down people, to destroy our ability to think independently, to make us indulgent, to addict us to social media and to pornography, to create a stupid political discourse of fat cats and slices of chocolate cake.

Richard Gage: Well, let’s go to what you said in the article to those who accuse you of running a vanity campaign.

You said,

“To those who accuse me of running a vanity campaign I ask, I demand, of any of those politicians who think that they’re qualified to run for president,

“One, have you condemned the criminal operation that planned a false flag attack on the United States, known as the 9/11 event, as a means of dragging the United States into foreign wars and demolishing the republic? Have you asked for an international investigation?

(Of course the answer is no)

“Two, have you demanded the return to the Federal Reserve of the $10 to $15 trillion stolen between January and September of 2020? (And of course that number is even much, much higher now, of course, with COVID scam) by multinational investment banks and other global players. Have you demanded that the criminals behind the theft be jailed?”

(And of course they haven’t)

So you’re on top of them, you’re calling them out.

Emanuel Pastreich: All those interested can visit my website (emanuelprez.com) which presents my platform, positions and links to most articles and speeches.

I am in the process of rewriting the platform because we’ve gotten into so much trouble on this question of the term “climate change,” which I used back then. Because the real destruction of the environment has been co-opted and corrupted by the effort to control of human life by multinational investment banks and the super-rich, we need to rephrase the entire problem.

(noise)

I’m sorry, that was my mother trying to call me. I’ll call her later.

Richard Gage: Presidential candidates have mothers, too?

Emanuel Pastreich: My mother’s 93. I’m very, very blessed to still have her and her wisdom, but I also feel sad because I lost my wife a year ago, and my children lost their mother. My daughter was in her third year of high school. It feels so unfair that I have my mother to the age of 93.

Richard Gage: So how do we fix Washington?

Emanuel Pastreich: Obviously change starts with us. We have to first recognize that the gangrene is so deep that it’s going to require a revolutionary shift. Obviously I’m not going to become president by the Democratic or the Republican Party nominating me. Both of these organizations have degenerated into criminal syndicates that are pay-to-play.

So we have to go back to the Declaration of Independence, the first time we tried to break away from a corrupt global empire.

The Declaration of Independence makes it quite clear where we stand relative to the empire, and the Declaration of Independence is the primary law of the United States of America:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is the citizens’ right, it is their duty, to throw off such a government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

We must recognize the reality that things are so out of control that some difficult choices are going to have to be made, that we must “provide new guards for the future security.”

I said to a friend who wanted to end militarism and war, “Yeah, you and what army?”

It was a joke, but also serious.

I’m anti-war, anti-militarism. I feel that this inflated military buildup in the United States has done tremendous damage to our society and to our economy.

But if someone tells me we must stop these guys, the answer is “You and what army?”

I mean, these guys are mean and they are organized. They’re ready to kill. They’ve already killed large numbers of people, not just the truth tellers about 9/11, but lots of others who were interested in real politics not shows for entertainment.

We have a tiny handful of “whistle blowers” who show up on TV, but, they are just the surface. There are numerous people in DoD, in CIA, in State and throughout the federal government who took a stand against this corruption.

I know personally what happens. You are fired; you will never get a decent job again. You will live in the margins, and those “whistle blowers” on TV will never mention your name or lift a finger to help you.

A critical next step for 9/11 truth is recognizing that there was an organized effort to resist the takeover of the United States, February, 2001, by the globalists–after the Bush administration came to power.

There was organized resistance against the globalists in 2001 before 9.11. Most of it came from within the military and intelligence starting in earnest in April, 2001, because the professors, the politicians, and the media and NGO people ran away scared once a few people got killed.

We can interpret 9/11 in several ways. We can say that it was an effort to create these foreign wars, to make money off of wars, to transform the United States and to create this military dictatorship within the federal government.

Clearly this interpretation is accurate.

But you can also see 9.11 as a response to the growing opposition within the federal government, within the United States, to the globalist dictatorship that seized power in February, 2001. There was real push-back and as a result the globalists no longer controlled parts of the Federal government.

And that’s why 9/11 had to happen, to make sure that the domestic resistance was crushed.

The resistance was not crushed, it showed its power in the last-minute resistance to the invasion of Iraq from within DoD, and we see efforts at resistance today.

Richard Gage: Well, one of the things you call for, which might gather some attention, is an international 9/11 investigation because we don’t have much hope left inside the country for an impartial investigation. Tell us what you hope we can achieve through an international investigation?

Emanuel Pastreich: Right. I don’t rule out the role of Americans in that international investigation. We know from the 9/11 Commission report that Americans are incapable of basic logic. The report was so disgusting that I could not read it to the end.  I felt sick.

But obviously there are people like yourselves in the United States who are working hard, but for us to go to the next level we need to have to have support from around the world.

However, we should not be so naive as to think that China, or Russia, can help us out just by themselves. These big countries do some good things, and lots of bad things. The fact that the United States is a basket case does not mean that we should glorify them.

We must face the reality that, like COVID 19, most governments were corrupt and involved.

We have to be globally organized. And that’s the challenge for us: in order to respond to the globalists we have to become global ourselves. But we cannot become like them. Our movement has to be based on people, based on the rule of law and, above all, based on science.

Richard Gage: Well, how do we keep the powers that have all the money from taking over the science as they’ve done currently in the previous investigation? I mean, how do keep the international investigation from becoming co-opted?

Emanuel Pastreich: That is the million dollar question for us.

I’m not the first person to talk about an international investigation.

It hasn’t been done seriously in the way that we would like.

We have three people today here who are committed. That is enough. I have people I know in Asia, for example, who think 9.11 truth is critical. There are obviously people in the Middle East who are profoundly aware of the damage done by this.

But Americans are damaged by, to use Joost Meerloo’s term, “the rape of the mind.” I think that sums it up.

Our minds been violated, raped, so that we’re unable to respond anymore to the abuse. We have become passive like victims of sexual violence.

It is difficult to overcome that state of mind, but it’s not impossible.

I think it starts with a handful of people. Enough time has passed that we’re getting over that initial trauma and to the point where people are willing to talk more and more.

My writing on 9/11 doesn’t get taken down and more. I’m sure you remember the good old days, Richard. They used to shut us down immediately. Now, a lot of 9/11 stuff is out there. It is no longer completely under wraps.

I’m a serious candidate for president. I give serious speeches. I have the background for the job. I don’t want to boast about the privileges I’ve received, but I can be taken seriously.

9.11 is serious. 9/11, just like Oklahoma, or the Kennedy assassination, it’s not just for historians and conspiracy buffs. These actions profoundly corrupted the nature of governance.

They destroy the relationship between the citizens and the government and that allows the government to become a facade for the super-rich.

I used the term “Murder on the Orient Express” in my speech. Perhaps you’re familiar with that Agatha Christie novel.

Richard Gage: I saw the movie.

Emanuel Pastreich: Inspector Poirot is unable to crack the murder initially because everybody had a stab. If there had been just one person who’d done it, then it would be easy to figure it out. But the group anesthetized the victim and then each person came in and had one stab.

So my guess is that when we get to the next stage of the unraveling, that we’re going to find out that a lot of people were involved in 9.11, including some who don’t want us to know they were involved, including people who are promoting semi-conspiracy theories meant to mislead us.

Much of the conspiracy chatter leads us away from the question of who benefits, and who would have the capacity to do it.

The questions for the investigation are basic. In DoD, in the CIA, or in Mossad, which directorates, which units, would have the capacity to carry something out like this–it is not a whole lot.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what the chain of command would be, where the orders would’ve come from.

So I think we need to get very technical about administrative procedure.

Institutions tied to Israel and the United States played a major role in 9.11–although others were involved too.

We need to understand the relationship between Israel and the United States, and I say that as someone whose father is Jewish, so I guess I am a self-hating anti-Semite.

The United States and Israel have become military allies without a formal alliance treaty–that is not good.

The result?

There has emerged this netherworld stretching from the Beltway, from Reston and Herndon, to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, an uncharted space wherein the two countries have merged together. That space is inhabited by a cancerous clump of private intelligence companies, political consulting firms, and weapons manufacturers.

We have to dig in there and to uncover what exactly happened: who did what.

I think it’s a mistake to launch a broad claim, that “It was the Zionists” or “It was Vatican,” or “It was the Masons.”

I’m not denying the possibility that these groups may be involved, but my guess is that actual operation was small and focused, but at the same time, behind the scenes it involved a far larger range of interest groups.

Richard Gage: I note your disappointment with your colleagues in Ivy League and in Washington DC then and again with the start of COVID-19. You write, “Then there I was again in January 2020, right there in Washington DC, watching in amazement as the utterly contrived and unconvincing COVID-19 pandemic was rolled out for mass consumption. I knew that my colleagues were smart enough to see through that circus from the start, but almost without exception they bought into the farce with enthusiasm, with pride and glee.” That was rather disappointing for you.

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, as I’m sure you know, Richard, the search for truth becomes personal. It involves family members. I’m very envious of you. You have your wife right there with you, but my wife, although she certainly was not naive about how the world works, was not interested in my getting involved. And I respected her position, but I felt I had no choice but to act.

Richard Gage: Yeah, it’s a mission. It comes to us.

You note that you were abandoned by those who, as you say, come from privilege, were are highly educated and then therefore had a duty to respond to society’s needs as they’re leading intellectuals. And yet they were bought and paid off, or their positions were threatened, such as your own, if they didn’t play along.

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, I’m a living proof of how that works. I’m very aware of how it works and there were people who suffered worse fates.

Richard Gage: You say bring the US military home and upgrade the United Nations. Why do we need the United Nations to be upgraded?

Emanuel Pastreich: I have revised my phrasing because the United Nations has become such a corrupt criminal syndicate that it cannot be reformed. Having a “United Nations” that can in a scientific and accountable manner deal with international issues is critical. I do carry on some of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tradition. So, I’m a card carrying member when it comes to the need for some form of global governance to control multinational corporations and globalists.

But I do not accept what we have now. And I think the United Nations has to be, I don’t want to say, “subject to a controlled demolition,” but it has to be rebuilt from the bottom up.

Reinventing the United Nations cannot be separated from getting the US military out of the world. Now, there are certain parts of the military presence around the world that are necessary, but 90% of what we see now is leading us along the path of imperial decline.

There’s no way to recover except to take that brave step and say the United States is a republic, not an empire.

That’s what our constitution says. The tragedy started at the end of the Second World War; we were supposed to go back to a peacetime economy. And unfortunately, we didn’t do that.

At this point the United States military has to be pulled out of the world for a while.

We have to be engaged with people, not banks, around the world. And that effort in security must be focused on taking on terrorist groups like multi-billionaires and private equity funds, but also include coordinating with other countries and other institutions to promote peace, to save our oceans, to stop the spread of deserts, to end the dumping of plastic and chemicals in our water, and stop the deadly culture of consumption.

Richard Gage: You demand that trade must be ecological and truly free. What does that mean?

Emanuel Pastreich: Sadly, trade has become part of the scam carried on by the multinational banks. Increasingly, things are shipped to us from around the world in a polluting, costly, manner.

So you go to the store and buy stuff made in China, or Thailand, that could have been made in your neighborhood. This “trade” is not “free.”

If you or I want to open a trading company there are these tariffs that will crush you from day one. But if you’re a multinational corporation, not only do you pay minimal tariffs, but governments will give you billions of dollars in the form of low-interest or free loans.

Trade has been taken over, in terms of logistics, the supply chain nexus, distribution and retail sales, by these invisible masters of reporting to the bankers.

When you buy something, you have to pay 20%, 30% to these distributors. In addition, Walmart or Amazon take their pound of flesh.

And, of course, the plastic they put on it, the wrapping they put on it, the marketing for it– you have no choice but to pay for things because of these hidden forces within this corrupt trade system.

If products were produced locally, the money would stay in your community instead of being siphoned off by the banks.

You can say I’m a isolationist. You’re not going to hurt my feelings. I think trade should be what’s in the interest of the American people, and that we have no responsibility to help multinational corporations, much of whose stock is owned by people outside the US, to play any role in determining what we buy.

Richard Gage: Let us turn to COVID 19, the mask and vaccine regime. Where do you stand?

Emanuel Pastreich: COVID-19 was the inevitable next step after 9.11. I called it “Covid-911” in one of my early speeches.

9.11 induced this profound psychological trauma that made it difficult for Americans to comprehend what was going on and to address this attack scientifically and effectively–with some rare exceptions like the two of you, and our honored audience today.

COVID-19 was an obvious fraud from the start. There is a high probability that in the first six months various bio weapons were used in Germany, in China and elsewhere in order to kill people and make it look like it was a pandemic, but that the actual deaths from so-called COVID-19 were near zero.

You can debate whether COVID19 even exists, or it’s a common cold. I could not care less about that argument.

And the vaccine regime that forced people to take this bio-cocktail involuntarily, in violation of the Nuremberg Code, these injections of substances that they didn’t understand, that included dangerous substances, that was a massive criminal action.

I’m not interested, we are not interested in, declaring, “Oh, COVID-19 is over. Let’s go back to life as it was before.”

COVID-19 is not going to be over until the assets of all the individuals who backed this crime are seized, until the responsible people are in jail, and if it has to be the president or the entire Congress, that is fine with me–locking them all up will not hurt my feelings at all.

If we want a congressman to step down because he had an affair with his secretary, or he made some racist comment about African Americans, then yes, we should demand that every single member of congress step down for backing the 9.11 and COVID-19 scams. No question about it.

We’re not going to get to the bottom or end COVID-19 until we declassify all the records, release the information from DARPA and from the Gates Foundation, all these classified records.

We must seize the assets of these multi-billionaires. Which would be a nice move because if we seize their assets, they can no longer manipulate us in the way that they’re doing now.

Richard Gage: Do they go to jail?

Emanuel Pastreich: Oh, Richard, you’re a very forgiving man.

Richard Gage: So they will be held to the fullest account of the law, which for mass murder and treason accounts to, what do you call that, the death penalty?

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, there are two aspects to what I said.

First we have to recognize that we’re going to have to fight these people. They’re not going to just roll over belly up because we tell the truth.

We’re going to have to organize ourselves, and if necessary… You’re in Idaho, right? Go to their farms in Montana and Idaho, to their underground bunkers, wherever they are and get them.

They are well prepared. I see that taking them down will be a serious challenge–but not impossible.

And that’s why I’m not anti-military by any means. We need as many brave people who are willing to help us. We just have to get our enemies straight.

We have to sit down and talk about war, in a sense The nature of war never changes. But the means by which you fight wars keeps changing, and we have to keep up with it.

If you start swinging your sword, but you don’t know who your enemy is, then you’re going to get in serious trouble.

Richard Gage: Well, let’s see if our audience can help us out. Our viewers at RichardGage911:UNLEASHED! are here with us via Gail.

Gail Gage: We received some great questions.

This is the first one. “Some believe Trump is hated so vehemently by the establishment because he has questioned the official story of 911. Do you agree?”

Emanuel Pastreich: I wrote an article for Global Research in defense of Donald Trump on the occasion of his second impeachment in January, 2021, in which I listed seven major contributions he made.

I think he needs to be given credit. I included his willingness to engage with people committed to 9.11 truth. I don’t think he was a particularly good president, but certainly he was better than Obama.

Gail Gage: Next question. “Mr. Pastreich, do you have any plan or strategy on how to repel the media attacks who label us as conspiracy theorists where the MSM, mainstream media, unites to falsely claim our stance and has been completely debunked?”

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, I certainly have felt your pain over the last 22 years of this. I’m afraid that the whole system in which global finance is fused with media, like how the Washington Post is run by Jeff Bezos, like the New York Times is basically a propaganda piece for putting out corporate opinions, is deeply damaging.

So I think the solution is what you see right here, what we’re doing now. The real answer is this sort of engagement, this sort of broadcast.

This alternative media must become more convincing, more effective, so that people can just stop reading the other garbage.

We need alternative media that covers everything. Not just alternative media focused on 9.11 or COVID-19, or Ukraine. We need alternative media that also covers your local community and gives you the information you need.

I say, do not waste your time trying to engage with the mainstream media owned by multinational corporations. I think the best we can do is to wish them a peaceful death.

Gail Gage: Next question. Whether or not people like Trump, you have to admit he got the media coverage and probably has the corporate backing to become president. Do you have any chances of being in the TV debates?

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, obviously, I’m not Donald Trump. I’m not a billionaire. I ended up having almost no assets. So my strategy is to do the opposite.

I do not want to show how low I can bow before the false idols while getting to speak the truth on weekends. I would rather be one who starts out as the prophet in the wilderness, using “the Jeremiah strategy.”

Let us make up policy in response to the truth. I do not have to become president. I do not even have to stay alive.

I have always felt if someone else comes along and embraces this campaign, then I would be delighted to endorse that person. I’m not very good at kissing babies or drinking beer.

But I felt that it was critical to have somebody out there addressing real issues.

Richard Gage: Well, when you stepped forward to run for president, do you get any support?

Emanuel Pastreich: Oh, sure. I’ve had multiple Americans endorse me; some set up web pages describing me, and then they disappeared. After an initial flurry in March, 2020, I was not reported about for a long time in alternative media. When Global Research started to feature my speeches about a year and a half ago, I regained my traction.

And now thanks to you, I have a chance to go to the next level.

Gail Gage: Moving on to the next question. “Presidential Candidate Pastreich, what is your position on the release of classified documents related to 9/11, and what steps would you take to ensure that the public has access to this information?”

Emanuel Pastreich: I’ve written about this topic at length. First, we need a discussion about how to do this, and I welcome that debate.

I think that the only way to pull ourselves back from the edge is to set up the equivalent of a constitution-based provisional government to get us through the move from a deeply corrupted system to a law-based government that actually reflects the Constitution.

Support the 9/11 Truth Movement

There is danger in that move. It is not going to be easy.

There’s going to be heavy lifting required, and there will be risks if you empower some part of the population to serve as a provisional government so as to restore the Constitution.

We run the real risk that those people will seize that opportunity to carry on the same fun and games already taking place, maybe to make the situation worse.

But I think that the risk of doing nothing is even greater. We have to assume that we need a constitutional convention that will restore the Constitution.

But we have to act at that level of seriousness, to have real historical vision, to say, we’re going to set up a government–and we are not going to just make a few corrections to this current system.

Richard Gage: Is it safe to suggest that you do support the release of classified documents related to 9/11?

Emanuel Pastreich: I was explaining how we are going to do it.

First we are not going to waste a century filing “freedom of information act” requests for little scraps that bureaucrats might or might not give us.

The way we will get the documents released is this: we hold our own constitutional convention, and we declare that we have established a provisional government to restore the Constitution. Our group then issues orders to DoD, CIA and other organizations saying, “Release all these classified documents immediately.”

They respond, “Well, you have no authority to order us.”

And we say,

“Of course we have authority. We’re following the Constitution. These people in the White House or the top in DoD or at General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin, they have no authority.

“Our constitutional convention has empowered us in that it reflects the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the two documents that define what the Republic is, and what it is not.

“We are empowered by the constitution, and those who are telling you what to do, they do not have the authority to tell you what to do.”

We should take a strong position like that. This approach has been been employed out of sight for some time–so it’s not a totally new concept.

At some point we will have a breakthrough. The dam would burst and they will start to recognize our legitimacy and to release these documents. And once they’re released, it will be a game changer.

We won’t get to that point, however, until there is a fundamental shift in the chain of command.

We  who are –I hate to call them puppets– doing the bidding of globalist investors. They’re democratic in that they represent various multinational interests, and they have to pay attention to the House of Saud, to the Koch family, the Walton family, and to the DuPonts.

have a chain of command now in which you have President Biden, and the Speaker of the House McCarthy, and other members of the government

They have to tend to the needs of BlackRock, Vanguard, and Goldman Sachs. But the chain of command does not include the American people anywhere.

Gail Gage: Next question. “Given your emphasis on international diplomacy and security issues, how do you see the events of 9/11 as having impacted US foreign policy and relations with other nations and how would you work to address any ongoing repercussions from these events?”

Emanuel Pastreich: Thank you for the excellent question. So I would first say that I’m not a magician. I don’t pretend that if you support me, or even if I were elected, that I’m going to be able to transform a broken, rotten system.

The impact of 9/11 has been profound.

The first being the death of science and the destruction of governance, which means the death of rationality in government. The death of governance extends to international diplomacy and security. Decisions are made based on who gives you the most money. Basically it is “pay to play” in the worst sense.

That means we face a high level conspiracy. The heads of state of all the major countries in the world have bought into this fake narrative. That means that the multinational banks and other global financial players have unbelievable reach around the world.

So that is a profound transformation of the international community.

It’s not entirely because of 9/11 that this change took place. It is also a result of technology, of a decadence in our culture that allows the unlimited influence of consumption culture on us. We have ceased being citizens and became consumers.

Gail Gage: Another question: “As an independent, the public would want to know if you’re left, right, neutral or something else?”

Richard Gage: Yeah. How do you identify?

Gail Gage: Which party?

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, I’ve been more successful with conservatives overall, but my family were all Democrats. I was a Democrat in 1998–a long time ago. I am from what you would call a liberal establishment family. My father went to Yale and he was part of the system, and to a degree so was I then.

When I started to talk about independence, the need to follow the Constitution, the need to produce our own food, and to form independent communities, obviously I was walking away from a big government liberal perspective–and away from the money economy.

My stand on money also appeals to conservatives. Money today is not money at all. It’s a liquid ideology that’s being floated around. And now they want to force us into digital currencies and to centralize all the banks around the world; the Silicon Valley Bank bankruptcy, and other banks that will collapse, is part of a scheme to make money disappear, and then, lo and behold, the government is going to save you with a digital currency.

Clearly, we’re not really talking about money anymore. That position gave me appeal with real conservatives, not the fake conservatives of the Republican Party.

So I am not a Bernie Sanders, let us throw money at the problem, sort of guy.

Richard Gage: Back to the left, right issue. You have the same issue as Robert F. Kennedy. He is coming forward as a presidential candidate, and he’s a Democrat, and from a long line of Democrats But he is completely bucking the establishment, the Democratic establishment in calling for truth about Covid-19 and the vaccines. So I am all for him.

Emanuel. How do you feel about his candidacy?

Emanuel Pastreich: I have read many of his materials. His writings were very helpful to me, and many statements in my speeches were based on information that he was so good as to provide.

I guess my position is a practical one. I would say that we’re past that stage of getting out information now. And we are past the stage in which the Democratic Party can play any meaningful role in governance. The Democratic Party is a criminal syndicate. It’s largely owned by investors from around the world. It’s being used against the American people. And the Republican Party is similar.

20 years ago, we had a few good people in the Democratic Party like Dennis Kucinich, even though it was corrupt. Now, I’d say the Republican Party at least has a few good people, even though it’s corrupt.

I have great respect for Robert Kennedy Jr. and we should support him to the degree that we can. But I do not think that we can embrace   as our candidate, somebody who’s not willing to take on 9/11 or for that matter, to take on Covid-19, as a criminal action.

Covid-19 is not about treatment. It’s not about the technical aspects of vaccines. It’s about a massive criminal conspiracy to use bio-weapons to kill off tens of millions, hundreds of millions, of people around the world.

We cannot get away with a “mistakes were made” criticism.

I would just ask Mr. Kennedy to please extend his excellent work to openly address what was really was behind Covid-19.

I hope that he would be willing to support a  real investigation of 9/11. If he does so I would be happy to support him.

Gail Gage: New question, “What is your stance on patents, antitrust laws and the state of monopoly law? Also, how can we reverse the growing class inequality domestically?”

Emanuel Pastreich: Right. Well, let me first say that unlike many politicians, I did not start out as a lawyer. And there are many things I don’t know about the law.

I’m not going to pretend to know things that I don’t know.

What I do know about patents is that increasingly we have multinational firms buying up patents en masse and then using them to try and stop individuals from using their own know-how.

If you invent something, then some multinational is going to come along and say, “Oh, we owned some patent that we bought that covers what you are doing and we will throw a pile of lawyers at you.”

They buy thousands of patents so that they can claim that if you fry a burger or brush your teeth, that is an infringement on their patent. Patents are not used to protect the rights of the individual citizen to develop his own or her own ideas, but rather as a way to suppress innovation and make us dependent on multinational corporations.

Antitrust obviously originally had a positive meaning, going back to Theodore Roosevelt. A lot of positive reforms were carried out in the name of antitrust. Today antitrust is used in a extremely selective way to batter down the groups that the monopolies do not like.

If you’re Google, or Facebook, or Microsoft, blatant antitrust violations don’t exist for you. In fact, the blatant monopolies carried out by these corporations are whitewashed as being convenient for the public.

Google is one of the most offensive in that respect. Google’s takeover of Wikipedia, Youtube, and of much of American intelligence through privatization and outsourcing makes it the invisible empire controlling our minds.

Richard Gage: Give us the names.

Emanuel Pastreich: I want to recommend Peter Phillip’s book “Giants: The Global Power Elite” which lists the heads of major investment funds around the world.

The book does not list all of the super-rich investors behind the scenes, but it identifies the people who are making the calls on long-term investments for their clients.

Those asset managers are the ones who hired the consulting firms who cooked up, and then directed, operation 9.11 and operation COVID-19.

Let us face facts. The second generation of billionaires and multi-billionaires, the scions of super rich families, are often not that smart. They don’t do the thinking and the dirty work  themselves. They have teams for intelligence and strategy. We are talking about families like the Sauds, the Waltons, the Rockefellers, the DuPonts, etc.

The responsibility should be traced back to the deep pockets in the end, but at this point we have to focus on those who are making up the strategy.

And I also want to stress, and this point is important, that we cannot say that the government is going to pay for the damages from 9/11 or from Covid-19–even if government officials did the dirty work for the rich and powerful.

Why? Because if the government paying, that means that you are paying. Your tax dollars are going to pay for the mess the rich made, or deficit spending to pay will create massive inflation that will eat up your savings.

Under my administration, the government is not going to pay a penny for 9.11 or COVID-19. The assets of the powerful who set these criminal operations in motion are going to be seized and used to pay.

The people ultimately responsible, when we get to the bottom of it, will not be those in the directorate of operations at the CIA or at Mossad. It’s going to be these multi-billionaires who hide behind the investment funds, who hide behind intelligence.

I say, if we want to be serious about 9/11, then we must go for the money.

Richard Gage: Well, it’s been an incredible honor to have you with us, Emanuel. Final thoughts from you, sir. And leave us with some hope here as we face this incredible set of problems we’ve inherited.

Emanuel Pastreich: I’m honored to have had this opportunity to talk to you. And the campaign over the last three years has not been about me. It shouldn’t be about me. It should be the future of our country and the future of our world.

We have to start by looking ourselves in the mirror.

As I note in “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” I first had to recognize my own mistakes, what I did wrong, before I could go forward and admit to myself that I had let myself be duped, that I had bought into these fairy tales. It took 9/11 to shake me out of my sleep, but it should have been Oklahoma that woke me up.

I should have woken up then because I knew there was something fishy about Oklahoma. But I was still in a fog back then in 1995. So, we must be forgiving of those who are still in a fog today, but we will be uncompromising in our demand that they must wake up.

See original posting at: Richard 911 Substack

Original interview at Emanuel on 9.11 Truth 

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Greanville Post

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***

On March 20, Annabel Goldie, a “Baroness-in-Waiting in the Royal Household,” currently “serving” as the minister of state at the UK Ministry of Defense, told House of Lords member Raymond Hervey Jolliffe, aka “Lord Hylton,” that indeed the UK will send a nuclear weapon to Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s post-coup regime.

🇬🇧🇺🇦The UK will send “armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium” to Ukraine, for use with the tank squadron donated by the British army.

Defence minister Baroness Goldie made the admission yesterday in response to a written parliamentary question from crossbench peer… pic.twitter.com/fKALIjhvzm

— Donbass Devushka (@PeImeniPusha) March 21, 2023

“Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium,” said Goldie. “Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armoured vehicles.”

Depleted uranium (DU) is a radiological warfare agent, thus it is fair to categorize it as a nuclear weapon. The National Nuclear Security Administration notes “the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile… needs a supply of depleted uranium metal… to manufacture nuclear weapon components.”

The use of DU in munitions endangers the normal functioning of the kidney, brain, liver, heart, and numerous other systems, according to the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. DU was used extensively during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The daily lives of Iraqis are still tormented by the invasion and occupation. The US abandoned some 11,000,000 pounds of toxic waste in Iraq. Depleted uranium and dioxin pollute the soil and water. https://t.co/IjzojaHBzz

— CODEPINK (@codepink) March 19, 2023

“Iraq is suffering from depleted uranium (DU) pollution in many regions and the effects of this may harm public health through poisoning and increased incidence of various cancers and birth defects,” reports the National Library of Medicine.

DU is a known carcinogenic agent. About 1200 tonnes of ammunition were dropped on Iraq during the Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003. As a result, contamination occurred in more than 350 sites in Iraq. Currently, Iraqis are facing about 140,000 cases of cancer, with 7000 to 8000 new ones registered each year. In Baghdad cancer incidences per 100,000 population have increased, just as they have also increased in Basra. The overall incidence of breast and lung cancer, Leukaemia and Lymphoma, has doubled even tripled.

Grotesque birth defects resulted from the use of DU in Iraq, including anencephaly, lower limb anomalies, spina bifida, and a variety of other abnormalities. Photos posted on the Foreign Policy Journal website reveal the severity of these deformities (warning: the photos are extremely graphic and disturbing).

The lunatics in Britain’s government have decided to provide shells containing depleted uranium to Ukraine. Depleted uranium rounds have been linked to cancer and birth defects and were used widely by Western forces in Iraq. Russia has warned it would https://t.co/lHnOyfOUyl…

— Dimitri Lascaris (@dimitrilascaris) March 21, 2023

General Lord George Robertson, the secretary of NATO in 2000, admitted DU was used against the people of Serbia, then Yugoslavia, in 1999. Julie Hyland writes,

NATO pursued a strategy of “carpet-bombing” towns and cities across Yugoslavia during its offensive. Some 700 planes flew almost 35,000 sorties, destroying large parts of the country’s industrial and social infrastructure. During the latter stages of the air campaign, NATO moved to 24-hour bombing, targeting industrial plants, airports, electricity and telecommunications facilities, railways, bridges and fuel depots, schools, health clinics, day care centres, government buildings, churches, museums and monasteries… A comprehensive list of those areas targeted with DU ammunition would probably mean declaring much of Serbia and Kosovo contaminated, as well as raising serious concerns over the environmental and health dangers for surrounding countries.

In January, I quoted Konstantin Gavrilov, head of the Russian delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control. Gavrilov said if the regime in Kyiv “were to be supplied with such munitions for the use in western heavy military hardware, we would regard it as the use of ‘dirty nuclear bombs’ against Russia, with all the consequences that entails.”

Also in January, the Biden administration refused to say if Bradley Fighting vehicles scheduled to be sent to Ukraine will be equipped with DU munitions.

The psychopathy of peerage entitled “conservatives” in the UK, and their criminally insane neocon counterparts in America, represents a growing threat to humanity. The Russians realize the use of DU in eastern Ukraine, much of it now part of the Russian Federation (as the ethnic Russians there voted for unification in referenda), is a form of radiological, chemical (heavy metals), and biological warfare.

As Gavrilov warned, using DU against the people of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk will be considered a “dirty bomb” attack on Russia. He said Russia would respond accordingly, although he did not provide specific details.

However, last March, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that Russia, if faced with an existential threat, would respond with nuclear weapons.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

***

ANNEX 

In May 2012, the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal passed a historic judgment against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Tony Blair, et al: 

“After hours of deliberation, the tribunal, in the verdict that was read out by the president of the tribunal Tan Sri Dato Lamin bin Haji Mohd Yunus Lamin, found that the prosecution had established beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused persons, former President George Bush and his co-conspirators engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of Torture and War Crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the “War on Terror” and the wars launched by the U.S. and others in Afghanistan and Iraq: 

(a) Torture;

(b) Creating, authorizing and implementing a regime of Cruel, Inhumane, and Degrading Treatment;

(c) Violating Customary International Law;

(d) Violating the Convention Against Torture 1984;

(e) Violating the Geneva Convention III and IV 1949;

(f) Violating the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention of 1949.

(g) Violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter. 

The Tribunal finds that the prosecution has established beyond a reasonable doubt that the Accused persons are individually and jointly liable for all crimes committed in pursuit of their common plan and purpose under principles established by Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (the Nuremberg Charter), which states, inter alia, “Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any person in execution of such plan.” 

Rage Against the War Machine: What Rage? ‘When will they ever learn?’

By Robert J. Burrowes, March 23, 2023

In his iconic 1950s anti-war hit song ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’, Pete Seeger posed the eternal question about war: ‘when will they ever learn?’ Of course, Seeger’s question was primarily directed at those individuals who choose to participate in the fighting. But it might equally have been directed at those in the ‘anti-war’ movement.

The U.S. Attempts to Mislead the World Into Thinking That India Is Its Ally Against China

By Andrew Korybko, March 23, 2023

The US’ soft power and strategic interests are served by manipulating the public’s perceptions about India’s emerging role in the global systemic transition, while that country’s own soft power and strategic interests are challenged by its partner’s latest information warfare campaign.

The World’s Largest CBDC Trial: A Preview of the Elite’s Cashless Vision for You

By Nick Giambruno, March 23, 2023

The eNaira is Africa’s first central bank digital currency (CBDC). Central bankers, academics, politicians, and an assortment of elites from over 100 countries hoping to launch their own CBDCs have closely followed the eNaira.

‘Mexico is not a US colony!’: AMLO Condemns Invasion Threats, Celebrates Nationalization of Oil, Lithium

By Ben Norton, March 23, 2023

Mexico’s leftist President AMLO condemned “hypocritical” Republicans who want the US military to invade, declaring “Mexico is an independent and free country, not a US colony or protectorate!” In a massive rally, López Obrador also celebrated the expropriation of oil and lithium, condemning exploitative foreign corporations.

NATO Pressuring Serbia “to Renounce Kosovo”. No to Capitulation! “Self-liberation” in NATO Occupied Belgrade

By Stephen Karganovic, March 23, 2023

The late Gene Sharp, ideological godfather of countless colour revolutions, probably would not be pleased to see his teachings posthumously hijacked by a most unconventional activist. Father Anthony is an  unyielding, pesky Serbian Orthodox cleric who gets high on driving his country’s authorities crazy, but has he heard of Gene Sharp?

Russia’s Economy Recovers While Dozens of US Banks Face Collapse

By Ahmed Adel, March 23, 2023

Although Western media were boasting about Sberbank’s 78% plunge in profit in 2022 due to US-led sanctions, with CEO German Gref acknowledging a “most difficult year”, it appears that the US economic system is the one actually on the brink as four banks have already collapsed, with dozens more expected to follow.

South Africa, Russia, China and the Shifting World Situation

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 23, 2023

National Assembly Speaker of the Republic of South Africa, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, said publicly in a recent statement before the supreme legislative body in Cape Town that the African National Congress (ANC) led government would continue to support the people of the Russian Federation.

Imagine a Life Like This: The Relentless Persecution of Hassan Diab

By Hassan Diab Support Committee, March 23, 2023

Hassan Diab goes on trial in France (in absentia) on April 3, 2023. This is for a 1980 bombing in Paris, although Hassan was not even in France at the time! His ordeal has disrupted his life for nearly 15 years, including more than three years in a maximum-security prison in France. Imagine the terrible price paid, and is still being paid, by him and his family.

How to Reduce Military Spending

By David Swanson, March 23, 2023

With Afghanistan and Iraq it took a year-and-a-half each to get good U.S. majorities in polls saying the wars never should have been started. The war in Ukraine appears to be on the same trajectory. Of course, those who believed the wars shouldn’t have been started did not, for the most part, believe they should be ended.

America’s Vulnerable Energy Security

By Shane Quinn, March 23, 2023

In 1992 Dick Cheney, the US Secretary of Defense, issued a document which outlined that the main political and military aim of Washington is to prevent any rival power emerging in Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. The ambition was to ensure America’s status as the global superpower.

Why Three US Banks Collapsed in One Week: Economist Michael Hudson Explains

Prof Michael Hudson, March 17, 2023

Breaking: “Second Russia Offensive” (SRO): Vladimir Sharpens the Cleaver; Volodymyr Fattens the Calf

William Walter Kay, March 21, 2023

The Military Situation In The Ukraine. Jacques Baud

Jacques Baud, March 18, 2023

Testicular Turbo Cancer in Young Athletes? Diagnosis to Death in Days or Weeks. COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Spike Protein Injury to the Testes

Dr. William Makis, March 20, 2023

The Covid “Killer Vaccine”. People Are Dying All Over the World. It’s A Criminal Undertaking

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 18, 2023

Warning! Silicon Valley Bank Collapse – A Prelude of Much Worse to Come? Derivatives: “Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction”.

