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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

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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***

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.

Featured image is from the author

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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

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

By William Walter Kay, March 21, 2023

NATO prophesied a Second Russian Offensive (SRO) on the muddy heals of rasputitsa [Spring]. Then when queried, on February 13, about upcoming festivities, Secretary-General Stoltenberg imparted: “we are seeing the start already.” The SRO crept imperceptibly. April Fools’ came early.

Commemorating Iraq’s Three Wars (1991, 2003, 2014): Looking Back: ‘Internationally Sponsored Genocide’. Felicity Arbuthnot

By Felicity Arbuthnot, March 20, 2023

Editors have a mantra, do not look back, move on, write what is current. But sometimes looking back is vital. Those who ignore even the recent past are doomed to understand nothing, sink deeper into quagmires – and bleat again : ‘Why do they hate us’? Looking through material for the book that has been far too long in the making, I found a copy of a letter which I sent to a prominent (UK) Member of Parliament.

Imperial Visits: US Emissaries in the Pacific

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, March 22, 2023

A number of officials are keen to push the line that Washington’s policy towards the Pacific is clearly back where it should be.  It’s all part of the warming strategy adopted by the Biden administration, typified by the US-Pacific Island Country summit held last September.

Russia’s Politics of Writing Off African Debts, Putin’s Strategy of Economic Cooperation

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, March 21, 2023

During the International Parliamentary conference Russia-Africa held March 19-20 in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech at the plenary session, reminded African parliamentarians that the partnership between Russia and African countries has gained additional momentum and is reaching a whole new level. That the current geopolitical changes present an opportunity to build on the strong momentum in boosting economic cooperation.

Conflicts of Interest: Pfizer’s Secret Collusion with the NIH. Big Pharma Endangers Public Health

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 21, 2023

The patent process is a part of the COVID mRNA shots that the media haven’t really addressed and people in general don’t know anything about — probably because it’s a total racket. Based on internal documents and correspondence, it appears the NIAID funded the creation of SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, it patented and receives royalty payments for the “vaccine” against said virus.

Send in the Clowns. Yellen and Garland Perform Back-to-back Surprise Visits to Ukraine

By Philip Giraldi, March 21, 2023

Sometimes I think that the script being used by the Biden Administration to manage its foreign and national security policies has been written by George Orwell, though I am not sure if it based on 1984 or Animal Farm. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Either way, it would help explain why there is something seriously wrong here.

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

By Michael Snyder, March 21, 2023

They are desperately trying to plug one leak in the system after another, but what happens if the entire system suddenly comes crashing down all around them?  Back on January 4th, I specifically warned that our problems would “greatly accelerate over the next 12 months”, and that is precisely what has happened.

The Chinese Document, “US Hegemony and Its Perils”. The U.S. Is a “Paper Tiger”. Geopolitical Analysis by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, March 21, 2023

Both Russia and China have publicly acknowledged the fact that Washington in pursuit of US hegemony disobeys international law, commits military and financial aggression, and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries.  Yet Russia and China have still not announced a mutual defense treaty or made any effort to include other threatened countries such as Iran in an alliance. 

Putin Tells Xi He’s “Open to Negotiating Process” on Ukraine as US Says Ceasefire “Unacceptable”

By Zero Hedge, March 21, 2023

Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in Moscow on Monday for what Beijing is calling a “trip for peace” – but at a moment the White House is emphasizing “We don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now,” according to the words of White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“True Stories … Could Fuel Hesitancy”: Stanford Project Worked to Censor Even True Stories on Social Media

By Jonathan Turley, March 21, 2023

The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures.

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During the International Parliamentary conference Russia-Africa held March 19-20 in Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a speech at the plenary session, reminded African parliamentarians that the partnership between Russia and African countries has gained additional momentum and is reaching a whole new level. That the current geopolitical changes present an opportunity to build on the strong momentum in boosting economic cooperation.

“We are ready to jointly shape the global agenda, work together to strengthen fair and equal interstate relations, and improve mechanisms for mutually beneficial economic cooperation. Thanks to our assistance, many industrial enterprises have been built on the continent, entire industries have been created, and vital infrastructure and social facilities have been built. At the same time, Russia wrote off the debt to African states in the amount of more than $20 billion,” Putin emphasized, copy of his text posted to Kremlin’s website.

Putin further offered spiteful goal-setting policy outlines and some aspects of lofty Russia’s economic policy directions for Africa. Most of these directions considered significant have, over these years, featured prominently in all his previous speeches on Russia’s relations with Africa. But what strikes many listeners and readers relates to historical references intended to draw on the sympathy and enlist support from Africa. By simple description Africa consists of 55 member states. African is not a country but a continent, thus Africa’s debt could mean the entire Africa.

Long seen as a strategic partner, Russia has opened a new chapter and started building better relations with Africa, and most significantly made its move by writing off a number of African countries’ debts accumulated from Soviet era. After the Soviet collapse, Russia first attempted at collecting its debts. Indeed, these Soviet-leaning debt-trapped African countries were unable to pay them (these debts) back to Russia.

During the Soviet era, Moscow forged alliances with African countries, especially those that supported its communist idealogy, and supplied them with military equipment and offered technical assistance on bilateral basis. In particular, supplied arms went to Angola, Algeria, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Namibia, Mozambique, Morocco and South Africa. That Soviet-era form of diplomatic engagement left those African countries indebted to an amount of $20 billion, according to official documents.

In an interview with TASS, Russian State News Agency, ahead of the first Russia-Africa Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained Soviet’s role in the liberation of the continent, support for the struggle of their people against colonialism, racism and apartheid. In addition, the enormous help offered those African countries to protect their independence and sovereignty, gain statehood, support for national economies, and created capable armed forces for Africa.

“Our African agenda is positive and future-oriented. We do not ally with someone against someone else; and we strongly oppose any geo-political ‘games’ involving Africa,” he said during that interview and categorically referred to the debts write-off to Africa. “Let me point out that in the post-Soviet period, at the end of the 20th century, Russia cancelled $20 billion of African countries’ debts to the Soviet Union. This was both an act of generosity and a pragmatic step, because many of the African states were unable to service those debts. We, therefore, decided that it would be best for everyone to start our cooperation from scratch,” said President Putin during that interview in 2019.

On 23 October 2019, President Vladimir Putin and President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, African Union Chairman and Co-Chairman of the Russia-Africa Summit Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took part in the Russia-Africa Economic Forum. During the plenary session held under the theme “Russia and Africa: Uncovering the Potential for Cooperation” and attended by top officials, politicians and business leaders, and almost 2,000 Russian and foreign companies, the question of debts write-off as basis for economic growth and for developing long-term relations featured prominently.

“Economic issues are an integral part and a priority of Russia’s relations with African countries. Developing close business ties serves our common interest, contributes to the sustainable growth, helps to improve quality of life and solve numerous social problems,” Putin said, and then added, “Russia provides systematic assistance to developing the African continent. Our country is participating in an initiative to ease the African countries’’ debt burden. To date, the total amount of write-offs stands at over $20 billion. Joint programmes have been launched with a number of countries involving the use of debts to finance national economic growth projects.”

On 5 September 2017, President Putin attended a meeting of BRICS leaders with delegation heads from invited states, including the Heads of State and Government of Egypt, Tajikistan, Mexico, Guinea and Thailand. The meeting discussed the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and prospects for further developing their partner relations. Before the meeting, the BRICS leaders and delegation heads form invited states had a joint photo session, President Putin informed that

“Russia has been working actively to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We have written off over $20 billion of African countries’ debts through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative.”

On 30 January 2015, President Putin sent his greetings to the 24th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union Heads of State and Government. The message stated in part:

“The Russian Federation’s relations with our African partners are developing positively. We have established a substantial political dialogue and work actively together in international affairs. Russia’s decision to write off much of African countries’ debt and the preferential conditions we offer the majority of Africa’s traditional export goods open up new possibilities for trade, economic and investment cooperation.”

On 27 March 2013, in Durban, South Africa, in a speech at meeting with Heads of African states, President Putin explicitly noted

“Over the course of many decades, Russia has provided direct assistance to the African continent. I would like to note that we have written off over 20 billion dollars in debt; we have written off far more than any other G8 nation. We plan to take additional measures to ease the debt burden.”

According to the Russian leader, the BRICS group’s companies are working actively in the African market; there is a growing influx of investments into various sectors in Africa’s economies, from traditional mineral extraction and farming to high technologies and banking. He added BRICS countries are championing the rights and interests of Africa and other nations with emerging economies, speaking out in favour of increasing their role and influence in the global governance system, particularly international financial and economic organizations.

On 28 June 2002, in Kananaskis, Canada, there was a media conference after the G8 Summit. There was one specific question regarding Africa. The G8 approached the plan submitted by African countries in a creative way. What can be Russia’s role and place in addressing the global problem of combating poverty?

President Vladimir Putin answered:

“As regards Russia, it has traditionally had very good relations with the African continent. We are very perceptive of the problems on the African continent. I must say that Russia has been making a very tangible contribution to solving Africa’s problems. Suffice it to say Russia is making a big contribution to the initiative adopted here, a multi-lateral initiative, including the writing off part of African debts. Of all the African debts that are to be written-off, 20% are debts to the Russian Federation. That is $26 billion.”

On 21 May 2007, The Kremlin made available Excerpts of the Transcript of the Cabinet Meeting. Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin on the meeting of G8 finance ministers. The issue about supporting and helping African countries. Minister Kudrin told the cabinet meeting:

“We discussed the implementation of a number of initiatives that should improve the management and transparency of public finances in those countries, including by better employing revenues from the extraction of mineral resources in Africa to fight against poverty.”

“We discussed responsible lending and relations with countries that have benefited from debt relief. We are writing off debt, reducing these countries’ debt burden, and meanwhile their opportunity to incur new debts is increasing simultaneously. And a number of countries are starting to make huge loans to these countries, taking advantage of the fact that they are no longer in debt and lending to them at such a rate that these countries will once again require help. These instances exist. In fact, this practice is liable to be perceived in a negative way. A number of leading countries in the world are engaged in this practice,” he said.

At Sochi summit, Putin’s announcement about “debt write-off” was, therefore, nothing new. The Africa’s debts write-off debt has been played for years. It has, several times since his appointment, re-occurred in Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov‘s speeches, these texts are available at the official website of the Foreign Affairs Ministry.

He said:

“Russian development assistance is invariably aimed at solving the most pressing challenges faced by the countries in need. In these efforts, we are neither trying to lecture our partners on how they should build their lives, nor impose political models and values. Poverty eradication is the key objective of Russia’s state policy in the area of international development assistance at the global level.” (Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the UN Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, New York, September 27, 2015 (1814-27-09-2015).

“Debt relief is an effective tool in this regard. Under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC), our country has written off over $20 billion of the principal debt owed by African countries alone. Russia also contributes to reducing the debt burden of the poorest countries beyond the HIPC through debt-for-aid swaps. We also take other steps towards the settlement of debt owed to Russia, both within multilateral and bilateral formats,” he added.

As it is known, Russia has written off over $20 billion debt of African states. We are undertaking steps to further ease the debt burden of Africans, including through conclusion of agreements based on the scheme “debt in exchange for development,” according to the Foreign Minister (Speech by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the reception on the occasion of Africa Day, Moscow, 22 May 2014 (1243-22-05-2014).

In April, 2014, the President Vladimir Putin, approved the new State policy concept of the Russian Federation in the area of contribution to international development. Its practical implementation will contribute to the build-up of our participation in the area of assistance to the development of states of the African continent, according to the report posted to the website.

“Russia has done a great deal to alleviate the debt burden, particularly in the framework of the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, and in writing off multilateral debts to the IMF and the International Development Association. The overall amount of the African countries’ indebtedness cancelled by us, including on a bilateral basis, exceeds 20 billion dollars, of which about one-half in the last two years,” Lavrov told the gathering on Africa Day in 2008 (Transcript of Remarks by Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov at Reception on Occasion of Africa Day, Moscow, May 26, 2008 (751-26-05-2008).

As far back as May 2007, the Foreign Ministry showed interest in Africa’s debts.

“We are helping our African partners reduce the burden of foreign debt. We have written off African debt within the framework of the initiative to reduce the indebtedness of the poorest nations,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at May 25 gathering of a group of ambassadors, diplomats and ministry officials marking Africa Day.

The move signaled Russia’s intention to fulfill its commitments made at that time Group of Eight (G8) meetings as well as paving the way to increased trade with the African continent. It was then, signed into law March 10 ratifying the agreement between Russia and African countries it aided during the Soviet era. Russia continued discussions on a full debt write-off on bilateral basis, African countries owed nearly $20 billion. The debt was primarily through weapon deliveries, according to the official transcript.

“The most important aspect of economic cooperation in our foreign policy is to encourage African countries to trade with us and to not only depend on development aid. Always looking for aid makes these countries less productive and funds for projects end up in foreign banks at the expense of the suffering population,” Lavrov said.

In March 2019, President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Commission for Military-Technical Cooperation with Foreign States and Kremlin’s website transcript pointed to the geographic reach of military-technical cooperation as constantly expanding, with the number of partners already in more than 100 countries worldwide.

Since then, President Putin has repeatedly called for renewed efforts, not only, in preserving, but also, in strengthening Russia’s leading position on the global arms market, primarily in the high-tech sector, amid tough competition. He further called for reliance on the rich experience in this sphere and building up consistently military technology cooperation with foreign states.

“We strictly observe international norms and principles in this area. We supply weapons and military equipment solely in the interests of security, defence and anti-terrorism efforts. In each case, we thoroughly assess the situation and try to predict the developments in the specific region. There are no bilateral contracts ever targeted against third countries, against their security interests,” he explained.

According to the Kremlin website, Russia targeted global export contracts worth $50 billion in 2018. Russia’s export priority is to expand its scope and strengthen its position on the market.

Over the past years, strengthening military-technical cooperation has been a strong part of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation. Russia has signed bilateral military-technical cooperation agreements with many African countries. On the other hand, Moscow’s post-Cold War relations with Africa, undoubtedly, lean toward military support and arms trade. Analysis by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicates that between 2014 and 2018, Russia accounted for 49% of arms imports to North Africa and 28% to Sub-Saharan Africa.

Africa has started accumulating debts. For example, Johan Burger’s article details crucial information in relation to Russia’s military interests in Africa. Russia has established or intends to establish military bases in Sudan along the Red Sea Coast, Somaliland, and Egypt. Another publication highlights Russia’s military bases in Madagascar, Mozambique, and Guinea. Lately, the Central African Republic intends to host a Russian military base.

October 2019, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, African Union Chairman and Co-Chairman of the Russia-Africa Summit, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, noted in his speech at the plenary session of the Russia-Africa Economic Forum: Africa welcomes the efforts to encourage an open door policy and cooperation with its partners with a view to making a breakthrough in developing its economy. Russia and other foreign countries as well as international financial organizations have to develop cooperation and invest in Africa.

The Egyptian leader urged international and regional financial organizations to take part in funding Africa’s economic growth and to give it financial guarantees on consolidating its economic potential. This would help promote trade and investment. He further urged foreign countries to grant African states generous terms for their projects and development programmes, which would help Africa reach its dream – to embark on the road of progress, modernization and sustainable development.

Before concluding his speech, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi emphasized that cooperation with Africa must be based on common interests, on the protection of African property, which would allow Africa to promote comprehensive sustainable development by carrying out three major goals.

First, it is necessary to accelerate economic reforms and create a businesslike atmosphere by establishing close partnership with the private sector. Second, it is essential to implement social justice principles with the broad participation of society. Third, it is necessary to consolidate peace and stability in accordance with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 and Sustainable Development Goals 2030.

The 15-member UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution welcoming AU initiatives for infrastructure development and pledging support for “African solutions to African problems” in an attempt to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Significantly noting that African Union officials have repeatedly urged African leaders to prioritize Africa’s Agenda 2063 – a strategic framework for delivering on Africa’s goal for inclusive and sustainable development – and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS) and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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Rapidly progressive kidney failure to the point of hemo- or peritoneal dialysis is a medical nightmare that must be avoided at all costs.

Patients with slowly advancing renal disease due to diabetes or other problems have months if not years to get ready for dialysis or plan for kidney transplantation.

Kidney failure requiring hospitalization or dialysis should never happen after a routine vaccine, yet it has occurred multiple times after COVID-19 mRNA injections (Pfizer or Moderna).

This side effect is not listed in any consent form, FAQ, or on the blank package insert for the EUA genetic products. I wonder how many patients have gone into renal failure, were hospitalized and or died after mRNA vaccination with no recognition that Pfizer or Moderna could have triggered the catastrophe?

Chen described nine cases of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) positive vasculitis that must be diagnosed with the ANCA test and often biopsy followed by intensive medical treatment. Doctors and nurses must act fast, otherwise the condition can be fatal. As you can see from the table 7 of 8 were spared dialysis but most had permanent kidney damage to deal with for the rest of their lives. Sadly, one patient went on dialysis.

Chen CC, Chen HY, Lu CC, Lin SH. Case Report: Anti-neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibody-Associated Vasculitis With Acute Renal Failure and Pulmonary Hemorrhage May Occur After COVID-19 Vaccination. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 Nov 11;8:765447. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.765447. PMID: 34859017; PMCID: PMC8632021.

This paper serves as a reminder for doctors who are evaluating patients with constitutional symptoms weeks to months after mRNA vaccination to have a low threshold for routine common testing including serum creatinine and urinalysis. When early renal failure is detected additional testing including ANCA must be drawn and care should be elevated to specialists familiar with ANCA positive syndromes.

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Source

Chen CC, Chen HY, Lu CC, Lin SH. Case Report: Anti-neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibody-Associated Vasculitis With Acute Renal Failure and Pulmonary Hemorrhage May Occur After COVID-19 Vaccination. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 Nov 11;8:765447. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2021.765447. PMID: 34859017; PMCID: PMC8632021.

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Under the 1984 Bayh-Dole Act, government scientists can collect royalties from drug companies for discoveries they make while working on the public’s dime

Taxpayers fund government research, while Big Pharma, the National Institutes of Health and NIH scientists keep all the profits

As a patent holder who profits from royalties, the NIH has a significant stake in regulations that impact patents and vaccine mandates, and may use its influence to benefit itself rather than the public

The NIH distributes $32 billion of taxpayer funds as research grants each year. As the largest federal grant-maker, the NIH has a monopoly on what research gets done and what doesn’t

Scientists vying for grants also recognize that in order to get funding, they have to play by the rules, and that means doing work that supports establishment narratives on public health policy

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In late February 2023, Moderna agreed to pay $400 million to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for the patent it holds on Moderna’s mRNA shot.¹

The patent process is a part of the COVID mRNA shots that the media haven’t really addressed and people in general don’t know anything about — probably because it’s a total racket. Based on internal documents and correspondence, it appears the NIAID funded the creation of SARS-CoV-2. At the same time, it patented and receives royalty payments for the “vaccine” against said virus.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supposed to be the primary government agency responsible for public health research, but by the looks of it, it appears instead to be in the business of creating public health threats in order to profit from them.

And the agency itself isn’t the only one raking in profits. Many patents are held by individuals working at the NIH/NIAID. So, taxpayers fund research that may or may not work out, while Big Pharma, the NIH and individuals at the NIH profit from products that end up on the market. This is a clear conflict of interest that can hurt public health in any number of ways.