Peter Koenig, March 22, 2023

Global Financial Meltdown: Sweeping Deregulation of the US Banking System

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 17, 2023

Conspiracy Theories Become Conspiracy Facts

Ramesh Thakur, March 14, 2023

20 Lies About the Iraq War

Glen Rangwala, March 19, 2023

A 10-year-old Canadian Hockey Player From Hamilton, Ontario, Died Suddenly on March 11, 2023. Canada’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates for Athletes Ages 12+ Are a Serious Crime

Dr. William Makis, March 20, 2023

Bill Gates, Vaccinations, Microchips, and Patent 060606

Leonid Savin, March 18, 2023

Video: Imminent 5G Induced Genocide: Vaccinated Vulnerable To 5G Kill Grid’s Deadly Tech! – Dr. Reiner Fuellmich

Reiner Fuellmich, March 17, 2023

The New World Order Crisis and “The Reproduction of Real Life”: Food, Water and Energy. Three Fundamental Necessities of Life in Jeopardy

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 18, 2023

Colin Powell and the “The Sloppy Dossier”: Plagiarism and “Fake Intelligence” Used to Justify the 2003 War on Iraq: Copied and Pasted from the Internet into an “Official” British Intel Report

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 18, 2023

White House Says It Opposes a Ceasefire in Ukraine

Dave DeCamp, March 20, 2023

186 More Banks “Are at Risk of Failure”, and That Could Push Us Into the Next Great Depression

Michael Snyder, March 21, 2023

5G Wireless Technology Is War against Humanity

Claire Edwards, March 18, 2023

West Sends Depleted Uranium Weapons to Ukraine: MEP to Warmongers – “You Make Me Sick!”

Colin Todhunter, March 22, 2023

Russia’s Economy Is Booming – Despite or Because of Sanctions?

Peter Koenig, March 20, 2023

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

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***

The US’ soft power and strategic interests are served by manipulating the public’s perceptions about India’s emerging role in the global systemic transition, while that country’s own soft power and strategic interests are challenged by its partner’s latest information warfare campaign. Presenting the aforesaid transition’s latest phase as a bipolar one between “democracies” and “dictatorships” instead of the tripolar phase that it truly is undercuts India’s claims to neutrality in the New Cold War.

The US commenced an information warfare campaign in the run-up to President Xi’s historic visit to Moscow aimed at misportraying India as its ally against China. The intention is to make the targeted audience think that International Relations aren’t about to trifurcate into the US-led West’s Golden Billion, the Sino-Russo Entente, and the informally Indian–led Global South, but bifurcate into “democracies” and “dictatorships”, with the US and India against China and Russia in the New Cold War.

The first move in this direction occurred on 14 March when Republican Senator Bill Hagerty published a press release about the bipartisan resolution that he co-sponsored in mid-February reaffirming the US’ recognition of Arunachal Pradesh as Indian territory and not Chinese. One day later on 15 March, former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was confirmed by the Senate to become the next US Ambassador to India, which finally filled this highly important diplomatic post after a two-year absence.

Then on 20 March, which was the same day that President Xi arrived in Moscow, US News & World Report cited an inside source who claimed that the US supplied intelligence to India prior to a border incident with China late last year, which enabled Delhi to thwart Beijing’s alleged incursion at the time. This sequence of events was arguably set into motion by the initial report on 7 March that President Xi planned to visit Russia on 21 March, which Beijing confirmed ten days later on 17 March.

Early February’s balloon incident ended prior hopes for a “New Détente” between China and the US, which in turn hardened their positions towards one another and thus made the intensification of their worldwide competition inevitable. Accordingly, China decided to solidify its nascent Entente with Russia by having President Xi travel to Moscow for that purpose, while the US sought to mislead the world into thinking that India had allied with it against the People’s Republic.

That second-mentioned response to the newfound military-strategic dynamics brought about by the balloon incident deserves to be analyzed more at length since everything isn’t at it seems. Upon learning in early March that President Xi was planning to visit Russia, the US decided to send three sequential signals for the purpose of manipulating public perceptions about the Indian-US Strategic Partnership, ergo the spree of developments that was described above.

The timing of Senator Hagerty’s press release about the bipartisan resolution that he co-sponsored the month prior wasn’t coincidental but the first salvo in this information warfare campaign. It was then followed by the Senate finally confirming Garcetti’s appointment as the next US Ambassador to India, which was a long time coming but was given an urgent impetus by reports about President Xi’s upcoming visit to Moscow.

The third and most recent step of this campaign, but certainly not the last one, was when the US decided to leak the report about their country’s intelligence assistance to India late last year on the exact day that President Xi arrived in Russia. This was meant to artificially manufacture the earlier described narrative relating to the false bifurcation of International Relations into “democratic” and “dictatorial” blocs instead of their trifurcation into the Golden Billion, the Entente, and Global South.

About that last-mentioned step, this report doesn’t in and of itself prove that India is the US’ military ally against China since that South Asian Great Power proudly practices a policy of multi-alignment between the world’s top players, which maximizes its hard-earned strategic autonomy in the New Cold War. India rightly eschews formal alliances since they’d impose limits on its foreign policy and burden it with uncomfortable obligations, thus reducing its sovereignty.

Moreover, observers should be informed that the US still dispatched senior diplomats to Beijing for talks with their Chinese counterparts in pursuit of their now-defunct “New Détente” immediately after the same Sino-Indo clash that their intelligence services helped Delhi prepare for ahead of time. Reports about that incident indicate that it took place on 9 December, while China’s Foreign Ministry disclosed on 12 December that their diplomats and the US’ held talks in Beijing over the past two days.

This proves that the US was double-dealing at the time. On the one hand, it reportedly shared intelligence with India to help it prepare for an impending incursion by China, while at the same time still dispatching its diplomats to Beijing in spite of the Sino-Indo clash that took place immediately prior. The signal sent to India was that the US tacitly had its back against China, while the one sent to China was that the US didn’t care enough about its reported incursion against India to call off their talks.

There’s no way to describe this approach other than emblematic of the US’ typical divide-and-rule agenda against Eurasia. If it and India had truly allied against China, then the US would have abruptly canceled its planned talks with China in protest after those two neighboring Asian Great Powers clashed. Instead, it went through with them anyhow since its strategists calculated that their country’s interests were best served by discussing a possible deal with China than standing in solidarity with India.

The above insight adds crucial context to the US’ newly commenced information warfare campaign aimed at misportraying India as its ally against China and compellingly discredits that false narrative. Quite clearly, while Delhi won’t ever decline Washington’s actionable intelligence that’s shared with it about Beijing’s military plans along their disputed border, this doesn’t mean that India will do the US’ bidding against China as proven by its continued restraint despite the incident late last year.

The US’ soft power and strategic interests are served by manipulating the public’s perceptions about India’s emerging role in the global systemic transition, while that country’s own soft power and strategic interests are challenged by its partner’s latest information warfare campaign. Presenting the aforesaid transition’s latest phase as a bipolar one between “democracies” and “dictatorships” instead of the tripolar phase that it truly is undercuts India’s claims to neutrality in the New Cold War.

It also implies that this South Asian Great Power has voluntarily surrendered its hard-earned strategic autonomy in that worldwide competition over the direction of the global systemic transition in order to voluntarily submit itself to becoming the unipolar-driven Golden Billion’s largest-ever vassal state. Neither of these narratives implied by the US’ latest information warfare campaign are true, but they’re being propagated in order to advance that declining unipolar hegemon’s interests at India’s expense.

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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 the author

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

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***

The eNaira is Africa’s first central bank digital currency (CBDC).

Central bankers, academics, politicians, and an assortment of elites from over 100 countries hoping to launch their own CBDCs have closely followed the eNaira.

They used Nigeria—Africa’s largest country by population and size of its economy—as a trial balloon to test their nefarious plans to eliminate cash in North America, Europe, and beyond.

Are you concerned about CBDCs?

Then you should be paying attention to what is happening in Nigeria.

That’s because there’s an excellent chance your government will reach for the same playbook when they decide to impose CBDCs in your area—which could be soon.

CBDCs enable all sorts of horrible, totalitarian things.

They allow governments to track and control every penny you earn, save, and spend. They are a powerful tool for politicians to confiscate and redistribute wealth as they see fit.

CBDCs will also enable devious social engineering by allowing governments to punish and reward people in ways they previously couldn’t.

CBDCs are, without a doubt, an instrument of enslavement. They represent a quantum leap backward in human freedom.

Unfortunately, they’re coming soon…

Governments will probably mandate CBDCs as the “solution” when the next real or contrived crisis hits—which is likely not far off.

That’s why you must pay attention to what is happening in Nigeria. That way, you can know what to expect and take preventative action.

Here are the top five insights from the eNaira.

Insight #1: Don’t Take the Bait… Reject CBDC Incentives

In Nigeria, the government implemented discounts and other incentives to increase the adoption of eNaira.

In North America and Europe, expect the government to require CBDCs to receive welfare payments, a potential universal basic income, so-called “inflation relief checks,” or whatever the next cockamamie scheme is.

Think of these incentives like the cheese in a mousetrap.

Insight #2: Simultaneous Moves To Eliminate Cash

To help boost eNaira adoption, the Nigerian government announced a plan to remove the legal tender status of various high denomination bills, rendering them worthless.

According to the World Bank, over 55% of the adult population in Nigeria does not have a bank account and is dependent on physical cash.

The Nigerian government must have known phasing out cash would be a disaster for a majority of the population, but they plowed ahead anyways—so much for democracy.

When your government imposes a CBDC, expect simultaneous measures to force people out of cash, regardless of the costs.

Those measures could come in many flavors, but I would bet they would first look to phase out large denomination bills by removing their legal tender status.

We’re already seeing this happen…

For example, the EU has already phased out the 500 euro note.

The $100 bill is the largest in circulation in the US, but that wasn’t always the case. At one point, the US had $500, $1,000, $5,000, and even $10,000 bills.

The government eliminated these large bills in 1969 under the pretext of fighting the War on (Some) Drugs.

The $100 bill has been the largest ever since. But it has far less purchasing power than it did in 1969. Decades of rampant money printing have debased the dollar. Today, a $100 note buys less than $12 in 1969.

Even though the Federal Reserve has devalued the dollar by over 88% since 1969, it still refuses to issue notes larger than $100.

With CBDCs on the horizon, I think the US government will not only never issue another bill higher than $100 but will probably look to phase out the $100 bill under various pretexts.

Insight #3: Bank Restrictions

Most people think of the money they deposit into the bank as a personal asset they own.

But that’s not true.

Once you deposit money at the bank, it’s no longer your property. Instead, it’s the bank’s, and they can pretty much do whatever they want with it.

What you really own is the bank’s promise to pay you back. It’s an unsecured liability, which makes you technically and legally a creditor of the bank.

And since the banking system is intertwined with the government everywhere, it’s only prudent to expect governments to place more restrictions on bank accounts as CBDCs debut.

This is exactly what happened in Nigeria.

Cash withdrawal limits and debit card transaction restrictions were imposed, among other measures. In addition, capital controls made it challenging to send money out of the country.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see the forced conversion of bank deposits into the eNaira—at an unfavorable rate.

Here’s the bottom line. Expect all sorts of restrictions—and possible confiscations—to be imposed on bank accounts when a CBDC is released.

Insight #4: Rising Inflation

Amid the eNaira rollout, Nigeria is experiencing some of the highest inflation levels in its history.

This is not surprising. CBDCs make it even easier for the government to debase the currency.

So, it’s reasonable to expect more inflation when CBDCs come to town.

Insight #5: Social Unrest

In another predictable development, frustrated Nigerians took to the streets over the government’s actions to restrict cash and bank accounts. There was a violent scramble to exchange old notes before the government deemed them worthless. Riots broke out in several locations.

There’s an excellent chance the destructive restrictions imposed alongside CBDCs could create social unrest anywhere.

Conclusion

To summarize, here are the top five insights from Nigeria’s CBDC experience.

Insight #1: Don’t Take the Bait… Reject CBDC Incentives

Insight #2: Simultaneous Moves To Eliminate Cash

Insight #3: Bank Restrictions

Insight #4: Rising Inflation

Insight #5: Social Unrest

As CBDCs come to your neighborhood, you now know what to expect.

Governments will probably mandate CBDCs as the “solution” when the next real or contrived crisis hits—which is likely not far off.

There’s an excellent chance more inflation and financial chaos is coming soon.

Are you ready for it?

That’s why I just released an urgent PDF guide, “Survive and Thrive During the Most Dangerous Economic Crisis in 100 Years.” Download this free report to discover the top 3 strategies you need to implement today to protect yourself and potentially come out ahead.

With the global economy in turmoil and the threat of a “Great Reset” looming, this guide is a must-read. Click here to download it now.

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In the immediate aftermath of Norfolk Southern’s train derailment in East Palestine in early February, reporters, first responders and officials seemed confused about exactly what chemicals were even in the train’s burning cars. Yet, right on cue, despite not knowing what effects the various chemicals could have within an explosive situation, the EPA reported that the surrounding air and water was safe to breathe and drink. 

As more reports trickled out, we learned the train cars were carrying at least five toxic chemicals: vinyl chloride, ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, butyl acrylate, ethylhexyl acrylate, and isobutylene.

According to government and scientific data, exposure to these chemicals can cause multiple forms of cancer and other serious health issues. But Norfolk Southern failed to initially disclose those chemicals as highly hazardous, and first responders — not to mention the public — had little idea what they were dealing with.

Three days after the derailment, on Feb. 6, we watched as Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, in consultation with Norfolk Southern representatives, greenlighted a plan to blow holes in five of the cars containing toxic chemicals, which would lead to a ​“controlled release,” and residents in nearby communities were ordered to evacuate. This decision to release and burn off the chemicals was defended by public officials and Norfolk Southern as the ​“safest way” to handle the situation. The resulting fire’s black plume of smoke, ash and debris, created a toxic pall that hung over the communities for days. EPA tests found the air contaminated with phosgene, hydrogen chloride, VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and particulate matter.

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Mexico’s leftist President AMLO condemned “hypocritical” Republicans who want the US military to invade, declaring “Mexico is an independent and free country, not a US colony or protectorate!” In a massive rally, López Obrador also celebrated the expropriation of oil and lithium, condemning exploitative foreign corporations.

Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) organized a massive rally in the heart of the capital, honoring the anniversary of the country’s nationalization of its oil reserves and expropriation of foreign corporations.

AMLO also used the demonstration as an opportunity to publicly condemn US politicians who have proposed militarily invading Mexico to combat drug trafficking.

“We remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States!” López Obrador declared.

“They can threaten us with committing some kind of abuse, but we will never, ever allow them to violate our sovereignty and trample on the dignity of our homeland!” he asserted.

AMLO added,

 “I want to make it clear that this is no longer the time of [Felipe] Calderón or [Genaro] García Luna, that it is no longer the time of the shady links between the government of Mexico and the agencies of the US government”.

The Mexican leader then led a chant: “Cooperation? Yes. Submission? No! Interventionism? No!”

AMLO delivered this fiery speech on March 18 in the Zócalo, the plaza in the heart of Mexico City.

His government officially convened the event to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the 1938 oil nationalization by revolutionary former President Lázaro Cárdenas.

López Obrador dedicated half of his hour-long speech to discussing the history of the Cardenista revolution, and the lessons it provides for today.

AMLO praised Cárdenas for challenging foreign corporations and defending national sovereignty, while redistributing land to the poor, protecting labor rights, encouraging unions, and forming an alliance with workers and peasants against the “conservative oligarchy” that had ruled Mexico during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, before the 1910 revolution.

The speech was one of the most passionate examples of López Obrador’s left-wing nationalist ideology.

AMLO made clear parallels between the government of Cárdenas and his own government today, between Cárdenas’ oil nationalization and López Obrador’s nationalization of Mexico’s lithium reserves.

El zócalo lleno conmemorando la expropiación petrolera, la defensa de la soberanía y la cuarta transformación. pic.twitter.com/qefBTHwh0w

— Dra. Claudia Sheinbaum (@Claudiashein) March 19, 2023

Far-right Republicans call for the US military to invade Mexico

This March, a series of far-right US politicians from the Republican Party have called for the military to invade Mexico, in the name of supposedly fighting drug cartels.

Extreme-right Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claimed in a March 15 tweet that Mexican cartels “are planting bombs on our land in our country”. (She posted a photo which did not show a bomb, according to US Border Patrol, but rather “a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn’t deemed a threat to agents/public”.)

“Our US military needs to take action against the Mexican Cartels”, she insisted. “End this Cartel led war against America!”

Greene is a Donald Trump loyalist and supporter of the neo-fascist QAnon cult. She ran for office inciting violence against the left, shooting and blowing up the word “socialism” in her campaign ads.

Explosive found by Border Patrol Agents Jan 17th. Agents have surveillance of who brought it in and when and confirmed it was the Cartel.
This changes everything.
Not only are the Cartels murdering Americans everyday through drugs and crime, but now they are planting bombs on… pic.twitter.com/8uxwbd1sOn

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 15, 2023

But Greene is far from alone.

Republican Congressmember Dan Crenshaw has introduced multiple bills to authorize the US military to attack cartels in Mexico.

Legislation that Crenshaw introduced in January cites the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed a week after the 9/11 attacks, in order to justify the US military to invade Mexico.

In an op-ed, Crenshaw compared Mexican drug cartels to ISIS, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein.

The Republican lawmaker also called for the US to impose sanctions on Mexico – one of its top three trading partners.

The Mexican drug cartels are an enemy every American should want to defeat.

We can’t let this chance to save American lives pass us by. My thoughts in @USAToday: https://t.co/AbIhC1qFIw

— Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) March 8, 2023

Greene wrote that she is “proud to co-sponsor Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s legislation to declare WAR on the Mexican cartels”.

“We must authorize the use of military force to eliminate the thugs who are smuggling drugs and illegal aliens across our southern border”, Greene insisted.

The far-right Republican also suggested that Washington should impose sanctions on Mexico.

“There is a war going on that affects every single American, but it’s not in Ukraine or the Middle East, it’s on our Southern border”, Greene declared.

I’m proud to co-sponsor @RepDanCrenshaw’s legislation to declare WAR on the Mexican cartels.

We must authorize the use of military force to eliminate the thugs who are smuggling drugs and illegal aliens across our southern border, leading to crime and the murder of countless…

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 14, 2023

In the US Senate, another Trump ally, Lindsey Graham, wants the US military to intervene in Mexico.

“We are going to unleash the fury and might of the U.S. against these cartels”, Graham proclaimed in a March 8 press conference.

Graham compared Mexican drug cartels to ISIS and al-Qaeda, referring to them as “narcoterrorists” and calling to “give the military the authority to go after these organizations wherever they exist”.

Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, published an article declaring, “It Is Time for America To Declare War on the Drug Cartels“.

“As Secretary of State, I suggested we use drones to strike the cartels”, he boasted.

With blatantly neocolonial rhetoric, Pompeo claimed that Mexico has a “total lack of sovereignty”. (In his memoir, Pompeo admitted that the Trump administration tried to overthrow Venezuela’s government because it supposedly put “out the welcome mat for Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and the cartels in a twenty-first-century violation of the Monroe Doctrine“, referencing the 200-year-old colonial doctrine.)

As Secretary of State, I suggested we use drones to strike the cartels.

Here's why:https://t.co/hdys6kVK98

— Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 17, 2023

Borrowing George W. Bush-era “war on terror” rhetoric, Pompeo referred to the cartels as “narco-terrorist entities”, and insisted that “the U.S. government should designate the major drug cartels – the Gulf Cartel (responsible for the recent kidnapping and murders), the Cartel Del Noreste, the Cartel de Sinaloa, and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion to name a few – as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO)”.

Pompeo also tried to link China to Mexican drug cartels as well, without any evidence. He asserted that the US war on cartels “will require going after the Chinese Communist Party-backed entities that are funneling precursor compounds to cartels”.

AMLO condemns US threats: “Mexico is not a colony!”

In his March 18 speech, López Obrador declared:

Friend, I cannot forget to mention that, in recent days, some legislators from the United States, who are accustomed to hypocritically throwing stones while forgetting that they live in glass houses, have a propagandistic plan. As we say here, in popular language, they are scheming. And for electoral purposes, political operatives are saying that, if we don’t stop the traffic of fentanyl to the northern border, they are going to propose in Congress that North American soldiers occupy our territory, to fight organized crime.

First, I want to make it clear that this is no longer the time of [Felipe] Calderón or [Genaro] García Luna, that it is no longer the time of the shady links between the government of Mexico and the agencies of the US government.

The most important thing is that, from here, from this Zócalo, the political and cultural heart of Mexico, we remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States, and that they can threaten us with committing some kind of abuse, but we will never, ever allow them to violate our sovereignty and trample on the dignity of our homeland!

Cooperation? Yes. Submission? No! Interventionism? No!

AMLO then shouted out the following words, and the audience replied: “Oligarchy? No! Corruption? No! Classism? No! Racism? No! Freedom? Yes! Democracy? Yes! Honesty? Yes! Social justice? Yes! Equality? Yes! Sovereignty? Yes!”

The president concluded his speech chanting: “Long live the oil expropriation! Long live the workers and technicians, of before and today, in the national oil industry! Long live General Lázaro Cárdenas del Río! Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico!”

Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas declaring the nationalization of the railroads in 1937

AMLO honors Lázaro Cárdenas’ revolutionary legacy

AMLO spent the first half of his speech discussing the legacy of leftist former President Lázaro Cárdenas.

He explained:

General Lázaro Cárdenas did not hesitate to rely on those below to carry out his transformation. The general’s strategy can be summarized in three important, consecutive actions. First, he gave land to the peasants and helped the workers. Then, he motivated them to organize. And finally, with that social base, he was able to carry out the expropriation of the oil and other national resources, which Porfirio Díaz had given away to individuals, fundamentally to foreigners.

In the Cardenista strategy, the most important thing was meeting the economic and social demands of the peasants and workers.

…

It is undoubtable that the peasants saw in Cárdenas a faithful representative of the revolutionary cause. The agrarian reform ensured that many people were loyal to the Cardenista government, and from then on, there was an alliance between the peasants and the state.

Moreover, during Cardenismo, the workers felt that their labor rights were guaranteed, with strict adherence to the law. Cárdenas respected the economic struggle of workers for better salaries and better labor conditions.

…

The organization and political mobilization of the masses advanced the goal of valuing the economic independence of our country.

Thereby, with the expropriation of the oil corporations, national goods and resources were returned to the nation, which since the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz had been in the hands of foreigners.

…

There has not existed in Mexico a president as close to humble people as General Cárdenas, nor a president as dedicated to the cause of social justice.

For example, already as president, in power in 1935, he wrote in his notes the following: “Ending the miseries that the people suffer from is above all other interests”.

…

I quote General Cárdenas; he says: “We made considerations of the circumstances that could arise if governments like those of England and the United States, in the interest of supporting the oil companies, pressured the government of Mexico with violent measures. But we also took into account that there is already the threat of a new world war with the growing provocations of Nazi-fascist imperialism, and that this would stop them from attacking Mexico in the case of the expropriation, among other reasons”.

And taking advantage of this circumstance, on March 18, 1938, the oil expropriation was carried out.

…

He then made known, by radio, to all of the nation, the step taken by the government, in defense of its sovereignty, reintegrating into its domain the oil wealth that, as the same general said, “Imperialist capital has been taking advantage of to keep the country in a humiliating situation”.

In response to Cárdenas’ expropriation of Mexico’s oil wealth, AMLO explained, “The millionaires requested a US [military] intervention. They complained to the United States”.

He then added with a sarcastic tone, “That sounds familiar, that sounds familiar, that sounds familiar”.

The millionaires “went and complained so that [the United States] would come here to protect their companies”, AMLO added.

But the threat of Nazi Germany and the clear signs that World War Two was coming prevented the US from militarily intervening to stop the nationalization, López Obrador argued.

He also noted that the US leader at the time was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom AMLO referred to as “one of the best presidents that that country has had in all of its history”.

“But the corporations were not as conscious and respectful” as FDR, López Obrador continued.

Foreign corporations thought that “Mexicans were born to enrich foreigners”, he said, “and that God put important natural resources below Mexico’s soil to increase the fortunes in the treasure chests of the exploiters and concessionaires”.

AMLO recalled that Cárdenas’ government was forced to “confront a boycott, pressures, and acts of sabotage promoted and funded by the foreign oil companies in our country”.

The Mexican president continued:

The oil expropriation caused deep discomfort among a minority, above all among the wealthy at the time, in sectors of the middle class, and in the majority of the media.

It is interesting, and this is a lesson, to highlight that, historically, the right wing always regroups when a democratic change is trying to be carried out, and it becomes plainly intolerant, and even violent when it comes to social demands in favor of the people and the control of the nation.

López Obrador discussed the example of Francisco Madero, a leader of the Mexican Revolution who governed as president from 1911 to 1913, but who was toppled and murdered in a coup d’etat sponsored by the United States and carried out by the right wing.

AMLO emphasized:

Let us remember that the overthrow of President Madero, our apostle of democracy, relied on the intervention of the US ambassador, but that overthrow was carried out by internal right-wing groups that had previously promoted a campaign of hatred and smears, consisting of ridiculing the leader, President Madero, in their newspapers, to the point of treating him as crazy and spiritualist.

As an example of the long history of Mexico’s right-wing elites betraying their country’s national interests in collaboration with foreign corporations, AMLO pointed out that the country’s right-wing party PAN, which governed from 2000 to 2012, had been created in 1939 as a representation of the wealthy oligarchic forces that opposed Cárdenas’ oil expropriation.

The Mexican president finally summarized his discussion of Cárdenas: “In this brief history, there are greater lessons. The main one is that only with the people, only with the support of the majority, is it possible to carry out a popular transformation to guarantee justice and confront the reactionaries who don’t want to lose their privileges”.

AMLO boasts of unprecedented government spending on social programs to help working-class Mexicans

Later in the March 18 speech, AMLO boasted of the unprecedented social spending his government has carried out:

All of the [government’s] savings are used to finance social programs, such as pensions for the elderly, support for people with disabilities, single mothers, peasants and fishermen; with scholarships for students from poor families; internet for everyone; programs to build and improve housing; favorable loans; fertilizers and guaranteed prices for small producers in the country; the Wellness Bank; the drive for public education and health care, universal and free.

This year, more than 25 million people will receive direct support totaling 600 billion pesos. In other words, out of the 35 million homes that there are in the country, 71% are already benefiting from at least one of the social programs.

With this policy of attention to the neediest, the most vulnerable, and especially the youth, we have also been able to reduce crime

…

]These policies] have allowed us to avoid more debt. We have not requested additional debt since we are in government.

…

The price of gasoline, diesel, gas, and electricity has not increased.

…

Also, public investment has increased, which did not happen for many years. This year, more than 1 trillion pesos will be spent on public works. That is to say, we are going to keep building roads, bridges, trains, airports, hospitals, universities, markets, sports facilities, piers, and natural, recreational, and ecological parks.

…

In the time that we have been in government, the minimum wage has increased by 90% in real terms, and more than double at the border.

Do you remember what the lying technocrats said about raising the salary, that there was going to be inflation? Pure nonsense! That is not true.

Of course we have to increase wages in a responsible way, to strengthen the internal market, as we are doing, and thereby to achieve well-being for our people.

…

“We have also directed our resources and efforts toward achieving food self-sufficiency and energy self-sufficiency.

…

We can ensure that we are guaranteed to have oil sovereignty. Next year, we are not going to buy gasoline, diesel, or other oil products abroad. We are going to process all of our raw materials.

…

And recently, the lithium was nationalized, strategic minerals used in making batteries, for electric cars and the storage system for clean energy. It fills me with pride to remember that.

While listing the accomplishments of his government, López Obrador also referenced the negotiations in 2018 and 2019 that led to replacing NAFTA with the new United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA).

AMLO said with pride:

We were able to remove from the free trade agreement a broad chapter that compromised our oil in that agreement and put in its place a small paragraph that I am going to read to you.

It says that the United States and Canada recognize that “Mexico reserves its sovereign right to reform its Constitution and its domestic legislation; and Mexico has the direct, inalienable, and imprescriptible ownership of all hydrocarbons in the subsoil of the national territory”.

The Mexican president added:

We are going to continue with that collective conscience. We are going to continue pushing back against the dirty war, the smear campaigns, and the manipulation attempts that they will continue to carry out because they have no other choice, our adversaries and their media outlets, sold out, bought up, in the hands of members of the corrupt conservative bloc.

But at the same time, we must have faith in the wisdom and loyalty of the people.

…

I maintain that, whatever they do, the oligarchs will not return to power. An authentic and true democracy will continue to prevail in our beloved Mexico.

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Dr. William Makis and Dr. Paul Alexander discuss mature minors given COVID shots in Canada with no parental consent, pilots collapsing in flight due to possible vaccine induced myocarditis, one pilot disaster and many high school students having heart attacks post COVID gene shot and needing defibrillators.

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The publicity for the Ukraine war has been handled far more successfully by the US, NATO and allies than the campaign to justify the 2003 US war on Iraq. The Ukraine news is pervasive. It comes from the front, from anchors in Kyiv, from interviews with victims, medical staff and politicians. Moscow-based Western correspondents who dominate the airwaves, television and print media provide unenlightening input from Russia. The war is being won for hearts and minds while bloody battles rage in eastern Ukraine. Blanket efforts to influence global public opinion in favour of the war will go on long after the war ends.

This is true of this week’s 20th anniversary coverage of George W. Bush’s deadly and destructive war on Iraq which afflicted chaos, anarchy and sectarianism on the core country of the Eastern Arab World (Mashreq) and shook the region. By repeating the three false pretexts for launching the war, the media gives them currency and some credibility. Few commentators state the fact that the US “lied” by saying Iraqi president Saddam Hussein retained banned weapons of mass destruction (WMD), had ties to Al Qaeda which attacked the US in 2001, and, the most farfetched of all, posed a threat to the US. “Lied” is a leaded word which conveys the accusation that the US intended to mislead the global public even this was true.

On the issue of WMD, on the website of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, ex-UN nuclear inspector Robert Kelley wrote, “The UN Special Commission on Iraq [UNSCOM] and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] Action Team carried out hundreds of person-days of inspections in Iraq [in 1992-1993]. We discovered nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programmes and methodically destroyed them, even to the extent of blowing up entire factories and laboratories and bringing special nuclear materials out of the country.” A US expert, Kelley also wrote the report to the IAEA on inspections carried out ahead of the war found no evidence of nuclear material or equipment. His report was ignored in Washington and London.

The Saddam Hussein-Al Qaeda connection was invented by US officials with the aim of providing Bush with justification for his war but was dismissed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2006. Al Qaeda made its appearance in Iraq after the US occupation when Abu Musab Al Zarqawi was tasked by Usama Bin Laden to establish cells in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had neither the aspiration nor possibility to mount strikes on the US which is more than 11,000 kilometres distant from Baghdad.

On April 9, 2007, former director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on a 60 Minutes television interview, “We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with Al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period.”

Twenty years on lies and misrepresentations continue to be adopted by today’s politicians and commentators. The most common is that Saddam Hussein established “a minority Sunni regime”. This, somehow, justified its removal.

Although Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, appointed relatives to senior posts, the government was secular and included Christian, Kurdish and Shiite ministers in key roles. Deputy prime minister and foreign minister Tareq Aziz was a Christian. Defence industry and industry minister Amr Al Sadi — who built weapons used by Iraq during the Iran war and liaised with UN weapons inspectors — is a Shiite. He was not a member of the ruling Baath Party. His brother was a high ranking official in the oil ministry. An early Baathist who reached the top ranks of the party, Saadoun Hammadi, another Shiita, was oil minister, prime minister, and foreign minister. Mohammed Saeed Al Sahhaf, a Shiita born in Karbala like Hammadi, served as information and foreign minister. Iraq’s health minister in the 1990s was a Kurd whom I met in Baghdad in 1992 or 1993 during a conference convened by a Jordanian doctors’ association. The majority of members in the Baath and Communist parties were Shiitas who made up about 55 per cent of the population.

Two examples of Monday’s 20th anniversary coverage are revealing.

Commenting in The Washington Post about US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s pre-war statement on WMD to the UN Security Council, Ishaan Tharoor said that he “would lament the defects in the US intelligence process” which gave Bush the pretext to wage war. There were no “defects” just lies which were recognised as lies at the time by opponents and critics of the war.

Beating around the bush, Tharoor admitted that “Saddam’s regime” was “nominally secular” although it was, in fact, “secular” and inclusive. Tharoor also wrote that the “regime ..presided over a united sense of Iraqi identity that was, to a certain extent, broken up by the US invasion and its aftermath”. There was an Iraqi identity before the war and, there was no “certain extent” about the US effort, launched in May 2003, to destroy the Iraqi identity. The US imposed a divide-and-rule system of governance based on ethnic — Arab-Kurd — and sectarian — Shiite and Sunni — identity. Instead of democracy, this system has produced sectarian and ethnic cleansing and rule by expatriate pro-Iranain Shiita militia leaders turned politicians.

In her 50-minute BBC documentary, “A Choice of Horrors”, Caroline Wyatt interviewed a number of academics, journalists and ex-officials on the whys and wherefores of the war. The programme was divided between interviews with proponents and opponents of the war. Pro-ponents relied on non-existent WMD and Saddam Husein’s repression. Wyatt argued correctly that the end of the Cold War left the US as the global hyperpower which, after 2000, had the muscle to conduct “humanitarian interventions” although the Iraq war was a straightforward war of conquest and not a “humanitarian intervention”. While opponents spoke of US hubris and argued Iraq emerged from the US war broken, violent and impoverished, they were overshadowed by proponents who spoke first. This weakened the conclusion that the US intervention was worse than non-intervention. The war of words over the US war on Iraq continues unabated.

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The flurry of criticism and counter-outrage over the classical colonial era is no mere academic matter, warns ANDREW MURRAY: what is being debated is whether fresh imperial slaughter can be sold to the public

The British empire is one of the front lines in the culture war. Few things make Establishment academics and pundits angrier than the critical scrutiny British imperialism is increasingly subjected to, particularly by scholars that aren’t white, male and privileged, the characteristics hitherto regarded as essential for holding an opinion on the subject.

Historians like Niall Ferguson and Robert Tombs argue that the empire wasn’t such a bad thing overall, a few undeniable excesses notwithstanding, or, as a fallback, too complex to pass judgement on. They are keener on emphasising Britain’s role in abolishing slavery than its prior record of promoting and profiting from it, and its foundational part in the development of capitalism.

They also disdain the intrusion of new scholars onto their terrain. In one especially unpleasant article, Tombs singled out three for the sin of exploiting “the fashionable theme of ‘anti-colonialism’,” as if hostility to colonialism was a priori a historical disability.

The impertinent trio were Afua Hirsch, David Olusoga and Kehinde Andrews, all of whom are black writers of distinction. Not particularly subtle, I would say.

Most recently, the imperial case has been set out by Nigel Biggar, a moral philosopher no less, who finds the record of the empire broadly congenial in a new book. He regards a reappraisal of the empire as threatening to the present social order since any critique has to foreground issues like racism, exploitation and state violence, essential components of Britain best left unexamined lest they undermine the bromides of liberal capitalist democracy.

This is the critical point. History isn’t over and, in particular, the history of British imperialism is a story without an ending so far.

When Ferguson wrote his pro-imperial history of the British empire 20 years ago, he wasn’t shy about proclaiming his purpose. It was to encourage a revival of imperial methods for governing the world, on the part of the US above all, since Britain was no longer equipped to go it alone.

The “bring back the empire” brigade had its way with Afghanistan and Iraq. Twenty years on from the start of the Afghan occupation it ended in utter ignominy.

And 20 years after the Iraq invasion, a bleak anniversary marked this week, no-one can be found to excuse the aggression.

Not even the Times. Like every other newspaper worldwide in the Murdoch empire, it cheered on the Bush-Blair invasion. Yet this week it editorialised that the war was “an unmitigated disaster” and “a hubristic act of overreach, a reckless product of the American ‘unipolar moment’ that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“For those responsible, including in Britain, the verdict of history grows only more damning with the passage of time… We all now live with its legacy: a less stable, more dangerous world than at any time since the second world war.”

The article could have been a Stop the War Coalition leaflet, in fact. Although there was no acknowledgement that the war was a disaster fully endorsed by the Times and its proprietor at the time. Anyway, imperial misadventures now turn sour even faster than they did in Queen Victoria’s days.

Yet still today, the preservation of a benign understanding of the British empire seems essential to the present system: the idea that it is, and always has been, pretty much the best people could aspire to.

Its propagandists realise that when the Colston statue was pulled down, for example, this was not just a matter of an image of a notorious slave trader being removed, it was the desecration of a central prop of contemporary politics.

The whole British bourgeoisie has at least one foot on the Colston pedestal. The sanctity of our past, in the Ferguson-Tombs historical telling, is the blank cheque written to today’s imperialists, cashable in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Ukraine in this century alone.

The legacy of the empire also legitimises authoritarianism, racism, and sundry other maladies, including the supremacy of the City of London in economic counsels and the overweening influence of the arms and energy monopolies.

To deride “anti-colonial” history is to sustain 21st-century neo-colonialism and the brutalisation of Iraq with its million dead, torture, sectarian strife and despoliation.

If we take one lesson from this anniversary week, let it be the importance of anti-imperialism to any serious socialist politics, from Iraq to Ukraine to Britain itself.

Obstructed: we are now as free as South Africa, Poland and Hungary

The latest figures show that real living standards for working people in Britain have now stagnated for 15 years. This is a slump entirely unprecedented in its duration.

At the same time, Britain has been downgraded in a global ranking of freedom, on account of “increasingly authoritarian” legislation, according to Civicus Monitor. New powers that restrict the right to protest have led to us being downgraded from “narrowed” to “obstructed.” We are now only one level above “repressed.”

“Narrowed,” the next level up, is a description which fits the democracy which allowed Tony Blair to take us into a war of choice ignoring public opinion. The rot runs deep.

The laws include those clamping down on the right to protest and giving police sweeping new powers — just what the Met doesn’t need this week — as well as the government’s drive to undermine civil organisations, like charities, critical of its policies.

To that could be added the fresh attack on the right to strike and legislation aimed at driving down electoral participation by the poor and the young.

It is impossible to see these developments as unrelated. As bleak economic circumstances undermine the consent of the people to capitalist class rule, coercion is intensified. Witness President Emmanuel Macron — a darling of all centrists — imposing the degradation of French pensions by decree rather than a parliamentary vote.

And Britain is in a worse state than France.

Can democracy survive capitalism in more-or-less unending crisis and the risk of a war of the great powers? This is being debated in Establishment circles, which would rather squeeze civil rights than profit margins.

The left must join the discussion and mobilise for the defence of democracy. At the moment, we are as frogs in water gradually coming to the boil.

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***

The late Gene Sharp, ideological godfather of countless colour revolutions, probably would not be pleased to see his teachings posthumously hijacked by a most unconventional activist. Father Anthony is an  unyielding, pesky Serbian Orthodox cleric who gets high on driving his country’s authorities crazy, but has he heard of Gene Sharp? Or ever read Sharp’s classical color revolution manual, “Self-liberation,” even more suggestively subtitled

“A guide to Strategic Planning for Action to End a Dictatorship or Other Oppression”?

Perhaps he and Sharp simply arrived at similar conclusions independently.

Be that as it may, internal tensions in Serbia are rising, fuelled by popular suspicion that NATO is strong-arming the vacillating government to renounce Kosovo.

Concomitantly, the charismatic monk’s visibility and credibility have also been rising steadily.

Hardly a day goes by that he is not harassed by the police or arrested on some imputation of “disorderly conduct.” He is held in jail until he scrapes together roughly 1000 euros to pay the brutal fine meted out for such “misconduct.” A pattern is emerging. It seems that the authorities typically stage incidents for the principal purpose of keeping Father Anthony off the streets of Belgrade as much as possible.

With a small band of devout supporters, he has been at it since 2016, when local oligarchs in the provincial town of Valjevo, possessed by a sense of impious impunity, decided to inundate the 13^thcentury monastery of Saint Archangel Michael nearby. The medieval shrine stood in the way of their artificial lake project, conceived brazenly so they could enjoy sail boating. That is when Father Anthony’s righteous indignation boiled over, and a modern Savonarola was born. He has been relentlessly haunting the powers that be ever since.

Following that initial protest, the good father’s public rhetoric expanded noticeably beyond theological matters and futile appeals in neo-liberal Serbia for the preservation of religious and cultural monuments. Every Saturday in Belgrade he leads a religious procession, a litany, making the rounds of what he regards as the nodal points of the occupation system that holds Serbia in subjection: the Patriarchal headquarters of the silenced Church, the national television broadcasting facility, and the parliament building, with the Presidential office close by, situated on the other side of the park. At each of these locations, Saturday after Saturday Anthony delivers scorching homilies on a wide range of sensitive topics that are certainly on everyone’s mind but are rarely whispered by his fellow-citizens, and even then by only a few audacious lips. Today in Serbia, that sort of preaching is offensively annoying. Clearly it does not have the effect of winning friends or influencing people, especially not in the dark corridors of power.

The fact that Anthony has no friends in the aforementioned quarters has been particularly evident over the past several weeks. He has been continuously caught in a revolving door, as he is sprung in and out of jail for his impassioned street denunciations of what he sees as betrayal to NATO and its regional vassals of Serbia’s spiritual and cultural heartland, Kosovo. As of this writing, he is still incarcerated on the other side of the revolving door, where he was safely tucked away to prevent him from adding his unique imprint to the “No to capitulation” mass rally in Belgrade in opposition to EU’s harsh ultimatum to Serbia to supinely accept NATO orchestrated secession of Kosovo.

Image: Anthony preaching with NATO bombed building in the background (Source: Stephen Karganovic)

Over the past week, Father Anthony demonstrated once more his brilliant capacity to mock and annoy, as should be expected from a student of Gene Sharp. On the day of his latest arrest on March 16^th, he   further unnerved the jittery authorities by nonchalantly taking a provocative, although perfectly legal, stroll in the park between the   National Assembly building and the President’s office [at 16:36 minutes]. He knew that the police would frown on his unpredictable presence in that public space, but decided with a handful of supporters to test the effectiveness of his civil rights anyway. Permission for a public gathering, defined by law as nineteen or more persons, was not received and pointedly not solicited. The authorities’ already rattled nerves were tried additionally when his followers separated into small groups of two and three, each clearly under the legal threshold, while disingenuously pretending that they congregated by pure chance and were not even acquainted with each other.

Whether intentionally designed or not, it turned into a classical Gene Sharp performance. The freaked out police, who had orders to disperse them, technically were in a legally untenable position [at 21:31 minutes]. Eventually, exactly as Sharp’s manual predicts they would, they solved the “rule of law” problem by crudely brushing all formalities away. They settled the matter Balkan style, the only method they know. An officer approached the monk, no court order or any such nonsense in hand of course, and peremptorily ordered Anthony to vacate the public area where he was legally entitled to be. Refusing to budge, Father Anthony preached and argued with the stone faced praetorians and finally he was rewarded with his Gene Sharp (or, if one prefers, Ghandi) moment. As the conversation was getting nowhere, he deliberately collapsed to the ground [at 33:02 minutes] forcing police officers to physically carry him off to a waiting vehicle [at 34:01 to 36:40 minutes]. In plain sight and for the obvious edification of the citizenry, Father Anthony was carted off to an undisclosed location. On best available information, he still remains there, incommunicado.

At last report, for this playful caper he was sentenced to five days in jail; there is no official word whether or not he offered to pay the fine, or the offer was refused.

Regrettably, neither Amnesty International nor the International Criminal Court, which lately purports to have been busy investigating human rights violations, have expressed the slightest interest in Father Anthony, the treatment he habitually receives, or his whereabouts. Nor have inquiries been made by international dignitaries who have been flocking to Belgrade to finalise with their local lackeys the handover of Kosovo to NATO occupiers and their Albanian minions. It seems to suit everybody perfectly that the monk has vanished.

For all we know, Father Anthony may be somewhere sharing a jail cell with incarcerated journalist Dejan Zlatanovic, comforting another forlorn prisoner of conscience in this dark night of the soul for the entire Serbian nation.

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Stephen Karganovic is president of “Srebrenica Historical Project,” an NGO registered in the Netherlands to investigate the factual matrix and background of events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: Serbian Monk Anthony defying the police (Source: Stephen Karganovic)

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***

Twenty years ago on this coming weekend, I was in Mongolia as the Deputy US Ambassador. After writing a Dissent Cable in early March 2003 on the pending US war on Iraq to my boss Secretary of State Colin Powell, I made the decision to resign from the US government as it was poised to invade, occupy and destroy the sovereign state of Iraq. I was one of three US diplomats who resigned – Brady Kiesling and John Brown resigned before me.

For months, the Bush administration attempted to get the US public to believe that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction and therefore was a threat to the United States and the international community. Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003 briefing on weapons of mass destruction to the U.N. Security Council was a bust and the Bush administration was unable to get the necessary votes for the UN to authorize military operations in its name. Nor did millions of ordinary citizens around the world believe Bush and Powell’s justification for war and they were marching against the war in numbers never seen in the recorded history of our planet.

As a reminder of the events leading up to the war on Iraq and the complicity of the media in providing the Bush administration all the coverage it wanted, The Dissenter is publishing the daily history of the Bush administration’s lies and the media cover-up. On March 16, 2023, The Dissenter posted the twenty-year old March 16, 2003 Washington Post article by Walter Pincus on his investigation of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in his infamous February 5, 2003 speech at the UN Security Council. Pincus’ investigation revealed that “US intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden.” Pincus highlighted how US officials “repeatedly have failed to mention the considerable amount of documented weapons destruction that took place in Iraq between 1991 and 1998.” The Post buried this small article on page A17, instead of on the front page where it belonged. Pincus wrote, “The front pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times are very important in shaping what other people think. They’re like writing a memo to the White House,” and that’s why the Post buried his critical article.

Tragically and criminally, the Bush administration went ahead and attacked Iraq and in the next decade created massive instability in the Middle East and the conditions for the rise of violent militia groups that are still terrorizing the region and the world. In the next two decades, the US continued its war mongering in Europe, Africa and North East Asia.

Today, twenty years after the beginning of the disastrous war on Iraq, the world is faced with the US war mongering in two major areas and several smaller ones. In Ukraine, the US is providing weapons for the US proxy war to “weaken” Russia..at the terrible expense of the lives of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians and the destruction of a large amount of housing and national infrastructure in Ukraine.

In the Pacific and Asia, the US has encouraged NATO, the NORTH ATLANTIC treaty organization to expand its area of concern/influence halfway around the world with NATO country ships and ground personnel in military war maneuvers to threaten China’s remarkable economic rise and modest military increase – in China’s own front yard. The US and South Korea are having the largest war maneuvers in decades on the border with North Korea.

In these dangerous actions with Russia, China and North Korea, the US and European media have been cheerleaders for military confrontation, just as they were for the US war on Iraq. Only this time, the US is challenging large, nuclear weapons countries, not a small country that the US knew had already destroyed its weaponry.

We are facing the same desire in the US and European media to bow to the wishes of the governments rather than the media being investigative journalists to give the public the honest truth about what is happening in a current brutal war in Ukraine and the lead-up to military actions in the Western Pacific and Northeast Asia.

Having served 29 years in the US Army/Army Reserves and retiring as a Colonel and 16 years as a US diplomat in US embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia, all I can say is “Don’t believe everything the US government says or the US media writes.”

No one wins when diplomacy is shot dead by military actions. Keep talking instead of shooting.

The future of our planet will depend on it!!

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Ann Wright is a retired US Army Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned from the US government in March 2003 in opposition to the US war on Iraq. She had served in US embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. Since her resignation 20 years ago this weekend, she has worked for peace with CODEPINK: Women For Peace, Veterans For Peace and many other peace organizations. She has travelled to Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and other countries under U.S. sanctions to write about U.S. imperialism. She is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience.

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***

In a follow-up to his explosive story accusing U.S. President Joe Biden of ordering the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, veteran U.S. journalist Seymour Hersh charged Wednesday that the White House—in collaboration with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz—is attempting a “cover-up of its operation” by “feeding” false alternative narratives to the press, most prominently The New York Times.

Hersh’s initial reporting, which was based on anonymous sourcing, was quickly dismissed by the Biden administration, with State Department Spokesperson Ned Price calling the detailed February account “false” and suggesting that those who believe its version of events are “naive” and “gullible.”

Hersh, who famously exposed U.S. forces’ massacre of Vietnamese civilians in My Lai and the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, forcefully hit back at the Biden administration on Wednesday and criticized the American press for failing to push the White House on the September attack, which has major geopolitical implications.

“Press aides for the White House and Central Intelligence Agency have consistently denied that America was responsible for exploding the pipelines, and those pro forma denials were more than enough for the White House press corps,” Hersh wrote on his Substack.

“There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally ‘task’ the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea,” the journalist continued. “According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he. Why not? Because he knows the answer.”

Officials from Norway, Germany, and Sweden told the United Nations last month that they are still investigating the explosions that severely damaged the Nord Stream pipelines, setting off an environmental nightmare and immediate speculation as to who was responsible. Such speculation is ongoing, with both official and unofficial probes attempting to determine the perpetrator.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline—which Biden vocally opposed—never became operational, as the German government put it on hold just ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

During a press briefing late last month, Price said the U.S. “is not a party to this investigation because there are countries on whose sovereign territory this attack occurred, and we’re deferring it to them to conduct this investigation.”

On March 7, nearly a month after Hersh published his report, The New York Times ran a story—also based on anonymous sourcing—alleging that “new intelligence reviewed by U.S. officials” indicates “a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year.”

The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement in the attack.

“U.S. officials said there was much they did not know about the perpetrators and their affiliations,” notes the Times report, which makes brief mention of Hersh’s story and quotes unnamed U.S. officials denying any Biden administration involvement.

The same day as the Times published its story, the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit ran a report alleging that German investigators “succeeded in identifying the boat that was allegedly used for the secret operation” to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines.

“It is said to be a yacht rented from a company based in Poland, apparently owned by two Ukrainians,” Die Zeit reported. “According to the investigation, the secret operation at sea was carried out by a team of six people. It is said to have been five men and one woman.”

In his Wednesday piece, Hersh contended that the message of the Times and Die Zeit stories—both of which emphasized that much of the sabotage operation remains shrouded in mystery—”was that the press and the public should stop asking questions and let the investigators unravel the truth.”

“Holger Stark, the author of the report in Die Zeit, went a step further and noted that there were some ‘in international security services’ who had not excluded the possibility that the yacht story ‘was a false flag operation.’ Indeed, it was,” Hersh alleged, citing an anonymous source inside the U.S. intelligence community.

That source told Hersh that the yacht narrative reported by Die Zeit “was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story.”

Hersh went on to add that

“the disinformation professionals inside the CIA understand that a propaganda gambit can only work if those on receiving are desperate for a story that can diminish or displace an unwanted truth.”

“And the truth in question is that President Joe Biden authorized the destruction of the pipelines and will have a difficult time explaining away his action as Germany and its Western European neighbors suffer as businesses are shuttered amid high day-to-day energy costs,” wrote Hersh, citing an energy expert who argued that the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines “led to a further surge of natural gas prices.”

According to Hersh, the “most telling evidence” of the “weakness” of the Times reporting can be found in a podcast interview featuring Julian Barnes, one of three reporters whose bylines appeared on the March 7 story.

Barnes told podcast host Michael Barbaro that “we know really very little” about the pro-Ukrainian group that the Times reporting alleges may have been behind the Nord Stream attack.

“This group remains mysterious,” Barnes said. “And it remains mysterious not just to us, but also to the U.S. government officials that we have spoken to. They know that the people involved were either Ukrainian, or Russian, or a mix. They know that they are not affiliated with the Ukrainian government. But they know they’re also anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine.”

In response, Hersh wrote that “the Times reporters in Washington were at the mercy of White House officials ‘who had access to intelligence.'”

“But the information they received,” he added, “originated with a group of CIA experts in deception and propaganda whose mission was to feed the newspaper a cover story—and to protect a president who made an unwise decision and is now lying about it.”

Hersh also alleged that while it remains an “open question” whether Scholz was aware of the planned pipeline sabotage in advance, the German leader has “clearly been complicit since last fall in support of the Biden Administration’s cover-up of its operation in the Baltic Sea.”

Hersh wrote:

In early March, President Biden hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington. The trip included only two public events—a brief pro forma exchange of compliments between Biden and Scholz before the White House press corps, with no questions allowed; and a CNN interview with Scholz by Fareed Zakaria, who did not touch on the pipeline allegations. The chancellor had flown to Washington with no members of the German press on board, no formal dinner scheduled, and the two world leaders were not slated to conduct a press conference, as routinely happens at such high-profile meetings. Instead, it was later reported that Biden and Scholz had an 80-minute meeting, with no aides present for much of the time.

Citing an anonymous official with “access to diplomatic intelligence,” Hersh wrote that “certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2.”

“In the words of the intelligence community,” Hersh continued, “the agency was ‘to pulse the system’ in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines’ destruction.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams.

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***

Although Western media were boasting about Sberbank’s 78% plunge in profit in 2022 due to US-led sanctions, with CEO German Gref acknowledging a “most difficult year”, it appears that the US economic system is the one actually on the brink as four banks have already collapsed, with dozens more expected to follow.

CNN described the Russian bank’s drop in profit as a “collapse” in its headline, but then had to admit in the article that “Sberbank’s resilience in the face of sanctions helped Russia’s banking sector recover from a loss-making first half in 2022.”

This is in line with Gref’s belief that this year’s profits should be close to the record 1.25 trillion rubles ($16.5 billion) earned in the “pre-crisis year.” “Our business model passed another strength test,” he added.

It is recalled that Russian Presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on March 14 that there is “practically” no risk of Russia facing a fallout from the SVB collapse, adding that: “Our banking system has certain connections with some segments of the international financial system, but it is mostly under illegal restrictions.”

Despite alarmist headlines from US media and experts, Peskov was proven correct as no Russian bank has collapsed despite Western sanctions. Meanwhile, the full repercussions of SVB’s downfall are yet to be felt, with former Lehman Brothers executive Lawrence McDonald believing that up to another 50 American banks could collapse if structural problems are not fixed.

“So Lehman failed and then it forced this too-big-to-fail system, and then, now this interest rate shock to the regional banks is moving hundreds of billions of dollars out of regional banks into the big banks… So you could have another 50 bank failures… unless they fix the structural problem,” said McDonald on March 22.

“There’s going to be further damage. They have to cut rates and then they have to have a deposit guarantee, a larger one, that’s what they’re going to come up with… That’s a bailout. That’s basically the federal government taking on bank deposit risk,” he added.

By being cut-off from the Western banking system, Russia is effectively protected from the series of bank collapses that are expected to follow. Russia faced a credit crunch due to the fallout from the US subprime mortgage crisis in 2008, which ultimately led to the Global Financial Crisis, a demonstration of how it too was exposed to weaknesses in the US economy.

Although Russia was cut-off from SWIFT only two-days after the special military operation began, in addition to many other Western restrictions, including a $60 per barrel oil price cap, President Vladimir Putin boasted about the resilience of the Russian economy.

The IMF reported that Russia’s economy contracted by 2.2% in 2022 and will start growing again in 2023, expanding by 0.3%, and then 2.1% in 2024. This is impressive when considering that fellow European countries, which are not sanctioned, will be struggling immensely. The UK is expected to contract by 0.6% and Germany will have a growth of only 0.1%.

At the same time, the OECD forecasts that US economic growth would slow from 1.5% this year to 0.9% next year. This is due to higher interest rates slowing down demand. Bloomberg on March 21, citing sources, reported that the US Treasury Department is studying the possibility of guaranteeing all bank deposits in the event of a recession in the banking sector.

The current banking crises has forced economists, including from the esteemed JPMorgan Chase, to make new recession forecasts after any hopes of recovery were snuffed away.

“The Fed is facing a difficult task on Wednesday, but it is likely already past the point of no return,” JPMorgan strategists wrote in a note to clients on March 22. “A soft landing now looks unlikely, with the airplane in a tailspin (lack of market confidence) and engines about to turn off (bank lending).”

Goldman Sachs also echoed JPMorgan and said in mid-March that the banking crisis could deliver a severe blow to economic growth.

For his part, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has warned multiple times, including as recently as March 9 but even from before the banking crisis, that the economy could be heading for a “Wile E. Coyote moment,” referencing a Looney Tunes character who was always blissfully unaware that he was about to hit the ground after running off the edge of a cliff.

However, the expected collapse of many banks in the US and the impending economic crisis has not deterred the determination of the Biden administration to fanatically arm, fund and train the Ukrainian military and regime. With millions of Americans on the verge of dropping out of the Middle Class, Washington continues to send tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine, and all the while Western sanctions are now beginning to have a minimum effect on the Russian economy, thus effectively rendering them nearly useless.

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

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***

Meet the People controlling your weather sitting in their Command and Control Centers in Jordan, Switzerland and Germany.

Dr Helmut Fluhrer claims he has produced tons of rain under Government contract for Australia, Switzerland, UAE and Jordan.

His company WeatherTec works for governments only.

Ionization Technology is based on charging aerosols in the atmosphere and WeatherTec Emitter Stations are based on the ground.

WeatherTec’s description is

“Charge humidity and clouds with ions; Reduce required humidity to generate rainfalls”

Its strengths are reputed as “Rainfalls cover large areas (>1000 km2); Most environmentally friendly technology”. See this.

Its key limitation is stated as “Requires areas with > 40% humidity”.

So now we know why it’s been raining since April in Melbourne and MSM tells everyone that it will be a wet Spring and someone cited, a wet Summer!

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***

Russia slammed the UK on Wednesday for its plan to supply Ukraine with shells containing depleted uranium. 

In a statement on its website, the Russian Foreign Ministry said the initiative was “further proof of London’s intention to aggravate the confrontation” and contradicted the UK’s claim of being “committed to the post-conflict rebuilding of that country.”

“London has apparently forgotten about the well-known serious consequences of the use of toxic and radioactive munitions by the West during the conflicts in Yugoslavia and Iraq. A desire to increase the suffering of civilians and to do irreparable environmental damage shows that the British have no regard whatsoever for the Ukrainian people,” it stressed.

The ministry called the British policy “openly cynical,” showing “who the real aggressor and warmonger in Ukraine is.”

“London must know that it will bear full responsibility for violating the fundamental norms of international law…We will respond to such actions accordingly,” it said.

Click here to read the full article.

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***

National Assembly Speaker of the Republic of South Africa, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, said publicly in a recent statement before the supreme legislative body in Cape Town that the African National Congress (ANC) led government would continue to support the people of the Russian Federation.

This proclamation came amid a highly-publicized visit by People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping to Moscow where the strategic partnership between the two countries was further solidified.

The administration of President Joe Biden along with the entire ruling class of the United States are quite concerned about the three-day visit of President Xi to Russia where he held extensive discussions with his counterpart Vladimir Putin. Both China and Russia are principal adversaries of the U.S., the European Union and the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance.

Russians welcome Xi Jinping (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

At present a protracted conflict is underway in Ukraine where the U.S. has prompted and continued a proxy war against Moscow and its allies in the region. Since February 24, 2022, the Biden administration has sent emissaries across the globe in an effort to build support for the NATO position in Eastern Europe.

Nonetheless, among many states and peoples within the Global South, there has been a lack of enthusiasm for the U.S. stance in the war. In many cases in Africa, Latin America, Asia and some European states, there is considerable solidarity with the Russian aims and objectives in what Moscow describes as a “special military operation.” For those who have followed and studied the geostrategic situation in Ukraine, the entire process of staging a coup in February 2014 with the ultimate desire to incorporate even more states into NATO can only be viewed by Russia as well as the anti-imperialist, socialist and non-aligned states with suspicion and trepidation.

In regard to the comments from the South African National Assembly Speaker Mapisa-Nqakula, the Eyewitness News website said that:

“She was delivering the closing remarks at the second Russia-Africa parliamentary conference in Moscow over the weekend (March 18-19). The gathering was also addressed by Russian president Vladimir Putin, who has pledged ongoing support to African nations in the fields of nuclear energy, training, and education. Mapisa-Nqakula has appealed to Russia to help Africa obtain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. ‘If that does not happen, we will continue to have the kinds of conflicts we are seeing on our continent,’ she added. She said that South Africa would continue to look to Russia for support in the quest for economic and political prosperity. ‘We will continue to lean on you, and you can rest assured that, as a country and as a people of South Africa, we will continue to support the people of Russia,’ she said. Mapisa-Nqakula also offered for South Africa to host peace talks between Russia and Ukraine while attending the inter-parliamentary union in Bahrain. She said that sanctions imposed by the Western world on African nations as a result of conflict on the continent, was a human rights violation.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has repeatedly urged the resolution of the Ukraine crisis through internationally-mediated negotiations. The desperate posture of the Biden administration and its Democratic and Republican colleagues in both branches of Congress has resulted in the drafting of legislation which would punish AU member-states that maintain cordial diplomatic and economic relations with Russia.

Ramaphosa in a state visit to the U.S. during late 2022, urged the abolition of the draft bill which is described as curtailing Russia’s malign influence in Africa. The AU member-states as a whole have rejected the rationale behind such proposed legislation.

Joint Naval Exercises Draw the Ire of Washington

In late February, the military forces of the Republic of South Africa, Russian Federation and People’s Republic of China held joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean. The decision by these three states represented a repudiation of the foreign policy orientation of Washington towards all three countries.

Despite the diplomatic maneuvers of the Biden administration, Africa’s most industrialized state has engaged in these naval exercises with the two governments which represent the major impediments to Washington’s military and diplomatic status. Consequently, there is a sequential trajectory related to the denunciation of the anti-Russia in Africa bill of the U.S. Congress, the call for an end to the war in Ukraine and the burgeoning relations between Moscow, Pretoria and Beijing.

All three states are members of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit which holds regular meetings. The concept behind BRICS is to build economic links between these countries, among others, outside the influence and control of Washington and Wall Street. There are proposals for the expansion of BRICS to encompass the entire AU region along with countries within Latin America.

One observer of the rapidly changing dynamics of international diplomacy and economics was quoted in an article published by the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Finance Prof. Lemma W. Senbet of the University of Buffalo, State University of New York, noted that the declining influence of the U.S. as it relates to the blatant disregard for its foreign policy interests must be taken into consideration by the State Department and the Pentagon. Smith cites BRICS as one forum which can enhance the capacity of the Global South to loosen its dependence upon the former colonial and present neo-colonial centers of dominance.

This opinion piece published by newswise.com emphasized:

“Senbet says that [this] relationship (BRICS) is in the background of the naval exercises. He indicates it’s not just about South Africa’s relations with Russia, but with China and India as well. ‘China is the largest trading partner in Africa. Tourism is also a big deal in South Africa.’ China is a huge tourism market for the country, as is India. And this is in addition to China’s trade and investment. ‘So, the extent to which they (South Africa) could suffer economic consequences is mitigated by their participation in this economic partnership.’ The western response to the invasion of Ukraine is mainly about protecting the international order, according to Senbet. But he says, ‘there are many countries, especially in the Global South, that think the order doesn’t work for them.’ South Africa is not the only African country to take a neutral stance in the Russia-Ukraine war. Several others have. ‘The U.S. and EU need to pay more attention to the rest of the globe, who are the lower-income, lower-developed economies that actually feel left out of the order. The order has to be inclusive.’”

Consequently, Washington will inevitably depend more on its military prowess to advance an imperialistic political and economic agenda around the globe. This creates a dangerous international scenario for billions of people to contemplate. As the financing of the Ukraine war continues under the Biden administration, several analysts of the war see a strong possibility for a broader engagement by NATO forces.

As the Ukrainian troops suffer greater casualties and setbacks on the battlefield, provocative military actions will escalate. The recent downing of a Pentagon predator drone over the Black Sea has frustrated the White House which falsely claims that these surveillance weapons are operating in “international airspace”.

Any attempt to widen the Ukraine war would prove disastrous for the majority of working and oppressed peoples living in various geopolitical regions including inside of Western Europe and North America. Within the U.S., the economy has suffered tremendous shocks during the month of March where several high-profile bank collapses have compounded the impact of ongoing layoffs of hundreds of thousands of workers employed in the technological and service sectors of the economy. These developments have precipitated a crisis of confidence in the capitalist and imperialist systems.

As Russia and China have written off tens of millions of dollars in loans to African states during 2022-2023, the U.S.-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is imposing draconian conditionalities on several countries on the continent including, Egypt, Ghana and Zambia. These African states are severely impacted by the rising interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve of the U.S. and other central banks in the capitalist states.

Moreover, the imperialist proxy war against Russia and the rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, are hampering the free flow of agricultural products and other commodities from Russia and Ukraine to the African continent as well as other geopolitical regions. Rather than address the need for a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict, Washington and Wall Street are leading the world into a possible nuclear confrontation along with a worldwide economic depression.

What is needed at this conjuncture is a broad-based antiwar and anti-imperialist movement in the Western industrialized states which could place political pressure on their governments to end the war in Ukraine and redirect the trillions in military expenditures to social spending and the rebuilding of infrastructure in a way which benefits the working class and oppressed throughout the globe.

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

Featured image: South Africa, Russia and Chinese flags during joint naval exercises (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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“It is with profound sadness, the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) announces the passing of Constable Corinne Kline. Our thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends during this difficult time. We will miss her dearly.” EPS wrote on Twitter (click here)

“Corinne Kline: A true gem, a leader, a parent, a wife, a friend, a community member & a colleague has departed and we mourn. We will always remember her positive spirit for her family, the service and the community she loved.” (click here)

Police did not announce her cause of death, but CTV News Edmonton confirmed she had a medical condition and was hospitalized last week. (click here)

COVID-19 vaccination status

My Take…

If Constable Corinne was triple COVID-19 vaccinated in March 2022, and was immunocompromised, it is highly probable that her doctor would have urged her to stay uptodate on her vaccines (every 6 months), and she most likely would have had five COVID-19 vaccines in total before she was hospitalized last week.

In addition to that, she had COVID-19 infection at least twice.

I believe most doctors in Canada had no idea that the COVID-19 vaccines damage the immune system and cause immune dysfunction or immunosuppression.

I don’t know the source of her immunocompromised status, but the COVID-19 vaccines would have only made her situation that much worse.

Edmonton Police Service had a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in place, and announced that more than 95% of EPS employees were fully vaccinated by Nov.30, 2021 (click here)

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All images in this article are from the author

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1. Hassan Diab Support Event, Ottawa, March 26, 2:30 pm

Hassan Diab goes on trial in France (in absentia) on April 3, 2023.

This is for a 1980 bombing in Paris, although Hassan was not even in France at the time! His ordeal has disrupted his life for nearly 15 years, including more than three years in a maximum-security prison in France. Imagine the terrible price paid, and is still being paid, by him and his family.

For a good review of his ordeal, check out this short video:

Please join students from Carleton University’s Department of Sociology and the Justice for Hassan Diab Support Committee to show support for Hassan and get the latest information about the upcoming trial.

SUPPORT HASSAN DIAB

SUNDAY MARCH 26, 2:30 – 4:30 PM ET

at CARLETON DOMINION-CHALMERS CENTRE (355 Cooper Street, Ottawa, Ontario)

Speakers:

• Michelle Weinroth with Raphael Weinroth-Browne (Cellist): Opening
• Hassan Diab: Welcome
• Roger Clark: Where we are now
• Lawyer Don Bayne: What to expect at the trial
• Dr. Deborah Conners and students: Importance of support for Hassan.
• Ria Heynen: Closing

Free Admission

• Silent Auction
• Live Music
• Free Food and Drink
• Caricaturist

The event will be live streamed here starting at 2:30 pm ET, Sunday March 26

If you can, please come in person to show Hassan your support.

This event has been organized by Carleton University Students along with the Hassan Diab Support Committee.

2. Amnesty International Calls on France to Halt its Case against Hassan Diab 

“Amnesty International has called on the French government to halt its ‘groundless’ prosecution of Diab and to find those responsible for the Oct. 3, 1980, attack on a Paris synagogue that killed four people and injured 40 others.

The renewed prosecution of Hassan Diab risks substituting the necessary pursuit of truth and accountability … with another travesty of justice,” Amnesty International said in a recent statement…

I think it’s important for Canada to signal to the French authorities that Canada does not accept this is a fair trial,” said Clark, former secretary general of Amnesty International (Canada). “This, I think, is part of Canada’s obligation to protect its citizens.”

Read the full article by Andrew Duffy in The Ottawa Citizen.

3. Sign the Petition to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

• Petition in English
• Pétition en français

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau must honor his words from June 2018 and refuse any future request from France for the extradition of Hassan Diab. Your support is vital to protect the rights of people in Canada against unjust prosecution and violation of fundamental rights.

We would like to reach at least 10,000 signatures on the petition before delivering it to PM Trudeau. Please sign the petition, if you haven’t done so already, and share it with at least 5 people you know. We need a groundswell of support to protect Hassan from a second wrongful extradition!

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The CDC has indicated on their website for months that 92% of adults have taken at least on shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. Yet a prior surveys Zogby and Rasmussen indicated that fraction may only be two thirds.

Now a recent, independent report from Northeastern University has found that the proportion of unvaccinated is not 8% but more like 25%. This agrees separately with a Kaiser Family Foundation report. Apparently the CDC vaccination administration system is not accurately identifying each person by a unique identifier and linking each injection to that code. Therefore, if a patient does not have the prior vaccine card or goes to a different vaccines center with slightly different name spelling, then the encounter is counted as a brand new person coming forward. This is leading to double-counting of “vaccinated” in CDC records.

CDC=Centers for Disease Control, CS=COVID States Project, KFF=Kaiser Family Foundation

These findings give new hope to the unvaccinated that they are not alone in holding strong against the adverse safety profile of the COVID-19 vaccines and standing up for the preservation of good health and right to decide what is injected into their bodies.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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This clip is adapted from the critically acclaimed documentary “War Made Easy,” produced in 2007 by the Media Education Foundation at the height of the Iraq war. “War Made Easy” takes a blistering look at how U.S. media outlets from Fox News to MSNBC enthusiastically disseminated Bush administration propaganda and helped sell a war that would kill thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq War, the RootsAction Education Fund will be hosting a virtual screening of “War Made Easy” on Monday, March 20, at 6:45 pm ET., followed by a live panel presentation at 8 pm ET.

Panelists will include Kathy Kelly, President of the Board of World BEYOND War and co-coordinator of Ban Killer Drones; Dennis Kucinich, former U.S. Congressman; David Swanson, campaign coordinator of RootsAction and Executive Director of World BEYOND War; Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction and author of “War Made Easy,” the book that the documentary was based on; India Walton, senior strategic organizer with RootsAction Education Fund and director of Roots Action Civic Engagement in Buffalo; and Marcy Winograd, coordinator of CodePink Congress and co-chair of the Peace in Ukraine Coalition.

You also have the option to watch the documentary online any time before March 24, courtesy of the Media Education Foundation, here.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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Iraq and Libya were both targeted by the U.S. in the month of March. The anniversaries of these war crimes must be commemorated, and the nature of the US/EU/NATO war machine must be understood.

“The International Criminal Court should uphold an objective and impartial stance, respect the jurisdictional immunity enjoyed by the head of state in accordance with international law, exercise its functions and powers prudently by the law, interpret and apply international law in good faith, and avoid politicization and double standards.” (Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin)

This commentary really should be part two from the piece I wrote last week in the run-up to the anti-war mobilization that took place March 18th which commemorated the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. In that article I made a similar argument about why the U.S. should be seen as the greatest threat to the survival of collective humanity on our planet.

That point, however, needs to be reinforced because in typical arrogance, on the eve of that mobilization and the official March 20th date of the U.S. invasion, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Russia President Vladimir Putin while Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Barack Obama, responsible for horrific crimes against humanity and literally millions of deaths combined in Serbia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and Syria, walk around as free individuals.

It would be comical if it was not so deadly serious and absurd. Just a couple of years ago when the ICC signaled under the leadership of the Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wanted to conduct an investigation into possible crimes in Afghanistan by the U.S. state, the Trump Administration told the court in no uncertain terms that the Court would be subjected to the full wrath of the U.S. government and the Court quietly demurred in favor of a national probe that everyone knew was a sham.

This is just part of the infuriating double standards that Chinese spokesperson Wang Wenbin refers to. For many in the global South, the “neutral” international mechanisms and structures created to uphold international law have lost significant credibility outside of the West.

The politicization of the ICC on the Ukrainian war and the unprincipled participation of the United Nations that provided political cover for the invasion and occupation of Haiti after the devastating earthquake in 2010 are just two examples of how international structures ostensibly committed to upholding international law and the UN Charter are now seen as corrupt instruments of a dying U.S. and Western colonial empire.

How did we get here?

It is not a mere historical coincidence that the world became a much more dangerous place with the escalation of conflicts that threatened international peace in the 1990s. Without the countervailing force of the Soviet Union, the delusional white supremacists making U.S. policy believed that the next century was going to be a century of unrestrained U.S. domination.

And who would be dominated? Largely the nations of the global South but also Europe with an accelerated integration plan in 1993 that the U.S. supported because it was seen as a more efficient mechanism for deploying U.S. capital and further solidifying trade relations with the huge and lucrative European Market.

Central to the assertion of U.S. global power, however, was the judicious use of military force. “Full Spectrum Dominance” was the strategic objective that would ensure the realization of the “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC ). There was just one challenge that had to be overcome. The U.S. population still suffered from the affliction labeled the “Vietnam syndrome .” Traumatized by the defeat in Vietnam the population was still reticent about giving its full support to foreign engagements that could develop into a possible military confrontation.

How was this challenge overcome? Human rights.

“Humanitarian interventionism ,” with its corollary the “responsibility to protect” would emerge in the late 90s as one of the most innovative propaganda tools ever created. Produced by Western human rights community and championed by psychopaths like Samantha Power, the humanitarianism of the benevolent empire became the ideological instrument that allowed the U.S. to fully commit itself to military options to advance the interests of U.S. corporate and financial interests globally while being fully supported by the U.S. population.

With this new ideological tool, the Clinton Administration bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 without any legal basis but with the moral imperative of the “responsibility to protect.” By the early 2000s it was obvious that the U.S. was not going to be bound by international law. Operating through NATO and with the formulation of a “rules based order” in which the U.S. and its Western European allies would make the rules and enforce the order, the world has been plunged into unending wars, illegal sanctions, political subversion and the corruption of international structures that were supposed to instrumentalize the legal, liberal international order.

But white supremacist colonial hubris resulted in the empire overextending itself.

Twenty years after the illegal and immoral attack on Iraq where it is estimated that over a million people perished and twelve years after the racist attack on Libya where NATO dropped over 26,000 bombs and murdered up to 50,000 people, the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is in irreversible decline but the U.S. hegemon, like a wounded wild beast is still dangerous and is proving to be even more reckless then just a few years ago.

The disastrous decision to provoke what the U.S. thought would be a limited proxy war with Russia that would allow it to impose sanctions on the Russian Federation will be recorded in history, along with the invasion of Iraq, as the two pivotal decisions that greatly precipitated the decline of the U.S. empire.