For starters, it incentivizes the NIH to support and promote potentially dangerous drugs, as we’ve clearly seen during the COVID pandemic. The NIH also has a significant stake in regulations that impact patents and vaccine mandates, and may use its influence to benefit itself rather than the public.

Conflicts of Interest Influence Public Health Policy

In the Full Measure video above, investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson reports the findings of watchdog group Open The Books, which recently took a deep dive into “the issue of government scientists collecting royalty payments from pharmaceutical companies for discoveries made while working on your dime.”

According to OpenTheBooks.com founder and CEO Adam Andrzejewski, the NIH distributes $32 billion of taxpayer funds as research grants each year to an estimated 56,000 different entities. “That basically buys you the entire American health care space,” he says.

As the largest federal grant-maker, the NIH has a monopoly on what research gets done and what doesn’t, as it decides which scientists and projects get that money. Scientists vying for grants also recognize that in order to get a piece of that pie, they have to play by the rules, and that means doing work that supports establishment narratives on public health policy.

But that’s not all. The NIH is also gobbling up patents, which further weakens its incentive to protect and promote what’s truly in the public’s best interest due to the financial conflicts of interest that come into play.

How the Third-Party Royalty Complex Works

As explained by Andrzejewski, under the 1984 Bayh-Dole Act, government scientists can collect royalties from drug companies for discoveries they make while working on the public’s dime:

“Here’s how the third-party royalty complex works. You have a government scientist funded by taxpayers, and they work in a government lab that’s also funded by taxpayers. And when they have an invention [a drug, device or therapeutic] … the NIH … then licenses that invention … to the private sector.

And the private sector then pays royalties back to NIH. NIH then distributes those royalties on a royalty split schedule, back to the scientist. Details of those royalty payments to government scientists are kept as strictly held secrets.”

In fact, these royalty payments are kept under such closed wraps, scientists who receive them aren’t even required to divulge them on their financial statements, let alone to the public. Congress can’t even access those data.

In mid-June 2022, Sen. Rand Paul questioned then-NIAID chief Dr. Anthony Fauci about whether he’d ever received royalty payments from an entity to which he had given a research grant, and whether he or anyone else on the vaccine committee had ever received payments from vaccine makers.² Fauci suffered one of his now-famous lapses of memory and wouldn’t answer.

NIH Fights to Shield Conflicted Parties

Paul’s questioning of Fauci came on the heels of a lawsuit filed against the NIH to obtain these payment disclosures. The lawsuit was filed by Open The Books in October 2021. But while the NIH eventually did release them, many of the most crucial pieces of information were redacted, and Paul’s attempt to get answers led nowhere. As noted by Andrzejewski:

“That lawsuit unearthed 3,000 pages of royalty payments to NIH scientists from 2010 to 2021. During that time, 2,407 government scientists received $325 million in secretive royalty payments, averaging out to more than $135,000 each.

But much is left unknown. NIH redacted or blacked out key details. We don’t know who paid it. We don’t know how much each individual scientist received. We can only see their names and count the number of times that each scientist received a payment.

And they also redacted the invention, the license number or the patent number … So, every single one of those individual, third-party royalty payments has the appearance of a conflict of interest …

We need to be able to follow the money. Unelected bureaucrats are running the entire American health care complex without any scrutiny. They’re basically telling the American people, ‘Sit down, shut up, pay up. We’ll run things.’ And that’s not how the federal government is supposed to operate.”

COVID Jabs Are Rife With Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest also appear to have played a role in the U.S. government’s preferential treatment of Pfizer and Moderna during the pandemic. Pfizer was the first to receive government authorization for its COVID jab, and it just so happens to be part of an NIH royalty-sharing agreement.

Moderna also has such an agreement. What this all means is that the NIH helped invent certain technologies that went into these shots, and then licensed those technologies to Pfizer and Moderna in return for royalty payments.

So, the NIH has been making tens of millions of dollars from the COVID shots. Could that financial incentive influence the NIH’s stance on vaccine mandates? What do you think?

As you may recall, Johnson & Johnson’s COVID jab was vilified for causing blood clots, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration even limited the authorized use of the Janssen shot to people over the age of 18 who have no access to Moderna’s or Pfizer’s jabs, and/or those who voluntarily opt for the Janssen shot, understanding the risks.³

Meanwhile, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s shots also cause blood clots, but neither of them was placed under restrictions. Instead, both were added to the U.S. childhood and adult vaccination schedules. Janssen wasn’t.

The NIH Royalty Cash Cow

The NIH’s secret royalties and the conflicts of interest these payments create were also addressed by “Rising” hosts Robby Soave and Briahna Joy Gray in a recent episode (video above). Alexander Zaitchik, author of “Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to COVID-19 Vaccines,” also joined them on the program.

In Zaitchik’s view, the biggest scandal is not that government scientists are receiving royalty payments from drug companies but, rather, the intimate relationship that exists between government and “an industry that is using the monopoly system to price gouge the American people.”

“The NIH has basically abandoned its role to serve the public,” Zaitchik says, “and instead has become much too aligned with the industry and is an enabler, an accomplice and a protector of these monopolies. The vaccines are a point in case.

Government science was basically given, along with these massive research subsidies, through Warp Speed, to Moderna, for example. And there were no public interest provisions attached.

There were no pricing promises, there were no requests that technology be transferred [shared] with other parts of the world. It was basically a conveyor belt for private industry … So, for me, the real problem is NIH [being] fully aligned with industry on the monopoly question when public science is involved …”

Public Gets Fleeced Coming and Going

When public monies are being used for research, any scientific discoveries ought to be used for the public’s benefit, and the patents should remain public property with broad licensing rights.

This used to be the default position, but not anymore. In the 1970s, Big Pharma convinced Congress that this policy was slowing down innovation, and that if companies were allowed to claim exclusive rights to the patents, they’d be more apt to innovate. The Bayh-Dole Act was an outgrowth of this.

But we can now see why and how that doesn’t work. Public health is literally being sacrificed for profit, and since government agencies are in on it, there’s no one left to look out for the public’s interests.

Additionally, the public ends up getting fleeced twice. First, our tax dollars are being used to fund the research that private companies then lay claim to, and then we end up paying top dollar for the products we funded the development of, as there’s no price competition.

As noted by Zaitchik, while the Bayh-Dole Act is a bad law, it does have a rider that says generic production of drugs created with government funding can be mandated. However, every time patient groups have approached the NIH and asked for this provision to be enforced, as the monopoly is hurting patients who cannot afford the exorbitant prices, the NIH has rejected those requests.

For example, the U.S. Army invented a breakthrough prostate cancer drug, and Americans are paying six times the price for this drug compared to other parts of the world. But even though the government has the power to lower the price by mandating generic production, it refuses to do so.

“The whole system, up and down, has been completely corrupted by the amount of money and power the industry has been allowed to amass, because of the corruption in the patent system in general,” Zaitchik says.

Big Pharma Endangers Public Health

In closing, I’d like to draw attention to a paper published in Surgical Neurology International in October 2022, titled “The Pharmaceutical Industry Is Dangerous To Health. Further Proof With COVID-19.”⁴

“The COVID-19 period highlights a huge problem that has been developing for decades, the control of science by industry,” the author, Fabien Deruelle, an independent researcher in France, writes.

“In the 1950s, the tobacco industry set the example, which the pharmaceutical industry followed. Since then, the latter has been regularly condemned for illegal marketing, misrepresentation of experimental results, dissimulation of information about the dangers of drugs, and considered as criminal.

Therefore, this study was conducted to show that knowledge is powerfully manipulated by harmful corporations, whose goals are: 1) financial; 2) to suppress our ability to make choices to acquire global control of public health.”

Deruelle’s paper reviews a long list of techniques that drug companies use to shape and control the science, including the following:

1. Falsification of clinical trials and making data inaccessible
2. Faked studies
3. Conflict-of-interest studies
4. Concealment of the jab’s short-term side effects
5. Concealment of the fact there is no knowledge of the long-term effects of the COVID-19 jab
6. Dubious composition of the COVID shots, with many ingredients remaining unlisted
7. Inadequate testing methods
8. Conflicts of interest within governments and international organizations
9. Bribing of physicians
10. Denigration of renowned scientists who express differing views
11. The banning of alternative effective treatments
12. Unscientific countermeasures that eviscerate liberties and freedoms
13. Government use of behavior modification and social engineering techniques to impose isolation, masks wearing and vaccine acceptance
14. Scientific censorship by the media

White Collar Crooks Are Running the Show

Deruelle points out that all but one of the primary drug companies producing COVID “vaccines” — Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Merck and Johnson & Johnson — have long criminal histories, having been busted and fined huge sums for illegal marketing, recommending drugs for off-label use, misrepresenting trial results and concealing information about known dangers of their drugs. Moderna is the only exception, as it’s only been around since 2010. Deruelle writes:⁵

“In 2007, Merck paid $670 million, in 2009, Pfizer paid $2.3 billion, in 2010, AstraZeneca paid $520 million, and in 2012, Johnson and Johnson paid a fine of $1.1 billion …

Since 1995, Pfizer has been assessed more than $6.5 billion in penalties for 42 instances of misconduct; 36 instances of misconduct since 1995, resulting in over $11.5 billion in penalties for Johnson and Johnson; 35 instances of misconduct since 1995 and $8.8 billion in penalties for Merck.

Pfizer is singled out as having persistent criminal behavior and casual disregard for the health and well-being of patients. Pfizer is no different from other pharmaceutical companies, but it is larger and more egregious. Pfizer is a habitual offender, persistently engaging in illegal business practices, bribing physicians, and suppressing unfavorable trial results.”

Will Pfizer Stand Trial?

True to form, Pfizer is also accused of scientific fraud in its COVID-19 jab trial. Brook Jackson, who worked at one of Pfizer’s trial sites, sued Pfizer in 2021 for violating the False Claims Act.⁶ U.S. District Judge Michael Truncale heard oral arguments on the motions to dismiss, March 1, 2023.

As reported by The Epoch Times March 2, 2023,⁷ defense attorneys for Pfizer argued that “whether protocol violations occurred was ultimately irrelevant because the federal government was made aware of them but still granted emergency authorization to Pfizer’s vaccine.”

Jackson’s lawyers countered by saying the FDA authorized the vaccine before reviewing Jackson’s complaint. Judge Truncale has not issued a ruling as of this writing, and Jackson’s attorney suspects it may be weeks or even months before the judge issues his opinion.⁸

Conflicts of Interest Shaped COVID Responses

Deruelle also specifically delves into the conflicts of interest and relationships between the drug companies involved during COVID-19 and governments, international organizations and media — and how they worked the COVID “emergency” for their own benefit. Here are some select excerpts:⁹

“In 2009, the H1N1 episode should already have been enough to reveal that governments and the WHO are not autonomous. Work has shown that the 2009 H1N1 pandemic seems (based on case fatality rates [CFRs]) to have been the mildest influenza pandemic on record. Following investigations by the BMJ, it appears that this event declared by the WHO is significantly tainted by conflicts of interest.

A report by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has heavily criticized the WHO, national governments, and EU agencies for their handling of the swine flu pandemic: distortion of priorities of public health services all over Europe, waste of huge sums of public money, provocation of unjustified fear among Europeans, and creation of health risks through vaccines and medications which might not have been sufficiently tested before being authorized in fast-track procedures.

According to former head of health at the Council of Europe, W. Wodarg, the swine flu outbreak was a false pandemic driven by drug companies that influenced scientists and official agencies …

During the COVID-19 period, France hired private consulting firms, mainly McKinsey and Company, which is known for working with pharmaceutical companies. The Senate Inquiry Commission reports that McKinsey contributed on all aspects of the health crisis, notably for social engineering strategies on the vaccination campaign and the extension of the health pass …

The suppression of good science and scientists is not new, but COVID-19 unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, suppressing science for political and financial reasons … Since the beginning of COVID-19, much scientific data and expert opinion have been censored or labeled as false or misleading by many internet platforms …

In June 2019, the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations signed a partnership (2030 agenda). In the field of health, this alliance is designed to combat key emerging global health threats and achieve universal health coverage. In October 2019, in New York City, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and its partners the WEF and the Gates Foundation, hosted Event 201, a fictional coronavirus pandemic …

Among the partners of the WEF, there are: Pfizer, AstraZeneka, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, McKinsey, and Facebook et Google. A few months later, a coronavirus pandemic is declared, accompanied by its highly mediatized universal solution, the vaccine …

In addition to Event 201, other pandemic simulations, civil (MARS and SPARS in 2017) and military (Dark Winter in 2001, Atlantic Storm in 2003 and 2005, Global mercury in 2003, and Crimson Contagion in 2019), have taken place over the past 20 years. All these simulations correspond to fear programs induced by false media.

For the general welfare of the population, all these scenarios lead to the same methods (identical to those used during COVID-19): Isolation, control of movements and liberties, censorship, propaganda, and coercive vaccination of the population …

[T]here is no doubt that this is an event manipulated by governments, international agencies, pharmaceutical industries, and the media. In addition to the huge profits obtained by the pharmaceutical groups involved, the primary goal of this ‘pandemic’ seems to be compulsory vaccination, because the introduction of a European vaccine passport had already been planned since 2019 …

The objective of the WHO is to impose the Chinese model to become the norm. That is to say, a system with centralization of each person’s health data and restriction of freedoms for the unvaccinated … A period such as COVID-19 represents a powerful lever for increasing the effectiveness of global governance.”

Conflicts of Interest Threaten Our Freedom

In the final analysis, conflicts of interest and the collusion between government and industry does more than rob us of our hard-earned money. It now threatens our very freedom, as these monopolies are being used to further a totalitarian takeover of global proportions.

As such, we can no longer turn a blind eye or accept excuses such as “these relationships don’t influence our decision-making.” They absolutely influence the decisions being made, and the public is consistently on the losing end. Congress needs to start taking this seriously, and revisit laws such as the Bayh-Dole Act, which is currently allowing private monopolies to profit while no one is looking out for our interests.

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Notes

¹ Fierce Pharma February 24, 2023

² KRCR News June 16, 2022

³ Yahoo News May 5, 2022

^4, 5, 9 Surgical Neurology International October 2022; 13: 475

⁶ NTD February 23, 2023

⁷ The Epoch Times March 2, 2023

⁸ Newstarget March 14, 2023

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Sometimes I think that the script being used by the Biden Administration to manage its foreign and national security policies has been written by George Orwell, though I am not sure if it based on 1984 or Animal Farm. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Either way, it would help explain why there is something seriously wrong here. For example, at the end of February Congress, confronted by a debt ceiling, began discussing cutting Medicare and Social Security while more recently a banking sector crisis seems to be developing so Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen decided to go off doing photo-ops in Kiev embracing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after handing him the keys to the US economy.

She explained to Zelensky how the White House had approved an additional $12 billion in aid to Ukraine during the previous week, including $2 billion for the military and $10 billion to support Zelensky’s government and other infrastructure needs. The US Treasury is now de facto the source of the Ukraine government’s entire annual budget. In addition, Yellen described glowingly how the Treasury and State Departments will implement a new round of sanctions against more than 200 entities and individuals with ties to Russia’s military, high-technology industries, and its metals and mining sectors. The US Department of Commerce is also enforcing export restrictions on materials and technology, including semiconductors, sold by American companies to customers in Russia and China.

In defense of her grand mission, Yellen penned an op-ed for the always compliant New York Times explaining the importance of Ukraine to the United States. She wrote how in Ukraine

“…Russia’s barbaric attacks continue — but Kyiv stands strong and free. Ukraine’s heroic resistance is the direct product of the courage and resilience of Ukraine’s military, leadership and people. But President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians would be the first to admit that they can’t do this alone — and that international support is crucial to sustaining their resistance. I’m in Kyiv to reaffirm our unwavering support of the Ukrainian people. Mr. Putin is counting on our global coalition’s resolve to wane, which he thinks will give him the upper hand in the war. But he is wrong. As President Biden said here last week, America will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes… Ukrainians are fighting for their lives on the front lines of the free world. Today, and every day, they deserve America’s unyielding support.”

The Yellen op-ed drones on with a lie so large that it is astonishing that the New York Times would even print it: “When confronted with scenes of brutality and oppression, Americans have always been quick to stand up and do the right thing. Our strength as a nation comes from our commitment to our ideals — and our capacity to see in others the same desires that animated our own struggles for freedom and justice.” But then she tops that with assurances from “President Zelensky, [who] has pledged to use these funds in the ‘most responsible way.’ We welcome this commitment, as well as his longstanding agenda to strengthen good governance in Ukraine.” Huh?

And here is Yellen’s version of “Why We Fight!”:

“Our support is motivated, first and foremost, by a moral duty to come to the aid of a people under attack. We also know that, as President Zelensky has said, our assistance is not charity. It’s an investment in ‘global security and democracy.’ Let’s look at the strategic impact of our support for Ukraine so far. Mr. Putin’s war poses a direct threat to European security, as well as to the laws and values that underpin the rules-based international system.”

So, Americans have a “moral duty” apparently up to and including sending their sons and daughters to die supporting Ukraine. And ah yes, it’s all about the “free” world, democracy and the notorious rules based international system! Has anyone yet cited Hegel’s observation that the President Joe Biden Administration’s foreign policy has already “repeated itself, first as a tragedy in Afghanistan, second as a farce”?

Meanwhile one suspects Zelensky was laughing all the way to the bank as Yellen disappeared over the horizon to come up with the cash, as that old expression goes, and he probably already has one of his buddies shopping for a new villa on the French Riviera to supplement his other real estate!

But wait! The story became even more exciting the following week, involving another visit to Mr. Z by America’s nearly invisible Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who can literally look Z in the eye as they are both very short. Garland is generally engaged in chasing white supremacists and requiring all new FBI hires to learn all about how to identify and pursue antisemites, but he has made two trips to Kiev to meet mano-a-mano with the brave olive drab t-shirt clad warrior who is already being beatified as the twenty-first century’s Winston Churchill.

Garland was in town to do the other thing the engages his sense of law and order, which is to set up a tribunal to arrest, prosecute and punish Russian war criminals after Ukraine emerges triumphant from its conflict with the unimaginably evil President Vladimir Putin. It would be modeled on the Nuremberg Tribunals that tried leading Nazis after the Second World War, and Garland has cited his family’s escape from the so-called holocaust to explain why he is intent on personally being involved in delivering what he describes as “justice.” A Justice Department spokeswoman described Garland’s mission as being in Kiev to personally “reaffirm America’s commitment to help hold Russia responsible for war crimes committed in its unjust and unprovoked invasion against its sovereign neighbor.”

Garland had several meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky and foreign law enforcement officials including Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin while attending what was billed as the “United for Justice Conference.” Zelensky elaborated that the purpose of the conference was to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for the alleged atrocities carried out by its army. “The main issue of all these meetings is accountability,” he said. The US Justice Department is reportedly actively engaged in the gathering of evidence to indict the Russians. During Garland’s first visit to Ukraine in June 2022 he announced the appointment of Eli Rosenbaum, an Office of Special Investigations prosecutor best known for going after former Nazis, to direct American efforts to identify and track Russian war criminals.