However, with over eight hundred U.S. bases globally, a military budget close to a trillion dollars and a doctrine that prioritizes a “military-first strategy,” the coming defeat in Ukraine might translate into even more irresponsible and counterproductive moves against the Chinese over Taiwan in the Pacific and more aggressive actions to maintain U.S. hegemony in the Americas through SOUTHCOM and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Global polls of international opinion continue to reflect that the peoples’ of our planet see the U.S. as the greatest threat to international peace . They are correct.

The commemoration of the attacks on the peoples of Iraq and Libya is an act of solidarity not only with the peoples of those nations, but with the peoples and nations suffering from the malign policies of this dying empire today. It is a time of rededication to peace and to justice, two elements that are inextricable. In the Black Alliance for Peace, we say that peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense of a world liberated from global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy.

This understanding is the foundation for why we are launching with our partners, an effort to revive the call to make the Americas a Zone of Peace on April the 4th, the day the state murdered Dr. King and the date that the Black Alliance for Peace was launched in 2017.

For Africans and other colonized peoples, the task is clear. The U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination embodies the anti-life structures of colonial/capitalist oppression and must be seen as the primary contradiction facing global humanity. We recognize that other contradictions exist. We are not naive. But for the exploited and colonized peoples of this planet, until there is a shift in the international balance of forces away from the maniacs in the “collective West,” the future of our planet and collective humanity remains imperiled.

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Ajamu Baraka is Chairman of the Coordinating Committee of the Black Alliance for Peace and an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S. based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) and the Steering Committee of the Black is Back Coalition.

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In his iconic 1950s anti-war hit song ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’, Pete Seeger posed the eternal question about war: ‘when will they ever learn?’ Of course, Seeger’s question was primarily directed at those individuals who choose to participate in the fighting. But it might equally have been directed at those in the ‘anti-war’ movement.

A few years later in 1963, Native Canadian Buffy Sainte-Marie penned the equally iconic ‘Universal Soldier’ to draw attention to ‘individual responsibility’ for war.

The question ‘Why war?’ has troubled human beings for millennia and individuals of conscience have long resisted it, sometimes paying a heavy price for doing so. And back in 1932, two of humanity’s giants – Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud – grappled with the question, exchanging letters on the subject.

See ‘Why War?’

Beyond war, a great deal of effort has gone into understanding conflict and violence, including their structural and cultural components, and I have noted some of these efforts, including my own, in a wide range of documents such as these:

‘Why Violence?’,

‘Comforting a Baby is Violent’,

‘The War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance to War’ and

‘Einstein and Freud’s ‘Why War?’

Revisited: Why Anti-War Efforts Go Nowhere’.

Four things fundamentally missing from all previous efforts to halt a particular war or to end war generally, however, are these:

1. a serious effort to understand the dysfunctional psychology, and what causes it, that drives human violence generally,
2. a serious effort to analyse war as a system of power: Who is causing it, why and how? (This is important because understanding how power works in the world system as well as who, precisely, is driving what is happening, why, and how they are doing it are crucial prerequisites for developing an effective strategy to resist, or end, war.)
3. a sophisticated nonviolent strategy based on this understanding and analysis that is thoughtfully designed to address each of the foundational components of war, and
4. sufficient courageous people committed to implementing this strategy by participating in it themselves and mobilizing others to do so too.

Consequently, to say that anti-war efforts lack sophistication is to put it mildly in the extreme. As the very long history of ‘anti-war’ struggle clearly demonstrates.

Source: Rage Against the War Machine

And so it was listening to the anti-war speeches delivered in Washington DC at the Rage Against the War Machine rally on 19 February 2023. You can watch whole or abridged versions of these speeches here: Rage Against the War Machine.

Rage might give a person power in some contexts but, in itself, rage has zero strategic value. And are these people really feeling ‘rage’ about the ongoing war all over the planet or even the war in Ukraine? And acting on it? Of course not. Even if they were, as mentioned ‘rage’ is no substitute for acting powerfully (that is, strategically) to end war.

Moreover, there is a simple reason for this. Most anti-war activists do not feel rage against the war machine for the simple reason that they are terrified of it.

And this fear incapacitates them, leaving most anti-war activists too scared to seriously commit themselves to doing what is necessary to end war. Again, as the record demonstrates.

Hence, they complain powerlessly, rather than analysing, devising strategy and then acting powerfully knowing that their actions will contribute to the long-term struggle to end war once and for all.

So let me go back a step and analyze why the anti-war movement is so frightened and powerless and why it cannot learn from its own history of failure.

Why do most people complain?

In essence, this happens because when they were children, their parents interfered with their emotional expression which, in turn, stifled those innate behaviors bestowed by evolution to ensure that the baby, and later the child and then adult, acted to have their needs met. Usually by a young age, the child will learn to complain powerlessly when they do not get what they want. But complaining, rather than acting, does not meet their needs.

Thus, just as the child, endlessly thwarted by a parent who ignores the child’s genuine needs and then ignores their pleas to have these addressed, is trapped in the mode of complaining, most activists never learn that the role of politicians is to ignore them too. Of course, the value in this for those who genuinely wield power in society and whose aim is to facilitate perpetual war to achieve a variety of Elite ends (notably including the ongoing consolidation of Elite power and the maximization of corporate profits by financing both sides in any war) is that efforts of this nature, such as public protests against ‘government policies’ absorb and dissipate dissent, as intended.

And so it was on 19 February 2023 when a list of anti-war speakers echoed the eternal cries of powerlessness at one of the latest manifestations of an anti-war street protest:

‘Enough is enough! We demand change! Do the right thing! Implement ceasefire in Ukraine!’ See ‘Twenty Years after the Start of the War in Iraq, People Around the World are still Raging Against the War Machine’.

Really?

As even former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig once noted about a massive anti-war demonstration: ‘Let them march all they want, as long as they continue to pay their taxes.’ See Alexander Haig. As a four-star general, Haig, not regarded as the most intelligent Secretary of State in US history, certainly understood that tactical choice is a question of strategy. Most activists have no idea.

So What Must We Do to End War?

Earlier in this article I identified four elements missing from the anti-war movement’s efforts. Let me restate them and offer my own learning in relation to these points.

1. a serious effort to understand the dysfunctional psychology, and what causes it, that drives human violence generally.

As the final stage of more than four decades investigating the cause of violence, I spent 14 years living in seclusion with Anita McKone. You can read what I learned in the document ‘Why Violence?’, in which I explain the destructive impact of the ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that adults relentlessly inflict on children – resulting in the bulk of the adult human population being unconsciously terrified, self-hating and powerless, with Anita’s description of our process in:

‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

If you like, you can also read other articles I have written such as

‘The Psychology of Projection in Conflict’ and

‘Challenges for Resolving Complex Conflicts’.

2. a serious effort to analyse war as a system of power: Who is causing it, why and how? This is important because understanding how power works in the world system as well as who, precisely, is driving what is happening, why, and how they are doing it are crucial prerequisites for developing an effective strategy to resist, or end, war.

I made considerable effort to explain this as part of a wider study identifying the Global Elite and how its power is exercised in the world system. This included explaining why the Elite has a vested interest in ensuring that war continues. For more than 200 years, members of this Elite have carefully facilitated the precipitation of war and then profited immensely from financing both sides in any war of significance as well as the rebuilding of infrastructure and the care of injured soldiers in its aftermath. Hence, preparations for war, the conduct of war and the rebuilding/healing necessary post-war is the most profitable economic venture, by far, conducted on Planet Earth and it greatly enriches Elite families, such as the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, as well as their agents.

See Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until ‘You’ll Own Nothing.’

3. a nonviolent strategy based on this understanding and analysis that is thoughtfully designed to address each of the foundational components of war.

First, this requires a completely different approach to parenting if we want to raise powerfully nonviolent children.

See ‘My Promise to Children’ and

‘Do We Want School or Education?’

And given that strategy has long been a passion of mine and nonviolent strategy particularly, I investigated this thoroughly when I wrote The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

But for the simplest explanation of nonviolent strategy to end war, you can read it on this website starting with the list of ‘Strategic Goals for Ending War’.

4. sufficient courageous people committed to implementing this strategy by participating in it themselves and mobilizing others to do so too. This is important because nonviolent activism to end war has a price, measured in jail terms, adverse psychological assessments from people intent on stopping you, and a myriad other penalties depending on the legal jurisdiction in which the activist operates.

But if the antiwar activist is not willing to pay the price of their nonviolent activism, then the victims of wars in other places will pay the price of war with their lives.

Source: Rage Against the War Machine

Clearly, identifying sufficient courageous people is a primary challenge and the obvious shortage of courageous and tenacious people committed to strategically resisting war is just another outcome of our violently dysfunctional parenting of children mentioned in the first point above.

So if we are going to mobilize sufficient people willing to act powerfully over an extended period to resist all of those foundational elements that make war possible, we must profoundly alter our parenting model to produce powerful children and offer adults a chance to heal from the violence they suffered as children as well.

See ‘Putting Feelings First’ and ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

Otherwise we are condemned to watch people speak against war and march up and down in ‘anti-war’ rallies (or employ other tactics devoid of strategic impact) until the world is blown up.

An Obvious Criticism

An obvious criticism of the approach I have outlined above is that it is ‘too slow’. It offers no quick solution to deal with the immediacy of the threat we face at the current moment with the proxy war being fought by the US and NATO through Ukraine against Russia which includes the risk of the war ‘going nuclear’.

See ‘The Dire Significance of Putin’s Feb 21 Speech’.

And I am well aware of the many calls for negotiations on the one hand – see, for example, ‘The Ukraine War: Think Deeper Or We Shall All Lose’ – and long-standing US war-fighting policy on the other as routinely explained in a plethora of US Government ‘defense strategy’ documents.

See, for example, ‘2022 National Defense Strategy of The United States of America’ and a thoughtful discussion of US nuclear strategy by Professor Michel Chossudovsky in

‘“Preemptive Nuclear War”: The Historic Battle for Peace and Democracy. A Third World War Threatens the Future of Humanity’.

I am also aware of calls, such as that by Scott Ritter, for US anti-war activists to focus on nuclear arms control as the highest priority for now.

See ‘Scott Ritter on the War Machine and the Future of the Antiwar Movement’.

And other perspectives and proposals besides.

But the obvious response to the ‘too slow’ criticism of my longer-term proposals above is simple: The result of the current crisis is so far beyond the existing anti-war movement to realistically influence, it is laughable. And so, in my view – which is consistent with my research into, and analysis of, what has transpired historically:

see Historical Analysis of the Global Elite: Ransacking the World Economy Until ‘You’ll Own Nothing.’ – the war will most probably end when Russia has defeated the Ukrainian state but only after the war has been dragged on for as long as it can be conducted profitably, from an Elite perspective.

And while there is undoubtedly considerable risk of the war ‘going nuclear’ through policy or strategic miscalculation – see ‘Stanislav Petrov, “The Man Who Saved The World,” Dies At 77’ – accident – see Command and Control – or rogue local ‘initiative’, the Elite will ‘gamble’ against these possibilities while (presumably) constraining it at policy level, as has most likely occurred throughout the nuclear age.

Insane? Of course, it is insane. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’. It’s just that, in my view, there is nothing new to observe here: Just repetition of what we have seen before, which includes being taken to the brink of nuclear war and relying on ‘unknown factors’ – including, but not exclusively, background control by the Elite – to avoid it.

Conclusion

War is brutal. The Elite perpetuates war endlessly to capture control of people and resources to maintain the existing system of world power and make monumental profits. It will not be stopped because we make fine speeches, chant anti-war slogans at rallies or call for negotiations.

The human world is a system of power. And we need to understand how that system of power works to understand, and change, the world. This applies particularly when dealing with systems, structures and processes at the heart of Elite power, such as economics and war.

But underlying even this we need to understand the psychology of human violence because this also enables us to understand why the Elite controls world affairs to precipitate war (among a vast range of other violent and exploitative outcomes) as well as why ‘ordinary’ people fight in wars and the vast bulk of people who identify as ‘anti-war’ are so powerless.

In essence, war will be ended by analysing and understanding what makes it all happen and taking action intelligently, courageously and tenaciously to change what makes it possible; that is, by resisting in strategically appropriate ways the foundational components on which the entire system of war is built.

And given the ultimate foundation of the war system is our violent parenting model that renders virtually all humans into a state of fearful submission to violence, we haven’t even started the long journey to end war yet.

Nevertheless, while my own lifetime of effort has failed to remedy anything significant about the war system, out of love for my uncles, great uncles and humanity generally – see ‘Who Am I?’ – I continue to focus my own attention on undermining its foundations as documented above. It is slow, ‘unrewarding’ work in the short term.

But my hope is that some future generations of humans, assuming we effectively resist a myriad of current and future threats notably including the vast range of threats we all face at the hands of the Elite now – see ‘We Are Being Smashed Politically, Economically, Medically and Technologically by the Elite’s “Great Reset”: Why? How Do We Fight Back Effectively?’ – will live in a world without violence and war.

Obviously, given the precarious state of the world in many respects, a tremendous amount of intelligent, strategically-oriented action will be needed for this hope to be realized.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

It ought to be easy. Open bank vault, remove weapons dealers, close bank vault. In reality, we need a ton of tools, work, and luck.

In constant dollar terms, after Korea, Vietnam, Reagan’s second term, and Obama’s first term U.S. military spending went down, just never as much as it had gone up. So, ending wars, including Cold Wars, may help.

We now have a war underway in which the U.S. participation is understood as primarily spending money. Ending that spending could be expanded into reducing military spending more broadly.

With Afghanistan and Iraq it took a year-and-a-half each to get good U.S. majorities in polls saying the wars never should have been started. The war in Ukraine appears to be on the same trajectory. Of course, those who believed the wars shouldn’t have been started did not, for the most part, believe they should be ended. The wars had to be continued for the sake of the troops, even if the actual troops were telling pollsters they wanted the wars ended. My hope is that U.S. opposition to the war in Ukraine may grow in the absence of troopist propaganda, as U.S. troops are not involved in large numbers and not supposed to be involved at all.

We also have the U.S. media looking back, with some glimmers of honesty here and there, at 20 or so years of disastrous war spending. Some of those wars have already been ended without the appropriate reductions in military spending. We can point out that U.S. military spending is now about double what it was in 2000.

We can also point out that the Democratic Party Platform of 2020 promised what we’re demanding, and that once elected Biden and the Democrats did the opposite of what they’d promised. That platform tied reducing military spending to ending the wars on Afghanistan and Yemen. They’ve actually ended one of those and pretended to end the other, while increasing military spending. Actually ending the war in Yemen via the War Powers Resolution might help us cut military spending — not that ending that war is any easier. But there is an active movement working on it, and a zoom call this Saturday about it with several Congress Members expected to take part.

People have generally caught on that when a bank or a corporation or a disease epidemic that impacts rich people needs money, somebody simply invents unlimited money out of nowhere. So our constant demand that military spending go down so that human and environmental spending can go up may be less persuasive. We may be giving ourselves two incredibly difficult tasks rather than making one of them easier. If the U.S. government were willing to fund education or housing or the environment, it would simply do so. Reducing military spending wouldn’t compel it to do so. I conclude that we should not shy away from all the usual comparisons of what we could get for what is spent on militarism, nor from comparing the U.S. military with those of other countries, but that there may be something else that’s more important.

I mean the evil of war. The moral case against war, and against the spending that generates more wars. Looking back at our efforts to end the war on Iraq, we never did even really try to teach the public that modern wars are one-sided slaughters. The fact that well over 90% of the deaths were Iraqis never got through, nor the fact that they were disproportionately the very old and young, nor even the fact that wars are fought in people’s towns and not on 19th century battlefields. Today the very best Congress Members will tell you the war was a mistake and cost money and so forth. But just image on a smaller scale murdering a bunch of your neighbors and then saying it was a mistake and you’re sorry the bullets cost so much, even while buying twice as many bullets every day. The point of teaching people the immorality of war is not to feel good or to make someone feel bad, but to mobilize action. People care. People will act and fund efforts to help distant strangers if someone tells them about the need.

Here’s how military spending has gone the past few times through. Biden proposes a massive increase in military spending — above and beyond both what he proposed the year before and what the Congress increased that to.

The corporate media reports on the budget proposal mostly as if the single item that takes up more than half of it doesn’t even exist. Nobody is asked for a preferable budget proposal, just as no presidential or congressional candidates ever are. The basic facts discoverable from a simple pie-chart are kept secret from most people.

Zero Democrats object or encourage No votes or vote-withholding threats or even state that they will personally vote No. (But the Congressional “Progressive” Caucus publishes a so-called “explainer” with three sentences at the end vaguely objecting.)

Congress, with Republicans in the lead, proposes a massive increase over and above Biden’s massive increase.

“Progressive” Democrats whimper about the Republican increase, suggesting through omission that it was the only increase.

But, zero Democrats object or encourage No votes or vote-withholding threats or even state that they will personally vote No (the one exception I know of was in the Senate one year, and not exactly a Democrat: Bernie Sanders once said he would vote No).

The bill passes both houses and is signed into law.

“Progressive” Democrats tell people they voted No, and moreover they’ve cosponsored the People Over the Pentagon Act.

But that’s a bill to reduce a bit the military spending that has gone through the roof during the years they’ve been proposing that bill, a bill that won’t pass the House but if it did would have to pass the Senate and the President, and then military spending could simply be increased by the $100b that bill reduced it by.

If a Congress Member or a caucus thereof were serious, they would do what the Progressive Caucus did to oppose the Manchin dirty oil deal. They withheld their votes from a Democrats-only procedural vote to bring a bill to the floor unless that deal was left out. They got what they wanted. But that bill was last year’s military authorization act. Never once have they organized and withheld their votes to reduce military spending. This should be our primary demand to them:

Will you speak out about the need for your colleagues to join you in voting No on military spending unless it is significantly reduced — doing so on every relevant vote, whether or not you expect to succeed, but even if you might?

A caucus of Congress Members in a single House can change policy by withholding votes — depending how many of them there are, how many are in on the vote, and what other members are voting with them for their own reasons — and I don’t think many Congress Members believe that many of their constituents know that.

Might they risk making it worse? Worse than the current course of destroying all life on Earth? Perhaps. But they’d make an actual effort and we’d see who did, and who didn’t and needed pressure.

A single Congress Member can force a swift debate and vote on ending a war, such as Yemen or Syria. I know that most Congress Members are confident their constituents have never heard of that. Not one Democrats spoke in support of a recent resolution to end U.S. warmaking in Syria. How many of them have heard from us that we want that war ended, troops brought home, troops brought home from everywhere, foreign bases closed, and military spending slashed?

The media’s biggest lie on military spending is that of omission. Our job is to make it a story.

The media’s biggest lie overall is that of powerlessness. The reason the government spies on and disrupts and constrains activism is not that its pretense of paying no attention to activism is real, just the opposite. Governments pay very close attention. They know damn well that they cannot continue if we withhold our consent. The constant media push to sit still or cry or shop or wait for an election is there for a reason. The reason is that people have far more power than the individually powerful would like them to know. But we only have it if we exercise it.

Here’s the video:

Video by CODEPINK

President Biden has proposed a record $886 billion military budget for 2024. This budget includes $170 billion for new bombers, intercontinental ballistic missiles and ballistic missile submarines; $30 billion for missile defense, $11 billion for hypersonic weapons and long range missiles; $13.5 billion for cyber activities, etc. –and this doesn’t even include $$$ to fund the war in Ukraine! Join us as we break down the military budget and explore opportunities to oppose these weapons systems. In addition to examining the budget as a moral document, we will also learn about CODEPINK’s Ground the F-35 campaign and how the F-35 Coalition is building the anti-war movement as it plans for protests. CODEPINK will host Ground the F-35 actions in New York City, Chicago, Nova Scotia, Washington DC, Madison, Philadelphia, Burlington, the Bay Area, Massachusetts and Seattle to demand Congress defund the F-35 fighter jet, capable of carrying both conventional and nuclear weapons.

Featuring

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host of Talk World Radio. He is Executive Director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. David’s books on war and peace include Leaving World War II Behind (an argument against the use of WWII as reason for more wars) and War Is A Lie (a catalog of the types of falsehoods regularly told about wars). David Swanson was awarded the 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation. David Swanson is on the advisory boards of: Nobel Peace Prize Watch, Veterans For Peace, Assange Defense, BPUR, and Military Families Speak Out.

Danaka Katovich is National Co-Director of CODEPINK, overseeing a myriad of issue campaigns, including the Ground the F-35 campaign. Danaka graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in political science in November 2020. Since 2018, Danaka has been working towards ending US participation in the war in Yemen. At CODEPINK, Danaka works on youth outreach as a facilitator of the organization’s Peace Collective, a cohort focused on anti-imperialist education and divestment.

Lindsay Koshgarian is the Program Director for the National Priorities Project. Lindsay’s work and commentary on the federal budget and military spending has appeared on NPR, the BBC, CNN, The Nation, U.S. News and World Report, and others. At NPP, her work is at the intersection of military and domestic federal spending.

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This article was originally published on WorldBeyondWar.Org.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk World Radio. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and U.S. Peace Prize recipient. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswansonand FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Below is a video of Christopher Black in the 2014 Rhodes Forum, “Dialogue of Civilizations”. 

He talks about the Rwanda Tribunal and the criminal methods used in the Tribunal to control the trials and come up with fixed outcomes. 

He argues that the war in Rwanda is used, time and again, by the US in its propaganda to justify its wars of interventions. 

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***

What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea. But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no political leader from the west is setting the global agenda.

It’s Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin that are now running the multilateral, multipolar show. Western exceptionalists may deploy their crybaby routines as much as they want: nothing will change the spectacular optics, and the underlying substance of this developing world order, especially for the Global South.

What Xi and Putin are setting out to do was explained in detail before their summit, in two Op-Eds penned by the presidents themselves. Like a highly-synchronized Russian ballet, Putin’s vision was laid out in the People’s Daily in China, focusing on a “future-bound partnership,” while Xi’s was published in the Russian Gazette and the RIA Novosti website, focusing on a new chapter in cooperation and common development.

Right from the start of the summit, the speeches by both Xi and Putin drove the NATO crowd into a hysterical frenzy of anger and envy: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova perfectly captured the mood when she remarked that the west was “foaming at the mouth.”

The front page of the Russian Gazette on Monday was iconic: Putin touring Nazi-free Mariupol, chatting with residents, side by side with Xi’s Op-Ed. That was, in a nutshell, Moscow’s terse response to Washington’s MQ-9 Reaper stunt and the International Criminal Court (ICC) kangaroo court shenanigans. “Foam at the mouth” as much as you like; NATO is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated in Ukraine.

During their first “informal” meeting, Xi and Putin talked for no less than four and a half hours. At the end, Putin personally escorted Xi to his limo. This conversation was the real deal: mapping out the lineaments of multipolarity – which starts with a solution for Ukraine.

Predictably, there were very few leaks from the sherpas, but there was quite a significant one on their “in-depth exchange” on Ukraine. Putin politely stressed he respects China’s position – expressed in Beijing’s 12-point conflict resolution plan, which has been completely rejected by Washington. But the Russian position remains ironclad: demilitarization, Ukrainian neutrality, and enshrining the new facts on the ground.

In parallel, the Russian Foreign Ministry completely ruled out a role for the US, UK, France, and Germany in future Ukraine negotiations: they are not considered neutral mediators.

A multipolar patchwork quilt

The next day was all about business: everything from energy and  “military-technical” cooperation to improving the efficacy of trade and economic corridors running through Eurasia.

Russia already ranks first as a natural gas supplier to China – surpassing Turkmenistan and Qatar – most of it via the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline that runs from Siberia to China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province, launched in December 2019. Negotiations on the Power of Siberia II pipeline via Mongolia are advancing fast.

Sino-Russian cooperation in high-tech will go through the roof: 79 projects at over $165 billion. Everything from liquified natural gas (LNG) to aircraft construction, machine tool construction, space research, agro-industry, and upgraded economic corridors.

The Chinese president explicitly said he wants to link the New Silk Road projects to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This BRI-EAEU interpolation is a natural evolution. China has already signed an economic cooperation deal with the EAEU. Russian macroeconomic uber-strategist Sergey Glazyev’s ideas are finally bearing fruit.

And last but not least, there will be a new drive towards mutual settlements in national currencies – and between Asia and Africa, and Latin America. For all practical purposes, Putin endorsed the role of the Chinese yuan as the new trade currency of choice while the complex discussions on a new reserve currency backed by gold and/or commodities proceed.

This joint economic/business offensive ties in with the concerted Russia-China diplomatic offensive to remake vast swathes of West Asia and Africa.

Chinese diplomacy works like the matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls) in terms of delivering subtle messages. It’s far from coincidental that Xi’s trip to Moscow exactly coincides with the 20^th anniversary of American ‘Shock and Awe’ and the illegal invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.

In parallel, over 40 delegations from Africa arrived in Moscow a day before Xi to take part in a “Russia-Africa in the Multipolar World” parliamentary conference – a run-up to the second Russia-Africa summit next July.

The area surrounding the Duma looked just like the old Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) days when most of Africa kept very close anti-imperialist relations with the USSR.

Putin chose this exact moment to write off more than $20 billion in African debt.

In West Asia, Russia-China are acting totally in synch. West Asia. The Saudi-Iran rapprochement was actually jump-started by Russia in Baghdad and Oman: it was these negotiations that led to the signing of the deal in Beijing. Moscow is also coordinating the Syria-Turkiye rapprochement discussions. Russian diplomacy with Iran – now under strategic partnership status – is kept on a separate track.

Diplomatic sources confirm that Chinese intelligence, via its own investigations, is now fully assured of Putin’s vast popularity across Russia, and even within the country’s political elites. That means conspiracies of the regime-change variety are out of the question. This was fundamental for Xi and the Zhongnanhai’s (China’s central HQ for party and state officials) decision to “bet” on Putin as a trusted partner in the coming years, considering he may run and win the next presidential elections. China is always about continuity.

So the Xi-Putin summit definitively sealed China-Russia as comprehensive strategic partners for the long haul, committed to developing serious geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with declining western hegemons.

This is the new world born in Moscow this week. Putin previously defined it as a new anti-colonial policy. It’s now laid out as a multipolar patchwork quilt. There’s no turning back on the demolition of the remnants of Pax Americana.

‘Changes that haven’t happened in 100 years’

In Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Janet Abu-Lughod built a carefully constructed narrative showing the prevailing multipolar order when the West “lagged behind the ‘Orient.’” Later, the West only “pulled ahead because the ‘Orient’ was temporarily in disarray.”

We may be witnessing a similarly historic shift in the making, trespassed by a revival of Confucianism (respect for authority, emphasis on social harmony), the equilibrium inherent to the Tao, and the spiritual power of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is, indeed, a civilizational fight.

Moscow, finally welcoming the first sunny days of Spring, provided this week a larger-than-life illustration of “weeks where decades happen” compared to “decades where nothing happens.”

The two presidents bid farewell in a poignant manner.

Xi: “Now, there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”

Putin: “I agree.”

Xi: “Take care, dear friend.”

Putin: “Have a safe trip.”

Here’s to a new day dawning, from the lands of the Rising Sun to the Eurasian steppes.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

From Hegemony to Multipolarity: How Post-Cold War U.S. Foreign Policy Towards Russia Is Creating a Modern Eurasia

By Adeyinka Makinde, March 22, 2023

The present conflict between Russia and Ukraine is arguably the culmination of the foreign policy pursued by the United States of America since the ending of its ideological Cold War with the Soviet Union.

California Farmers: “We’ve Lost Everything” – $ Billions of Food Lost in Floods in State that Produces Half of America’s Agriculture

By Brian Shilhavy, March 23, 2023

The emphasis today is still on saving people’s lives as the rain and flooding continue, and nobody knows yet what the final damages will be to America’s richest farmlands and how that will impact food security in the United States, and the nation’s already fragile economy. Almost half of California’s agricultural products are exported to other countries.

“Market Socialism” and the Destruction of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, March 22, 2023

It will pass 33 years since the first post-WWII “democratic and multiparty” elections in all six Yugoslav republics in 1990. Next year, however, not only that this country did not exist anymore but the Yugoslavs have been faced with a civil war as a result of the post-Cold War “democratization process”.

‘Smart’ Masks for Cows? Bill Gates Invests $4.7 Million in Data-Collecting “Faceware for Livestock”

By Dr. Suzanne Burdick, March 22, 2023

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this month awarded a $4.8 million grant to a company that sells “smart” face masks for cows. ZELP, which stands for Zero Emissions Livestock Project, claims its artificial intelligence (AI) mask technology for livestock will reduce methane emissions — considered to be a main greenhouse gas — and curb climate change.

For Second Time, US Seeks to Sabotage a Russo-Ukraine Negotiated Peace

By Walt Zlotow, March 22, 2023

A year ago when NATO member Turkey neared a 15 point negotiated settlement, the US and UK each sent a top official to Kyiv not to request, but demand that Ukraine President Zelensky walk away to keep fighting. That grotesque demand led to over 100,000 unnecessary Ukraine deaths over the next year. A third of the Ukraine economy vanished. Six million left Ukraine and another six million relocated.

Forever Wars vs. Armageddon

By Ann Garrison, March 22, 2023

While the world’s attention is focused on the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, 900 US troops continue to occupy Syria, as they have since 2017 , and 2,000 remain stationed in Iraq, 20 years after the US attacked, overthrew its government, and hung its president. Around 500 have been in Somalia since Biden redeployed them in June 2022.

The Lord of Chaos. “The Politicians Who Lied to Us Extinguished Millions of Lives”. Chris Hedges

By Chris Hedges, March 22, 2023

The politicians and shills in the media who orchestrated 20 years of military debacles in the Middle East, and who seek a world dominated by U.S. power, must be held accountable for their crimes.

When Will We Profess the Unity of the Human Race?

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, March 22, 2023

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find one’s way through the jungle of lies and half-truths. More and more contemporaries therefore do not want to hear anything more from politicians. Personally, the alternative media keep me “afloat” because they still “pay tribute to the truth” due to their independence from government.

Georgia College Student on Life Support with Brain Bleed After Trip to Mexico. Just Like Brain Aneurysms, AVMs Are Also at Risk for Rupture & Bleed from Pfizer & Moderna COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines

By Dr. William Makis, March 22, 2023

Liza Burke, a UGA senior, was in Cabo San Lucas with a “big group of friends” for her “last spring break” when, on March 10, she complained of a headache at breakfast. “A few hours later, her friends called the doctor because they couldn’t wake her. She was immediately rushed to the hospital where she was diagnosed with Arteriovenous malformation (AVM) which cause her brain to hemorrhage.”

Transition from Year 1 B.C. (Before Corona). Secrecy and the New Zealand Government in the “Year of Our Democide”

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, March 22, 2023

In the year 1 B.C. (Before Corona), we here in New Zealand were getting along rather well. Despite the exorbitant cost of food and housing, the majestic and available beauty of the physical country gave us  immeasurable comfort. Our government, we thought, might not have been the most efficient one in the world, nor the one most populated with high intelligence, but it seemed to make an effort to represent its citizenry and to provide basic services.

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***

Almost half of America’s agriculture is produced in the State of California, producing over 50 $BILLION annually in revenues.

Source.

Now, with recent historical and unprecedented flooding, many farmers in California are reporting that they have “lost everything.”

And it is not over yet, as the rains continue, and record amounts of snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains still need to melt, which will flow into farmlands that are already devastated in California’s Central Valley. See: California snowmageddon: Now the second snowiest winter ever on record and still MUCH MORE TO COME!

The emphasis today is still on saving people’s lives as the rain and flooding continue, and nobody knows yet what the final damages will be to America’s richest farmlands and how that will impact food security in the United States, and the nation’s already fragile economy. Almost half of California’s agricultural products are exported to other countries.

Tulare County in Central California is the county that is suffering the most, and it is also the second largest county in the U.S. in terms of food production, producing over $8 BILLION annually, with sales of dairy products making up almost one fourth of those sales, followed by citrus and nuts. (Source.)

Kern County, just to the south of Tulare County, is the nation’s #1 county in agricultural production, and Fresno County, just to the north of Tulare County, is the nation’s 3rd largest producer of agriculture, and both of those counties have also seen devastating floods in the Central Valley of California.

Monterey County on the Central Coast of California, is the 4th largest county in the U.S. in terms of agriculture production, and they too have been hit with devastating floods, wiping out most of the vegetable and strawberry farms.

I have put together a video report that is just under 15 minutes. I have friends and family members who live in Tulare County, so I can confirm from first hand experiences that none of this is exaggerated. It is real.

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***

It’s been six weeks since I published a report, based on anonymous sourcing, naming President Joe Biden as the official who ordered the mysterious destruction last September of Nord Stream 2, a new $11-billion pipeline that was scheduled to double the volume of natural gas delivered from Russia to Germany. The story gained traction in Germany and Western Europe, but was subject to a near media blackout in the US. Two weeks ago, after a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Washington, US and German intelligence agencies attempted to add to the blackout by feeding the New York Times and the German weekly Die Zeit false cover stories to counter the report that Biden and US operatives were responsible for the pipelines’ destruction.

Press aides for the White House and Central Intelligence Agency have consistently denied that America was responsible for exploding the pipelines, and those pro forma denials were more than enough for the White House press corps. There is no evidence that any reporter assigned there has yet to ask the White House press secretary whether Biden had done what any serious leader would do: formally “task” the American intelligence community to conduct a deep investigation, with all of its assets, and find out just who had done the deed in the Baltic Sea. According to a source within the intelligence community, the president has not done so, nor will he. Why not? Because he knows the answer.

Sarah Miller—an energy expert and an editor at Energy Intelligence, which publishes leading trade journals—explained to me in an interview why the pipeline story has been big news in Germany and Western Europe. “The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines in September led to a further surge of natural gas prices that were already six or more times pre-crisis levels,” she said. “Nord Stream was blown up in late September. German gas imports peaked a month later, in October, at 10 times pre-crisis levels. Electricity prices across Europe were pulled up, and governments spent as much as 800 billion euros, by some estimates, shielding households and businesses from the impact. Gas prices, reflecting the mild winter in Europe, have now fallen back to roughly a quarter of the October peak, but they are still between two and three times pre-crisis levels and are more than three times current US rates. Over the last year, German and other European manufacturers closed their most energy-intensive operations, such as fertilizer and glass production, and it’s unclear when, if ever, those plants will reopen. Europe is scrambling to get solar and wind capacity in place, but it may not come soon enough to save large chunks of German industry.” (Miller writes a blog on Medium.)

In early March, President Biden hosted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Washington. The trip included only two public events—a brief pro forma exchange of compliments between Biden and Scholz before the White House press corps, with no questions allowed; and a CNN interview with Scholz by Fareed Zakaria, who did not touch on the pipeline allegations. The chancellor had flown to Washington with no members of the German press on board, no formal dinner scheduled, and the two world leaders were not slated to conduct a press conference, as routinely happens at such high-profile meetings. Instead, it was later reported that Biden and Scholz had an 80-minute meeting, with no aides present for much of the time. There have been no statements or written understandings made public since then by either government, but I was told by someone with access to diplomatic intelligence that there was a discussion of the pipeline exposé and, as a result, certain elements in the Central Intelligence Agency were asked to prepare a cover story in collaboration with German intelligence that would provide the American and German press with an alternative version for the destruction of Nord Stream 2. In the words of the intelligence community, the agency was “to pulse the system” in an effort to discount the claim that Biden had ordered the pipelines’ destruction.

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First published on October 6, 2022

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Dieser Artikel wurde von der Autorin erstmals 2018 veröffentlicht.

Mehr als eineinhalb Jahrzehnte nach dem völkerrechtswidrigen Angriffskrieg der US-geführten NATO gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien (SRJ) unter Einsatz hochgiftiger und radioaktiver Uran-Geschosse wird das ungeheure Ausmaß dieses Kriegsverbrechens deutlich.

In Serbien haben die aggressiven Krebserkrankungen bei Jung und Alt in den letzten Jahren ein epidemisches Ausmaß erreicht. Das Leid der Menschen schreit zum Himmel. Besonders betroffen sind der Süden Serbiens und das Kosovo. Nach Angaben des serbischen Gesundheitsministeriums erkrankt jeden Tag ein Kind an Krebs. Das gesamte Land ist verseucht. Durch die Schädigung des Erbgutes (DNA) werden Generationen um Generationen missgebildeter Kinder zur Welt kommen. Wissentlich und willentlich wurde ein Völkermord begangen.

Bis vor kurzem hat die Politik unter Mithilfe der Medien den verunsicherten Bürgern Serbiens auf Druck der Verursacher des Genozids die Wahrheit vorenthalten. Mutigen und verantwortungsbewussten Ärzten, Ex-Militärs, Ex-Politikern und Wissenschaftlern ist es nun gelungen, diese Mauer des Schweigens zu durchbrechen – zum Wohle des serbischen Volkes und der vielen anderen Völker dieser Welt, die sein Schicksal teilen.