Garland laid it on thick, as was expected from someone responsible for prosecuting the rest of the world when it steps out of line. He told his hosts that

“Just over twelve months ago, invading Russian forces began committing atrocities at the largest scale in any armed conflict since the Second World War. We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them. In addition to our work in partnership with Ukraine and the international community, the United States has also opened criminal investigations into war crimes in Ukraine that may violate US law.”

He concluded by throwing out the complete bullshit party line much beloved by Joe Biden and Tony Blinken, that

“The United States recognizes that what happens here in Ukraine will have a direct impact on the strength of our own democracy.”

Of course, there is more than a little bit of irony in all this, not to mention top level hypocrisy, as the United States has killed more people directly or indirectly while committing more crimes against humanity dished out in various ways over the past twenty years than any other country, except, predictably, Israel, which currently is committing crimes against humanity on a nearly daily basis.

Curiously, however, the normally tone-deaf White House and Pentagon seem to understand, on a certain level, that opening up Pandora’s box might not be a good idea when it comes to war crimes. Last week Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin refused to share US information on alleged Russian crimes with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the ICC collected by American intelligence agencies regarding Russian activities in Ukraine because helping the court investigate Russians might set a precedent that could help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans. Washington does not recognize the ICC, fearing that it might well seek to examine the sorry record of US military crimes in Asia and Africa. Israel similarly does to recognize the court for roughly the same reason.

So here we are, two top level officials from the Biden regime sneak into Kiev to give an arch crook money and unlimited moral support, together with a pledge that more cash is on the way as are arms and war crimes tribunals await those nasty Russians. And guess what? It is all packaged as being good for America! This sounds like a song that was sung previously in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and it was a tissue of lies then just as it is now. Yellen ought to have stayed home to tend to the banking system and should be giving the billions of dollars earmarked for Zelensky back to the American people. If Garland wants to investigate anyone it should be the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and Congress. And yes, his own FBI! And don’t forget how the Bidens and Clintons became multi-millionaires! And then there is the destruction of Nord Stream. Funny how every time one turns over a rock in and around the US government something really smelly surfaces.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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Latest update as of 10:17 ET, March 21, 2023:

What’s being described as an initial, informal meeting between Presidents Xi and Putin is underway at the Kremlin. While the expected cordialities and expressions of closer relations were exchange, among the most notable early statements came from Putin, who said he’s “open” to peace talks with Ukraine and China’s mediation efforts.

“We have a lot of joint tasks, goals,” Putin told his Chinese counterpart while also congratulating him on re-election as the head of the Chinese state for a third 5-year term. Xi in return said “Russia succeeded in promoting prosperity under Putin’s leadership.” Putin further expressed that “we will discuss your initiative [on Ukraine] which we view with respect.”

“We are open for a negotiating process on Ukraine,” the Russian leader added. He noted to Xi that “we have looked at your proposals for the resolution of the Ukraine conflict” and previewed that “we will discuss this question.”

🇨🇳🤝🇷🇺"Welcome to Russia" — Xi Jinping has arrived in the Kremlin, an informal meeting with Vladimir Putin has started pic.twitter.com/BQ4rzfmynT

— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) March 20, 2023

The day prior in media interviews, White House NSC spokesperson John Kirby declared that any “call for a ceasefire” in Ukraine is “unacceptable.”

Likely Moscow will only be satisfied with nothing short of a full Kiev recognition of the Donbass being under Russia; however, this is the very thing Washington will condemn and seek to induce the Zelensky administration to resist.

According to state media commentary (RT), “Moscow has said that it would consider the proposal but has pointed to several factors that stand in the way of a peaceful resolution in Ukraine.” And more of Moscow’s perspective headed into more Xi meetings: “Those include the insistence of Kiev and its Western backers on inflicting a military defeat of Russia, their firm opposition to any sort of ceasefire, as well as a law enacted by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky that forbids holding negotiations with Russia as long as Putin remains in office.”

Kirby on Xi meeting Putin: “If there's some sort of call for a ceasefire well that's just going to be unacceptable.”
-> Only US mediated ceasefires are good! pic.twitter.com/4SrnKLBu3o

— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) March 20, 2023

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Chinese President Xi Jinping has arrived in Moscow on Monday for what Beijing is calling a “trip for peace” – but at a moment the White House is emphasizing “We don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now,” according to the words of White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby. “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,” Kirby said.

The three-day trip was kicked off as Xi’s plane touched down at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport, where Russia’s deputy prime minister for tourism, sport, culture and communications, Dmitri N. Chernyshenko, greeted him a red carpet ceremony and military brass band. His first stop was the Kremlin for an initial and informal meeting with President Putin.

“I am very glad, at the invitation of President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to come back to the land of our close neighbor on a state visit,” Mr. Xi said upon arrival. He added: “China and Russia are good neighbors and reliable partners connected by mountains and rivers.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that China’s 12-point peace plan in Ukraine will top the agenda. “One way or another, issues raised in (Beijing’s) plan for Ukraine will be touched upon during the negotiations,” he said. “Comprehensive explanations will be given by President Putin” of the Russian position.”

Just hours ahead of the Chinese presidential plane being en route, both Xi and Putin published separate articles previewing the bilateral summit, with Xi emphasizing China’s push to end the Ukraine crisis reflects global support. Putin for his part wrote that he has “high expectations for the upcoming talks” with his “good old friend”.

Putin said he enjoys the “warmest relationship” with Xi, in a partnership between countries which is “consistently growing stronger” and has reached “the highest level in their history”. Speaking of the talks, the first in-person summit with the Chinese leader since the start of the Ukraine war, Putin stressed, “We have no doubt that they will give a new powerful impetus to our bilateral cooperation in its entirety.” According to more from Putin’s letter, published also in English on state websites:

Yet the main thing has remained unchanged: I am talking of the firm friendship between Russia and China, which is consistently growing stronger for the benefit and in the interest of our countries and peoples. The progress made in the development of bilateral ties is impressive. The Russia-China relations have reached the highest level in their history and are gaining even more strength; they surpass Cold War-time military-political alliances in their quality, with no one to constantly order and no one to constantly obey, without limitations or taboos. We have reached an unprecedented level of trust in our political dialogue, our strategic cooperation has become truly comprehensive in nature and is standing on the brink of a new era.

Putin also at one point took a swipe directly at the United States:

Sticking more stubbornly than ever to its obsolete dogmata and vanishing dominance, the “Collective West” is gambling on the fates of entire states and peoples. The US’s policy of simultaneously deterring Russia and China, as well as all those who do not bend to the American dictation, is getting ever more fierce and aggressive. The international security and cooperation architecture is being dismantled. Russia has been labelled an “immediate threat” and China a “strategic competitor.”

Meanwhile, Washington is watching the Xi trip very closely, also as the Chinese leader is at some point soon expected to hold a phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky….

Ahead of a meeting between Putin and Xi, White House NSC spokesperson John Kirby declares that any "call for a ceasefire" in Ukraine is "unacceptable." pic.twitter.com/Z1MUvdlTwS

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 20, 2023

And on China’s mediation efforts in the Ukraine crisis in particular, Putin vowed that efforts to split the major Eurasian allies “won’t work”…

“The crisis in Ukraine, which was provoked and is being diligently fuelled by the West, is the most striking, yet not the only, manifestation of its desire to retain its international dominance and preserve the unipolar world order,” the Russian leader wrote. “It is crystal clear that NATO is striving for a global reach of activities and seeking to penetrate the Asia-Pacific.” He continued:

It obvious that there are forces persistently working to split the common Eurasian space into a network of “exclusive clubs” and military blocs that would serve to contain our countries’ development and harm their interests. This won’t work.

Chinese President Xi arrives in Moscow to meet with the Russian President Putin. pic.twitter.com/4GLcnf3nkt

— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 20, 2023

Putin concluded near the end of his letter, “We appreciate the well-balanced stance on the events in Ukraine adopted by the PRC, as well as its understanding of their historical background and root causes.” He emphasized: “We welcome China’s readiness to make a meaningful contribution to the settlement of the crisis.”

The NY Times notes based on Chinese state media that Xi as accompanied to Moscow by “senior officials including Wang Yi, China’s highest ranking diplomat; Foreign Minister Qin Gang; and Cai Qi, director of the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee.” Ukraine at the same time issued a call for Russia to remove all of its troops, saying this is the proper formula for the successful implementation of China’s ‘Peace Plan’.

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While lost in the explosive news about Donald Trump’s expected arrest, journalist Matt Taibbi released new details on previously undisclosed censorship efforts on social media. The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as natural immunity defenses, the exaggerated value of masks, and questions over vaccine efficacy in preventing second illnesses. The work of the Virality Project to censor even true stories should result in the severance of any connection with Stanford University.

We have learned of an ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations.

However, the new files are chilling in the details allegedly showing how the Virality Project labeled even true stories as “anti-vaccine” and, therefore, subject to censorship. These files would suggest that the Project eagerly worked to limit free speech and suppress alternative scientific viewpoints.

Taibbi describes the Virality Project as “a sweeping, cross-platform effort to monitor billions of social media posts by Stanford University, federal agencies, and a slew of (often state-funded) NGOs.”

He added:

“We’ve since learned the Virality Project in 2021 worked with government to launch a pan-industry monitoring plan for Covid-related content. At least six major Internet platforms were ‘onboarded’ to the same JIRA ticketing system, daily sending millions of items for review.”

According to Taibbi, it targeted anyone who did not robotically fall in line with the CDC and media narratives, including targeting postings that shared “Reports of vaccinated individuals contracting Covid-19 anyway,” research on “natural immunity,” suggesting Covid-19 “leaked from a lab,” and even “worrisome jokes.”

That included evidence that it “knowingly targeted true material and legitimate political opinion, while often being factually wrong itself.”

The Virality Project warned Twitter that “true stories … could fuel hesitancy,” including stories on “celebrity deaths after vaccine” and the closure of a central New York school due to reports of post-vaccine illness.

The Project is part of the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford and bills itself as “a joint initiative of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Law School, connects academia, the legal and tech industry and civil society with policymakers around the country to address the most pressing cyber policy concerns.”

The Center launched the Project as a “a global study aimed at understanding the disinformation dynamics specific to the COVID-19 crisis.”

As with many disinformation projects, it became a source of its own disinformation in the effort to suppress alternative views.

It is being funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Hewlett Foundation.

On its website, it proclaims: “At the Stanford Internet Observatory our mission is to study the misuse of the internet to cause harm, and to help create policy and technical mitigations to those harms.” It defines its mission to maintain the truth as it sees it:

“The global COVID-19 crisis has significantly shifted the landscape for mis- and disinformation as the pandemic has become the primary concern of almost every nation on the planet. This has perhaps never happened before; few topics have commanded and sustained attention at a global level simultaneously, or provided such a wealth of opportunities for governments, economically motivated actors, and domestic activists alike to spread malign narratives in service to their interests.”

What is even more disconcerting is that groups like the Virality Project worked against public health by suppressing such stories that are now considered legitimate from the efficacy of masks to the lab origin theory. It was declaring dissenting scientific views to be dangerous disinformation. Nothing could be more inimical to the academic mission. Yet, Stanford still heralds the work of the Project on its website.

There is nothing more inherently in conflict with academic values than censorship. Stanford’s association with this censorship effort is disgraceful and should be a matter for faculty action. This is a project that sought to censor true stories that undermined government or media narratives.

I am not hopeful that Stanford will sever its connection to the Project.  Censorship is now the rage on campuses and the Project is the perfect embodiment of this movement. Cloaking censorship efforts in self-righteous rhetoric, the Project sought to silence those who failed to adhere to a certain orthodoxy, including scientific and public health claims that were later found flawed or wrong. The Project itself is an example of what it called “media and social media capabilities – overt and covert – to spread particular narratives.”

Stanford should fulfill its pledge in creating the Virality Project in fighting disinformation by eliminating the Virality Project.

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***

Kosovo-Metohija Serbs were targeted by a pogrom 19 years ago on March 17-19, 2004.

It was the second largest pogrom Serbs in the province suffered at the hands of ethnic Albanians after the end of the 1999 NATO aggression on Serbia, then part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Previously, approximately a quarter of a million Serbs and other non-Albanians were expelled from Kosovo-Metohija in June 1999 in the presence of international troops.

The March 2004 Kristallnacht-like violence targeted the Serbs and their property, holy sites, churches and monuments.

As a result, 4,012 Serbs were expelled from Kosovo-Metohija, and most of them never returned to their homes.

During the March 2004 violence, at least 27 people were killed – including 16 Serbs, as well as 11 ethnic Albanians who lost their lives in clashes with international forces.

Hundreds of people were injured.

In the evening of March 16, 2004, Pristina media reported that three ethnic Albanian boys had drowned in the Ibar River in a village near Zubin Potok while allegedly trying to escape attackers who were Serbs.

On the following day, thousands of ethnic Albanians crossed into the north of Kosovska Mitrovica via a bridge on the Ibar to attack local Serbs.

Gunfire began, and ethnic Albanians armed with automatic weapons were seen in the town.

Attacks, burning and looting followed in other Serb communities in the province.

Later in the day, UNMIK spokesperson Derek Chappell refuted the accusations that the ethnic Albanian boys had died while running away from Serbs – the pretext for the anti-Serb pogrom.

He said the violence had been planned beforehand.

NATO Allied Joint Force Command Naples Commander Adm Gregory Johnson branded the mass violence against Serbs as ethnic cleansing.

The mob destroyed 935 Serb homes and burned down 35 Serbian Orthodox holy sites, including 18 cultural monuments.

One of them is the medieval Church of Our Lady of Ljevis in Prizren, subsequently included in the list of UNESCO-protected monuments.

According to information released by the Serbian Orthodox Eparchy of Raska and Prizren, the number of church buildings destroyed in the March 2004 pogrom is close to one hundred.

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***

They are desperately trying to plug one leak in the system after another, but what happens if the entire system suddenly comes crashing down all around them?  Back on January 4th, I specifically warned that our problems would “greatly accelerate over the next 12 months”, and that is precisely what has happened.  We are now in the midst of the most severe banking crisis since 2008, and it could soon get a whole lot worse.  We have already witnessed the second and third largest bank failures in the entire history of our nation, and now it is being reported that 186 more banks “are at risk of failure”…

On the heels of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse earlier this month, 186 more banks are at risk of failure even if only half of their depositors decide to withdraw their funds, a new study has found.

That is because the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes to tamp down inflation have eroded the value of bank assets such as government bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

“The recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the U.S. banking system to uninsured depositor runs,” economists wrote in a recent paper published on the Social Science Research Network.

Needless to say, these banks realize that they are in jeopardy, and a coalition of mid-size banks is literally begging federal regulators to cover all uninsured deposits for at least the next two years…

A coalition of midsize US banks asked federal regulators to extend FDIC insurance to all deposits for the next two years, arguing the guarantee is needed to avoid a wider run on the banks.

“Doing so will immediately halt the exodus of deposits from smaller banks, stabilize the banking sector and greatly reduce chances of more bank failures,” the Mid-Size Bank Coalition of America said in a letter to regulators seen by Bloomberg News.

If federal regulators don’t do this, vast amounts of money will continue to be transferred from small and mid-size banks to the “too big to fail” banks.

But I’ll tell you why such a move is not likely to happen right now.

If every bank account in America is suddenly fully guaranteed by the federal government, there will be a giant sucking sound as wealthy individuals pull their money out of European banks where large balances are not fully insured.

The European banking system is already teetering on the brink of collapse.  In fact, we just learned that UBS has just agreed to an emergency purchase of Credit Suisse…

Switzerland’s biggest bank, UBS, has agreed to buy its ailing rival Credit Suisse in an emergency rescue deal aimed at stemming financial market panic unleashed by the failure of two American banks earlier this month.

“UBS today announced the takeover of Credit Suisse,” the Swiss National Bank said in a statement. It said the rescue would “secure financial stability and protect the Swiss economy.”

UBS is paying 3 billion Swiss francs ($3.25 billion) for Credit Suisse, about 60% less than the bank was worth when markets closed on Friday. Credit Suisse shareholders will be largely wiped out, receiving the equivalent of just 0.76 Swiss francs in UBS shares for stock that was worth 1.86 Swiss francs on Friday.

So to protect foreign banks, small and mid-size banks in the U.S. will be allowed to fail.

But if large numbers of small and mid-size banks start failing, this country will rapidly plunge into an economic nightmare.

On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted one of the greatest tweets that I have seen in a long time…

If the Fed does not contain the regional bank collapse, there will be another great depression.

Small/medium banks account for 50% of US commercial and industrial lending, 60% of residential real estate lending, 80% of commercial real estate lending, and 45% of consumer lending pic.twitter.com/wzTMHxSnXI

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 18, 2023

I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

Our economy runs on mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and debit cards.

If a bank gets into trouble, the flow of credit from that bank is restricted.

And if a bank fails, the flow of credit from that bank completely stops.

If lots of banks start going under in this country, economic activity will shrink substantially and we really will be facing “another great depression”.

At this point, conditions are so dire that Warren Buffett is getting personally involved…

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Warren Buffett has been in touch with senior officials in President Joe Biden’s administration in recent days as the regional banking crisis unfolds.

There have been multiple conversations between Biden’s team and Buffett in the past week, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. The calls have centered around Buffett possibly investing in the US regional banking sector in some way, but the billionaire has also given advice and guidance more broadly about the current turmoil.

It appears that far more is going on behind the scenes than we are being told.

Interestingly, lots of private jets were flying in and out of Omaha on Friday…

The Private Jets arrived in Omaha in multiple groups. Sometimes landing at almost the same exact time.

Did Buffett schedule some meetings with different groups of CEOs every hour?

Number of Jets arriving:
5 ~10am (est)
3 ~2pm
5 ~3:30pm
5 ~5pm
6 ~6:15pm
3 ~7:30pm pic.twitter.com/68Ok6zl8cA

— FuzzyPanda 🇺🇦 (@FuzzyPandaShort) March 17, 2023

Hopefully a way can be found to stabilize the banking system, because economic conditions are certainly bad enough already.

Earlier today, I was surprised to learn that Disney is getting ready to conduct a second round of layoffs…

After announcing a plan to slash nearly 7,000 jobs, Disney is reportedly instructing managers to propose budget cuts and put together lists of employees to be laid off in the coming weeks.

It is unclear whether Disney will begin layoffs in small waves or cut thousands of employees all at once, but the company will announce at least 4,000 current employees will be out of work sometime in April, according to Business Insider.

All over America, large companies are letting workers go.

But even though a significant economic downturn has already obviously begun, we are being told that the Federal Reserve is likely to raise interest rates yet again this week…

The Federal Reserve will kick off its meeting with trading expected to be light heading into a decision on interest rates Wednesday.

Despite the market tumult, 62% of investors expect the policymakers to continue hiking rates, which would mark the ninth straight increase. Thirty-eight percent expect no change, according to CME’s FedWatch.

After everything that has transpired over the past couple of weeks, it would literally be suicidal to raise rates again.

But they just might do it anyway.

So many of the things that I have been relentlessly warning about are now starting to transpire right in front of our eyes.

A great financial meltdown has begun, and our leaders seem very unsure about how to handle it.