Uranwaffen sind Massenvernichtungswaffen

Als die USA in Vietnam das Entlaubungsmittel “Agent Orange” und Napalm eingesetzt hatten, war die Welt entsetzt. Das war nicht mehr Krieg, das war Schlächterei an der Zivilbevölkerung und nachhaltige Zerstörung der Natur. 50 Jahre danach kommt dort Generation um Generation schwer behindert zur Welt – zum Sterben geboren. Doch die Waffenindustrie, auch die Atomwaffenindustrie, hat seit Vietnam ihr Geschäft zügig weiterentwickelt. Alle Kriege sind nach den Rechtsnormen des Nürnberger Tribunals illegale Angriffskriege und sie werden immer mörderischer, hinterhältiger, flächendeckender, genozidaler. So auch der erste Krieg der US-geführten NATO auf europäischem Boden gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien 1999.

Hier setzte die US-Armee unter stillschweigender Duldung der NATO-Verbündeten – darunter auch Deutschlands – Massenvernichtungswaffen ein, die sie im 2. Golfkrieg 1991 und in Bosnien-Herzegowina 1994/95 bereits erprobt hatte: hochgiftige und radioaktive Uranwaffen. Die NATO selbst hat zugegeben, dass sie 30.000 Geschosse mit abgereichertem Uran (Depleted Uranium; DU) abgefeuert hat, das Militär Serbiens spricht von 50.000 Geschossen. Das entspricht 10 bis 15 Tonnen Uran.

Da bereits umfangreiche wissenschaftliche Literatur und Filmmaterial (“Deadly Dust”) zu diesem Kriegsverbrechen in deutscher, englischer und serbischer Sprache zur Verfügung stehen, hier nur einige Anmerkungen:

Wegen des langen Abbauprozesses der Radioaktivität und ihrer Toxizität werden Abfälle der Uran- und Atomindustrie – vorwiegend DU des Isotops 238 – für einen sehr langen Zeitraum in gesicherten Deponien gelagert. Zur Verringerung des damit verbundenen hohen Kostenaufwands wird DU daher gerne kostenfrei an Interessenten wie das Militär abgegeben. DU besitzt Charakteristika, die vor allem für die Rüstungsindustrie sehr attraktiv sind.

Die nach einer deutschen Technologie entwickelten DU-Geschosse – so Professor Dr. med. Siegwart-Horst Günther – haben wegen der hohen Dichte des metallischen Urans (1,7 Mal größer als die von Blei) eine hohe Durchschlagskraft und sind speziell zum Brechen von Stahlpanzerungen und unterirdischen Beton-Bunkern geeignet. DU ist zudem ein brennbares Material, das sich beim Durchschlagen einer Panzerplatte von selbst entzündet, bei 3.000 Grad Celsius zu Uranoxidstaub verbrennt und dabei hochtoxische und radioaktive Stoffe (Uranoxid) freisetzt.

Dieses Uranoxid-Aerosol mit Partikelgrößen im Nanobereich gelangt über die Atemluft, das Wasser und langfristig auch über die Nahrungskette in den menschlichen Körper.

In der Lunge werden die DU-Staubteilchen auch an die roten und weißen Blutzellen angelagert und gelangen so in alle Organe des Körpers, auch ins Gehirn, in die Niere und in die Hoden, so dass in vielen Organen Krebs entsteht und die Erbsubstanz (DNA) irreversibel geschädigt wird. Die starke Kanzerogenität des DU ist darauf zurückzuführen, dass die Chemo- und die Radiotoxizität synergetisch wirken.

Über die Placenta kann DU auch ein ungeborenes Kind erreichen und ihm schweren Schaden zufügen. Mögliche Langzeitschäden sind genetische Defekte bei Säuglingen, Kinderleukämien, Krebserkrankungen und Nierenschädigungen. Da die Uranoxid-Partikel durch die Verbrennungshitze die Eigenschaft von Keramik angenommen haben, sind sie wasserunlöslich, sitzen in dieser Form im Körper fest und können über Jahre ihre radioaktive Wirkung (Alpha-Strahlung) entfalten.

Krieg mit Uranwaffen ist wissentlich und willentlich herbeigeführter Völkermord

Für den Biochemiker Albrecht Schott ist DU ein Beispiel für Eingriffe in die Schöpfung, die diese existenziell gefährden und damit keine Waffe gegen Staaten, sondern eine Waffe gegen den Planeten. Der bekannte deutsche Journalist und Filmemacher Frieder Wagner bezeichnet Uranwaffen als “Ausrottungswaffe” und die Opfer dieser mörderischen Waffen als die “Toten des stillen Sterbens”. Uranwaffen sind die “perfekte Waffe”, um massenhaft Menschen umzubringen, das heißt, einen Völkermord zu begehen.

Seit der UN-Konvention über die Verhütung und Bestrafung des Völkermordes von 1948 ist der Genozid ein Straftatbestand im Völkerstrafrecht, der nicht verjährt. Gekennzeichnet ist er durch die spezielle Absicht, auf direkte oder indirekte Weise eine nationale, ethnische, rassische oder religiöse Gruppe als solche ganz oder teilweise zu zerstören. Deshalb wird der Völkermord auch als “einzigartiges Verbrechen”, als “Verbrechen der Verbrechen” (englisch “crime of crimes”) oder als “schlimmstes Verbrechen im Völkerstrafrecht” bezeichnet.

Die australische Ärztin, Atomwaffenspezialistin und Friedensaktivistin Helen Caldicott schreibt in ihrem Buch “Atomgefahr USA”:

Es ist klar, dass das Pentagon schon lange vor der Operation Wüstensturm [2. Golfkrieg 1991; der Verfasser] um die gesundheitlichen Risiken wusste, die von uranhaltiger Munition ausgehen. In zahlreichen Militärberichten wird eingeräumt, dass Uran-238 Nierenschäden, Lungen- und Knochenkrebs, (nicht bösartige) Erkrankungen der Lunge, Hauterkrankungen, neurokognitive Störungen, Chromosomenschäden und Geburtsfehler verursachen kann.

Aus diesem Grund sind Kriege unter Einsatz hochgiftiger und radioaktiver Uranwaffen sowohl Kriegsverbrechen als auch wissentlich und willentlich herbeigeführter Völkermord – so auch der Krieg gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien 1999. Gemäß der UN-Konvention gegen Völkermord verpflichten sich die Vertragsparteien, Völkermord beziehungsweise Personen, die einen solchen begehen, zu bestrafen, unabhängig davon, ob sie regierende Personen, öffentliche Beamte oder private Einzelpersonen sind.

Aggressive Krebserkrankungen in Serbien erreichen epidemisches Ausmaß

Die Bombardierung Serbiens dauerte 78 Tage. Dabei wurden 1.031 Soldaten getötet, 5.173 Soldaten und Polizisten verwundet, 2.500 Zivilisten starben – darunter 78 Kinder – und über 6.000 Zivilisten wurden verwundet. Neben den Projektilen mit DU, die zudem Spuren hochgiftigen Plutoniums aufwiesen, sind auch andere explosive Kombinationen und Raketenkraftstoffe mit bestimmten chemischen Verbindungen zum Einsatz gekommen, die bei Explosionen sehr giftig wirken und Krebserkrankungen bewirken. Die Zahl dieser Krebserkrankungen wuchs von Jahr zu Jahr. Auch stiegen die Zahl der Neugeborenen mit Missbildungen und jene aggressiver Leukämieerkrankungen bei Kindern.

Vor über einem Jahr wurden Schätzungen des serbischen Verbands zur Krebsbekämpfung bekannt: Studien hätten gezeigt, dass der Einsatz der Uranwaffen zwischen 2001 und 2010 zu 15.000 Krebserkrankungen und 10.000 Toten geführt habe, so der Verbandsleiter und Onkologe Prof. Dr. med. Slobodan Cikaric. Insgesamt habe es in diesem Zeitraum 330.000 Krebserkrankungen in Serbien gegeben. Die Todesrate habe seit dem Jahr 1999 jährlich um 2,5 Prozent zugenommen.

Bereits im Jahr 2013 äußerte Professor Cikaric in der serbischen Zeitung Blic, dass Serbien 14 Jahre nach der Bombardierung mit DU eine Explosion von Krebserkrankungen aller Art erwarte. Er sollte Recht behalten. Übermittelt sind Zusammenbrüche des Immunsystems mit ansteigenden Fällen von Infektionskrankheiten, schwere Funktionsstörungen von Nieren und Leber, aggressive Leukämien und andere Krebserkrankungen (auch Mehrfachkrebs), Störungen im Knochenmark, genetische Defekte und Missbildungen sowie Aborte und Frühgeburten bei Schwangeren wie nach der Tschernobyl-Katastrophe.

Liest man heute eine serbische Zeitung oder geht über einen serbischen Friedhof, dann fällt einem in den seitenlangen Todesanzeigen oder Grabinschriften die kurze Lebenszeit vieler Verstorbener ins Auge. Es müsste jeweils heißen: “Gestorben an den Folgen von DU-Vergiftung und Verstrahlung”.

Viele Bürger Serbiens sind aufgrund ihres jahrelangen Mitleidens mit kranken Angehörigen und infolge des ängstlichen Abwartens, ob und wann auch sie eventuell von einer der schrecklichen und meist tödlich verlaufenden Krankheiten eingeholt werden, psychisch stark belastet. Auch wenn die meisten von ihnen die Ursache der schweren Erkrankungen erahnen, bleibt trotzdem eine große Verunsicherung, die anhaltende Stressgefühle auslöst.

Von politischer Seite hat man sowohl in Serbien wie auch in den anderen mit DU verseuchten Ländern im Nahen und Mittleren Osten und in den NATO-Ländern selbst die Bevölkerung bewusst nicht aufgeklärt. Man wollte sich unter anderem Regressforderungen entziehen und das mörderische Handwerk ungestört weiterführen. Stress, Ängste wie auch Depressionen schwächen das bereits belastete Immunsystem zusätzlich und führen zu einer höheren Infektionsanfälligkeit. Das zeigen Forschungsergebnisse des interdisziplinären Forschungsgebiets der Psycho-Neuro-Immunologie (PNI).

Volk hat Recht auf Wahrheit

Um das eigene Leben und das der Familie befriedigend gestalten, Vorsorge für die Zukunft treffen oder als Ehepaar entscheiden zu können, ob man Kinder in die Welt setzen will oder nicht, dafür muss jeder Bürger die wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Gegebenheiten in seinem Land realistisch einschätzen können. Das kann er aber nicht, wenn ihm die Wahrheit über Vorkommnisse vorenthalten wird, die sein Leben stark beeinträchtigen können. Deshalb ist es eine moralische Verpflichtung all derer, die sich mit dem Problem der Verseuchung des Landes auseinandergesetzt haben – Ärzte, Wissenschaftler, Journalisten, von Kontamination betroffene Militärs und Zivilisten –, die Mitbürger aufzuklären und ihnen beizustehen.

Hinzu kommt, dass die Identität eines Volkes auf dem Recht der Bürger auf Wahrheit und das Wissen um ihre Geschichte gründet. Historiker und Vertreter weiterer Wissenschaften haben dazu einen wichtigen Beitrag zu leisten. Die Auseinandersetzung darf aber nicht ihnen allein überlassen werden. Die Suche nach der Wahrheit und die Aufklärung des Volkes ist auch eine politische Aufgabe, die von politischen Verantwortungsträgern zu lösen ist und unter keinen Umständen von ihnen unterbunden werden darf. Regierung und Parlament haben sich zu positionieren. Wie können Bürger einer Regierung oder Volksvertretung vertrauen, die ihnen die Wahrheit über ein Problem vorenthält, das sie existenziell betrifft?

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler (Dr. paed.) und Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer (Professor) in der Erwachsenenbildung: unter anderem Leiter eines freien Schul-Modell-Versuchs und Fortbildner bayerischer Beratungslehrkräfte und Schulpsychologen. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. Bei einer Öffentlichen Anhörung zur Jugendkriminalität im Europa-Parlament war er Berichterstatter für Deutschland. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.

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Preface

It will pass 33 years since the first post-WWII “democratic and multiparty” elections in all six Yugoslav republics in 1990. Next year, however, not only that this country did not exist anymore but the Yugoslavs have been faced with a civil war as a result of the post-Cold War “democratization process”.

For two decades before 1980, Yugoslavia was prospering with a GDP of 6,1%, a decent standard of living, free medical care, and education guaranteed the right to a job, affordable public transportation housing, and utilities, a literacy rate over 90%, life expectancy 72 years. Most of the economy was in the public not in the profit sector. It was a different case because it had established its form of the social model of economic activity which was the mixed economy with private-sector enterprise and state-run industry. It was considered to be a success story of market socialism (with huge international loans and donations by the West!) it had higher rates of growth than more of the Western countries.

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had an advanced welfare state and it was a multiethnic society (it was populated by Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, Bosnian Muslims, Macedonians, Hungarians, Albanians, and many others) which lived in harmony under the communist pressure and dictatorship and, therefore, in many regards it was a (wrong) model of development. The outsider can say that it was something special about this land, and the question is why did people spill so much blood over there in the 1990s? Who was to blame for that?

Before WWII

The Serbs, the most numerous Yugoslav nation, lost their freedom after the Ottoman Turks attacked them in 1389 in the field of Blackbirds which is called Kosovo. The Serbs lost their statehood which lasted several centuries produced a strong encouragement in the myth of Kosovo. For standing up against the Turks Serbs were prosecuted and invented torture devices were implemented. Serbs lived under terrible prosecution, Serbs were wiped, Serbs were lynched except the matter that they were lynched by impalement. It means that the sharp stick is put up in your anus and driven through your body and exits through your back without harming vital organs. The Ottoman Turkish army was an expert in doing it. There was however a way to avoid all this – converge to Islam. And many did, many had no choice. This made a part of the Slavic population Muslim while the rest is Christian Orthodox.

On the other hand, the state religion of the Austrian Empire was Roman Catholic from which the large Croatian population got a great influence. When Austria-Hungary illegally annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina (breaking the decisions of the 1878 Berlin Congress) and a large population fell under it in 1908, the Yugoslav dream (coming from outside of Serbia) was never more threatened. A group of young Yugoslav nationalists called “Young Bosnia” which included Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims decided that enough is enough. A Bosnian young man Gavrilo Princip (having a Roman Catholic-Latin origin surname) shot and killed the Austrian warmonger-archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28^th, 1914 (the day of the 1389 Kosovo Battle). After he was quoted as saying “I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, we must be free from Austria” the Austrians used this event as the reason to attack the last Slavic stronghold after Russia: Serbia.

This was, however, not the real reason for the attack. The Austrians and Germans had the plan to expand their common Pan-Germanic Empire in the east and the war was the only way at that time they could do it. During the early period of WWI, a group of Yugoslav politicians fled from Austria-Hungary and formed the Yugoslav Committee in London which was collaborating with the Government of Serbia in exile (in Greece). In July 1916, on the Corfu Island in Greece, the Yugoslav Committee (composed mainly of the Croats) together with the Serbian Government declared that the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians are “the same by the blood, by the language, by the feelings of their unity, by the integrated territory which they inhabited undividedly, by the common vital interests of their national survival and many developments of the material life.”

It happened to the thing which the Ottoman and the Austrian-Hungarian authorities were afraid of the most. After WWI, the Yugoslavs had a country of their own mainly built on Serbian blood. The interwar royal Yugoslav state was short-lived because another world war came soon in April 1941. In the hope to keep Yugoslavia out of the war, the Yugoslav regent Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact with Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan on March 25^th, 1941. However, British diplomacy did not like such political development in the Balkans and, therefore, they encouraged the anti-German military coup in Belgrade and brought the Serbian people against the pact. The Brits were very happy with the new pro-British Yugoslav Government established on March 27^th, 1941 but the Germans were not anymore. A. Hitler decided to wipe Yugoslavia off the map together with Greece. Yugoslavia was attacked from all sides together with Greece on April 6^th, 1941.

At that time, Yugoslavia was divided into 12 pieces and some of them went to fascist Italy, some of them to Hungary, some of them to Albania while Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were united in the Croatian fascist state under the Ustasi regime which was called Independent State of Croatia (concerning its internal affairs, the ISC was, really, independent especially regarding the policy of genocide on the Serbs, Jews, and Roma). Croatian fascists were quick to destroy all the not fascist (i.e., not Croatian) elements in the state primarily the Serbs. And that meant that A. Hitler’s final solution (of the Jewish question) applied here as well (as the final solution of the Serb question). Hundreds of thousands of Serbs (at least 700.000) but also Jews and Roma were killed most of them in the 4^th largest concentration camp in Europe called Jasenovac on the Sava River. And one important detail is that the Croatian political fascist regime was fully integrated with the Roman Catholic clergy and even some of the priests (Franciscans) were the heads of the concentration camps and executors.

During the war, there was one real anti-fascist movement, a nationalist Yugoslav Royal Army in the Homeland (the Ravna Gora movement or the Chetniks of General Draža Mihailović) and one quasi anti-fascist movement – the communists (the Partisans) led by Josip Broz Tito (according to V. Molotov, he was a Jew from Odessa). Although when the war began, these two movements cooperated to a certain extent, the mutual conflict soon occurred due to the Partisan’s attacks on the Chetniks followed by the civil war till May 1945. During the second part of the war, the Western allies (especially W. Churchill) betrayed Serbian nationalists and Serbian people by making political trade with J. V. Stalin – in fact, they crucially supported the Yugoslav communists after the Tehran Conference in November 1943.

On November 29^th, 1943, J. B. Tito declared a new Yugoslavia and two years later the country was occupied by his partisans who officially called it liberation. Skilled in his political games he was a worldwide accepted leader who was not only a leader but a brand as well and above all the dictator. He was one of the three founders of the non-alignment movement in 1961 (the first conference was in Belgrade) sponsored by the West to play the game of middle ground between great powers, between East and West in international relations during the Cold War.

After WWII

At the end of WWII, the communists conducted the federalization of the new socialist Yugoslavia. After the genocide against the Serbian people who were killed by the nationalist Ustasi movement (the Croats and Bosnian Muslims) in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and everything that happened during the war, the communists attempted to align it with a policy of national reconciliation in the conditions of a totalitarian regime by establishing a state in which there would be an internal balance of the six federal units. Those were Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia.

People who lived in these federal units suddenly started to be deemed as different nations according to their republic’s belonging. For example, in Yugoslav Macedonia (there are three parts of historical-geographic Macedonia: the Serbian/Yugoslav, Bulgarian, and Greek) there was a specially developed national consciousness to be Macedonian, as well in Montenegro to be Montenegrin. Moreover, some historically artificial nations within republics became created allegedly on an ethnic basis. For instance, suddenly, 20 years after WWII, the Muslim nation of ethnic Serbs who were Islamized during the 500 years of the Ottoman occupation was formed (however, the Catholic or Orthodox, or Christian nations have not been ever created). Later and today, they gained Bosniak or Bosnian identity primarily based on their religion combined with the republic’s identity. Nevertheless, such division and the increasing power of federal units later in the 1990s demonstrated expulsion and migration of the population to the “mother” countries, and more or less division among the population within the country.

When Josip Broz Tito (officially) died on May 4^th, 1980, many Yugoslavs were crying not for him as much as for Yugoslavia itself. His (official) funeral was the largest statesman funeral in recorded history.

Internal tensions in the country, from 1981, grew steadily, reinforced by the economic slowdown and high debt to foreign investors. Debt, inherited from J. B. Tito’s time, was further increased. In 1984, the (USA President at that time) Ronald Reagan’s administration was specifically targeting Yugoslavia’s economy in the secret memo, National Security Directive 133 which stated that the US policy will be promoting the trend towards a market-oriented Yugoslav economy structure. And it was in line with previous decision directives which advocated expanded efforts to promote revolutions to overthrow communist Governments. It triggered the whole series of other initiatives which of course were not published. What the USA wanted is that Yugoslavia quit being a socialist (command) market economy and become a free-market economy, modelled on the Western pattern.

The destruction of the Yugoslav economy

While the Soviet system was starting to collapse in 1980s, Washington wasted no time and was sending advisors to Yugoslavia from the non-profit organization called National Endowment for Democracy (the NED). Allen Weinstein, who planned the NED, told Washington that “a lot what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”. So the NED became the CIA’s satellite. And what did it do? It started financing opposition groups, young journalists, trade unions, and other pro-open market economists and NGOs. The NED financed the so-called G17 in Serbia – a notorious pro-Western colonial political group.

And who were they? Those were the NGOs made up of 17 free-market economists which after became a political party and had after the Western-sponsored revolution of October 5^th, 2000 in their hands Ministry of Finance and Economy. They were working closely with the IMF and the World Bank, and a coordinator of the G17 Plus Professor Veselin Vukotić, who was the minister of privatization in the Yugoslav Government of the (Croat)

PM Ante Marković just before the destruction of Yugoslavia, was in charge of the World Bank’s bankruptcy program for Yugoslavia during 1989 and 1990 which let off the devastation of the Yugoslav economy. So this was not simply a group of economists, it was a network and the IMF and the World Bank use this network to impose their policies on Yugoslavia, or now on Serbia.

And how do they do it? They did it in three stages:

• They force the Government to stop subsidizing domestic production (food, medical means), transportation, free medical care, and so on. In other words, you cut public sector spending, you cut wages, cut employment, you abolish working management enterprises, and as a result, you force your people to work harder for lesser.
• They use laws to force public (state) businesses to go into bankruptcy. And the World Bank uses this mechanism which is called a trigger, they use this term to describe the process ” to trigger the bankruptcy of the Yugoslav industry”.
• Then these businesses are bought from foreign speculators and other interested foreign groups. Creditors could take these businesses during the 45 days and either the businesses are sold (privatized) or canceled. This is called privatization through liquidation! Evidence from the World Bank confirms that under V. Vukotić’s intervention from 1989 till 1990 (still Yugoslavia existed) more than 1100 industrial firms were wiped out!

The standard of living declined by 18% from January to October 1990. At the same time, unemployment rose to 20% and thus increased tension between the Yugoslav republics. So, usually, when you have this kind of unsatisfactions everybody is looking for a guilty party.

When a man has nothing and he is not aware in the existential sense, he clings to those types of ideas that awake the human inside him, and those are usually national or religious stories. Suddenly he feels more important when someone tells him “yes it is their fault, not yours”. In desperation, PM A. Marković visited his bosses in Washington essentially to meet with President Bush Senior, when he said that rising tensions between the Yugoslav republics and nationalities would be a consequence of these austerity measures and privatization plan and he asked for another loan because otherwise there would be troubles.

And we all know that the American administration did not want any trouble in the Balkans so President Bush in November of 1990 went to Congress and pushed them to pass the law which demanded that if any republic of Yugoslavia wanted further US aid, they would have to break away from Yugoslavia and proclaim their independence. It is a public law! It required that republics do not hold national elections but only the elections in their own republics! And when the financial aid went to Yugoslavia, it went only to those parts controlled by radical ultranationalists and even fascist parties (like the HDZ in Croatia or the SDA in Bosnia-Herzegovina) which the USA officially considered as democratic and supported them as such.

The destruction of Yugoslavia was not the result of the preexisting internal divisions. Those internal divisions were exacerbated as the result of an outside (Western) intervention.

By 1991 the inflation was 200%. The central Federal Government of Yugoslavia could not repay the state (public) debt and could not even buy the raw material for domestic industrial production. The economic cooperation between the republics stopped existing. The republics did not get any money from the Federal Government, but neither sent the money from the taxes to the federal budget. As a consequence, the whole fiscal structure soon collapsed. The republics were left at their own “devices” and then it appeared a new form of nationalism. However, the republican political leaders did not work on calming people down, but, actually, they have been doing quite opposite. People were going in the street protesting with the message “do not sacrifice peace for the political aims”.

The political destruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina

The Yugoslav republics on the election in 1990 got the people who were far away from calming down inter-republican economic and political tensions. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, President Alija Izetbegović (who, in fact, lost the elections as being a vice-winner) was propagating the ideas from the 1970 nationalistic Islamic Declaration, as he said, for instance, “there can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and non-Islamic social and political institutions”. He emphasized the percentage of religion over ethnicity. In fact, there was a moment when he could prevent the war when he signed the 1992 Lisbon Agreement which would make Bosnia-Herzegovina a confederation of three ethnic regions (Muslim, Croat, and Serbian).

However, Alija Izetbegović did not like such a solution at all as he wanted whole power for himself and his Bosnian Muslims, and luckily for him, the USA did not like it as well (the Croat and Serb political representatives from Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed about the Lisbon Agreement and signed it). On May 2^nd, 1992 Alija Izetbegović was kidnapped at the Sarajevo airport by the Yugoslav People’s Army (the YPA) as he returned from the European Community talks in Lisbon. He is exchanged for the YPA’s prisoners the next day. That weekend (May 2‒3^rd, 1992) was up to that time the most violent in both Sarajevo and the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

However, the last US ambassador in Yugoslavia, V. Zimmermann, did not like it much more. As he said “If you don’t like it, why sign it?”, So, after the consultations with him in Belgrade in the US embassy, Alija Izetbegović simply withdraw his signature from the agreement and, therefore, opened a door to the bloody war! The Socialist Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina was constituted as a federal unit in which three ethnic nations were equal: the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (no majorization). These three groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina were constituents that means in terms of resolving their status outvoting was legally impossible. Bosnia’s secession would be possible only if the political representatives of these three agree on secession, and was legally impossible to agree for the Muslim and the Croatian representatives to overrule the Serbs (what in practice happened). Since they could not agree on the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the war started on a dispute in religious terms and territorial division.

Ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia in 1991

As it became clear that the European Community was going to recognize on April 6^th, 1992 the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaimed earlier by Bosnian Muslims and Croats, a night before (between April 5−6^th,) in Banja Luka, the Assembly of the Serbian People of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence for the Serbs in this ex-Yugoslav republic (the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The name was changed on August 12^th, 1992 into the Republic of Srpska). The next separatists in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been the Roman Catholic Croats who on July 5^th, 1992 proclaimed the independence of their controlled region called the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia (Western Herzegovina), headed by the leader of the ultranationalistic Croatian HDZ party (Croatian Democratic Union) for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Mate Boban, who favored the partition of the republic between Croatia and Serbia (according to the oral agreement by Croatian President Franjo Tuđman and Serbian President Slobodan Milošević reached in Karađorđevo in 1991). The capital of this republic was multiethnic Mostar. Mate Boban was allied with Franjo Tuđman, whereas other Bosnian Croat leaders, including Stjepan Kljuić and Jovan Divjak, opposed F. Tuđman and the declaration for the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, on July 7^th, the Croatian President officially stated he does not support the formation of Herzeg-Bosnia as a Croatian independent state. Rather, he said Herzeg-Bosnia will help administer the area amid wartime chaos while the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina formally remained his chief concern.

In the end, after 4 years of civil war on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, much inspired and fuelled by Washington, the US administration designed the Dayton Peace Accord in December 1995. According to the accord, Bosnia-Herzegovina gained the status of an independent country but was divided into two political entities: the unitary Republic of Srpska (49%) and the ethnically cantonized Muslim-Croat Federation (51%). However, the division lines between these three main ethnic communities still exist today with the constant Croat struggle for the status of the third political entity based on ethnic belonging.

The Bosnian conflict (of 3,5 years) was a tragedy for all those involved – the Muslims/Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats. However, the international Western focus of guilt was laid overwhelmingly on the Serbian side from the very beginning (Slovenia in June 1991), mainly because the Serbian side presented well-organized armed resistance to the destruction of Yugoslavia in order not to be repeated the genocide over the Serbs from WWII in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

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

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***

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation this month awarded a $4.8 million grant to a company that sells “smart” face masks for cows.

ZELP, which stands for Zero Emissions Livestock Project, claims its artificial intelligence (AI) mask technology for livestock will reduce methane emissions — considered to be a main greenhouse gas — and curb climate change.

Cows and other ruminant animals emit methane in the process of digesting their food.

The mask goes around the cow’s head and captures the methane gas exhaled by the animal, oxidizing it and then releasing it into the air as carbon dioxide and water vapor, according to ZELP.

It also has sensors that continuously collect millions of data points on the animals that are processed by machine learning algorithms.

“Our AI is trained to detect heat, flag welfare conditions, and identify the most efficient animals with a high-level of accuracy,” ZELP said.

But critics, including third-generation farmer Howard Vlieger, said the Gates-funded venture is illogical and driven by greed.

Vlieger, who advises crop and livestock farmers across the U.S., said, “This is what you would get when you combine greed and stupidity.”

Commenting on the news, Will Harris — a fourth-generation regenerative farmer who runs his family’s farm White Oak Pastures, told The Defender all he could say was, “Surely this is a hoax.”

Critical Sway, a researcher and investigator, tweeted, “You couldn’t make this stuff up. … We’re living in ridiculous times my friends.”

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just announced a $4.7 million grant for a company that sells face masks for cows.

You couldn't make this stuff up. pic.twitter.com/U8vkorBKwr

— Critical Sway (@CriticalSway) March 11, 2023

ZELP — which collaborates with the agricultural giant Cargill — makes its money by leasing the smart masks out to farmers and by selling carbon offset credits, Critical Sway said.

“History will show that the vast majority of so-called environmentally beneficial projects like this are going to make Bernie Madoff look like an altar boy,” Vlieger said.

Madoff, whose name became synonymous with financial fraud, was behind the $20 billion Ponzi scheme that CNN called the largest financial fraud in history.

Gates’ love affair with techno-fixes

Smart masks for cows aren’t the first money-making tech fix Gates has attempted to apply to a natural problem.

Last year, the billionaire partnered with Samsung in an attempt to make a toilet that would turn human feces into ash.

And Gates recently claimed his genetically altered seeds were necessary for solving world hunger because climate change alters growing conditions.

He also promotes AI-driven digital agriculture that relies on large-scale monocultures and is “basically a surveillance agriculture,” according to environmental activist Vandana Shiva, Ph.D.

The technology forces farmers “to get addicted to chemicals and chemical fertilizers” that harm the planet and people while reducing natural biodiversity, Shiva said.

Shiva said Gates’ solutions ignore obvious natural remedies for environmental problems, such as the regenerative agriculture practices of managed grazing and natural soil enrichment.

Industrial farming practices — not cows — are the problem

ZELP’s design was one of four winners last year in the Terra Carta Design Lab, an environmental sustainability competition for cutting methane emissions.

Prince Charles — who launched the competition as part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative — praised the mask design as “fascinating,” reported Business Insider in April 2022.

But according to Vlieger, ruminant animals in their natural habitat are not the key drivers of environmental problems.

Source: Children’s Health Defense

“When the settlers worked their way across the plains, there were millions of buffalo,” Vlieger said. “If ruminant animals were the problem, why didn’t we have climate change problems then?”

Techno-fixes like ZELP’s smart masks ignore the issue of where and how the animals graze, Vlieger and others said.

Conventional livestock production — which includes confining large numbers of animals in concentrated animal feeding operations, more commonly known as factory farms — “manipulates pieces of the ecosystem in an effort to maximize production and profits, thereby leading to the complication and expense of dealing with unintended consequences,” according to a 2015 report by the Savory Institute, a regenerative agriculture organization that promotes wholistic management of livestock.

An intact ecosystem effectively balances ruminant methane production and breakdown, the report authors said.

Indeed, researchers — including W. Richard Teague, Ph.D., professor emeritus and grazing ecologist at Texas A&M AgriLife Research & Extension Center — found that with appropriate regenerative crop and grazing management, ruminant animals not only reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions but also provide essential ecosystem services that increase soil carbon sequestration and reduce environmental damage.

Teague and his colleagues said in a 2016 article published in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation that “to ensure long-term sustainability and ecological resilience of agroecosystems, agricultural production should be guided by policies and regenerative management protocols that include ruminant grazing.”

Allowing cows to open graze “under appropriate management results in more carbon sequestration than emissions,” Teague told Successful Farming.

Grazing systems that are regenerative cause soil microorganisms to increase, which helps drive carbon sequestration and methane oxidization, Teague added.

‘This is wrong in so many ways’

Vlieger said ZELP’s smart mask would generate electromagnetic radiation that could harm the animals.

“Many years ago when the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture] was talking about the electronic ID ear tags for cattle, I wrote an article about the dangers of the electromagnetic frequencies — and that was way before we had a fraction of the information that we have today,” he said.

“The potential for tumors and other ill health effects are significant,” Vlieger added.

Blogger Tessa Lena also criticized the cow smart mask because it is a step in normalizing “smart” facewear for both animals and humans — something that is “a win-win for all fascists,” she said in a March 14 Substack post.

Lena said:

“It’s a very lucrative ‘product adoption curve for Big Tech — and extremely consistent with how they’ve been going about their ‘product adoption curves’ since day one of the industry’s existence.”

Smart faceware is also “useful to the totalitarian types in the government” and a “treasure trove of yummy ‘new oil’ biometric data for the delight of all fascists,” Lena added.

Her solution?

People must wake up and refuse to do this, she said.

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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.

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***

“We don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now. We certainly don’t support calls for a ceasefire that would be called for by the PRC in a meeting in Moscow that would simply benefit Russia.”

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***

The BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement) was founded to represent the interests of Dutch farmers facing severe difficulties or being closed down altogether as a result of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s efforts to implement European Union-mandated curbs on the use of nitrogen fertilisers, in order to serve the bloc’s climate change green agenda.

Initially a protest movement, the BBB has been involved in many major demonstrations, often involving tractors, in the Netherlands — but it arrived as a political force in the country’s recent regional government elections for the first time, which also determine the make-up of the First Chamber of the States General — the upper house or senate of the Dutch legislature.

As the results of the election become clearer, it now appears to scale of the Farmer-Citizen Movement’s success was greater than polls initially suggested, with it being due to claim 17 seats in the Senate and become by far the largest party there, according to pro-farmer campaigner Eva Vlaardingerbroek.

The precarious four-party coalition government of the supposedly “centre-right” Prime Minister Mark Rutte, meanwhile, appears to have suffered somewhat worse losses than expected, with Vlaardingerbroek suggesting they will be unable to achieve a majority even with the support of the Labour Party and the Greens.

🇳🇱 UPDATE on the Dutch elections!

The final votes have been counted. The BBB (farmers citizens movement) gained a staggering 17 seats and the ruling parties have suffered severe losses and won’t reach a majority – not even with the help of the Green Party + Labour. #DutchFarmers pic.twitter.com/ZQTtB48Riw

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) March 19, 2023

Vlaardingerbroek has previously alleged that her country is being used as a “pilot” for a broader agenda, with Prime Minister Rutte “very deeply involved in the World Economic Forum [and] a great proponent of all the ideas laid out in the 2030 Agenda and the Great Reset.”

“It’s all related, all these policies are out of those institutions and they are being implemented in our country first, we are sort of the pilot country together with Canada for this agenda,” she added, lamenting the impact of the scheme on farmers targeted by the EU’s Natura 2000 scheme who have in many cases been tending their land and livestock for generations, but now face being forced out of business by state power.

Some members of the Dutch Cabinet have been giving pause by the bloody nose the BBB inflicted on them in the elections, however, with Wopke Hoekstra, who leads the supposedly Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party which is in coalition with Prime Minister Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), warning the government can no longer simply “move on to the order of the day”.

Dutch PM: Hungary Has No Place in EU After LGBT Teaching Law, Bloc Should Force Hungary ‘to Its Knees’ https://t.co/JnkWZ7sJKq

— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 26, 2021

Regardless of the unease on the government benches, however, Dutch politics will not change overnight, given the somewhat labyrinthine mechanism by which the composition of the Dutch Senate is decided.

The Senate’s makeup is determined indirectly by the elections for regional governments — the States-Provincial — whose members then select Senators with the assistance of four electoral colleges representing former Dutch colonies in the Caribbean and Dutch expatriates.

As with U.S. presidential elections, there is a delay between the people casting their votes and their will being implemented by their institutional representatives, but with 99 per cent of votes counted in the provincial elections the seat projections for the formal appointment process for Senators — scheduled for May — are now near-certain to hold true.

Netherlands, regional elections:

Prognosis based on 99% of the vote counted

Senate seat projection

BBB-*: 17 (new)
PvdA/GL-S&D|G/EFA: 15 (+1)
VVD-RE: 10 (-2)
CDA-EPP: 5 (-4)
D66-RE: 5 (-1)
PVV→ID: 4 (-1)
PvdD-LEFT: 4 (+1)
…

+/− vs. 2019 election
➤ https://t.co/dz1X5eQdmV pic.twitter.com/upXgQEvu5t

— Europe Elects (@EuropeElects) March 19, 2023

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***

While the world’s attention is focused on the US proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, 900 US troops continue to occupy Syria, as they have since 2017 , and 2,000 remain stationed in Iraq, 20 years after the US attacked, overthrew its government, and hung its president. Around 500 have been in Somalia since Biden redeployed them in June 2022.

On March 8, the House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees voted for resolutions to repeal the 1991 and 2002 Authorizations of Military Force (AUMFs) against Iraq, but that was hardly a victory for the antiwar community because US troops remain with the acquiescence of the current Iraqi government, and even so, it’s not clear that the House and Senate will pass the resolutions.

Also on March 8, the House voted down House Concurrent Resolution 21 to withdraw all US troops from Syria within 180 days in accordance with the 1973 War Powers Act, which states that US armed forces cannot be sent to war unless Congress declares war or unless a national emergency is created by attack on the US.

The resolution’s advocates argued that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force passed 22 years ago, after 9/11, does not legally justify ongoing US wars. Opponents of the resolution argued that ISIS remains a threat and the 22-year-old AUMF is still legally valid.

According to the “Costs of War Project” at Brown University, the US has invoked the post-09/11 AUMF as the legal basis for air strikes and operations in eight countries, detention in 1 (Guantanamo, Cuba), and support for “counter terrorism partners” in 13.