Unfortunately for them, what we have gone through so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

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Michael Snyder has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

It is finally here! Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

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***

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 was the second largest bank failure in US history. Just two days following SVB’s collapse, Signature Bank joined the record books as the third largest bank failure in US history. First Republic Bank also seemed on the edge of collapse until Bank of America, Citigroup, and other big banks agreed to jointly fund a bailout for it.

Major Swiss bank Credit Suisse was also teetering on the brink when it received a 54 billion dollars line of credit from the Swiss UBS Group last week. Now, UBS is in the process of buying Credit Suisse. Politicians, regulators, and financial “experts” all rushed to assure us these problems were all caused by factors unique to the individual banks and were not a sign of a systemic weakness in the banking system.

The bank failures and near failures caused nervous banks to borrow a combined 164.8 billion dollars in one week from the Federal Reserve’s discount window and the Bank Term Funding Program, a new program created by the Fed to make loans to troubled banks. The Fed created this program even though supposedly there is no systemic problem in the banking industry.

While SVB didn’t receive a bailout, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) guaranteed the full amount of all deposits even though Congress set a standard FDIC guarantee on deposits of up to 250,000 dollars. By covering all SVB deposits, the FDIC has created an expectation among depositors at major financial institutions (as well as the institutions themselves) that the government will cover 100 percent of deposits. This will cause both depositors and banks to make investment decisions they typically would not make, thus guaranteeing larger bank failures followed by more bailouts for wealthy depositors.

Some have blamed the current bank failures, along with other signs that the economy is on the verge of a major downturn, on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases. It is true the Fed bears responsibility. However, the rate increases are not the problem. The problem is the “easy money” and low or zero interest rate policies the Fed pushed since the 2008 market meltdown, which was caused by the bursting of the Fed-created housing bubble. Federal Reserve manipulation of the money supply distorts interest rates, which are the price of money. This distorts the signals sent to market actors regarding the true value of investing in particular industries. The result is malinvestments in those industries creating a bubble. The bubble will inevitably burst.

The economic downturn that follows the bursting of a bubble is necessary to cleanse the economy of the malinvestments. The correction will not last long and the economy will emerge stronger if Congress, the Treasury Department, and the Federal Reserve refrain from “stimulating” the economy with federal spending and artificially low interest rates. Government interference, however, can create yet another bubble, setting the stage for another crash.

The new wave of bank failures is an indication that the US economy is either in or on the verge of another serious Fed-caused recession. With nations seeking to end the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, the end of America’s disastrous experiment with fiat money, and with it the welfare-warfare state, could be on the horizon. The collapse can be accompanied by civil unrest and greater restrictions on liberty. However, the spreading authoritarianism can also spur a growth in the movement for individual liberty, a free market, and limited government that could make the dark night of authoritarianism a prelude to a new dawn of liberty.

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***

It is widely believed that the Internet offers endless amounts of independent information.

This is false. The Internet offers government agencies and monied interests endless opportunities to lavishly fund websites that advance official and self-serving agendas.  There is very little truth on the internet.  

The few places where it exists are demonized as “conspiracy theorists,” “white supremacy,” “anti-semitic,” “domestic terrorist,”, “kook.” Support truth where you can find it, or truth will disappear completely. If you don’t care about truth, you don’t care about your freedom.  

Both Russia and China have publicly acknowledged the fact that Washington in pursuit of US hegemony disobeys international law, commits military and financial aggression, and interferes in the internal affairs of other countries.  Yet Russia and China have still not announced a mutual defense treaty or made any effort to include other threatened countries such as Iran in an alliance.  By failing to act in their own self defense, both countries have left themselves exposed, thereby encouraging more aggressive behavior by Washington that leads to nuclear war.  

The official Chinese document released by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs is very important.  It declares:

“Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

“It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a ‘rules-based international order.’

“The United States has been overriding truth with its power and trampling justice to serve self-interest. These unilateral, egoistic and regressive hegemonic practices have drawn growing, intense criticism and opposition from the international community.”

The Chinese are mistaken that the US is the most powerful country.  US power has rested on the dollar as world reserve currency, a role that is being destroyed by US sanctions that drive countries away from the use of the dollar, by massive and growing debt, by the demoralization of US armed services by anti-white propaganda and racial privileges for people of color and sexual privileges for sexual perverts, an unregulated financial system prone to crisis, and by Identity Politics that has destroyed national unity and shredded the protections granted by the US Constitution.

Mao Zedong was correct decades ago when he described the US as “a paper tiger.” 

It is extraordinary that both Russia and China are  so intimidated by a paper tiger that they are fearful to act in their own interests, instead accepting provocation after provocation.  

---

See this:

“US Hegemony and Its Perils”: China Document

By China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Karsten Riise, March 18, 2023

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

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***

In a “2-minute topic” posted on Twitter, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter reported that the U.S. MQ-9 drone that was forced down into the Black Sea on March 14 was not innocently transiting international airspace when it was intercepted by two Russian Su-27 fighters. Rather, it was on an intelligence-gathering mission, peering into Crimea, to gather electronic intelligence on Russian air defenses, communications and other activities of interest.

Source: businessinsider.com

The incident marked the first time Russian and U.S. military aircraft have come into direct physical contact since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine just over a year ago and is likely to increase tensions between the two nations, with the U.S. calling Russia’s actions “reckless, environmentally unsound and unprofessional.”

My latest 2 minute topic: pic.twitter.com/nT1VCKgvu6

— Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) March 17, 2023

Ritter said that it was clear the U.S. drone was collecting intelligence because of the existence of a signals intelligence pod placed under its wing.

That a U.S. drone was collecting intelligence was not by itself such a big deal, as so-called “Great Powers” routinely do this, but this case is different because the U.S. is sharing the intelligence it gathers with Ukraine, “which uses this information to target Russia.”

That is, information used for strikes on targets “where Russian soldiers are killed or wounded and Russian equipment is destroyed or damaged.”

“This makes the United States an active participant in the conflict, and the MQ-9 Reaper drone loses all protections,” Ritter went on. “So what Russia did is give the operators of the MQ-9 Reaper drone every chance to withdraw—19 times the Russian fighters flew past the drone, trying to convince the operators to leave the area. When that didn’t work, they used tactics that date back to the Cold War, dumping fuel on the airframe to disrupt its operations and if necessary, as was the case here, bring it down.

“This was an unfortunate incident. It cost the United States a $32 million aircraft. But we can’t allow this situation to spin out of control,” Ritter concluded.

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image: U.S. Air Force MQ-9 camera footage of the Russian Su-27 Black Sea intercept on March 14. [Source: edition.cnn.com]

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***

The author of the article, Ara Darzi, who is a member of the House of Lords of the United Kingdom, wrote:

‘The latest stage in the battle against Covid-19 has begun. Across the UK people aged over 50 are being called for vaccination with a booster this autumn to protect them against a likely new wave of infection this winter. But how many will accept it?

Darzi, who also just happens to be the director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College, Londonthen went on to claim the following –

• The growing anti-vaccine movement is a threat to public health here (UK) and across the Globe.
• Over 3.7 million people in Britain (6.4 per cent) are yet to have a single dose of the Covid vaccine.
• The risk of death is 14 times higher in the unvaccinated and without full coverage, the danger to the wider population is increased.
• Thousands of deaths have been linked to vaccine refusal. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 37,961 unvaccinated people in the UK died with Covid-19 mentioned on their death certificates between January 2021 and March 2022.

The article, which is of course behind a paywall, can be read in full here.

But each and every one of the claims made by Ara Darzi in the article is an outright lie.

Darzi was technically correct in saying ‘over 3.7 million people in Britain (6.4 per cent) were yet to have a single dose of the Covid vaccine’ when he wrote the article. But only because he uses the word over. He’s only 15.2 million short of the actual number of people who were yet to have a single dose.

Source Data – Page 65

According to the UK Health Security Agency’s (UKHSA) own figures, 63.4 million people were eligible for vaccination in England alone as of July 3rd 2022.

And according to the same figures, 44.48 million people had a single dose, 41.8 million people had two doses, and 32.9 million people had three doses as of July 3rd 2022.

Therefore, approximately 18.9 million people have refused the Covid-19 vaccine in England alone and remain completely unvaccinated. So just ever so slightly more than the 3.7 million people in the whole of Britain that Darzi, the director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College, London claimed.

Darzi also claimed that the risk of death is 14 times higher in the unvaccinated without supplying any evidence to back it up. We assume he plucked the number out of thin air because it certainly isn’t the case when it comes to Covid-19 deaths, and it isn’t the case when it comes to all-cause deaths either.

The following chart shows the monthly age-standardised mortality rates by vaccination status among each age group for Non-Covid-19 deaths in England between January and May 2022, using the figures contained in table 2 of the ‘January 2021 to May 2022 published dataset‘ collated by the UK Government agency, the Office for National Statistics –

The above figures reveal that for months on end, mortality rates per 100,000 were lowest among the unvaccinated in every single age group.

A more detailed analysis of the figures broken down by age group can be read here.

But, at the end of February 2023, the ONS finally published an updated dataset, 6 months later than expected. And it revealed exactly the same thing.

Source Data

Source Data

As you can see from the above, the mortality rate per 100,00 among the unvaccinated remained at pretty much the same level throughout the entirety of 2022, with no major increases, or dips.

But what’s concerning is the fact that the unvaccinated mortality rate was lower than the one dose vaccinated and two dose vaccinated for the entire year. And the 3+ dose vaccinated for 8 months of the year.

However, if it were not for the fact the 3 dose + data includes those who have also had a fourth, or even fifth dose, we fully believe that the mortality rate would still be higher than the unvaccinated mortality rate for the entire year.

Because as you can see from the above chart, the fall is far too dramatic, and it coincides with the rollout of the Autumn 2022 Booster campaign as confirmed in a press release published by the JCVI –

Source

This means the data for mortality rates on those who had 3 doses after Spring 2022 is unreliable because it includes a small portion of people who had a fourth dose in Spring and an even smaller portion of people who had a fifth dose in the Autumn.

Therefore, the UK Government has clearly confirmed that mortality rates per 100,000 were highest among the vaccinated in every single age group throughout 2022

These are age-standardised figures. There is no other conclusion that can be found for the fact mortality rates per 100,000 are the lowest among the unvaccinated other than that the Covid-19 injections are killing people most likely due to the intense damage Covid-19 vaccination can do to the most vital organ in the human body, the heart, and the devastating decimation it does to the natural immune system.

So as you can see, the risk of death is definitely not 14 times higher in the unvaccinated, but just in case Darzi meant to actually only refer to Covid-19 deaths, let’s prove once and for all that the member of the House of Lords and the director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College, London is nothing more than a charlatan and a liar.

The rebuttal to Darzi’s claim the risk of death is 14x higher among the unvaccinated also covers the next questionable claim he made that ‘thousands of deaths have been linked to vaccine refusal. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 37,961 unvaccinated people in the UK died with Covid-19 mentioned on their death certificates between January 2021 and March 2022.’

The following graph shows Covid-19 deaths in the UK from early 2020 to the present day –

Can you see the tip of that huge second peak of alleged Covid-19 deaths? It ends on around the 18th of January 2021. So Darzi has been very deceitful to unsuspecting and unquestioning readers here because he’s included a huge amount of deaths in his 37,961 figure that occurred among the unvaccinated when 99% of people aged 12 and over in the UK were unvaccinated.

If we actually count the deaths from 1st March 2021, when 1.3% of the UK population aged 12 and over were considered fully vaccinated…

Source

To 31st May 2022, a period of 15 months, when 82.3% of the UK population aged 12 and over were considered fully vaccinated…

Source

We actually find there were only 6,235 deaths among the unvaccinated.

This compares to 27,726 deaths among the vaccinated.

And what we also find is that each dose administered seems to induce more Covid-19 deaths.

Here’s what happened in terms of Covid-19 deaths in the five months from March 1st 2021 according to data extracted from table 1 of the ‘January 2021 to May 2022 ONS Deaths by vaccination status‘ dataset –

The public was told that they needed two doses of the Covid-19 vaccine for it to be fully effective. But despite only a tiny percentage of people being two-dose vaccinated by the 1st of March, Covid-19 deaths began to fall significantly by the month.

However, as you can see from the above chart, it was the vaccinated who accounted for the majority of Covid-19 deaths each month. In all, there were 5,629 Covid-19 deaths. The vaccinated accounted for 63% of those deaths, 66% of which were among the one-dose vaccinated.

But things actually began to get worse for the double vaccinated in June, and unfortunately, by July 2021, Covid-19 deaths were on the rise again.

As you can see from the above, people given a third dose began to account for a large chunk of the people dying of Covid-19 from the very first moment it was administered.

It was however the double vaccinated who accounted for the vast majority of Covid-19 deaths among the vaccinated between 1st August and 31st December 2021. 83% to be exact. And the vaccinated population as a whole accounted for 79% of the 13,309 alleged Covid-19 deaths between the 1st of August and the 31st of December 2021.

This means the overall number of Covid-19 deaths increased by 136% over this period compared to the previous five months.

But here’s what happened in terms of Covid-19 deaths in the following five months according to data extracted from table 1 of the latest ONS ‘Deaths by vaccination status‘ dataset –

By the end of May 2022, England had suffered 15,113 Covid-19 deaths, and the vaccinated accounted for a shocking 13,666 of them. And the majority of them were among the triple vaccinated every single month.

This means that overall the vaccinated population accounted for 90% of Covid-19 deaths during this period. 82% of which were among the triple vaccinated despite just 50% of the population having had three or more doses.

What is most concerning in this period though is the massive decline in deaths among the unvaccinated compared to the increase in deaths each month among the vaccinated.

In January the vaccinated accounted for 85% of Covid-19 deaths, 67% of which were among the triple jabbed.

In February the vaccinated accounted for 90% of Covid-19 deaths, 74% of which were among the triple jabbed.

In March the vaccinated accounted for 93% of Covid-19 deaths, 82%% of which were among the triple jabbed.

In April the vaccinated accounted for 94%% of Covid-19 deaths, 91% of which were among the triple jabbed.

Finally, in May, a month where we would expect seasonal illness to decline, as proven by the figures, the vaccinated still accounted for 94% of Covid-19 deaths, 85% of which were among the triple jabbed.

But now, thanks to the ONS finally publishing an updated dataset, 6 months later than expected, at the end of February 2023, We can see that the triple+ Vaccinated accounted for 92% of COVID deaths throughout the entirety of 2022.

Here’s how the ONS presents the figures for the month of October 2022 –

As you can see from the above, the vast majority of Covid-19 deaths occurred among those who had received three or more doses of the Covid-19 injection during that month. But this isn’t an anomaly.

So we took the figures provided by the ONS and have produced the following chart showing the total number of Covid-19 deaths by vaccination status throughout 2022 –

In all, there were 28,041 Covid-19 deaths in England between 1st January 2022 and 31st December 2022, and shockingly, 25,758 of those deaths were among the fully vaccinated population, while just 2,273 deaths were among the unvaccinated population.

This means the fully vaccinated population accounted for 92% of all Covid-19 deaths throughout the year 2022.

And despite a fifth dose of the Covid-19 injection being offered to the public before the end of the year, it’s those who had the most doses that account for the majority of deaths among the vaccinated.

Do these figures scream that the unvaccinated are 14x more likely to die, as Ara Darzi, the director of the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College, London claimed back in October 2022?

They most certainly do not.

Ara Darzi has proven himself to be a charlatan, a liar, and a propaganda-promoting disgrace.

And for the record Mr Darzi, it’s Anti-Vaxxers; not Antivaxers. But with the amount of garbage spouted within your hate-inciting article, ‘Antivaxers [sic] are a global menace who must be defeated’, we should have known it was beyond you to even spell the headline correctly.

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When will this hate-filled nonsense stop?  Surveillance balloons treated like evocations of Satan and his card-carrying followers; other innumerable unidentified phenomena that, nonetheless, remain attributable in origin, despite their designation; and then the issue of spying cranes.  In the meantime, there has been much finger pointing on the culprit of COVID-19 and the global pandemic.  Behold the China Threat, the Sino Monster, the Yellow Terror.

In this atmosphere, the hawkish disposition of media outlets in a number of countries in shrieking for war is becoming palpable. 

The Fairfax press in Australia gave a less than admirable example of this in their absurd Red Alert series, crowned by crowing warmongers warning Australia to get ready for the imminent confrontation.  The publications were timed to soften the public for the inevitable, scandalous and possibly even treasonous announcement that the Australian government would be spending A$368 billion in local currency on needless submarines against a garishly dressed-up threat backed by ill-motivated allies.

For days, the Australian press demonstrated a zombie-like adherence to the war line that had been fed by deskbound generals no doubt suffering from piles and deranged civilian strategists desperate to justify their supper.  It is a line that always assumes the virtue of war; that going into battle, much like US President Theodore Roosevelt thought, will always outdo the tedium of peace in a haze of phosphorescent glory.  It is only in the morgues and the crowded cemeteries that we find a worthy patriotism.  Go out and kill, you noble sons and daughters.  Do your nation proud, however stupidly.

The desperation of such a measure is also a reflection of how public opinion rejects the war drive.  In a 2022 poll by the Lowy Institute think tank, 51% of Australians said they preferred their country to remain “neutral” in a conflict between the US and China over Taiwan.  This was not a bad return, given the repetitious insistence by various Australian government ministers that joining a war with the United States over Taiwan was simply assumed.

In the US, the Wall Street Journal was also doing much the same thing, plumping for great power competitions that can only end badly, rather than great power cooperation which, when it goes well, spares us the body bags, the funerals and the flag fluttering.

The introductory note of one article in that Rupert Murdoch-owned organ was not encouraging.  “Since 2018, the [US] military has shifted to focus on China and Russia after decades fighting insurgencies, but it still faces challenges to produce weapons and come up with new ways of waging war.”

The obsession with war scenarios rather than diplomatic ones is hardening.  It elevates the game to level pegging with peace overtures.  In fact, it goes further, suggesting that such measures are to be frowned upon, if not abandoned in their entirety.  Rather than considering discussions with China, for instance, on whether some rules of accommodation and observance can be made, the attitude from Washington and its satellites is one of excoriation, taking issue with any restrictions on the growth of the US defence complex.  Acid observations are reserved for the Budget Control Act of 2011, which supposedly “hampered initiatives to transform the military, including on artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous systems and advanced manufacturing.”

As defence analyst William Hartung writes, the Pentagon has never been short of cash in its pursuits, though it has been more than wasteful, obsessed with maintaining a global military presence spanning 750 bases and 170,000 overseas troops, not to mention the madness of shovelling $2 billion into developing a new generation of nuclear weapons.  Far from encouraging deterrence, this is bound to “accelerate a dangerous and costly arms race.”

The same must be said of AUKUS, the triumvirate alliance that is already terrifying several powers in the Indo-Pacific into joining the regional arms race.  Here we see, yet again, the Anglosphere enthralled by protecting their possessions and routes of access, directly or indirectly held.

In the red mist of war, lucid voices can be found.  Singaporean diplomat and foreign policy intellectual Kishore Mahbubani is one to offer a bracing analysis in observing that China is hardly going to undermine the very order that has benefitted it. The Chinese, far from wishing to upend the rules-based system with thuggish glee, saw it as a gift of Western legal engineering.  “So the paradox about the world today is that even though the global rules based order is a gift of the west, China embraces it.”