Resolution 21

In the debate preceding the vote on Resolution 21, no one mentioned the military industrial motive for continuing the war, but South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson did note that withdrawal would mean losing the Al-Omar oil field, the largest in Syria and the site of the largest US base there. Of course, Wilson didn’t say that would mean returning Syria’s oil to Syria. He said, “Upon withdrawal terrorists will also have unfettered access to the Omar oil field.”

No one pointed out that Article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits “the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” making the US occupation an international crime, because US officials don’t talk about that. International law is for other nations to obey.

Florida Republican Matt Gaetz explained why he had introduced the resolution:

“Most Americans don’t know a single Syrian. And so people watching this debate might wonder how has it come to be that Syria has become the great platform of great power competition in the world. It begins in 2011, during the Arab Spring, when Assad, who is undeniably a madman, and a despot, opens fire on his own people protesting. Then part of the Syrian army defects, they engage in warfare against Assad, and all of a sudden, they’ve got a whole lot of weapons and money being sent from the rich Gulf monarchies through Jordan, in Syria.

“So Iran is not just going to watch this Assad’s their ally, they activate Hezbollah, they then invade Syria. So now you’ve got Jordan, the Gulf monarchies, Iran, but wait, Russia is pitching their vision of the world as a regime preservation force, whether you’re Maduro or Assad, so they get involved, and what do they get for their time, a warm water port in the eastern Mediterranean.

“So we’ve got Russia, the Gulf monarchies. Israel starts to get worried about Hezbollah and Iran. So Israel cuts a deal with Russia to keep Iran out of southern Syria. And if it doesn’t get any worse than that. Now, all of a sudden, you’ve got the Kurds who declare war on Syria. And it makes it a little messy, that the Kurds are also in conflict with Turkey, which is a NATO ally.

“And then somehow, the United States in 2015 says, ‘You know what, we need to get involved in this mess in Syria.’ And since we’ve been there, we have seen Americans die, we’ve seen 10s of billions of dollars wasted.

And what is hilarious about the 2001 AUMF that the neoconservatives wave around like some permission slip for every neoconservative fantasy of turning an Arabian desert into a Jeffersonian democracy, is that that very 2001 AUMF would justify attacking the people that we’re fighting against, and the people we’re funding, because both have ties to al Qaeda, and of course, the 2001 AUMF dealt with al Qaeda, all this talk about a reemergence of ISIS.

“I would encourage my colleagues to go read the Inspector General’s report of the last quarter that indicates that ISIS is not a threat to the homeland. And with the Turks conducting operations in Syria, against ISIS, with Assad and Russia having every incentive to create pressure on ISIS. I do not believe that what stands between a caliphate and not a caliphate are the 900 Americans who have been sent to this hellscape with no definition of victory, with no clear objective, and purely existing as a vestige to the regime change failed foreign policies of multiple former presidents.”

Gaetz introduced the 2016 LA Times article headlined, “In Syria militias armed by the Pentagon, fight those armed by the CIA .”

Montana Democrat, Ryan Zinke, responded that we have to fight ISIS in Syria, or fight them in the streets here:

“But there is no doubt that Syria also remains a center for radical Islamic forces and terrorism, like ISIS, like PKK. These are organizations that will never stop ever. They are committed to destroy this nation and our allies, and we should be aware of their objectives. Lastly, the hard truth is this. Either we fight him in Syria, or we’ll fight them here, either we fight and defeat them in Syria, or we’ll fight in the streets of our nation.”

Gaetz’s argument for withdrawal was hardly ideal, but his response to Zinke was apt:

“My patriotic colleague, Mr. Zinke of Montana gave up the game when he said ISIS will never be gone. So presumably the position of those holding that viewpoint is that we have to stay in Syria forever, maybe make it the 51st state.”

In the most disturbing and ominous moment of the hearing, Florida Republican Anna Polina said we need all the troops we’ve got to go up against China:

“We need to be focusing on his bigger issues like China. Make no mistake if we take China at their word, a peer to peer fight is coming, and it will require 100% of our military.”

In other words, we have to get out of all these “forever wars” to prepare for Armageddon. That sentiment was confirmed in a report in the military publication Task and Purpose headlined, “Military buying more missiles and other weapons to fight China, Russia .”

The House ultimately voted the resolution down 103 to 321, with 47 Republicans voting yes, 171 no, while 56 Democrats voted yes, 150 no, and 11 congresspersons did not vote. The Democrats’ House Progressive Caucus reportedly endorsed a yes vote, but the caucus claims 101 members, so barely more than half, at best, actually voted for the resolution.

Some resistance to some US wars is better than none, but in Congress, for now, that’s as good as it gets.

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Ann Garrison is a Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize   for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann(at)anngarrison.com. 

Featured image is from BAR

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-0-9

Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

Price: $9.40

Click here to order.

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***

Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow on Tuesday that a 12-point peace plan put forward by Beijing could be the “basis” for a peaceful settlement in Ukraine.

“We believe in many of the points on the peace plan put forward by China,” Putin said. Beijing’s proposal calls for the cessation of hostilities and for both sides to resume peace talks.

Putin expressed doubt that Kyiv or its Western backers were ready for negotiations, saying the Chinese proposal could be used as a foundation when “the West and in Kyiv are ready for it.” The Biden administration has come out strongly against China’s mediation efforts, as the White House has said it’s against calls for a ceasefire.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is open to discussing the issues with China, and Xi is expected to call him following his trip to Moscow, which wraps up on Wednesday. Zelensky said Tuesday that he has asked Beijing for talks on a “peace formula” for Ukraine.

Zelensky has put forward his own peace proposal, which calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops and for war crimes tribunals.

“We offered China to become a partner in the implementation of the peace formula. We passed over our formula across all channels. We invite you to dialogue. We are waiting for your answer,” Zelensky said.

After holding hours of talks on Tuesday, Putin and Xi put out a joint statement that said China believes Russia is ready to restart peace talks.

“The Chinese side positively assesses the willingness of the Russian side to make efforts to restart peace talks as soon as possible,” the statement said.

The statement also said that Russia welcomes “China’s readiness to play a positive role in a political-diplomatic settlement of the Ukrainian crisis and the constructive ideas set forth in the document drawn up by the Chinese side.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday doubled down on the Biden administration’s opposition to a ceasefire, saying the world must “not be fooled” by China’s efforts. The position follows a pattern of the US discouraging peace talks throughout the war.

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

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Tensions are dramatically escalating on the Korean Peninsula, after a series of missile tests from Pyongyang in 2022. The United States and South Korea have responded to these threats with military maneuvers of their own, raising the stakes even further. But this is a recipe for disaster: To avoid an all-out war on the Korean Peninsula, the United States must stop the muscle-flexing, commit to diplomacy instead, and adopt a peace-first strategy.

North Korea’s progress in weapons development should come as no surprise; in 2021, Kim Jong-un announced that North Korea would expand its nuclear weapon capabilities in order to deter what they perceive as hostility and aggression from the United States. This perception by Pyongyang is a direct result of the Biden administration’s continuation of decades of failed policies—consisting of isolation, sanctions, and military threats—all these dotted with occasional flurries of diplomacy. To have even a chance of halting the expansion of North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and preventing a conflict that crosses the nuclear threshold, the United States must address the root cause of tensions: the unresolved Korean War.

An enduring conflict. While an armistice signed in 1953 halted fighting between the United States and North Korea, the Korean War never legally ended; neither country signed a formal peace agreement. This 70-year state of war has ingrained mutual distrust between North Korea and the United States—which, since North Korea developed nuclear weapons, has cemented even further.

Since then, time and time again, the United States has insisted on North Korea’s unilateral and complete denuclearization without first reducing tensions and building trust. Continuing to press North Korea to dismantle arguably its most effective deterrent without resolving its underlying contentious relationship with the United States is certain to fail: North Korea will continue to see such demand for unilateral denuclearization as a non-starter in negotiations.

For example, during the first round of the six-party talks in August 2003 (involving belligerents of the Korean War—the United States, South Korea, North Korea, and China—as well as Japan and Russia), the United States rejected North Korea’s calls for normalizing relations and a non-aggression pact. Instead, the United States demanded that North Korea completely dismantle its nuclear arsenal before providing diplomatic or other incentives. To this demand, North Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-gwan responded, “The United States wants North Korea to drop its pants and be naked and humiliated before the United States is prepared to improve relations. We are technically at war with the United States. You want us to surrender unconditionally.”

During the fifth and sixth rounds of the talks, the United States and North Korea agreed that Pyongyang would “provide a complete and correct declaration of all its nuclear programs” by end of 2007. But once the deadline arrived and the United States inquired about North Korea’s actual number of nuclear weapons, Kim Gye-gwan said, “We’re still technically at war with you. It would be inappropriate for us to discuss weapons with an enemy state.”

Demanding again North Korea’s unilateral denuclearization was also responsible for ending without a deal the 2019 talks in Hanoi between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and US President Donald Trump. North Korea had offered to dismantle all its nuclear production facilities in Yongbyon in exchange for partial sanctions relief. But, maintaining its all-or-nothing stance, the United States countered by demanding that North Korea fully dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

Former US officials who had made progress on freezing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program from 1994 to 2002 agree that security guarantees are necessary for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. Former US Secretary of Defense William Perry argued that since North Korea views its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against a possible US invasion, South Korea and the United States should address North Korea’s security concerns and normalize relations first before seeking its denuclearization. Former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Siegfried Hecker, who visited the Yongbyon nuclear site four times, also said that he believes North Korea “will not give up its weapons and weapons program until its security can be assured.”

Unsustainable status quo. Despite these calls, the Biden administration—like the three US presidential administrations before—remains entangled in the failed policy of up-front denuclearization, like when the US State Department’s Press Secretary Ned Price recently rolled back Under Secretary for Arms Control Bonnie Jenkins’ comments on pursuing an arms control and risk reduction approach to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. While the administration’s North Korea policy review released in 2021 claims to strike a balance between President Donald Trump’s “grand bargain” diplomacy and President Barack Obama’s “strategic patience” approach, in practice, both approaches maintain the status quo of maximum pressure—through sanctions and military exercises—without putting anything on the negotiating table.

The status quo in US-North Korean relations will only worsen the security of the Korean Peninsula.

Diplomacy is the only option. To truly improve the security of the Korean Peninsula, the Biden administration should trade its bold approach for a strategy of diplomacy toward North Korea. An effective diplomacy must be fourfold. First, the United States should emphasize it is willing to resume diplomacy, focusing on immediate de-escalation of tensions and restoration of communication channels. Second, it should prioritize formally ending the Korean War with a peace agreement with North Korea. Third, the Biden administration should rebuild trust by offering to lift sanctions, especially those that impact the North Korean population. Fourth, it should also take steps to reduce tensions such as scaling down or ceasing joint military exercises with South Korea, especially since joint military exercises do not deter North Korea but rather provoke a cycle of tit-for-tat provocative rhetoric and actions.

Diplomacy has been the most successful method of making progress toward denuclearization. In 1994, the Clinton administration successfully persuaded North Korea to freeze plutonium production at the Yongbyon complex in the Agreed Framework. The 2018-2019 summits between the United States and North Korea resulted in several tension-reducing measures, including the repatriation of US soldiers’ remains, reunions of Korean families separated by the war, landmine clearance in the demilitarized zone, North Korea’s self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range missile testing, and suspension by the United States of joint military exercises with South Korea. However, while past talks aimed solely at North Korea’s denuclearization, future negotiations should instead first address the root cause of the security crisis to build toward longer-lasting agreements and mutual trust.

Amid heightened tensions with other nuclear-armed powers, including Russia and China, the United States must do everything it can to diffuse the situation with North Korea through peaceful and diplomatic means. The potential for escalatory responses heightens the risk of a catastrophic war that would put millions of lives at risk of death, suffering, and displacement. Decades of pressure-based tactics have failed to make progress on North Korea’s denuclearization and only worsened global security. It’s time to try something different.

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Colleen Moore is the director for advocacy at Women Cross DMZ, a non-profit organization of women mobilizing for peace on the Korean Peninsula. Moore is a policy, advocacy, and campaign strategy professional, with expertise in progressive foreign policy and national security, particularly focusing on East Asia, peacebuilding, and nuclear disarmament. She previously held positions at Beyond the Bomb, Global Zero, Win Without War, Seeds of Peace, and East Timor and Indonesia Action Network.

Featured image: US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands at the Hanoi Summit in Vietnam on February 27, 2019. The summit ended without a deal after the United States demanded again North Korea’s unilateral denuclearization. (Credit: White House)

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***

The politicians and shills in the media who orchestrated 20 years of military debacles in the Middle East, and who seek a world dominated by U.S. power, must be held accountable for their crimes.

Two decades ago, I sabotaged my career at The New York Times. It was a conscious choice. I had spent seven years in the Middle East, four of them as the Middle East Bureau Chief. I was an Arabic speaker. I believed, like nearly all Arabists, including most of those in the State Department and the CIA, that a “preemptive” war against Iraq would be the most costly strategic blunder in American history. It would also constitute what the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the “supreme international crime.” While Arabists in official circles were muzzled, I was not. I was invited by them to speak at The State Department, The United States Military Academy at West Point and to senior Marine Corps officers scheduled to be deployed to Kuwait to prepare for the invasion.

Mine was not a popular view nor one a reporter, rather than an opinion columnist, was permitted to express publicly according to the rules laid down by the newspaper. But I had experience that gave me credibility and a platform. I had reported extensively from Iraq. I had covered numerous armed conflicts, including the first Gulf War and the Shi’ite uprising in southern Iraq where I was taken prisoner by The Iraqi Republican Guard. I easily dismantled the lunacy and lies used to promote the war, especially as I had reported on the destruction of Iraq’s chemical weapons stockpiles and facilities by the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspection teams. I had detailed knowledge of how degraded the Iraqi military had become under U.S. sanctions. Besides, even if Iraq did possess “weapons of mass destruction” that would not have been a legal justification for war.

The death threats towards me exploded when my stance became public in numerous interviews and talks I gave across the country. They were either mailed in by anonymous writers or expressed by irate callers who would daily fill up the message bank on my phone with rage-filled tirades. Right-wing talk shows, including Fox News, pilloried me, especially after I was heckled and booed off a commencement stage at Rockford College for denouncing the war. The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial attacking me. Bomb threats were called into venues where I was scheduled to speak. I became a pariah in the newsroom. Reporters and editors I had known for years would lower their heads as I passed, fearful of any career-killing contagion. I was issued a written reprimand by The New York Times to cease speaking publicly against the war. I refused. My tenure was over.

What is disturbing is not the cost to me personally. I was aware of the potential consequences. What is disturbing is that the architects of these debacles have never been held accountable and remain ensconced in power. They continue to promote permanent war, including the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, as well as a future war against China.

The politicians who lied to us — George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to name but a few — extinguished millions of lives, including thousands of American lives, and left Iraq along with Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Libya and Yemen in chaos. They exaggerated or fabricated conclusions from intelligence reports to mislead the public. The big lie is taken from the playbook of totalitarian regimes.

The cheerleaders in the media for war — Thomas Friedman, David Remnick, Richard Cohen, George Packer, William Kristol, Peter Beinart, Bill Keller, Robert Kaplan, Anne Applebaum, Nicholas Kristof, Jonathan Chait, Fareed Zakaria, David Frum, Jeffrey Goldberg, David Brooks and Michael Ignatieff — were used to amplify the lies and discredit the handful of us, including Michael Moore, Robert Scheer and Phil Donahue, who opposed the war. These courtiers were often motivated more by careerism than idealism. They did not lose their megaphones or lucrative speaking fees and book contracts once the lies were exposed, as if their crazed diatribes did not matter. They served the centers of power and were rewarded for it.

Many of these same pundits are pushing further escalation of the war in Ukraine, although most know as little about Ukraine or NATO’s provocative and unnecessary expansion to the borders of Russia as they did about Iraq.

“I told myself and others that Ukraine is the most important story of our time, that everything we should care about is on the line there,” George Packer writes in The Atlantic magazine. “I believed it then, and I believe it now, but all of this talk put a nice gloss on the simple, unjustifiable desire to be there and see.”

Packer views war as a purgative, a force that will jolt a country, including the U.S., back to the core moral values he supposedly found amongst American volunteers in Ukraine.

“I didn’t know what these men thought of American politics, and I didn’t want to know,” he writes of two U.S. volunteers. “Back home we might have argued; we might have detested each other. Here, we were joined by a common belief in what the Ukrainians were trying to do and admiration for how they were doing it. Here, all the complex infighting and chronic disappointments and sheer lethargy of any democratic society, but especially ours, dissolved, and the essential things — to be free and live with dignity — became clear. It almost seemed as if the U.S. would have to be attacked or undergo some other catastrophe for Americans to remember what Ukrainians have known from the start.”

The Iraq war cost at least $3 trillion and the 20 years of warfare in the Middle East cost a total of some $8 trillion. The occupation created Shi’ite and Sunni death squads, fueled horrific sectarian violence, gangs of kidnappers, mass killings and torture. It gave rise to al-Qaeda cells and spawned ISIS which at one point controlled a third of Iraq and Syria. ISIS carried out rape, enslavement and mass executions of Iraqi ethnic and religious minorities such as the Yazidis. It persecuted Chaldean Catholics and other Christians. This mayhem was accompanied by an orgy of killing by U.S. occupation forces, such as as the gang rape and murder of Abeer al-Janabi, a 14-year-old girl and her family by members of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne. The U.S. routinely engaged in the torture and execution of detained civilians, including at Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca.

There is no accurate count of lives lost, estimates in Iraq alone range from hundreds of thousands to over a million. Some 7,000 U.S. service members died in our post 9/11 wars, with over 30,000 later committing suicide, according to Brown University’s Costs of War project.

Yes, Saddam Hussein was brutal and murderous, but in terms of a body count, we far outstripped his killings, including his genocidal campaigns against the Kurds. We destroyed Iraq as a unified country, devastated its modern infrastructure, wiped out its thriving and educated middle class, gave birth to rogue militias and installed a kleptocracy that uses the country’s oil revenues to enrich itself. Ordinary Iraqis are impoverished. Hundreds of Iraqis protesting in the streets against the kleptocracy have been gunned down by police. There are frequent power outages. The Shi’ite majority, closely allied with Iran, dominates the country.

The occupation of Iraq, beginning 20 years ago today, turned the Muslim world and the Global South against us. The enduring images we left behind from two decades of war include President Bush standing under a “Mission Accomplished” banner onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier barely one month after he invaded Iraq, the bodies of Iraqis in Fallujah that were burned with white phosphorus and the photos of torture by U.S. soldiers.

The U.S. is desperately attempting to use Ukraine to repair its image. But the rank hypocrisy of calling for “a rules-based international order” to justify the $113 billion in arms and other aid that the U.S. has committed to send to Ukraine, won’t work. It ignores what we did. We might forget, but the victims do not. The only redemptive path is charging Bush, Cheney and the other architects of the wars in the Middle East, including Joe Biden, as war criminals in the International Criminal Court. Haul Russian President Vladimir Putin off to The Hague, but only if Bush is in the cell next to him.

Many of the apologists for the war in Iraq seek to justify their support by arguing that “mistakes” were made, that if, for example, the Iraqi civil service and army were not disbanded after the U.S. invaded, the occupation would have worked. They insist that our intentions were honorable. They ignore the hubris and lies that led to the war, the misguided belief that the U.S. could be the sole major power in a unipolar world. They ignore the massive military expenditures spent annually to achieve this fantasy. They ignore that the war in Iraq was only an episode in this demented quest.

A national reckoning with the military fiascos in the Middle East would expose the self-delusion of the ruling class. But this reckoning is not taking place. We are trying to wish the nightmares we perpetuated in the Middle East away, burying them in a collective amnesia. “World War III Begins With Forgetting,” warns Stephen Wertheim.

The celebration of our national “virtue” by pumping weapons into Ukraine, by sustaining at least 750 military bases in more than 70 countries and by expanding our naval presence in the South China Sea, is meant to fuel this dream of global dominance.

What the mandarins in Washington fail to grasp is that most of the globe does not believe the lie of American benevolence or support its justifications for U.S. interventions. China and Russia, rather than passively accepting U.S. hegemony, are building up their militaries and strategic alliances. China, last week, brokered an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to re-establish relations after seven years of hostility, something once expected of U.S. diplomats. The rising influence of China creates a self-fulfilling prophecy for those who call for war with Russia and China, one that will have consequences far more catastrophic than those in the Middle East.

There is a national weariness with permanent war, especially with inflation ravaging family incomes and 57 percent of Americans unable to afford a $1,000 emergency expense. The Democratic Party and the establishment wing of the Republican Party, who peddled the lies about Iraq, are war parties. Donald Trump’s call to end the war in Ukraine, like his lambasting of the war in Iraq as the “worst decision” in American history, are attractive political stances to Americans struggling to stay afloat. The working poor, even those whose options for education and employment are limited, are no longer as inclined to fill the ranks. They have far more pressing concerns than a unipolar world or war with Russia or China. The isolationism of the far right is a potent political weapon.

The pimps of war, leaping from fiasco to fiasco, cling to the chimera of U.S. global supremacy. The dance macabre will not stop until we publicly hold them accountable for their crimes, ask those we have wronged for forgiveness and give up our lust for uncontested global power. The day of reckoning, vital if we are to protect what is left of our anemic democracy and curb the appetites of the war machine, will only come when we build mass anti-war organizations that demand an end to the imperial folly threatening to extinguish life on the planet.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.

Featured image: We’re Number One – by Mr. Fish

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***

In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful speech. It would become known as his “Cross of Iron” address. In it, Ike warned of the cost humanity would pay if Cold War competition led to a world dominated by wars and weaponry that couldn’t be reined in. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Ike extended an olive branch to the new leaders of that empire. He sought, he said, to put America and the world on a “highway to peace.” It was, of course, never to be, as this country’s emergent military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC) chose instead to build a militarized (and highly profitable) highway to hell.

Image: President Dwight D. Eisenhower (National Archives)

Eight years later, in his famous farewell address, a frustrated and alarmed president called out “the military-industrial complex,” prophetically warning of its anti-democratic nature and the disastrous rise of misplaced power that it represented. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, fully engaged in corralling, containing, and constraining it, he concluded, could save democracy and bolster peaceful methods and goals.

The MICC’s response was, of course, to ignore his warning, while waging a savage war on communism in the name of containing it. In the process, atrocious conflicts would be launched in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as the contagion of war spread. Threatened with the possibility of peace in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the MICC bided its time with operations in Iraq (Desert Storm), Bosnia, and elsewhere, along with the expansion of NATO, until it could launch an unconstrained Global War on Terror in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.  Those “good times” (filled with lost wars) lasted until 2021 and the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Not to be deterred by the fizzling of the nightmarish war on terror, the MICC seized on a “new cold war” with China and Russia, which only surged when, in 2022, Vladimir Putin so disastrously invaded Ukraine (as the U.S. had once invaded Afghanistan and Iraq). Yet again, Americans were told that they faced implacable foes that could only be met with overwhelming military power and, of course, the funding that went with it — again in the name of deterrence and containment.

In a way, in 1953 and later in 1961, Ike, too, had been urging Americans to launch a war of containment, only against an internal foe: what he then labeled for the first time “the military-industrial complex.” For various reasons, we failed to heed his warnings. As a result, over the last 70 years, it has grown to dominate the federal government as well as American culture in a myriad of ways. Leaving aside funding where it’s beyond dominant, try movies, TV shows, video games, education, sports, you name it. Today, the MICC is remarkably uncontained. Ike’s words weren’t enough and, sadly, his actions too often conflicted with his vision (as in the CIA’s involvement in a coup in Iran in 1953). So, his worst nightmare did indeed come to pass. In 2023, along with much of the world, America does indeed hang from a cross of iron, hovering closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Updating Ike’s Cross of Iron Speech for Today

Perhaps the most quoted passage in that 1953 speech addressed the true cost of militarism, with Ike putting it in homespun, easily grasped, terms. He started by saying, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” (An aside: Can you imagine Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or any other recent president challenging Pentagon spending and militarism so brazenly?)

Ike then added:

“This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

He concluded with a harrowing image: “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Ike’s cost breakdown of guns versus butter, weapons versus civilian goods, got me thinking recently: What would it look like if he could give that speech today? Are we getting more bang for the military megabucks we spend, or less?  How much are Americans sacrificing to their wasteful and wanton god of war?

Let’s take a closer look. A conservative cost estimate for one of the Air Force’s new “heavy” strategic nuclear bombers, the B-21 Raider, is $750 million. A conservative estimate for a single new fighter plane, in this case the F-35 Lightning II, is $100 million. A single Navy destroyer, a Zumwalt-class ship, will be anywhere from $4 to $8 billion, but let’s just stick with the lower figure. Using those weapons, and some quick Internet sleuthing, here’s how Ike’s passage might read if he stood before us now:

“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick-veneer and reinforced concrete school in 75 cities.  It is five electric power plants, each serving a town with 60,000 inhabitants. It is five fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 150 miles of pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with more than 12 million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 64,000 people.”

(Quick and dirty figures for the calculations above: $10 million per elementary school; $150 million per power plant [$5,000/kilowatt for 30,000 homes]; $150 million per hospital; $5 million per new mile of road; $8 per bushel of wheat; $250,000 per home for four people.)

Grim stats indeed! Admittedly, those are just ballpark figures, but taken together they show that the tradeoff between guns and butter — bombers and jet fighters on the one hand, schools and hospitals on the other — is considerably worse now than in Ike’s day. Yet Congress doesn’t seem to care, as Pentagon budgets continue to soar irrespective of huge cost overruns and failed audits (five in a row!), not to speak of failed wars.

Without irony, today’s MICC speaks of “investing” in weapons, yet, unlike Ike in 1953, today’s generals, the CEOs of the major weapons-making corporations, and members of Congress never bring up the lost opportunity costs of such “investments.” Imagine the better schools and hospitals this country could have today, the improved public transportation, more affordable housing, even bushels of wheat, for the cost of those prodigal weapons and the complex that goes with them. And perish the thought of acknowledging in any significant way how so many of those “investments” have failed spectacularly, including the Zumwalt-class destroyers and the Navy’s Freedom-class littoral combat ships that came to be known in the Pentagon as “little crappy ships.”

Speaking of wasteful warships, Ike was hardly the first person to notice how much they cost or what can be sacrificed in building them. In his prescient book The War in the Air, first published in 1907, H.G. Wells, the famed author who had envisioned an alien invasion of Earth in The War of the Worlds, denounced his own epoch’s obsession with ironclad battleships in a passage that eerily anticipated Ike’s powerful critique:

The cost of those battleships, Wells wrote, must be measured by:

“The lives of countless men… spent in their service, the splendid genius and patience of thousands of engineers and inventors, wealth and material beyond estimating; to their account we must put stunted and starved lives on land, millions of children sent to toil unduly, innumerable opportunities of fine living undeveloped and lost. Money had to be found for them at any cost—that was the law of a nation’s existence during that strange time.  Surely they were the weirdest, most destructive and wasteful megatheria in the whole history of mechanical invention.”

Little could he imagine our own era’s “wasteful megatheria.” These days, substitute nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, aircraft carriers, and similar “modern” weapons for the ironclads of his era and the sentiment rings at least as true as it did then. (Interestingly, all those highly touted ironclads did nothing to avert the disaster of World War I and had little impact on its murderous course or ponderous duration.)

Returning to 1953, Eisenhower didn’t mince words about what the world faced if the iron cross mentality won out: at worst, nuclear war; at best, “a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system, or the Soviet system, or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.”

Ike’s worst-case scenario grows ever more likely today. Recently, Russia suspended the START treaty, the final nuclear deal still in operation, that oversaw reductions in strategic nuclear weapons.  Instead of reductions, Russia, China, and the United States are now pursuing staggering “modernization” programs for their nuclear arsenals, an effort that may cost the American taxpayer nearly $2 trillion over the coming decades (though even such a huge sum matters little if most of us are dead from nuclear war).

In any case, the United States in 2023 clearly reflects Ike’s “cross of iron” scenario. It’s a country that’s become thoroughly militarized and so is slowly wasting away, marked increasingly by fear, deprivation, and unhappiness.

It’s Never Too Late to Change Course

Only Americans, Ike once said, can truly hurt America.  Meaning, to put the matter in a more positive context, only we can truly help save America. A vital first step is to put the word “peace” back in our national vocabulary.

“The peace we seek,” Ike explained 70 years ago, “founded upon a decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.”

The real needs of humanity haven’t changed since Ike’s time. Whether in 1953 or 2023, more guns won’t serve the cause of peace. They won’t provide succor. They’ll only stunt and starve us, to echo the words of H.G. Wells, while imperiling the lives and futures of our children.

This is no way of life at all, as Ike certainly would have noted, were he alive today.

Which is why the federal budget proposal released by President Biden for 2024 was both so painfully predictable and so immensely disappointing. Calamitously so. Biden’s proposal once again boosts spending on weaponry and war in a Pentagon budget now pegged at $886 billion. It will include yet more spending on nuclear weapons and envisions only further perpetual tensions with “near-peer” rivals China and Russia.

This past year, Congress added $45 billion more to that budget than even the president and the Pentagon requested, putting this country’s 2023 Pentagon budget at $858 billion. Clearly, a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget is in our collective future, perhaps as early as 2027. Perish the thought of how high it could soar, should the U.S. find itself in a shooting war with China or Russia (as the recent Russian downing of a U.S. drone in the Black Sea brought to mind).  And if that war were to go nuclear…

The Pentagon’s soaring war budget broadcast a clear and shocking message to the world. In America’s creed, blessed are the warmakers and those martyrs crucified on its cross of iron.

This was hardly the message Ike sought to convey to the world 70 years ago this April. Yet it’s the message the MICC conveys with its grossly inflated military budgets and endless saber-rattling.

Yet one thing remains true today: it’s never too late to change course, to order an “about-face.” Sadly, lacking the wisdom of Dwight D. Eisenhower, such an order won’t come from Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or any other major candidate for president in 2024. It would have to come from us, collectively. It’s time to wise up, America. Together, it’s time to find an exit ramp from the highway to hell that we’ve been on since 1953 and look for the on-ramp to Ike’s highway to peace.

And once we’re on it, let’s push the pedal to the metal and never look back.

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William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal substack is Bracing Views.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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

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***

Introduction to the topic

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find one’s way through the jungle of lies and half-truths. More and more contemporaries therefore do not want to hear anything more from politicians. Personally, the alternative media keep me “afloat” because they still “pay tribute to the truth” due to their independence from government.

But since we cannot assume that “free spirits” will teach us each what is truth and what is a lie, we should be able to distinguish between them ourselves. We must learn to think for ourselves (Kant). Hence the attempt at a psychological approach to the subject. Also worth mentioning is Dr Garcia’s article “Lies, damned lies and elephants” (1).

The 20th anniversary of the start of the war of aggression against Iraq by the USA, Great Britain and a “coalition of the willing” in violation of international law is certainly an appropriate occasion to raise awareness about the destructive effects of political lies and manipulation.

However, the following will not only deal with violence as the ultima ratio of politics, but more generally with the destructive effects of lies and manipulation on the human soul and human relationships, and with truth as an “antidote”.

The information and cultural values that parents and educators pass on to the child on a daily basis are of great importance for building trust in fellow human beings.

The image of man of the Christian occidental culture says that man – even the small child – carries bad qualities within himself. The educators approach the child with this information – whether consciously or unconsciously. They always suspect ill will in the child and are therefore often insincere, strict and violent. This makes the child afraid of the other person.

When the child learns to be afraid, this permeates all his actions, how he moves and gives himself in the community. The emotional reaction of fear then becomes a component of his character, which he carries into adulthood more or less consciously into every interpersonal relationship.

Trust in fellow human beings – the foundation of a personality – also develops in the relationship with the persons of childhood. Since the human being is the product of the experiences and impressions that parents, teachers and educators impart to him or her from earliest childhood, what kind of information and what culturally prevailing values they pass on to the child are decisive.

If the child is unsettled and deceived by untruthful information and/or confusing lies, it will distance itself from fellow human beings. Trust in the other person can only develop if he or she can rely on his or her honesty.

Dear readers, allow me to draw your attention in this context to the unfavourable effects of religious education on the child’s soul: it is about non-existent spirits, devils and angels.

No sooner does the child show its first spiritual impulses and learn to speak than it is “taken into care” by the parents and the church. A few years later, when the consciousness of the “I” is formed, the god and devil of the respective religion already intervene. The child’s belief in demons is crystallised in the ideas of the devil and hell. According to psychiatrists, anxiety neuroses and severe mental disorders are sometimes the result.

“Psychological operations” in the overall social space

A lie is a statement that the liar knows or suspects to be untrue. He utters it with the intention that the receiver will believe it. Manipulating another person is also a deception. It is used to gain an advantage and means the deliberate and covert influence or control of the experience and behaviour of individuals or groups, which is intended to remain hidden from them.

As early as 500 years ago, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote “Il Principe”, one of the first works of modern political philosophy. On this, the Swiss psychologist Dr Barben writes:

“For Machiavelli, power and fame meant everything, goodness and humanity meant nothing. He praised as powerful and successful those despots ‘who were not scrupulous about loyalty and knew how to ensnare people by cunning’. A ruler, he wrote, must ‘display mildness, loyalty, humanity, honesty and piety’, but if necessary brutally ‘turn these qualities into their opposite’. Nor should he ‘shrink from evil’ and must be able to ‘twist and turn according to the wind'” (2).

But these ancient and crude methods of the political manipulator Machiavelli were to disappear with time. That is why American “spin-doctors” used soft power after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A “spin doctor” is a communications expert who works to ensure that, for example, the public understands a statement or decision in a way that is advantageous to the client or politician (3).

This form of propaganda was more discreet, subtle and “pleasing” compared to the communist methods. Joseph S. Ney, US government advisor and Harvard professor described it as “an excellent tool for getting the world to ‘voluntarily’ do what America wanted” (4). With soft power, it was possible to shape public opinion in a way that mere propaganda never could. But that was not enough!

In order to improve “communication”, that is, to “optimise” the opinion of world public opinion especially in times of war, the “Psy-Op” group of the US Army was strengthened by tens of thousands of personnel and cooperation with Hollywood studios was intensified. “Psy-Op” is to be called “psychological operation” instead of the formerly ugly term “psychological warfare”. However, Larry Dietz, a senior US military officer specialising in psychological warfare, defined “PsyOp” thus:

“Psychological operations are an additional weapon system to accomplish a mission ordered by a military commander. (…). The aim of PsyOp is to influence the behaviour (of targets) in the sense of the military command.” (5) See also the article by Alan Lash: “Psyops are not new, just more dangerous” (6).

Drawing again on Leo Tolstoy’s (1828-1910) famous quote about the character of rulers, and learning that politicians are “the most mendacious of men”, one wonders why we citizens hand over power to them so lightly:

“One could still justify the subordination of an entire people to a few people if those in power were the best people; but that is not the case, has never been the case and can never be the case. The worst, most insignificant, most cruel, most immoral and especially the most mendacious people often rule. And that this is so is no accident.” (7)

The question of war is also a general cultural question, which reminds us that our entire culture is permeated by the principle of violence and therefore also falls again and again into the error of being able to solve national problems by the method of violence, that is, war. Everywhere, power is placed above human solidarity and a sense of community.

Psychological Operation ‘Killer Games’: harmless ‘entertainment violence’?

Another target group of ‘PsyOp’ are children and adolescents – a particularly sinister chapter. On this, Dr Barben writes:

“To increase kill rates in military operations, the Pentagon uses simulators on which routine killing is practised. These are used to train soldiers to overcome their natural inhibition to kill. They practise killing as many people as possible quickly and automatically. A few years ago, the Pentagon signed contracts with Hollywood. The film and entertainment industry gave the military killing simulators an ‘attractive’ design and marketed them as ‘children’s games’ “. (8)

In reality, these ‘games’ have exactly the same effect on children and young people as they do on soldiers. According to the US military psychologist Dave Grossman, they get people used to killing and brutalise their feelings (9).

On the subject of “killer games”, the author, together with recognised university professors, military scientists, youth psychiatrists, home directors and affected high school students, wrote two handouts for parents and teachers: “Da spiel ich nicht mit!” (I’m not playing!) (10) and “Game OVER!” (11). Both deal with the effects of this so-called “entertainment violence” in television, video and computer games – and what can be done about it.

When will the human conscience finally make itself heard?

The most effective antidote to lies and manipulation is the truth respectively its dissemination. But we cannot yet say when the human conscience, whose warning cry has rung through the centuries, will finally make itself heard in order to expose the terrible error of imperiousness.

Nor do we know when the conscience of humanity will proclaim the so-called “absolute truth” that human beings belong together and are under the law to work together and join hands. There is no doubt, however, that the existence of the human race will depend on people professing all-human solidarity to a far greater extent than they have done so far.

To this day, discord is sown among those who would depend on uniting against the forces of nature and ensuring a tolerable existence for all people on this earth, and they are also lied to “through their teeth”.

Thus, the prerogative of the rulers and the delusion of the ruled make possible time and again relapses into the warlike mentality that causes unspeakable suffering in the lives of individuals and peoples alike. At the same time, there is shameless talk of the “ethos of war”, in which the noblest virtues of man such as courage and renunciation, loyalty to duty and willingness to make sacrifices would unfold.

Enlightenment and education as the most important measures against lies, manipulation and war.

History is a work of man. If you want to change this world, you have to change man. Accordingly, enlightenment and education are the most promising measures that can be taken against war, manipulation and lies.

Of course, parents and educators should urge children to always stick to the truth. And if one does not yet know it, one should invite the other to explore it together. It is also essential that adults always set an example of honesty and truthfulness to the children.

Lies and manipulation respect neither the dignity nor the equality of human beings. They violate conscience and the commandment of brotherhood. By degrading fellow human beings to objects of manipulation, they do not respect them as equal partners.

Those who have the honest intention to inform may be mistaken, but they feel committed to the truth. He wants to communicate something true to the other person. In doing so, he does not pursue a secret purpose which he hides from the other.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educational scientist and graduate psychologist. After his university studies, he became an academic teacher in adult education. As a retiree he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. In his books and professional articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education in values as well as an education for public spirit and peace. In 2021, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad for services to Serbia.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

(1) https://www.globalresearch.ca/lies-damned-lies-elephants/5811493

(2) Barben, Judith (2009). Spin doctors in the Federal Parliament. CH-5401 Baden

(3) https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/lexika/politiklexikon/296497/spin-doctor/

(4) Barben, Judith (2009). Spin doctors in the Federal Parliament. CH-5401 Baden, p. 37

(5) op. cit., p. 40

(6) https://www.globalresearch.ca/psyops-not-new-just-more-dangerous/5812602

(7) Tolstoy, Leo N. (1968). Speech against war. Frankfurt a. M., p. 74

(8) Barben, Judith (2009). Spin doctors in the Federal Parliament. CH-5401 Baden, p. 41f.

(9) op. cit., p. 42

(10) Hänsel, Rudolf and Renate (eds.) (2005). I won’t play along! Effects of “entertainment violence” in television, video and computer games – and what to do about it. Donauwörth

(11) Hänsel, Rudolf (2011). GAME OVER! How killer games manipulate our youth. Berlin

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***

A 22 year old University of Georgia student, Liza Burke, was hospitalized after experiencing a brain hemorrhage while on spring break in Mexico, according to those who know her. (click here)

Liza Burke, a UGA senior, was in Cabo San Lucas with a “big group of friends” for her “last spring break” when, on March 10, she complained of a headache at breakfast.

“A few hours later, her friends called the doctor because they couldn’t wake her. She was immediately rushed to the hospital where she was diagnosed with Arteriovenous malformation (AVM) which cause her brain to hemorrhage”

The Mayo Clinic describes AVM as “a tangle of blood vessels that irregularly connects arteries and veins, disrupting blood flow and oxygen circulation.”

Burke underwent emergency surgery to remove part of her skull and was placed on life support.

With the help of the more than $138,000 raised, she was placed on a medical flight on Tuesday and returned to the US, where she was transported to Jacksonville, Florida, where her mother lives, and is being treated at the Mayo Clinic.

South Korea reports brain AVM rupture & bleed in a 28 yo woman post 1st Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine dose

I’ve seen many people comment that Liza Burke’s brain bleed couldn’t possibly be caused by COVID-19 vaccines, since AVMs are congenital malformations. But this is an error in not understanding the interactions between jabs and AVMs.

In Feb.2022, South Korean doctors reported a case of a 28 yo woman who had her 1st Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose and 4 days later developed severe headaches, with a CT showing a brain bleed and an angiogram showing an AVM (click here).

She underwent surgical treatment for AVM nidus removal with hematoma evacuation.

The Korean authors note: “As of the publication of this paper, 5 Japanese individuals died of brain bleed post Pfizer mRNA vaccination, 4 of them women.” The authors express concerns about this.

As for the mechanism of how COVID-19 vaccines can damage AVMs and cause them to bleed:

“enhanced systemic inflammation is believed to be the pathogenic mechanism directly or indirectly related to abnormal vessel injury caused by the vaccine. Direct endothelial damage induced by the COVID-19 vaccine can lead to the development of vasculitis, whereas inflammation and extracellular matrix remodeling following vaccination may result in AVM growth and rupture.”

“Recruitment of neutrophils and macrophages to the site of injury can increase the concentrations of leukocyte-derived metalloproteinases, which can damage the vessel walls of AVMs and lead to their rupture”

In short, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines cause inflammation and damage of blood vessels, including congenital AVMs, which can lead to their rupture and bleeding.

My take on brain aneurysms vs AVMs

I just published a substack article about COVID-19 mRNA vaccines damaging blood vessel walls which leads to the formation of aneurysms that can be fatal when they rupture. Women are disproportionately dying from ruptured aneurysms. (click here)

AVM is a weak spot in the blood vessels that you’re born with. If COVID-19 mRNA vaccines can damage blood vessel walls anywhere in the body, they can also damage AVMs. That weak spot, once inflamed, is then at risk for rupture and bleeding.

The underlying mechanism of COVID-19 vaccine damage is the same, whether it is an aneurysm or AVM.

Interestingly, the US VAERS Database contains numerous cases of AVMs bleeding following Pfizer or Moderna COVID-19 mRNA vaccination. (click here)

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

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As the Empire of Lies celebrates the International Criminal Court issuing an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, let’s revisit who the ICC really works for.

Watch war criminal John Bolton threaten to arrest ICC judges and go after their finances if they or any organization or company assist the ICC in taking any action against American war criminals:

pic.twitter.com/qs5j6cb0c9

— #malingu06 (@malingu06) March 18, 2023

I asked ChatGPT about the war crimes of American leaders and the following is what it returned…

Henry Kissinger 

Henry Kissinger, a former U.S. Secretary of State, has been accused of being involved in several war crimes during his time in office. Here are some of the main allegations against him:

1. The bombing of Cambodia: Kissinger played a key role in the secret bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, which led to the deaths of thousands of civilians. The bombing was carried out without the knowledge or approval of Congress or the American public.
2. Chilean coup and Operation Condor: Kissinger supported the 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the democratically-elected government of President Salvador Allende and led to the establishment of a military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet. Kissinger also allegedly played a role in the creation of Operation Condor, a coordinated campaign of political repression and state terror carried out by several South American military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s.
3. East Timor invasion: Kissinger gave tacit approval to the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, which led to the deaths of up to 200,000 people. The invasion was widely condemned by the international community as a violation of international law.
4. Assassination plots: Kissinger has been accused of involvement in several assassination plots against foreign leaders, including Chilean General Rene Schneider and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Preparing for a visit to paedo island.

Bill Clinton 

NATO and Bill Clinton have been accused of various war crimes during the conflict in the Balkans in the 1990s. Here are some of the main allegations:

1. The bombing of civilian targets: NATO carried out a bombing campaign against Serbia and Montenegro in 1999, which included the targeting of civilian infrastructure such as bridges, power plants, and factories. The bombing led to significant civilian casualties and displacement.
2. Depleted uranium weapons: NATO forces used depleted uranium weapons during the conflict, which can cause long-term health problems and environmental damage.
3. Failure to prevent ethnic cleansing: Some critics have argued that NATO and Clinton did not do enough to prevent ethnic cleansing and other atrocities committed by Serb forces in Bosnia and Kosovo.
4. Violation of international law: Some legal experts and human rights groups have argued that the NATO bombing campaign violated international law, particularly with respect to the principles of proportionality and distinction between civilian and military targets.

Bill Clinton, as the President of the United States, oversaw the implementation of economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s. The sanctions restricted Iraq’s ability to import goods and conduct international trade, leading to shortages of food, medicine, and other essential supplies.

Some estimates suggest that the sanctions contributed to the deaths of half a million Iraqi civilians, including many children. The sanctions were lifted in 2003, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Dick Cheney

There are a number of allegations and criticisms regarding Dick Cheney’s actions as Vice President of the United States during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of the most significant accusations include his role in:

1. Promoting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was based on faulty intelligence and led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians and US military personnel.
2. Authorizing the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, that are widely considered to be torture and violate international law.
3. Ignoring or condoning human rights abuses committed by US military personnel and contractors, such as the abuse and torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
4. Advocating for expanded executive powers and limiting congressional oversight in matters of national security, which some critics argue undermined democratic norms and principles.

While Cheney has defended his actions and argued that they were necessary to protect US national security, his record is controversial and has been subject to significant criticism from human rights groups, legal scholars, and others.

There is evidence to suggest that DU contamination in Iraq has had negative health effects on the civilian population. Studies have shown that DU exposure can lead to long-term health problems, including cancer, birth defects, and other illnesses. A 2013 report by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that DU contamination was present in the soil and water near bombing sites in Iraq and that exposure to DU was a potential health risk for local populations.

There is evidence to suggest that cancer rates in Fallujah, Iraq increased significantly after the US military used depleted uranium (DU) during the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A 2010 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that the rate of leukemia in Fallujah was 38 times higher than expected and the rate of lymphoma was 10 times higher than expected. Other studies have found elevated rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, and other illnesses in the region.

George W. Bush

• The invasion of Iraq: Bush was the key architect of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was launched on the pretext of eliminating weapons of mass destruction. However, it was later revealed that there were no such weapons in Iraq, and the war was widely criticized as a mistake. The war resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and many argue that it was a violation of international law.
• Use of torture: Bush’s administration was accused of authorizing the use of torture against suspected terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and stress positions were reportedly used on detainees, which many argue constitutes a violation of international law.
• Guantanamo Bay detention center: Bush authorized the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, where suspected terrorists were held without trial and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques. Many have criticized the detention center as a violation of due process and human rights.
• Targeted killings: Bush’s administration authorized targeted killings of suspected terrorists, including the use of drone strikes in countries such as Pakistan and Yemen. Critics argue that such killings violate international law and raise serious questions about due process and accountability.

While there is ongoing debate and disagreement over the legality and morality of George W. Bush’s actions during his time in office, many human rights organizations and legal experts have accused him of committing war crimes and violating international law.

Barrack Obama

There is a lot of debate and controversy over the actions of former President Barack Obama during his time in office, particularly in relation to his use of drone strikes and his handling of conflicts in countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Some have accused him of committing war crimes, while others argue that his actions were justified in the context of the global war on terror.

Some of the key criticisms and accusations against Barack Obama include:

• Use of drone strikes: Obama significantly escalated the use of drone strikes in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, and authorized the targeted killings of suspected terrorists without trial. Critics argue that such strikes violate international law and raise serious questions about due process and accountability.
• Intervention in Libya: Obama authorized a military intervention in Libya in 2011, which was aimed at removing dictator Muammar Gaddafi from power. The intervention has been criticized as a violation of international law, and for contributing to the ongoing conflict and instability in the region.
• Involvement in Syria: Obama authorized support for rebels fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and also launched airstrikes against ISIS targets in the country. The conflict has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and has been criticized as a violation of international law.
• Continuation of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: Despite campaigning on a promise to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama authorized the continuation of both conflicts during his time in office. The wars have been criticized for their impact on civilians and for contributing to ongoing instability in the region.

While there is ongoing debate and disagreement over the legality and morality of Barack Obama’s actions during his time in office, many human rights organizations and legal experts have accused him of committing war crimes and violating international law.

The conflicts in countries such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, including both combatants and civilians. Many of these deaths were caused by a variety of actors, including government forces, rebel groups, and terrorist organizations.

The use of drone strikes, in particular, has been criticized for causing significant civilian casualties. Estimates of civilian deaths resulting from U.S. drone strikes vary widely, with some sources suggesting that the number of civilians killed may be as high as several thousand. However, precise figures are difficult to obtain due to the secrecy surrounding the U.S. drone program and the difficulty of determining whether those killed in strikes were combatants or civilians.

Hillary Clinton

As Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton played a key role in the U.S. intervention in Libya in 2011. The intervention was aimed at supporting the Libyan rebels who were fighting to overthrow long-time dictator Muammar Gaddafi. The conflict lasted for several months and resulted in a significant number of casualties.

Estimates of the number of people killed during the Libyan civil war vary widely, but some sources suggest that the total number of casualties may have been in the tens of thousands. The exact number of deaths is difficult to determine, as many of the deaths were the result of fighting between various armed groups, as well as airstrikes carried out by NATO forces.

Since the overthrow of Gaddafi, Libya has struggled to establish a stable and functional government. The country has been plagued by ongoing violence and instability, with various armed groups vying for power and control of key territories. The lack of a strong central government has also contributed to the rise of extremist groups such as ISIS.

Overall, the U.S. intervention in Libya has been criticized for contributing to the ongoing conflict and instability in the country.

There have been reports of slave markets operating in Libya since the intervention in 2011. These reports have been widely condemned by international organizations and human rights groups.

The ongoing conflict and instability in Libya have created a situation where human trafficking and the exploitation of vulnerable individuals have become major problems. Reports suggest that many of the people who are being sold in these slave markets are migrants and refugees who are attempting to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe.

The situation in Libya has been described as a humanitarian crisis, with many people being subjected to forced labor, sexual exploitation, and other forms of abuse.

Joe Biden

As Vice President and President, Joe Biden has been involved in a number of U.S. military interventions and foreign policy decisions that have been criticized for their human rights implications. Here are a few examples:

1. Iraq War: As a Senator, Joe Biden voted in favor of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, which authorized the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The war has been widely criticized for its high civilian death toll and the destabilizing impact it had on the region.
2. Drone strikes: As Vice President, Biden played a key role in the Obama administration’s drone program, which authorized targeted killings of suspected terrorists in countries such as Yemen and Pakistan. The program has been criticized for causing civilian casualties and violating international law.
3. Saudi Arabia: Biden has been criticized for his administration’s close relationship with Saudi Arabia, despite the country’s human rights abuses and involvement in the conflict in Yemen.
4. Immigration policy: Biden’s immigration policies, including the continued use of detention centers and deportations, have been criticized for their treatment of immigrants and asylum seekers.
5. Afghanistan: Biden’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan has been criticized for its handling and potential impact on the country’s stability and human rights situation.

Biden’s economic sanctions on Syria and Yemen have contributed to the ongoing humanitarian crises in both countries. In Yemen, the sanctions have contributed to the country’s ongoing civil war, which has resulted in widespread famine, disease, and displacement. Yemen is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with an estimated 80% of the population in need of humanitarian assistance.

The sanctions have also had a devastating impact on Syria’s economy, exacerbating the country’s humanitarian crisis. According to a report by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the sanctions have contributed to a decline in living standards and increased poverty, particularly for vulnerable populations such as women and children.

In both Yemen and Syria, the sanctions have made it difficult for humanitarian aid to reach those in need, further worsening the humanitarian situation. The international community has called for an end to the sanctions and increased support for humanitarian efforts in both countries.

ChatGPT (owned by Microsoft) says Epstein did kill himself in prison.

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***

In 2003, March was different. Baghdad seemed almost empty, burdened with worries and sadness. The successive dust storms of spring had clothed it with a heavy mask that hid the feelings of exhaustion and futility.

I was a reporter at a local Iraqi weekly newspaper at the time of the US-led invasion. My editor asked me to cover people’s preparations for war and the upcoming battles in southern Baghdad.

Every briefing was dominated by whispered and off-the-record conversations. Officials spoke about the shortage of ammunition and the fearsome weapons and equipment Iraq’s army expected to face. But who dares to speak publicly or publish such things in the media?

On the record, leaders trumpeted imaginary victories that they would achieve over the invading forces. The moment the camera and recording devices were switched off the truth came out – everyone was terrified.

The Americans began their invasion in the south. Telephone lines with the southern governorates had been almost completely cut off, and once the US-led forces bombed the radio and television building and the backup transmitters, broadcasts ground to a halt.

Yet the news of the battles in Basra and Nasiriyah were reaching us one way or another. The fighting was fierce, but the coalition forces were advancing.

I was living in my parents’ house in southern Baghdad at the time.

Weeks before, the area had been turned into a military barracks. The Iraqi army used the primary school over the road as a base, while deploying dozens of tanks, heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns in the surrounding open lands.

On 3 April, I had to cross the street to take a taxi to the frontline, where my editor asked me to cover the battles. As was my custom in those days, whenever I left the house, I said goodbye to everything in it, not knowing if I would ever return.

I nearly didn’t. After a few steps an explosion ripped through the street and covered everything with dust. A shell or a missile had hit one of the nearby tanks. The battles had reached Baghdad.

I was terrified. This was the first time I’d ever seen a bombing in front of my eyes.

All I remember about the Iran war was the bodies of martyrs wrapped in the Iraqi flag and the wailing of their families. In the Gulf War, I remember the sounds of blasts, the sight of warplanes bombing from the air, and the massive destruction they left behind. But this time it was different. I was there, all by myself.

I had to decide whether to go back to the comfort of my family or walk on, fulfilling my duty as a reporter. Would my fear defeat me?

Suadad al-Salhy interviews security forces in Fallujah in 2018 (MEE)

This paralysis lasted just a few seconds. My parents must have heard the explosion. If I come back now, I thought, they won’t let me out again. I wanted to be part of the event; to offer something for my country, to use my beliefs and convictions. Didn’t they teach us that the homeland deserves all kinds of sacrifices? Was this not the essence of what I had studied and learned over the past 25 years? How can I expect the soldier to continue to defend me when I think about fleeing at the first sign of danger?

Yes, this was me. I adopted such silly ideas.

Anyway, I made up my mind and moved forward without looking back.

Forced to flee

At al-Rasheed, a town 15km south of Baghdad, chaos reigned. Aerial bombardment got heavier with every hour, and US troops were being air dropped here and there.

I’d been moving around the front, filling my notebook with scenes of destruction and fear. Suddenly, the streets were empty. Everyone had fled and I was alone. I had to get home before I was stranded.

When I got there, everyone was standing in the garage. It took me a few seconds to understand what was going on. My father was forcing my family to leave.

Blasts were hitting nearby in ever-shorter intervals, shaking the earth beneath us. Though our neighbourhood was full of tanks and Iraqi troops, we so far seemed to have been spared. Maybe because the soldiers there hadn’t fired a single shot at the Americans.

It was clear the bombs would come eventually.

Everyone tried to convince my father to leave with us, but he refused.

He could be very dictatorial, and once his mind was made up he refused to consider any objections.

My father was a textile merchant who had a number of shops in a major Baghdad market. I’d never seen him so exhausted and resigned.

He was caught between two fires: on one side he had to protect his family, and on the other he needed to protect his property.

Like the merchant he was, he chose to send his family to safety and stay and look after his wealth.

We wept, and told him we must all live or die together, but his stubbornness won through. Iraqis had been told that American soldiers were rapists, and the fear of that shame was too much for him to bear. Little did he know that two of my brothers, Mustafa and Murtada, hid somewhere without him knowing, so he wouldn’t be alone.

I watched it all silently. My disappointment was even greater than my fear. My brain was working differently. Maybe still is.

My mind was trying to store as many details and feelings as possible, not pausing to process what was going on around me, sucking in every event, image and conversation.

No way out

So we left, hoping to find a route south where a house had been prepared in case we needed to flee.

More than 20 of us, mostly women and children, crammed into a double-seater pickup truck. My brother Muhammad took the wheel. Barely 25 years old, he had never taken responsibility for himself, let alone his family.

It soon became clear that my father did not choose his timing well. US forces had been dropped on all roads leading south, cutting Baghdad off.

Muhammad drove frantically, trying to find a gap in the US line, probing the small, unpaved roads that led out of Baghdad through farmland of dense citrus plantations. No luck.

In the fields, Iraqi soldiers fled flaming tanks. Some took their military jackets off, trying to disguise their identity, though the cold was biting.

Muhammad ignored all the signs of danger around us and drove towards the main road between Baghdad and Babel. Bursts of American gunfire rained down on us, forcing him to turn around and drive as fast as he could.

When the gunfire stopped, so did we, anxious to count our losses. Thank God there were no injuries. It seems that the shooting was just a warning.

It was about six in the evening. We were hungry, broke, scared and without a destination.

Like most Iraqis, Muhammad was never asked whether he wanted this war. He was never able to give his permission for the experiment he was just subjected to. He was drowning in worry.

When we began to drive again, the car swayed along the dirt road very slowly, as if it was carrying all the weight of the world on its back.

A weary fleeing Iraqi soldier grabbed on, desperate to lighten the load on legs that could no longer bear him.

I offered him some water. Later we would learn his name was Hashem. He was thin, in his 20s, and his features could barely be seen behind a veneer of dirt and gunpowder.

Hashem leaned back and drank water with a strange pleasure that was out of proportion to the place and time, as if he was tasting a fine wine.

We all submitted to Hashem’s silence, respecting his strange meditation rituals.

Ten minutes later, Hashem quietly suggested that we go with him to Diyala, a province northeast of Baghdad.

“You guys need a destination, and I need a car to take me home. Why don’t we go together?” he said.

He had no idea what he was giving us. For Hashem, he was trading a service for a service. In fact, he had pulled us all out of a vortex of loss in which we had been spinning for hours, if not decades.

The plan created excitement. Especially for Muhammad, who finally relaxed and regained some of his spirit, cracking jokes and teasing the kids.

This worn-out and defeated soldier had given everyone a temporary sense of reassurance.

Lost dignity

The distance between Baghdad and the Diyala district of Hibhib, where Hashem’s village was located, is no more than 60km.

Usually it would take about an hour to get to. But we were just one of tens of thousands of vehicles ferrying panicked families away from hell.

Cars spread out across the flat lands beyond the city, covering every inch of earth like metal paving.

The eyes of the city’s fleeing residents were lifeless, lost and weary.

I can remember the silence. Thousands of vehicles squeezed together but none of them making a sound. No horns, no conversations, no grumbling, no requests. Even the children had no voice. Everyone seemed resigned to their unknown fate.

Hashem’s family received us in the best possible way: no questions. For Iraqis in difficult circumstances, even asking about their plight can be seen as an insult.

Though the children were asleep in warm beds, that night passed heavily. There were no mobile phones in Iraq at that time, and phone lines had been completely severed. We had no way of finding out what happened to my father and my brothers, and they knew nothing of us.

Finally, the sun rose. We asked Hashem to allow us to leave, wary of being a burden on this impoverished family. But they refused, and after long, sometimes angry, discussions, they suggested that we stay in a building under construction on a nearby farm.

Our new home consisted of one room made of bare bricks. There were no tiles on the floor, no electricity or water, and the windows and door were yet to be attached. But it was perfect, for a few hours at least.

After three days, Muhammed went to Baghdad to seek out our father. Instead, he returned with one of my father’s business partners and his family, who joined us in our shelter, bringing food and blankets we used to cover the damp and dirty floor.

At night, heavy cold air followed the dark. Though this corner of rural Iraq was almost silent, the echo of explosions began to greet our ears from time to time.

We didn’t have enough blankets, so divided into two groups: one who slept in the day, another at night.

I still remember the coldness of the earth, a chill that used to creep into my body whenever I tried to sleep. Whatever we put beneath us couldn’t protect us from the damp, muddy ground.

The only source of fresh water was 3km away, and our lives began to resemble those of stray dogs, lapping up wastewater and relieving ourselves in the open. At least stray dogs do not feel their lost dignity, because, after all, they know that they are dogs.

We stayed there for ten days. It might as well have been ten months, or a decade. Every day I prayed this nightmare would end. I no longer wanted anything but to go home. I no longer cared who ruled or who ruled what.

Who could possibly care anymore about such nonsense as a US invasion and Iraqi sovereignty? Nothing made sense anymore.

Learning the hard way

When we returned to Baghdad it was still on fire. Dozens of corpses lay in the streets, and American soldiers were everywhere. Those sights stirred nothing in me.

In fact, I felt nothing as each major event was followed by another one. I did not much care about the fall of Baghdad, or that the country was now in the hands of the Americans.

That’s not to say that what followed didn’t make me sad, heartbroken or angry at times. But nothing changed me in the way those ten days did.

After those nights of terror and the humiliation of displacement, I was no longer the same person. Things were no longer what they used to be. The concept of sacred and precious changed forever.

Whatever I felt about the bonds between me and places, people, ideas, institutions and power had completely altered.

I learned – the hard way, unfortunately – that human life is more valuable than anything else in the world. I also learned that life’s greatest achievement is having choices, and that no one gives you what you deserve for free.

Those early days of the Iraq war have ruled my life and determined my paths. All the battles I have fought since aim at one thing: preserving my right to choose and preventing any person, regime or authority from taking this right away from me.

Millions of Iraqis and non-Iraqis have lived and are still living the same or similar experiences. Many even harsher.

For two weeks, I have been receiving dozens of requests to talk about the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Most of them I ignored. Not because I have nothing to talk about, but because the memory of the invasion is like some great, deep wound, the worst to strike me since I was born, and I’m still trying to recover from it.

Nothing can prepare you for the moment you discover your true value to those that rule you and world leaders who describe themselves as advanced and moral.

How are you supposed to recover from understanding that, to Saddam Hussein and the invading American army, you have the same rights as those scrawny stray dogs? I’m reminded of it every time I see one on the street.

This is what the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq means to me, and this is what the Americans have still not grasped, that the impact of their actions stays with people for a lifetime.

We Iraqis had no choice when America decided to go to war. But whatever happened, since March 2003 we now at least have options. We can be state-builders or gangsters, fighters or civil servants, serve foreign powers or serve ourselves. The choices are there, though they may not be easy.

*

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***

In the year 1 B.C. (Before Corona), we here in New Zealand were getting along rather well. Despite the exorbitant cost of food and housing, the majestic and available beauty of the physical country gave us  immeasurable comfort. Our government, we thought, might not have been the most efficient one in the world, nor the one most populated with high intelligence, but it seemed to make an effort to represent its citizenry and to provide basic services. At the time – 2019 by conventional dating – I was an employee of the health sector and I provided psychiatric services to the people of Lower Hutt, a small city just outside Wellington, the nation’s capital.

When I first received news about the new virus that had emerged in Wuhan and, shortly thereafter, had rapidly spread to Italy, I was skeptical; but the snowball set in motion gathered mass and momentum and by early 2020 the entirety of New Zealand was under house arrest.  During that calamitous time, I had happened to have planned a vacation. With nowhere to go I volunteered my services at a local primary care facility for several weeks, helping with prescriptions, advising GPs about mental health issues and making home visits when necessary. When I returned to work as a psychiatrist and tended my usual flock, everyone was masked, protective equipment was being pushed and distancing was de rigueur.

I recall having to make an emergency visit to a patient who had, astoundingly enough, been discharged from hospital to a posh Wellington hotel. The thing is: she was confined to her room, had no social contact, and received her food from trays left at her door. This of course was not exactly a recipe for wellness and, predictably enough, she decompensated to the extent that I had been called in for an assessment.

By the time I arrived seven members of the police force were on site, with Plexiglass face shields, surgical masks under them, bulletproof vests and batons. I and the nurse who accompanied me were dressed normally: maskless, gownless, gloveless. The young person was ushered out of this bizarre form of seclusion and isolation to hospital, where real, actual and present people could attempt to administer some human care.

As I drove along the motorway during those days I noticed the electronic signboards thanking ‘essential workers’ as I had been deemed, being in healthcare,  as if other workers were non-essential …  To blow off steam during that first lockdown, I occasionally frequented a local playground,  despite the restrictions that forbade its use, and shot a few hoops by my lonesome. On one occasion a neighbour happened to stray by: he leapt an additional twelve feet out of the way after he saw me.

During this bizarre, unsettling, surreal and, frankly absurd time, this twilight zone of fear, I remember the prohibitions against swimming in Wellington harbour and the eerie extinction of the street lamps at night. I also noticed that my local hospital was a ghost-town: virtually no patients were in residence.

I wrote letters to Parliament and the papers and various Ministers questioning the government’s health strategy, noting the glaring absence of any actual treatment. I received, at best, a few automated replies.

Meanwhile, a country that had ‘come together’ by staying apart had now become a country in a relatively permanent state of fear, a country that accepted governmental restrictions and controls with hardly a whimper.

But in February 2021 – year 1 A.D. (anno democidii) the Pfizer inoculation was rolled out, approved for use by Medsafe and touted by then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern as ‘safe and effective’. Thus began Phase II of the juggernautical war against human autonomy and true health.

Thanks to lawyer Thomas Cranmer we learn now that the official approval of the Pfizer jab was hardly straightforward.

Medsafe’s initial assessment was not particularly effusive, and it rightly raised concerns about long-term safety data. In fact, Chris James, the Group Manger of Medsafe, New Zealand’s regulatory watchdog, could not grant consent to distribution of the Pfizer product.

Not to worry, however. The matter was referred to a body known as the Medicines Assessment Advisory Committee (MAAC), who in turn advised Medsafe to proceed with provisional approval.

Strangely – or not so strangely – enough, the members of MAAC have been kept secret.  The Ministry of Health has refused to provide their names.

The rest, of course, became history: the jab mandates that have cost many their jobs and have resulted in many adverse reactions and even deaths; the second perfidious lockdown based on one positive test result in Auckland; the destruction of small businesses; the creation of a ‘vax apartheid’ society; and the continuing recommendation of a medical intervention which has always been unnecessary and dangerous.

As I write today a number of good doctors here in New Zealand, doctors who attempted to treat people with covid appropriately, doctors who insisted on informed consent and who took their Hippocratic Oath to do no harm seriously, are under attack by another statutory medical body – the Medical Council of New Zealand.  They are actively persecuted, they have been referred to Health and Disability Commission tribunal hearings, are having provisions attached to their licences when these licences are up for renewal, are compelled to undertake ‘reeducation’ programmes, and are prevented from freely prescribing medicines as their clinical judgment sees fit. Professional Conduct Complaint procedures against such doctors are ongoing, while twenty thousand of their colleagues keep their heads down and their lips sealed.

According to the government’s reckoning, as of today 2,586 people have died of COVID-19 (or it was a contributing factor). Of these 2,586, how many received early treatment, how many were advised about preventive measures?

And also according to the government, of the 184 deaths reported after the administration of the Pfizer inoculation, 163 were deemed unlikely to be related to the jab.

May I ask how assiduous the government has been in requiring the reporting of adverse events? May I ask how assiduous it has been in mandating autopsies after each death that has occurred in a person who has received the Pfizer jab?

Coincidentally, New Zealand has recorded the largest increase in deaths in a century.

Why?

1. a) long covid
2. b) short covid
3. c) medium covid
4. d) half-baked covid
5. e) a gene-altering spike-protein creating mRNA injection

Take your pick.

And hold the government and its minions to account. Because if we don’t it will be déjà vu all over again, only far far worse.

*

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The recent Chinese brokered agreement between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran stunned the world.  The Biden administration was among the most surprised, as they saw yet another example of the diminishing status of the US in the Persian Gulf region. Saudi Arabia and its oil-rich neighbors have watched as the US has walked away from the region.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Dr. Javad Masoumi, a geopolitical researcher and analyst, to shed light on some key issues surrounding this new agreement.

Steven Sahiounie (SS):   The Chinese brokered agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran surprised the world. In your opinion, will restoring full relations between the two have an effect of China’s Belt and Road project?

Javad Masoumi (JM):  China’s Belt and Road Initiative was established in 2013.  It connects China to Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa through rail, road and sea corridors.  This road belt evokes memories of the ancient Silk Road.  This plan has placed China in a position of physical, financial, cultural, technological and political influence at the international level. China is drawing the exact details of the world map with new railways and bridges and ports with different capacities and potentials.  This project has affected 60 countries of the world including Iran and Saudi Arabia. In addition to economic effects, China can transmit political and cultural values. Initiatives such as the road belt provide an attractive perspective of China’s centrality.  It requires the cooperation of other countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia. Based on this, China is trying to highlight the world around it, including Iran, India, Saudi Arabia and Russia, in the new world order. In China’s mediation in the recent agreement, Iran and Saudi Arabia effectively demonstrated that it can change diplomacy anywhere in the world.  By using economic leverage, China is trying to force countries to impose their own policies. By organizing joint financing, China has made it possible to implement large infrastructure projects. China is one of the largest and most important trading partners of Iran, and is Saudi Arabia.  Trilateral regional and extra-regional cooperation is at a common and turning point. Iran and China have a common point in the historical and ancient silk road belt. Also, Iran and China are fighting unilateralism in the world, and fighting against The United States of America with shared capacities and opportunities in West Asia.  China’s road belt initiative has benefits for all countries on the route of this ancient road, including Saudi Arabia. It also facilitates trade and economic relations.  This idea can play a role in realizing the important goals of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well as the important goals of the global development plan.

SS:  The tension between Riyadh and Tehran was solved after decades by the recent Chinese brokered agreement to resume full relations. In your opinion, will this play a role in ending the suffering of the Syrian people?

JM:   The reopening of embassies and the resumption of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia can have a positive effect on regional developments, including Syria.  This agreement is considered a step towards reducing tension in Syria.  Iran and Saudi Arabia are two powerful countries in the region of the Islamic world.  These two countries have many capacities in the region in trans-regional issues.  In addition, both Iran and Saudi Arabia have considerable influence in Syria.  Following this agreement, regional tensions in Syria will definitely decrease.  Of course, the necessary condition is that relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia are formed in good faith.  In this case, we can witness the solution of the Syrian case.  In general, if this agreement is implemented with the implementation of constructive and executive strategic plans, in the future we can witness peace in the West Asian region, especially in Syria.  The costs of the conflict in Syria will lead to the reconstruction and development of the Syrian economy.  The agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia can lead to peace and stability and an end to the suffering of the Syrian people.

SS:   The media has been for decades fueling a war between Sunni and Shiite people.  In your view, will the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran help to end this media war?

JM:  The real meaning of the media war between Iran and Saudi Arabia was in the creation of news and television channels in Persian and Arabic languages ​​by the two countries.  Saudi Arabia was able to become a leading media power in the West and Southwest Asia by spending its oil dollars in the field of media and gaining the support of European and American powers.  The emergence of Iran International news network in the form of Persian satellite TV is an example of this media war.  What is certain is that the media war works like a very strong ballistic missile.  In a short period of time, the Iran International network is in close competition with the BBC Persian network.  In today’s era, which is called global village and virtual world,  media is one of the tools of interference in the politics and governance of countries.  Soft power in the global village is one of the sources of authority of countries and great powers, including Iran and Saudi Arabia.  The problems of Iran-Saudi diplomacy in the past are based on a misunderstanding but have deep roots in the religious history of Shia and Sunni.  Saudi Arabia is Sunni and Iran is Shia.  But due to the fact that both countries are Muslim, Iran and Saudi Arabia will never directly go to war with each other.  But they have faced each other in proxy conflicts.  In the meantime, the active role of some trans-regional countries, including Israel, The UK and the US, has used the gap between Shia and Sunni religious differences and fueled this division between the two Muslim countries.  The strategic development is that after the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the media policies of these two countries will be rearranged and adjusted based on identifying and defining the commonalities of each other’s demands.  It should be accepted that in the current situation of the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the media of both countries will create a suitable opportunity for the development of strategic interactions.  The most important factor affecting the relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is the West, especially the United States and Israel.  So it can be said that Iran and Saudi Arabia represent two religious thoughts, Shia and Sunni.  But both are Muslims who seem to be careful about this important agreement and avoid tension.  The zeroing of tensions is conditional on applying changes and rearranging the strategy of extensive media policies in the intellectual and identity foundations, which seems necessary and necessary in the conditions of the recent agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

SS:  The US and EU have seemingly approved this Saudi Arabia and Iran rapprochement brokered by China.  In your opinion, will this bring life back to the Iranian nuclear deal negotiations?

JM:  The restoration of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia will help the stability of the West Asian region.  But the JCPOA is a different matter and this agreement may have more of a psychological effect.  The agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is considered relatively timely to break the JCPOA political deadlock.  Certainly, this correct procedure of restructuring Iran’s foreign policy will not be ineffective in completing the JCPOA.  I hope there is a change of attitude in international foreign policy.  It is important to note that Iran’s nuclear activities, including enrichment at various levels, are completely peaceful and in line with Iran’s rights based on the NPT and are under the supervision, verification and control of the Agency.  Iran wants to continue implementing the JCPOA obligations.  But some regional and extra-regional countries, especially Israel, have tried their best to hide the facts.  Iran has been the most active delegation during the negotiations and has put forward many initiatives to clarify the negotiations.

What is certain is that countries and the United Nations do not pay attention to the important and extremely worrying issue of Israel’s military nuclear program, which causes instability in the region and is a serious threat to world peace and security.  In the current situation, the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is based on the strategic policy of reducing tension and improving the level of peace, stability and security in the region.

With the dictatorship of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel has become a more serious threat to the world with its temporary existence and the chaotic situation of the civil war.  It seems that changes are taking place at the international level, which have also affected the JCPOA case.  The issue of JCPOA is more of a political case than a technical case.  Based on the political model of international relations, Iran’s agreement with Saudi Arabia also has a psychological effect on the JCPOA case.  But the JCPOA case is a different matter.

SS:  The Israeli media have been calling the Saudi Arabia and Iran agreement to restore full relations as a big loss for Israel politically, and they are considering it a threat to their national security. In your view, how could this affect Israel?

JM:   America and Israel were surprised.  Israel relied on the continued hostility of Saudi Arabia against Iran.  Above all, Israel does not want Iran to be powerful enough to effectively balance the power with Israel.  Tel Aviv only looks at the world, especially Saudi Arabia, through the lens of its own benefit.  Tehran’s agreement with Riyadh is a fatal blow to Israel’s Iranophobia project.  The agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is a strategic and double defeat for Israel and America and a fatal blow to their project to create an Arab-Israeli NATO against Iran.  The new regional order has entered a new phase that is not in the interest of America and Israel.  The former officials of the Zionist regime described the agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia to resume relations with each other as a complete failure of Tel Aviv’s foreign policy and the collapse of the regional coalition against Iran.  The recent agreement showed that there is a fundamental weakness in America and Israel towards Iran.