He also has this to say about the US-China relationship. “China has been around for 5,000 years. The United States has been around for 250 years. And it’s not surprising that a juvenile like the United States would have difficulty dealing with a wiser, older civilisation”.

Mahbubani, ever wily but also penetratingly sharp, also offers a valuable point: that the notion of a remarkable weapon (the nuclear-propelled submarine is not so much remarkable as cumbersomely draining and costly) must surely come a distant second to the attainment of economic prosperity.  “Submarines are stealthy, but trade is stealthier,” he writes with a touch of serene sagacity. Both provide security, in a fashion: the former in terms of raw deterrence; the latter in terms of interdependence – but the kind of security created by trade, he is adamant, “lasts longer”.  To date, that realisation seems to have bypassed the AUKUS troika.

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

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

By Dr. William Makis, March 20, 2023

COVID-19 Vaccine mandates were for ages 12+ but look at the pressure they put every citizen of Hamilton, Ontario under. Just to get into the Arena: “a city official will be present at the door to check for vaccination certificate and ID”.

East Palestine Soil Contains Dioxin Levels Hundreds of Times Over Cancer Risk Threshold

By Jake Johnson, March 21, 2023

East Palestine, Ohio residents’ concerns about the enduring impact of last month’s fiery train derailment are likely to intensify following the release of data showing that levels of dioxin in the soil near the wreck site are far higher than the cancer risk threshold recommended by federal scientists.

The UAE Welcomes Syrian President Assad and the First Lady

By Steven Sahiounie, March 21, 2023

Syrian President Assad is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) today on an official visit as Arab leaders continue to defy the directives issued by the US State Department. Momentum is building across the region to bring Assad back into the fold.

Patriotism and Sinophobia. Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor

By Kim Petersen, March 21, 2023

People such as former US military men like Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor provide excellent analysis on the geopolitics and warring in Ukraine. Ritter and McGregor are two Americans apparently able to relay a perspective based on their own take of a situation, a take independent of government pronouncements and home media reports.

The US’ Schizophrenic Approach to the ICC Embodies Its Hypocritical “Rules-Based Order” Concept

By Andrew Korybko, March 21, 2023

This paradigm of International Relations isn’t about upholding the UN Charter, but arbitrarily implementing double standards in advance of America’s interests and even sometimes at the expense of its own reputation in pursuit of its goals.

NY Red Alert: Recently Passed Bill Clears the Way for a Mandatory Adult Vaccine Database

By Autism Action Network, March 21, 2023

A mandatory vaccine database is an essential part of any vaccine passport system. As we have already seen, New York State and City will use this information to decide who can work, go to school, attend college, travel, operate a business, enter public places, shop, attend worship services, receive medical care, and on and on.

White House Says It Opposes a Ceasefire in Ukraine

By Dave DeCamp, March 20, 2023

The White House has come out against a ceasefire in Ukraine ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow to potentially mediate between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart in Kyiv.

Unrest Erupts in France After Macron Imposes Pension Reforms by Decree

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 20, 2023

French workers and youth expressed their profound anger at the government in the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s actions related to the proposed changes in the pension system in one of Europe’s leading states.

Does ICC’s Arrest Warrant Limit Putin’s External Visits? “The West Is Hysterical”

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, March 20, 2023

The first simple interpretation of the warrant issued by International Criminal Court is that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be arrested in 123 member states around the world. These members are now legally bound to arrest, detain and hand him over to the court.

Endless Wars: US Escalation to the East. Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, March 20, 2023

Unable to prevent the “decline” with political and economic tools, the U.S. and its allies are increasingly resorting to military ones. This includes the “landmark agreement with Australia and Britain,” announced by President Biden.

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***

East Palestine, Ohio residents’ concerns about the enduring impact of last month’s fiery train derailment are likely to intensify following the release of data showing that levels of dioxin in the soil near the wreck site are far higher than the cancer risk threshold recommended by federal scientists.

Dioxin is a toxic and carcinogenic byproduct of burning vinyl chloride, a hazardous chemical that at least five Norfolk Southern train cars were carrying when they derailed in early February, sparking a full-blown environmental and public health disaster.

Citing a report that Pace Analytical prepared for Ohio’s neighbor Indiana, The Guardian reported Friday that “East Palestine soil showed levels of ‘2,3,7,8 TCDD toxicity equivalence’ of 700 parts per trillion (ppt),” potentially stemming from the controlled burn of vinyl chloride in the wake of the crash.

“The level at which the EPA will initiate cleanup action in residential areas is 1,000 ppt,” the newspaper explained. “However, the cleanup triggers are much lower in many states—90 ppt in Michigan, and 50 ppt in California… Moreover, EPA scientists in 2010 put the cancer risk threshold for dioxins in residential soil at 3.7 ppt, and the agency recommended lowering the cleanup trigger to 72 ppt.”

The Obama administration tanked the EPA scientists’ effort to formally lower the federal cleanup threshold, The Guardiannoted.

Chemical experts and former EPA officials expressed alarm over the data while acknowledging it was limited to just two soil samples and more testing is needed.

“The levels are not screaming high, but we have confirmed that dioxins are in East Palestine’s soil,” Linda Birnbaum, former head of the U.S. National Toxicology Program, told The Guardian. “The EPA must test the soil in the area more broadly.”

Carsten Prasse, an organic chemist at Johns Hopkins University, added that the dioxin concentrations in the soil samples examined are “actually concerning.”

“My main concern is: is this reflective of the level in the area in East Palestine… and of the levels individuals who live near the rail are exposed to?” Prasse asked. “I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable living there.”

Despite outside experts’ fears, EPA regional administrator Debra Shore insisted that the dioxin levels detected in the Indiana report are “very low.”

NEW: This is why the East Palestine community is demanding independent testing.

We know the that the dangerous chemicals released by Norfolk Southern’s negligence pose a deadly risk to residents in the region.

We need action and leadership NOW. https://t.co/qSq7fTjkhN

— River Valley Organizing (@RiverValleyOrg) March 17, 2023

The Guardian‘s reporting came days after Ohio’s Republican attorney general filed suit against Norfolk Southern, accusing the rail giant of “recklessly endangering” East Palestine residents.

“Ohio shouldn’t have to bear the tremendous financial burden of Norfolk Southern’s glaring negligence,” said AG Dave Yost said. “The fallout from this highly preventable incident may continue for years to come, and there’s still so much we don’t know about the long-term effects on our air, water, and soil.”

In Congress, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to build support for legislation that would impose more strict regulations on trains carrying hazardous materials such as vinyl chloride.

During Senate testimony last week, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw refused to endorse the bill.

“If Norfolk Southern had paid a little more attention to safety and a little less attention to its profits—had cared a little more about the Ohioans along its tracks, and a little less about its executives and shareholders—these accidents would not have been as bad, or might not have happened at all,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the lead Democratic sponsor of the Railway Safety Act, said during the hearing.

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.

Featured image: Contractors removing the burnt wagons, East Palestine, Ohio. (Facebook via Free West Media)

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***

Today, Iraqis mark the 20th anniversary of the horrific U.S.-U.K. bombing of Baghdad, dubbed “Shock and Awe.” In rapid succession, “coalition forces” dropped 3,000 bombs, including many that weighed 2,000 pounds, on Baghdad in what The New York Times called “almost biblical power.”

Although they launched an illegal war of aggression and committed war crimes in Iraq, 20 years later the leaders of the U.S. and the U.K. have never faced criminal accountability. By contrast, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has already charged Russian President Vladimir Putin with war crimes just one year after his unlawful invasion of Ukraine. He is the first non-African leader to be charged by the ICC, which frequently succumbs to pressure from the United States.

In what came to be called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 173,000 troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. During the eight-year war, about 300,000 Iraqis and 4,600 Americans were killed. The United States spent $815 billion on the war, not counting indirect costs. It plunged the country into a civil war and millions of Iraqi refugees remain displaced. Two decades later, not one of the officials responsible has been brought to justice.

Invading Iraq Was an Act of Aggression

Sources within his administration have confirmed that George W. Bush was planning to invade Iraq and execute regime change long before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The U.S.-led invasion violated the United Nations Charter, which authorizes countries to use military force against other countries only in self-defense or with approval by the UN Security Council.

The attack on Iraq didn’t satisfy either of these conditions and was therefore an act of aggression. After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg wrote, “To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Like other U.S. military interventions, the rationale for this illegal aggression was based on a lie. Much as President Lyndon B. Johnson used the fabricated Tonkin Gulf incident as a pretext to escalate the Vietnam War, Bush relied on mythical weapons of mass destruction and a nonexistent link between Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks to justify his war on Iraq.

Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice falsely warned that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and Rice invoked the image of a “mushroom cloud” to justify the impending invasion of Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell shamefully presented false information about Iraq having WMD to the UN Security Council in February 2003.

In 2002, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter confirmed that Iraq had destroyed 90-95 percent of its WMD and there was no evidence that it had retained the other 5-10 percent, which didn’t necessarily constitute a threat or even a weapons program.

Indeed, no WMD were ever found by the UN weapons inspectors before or after Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Moreover, the Bush administration fabricated a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda notwithstanding the intelligence to the contrary.

The Downing Street Minutes, a transcript of one of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s briefings with British intelligence that The Times of London published in 2005, demonstrated that the Bush administration had decided by July 2002 to invade Iraq and carry out regime change. The “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” the minutes revealed.

Even a 2005 congressional report prepared at the direction of former Rep. John Conyers, Jr. concluded that in spite of intelligence information to the contrary, members of the Bush administration made false statements before the invasion about Iraq having WMD, and linkages between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

Although Team Bush urged the UN Security Council to pass a resolution authorizing its attack on Iraq, the Council refused. Bush and his allies instead cobbled together prior Council resolutions, none of which — individually or collectively — authorized the invasion of Iraq.

Bush justified the attack with his doctrine of “preemptive war.” But the UN Charter only allows a country to use military force in response to an armed attack by another country or with permission of the Security Council. Operation Iraqi Freedom violated the UN Charter and constituted an illegal war of aggression.

War Crimes Committed by the Bush Administration

U.S. forces committed many other war crimes in Iraq, including extrajudicial killings, torture and the targeting of civilians, which are prohibited by the Geneva Conventions; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Torture and abuse conducted at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq included the stacking of naked prisoners on one another; photographing prisoners who had been forcibly arranged in sexually explicit positions; keeping prisoners naked for days; forcing male prisoners to wear women’s underwear; using snarling dogs; punching, slapping and kicking prisoners; and sodomizing a prisoner with a chemical light and broomstick.

Civilians were targeted as U.S. troops operated under rules of engagement that directed them to shoot everything that moved. In these “free-fire zones” the U.S. also bombed civilian areas and used cluster bombs, depleted uranium and white phosphorus, resulting in massive civilian casualties.

The most notorious free-fire zone was in Fallujah. In April 2004, U.S. forces attacked the village and killed 736 people, at least 60 percent of whom were women and children. In another attack the following November, U.S. troops killed between 581 and 670 civilians in Fallujah.

Another infamous example of extrajudicial killing was the Haditha Massacre in November 2005, when U.S. Marines killed 24 unarmed civilians “execution-style” in a 3-to-4-hour rampage. The U.S. covered up the massacre until Timemagazine ran a story about it in March 2006.

Documented extrajudicial killings also took place in the Iraqi cities of Al-Qa’im, Taal Al Jal, Mukaradeeb, Mahmudiya, Al-Hamdaniyah, Samarra, Salahuddin and Ishaqi.

These war crimes are not only abhorrent, but punishable under the U.S. War Crimes Act and the U.S. Torture Statute. Yet, although it has been 20 years since the invasion of Iraq, no U.S. leaders have been indicted. The Obama administration’s Department of Justice actively decided not to prosecute anyone for the torture and abuse committed during the Bush regime. Yet it only took one year for the ICC to charge Putin with war crimes in Ukraine.

Last May, George W. Bush accidentally admitted that his decision to invade Iraq was unjustified. While addressing a crowd at the Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Bush decried “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean, Ukraine.” He then added under his breath, “Iraq too.”

Speaking about the war in Ukraine, President Joe Biden recently declared the apparent absurdity of “The idea that over 100,000 forces would invade another country — since World War II, nothing like that has happened.” Biden apparently forgot about “Operation Iraqi Freedom.”

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace, and the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. She is co-host of “Law and Disorder” radio.

Featured image is from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

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***

My attention was recently drawn by a commentary from Emily Harris in JAMA implying that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy had benefits from a study previously published in the British Medical Journal. There has never been any randomized, prospective, double-blind placebo controlled trial of COVID-19 vaccines in any group demonstrating clinical benefit defined as reductions in hospitalization and death. Among pregnant women, COVID-19 vaccination is category X, meaning it should not be given. So naturally I was suspicious on how a report indicating benefit made into the British Medical Journal. The literature is accumulating numerous invalid analyses making false claims of benefit without adequate design or consideration of drug safety.

Jorgensen et al published from the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN) Provincial Collaborative Network Investigators a study from automated sources of data on pregnant women and infants tested using nasal PCR-testing. As a former editor I found this paper misleading because: 1) diagnostic codes for safety events (heart damage, blood clots, stroke, maternal death) were not disclosed and analyzed, 2) no adjudication for COVID-19 illness, so healthy test positive “cases” were reported, 3) focus was on infants was irrelevant since they not develop clinically significant COVID-19.

The interesting finding in the Jorgensen paper, not mentioned by the authors is in the Table. As you can see, primary series and boosters had no statistically significant impact in test positivity among the mothers. This means the intervention was completely useless and had no laboratory or clinical benefit reported.

Jorgensen SCJ, Hernandez A, Fell DB, Austin PC, D’Souza R, Guttmann A, Brown KA, Buchan SA, Gubbay JB, Nasreen S, Schwartz KL, Tadrous M, Wilson K, Kwong JC; Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN) Provincial Collaborative Network (PCN) Investigators. Maternal mRNA covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy and delta or omicron infection or hospital admission in infants: test negative design study. BMJ. 2023 Feb 8;380:e074035. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2022-074035. PMID: 36754426; PMCID: PMC9903336.

The medical literature is burgeoning with fraudulent papers extolling false claims of COVID-19 vaccination from nonrandomized, non-adjudicated data while at the same time ignoring horrific safety outcomes well known to occur as a result of vaccination. Jorgensen and the Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN) Provincial Collaborative Network Investigators can be added to this long list of culpable authors. The conclusions of this paper serve as a stark warning to view the primary data and realize the authors are biased and not fairly evaluating these emerging potentially dangerous genetic biotechnologies.

If you find “Courageous Discourse” enjoyable and useful to your endeavors, please subscribe as a paying or founder member to support our efforts in helping you engage in these discussions with family, friends, and your extended circles.

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Sources

Harris E. COVID-19 Vaccination During Pregnancy Protected Infants. JAMA. 2023;329(10):789. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.2098

COVID-19 Vaccines Remain Pregnancy Category X Products Should Never Have Been Administered in Pregnant Women and Those of Childbearing Age

Jorgensen SCJ, Hernandez A, Fell DB, Austin PC, D’Souza R, Guttmann A, Brown KA, Buchan SA, Gubbay JB, Nasreen S, Schwartz KL, Tadrous M, Wilson K, Kwong JC; Canadian Immunization Research Network (CIRN) Provincial Collaborative Network (PCN) Investigators. Maternal mRNA covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy and delta or omicron infection or hospital admission in infants: test negative design study. BMJ. 2023 Feb 8;380:e074035. doi: 10.1136/bmj-2022-074035. PMID: 36754426; PMCID: PMC9903336.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

Syrian President Assad is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) today on an official visit as Arab leaders continue to defy the directives issued by the US State Department. Momentum is building across the region to bring Assad back into the fold.

Assad and his wife, Asma, were personally greeted at the airport by UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan. As Assad’s plane entered Emirati airspace, it was flanked by a precision group of Emirati fighter jets, and after landing the pair were honored by a canon salute and the Syrian national anthem.

Syria’s first lady Asmaa Al-Assad in the UAE with Syrian President

“Our discussions also explored ways of enhancing cooperation to accelerate stability and progress in Syria and the region,” Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed tweeted. Abu Dhabi restored diplomatic relations with Damascus in 2018.

The UAE had pledged over $100 million in assistance to quake-hit Syria, dispatched a search and rescue team and provided thousands of tons of humanitarian aid.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE Foreign Minister, visited Syria last month as the first senior Gulf official to do so since the quake.

Arab states such as Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Oman, and Tunisia have an interest in ending the isolation of Syria.

There was a time in the past, when Arab leaders obeyed Washington’s demands and orders. Those days are over, as the region has developed their own diplomatic skills and are using them in their own interest.

When the US launched their attack on Syria in 2011 for regime change, they utilized their assets in the region.  Orders were handed out to Qatar and Turkey, both US allies who host US military bases, to supply the armed fighters, cash, logistics and weapons to facilitate a war in Syria which would eventually result in an uprising, and finally in regime change.  The US-NATO plan failed.  The Arab world learned a hard lesson: following US orders blindly will lead you to failure. They could have first studied the US failed war in Iraq.

A big message was sent from the region to Washington in March 2022 when Assad visited the UAE.

Saudi Arabia, the most powerful country in the region, has recently reached an agreement with Iran to restore full diplomatic relations. After the February 6 earthquake which devastated Turkey and parts of Syria, and killed 5,900 Syrians, Saudi Arabia was among the first countries to land humanitarian aid in Syria.

Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Foreign Minister of Saudi Arabia said that when it comes to Syria “the status quo is not workable,” and that the world must “at some point” engage Damascus on issues like refugees and humanitarian aid.

The Arab world has argued that the US policy towards Syria has produced failure and destruction and the international community should set aside politics and remove sanctions to help Syrian earthquake victims who desperately need humanitarian assistance. US and EU sanctions continue to prevent the free flow of aid and monetary aid to families.

Despite the US objection, Abu Dhabi has rebuilt ties with Damascus several years ago and has delivered aid to Syria since the earthquake.

On February 7, Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi spoke with Assad by phone for the first time, and Jordan’s foreign minister made his first trip to Damascus on February 15.

On February 20, Assad arrived in Muscat for a working visit to Oman. The sultanate was the only state in the six-member GCC to maintain diplomatic relations with Damascus throughout the Syrian conflict and Muscat has supported Syria’s return to the Arab League.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Omani capital Muscat

Oman sent a new ambassador to Syria in 2020, and Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi visited Damascus in January 2022.

Assad’s welcome in Muscat shows interest at the highest levels of the GCC, and experts have argued that the Syrian president could not have gone to Oman without Saudi Arabia’s approval.

Oman’s Royal Air Force has conducted aid flights to Syria since the earthquake. Assad was greeted by Sultan Haitham, and the leaders travelled to Al Baraka Palace for talks, where Assad thanked Oman for its efforts to help with the earthquake recovery.

On February 26, Egypt House Speaker Hanafi Gibali traveled to Damascus as part of a delegation of senior Arab parliamentarians to discuss bringing Syria back to the Arab League. Syria was suspended from the organization in 2011.

The heads of the Iraqi, Jordanian, Palestinian, Libyan, Egyptian and Emirati houses of representatives, as well as representatives from Oman and Lebanon, traveled to Syria as part of a delegation from the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union. They met with Syrian parliamentarians and with Assad.

“We cannot do without Syria and Syria cannot do without its Arab environment, which we hope it can return to,” said Iraqi parliament speaker Mohammed Halbousi.

On February 27, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry became the first Egyptian diplomat to make an official visit to Syria in a decade. Egypt will provide more aid to Syria and has already shipped 1.5k tons, Shoukry told reporters following meetings with Al Assad and Syrian Foreign Minister Faisel Mikdad.

“The goal of the visit is primarily humanitarian, and to pass on our solidarity – from the leadership, the government and the people of Egypt to the people of Syria,” Shoukry said.

On March 14 and 15, Assad was in Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In 2018, the US State Department laid out their foreign policy on Syria, and it hasn’t changed, even though Biden was elected in 2020.

The US strategy was to isolate Assad by treating Syria like North Korea. David Statterfield, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs, described how the US would remove Assad from power while speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Syria needs reconstruction funds of between $200-300 billion plus. The international has community has committed itself not to provide those funds,” Statterfield said.

The US occupation forces control the oil fields which had provided Syria will all their domestic energy needs to heat homes, drive cars and provide electricity. Now that the US Army denies the Syrian people their own resources, the people have about 30 minutes of electricity in three intervals per day.

The US State Department’s Syria policy is to prevent all reconstruction following the US attack on Syria since 2011, and now following the February 6 earthquake of 7.8 magnitude which has been called Turkish President Erdogan as the “Disaster of the Century”.

With a concerted effort led by the US at the UN, the international community can deny Syria’s government the funding it would need to rebuild the country and the lives and livelihoods of 20 million people.

It is now up to the Arab world, not the western “international community”, to save the Syrian people and restore their human right to have shelter, income, education and a chance at happiness.

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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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***

Thursday marks the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.

By March 16, yours truly was already pretty fed up with both the governmental and societal “response” to what was being baselessly categorized as the worst pandemic in 100 years, despite zero statistical data supporting such a serious claim.

The Moment That Shook the World: "15 Days to Slow the Spread" (March 16, 2020)

Fauci: "In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be https://t.co/T9CGrYFNjv… https://t.co/SwDYBgN438 pic.twitter.com/k5oaU36YAR

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 16, 2023

I was living in the Washington, D.C. Beltway at the time, and it was pretty much impossible to find a like-minded person within 50 miles who also wasn’t taking the bait. After I read about the news coming out of Wuhan in January, I spent much of the next couple weeks catching up to speed and reading about what a modern pandemic response was supposed to look like.

What surprised me most was that none of “the measures” were mentioned, and that these designated “experts” were nothing more than failed mathematicians, government doctors, and college professors who were more interested in policy via shoddy academic forecasting than observing reality.

Within days of continually hearing their yapping at White House pressers, It quickly became clear that the Deborah Birx’s and Anthony Fauci’s of the world were engaging in nothing more than a giant experiment. There was no an evidence-based approach to managing Covid whatsoever. These figures were leaning into the collective hysteria, and brandishing their credentials as Public Health Experts to demand top-down approaches to stamping out the WuFlu.

DeSantis on Covid lockdowns: “So I call and say, ‘Deborah [Birx], tell me: when in American history has this been done?’ And she says, ‘It’s kind of our own science experiment that we’re doing in real time.’”

Lockdowns were Fauci's “science experiment”🤯pic.twitter.com/K7H8NIBPaV

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) March 14, 2023

To put it bluntly, these longtime government bureaucrats had no idea what the f—k they were doing. Fauci and his cohorts were not established or reputable scientists, but authoritarians, charlatans, who had a decades-long track record of hackery and corruption. This Coronavirus Task Force did not have the collective intellect nor the wisdom to be making these broad brush decisions.

Back then, there were only literally a handful of people who attempted to raise awareness about the wave of tyranny, hysteria, and anti-science policies that were coming our way. There were so few of us back in March in 2020 that it was impossible to form any kind of significant structured resistance to the madness that was unfolding before us. These structures would later form, but not until the infrastructure for the highway to Covid hysteria hell had already been cemented.

Making matters worse was the reality that the vast majority of the population — friends, colleagues, peers and family included — agreed that dissenters were nothing more than reckless extremists, bioterrorists, Covid deniers, anti-science rabble rousers, and the like.

Yet we were right, and we had the evidence and data to prove it. There was no evidence to ever support such a heavy-handed series of government initiatives to “slow the spread.”

By March 16, 2020, data had already accumulated indicating that this contagion would be no more lethal than an influenza outbreak.

The February, 2020 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship provided a clear signal that the hysteria models provided by Bill Gates-funded and managed organizations were incredibly off base. Of the 3,711 people aboard the Diamond Princess, about 20% tested positive with Covid. The majority of those who tested positive had zero symptoms. By the time all passengers had disembarked from the vessel, there were 7 reported deaths on the ship, with the average age of this cohort being in the mid 80s, and it wasn’t even clear if these passengers died from or with Covid.

Despite the strange photos and videos coming out of Wuhan, China, there was no objective evidence of a once in a century disease approaching America’s shores, and the Diamond Princess outbreak made that clear.

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People such as former US military men like Scott Ritter and Douglas MacGregor provide excellent analysis on the geopolitics and warring in Ukraine.

Ritter and McGregor are two Americans apparently able to relay a perspective based on their own take of a situation, a take independent of government pronouncements and home media reports.

Nonetheless, despite reporting their government’s involvement in a proxy war and being well aware of US imperialism and war crimes, these men feel the need to profess their love of country. This is despite their country stirring up wars abroad; stealing oil and wheat in Syria; withholding money that belongs to the poor people of Afghanistan; having overthrown or trying to overthrow governments in Ukraine, Venezuela, Iran, Bolivia, Peru, Russia, etc.; leaving Americans without healthcare to fend for themselves as well as the homeless and destitute; carrying out a slow-motion assassination of Julian Assange; forcing Edward Snowden to live in exile; and a war against several other whistleblowers, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou, to name a few. So why the need to express an undying love for country?

One must not be harsh, as one can assume that to not declare an unwavering patriotism would put these independent speakers at risk of a harsh backlash.

I admire Ritter and MacGregor for their independent streak. (I also appreciate the analysis of former US marine Brian Berletic who does not engage in rah-rah for the United States, but then he is an ex-pat).

Of course, that an ex-military man can provide excellent military analysis does not mean that views expressed outside one’s bailiwick are equally profound. Such views may even be deserving of criticism or censure.

In a recent video, MacGregor is interviewed by Stephen Gardner (who displays a large Star and Stripes in the background). MacGregor imparts a perspective that is at odds with that trotted out by his government and the US monopoly media concerning warring in Ukraine.

However, a final question that Gardner posed to MacGregor was rather revealing in a very negative light.

Gardner tendentiously asks (around 29:25),

“You mentioned that the humane thing would be for the United States to step in and say this war is over; let’s be done. Don’t you feel like China is trying to fill that vacuum, where they are now saying, ‘Oh Saudi Arabia and Iran, there’s a lot of money to be made, let’s broker peace. Russia, Ukraine, hey, the United States is not going to step in; we are going to step in and broker peace.’ Is this one more way for China to try to eclipse the United States on the world stage?”

What basis does Garner have for posing such a loaded question? Gardner ascribes selfish motives to China’s seeking to broker peace. One assumes that making war is preferable in Garner’s estimation. When has China ever boasted that it aspires to eclipse any country or be top dog? China eschews hegemony, and it consistently states its preference for a multipolar world, a world of peace, and developing win-win relationships with countries. Africans, long pillaged by Europeans and the Anglo diaspora, know this well.

MacGregor responded well, at first, “Well, first of all, I do not subscribe to the view that China wants to eclipse us.” Fine, but this was immediately and emphatically followed by: “They know they can’t.” This comes across as chest thumping, USA, USA, USA, from a former military man.

This is followed by a several assertions: “They [China] have serious problems internally, as well.” He opines that China “is too big to do more than it has already done.” He asserts that China’s chairman Xi Jinping wakes everyday wondering how to hold the country together. He does not cite one example to substantiate what he says. Under Xi, China eliminated extreme poverty and it is on the path to moderate prosperity. If only the US could come close to such monumental achievements for its citizenry. China is forging ties with nations from around the world with its Belt and Road initiative. This is what Xi thinks about each day – not the nonsense MacGregor espouses.

Most disturbingly, MacGregor reveals himself in the video to be a Sinophobe by making all kinds of wild racist assertions; e.g., (at 32:14) “No one in central Asia trusts the Chinese; no one in Asia beyond China’s borders trusts the Chinese [followed by snickering].”

“People… are all very concerned about the Chinese… the Chinese do what they have always done, if you leave it on the table, they’ll steal it. That’s what they do; they’ve been doing it for thousands of years.”

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***

This paradigm of International Relations isn’t about upholding the UN Charter, but arbitrarily implementing double standards in advance of America’s interests and even sometimes at the expense of its own reputation in pursuit of its goals. This was recently expressed through its hypocritical approach towards Georgia-Moldova and Bosnia-Serbia as well as its equally hypocritical condemnation of the US-inspired foreign agents laws proposed by Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and Georgia.

Biden just praised the “International Criminal Court’s” (ICC) decision to issue an unenforceable warrant for President Putin’s arrest as “justified” despite the US itself still refusing to participate in that partially recognized and highly scandalous body. The Russian Embassy in DC reacted to this hypocrisy by calling that declining unipolar hegemon out for its “sluggish schizophrenia”, which perfectly embodies its “rules-based order” concept and inadvertently extends credence to Moscow’s criticism thereof.

This paradigm of International Relations isn’t about upholding the UN Charter, but arbitrarily implementing double standards in advance of America’s interests and even sometimes at the expense of its own reputation in pursuit of its goals. This was recently expressed through its hypocritical approach towards Georgia-Moldova and Bosnia-Serbia as well as its equally hypocritical condemnation of the US-inspired foreign agents laws proposed by Bosnia’s Republika Srpska and Georgia.

The only “rules” that matter enough for the US to care about enforcing are those that it regards as suiting its interests at any given point in time. This explains why Biden just praised the ICC in spite of the US itself refusing to participate in it. His country’s interests are served through this public relations spectacle due to the amount of global media attention its unenforceable warrant for President Putin’s arrest has generated, which in turn contributes to misleading the public about the Ukrainian Conflict.

The targeted Western audience is made to think that there’s supposedly some credence to the false accusation that he himself personally as well as another Russian official are allegedly responsible for “abducting” Ukrainian children, thus reinforcing their perception that he’s the ultimate evil. As long as they continue wrongly thinking that he is, they’ll keep supporting their governments’ policy of extending a blank check to Kiev for indefinitely funding their de facto New Cold War bloc’s proxy war on Russia.

It doesn’t matter to them that the US is supporting a partially recognized and highly scandalous body that it doesn’t even participate in since all that’s important to them is that it’s “on the right side of history” in trying to “bring justice” to those Ukrainian children that they’re convinced were “abducted”. Those who see through this information warfare charade and thus are already skeptical of the West’s “official narrative” about the conflict or outright oppose it won’t be swayed by this latest provocation.

This insight therefore suggests that the only purpose in issuing an unenforceable warrant for President Putin’s arrest and Biden’s hypocritical support of the ICC’s decision is to reinforce the perceptions of this proxy war’s remaining supporters in the West ahead of what’ll likely be a spree of bad news very soon. “The Washington Post Finally Told The Full Truth About How Poorly Kiev’s Forces Are Faring”, which preconditioned the public to expect Kiev to experience some serious setbacks in the coming future.

Zelensky himself recently told CNN that Russia might roll through the rest of Donbass if it succeeds in capturing Artyomovsk/“Bakhmut”, which could result in some of this proxy war’s most spirited supporters losing hope in their side and thus beginning to question whether any more aid is worth it. If these same folks think that continuing to indefinitely fund this conflict could “bring justice” to those Ukrainian children that they’re convinced were “abducted”, however, then they might soldier on.

Should a critical mass of them change their minds due to forthcoming events, then public opinion would decisively shift against their elites’ blank check policy, thus possibly placing enough pressure on some of them to consider whether they should change this policy. It’s this scenario that scares Western leaders more than anything else since the last thing they want is large-scale protests in the streets over this issue, hence why they’re doubling down on their deflection tactics via the ICC’s ridiculous decision.

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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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***

Both houses of the New York legislature passed an alarming bill (A4132/S837) on Wednesday. The bill itself is not especially dangerous. What is very alarming though is the fact that it was passed indicates that the legislature is getting ready to try and pass another bill (S1531) that will make mandatory reporting of all adult vaccines, and perhaps vaccines refused, to the New York State Immunization Information System or the New York City Citywide Immunization Registry. Currently, if a medical worker follow the law, permission must be obtained to put a person’s information in the database.

We believe that S1531 has the best chance of passing this session out of all the many very bad vaccine-related bills.

The State wants this database for two simple reasons: to know who is and who is not complying with vaccine directives, and, therefore, identify targets for enforcement measures. As we all know, this is exactly what school vaccine databases are used for.

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Please join us on a zoom call at 7:30 pm on Wednesday, March 22, for more information on this bill and what we MUST do to stop it. Click HERE to register for the call.

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A mandatory vaccine database is an essential part of any vaccine passport system. As we have already seen, New York State and City will use this information to decide who can work, go to school, attend college, travel, operate a business, enter public places, shop, attend worship services, receive medical care, and on and on. This is an essential tool for a vaccine police state, and they want it badly.

Last year, a strong effort was made to pass a mandatory database bill. We fought hard to stop it. Quite unexpectedly, opposition to the database bill emerged from advocates for illegal immigrants. They were afraid that information from the database could be used by federal immigration enforcement agencies to find and deport people. A law was rammed through Albany that among other things said that the federal government could not get access to, or even subpoena, information from the database.

States do not make laws that bind the federal government. Anyone who passed high school civics knows that, but not our legislature. They went ahead and passed the bill that was blatantly unconstitutional and could not stand legal scrutiny by a court. But this was all posturing anyway because the law included a clause allowing the Governor and the Commissioner of Health to give information from the database to anyone at their discretion., including immigration enforcement agencies.

The law passed on Wednesday (A4132/S837) removes this blatantly unconstitutional language and clears the way for S1531, the mandatory database bill. The bill was introduced by the Chairs of the Health Committees of the respective Houses which shows that this is something leadership definitely wants. And now they can move ahead on S1531.

The mandatory database is just part of the growing vaccine police state apparatus. Just days ago, Attorney General Leticia James and Gov. Hochul filed an appeal to resurrect their quarantine camp regulation that would allow seizing and imprisoning for an indefinite time anybody who is suspected of having been exposed to a communicable disease. Under Hochul’s regulation no due process is required, no hearing, no trial, no legal representation, and no proof required showing that you are even infected. As we learned with COVID, everybody was exposed, and almost everybody infected, which means that according to this regulation anybody could be arrested at any time. They want the power to pull you off the street or from your home and throw you in jail and hold you for as long as they want.

S1531, the mandatory database bill, was introduced by Sen. Brad Hoylman, the drug industry’s most loyal shill in the New York State Senate. Right now, there is no identical bill in the Assembly. But we expect that to change very soon, possibly this week. This bill has been around for several sessions and its earlier version was introduced by Richard Gottfried, the just retired former Chair of the Assembly Health Committee. Amy Paulin, the new Chair of the Assembly Health Committee, was a co-sponsor in the past and we expect her to re-introduce the bill.

One question is what will the illegal immigrant advocates do now that the pretense that the federal immigration agencies would not be able to get the data has been exposed for the lie it always was?

If we all fight, we can stop the mandatory database but the efforts of thousands will be required.

Please share this link to register for the Zoom call on Wednesday, March 22 at 7:30 pm.

Please share this message with friends and family, and please share on social networks while we still can.

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***

Under the rule of a rapacious global capitalism, “civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised savagery and lawless revenge.”^[1] Karl Marx was analyzing the civil war in France, but how else could the infamy of the 2003 imperialist invasion of Iraq be described, with hundreds of thousands dead, and a country already decimated by genocidal sanctions now in ruins?^[2]

With transatlantic cultural machineries justifying the “war effort,” and U.S.-British social democracies complicit, sound artist Sherko Abbas was pushed to “reveal truth…far away from what people saw from the Western media.” His artistic representations were based on having lived in occupied Sulaimaniya until 2011. Musicians around the world depicted and resisted the war in other ways, yet others scraped the barrel of base, chauvinistic interests to sing for the imperialists. Sound was a partisan weapon.

In November 2021, I was invited to introduce Brouhaha, a sound-based performance by Sherko and Kani Kamil at Home Theater in Manchester, Britain. In their early decades in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, the 1980­–88 Iran-Iraq war laid waste to both countries and left indelible impressions on the artists. This marks the starting point for the sounds on display in their piece, Brouhaha—roughly meaning argument, ruckus, noise, or uproar. In the performance, Sherko played a “wild instrument” of wood and metal, based on the principles of a child’s toy. He explained that his construction was based on a small handmade object called damaqachan, or “spoke”: “In Iraq, damaqachan is a simple toy, constructed from bicycle spokes, nails and matches, which sets off miniature explosions.” Simultaneously, Kani manipulated vinyl record sound effects, including distorted musical samples of Umm Kulthum’s Baghdad and Beethoven’s Eroica, both of which had been used to introduce the news in pre-2003 Iraq.

During the performance, audience members gasped as warped sirens met unexpected explosions, at times filling the theater with smoke. Manipulating “sonic memory,” Sherko and Kani reminded those present of the different soundtracks heard by those who suffered the war on the ground. While relatively few of us in Britain could even approach the kinds of sonic horrors heard by those in Iraq alongside daily massacres, memories of the accompanying sounds of this forever war are indicative of broader historical phenomena. We could go back to the 1960s, to CIA encouragement of a right-wing nationalist war against Iraqi communists, or earlier to the 1921 installation of a pro-British monarchy after Britain and France carved up the Middle East between themselves. The occupation of Palestine and the wars that have engulfed Lebanon and Syria in recent decades find roots in this era a century ago.

Sanctions and war are major factors in the dislocation of oral tradition and loss of patronage for traditional musics in Iraq. In 2003, U.S. imperialists bombed Baghdad Radio and its extensive sound archive, accumulated since its founding in 1936.^[3] Other acts of cultural terrorism included the sacking of the Iraqi National Museum, where at least 15,000 ancient artifacts, spanning 7,000 years of civilization, disappeared in the wake of the invasion.^[4]Musicians seeking in different ways to address lost connections with Iraqi cultures in the wake of this destruction have included oud player Naseer Shamma, jazz and Iraqi maqamperformer Amir El-Saffar, and contemporary musician Khyam Allami.