*

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

Today the Free Alex Saab Movement makes an urgent call to the world to denounce the alarming health condition of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, which endangers his life.

In July 2021, the Working Group against Torture and several UN rapporteurs expressed their concern about the irreparable deterioration of Alex Saab’s health condition.

Let us recall that in Cape Verde, on July 7, 2021, after many refusals, Alex Saab was visited by his family doctor, who in his report detected a worrying health condition of the Venezuelan official, especially because Saab is a stomach cancer survivor. The doctor diagnosed: anemia, anorexia, diabetes mellitus type 2, hypothyroidism, hypertension, high risk of thromboembolic disease including pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis. In addition, he highlighted that a high infection by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori was found in his blood and an endoscopy identified bleeding from the digestive tract that could mean recurrence of the cancer; likewise, the lower left molar was found broken due to the beatings received during the torture and access to proper medical care was recommended, however, he was never allowed to receive treatment.

Subsequently, the treating physician issued, on September 9, 2021, a new report highlighting the need for patient Alex Saab to receive specialized medical care and asked the authorities of Cape Verde to take into consideration the need to preserve the health and life of Alex Saab. Cape Verde did nothing in this regard.

Alex Saab arrived in the territory of the United States, kidnapped for the second time, on October 16, 2021 and from that moment until today he has not received any medical attention according to the basic diseases that had been reported, ignoring the call of the UN rapporteurs.

Alex Saab is in the Federal Detention Center in Miami and his prison situation is even worse than in Cape Verde; he has not been allowed family visits and has not seen his wife and children for more than two years and eight months, who have also been victims of persecution by the U.S. authorities and their allies.

Alex Saab has also not been allowed consular visits, which is a human right of every prisoner deprived of liberty. The U.S. State Department has not responded to the Venezuelan State’s request to grant him a consular visit, as established in Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

In the medical reports made in July, Alex Saab’s doctor had already informed that they had identified bleeding from the digestive tract, which could mean a recurrence of the cancer. Now, it is extremely alarming to learn that Alex has been vomiting blood for weeks and despite having reported it to the U.S. authorities, there is still a lack of medical attention at the prison. Why has the U.S. not bothered to treat him?

Everything indicates that the lack of medical attention is part of a State policy, as was his illegal arrest. Could it be that they want to hand over Alex Saab dead to the Venezuelan authorities? Why then the insistence on not providing him with medical attention, and not allowing his doctor to visit him?

Everyone knows that the truth is on the side of the Venezuelan diplomat, and sooner or later the United States must release him, but they are taking more time than usual, could it be that they are waiting for his illnesses to develop further?

We, the #FreeAlexSaab Movement, holds the U.S. Government responsible for the life and for what may happen to the diplomat Alex Saab Moran.

We ask at the same time that the International Committee of the Red Cross to be present at the Federal Detention Center in Miami-USA.

Likewise, we urge the High Commissioner of the UN Human Rights to take action and denounce this violation of the human rights of the Venezuelan diplomat illegally detained in U.S. territory.

We request the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, as the highest defender of International Law, to make an announcement on this case, which constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and human rights.

We demand immediate freedom for Alex Saab Moran, the Venezuelan diplomat kidnapped in the United States. We urgently require a humanitarian, political and diplomatic solution to this unjust situation.

It is time for a solution that will bring benefits for both nations, it is time to move forward, we urge the U.S. Government to sit down and reach an agreement, Venezuela has shown to be open to a solution.

*

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***

Registered practical nurse and single mother Sarah Choujounian has been terminated from her position and faces regulatory investigation and discipline for the crime of upholding her oath to advocate on behalf of her patients.

Choujounian was working in long-term care when she began denouncing the unethical and dehumanizing ways COVID-19 lockdowns were harming the elderly that she was supporting.

Her regulator, The College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) has since launched an investigation against her which has now transpired into disciplinary action.

Interested members of the public need to email [email protected] for the link to the livestream. They should reference that they are interested in observing the Discipline Hearing which begins tomorrow in CNO and S.A. Choujounian-Abulu.

Again, thank you🙏 pic.twitter.com/J60AJt4azR

— Sarah Choujounian (@SarahChoujounia) March 9, 2023

“There are twelve allegations against me,” says Choujounian. “They are coming after me saying that I misinform the public and how dangerous it is that I went against what [the regulator] says.”

The College of Nurses of Ontario expects its members to support public health measures and be a “role model” for “directives that keep patients and the public safe,” according to a December 2020 statement.

The same statement says that “handwashing, masking, social distancing and vaccinations are effective strategies to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” which appears to ignore the real-world data showing that COVID-19 vaccination does not prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“I was chief steward of the union and I was trying to be the voice of the people. I was shut down very fast,” details Choujounian. She continues to describe horrific accounts of isolation and forced medication on the residents she cared for during the initial COVID response in early 2020 when residents were locked in their rooms and family members were barred from entry to provide care and support.

“A lot of residents were failing to thrive,” she says, and “residents who weren’t listening [to isolation orders] were locked in their rooms and sedated. Some walkers were taken away. They were dying alone. It felt so disgusting.”

Choujounian was fired when she spoke up about this horrific treatment.

Choujounian thought more people would come forward to denounce the harms COVID policies were having on the public after she founded Nurses Against Lockdowns which eventually turned into Canadian Frontline Nurses with ousted pediatric nurse Kristen Nagle.

But that didn’t happen. “Even up until today, nurses are scared to speak up,” she says.

This is par for the course when your regulatory body makes an example out of its members with intimidating investigations and silencing discipline.

The College of Nurses claims that too many people reached out 2 get the links 2 my disciplinary hearing which made their system crash & they couldn’t respond 2 the demand🤔

Everything should be resolved by now, if you haven’t gotten a reply, call & demand it at (416)928-0900🙏

— Sarah Choujounian (@SarahChoujounia) March 14, 2023

Both Choujounian and Nagle have a pending lawsuit against the Canadian Nurses Association alleging defamation when they were referred to as domestic terrorists and anti-vaxxers for speaking at a health summit blocks away from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on January 6.

Choujounian says that the media was subsequently weaponized against them after they received death threats and RCMP visits to their homes.

With several days of hearing left, Choujounian says that they don’t expect to win at the CNO level.

”It’s nurses from [the CNO] council representing the jury. So they won’t go against the college,” she logically explains. “Everything that we bring forward [in terms of evidence and experts] will be used for the appeal that we plan on doing afterward.”

“If I have to, I’ll go all the way up to the Supreme Court because I believe that I did exactly what I was told to do in nursing school. The first thing that we learn is the Code of Ethics and how if the medical industry turns against the people, it’s our job to ‘agitate and advocate’ for what is best for our communities so I’m being punished when I feel like I should be getting a medal.”

Meanwhile, residents are suffering from the negative effects of severe understaffing in the healthcare system, namely long-term care.

Choujounian is raising fees for her ongoing legal challenges at Canadian Frontline Nurses website.

Since her termination, Choujounian sold her home and has begun a mental health support program called Lighting Up Dark Corners.

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***

For a long time, massive propaganda has been the way for the US Government to influence public opinion for or against one cause or another. It is deliberately spread by both the government and the mainstream media to mold the public opinion in favor of our government’s particular agenda. All our mainstream media are usually complicit in the propaganda campaign. Throughout our violent history, the propaganda by our government has played a vital role in molding the public opinion in favor of its nefarious policies whether it was the created war with Mexico in 1846, or the coup d’état against Queen Lili’uokalani of Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and its ultimate annexation in 1898 or war with Spain in 1895 resulting in the acquisition of territories in the western Pacific and Latin America or resulting in the acquisition of Gaum from Spain in 1899, just to name a few. We Americans are led to believe that America’s intentions were and always are noble and peaceful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Atomic Bombing of Japan

President Harry Truman threw not one but two atomic bombs on civilian targets in Japan’s cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killing more than 250,000 people, many instantly and others succumbed to their injuries later. This criminal act was committed even though Japan was ready and desperate to surrender. Truman refused to its simple demand that its Emperor should be saved.

After this criminal act, Truman and his administration went on telling American people ‘Blatant lies’ that by atomic bombing of Japan, one million American lives were saved to end the war otherwise invasion of Japan would have been necessary with massive loss of half to one million American soldiers. Majority of Americans then and still now believe this lie.

The World War II

In this war with Nazi-Germany, Russians lost some 26 million people. It was Russia who was more responsible for the defeat of Nazis, not the allied forces as we are led to believe. At that time, the Russians were our friends, part of the Allied Forces. But after the war, President Truman and Winston Churchill decided that Russians were our enemies and should be stopped from advancing their influence in Eastern Europe. Truman followed up by creating NATO in 1949 to dominate Russia. Massive propaganda was carried out against the “Soviet threat” in the united States and Britain. Stalin became a boogey man, a dangerous dictator to be feared. It was projected that the Soviet Union and Communism was bent on conquering the world. A foolish cold war was started by the United States and huge arms development began in USA and UK. Soviets followed suit. What followed was the beginning of a massive, expensive, and foolish arms race that continued for decades and even now. Hundreds of trillions of Dollars were spent on weapons of mass destruction by the US, UK, the NATO countries and the Soviet Union was too forced to do the same. Trillions of Dollars were diverted towards arms development which could have been used for the welfare of the people. The threat of the Soviet Union was exaggerated. The soviets were recovering from massive war devastation and were in no position to threaten the United States. Yet, propaganda of the communist and Soviet threat was carried on for decades. The result was, the American people believed their leaders. Like they say, when a lie is repeated several times, people believe it.

The Vietnam War

I remember, during the Vietnam War, I was in college, and I used to watch Huntley/Brinkley News in the evening. These news gave the idea that we were winning. General Westmoreland–who was the Supreme Commander of our whole operation there–was assuring President Johnson that the war was turning around in our favor and that we were winning. It turned out that all this was a lie as final events of 1975 revealed when we were forced to flee by planes and helicopters from our Saigon embassy with our tail between our legs.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

In August 1964, the U.S. escalated the Vietnam War based on the reports of an unprovoked attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964, the US government claimed that the American destroyer USS Maddox which was stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam was attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Again, it was attacked on August 4^th. After the second attack, the U.S. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution almost unanimously, allowing the government to “take all necessary measures” to protect U.S. forces in Vietnam. It was tantamount to a declaration of war, but it was based on a lie. In early 2000s, nearly 200 documents were declassified and released by the National Security Agency. These documents revealed that there was no attack on August 2^nd or 4^th, 1964. The U.S. government had created this “lie” for their own gains and perhaps for Johnson’s own political prospects. This lie jumpstarted the war that would claim 58,220 American and more that 3 million Vietnamese lives. This is what our government does, and our mass-media always conspires with our government and follows through with these lies.

A North Vietnamese P-4 engaging USS Maddox, August 2, 1964 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The Gulf War

Shortly after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, an organization called Citizen for a Free Kuwait was formed. It hired a public relations firm—Hill & Knowlton–for $11 million paid by Kuwait’s government. It arranged for an appearance before a group of members of US Congress in which a young woman identifying herself as a nurse working in the Kuwait city hospital described Iraqi soldiers pulling babies out of incubators and letting them die on the floor. The story helped tip the Congress and the US public towards a war with Iraq. All our major compliant news media carried out these lies’ day and night to all Americans. Hence majority of Americans were convinced of the legality of this illegal war.

Invasion of Afghanistan

After 9/11 attacks, George Bush asked the ruling Janata of Afghanistan to hand over Osama Bin Laden who was living there. The Taliban spokesman requested the proof that Osama was behind the attacks. This was a fair demand. The Bush administration in its arrogance said, “we don’t negotiate with the terrorists” and refused to give any proof of Osama’s involvement in the crime. As a matter of fact, according to reports, they had no proof of Osama’s involvement in this crime. Most of the terrorists were Saudi Arabians and few were from Egypt. Still today, they don’t have any proof of Osama’s involvement in this heinous crime. After 20 Years of criminal invasion and war with Afghanistan, once again we were forced to run away from it like we did in Vietnam. But no American politician admits to this blunder and no lessons are learned from our criminal wars.

Invasion of Iraq

Then came the immoral and disastrous invasion of Iraq. The whole war was based on a lie. George W. Bush and his administration carried out a major campaign of lies that Iraq was developing weapons of ‘mass destruction’. Remember the ‘Mushroom Clouds’? Saddam Hussein was projected as a bogeyman, a new Hitler. Some 72% of Americans approved of this invasion.

What was the result? Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Iraq as a country which was doing well, was destroyed. More than a million Iraqi civilians were killed, and $2 trillions of taxpayers’ dollars were squandered. Thousands of our young men were injured, many of them were maimed for a miserable life while war criminals like George Bush is playing golf and his war criminals like Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and Wolfowitz are enjoying their lives today.

According to the Costs of War project at Brown University revealed that 20 years of post -9/11 wars have cost the U.S. an estimated $8 trillion and have killed more than 900,000 people.

“American Democracy”

There is massive propaganda in this country as well as around the globe. All the time, our president and other politicians tout the greatness of America and its great democracy. In reality, America is controlled by the oligarchs and the superrich. They buy and control our politicians and these politicians do their bidding, paying back their paymaster. Average American has no voice. But most Americans still buy the media narrative and believe that America is a great democracy.

Israel

Image is from The Unz Review

Ever since the 1967 Arab-Israel War, the pro-Israel propaganda and the narrative by the US Government and the mass media in our country is so strong that nobody, from the president down to the Senators or the Congressmen or any professor or any public figure dare to criticize Israel in its apartheid policies towards the Palestinians or their illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. No politician dares to criticize Israel without losing the next election or no professor can criticize Israel without losing his/her tenure from any prestigious college or university in America. Because the powerful Jewish lobby AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) is watching every politician in this country. Is that freedom of speech?  And the American people accept this because they have no choice. Our government doles out $3.8 billion military aid every year—total aid given since 1949 depending on the source, varying from $133 to $146 billion–while some 33.98 million of Americans were living below the poverty line in 2019 and as of 2020, some 14 million American children or 1 in 5 children don’t get enough food to eat. To our government, who is more important? Few millions of Israelis some 6756 miles away or close to 40 million of American citizens who are very poor? But nobody dares complain because it will never be reported by our mainstream mass media or see the light of the day. The poor have no voice in this country. They are kept there to serve the rich and the powerful.

Ukraine War

Take a recent example of Ukraine War. The whole war was the work of the United States. Since the collapse of the Soviet union in 1989-90, Russian president Gorbachev was promised –in exchange for his allowing East Germany to merge with West Germany—that “NATO will not move one inch eastward towards Russia”. But afterwards, Bill Clinton added 3 nations to NATO and George Bush Jr. added 7 more. NATO expanded to include 30 nations. When Putin came to power in 2000-2001, he said that Ukraine joining NATO will be a red line for Russia. But they invited Ukraine to join NATO. So, Putin was recklessly provoked to invade Ukraine. Immediately, massive American propaganda machine went to work full throttle. Every American mainstream news media has been blaming Russia for this war and are demonizing Putin, comparing him with Hitler. Ever since the invasion of Ukraine, every mainstream mews media is carrying anti-Russia propaganda taking their clue from our government. Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware of the real reasons behind Russia’s attack on Ukraine. So, they believe every word of this propaganda by our news media as well as by our government. History repeats itself many times like they believed weapons of mass destruction story about Iraq in 2003.

Just like during mid-1960s our generals were telling the government that we are winning the Vietnam War…a blatant lie. They were losing the war. The same way, our media taking their clue from the government is telling Americans that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia; another lie like before.

Talking about the 2020 election, Donald Trump and his cronies went on falsely claiming that the election of Joe Biden was fraudulent; it was stolen. Millions of Americans still believe that. They are die-hard believers in Trump’s lies.

Just last September, as per Seymour Hersh, the Nord Stream pipeline was destroyed by the United States’ Navy and that of Norway, an international terrorist act by any standard but no attention was given to this major news in American mainstream news-media. A total black out. That is called “the censorship by omission”, to borrow a phrase from veteran journalist John Pilger.

There are protests by thousands of people in France, Germany, and Britain. As the people of NATO-Europe are suffering from very high energy costs due to sanctions on Russia, they are demanding that their country get out of NATO, stop the Ukraine War, stop supporting Ukraine, be friends with Russia etc. But amazingly, you don’t see any of these protests being reported in mainstream news media in America. Is that freedom of information? No. That is, once again “the censorship by omission”. The media is censoring any news which can change the public opinion in America or Britain against supporting this proxy war.

Noam Chomsky, the famous expert, and critique of US foreign policy has described this Ukraine War as “the proxy war by the United States to the last Ukrainian”. But you will never see famous critiques like him, Chris Hedges, Ralph Nader or professor John Mearsheimer ever being interviewed on our mainstream news media. Because if given an opportunity, they will demolish the current narrative of our government and the mass media about this proxy war.

Vietnam veteran and author Andrew Bacevich so aptly writes in his interesting book of 2021, After the Apocalypse: “That much is certain, however: In Washington, refusal to abide by the expressed rhetorical conventions of American global leadership offers sufficient grounds for being effectively silenced. Critics of empire like Noam Chomsky on the left and Patrick Buchanan on the right offer examples. Each may be allowed his say and each may even attract large audiences. But in this instance, the audience does not translate into influence. To question American Exceptionalism and oppose the American Empire is to become persona non grata wherever members of the foreign policy establishment congregate. That describes Chomsky and Buchanan’s fate.”

Capitalism

Have you ever seen or heard on our mainstream media, the criticism of capitalism? It will never happen. Because it is capitalism or our current economic system that keeps our billionaires and superrich in power. It is our “winner take all” economic system that keeps the rich getting richer and the poor staying poor today. These superrich know that if people realize that it is this unfair system that keeps them poor, then the majority will try to change this system for a more equitable system like socialism or social democracy. The superrich then will lose their wealth and power. So, they will never allow public opinion to form against capitalism. Hence the unfair system continues uninterrupted.

Majority of Americans get their news from the mainstream news media. So, they don’t get the real unbiased story or facts. They believe everything our mainstream news media and our government tells them. And the government and our news media have an agenda to mold Americans’ public opinion in certain way like supporting a future war or future law or future plan. Like Noam Chomsky famously wrote many years ago about “Manufacturing Consent”. That is what they are doing and are successful at that.

Majority of Americans believe in America’s exceptionalism. Many Americans believe that America is a God Chosen country to do good in the world.

From early childhood, we are all led to believe that America is a “free country”. The fact is that America has largest number and percentage of people in jail than any other country including China or Russia.

Our leaders constantly tell us that we are “the leaders of the free world”. Most Americans believe this propaganda. The fact is that in most UN Resolutions, America and its satellite states like Israel vote on one side while the rest of the world votes the opposite way. But the propaganda machine keeps churning. The tragedy is, most Americans keep believing in this propaganda and lies.

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Chaitanya Davé is a Chemist and a Chemical Engineer and a businessman. He has authored three books: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: A Shocking Record of US Crimes since 1776-2007, COLLAPSE: Civilization of the Brink-2010, Capitalism’s March of Destruction. Author of many articles on politics, history, and environment Founder/President of a non-profit charity foundation helping the poor villagers of India, Nepal, Haiti, USA-homeless and other poor countries. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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British Minister of State for Defence Annabel Goldie announced on March 20 that her country would supply Ukraine with depleted uranium munitions as part of an aid package to bolster the Eastern European state’s ongoing war effort against Russia. The munitions would be supplied alongside Challenger 2 tanks, of which Britain pledged to send 14 in January, with the majority of training for Ukrainian personnel having been completed since. The pledge to send Challenger 2s made Britain the first country to offer Western designed tanks to Kiev, with Germany under significant U.S. and Polish pressure subsequently granting permission to supply Leopard 2 tanks, widely used across Europe, to Ukraine as well.

When asked specifically whether depleted uranium weapons munitions would be supplied, Goldie replied: “Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium. Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armoured vehicles.” The munitions most likely being referred to are the L26A1 and L27A1, which are compatible with British rifled tank guns. The Challenger 2s were reported in January to be scheduled for delivery by the end of March, meaning the first use of depleted uranium rounds against Russian forces could well be imminent depending on how ready Ukrainian crews are to quickly begin frontline operations.

British Army Challenger 2 Tank 

The possible supply of depleted uranium weapons has long been a highly controversial issue, with the head of the Russian delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control Konstantin Gavrilov having thus cautioned on January 25: “We know that Leopard 2 tanks, as well as Bradley and Marauder armoured fighting vehicles, can use depleted uranium shells, which can contaminate terrain, just like it happened in Yugoslavia and Iraq. If Kiev were to be supplied with such munitions for the use in western heavy military hardware, we would regard it as the use of ‘dirty nuclear bombs’ against Russia, with all the consequences that entails.” Regarding the possible responses Russia could take, Gavrilov elaborated: “If Washington and NATO countries provide Kiev with weapons for striking against the cities deep inside the Russian territory and for attempting to seize our constitutionally affirmed territories, it would force Moscow to undertake harsh retaliatory actions. Do not say that we did not warn you.” A number of analysts took this to be an implied threat of a Russian nuclear response. 

It remains highly possible that Britain is seeking to set a precedent that would pave the way to the U.S. and Germany providing depleted uranium arms for their own tanks which they are set to supply to Ukraine, as London alongside Warsaw and the three Baltic States has consistently been far less cautious in what armaments are supplied to the front. Depleted uranium is among the heaviest elements on the planet, and is produced using low-level radioactive waste left over from the manufacture of nuclear fuel or nuclear warheads which makes it affordable to produce in large quantities. It is widely used in Western anti armour rounds to provide a greater penetrative capability – a notable example is the M829 armour fin-stabilised discarding sabot round which is compatible with the M1 Abrams and Leopard 2. Using such rounds can have calamitous environmental impacts, emitting highly toxic radioactive particles emitted into the air spreading for well over 40km as easily inhalable dust and having half-lives of over four billion years.

M1 Abrams Tank Firing

The effects of depleted uranium use were seen in the Gulf War, with British Royal Navy Commander Robert Green reporting: “a surge of unexplained illnesses, cancers and children born with genetic deformities among the Iraqi people, especially in the south near the battlefields.” A confidential UN report leaked in May 1999 similarly concluded regarding depleted uranium weapons: “this type of ammunition is nuclear waste, and its use is very dangerous and harmful.” In the subsequent Iraq War the following decade the city of Fallujah was particularly heavily bombarded by depleted uranium weapons by U.S. forces, with Professor Chris Busby, one of the authors of a survey of 4,800 Fallujah residents, writing regarding the connection between these attacks and the rapid increase in cancers and birth defects that followed: “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened.” He concluded that some kind of uranium weapon had to have been the cause.

The Fallujah survey by 11 experts covering over 700 households, concluded that the effects on the population were “similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout.” Depleted uranium weapons were found to have had highly similar effects on populations in Yugoslavia, which was heavily bombarded by NATO forces in 1999. With much of the fighting in the Russian-Ukrainian War taking place on territory Russia considers as its own, the use of depleted uranium weapons particularly against population centres, which would place the Russian speaking civilians there at tremendous risk, could lead to an unprecedentedly harsh response by Moscow potentially take the country to the brink escalation using nuclear assets of its own. 

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Featured image: British Challenger 2 Tank (All images in this article are from MWM)

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After the end of the (First) Cold War and the start of what Francis Fukuyama dubbed the “End of History”, the world seemed firmly in the hands of the political West. For the next two to three decades, this resulted in one of the most disastrous and unstable periods in recent human history, with the political West ravaging much of the world, while most of the rest was held under near-constant self-defeating subservience.

The US-led power pole engaged in what can only be described as war hopping, starting one aggression after another, or worse yet, several consecutive invasions against countries on multiple continents, with its numerous vassals and satellite states sending auxiliary forces or at the very least providing support in logistics and financing. America’s superiority was both quantitative and qualitative, leaving nearly everyone else far behind. The only exception was Russia, whose only advantage was its massive strategic arsenal, the last vestige of the (First) Cold War that kept the US from exerting absolute dominance.

Moscow’s main trump card was also the world’s trump card, providing precious several decades of peace to other sovereign-minded powers, primarily China. Beijing’s meteoric rise to superpower status would have been all but impossible without it and the Asian giant’s leadership is well aware of this. It could be said that both Russia and China “have each other’s backs”, with the cooperation reaching unprecedented levels, not seen in approximately 60 years.

Not counting the purely ideological “cold war” in the aftermath of the Sino-Soviet split, the relationship between Moscow and Beijing has been cordial at worst. However, in the last 30 years, particularly since President Putin consolidated Russia’s geopolitical standing, this relationship has transformed into a fully-fledged strategic alliance in virtually every aspect, truly limitless, as Putin and Xi Jinping recently described. Since the early 1990s, Russia has transferred copious amounts of its massive technological know-how, particularly in military tech, helping push China’s defense capabilities nearly half a century ahead in less than a decade.

The result was quite positive for Beijing, but was seen with contempt in Washington DC, which loathes the idea of having to deal with “another Soviet Union”, especially after investing nearly half a century into dismantling the original and after the Clinton administration announced the US will “never let the rise of another superpower” with the equivalent or close to the power of the USSR. However, despite US attempts to prevent it, exactly this happened. Russia, at first a mere shadow of its former glory and essentially dismissed as a “done deal” by the political West, started regaining its strength, but this time not as a socialist empire, but perhaps the world’s premier realpolitik superpower. With such an approach, Moscow kept most of its historic geopolitical partnerships and was also able to expand them, including with China. President Xi Jinping’s latest visit, the first foreign trip he went on after being reelected for his third term, serves as a testament to this growing alliance.

The superpowers signed over a dozen key strategic agreements outlying the prospects of their unprecedented cooperation by the end of this decade and beyond. Apart from the growing trade exchange, which is racing towards $200 billion annually, one of the key aspects of this is a technological and military partnership. China and Russia will further expand their cooperation in areas such as information technologies and advanced AI, involving approximately 80 new projects assessed at over $165 billion. This includes aircraft and machine tools manufacturing, space research and strengthening of military cooperation, including further unification of Moscow’s and Beijing’s know-how.

In a joint statement, the (Eur)Asian giants reiterated their commitment to regularly conduct bilateral naval and aerial patrols, as well as regular military exercises, expand cooperation within and beyond the framework of existing bilateral agreements and deepen mutual trust and interoperability between their armed forces.

One particularly important segment of this growing alliance is the exchange of military technologies in which both countries excel. China’s impressive strides in microelectronics and semiconductors are of great interest to Russia, while Moscow’s traditionally world-class expertise in rocket/missile and space technologies is greatly appreciated in Beijing. This includes the latest Chinese developments in new network-centric capabilities, with drone swarms being of particular interest for Russia, which could provide key tactical advantages on the battlefield.

Moscow has certainly developed a plethora of its own similar capabilities, but getting Beijing to participate in these efforts will help expand the said capabilities even further. On the other hand, China is greatly interested in Russia’s unrivaled hypersonic technologies, especially naval, as the primary threat to its security and development comes from the belligerent thalassocratic powers of the political West and their regional vassals.

Russian military expert Andrei Martyanov outlined the virtually unknown (to the vast majority of mainstream media) aspects of this cooperation, including the immediate threat that the AUKUS represents for Beijing. With virtually all of China’s Tier 1 cities and provinces being exposed to naval aggression from the US, the Asian giant is seeking ways to nullify this possibility or at the very least push it to a minimum. Of particular concern is the US Navy’s AGM-158 JASSM (Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile), a stealthy air-launched cruise missile deployed by American CBG (carrier battle groups), including the 2000-km range JASSM-XR variant. And while such missiles can hardly be considered comparable to the latest Chinese weapons, they are relatively cheap (by US standards) and numerous (at least 2000 procured by USAF and USN), providing a strong first-strike capability for Washington DC. According to Martyanov, precisely this was very likely one of the key topics of the behind-closed-doors talks between Russian and Chinese delegations.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Lula is truly a liberal-globalist who voluntarily surrendered his country’s objective national interests to the West out of ideological solidarity. The same man who legendarily co-founded BRICS almost a decade and a half ago has now backstabbed one of this same multipolar group’s fellow founding fathers upon ordering his Foreign Minister to very strongly imply that his counterpart will be arrested if he visits Brazil.

Brazilian Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira’s latest interview sent shockwaves across the world after the top diplomat of this BRICS country very strongly implied that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be arrested if he sets foot on this South American state’s soil. He reaffirmed to Metropoles in an interview that

“Brazil is part of the ICC, the International Criminal Court, which we respect and follow” when asked about that partially recognized and highly controversial body’s arrest warrant against the Russian leader.

This top diplomat then added that

“Any travel, any presence of [President Putin] in a country that is a member of the International Criminal Court can lead to complications, I have no doubt.”

There’s no other way to realistically interpret his words than as ominously suggesting that he’d order the security services to detain that world leader in the event that he ever visits Brazil. While casual observers might be shocked by this stance, it’s fully in line with President Lula da Silva’s new worldview.

Since his imprisonment, this BRICS co-founder has recalibrated his approach to International Relations in a way that very closely aligns Brazil with the US nowadays. As proof of this, Lula condemned Russia’s special operation in a joint statement with Biden during his trip to DC in early February, after which he ordered his diplomats to vote in support of a fiercely anti-Russian resolution at the UN calling for Moscow to immediately withdraw from all the territory that Kiev claims as its own, including Crimea.

This was followed up by Lula calling Zelensky, during which time it was revealed that they discussed the latter’s so-called “peace formula” which includes the creation of a “special tribunal” for prosecuting Russians. A few weeks later, the Brazilian leader then lied by claiming that this conflict is “over small things”, which occurred on the same day as his Deputy Representative to the UN expressed annoyance at Moscow discussing Russophobia at a Security Council meeting dedicated exclusively to this scourge.

This sequence of events leaves no doubt that Brazil is politically against Russia in the New Cold War despite still officially remaining interested in exploring the expansion of mutually beneficial economic cooperation. That explains why its Foreign Minister just hinted that President Putin will be arrested if he came to Brazil, thus proving once and for all that Lula is truly a liberal-globalist who voluntarily surrendered his country’s objective national interests to the West out of ideological solidarity.

It’s therefore little wonder that Color Revolution mastermind George Soros so enthusiastically endorsed this newly re-elected and now three-time leader during his speech at the Munich Security Conference last month. In his own words

“There are many other regional powers that can influence the course of history. Brazil stands out. The election of Lula at the end of last year was crucial…Brazil is on the front-line of the conflict between open and closed societies…[Lula] will need strong international support”.

Observers should no longer be under any illusions about Lula’s grand strategy, which aims to align Brazil a lot more closely with the US-led West’s Golden Billion instead of the Sino-Russo Entente or the informally Indian–led Global South amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations. Nevertheless, Vieira also spoke very highly about China in his latest interview ahead of his and Lula’s upcoming trip to the People’s Republic next week, which proves that they haven’t completely sold out.

This approach leaves open the possibility of Brazil attempting to balance between the Golden Billion’s US leader with whom Lula has politically aligned himself against Russia and the Sino-Russo Entente’s Chinese economic engine, though it remains unclear how successful this will ultimately be. In any case, there’s no doubt that Lula opposes Russia’s special operation and tasked Vieira with lying to the non-Western community about the reasons why so as to distract from Brazil’s rapid alignment with the US.

According to that top diplomat in his latest interview, “Brazil condemned the invasion of Russia and it could not be otherwise. This is even one of the constitutional precepts that guide foreign policy. This is in the initial articles of the Constitution which establishes, among other things, international law, human rights, territorial integrity and the peaceful settlement of disputes. Brazil could not fail to condemn the invasion of Ukrainian territory.”

This is a misleading interpretation of his country’s primary legal document. The argument can compellingly be made that Brazil should have abstained from all anti-Russian resolutions at the UN because Kiev’s violation of its Russian population’s human rights and former President Petro Poroshenko’s admission that the Minsk Accords for ending his country’s then-civil war were never meant to be implemented contradict Article 4’s guiding foreign policy principles.

These mandate Brazil to formulate its international position based on the “prevalence of human rights” and the “peaceful resolution of conflicts”, both principles of which are actually violated by supporting Kiev at the UN after that fascist regime went against these two concepts as was previously explained. By twisting these ideas around to justify taking a partisan stance against Russia, Vieira is participating in the latest Hybrid War on Brazil aimed at misleading the ruling party’s base about Lula’s US-aligned policies.

The same man who legendarily co-founded BRICS almost a decade and a half ago has now backstabbed one of this same multipolar group’s fellow founding fathers upon ordering his Foreign Minister to very strongly imply that his counterpart will be arrested if he visits Brazil. This ominous signal will likely preclude President Putin’s participation in their organization’s 2025 summit that’s supposed to be held in that country, which risks handicapping its impact to the benefit of the US’ divide-and-rule interests.

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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.

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***

US-Turkish differences are on the rise and incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan might be facing his most difficult election in 20 years. Erdogan’s domestic problems are well known: the country now experiances a 55 percent inflation and last October it had reached a 25-year high of 85.5%. Turkey’s currency has also lost 60 percent of its value against the dollar since early 2021.

In addition, the tragedy that ensued after the earthquake last month (around 50,000 people dead) has also sparked some outrage: many believe the disaster was made worse by poor urban planning and bad crisis management. Recent polls indicate that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition candidate, is leading by over 10 percentage points, just weeks before the upcoming election. Polls also suggest that the Nation Alliance, a six-party opposition bloc, could get the highest number of seats this time.

Even though Erdogan faces so many internal problems, he might still win the election. Since the 2016 failed military coup against him, the Turkish President has increased his powers. Some analysts, such as Sinan Ciddi, professor of national security studies at the US Marine Corps University and author of the book “Kemalism in Turkish Politics”, believe that he can make good use of Turkish media (which supposedly is largely controlled by his AK Party) to overcome some of his problems. This scenario may provide the political West with sufficient basis to push a narrative about a “dictatorship” in Turkey, thus casting doubts on the legitimacy of any Erdogan’s election victory.

Foreign Correspondent Jamie Dettmer argues that one should expect Erdogan to contest any election defeat. Ciddi in turn believes “judges and elections officials loyal to Erdogan may overturn the results” and thus “he may not relinquish power after having lost the election.”

The fact that the West routinely weaponizes the issue of human rights and democracy, often hypocritically, is well known. The human rights issue certainly plays an important propaganda part in the wars of narratives that are part of many frictions Western powers are involved in today. Such a narrative may be losing force today, but much of Western rhetoric and diplomacy campaigns is still based on it.

The Madrid Summit Declaration, issued at the 2022 NATO Summit, stated that there has been an “unprecedented level of cooperation with the European Union”, and vows to strengthen the “strategic partnership” with the bloc. During that summit, China was, for the first time, addressed as a “challenge” to the Alliance’s “interests, security”, and also its “values”. The  North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) describes itself, in its official website, as an organization promoting “democratic values”.

Institutionally, that has always been so, at least in theory, but today democratic values (framed in a Western understanding of the concept) are increasingly in the spotlight, in spite of the aforementioned hypocrisy. Such hypocrisy could allow for accommodating members that do not necessarily abide to Western notions of democratic rule. However, such an accommodation may become increasingly harder to be pursued, especially when Erdogan’s Turkey is seen as a kind of a hindrance to the Alliance’s strategic goals pertaining to Nordic expansion.

The aforementioned US Marine Corps University scholar Sinan Ciddi also argues that no American-Turkish rapprochement is possible under Erdogan. Contesting Turkey’s Ambassador Murat Mercan recent remarks about the inevitability of “gradual rapprochement between Turkey and the United States”, Ciddi portrays the Turkish leader as an “opponent of democratic governance”, who “shares none of the values that define and undergird the transatlantic alliance that Turkey was an integral and trusted member of.” He concludes by saying that “the United States should not settle for a bad ally.”

As I have written, Ankara has employed Pan-Turkist, Neo-Ottomanism and Turanist ideas as a tool for soft power. Its greater ambitions also threaten peace in Central Asia and even beyond. Although Turkey has been a NATO member since 1952, experts have been talking about a Turkish “Eastern turn” since at least 2016, when it started pursuing a much more aggressive and independent foreign policy seeking integration with Arab and Muslim nations. This can certainly further complicate Turkey’s already complex relationship with Russia. In spite of these tensions, Ankara and Moscow have managed so far to maintain stable bilateral relations. With the West, however, the relationship has only been declining.

Already in 2019, Washington was proposing new sanctions against the Republic of Turkey over the issue of Turkish acquisition of the Russian S-400 missile defense system. In August 2022 Ankara was planning to receive the second S-400 batch anyway – a still ongoing issue.

Turkey-US divergences on NATO’s Nordic expansion and on the Kurdish matter (two issues that I have argued to be related), might be the last straw. The Turkish opposition in fact has promised to end Ankara’s veto on NATO membership for Finland and Sweden and to “unfreeze” EU accession talks.

If Erdogan remains “inflexible” on the issue of Sweden, then what can we expect from the US? At this point, one can only speculate, but based on what we know about Washington’s modus operandi, it would not be too far-fetched to expect it to start a diplomatic campaign against Ankara in the likely event of an Erdogan reelection. Depending on how that develops, one could also expect the US to clandestinely support opposition and even Kurdish groups in attempts to destabilize Erdogan’s presidency or even aiming at regime change.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from InfoBrics