In the face of the targeted murder of Iraqi musicians and what Haifa Zangana sees as the fear of the occupation and sectarian proxies for aghani al-muqaqama, or songs of resistance, lyrics commemorating the struggle to liberate Falluja and other key battles remain popular. In Hay-yalla ahl al-Falluja, an anonymous vocalist sang to a folk melody and percussion:

Salute, O God, the people of Falluja,
Brave they are all
They never bowed their heads
Nor were humbled by the Americans

Zangana sees a “reversion to roots,” including forms of the once Iraqi maqam tradition “in the context of the growing need for unity in the face of foreign domination, and the threatened deliberate fragmentation of the people and the country.” Like Algeria, South Africa, and, we might add, Palestine, Ireland, and other examples of anti-imperialist struggle, “the Iraqi resistance has its song.”^[5]

So, apparently, does the oppressor. Illustrating the dehumanizing ideological tendencies accompanying the war to recolonize Iraq, then U.S. president George W. Bush paraded in New York to the lyrics of the Iraq and Roll, a song by redneck Clint Black, who boasted that Smart Bombs “find stupid people too.” Orientalism and fascism united as allies. Amidst the drums of war and sanctions, Edward Said had written on how “Arabs are dehumanized…seen as violent irrational terrorists always on the lookout for murder and bombing outrages.”^[6] In Sherko Abbas’s film The Music of the Bush Era (2023), the U.S. government is shown militarily airlifting members of the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra to Washington at the height of the war to perform at a propagandizing concert in front of Bush and other politicians. Others weren’t offered the red carpet: U.S. and Iraqi forces raided the home of violinist and engineer, Mohammed Qassim, ostensibly in an anti-“terrorism” operation. They smashed his antique violin to pieces.^[7]

In Britain, the Labour government’s enthusiastic warmongering was met by George Michael’s antiwar song Shoot the Dog, which pleaded for Britain not to follow its U.S. ally: “Tony Tony Tony, I know that you are horny, but there’s somethin’ ‘bout that Bush ain’t right.” Depicting Tony Blair as Bush’s “poodle” had become a popular chant on protest marches in London and was a theme of speeches by George Galloway and other Labour MPs on Stop the War Coalition platforms. This let British imperialism off the hook and placed the blame elsewhere. The response of ex-Beatle Paul McCartney was more barefaced. He had tuned into U.S. fever pitch after 9/11, writing the derivative song Freedom, in support of the war on Afghanistan. He’d tell journalists, “I’d like to see the bombing stop but what are you gonna do, turn the other cheek?”^[8]

The contributions of the millions opposed to imperialist war stood in antithesis to the live-and-let-die attitude of millionaire musicians. Internationally, the attack of Iraq was met with new generations of protesters, resisters, and musicians. Based in occupied Akka and carving a new path in the underground of Palestinian music, rap group MWR released ‘Arubitna Bkhatar (“Our Arabism is in Danger”) in 2003. The rappers raged against the silence of the Arab regimes, presenting imagery of bourgeois collaboration with the imperialists and placing Palestinian suffering at the heart of regional destruction.

The lyrics of MWR lamented the loss of earlier commitments to regional solidarity found in the works of Akka-born revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani in times of pan-Arab struggle. Their songs were played at anti-imperialist street mobilizations in Europe, along with other, earlier recorded examples from the 1987–93 intifada, and quickly found and downloaded mp3 anthems recorded in the Arab world to support the Iraqi resistance. London rappers Logic and Lowkey, who has Iraqi maternal roots, recorded Relatives in 2008, taking on the characters of Iraqi and British fighters in the war. Their words imagined forms of solidarity beyond the racism through which the invasion was justified in the British press:

Logic: My heart is in Basra, and never will I part it
Lowkey: This war’s going nowhere, tell me, why did we start it?
Logic: I’m fighting regardless till I’m resting where Allah is
Lowkey: Come to think of it, I should have never joined the army
And when I think about it, I don’t hate these Iraqis

In the United States, the Dixie Chicks (now the Chicks) were subject to the mobilized misogyny of the rightist media for daring to stand against the war. As the occupation wore on, Tom Morello and the Coup teamed up to record the mutinous Captain Sterling’s Little Problem, and launched a campaign to send the song to U.S. troops in Iraq. Rapper Boots Riley argued: “the soldiers should demand to be returned home, using any means necessary to make this happen.”^[9]

Other powerful sounds of resistance included the thudding of Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi’s shoes, thrown forcefully at George W. Bush in a December 2008 press conference amidst claims of coalition success; for his efforts, al-Zaidi was brutally arrested and spent nine months in prison. Extreme sonic brutality is a feature of imperialist and colonialist torture techniques, from the infamous “disco room” at occupied Guantanamo to the sensory manipulation used by the Zionist Shabak in colonized Palestine, but the era also brought reminders that soundscapes could be reclaimed by those willing to resist.

After the Brouhaha performance of Sherko and Kani, audience questions discussed childhood and war, and the realities of growing up under sanctions and occupation. When questioned about cultural identity, it was revealing that the artists saw their position as Kurds within a kind of inclusivity through which they also saw themselves as Iraqis. The stooges and elites that have bargained with the nation’s position since 2003 have included the bourgeois Kurdish, pro-Zionist Barzani regime in Erbil. In contrast, the artists’ exploration of sound spoke to the social solidarities shared by the masses, north and south, who faced imperialist war, sanctions, and displacement together.

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Louis Brehony is author of the book Palestinian Music in Exile (2023) and director of the award winning film Kofia: A Revolution Through Music (2021). He writes regularly on music and political culture, and is editor of an upcoming collection of writings by Palestinian Marxist Ghassan Kanafani.

Notes

^[1] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France, May, 1871.

^[2] See https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/body-count.pdf

^[3] Scheherazade Hassan, “Aspects of the Musical Traditions in the Arabian Peninsula,” in Issa Boulos et al., Music in Arabia (Indiana University Press, 2021), 26

^[4] Robert M. Poole, “Looting Iraq,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2008.

^[5] Haifa Zangana, “Iraqi resistance has its song,” International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 3, no. 3 (2009): 285.

^[6] Said, “Apocalypse Now,” Al-Ahram Weekly, November 1997.

^[7] Zangana, 278.

^[8] The Independent, “Sir Paul McCartney: Give War A Chance,” November 15, 2001.

^[9] “Boots Riley of the Coup wants you to send songs to Iraq,” Punknews.org, 2007.

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***

Toxic smoke from US military burn pits at bases in Iraq following the 2003 invasion and occupation of the country has caused deadly cancers and respiratory problems in both US soldiers and Iraqis, the Washington Post reported on 18 March.

“Where soldiers established military bases, they burned their trash in the open, poisoning the air all around them,” the Post wrote. Batteries, human waste, plastic ration packs, medical waste, paint, petroleum, unexploded ordinance and even refrigerators were among the items burned.

Of the 150 burn pits at US military bases throughout Iraq, the pit in the town of Balad, 50 km north of Baghdad, was the largest, some 10 acres in size.

By 2008, some 150 tons of waste were burned there each day, at times creating a poison cloud thick enough to block out the sun, which caused farmers working the fields nearby to return home covered in soot streaks at the end of each day.

US President Joe Biden signed legislation last year acknowledging the deadly impact of the burn pits and providing benefits to US military veterans affected by the toxic smoke. President Biden was motivated in part by the death of his own son, Beau, who died of brain cancer believed to have been caused by exposure to the burn pits during his tour as a soldier in Iraq.

However, the US government has not attempted to assess the impact of the pits on Iraqis or provide them with any form of compensation. While US soldiers would be exposed to the toxic gases over the course of a one-year deployment to the country, Iraqis living and working near US bases breathed the smoke day and night for eight years as the war dragged on.

The Washington Post documented the story of one family working a farm near Balad. The entire family had health issues, except one brother, who worked as a policeman deployed outside the town. The mother, Attiyah, developed cancer three times, ovarian, thyroid, then ovarian cancer again. Her grandson, Mehdi, died of respiratory issues that caused his oxygen levels to drop too low. When he was first taken to the hospital, his skin was blue.

But the rise in rates of cancer and other illnesses among Iraqis has been suspected for years, not only due to the burn pits but also due to the US military’s use of radioactive materials in munitions, in particular Depleted Uranium (DU), during the first Gulf War in 1991 and Second Gulf War in 2003.

In 2013, Al-Jazeera reported that contamination from DU munitions and other military-related pollution was suspected of causing a sharp rise in the cases of congenital birth defects and cancer, such as leukemia, throughout many Iraqi governorates, most notably in the city of Falluja.

Al-Jazeera explained that “Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people.”

The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was launched after Bush administration officials fabricated evidence claiming Iraq’s government, led by Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction and had assisted Al-Qaeda in carrying out the 9/11 attacks. These false claims were needed to gain the approval of the US public to launch the war.

According to researchers at Brown University, between 275,000 and 306,000 Iraqi civilians are estimated to have been killed by direct violence following the US invasion. However, the actual number of civilians killed by direct and indirect war violence is unknown but likely much higher.

No members of the Bush administration have been prosecuted in domestic or international courts for their roles in launching the illegal 2003 war.

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Editors have a mantra, do not look back, move on, write what is current. But sometimes looking back is vital. Those who ignore even the recent past are doomed to understand nothing, sink deeper into quagmires – and bleat again : ‘Why do they hate us’ ?

Looking through material for the book that has been far too long in the making, I found a copy of a letter which I sent to a prominent (UK) Member of Parliament.

 

 

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It is dated November 1993 and clarifies for ever why the invaders were never going to be greeted with ‘sweets and flowers’.

Felicity Arbuthnot, Global Research, March 20, 2023

 

Near thirty years ago,  I wrote:

          Meridian Hotel, Baghdad, 4th November 1993.

As you know, when I was here in April/May 1992, I thought things could get no worse. Yet in July this year, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations note in a Report: ‘..with deep regret’, all the: ‘pre-famine indicators being in place’. Further that an appreciable proportion of the population now had less calorific intake than the most famine stricken parts of Africa. That was July. This is apocalypse. This is an internationally sponsored genocide.

Food prices have  risen in real terms, one thousand percent. Some most basic of staples have risen eleven hundred times. This morning a breakfast for three, of three black coffees, two orange juices and an omelet cost, what would have been, in 1989, the equivalent of one thousand three hundred US dollars. With US dollars, one can buy stacks of black market Iraqi Dinars, an inches high wad for fifty dollars, chillingly redolent of Germany after the first world war. Most Iraqi people have no dollars.

‘”In the foyer of the Rashid Hotel, is one of the most magnificent display of wondrous artifacts one could ever hope to see: jewelry, paintings, superb, rare antique boxes, chandeliers, crystal, exquisite family treasures, handed down over generations, many also collected from around the globe. They are the belongings of the middle class, for sale in the hope they will be sold for hard currency to the rare visitor. Living for a few more weeks. The poor have no antiques. 

“A friend, a multi-lingual, much traveled novelist and editor, whose great grandfather’s statue graces an area of Baghdad, boils rose petals for a face cleaner, concocts a mixture of boracic and herbs for deodorant and uses an ancient clay for hair conditioner. She and her family, as many Iraqis, now clean their teeth with husks from a plant, a method from a bygone age. Tooth paste and tooth brushes are vetoed. Her last novel is trapped in her computer, for want of a minor, embargoed spare part. If she could release it, it would be anyway useless, there is no paper to print it on. Paper is also vetoed by the U.N., Sanctions Committee.
“Car tires cost sixteen month’s average salary.

Yet people have to drive the grueling, utterly isolated, seven hundred kilometers, desert road to Jordan, to attempt to conduct any business, or for medical help, if they are the few lucky enough to have the money to operate in hard currency. They drive on re-sewn tires, often stuffed with just about anything to keep them inflated, in the searing heat. They travel in cars that are now death traps. All spare parts also vetoed.

“The deaths on the Jordan road (and the visible testimony of them) are a bare decimal point in the reality of life here.

The U.N., of course, fly in, and loudly demand Nescafe for breakfast, unattainable anywhere. The delicious Turkish coffee which is available for those who can afford it, has become a token of ‘ the enemy’ for them, it seems. I have witnessed this over and over again, in this hotel: ‘ No, no, Nescafe, not Turkish coffee …’ Then something along the lines of : ”What is wrong with you people, do you understand nothing’? Last night, they wanted hot ‘ vegetable soup’. The temperature was Hadean and the Chef had worked miracles with pulses and fresh salads, unattainable for most and now pretty difficult for even the government subsidized hotels. U.N., personnel in Iraq are a million miles from the aspirations expressed on behalf of ‘We the people …’ They are bent on ritual humiliation – utterly shaming ‘We the people’.  

“The U.N,. personnel were sporting satellite phones and bleepers. Two months ago the U.N., Sanctions Committee (read US and UK., as ever) vetoed a consignment of bleepers and mobile ‘phones for the doctors, medical staff, ambulance drivers and other emergency units, denying all contact between  emergency and life saving personnel.

“Just before I left the U.K., in September, the Sanctions Committee revoked the license for five hundred tons of shroud material. It is currently stuck in Jordan, having taken since April to get even as far as Aquaba port. Sanctions reach even beyond the grave.

“Earlier this year the U.S., U.K., and France vetoed a consignment of school writing pads, erasers, pencil sharpeners, pencils and consignment of ping pong balls. Childhood is dead in Iraq. There are few birthday parties anymore, for most, neither the food nor the presents are affordable.

“The U.S., and U.K., recently also vetoed a consignment of ‘medical gauze’ (i.e.: bandages) and refused to allow a Spanish company to assist in rebuilding the syringe factory, bombed in 1991. Doctors are forced to re-use syringes again and again. One lowered his eyes and his voice in shame, as he told me that they re-use the pediatric canulars from babies who have died. He did five years post graduate studies in the United States and spoke better English than you or I. He had believed in the ‘land of the free’. Not any more.

“In a tiny grocery store, very early yesterday morning, a child of perhaps five came in, with that air of pride of children everywhere entrusted to run an errand. He was clutching a five Dinar note, fifteen dollars, just four years ago. It bought one egg, which he carefully carried to the door – and then he dropped it. He was beside himself. He fell to the floor and frantically tried to gather it up in his hands, tears streaming down his small, desperate face. As I searched in my pocket, the shopkeeper shook his head, gently touched him on the shoulder and gave him another egg. Protein is unbuyable for the majority. Families chop one egg into miniscule pieces, so all have a couple of tiny morsels – in a country ‘floating on a sea of oil’, the second largest reserves on earth.

“How many more traumatized children, in our name? How many countless ‘broken eggs’ are there here now in just three years? What would be acceptable to the U.S., and British administrations? What do they expect, perhaps an army of premature babies (a quarter of live births are now premature) rising up from their non-functioning-for-want-of-western-spare-parts-incubators, to overthrow Saddam Hussein?

“People here, broadly, do not care about the government. The struggle to survive day by day is the greater challenge. Further, I went back to a large group who were highly critical of the government a year ago. They are now so furious at what the embargo is doing to their families, friends, neighborhood and the ancient country they love – and of which , it seems to the visitor, all feel that they are honored custodians – this year they all lit a candle on Saddam Hussein’s birthday.

“As you know, rightly or wrongly, I have no view on politics here, it is none of our business and to collectively punish – U.N., or not, is illegal and beyond shame – twenty five million souls hostage to our Administration’s’ views of their government. The highest category of victims are the new born, the unborn and the under fives. This is being done, we are told, that Saddam Hussein will be forced to comply with the latest moving goal post and curb the excesses of his regime. Yet in the name of our regimes the ‘mass graves’ are spreading across the country – with our nations’ names on them.

” I do not know when or where this shocking episode in history will end. But I know for certain that we will never be forgiven, not alone in Iraq, but across the region and beyond. Putting out the hand of friendship and being big enough to forget about ‘losing face’, might just avert some major tragedy, the spirit of generosity is what embodies this region. Otherwise the silent crimes of the U.S.,-U.K.,  driven ‘U.N.’ embargo may return to haunt us too.'”

The embargo of course, ground on for a further ten years, then came the criminality of ‘Shock and Awe’ and an invasion where Iraqis can be killed, tortured, stolen from, raped, run over, bombed, blown up, imprisoned without trial, with impunity.

If anyone treated a domestic or farm animal in the West, as the Iraqis have been treated for over thirty years: denied a proper diet, medication, clean water, a safe environment, that person would end up in Court and likely in prison.

The above letter is a minute snap shot from just one visit now long ago – and it went downhill from there.

Every visit saw a new crisis. Forget ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘insurgents’, ‘dead enders’, ‘terrorist elements’, ‘bad guys’. The majority of the resistance are the child that dropped the egg within the man and his generation of childhoodless, traumatized children, who survived the internationally sponsored genocide. ‘No child left behind’? In Iraq every child has been left behind, discarded year after year, by the ‘international community’.

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The White House has come out against a ceasefire in Ukraine ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow to potentially mediate between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his counterpart in Kyiv.

Xi is due to arrive in Moscow on Monday and is expected to speak virtually to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following his talks with Putin. Xi’s trip comes after Beijing released a 12-point peace plan for Ukraine that called for the two sides to cease hostilities and for peace talks to begin.

Zelensky expressed openness to China’s proposal, but it was immediately rejected by President Biden.

“We don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Friday, according to Newsweek. “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.”

Kirby’s comments come as Ukrainian and Russian forces continue to battle in the Donbas city of Bakhmut, which has become known as the “meat grinder” due to the heavy casualties. Ukraine has been pouring in barely-trained conscripts to fight in the city, and the US thinks Kyiv is wasting too many resources in the battle.

The US wants Ukraine to launch a counteroffensive in the spring, although a senior Ukrainian official told The Washington Post last week that Kyiv doesn’t have the resources to pull it off. Kirby’s reasoning for opposing a ceasefire at this time is that a pause in fighting could concede territory to Moscow.

Kirby said the ceasefire would, “in effect, recognize Russia’s gains, and its attempt to conquer his neighbor’s territory by force, allowing Russian troops to continue to occupy sovereign Ukrainian territory and, of course, it would be another continued violation of the UN Charter.”

The US and its allies discouraged peace talks and mediation efforts that were conducted shortly after Russia’s February 2022 invasion. At that time, Moscow was seeking a deal that would have reverted to the pre-invasion territorial lines. But now, Ukraine stands to lose much more as Russia has annexed the territory it controls in the Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and the breakaway Donbas republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

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

Featured image is from GlobelyNews

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“All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory.” — Viet Thanh Nguyen

As mainstream U.S. media outlets pause to remember the US invasion of Iraq, it’s clear that there’s a lot they hope we’ll forget – first and foremost, the media’s own active complicity in whipping up public support for the war.

But the more you dig into mainstream news coverage from that period, as our documentary team did last week when we put together this five-minute montage from our 2007 film War Made Easy, the harder it is to forget how flagrantly news networks across the broadcast and cable landscape uncritically spread the Bush administration’s propaganda and actively excluded dissenting voices.

The numbers don’t lie. A 2003 report by the media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) found that in the two weeks leading up to the invasion, ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, and the PBS Newshour featured a total of 267 American experts, analysts, and commentators on camera to supposedly help make sense of the march to war. Of these 267 guests, an astounding 75% were current or former government or military officials, and a grand total of one expressed any skepticism.

Meanwhile, in the fast-growing world of cable news, Fox News’s tough-talking, pro-war jingoism was setting the standard for ratings-wary executives at most of the more “liberal” cable networks. MSNBC and CNN, feeling the heat of what industry insiders were calling “the Fox effect,” were desperately trying to outflank their right-wing rival – and one another – by actively eliminating critical voices and seeing who could bang the war drums loudest.

At MSNBC, as the Iraq invasion approached in early 2003, network executives decided to fire Phil Donahue even though his show had the highest ratings on the channel. A leaked internal memo explained that top management saw Donahue as “a tired, left-wing liberal” who would be a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” Noting that Donahue “seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives,” the memo warned ominously that his show could end up being “a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”

Not to be outdone, CNN news chief Eason Jordan would boast on air that he had met with Pentagon officials during the run-up to the invasion to get their approval for the on-camera war “experts” the network would rely on. “I think it’s important to have experts explain the war and to describe the military hardware, describe the tactics, talk about the strategy behind the conflict,” Jordan explained. “I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said . . . here are the generals we’re thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs up on all of them. That was important.”

As Norman Solomon observes in our film War Made Easy, which we based on his book of the same name, the bedrock democratic principle of an independent, adversarial press was simply tossed out the window. “Often journalists blame the government for the failure of the journalists themselves to do independent reporting,” Solomon says. “But nobody forced the major networks like CNN to do so much commentary from retired generals and admirals and all the rest of it . . . It wasn’t even something to hide, ultimately. It was something to say to the American people, ‘See, we’re team players. We may be the news media, but we’re on the same side and the same page as the Pentagon.’ . . . And that really runs directly counter to the idea of an independent press.”

The result was a barely debated, deceit-driven, headlong rush into a war of choice that would go on to destabilize the region, accelerate global terrorism, bleed trillions of dollars from the US treasury, and kill thousands of US servicemembers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, most of them innocent civilians. Yet two decades later, as we hurtle ever closer to potentially catastrophic new wars, there’s been virtually no accountability or sustained reporting in mainstream news media to remind us of their own decisive role in selling the Iraq war.

It’s an act of forgetting we can ill afford, especially as many of the same media patterns from 20 years ago now repeat themselves on overdrive – from the full-scale reboot and rehabilitation of leading Iraq war architects and cheerleaders to the news media’s continuing over-reliance on “experts” drawn from the revolving-door world of the Pentagon and the arms industry (often without disclosure).

“Memory is a strategic resource in any country, especially the memory of wars,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has written. “By controlling the narrative of the wars we fought, we justify the wars we are going to fight in the present.”

As we mark the 20th anniversary of the murderous US invasion of Iraq, it’s imperative to reclaim the memory of this war not only from the Bush administration officials who waged it, but also from the corporate media system that helped sell it and has tried to control the narrative ever since.

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Jeremy Earp is the Production Director of the Media Education Foundation (MEF)and the co-director, with Loretta Alper, of the MEF documentary “War Made Easy: How Presidents & Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” featuring Norman Solomon. To mark the 20th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, the RootsAction Education Fund will be hosting a virtual screening of “War Made Easy” on March 20th at 6:45 PM Eastern, followed by a panel discussion featuring Solomon, Dennis Kucinich, Kathy Kelly, Marcy Winograd, India Walton, and David Swanson. Click here to sign up for the event, and click here to stream “War Made Easy” in advance for free.

Featured image: A small part of the highway of death. Photo: rarehistoricalphotos.com

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French workers and youth expressed their profound anger at the government in the wake of President Emmanuel Macron’s actions related to the proposed changes in the pension system in one of Europe’s leading states.

Article 49.3, which allows the president to pass a law without a vote by the National Assembly, was evoked by Macron before the final legislative approval of the new policy.

Macron directed Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne to by-pass the National Assembly vote forcing the measure into law. Borne was met with heckles after it became clear that there would not be a vote on the pension reform legislation.

The prime minister went on French television to condemn the disruptions in the National Assembly asserting that those who opposed the actions by Macron had no respect for the institutions of governance. The government has staked its political future on the passage of the pension reform legislation claiming that the current system was financially unsustainable.

The law would move the retirement age from 62 to 64 while requiring 43 years of employment in order to receive full benefits. For several months, French workers and students have engaged in widespread rolling strikes where oil, transport, education and other important sectors within the economy ground to a standstill.

For several days since the imposition of the reform bill by Macron on March 16, thousands of people have taken to the streets in mass demonstrations and rebellion. Several hundred people have been arrested amid renewed calls for strike action during the remaining weeks of March.

Two different motions of no-confidence were prepared by opposing political factions in the National Assembly directed at removing Macron and forcing an election. However, the conservative Republican party within the National Assembly has openly stated that it will not support such a motion to remove Macron.

If the motions of no-confidence fail, a coalition of Left parties in the National Assembly say they will appeal the decision to the Constitutional Council. The existing government claims that they do not believe the motions will pass.

Government Efforts Prompted Militant Demonstrations and Strikes

Since January, striking workers have periodically blocked the departure of trucks carrying fuel to distribution centers. Schools also are deeply impacted by the unrest as both teachers and students staged stayaways.

French workers march through the streets against pension reforms (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Sanitation workers are refusing to pick up trash leaving 10,000 tons of rubbish across in the streets of the capital of Paris. The government has forced some of the sanitation employees back to work utilizing their executive authority. Rats are swarming the streets of Paris at night to feast on the discarded food threatening an outbreak of disease. The much relied upon tourist industry in Paris and other areas of the country will surely be damaged as a result of the mounds of garbage in the capital and the lack of public transportation.

In a report on the situation published by Le Monde, it says that:

“Police on Saturday (March 18) closed Paris’ Place de la Concorde opposite parliament for demonstrations following two successive nights of clashes. Some 122 people were arrested as some set rubbish bins on fire, destroyed bus stops and erected improvised barricades around a 4,000-strong demonstration in the capital. On Sunday (March 19), police arrested another 17 people as protesters invaded the Les Halles shopping complex in central Paris. Away from the streets of major cities, the CGT said Saturday that workers would shut down France’s largest oil refinery in Normandy, warning that two more could follow on Monday. So far, strikers have only prevented fuel deliveries from leaving refineries but not completely halted operations.”

Public opinion polls in France indicate that two-thirds of the electorate oppose the pension reform legislation. Critics say the new policy would place a heavy burden on young workers, especially those in the child-bearing ages.

Workers involved in the demonstrations said they did not want to work until 64. One woman said that she was already exhausted due to her labor-intensive job.

In another article which appeared in the British Morning Star it says of the response of the workers:

“As night fell (March 16), police officers charged the demonstrators in waves to clear the square. Small groups then moved through nearby streets in the chic Champs-Elysees neighborhood, setting street fires. Similar scenes repeated themselves in numerous other cities, from Rennes and Nantes in eastern France to Lyon and the southern port city of Marseille, where shop windows and bank fronts were smashed, according to French media. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told radio station RTL today (March 18) that 310 people were arrested overnight. Most of the arrests, 258, were made in Paris, according to Mr. Darmanin. The eight main trade union federations called for a new day of ‘strong mobilization’ against the plans next Thursday, March 23.”

Macron and his Renaissance political party, formerly known as Le Republique En Marche, approval rating has sunk to 28% of the French voters. In polls published by Le Journal du Dimanche and Le Figaro, those holding a negative view of the president accounted for 70% of the respondents.

French Policy Reflects Austerity Measures Enacted by Capitalist States

These developments in France are not taking place within a political and economic vacuum as the crisis of capitalism and imperialism deepens. Similar policies are being implemented in Britain where public sector unions have held strike actions in the transport, healthcare, education and home affairs service sectors.

The Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has introduced a budget in parliament which calls for even more draconian cuts within the public sector. Sunak inherited the crisis from four previous administrations in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum of 2016. The country has had five prime ministers over the last six-and-one-half years.

In the United States, dissatisfaction with the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden has resulted in an approval rating of 42%. Biden has failed to address the problems related to high rates of inflation not experienced since the early 1980s. Real wages have declined while the energy firms within the oil and natural gas sectors are reaping record profits.

A financial crisis has emerged in part due to the raising of interest rates in an attempt to curtail inflation. The current aim of the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S. is to reduce inflation down to 2% annually. However, the refusal to impose price controls and raise the level of social spending is having a devastating impact on workers in the service and high-tech areas of the national economy.

During early and mid-March, several banks have collapsed placing even more strain on the working class and oppressed. On March 13, after a tumultuous week characterized by the literal runs on Silvergate, Silicon Valley and Signature banks, Biden held a press conference to reassure people in the U.S. that their deposits were safe. The president claimed that negotiations within the financial industry brought about an agreement that the largest banks would provide the liquidity needed to prevent insolvency of the collapsed firms while ostensibly preventing further meltdowns.

These failed banks were involved in the financing of start-up businesses, tech firms and cryptocurrencies. In the tech and service sectors, there have been tens of thousands of lay-offs in recent months. Although the monthly reports from the Department of Labor support the notion of a strong jobs market, inflation remains a serious challenge as well as the threat of a significant economic recession.

There is much speculation about possible “contagion” within the banking industry not only in the U.S. but around the world. The week of March 13 saw yet another institution, First Republic, reach a critical point of near collapse. Other banks agreed to provide $30 billion in liquidity to First Republic yet these offers did not bring about a rise in the value of their stocks.

Stock markets have been marked by sharp volatility since the beginning of March. Over a period of two days in the first full week of the month, the leading banks based in the U.S. experienced $52 billion of losses in the stock markets. See this.

Then Credit Suisse, based in Switzerland, was facing a similar fate as their U.S. counterparts in California and New York. The Swiss National Bank over the weekend of March 17-19 agreed to in essence bailout Credit Suisse. On March 19, the Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) made a decision in consultation with the finance ministry to acquire Credit Suisse.

All of this was undoubtedly designed to poise the financial industry for potentially even more volatility in the stock markets globally. Everyday there are repeated statements by treasury officials and banking experts in the western capitalist states that this crisis is different from the Great Recession which emerged full blown in 2008, resulting in millions of home foreclosures, job losses and the eventual bailing out of the banks utilizing the tax dollars of workers in the U.S. along with their deposits controlled by the Federal Reserve Bank which imposed several rounds of Quantitative Easing (QE).

Nonetheless, despite these proclamations which are based upon wishful thinking as opposed to objective analysis, there are key areas where the capitalist system remains extremely vulnerable in the present period. The U.S.-NATO proxy war in Ukraine has placed huge burdens on working people and farmers throughout Europe, North America and the world. A victory by the Russian Federation would create even more uncertainty in regard to the status of world imperialism.

The working class, youth and farmers in order to effectively address the burgeoning crisis will be required to organize independently. Capitalism has not been able to provide a solution to the conundrum in which it finds itself. This global situation provides the political openings to advocate on behalf of a transition to socialism where the national and international wealth which is produced by the proletariat and farmers can be utilized for their benefit as a class.

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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: French workers demonstrate in the streets against pension reforms (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is appalled by the decision of Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly to meet with her Israeli counterpart Eli Cohen this week. This was the first meeting between Minister Joly and Israel’s far-right government led by Benjamin Netanyahu, which has been in power since the end of 2022. CJPME identifies Cohen as a far-right extremist and annexationist, who has said that Palestinian citizens of Israel can “move to Gaza on a one-way ticket.” According to the readout of the meeting, Minister Joly expressed concerns about violence against Israelis but did not confront Israel on its escalation of violence and oppression against Palestinians. CJPME reiterates its call for Canada to send a strong message in support of human rights and international law by imposing a diplomatic boycott on Israel’s far-right regime.

“Minister Joly’s friendly meeting with Israel’s foreign minister lends legitimacy to this far-right and dangerous regime, which has already killed more than 80 Palestinians this year,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. Almost 2,000 Canadians have written to the Minister requesting that she boycott all meetings with Israel’s far-right government, which poses an immediate threat to the safety of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line. “Canada’s decision to continue business as usual with Israeli extremism demonstrates a shocking disregard for Palestinian lives,” added Bueckert.

CJPME notes that the readout of the meeting between Minister Joly and Israeli Minister Cohen takes a warm tone, speaking of an “enduring friendship” and “shared values,” and congratulating Israel on upcoming celebrations. While the readout also mentions issues of democracy and Israel’s illegal settlements, these are presented as statements of existing Canadian policy, rather than posed as a direct challenge to Israel’s current actions. Moreover, only violence against Israelis is specifically acknowledged. Although the readout mentions “deep concerns” over the “recent escalation of violence in Israel and the West Bank,” these are presented as issues of security and a need to “restore calm,” rather than expressing concern over Israel’s human rights record or the impact of its actions on Palestinians.

CJPME notes that Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen is himself a far-right anti-Palestinian extremist, who supports annexing the occupied West Bank. Last year, Cohen sponsored a bill to ban Israeli institutions from displaying the Palestinian flag, saying of Palestinian citizens of Israel: “those who view themselves as Palestinian, by the way, will receive all the assistance they need from us to move to Gaza on a one-way ticket.” While this was Minister Joly’s first meeting with Israel’s far-right government, CJPME has raised concerns over Trade Minister Ng’s meeting with her counterpart, Israeli MK Ofir Akunis, who has similarly promoted the annexation of the occupied West Bank and says that only the Jewish people have any right to the territory under Israeli control. CJPME has also expressed concerns over a meeting between three Senators and Israeli MK Amir Ohana, who has said that Muslims are prone to “cultural murderousness.”

Minister Joly’s meeting took place only weeks after fascist Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the Palestinian town of Huwara should be “wiped out,” shortly following Israel’s advancement of 15 new illegal settlements and 7,000 new settlement units, and on the same day as an Israeli military invasion of the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. During that invasion, Israeli forces executed four Palestinians in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded city centre, including a 14-year-oldwho was shot in the back as he was riding his bike.

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It’s been a week since the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the 16th largest bank in the US at the time of its collapse and reportedly a source of funding for half of all the tech start ups in the US.

It’s now become clear the more general banking crisis that has emerged is not due simply to a rogue, mismanaged bank that over-extended itself during the recent tech boom and then somehow mysteriously imploded in just 72 hours, March 7-9, until seized by the FDIC on the morning of March 10, 2023.

Deeper, more systemic forces are at play—in the case of both the SVB collapse and the now spreading contagion to US regional banks as well as to European banks. The SVB is just the tip of the current financial instability iceberg. In Europe the focus is the now collapsed big Credit Suisse bank announced today, March 19, by Switzerland’s central bank. The problem is thus now not just US regional bank centric, but is rapidly becoming global systemic.

What then are the systemic forces responsible for the SVB collapse and now spreading instability to US regional banks and European banks?

Causation: Precipitating, Enabling, and Fundamental

When discussing causation of a financial institution collapse it is necessary to distinguish between precipitating causes, enabling causes, and fundamental causes.

Clearly the Fed’s historically rapid rise in interest rates since March 2022 has played a key role in precipitating the crisis. And SVB’s management in recent years clearly engaged in classic mismanagement of its assets, so that mismanagement has enabled its eventual collapse.

But at a more fundamental, deeper level the SVB collapse—and the now spreading contagion—is a reflection of the speculative investing boom that occurred in the tech industry over the last decade, especially after 2019. That tech boom was fueled in large part by the Federal Reserve’s massive liquidity injections into the US banking system since 2009—which accelerated further from September 2019 to February 2022. Massive, excess liquidity injections by the Fed since the fall of 2019 drove corporate borrowing rates to zero (and below zero in real terms), thus fueling much of the tech over-investment bubble.

Overlaid on that longer term fundamental cause of excess liquidity driving borrowing rates to zero, the Fed then precipitated the crisis by abruptly reversing its decade-long free money policy by raising interest rates in 2022 at the fastest pace in its history and shutting off that free money spigot.

Before examining the Fed’s contributions and role in the current crisis in more detail, a review of what actually happened at SVB (and now is happening at other regional banks and in European banks) is perhaps instructive, revealing the dynamics of bank instability today at the bank level itself.

We might therefore ask: what then were the processes behind SVB’s collapse? What actually happened at SVB? And is that same Fed-induced processes now at work in other banks behind the scenes—eventually to be revealed in coming weeks with further subsequent depositors’ bank withdrawals, collapsing bank stock prices, rising credit default swap costs insuring against possible bank failure, and more US announcements to try to stem the contagion? To what extent is the collapse this weekend of the giant European bank, Credit Suisse, also influenced by events of the week prior in the US banking system?

Most important, what are the possible scenarios for continuing US and European banking instability in the coming weeks.

The SVB Collapse ‘Template’

In general terms, here’s how banks typically fail:

The basic mechanics of financial institution instability typically occurs as follows:

a bank becomes more ‘fragile’ (i.e. is prone to a financial instability) when it either takes on excessive debt, or structures that debt poorly, and then experiences either a sharp decline in its cash flow required to service that debt (i.e. to pay principal and interest due) or experiences a loss of prior cash (or near cash) on hand with which to service that debt. SVB fell into that chasm, into which many other regional US banks have now been sliding into as well. The Fed created the chasm. SVB management simply decided to dance along the edge of that financial cliff, until it slipped and fell into the hole.

In the specific case of SVB, it took on too much asset liability, poorly structured its long term debt, then suffered a severe decline in cash on hand as depositors and investors withdrew their money from the bank.

Here’s a statistic worth noting:

SVB’s total asset base by 2019 was approximately $50 billion. That accelerated to more than $200 billion by year end 2022.

How did that happen? For one thing, the tech boom produced massive financial gains for investors and managers (and even employees) in the tech sector. SVB in California was the ‘place to be’ to deposit those gains.

It was a favorite locale for the highly concentrated Venture Capitalist industry located in California in which to deposit funds earmarked for the tech start ups the VCs were funding. Capital gains by rich tech managers and ‘founding employees’ who just cashed in their IPO stock awards also found their way to SVB. And then there was Covid!

The Federal Reserve in March 2020 pumped $4 trillion into the banking system in the US. It was theoretically to prevent another bank crisis, as in 2008-09. Except there was no bank crisis. It was a pre-bank bailout that never happened. It was a preventive bank bailout that was never needed. But the $4T went out into the banking system anyway.

That Fed $4T followed a prior Fed liquidity injection of $1 to $1.5T that occurred in September 2019 to bail out the ‘repo’ bond market. So more than $5T flowed into the economy in 2019-2020.

The tech sector was booming already, fueled in part by the Trump administration’s 2017 $4.5T tax cut for investors and businesses. That tax cut had fueled the Fortune 500 corporations distributing $3.5T in stock buybacks and dividend payouts to their shareholders during the three years, 2017-19 alone. One can only imagine how much more was distributed to shareholders by the 5000 largest US corporations as well.

Massive amounts of money capital thus flowed into financial asset markets, especially into the then booming tech and tech start up sector.

Tech companies went even further. As result of the Fed’s $4T liquidity injection during the Covid crisis, the zero interest rates created by that liquidity made it possible for tech companies to issue their own corporate bonds at a record pace. For example, Apple Corp., had a cash hoard on hand of $252 billion. But it issued its own corporate bonds anyway to take advantage of the near zero interest rates made possible by the Fed’s $4T injection during Covid, from March 2020 through February 2022.

Countless millionaires were made and the ranks of billionaire tech investors billowed as well. The tech bubble—fueled both directly and indirectly by the Fed’s zero rate policy—expanded. Many of those investors riding the wave—whether VCs, tech start ups, tech CEOs, and even founding tech employees—funneled their money capital into SVB the celebrity tech bank of choice in silicon valley.

The bank’s deposit base surged from the $50 billion to more than $200 billion by end of 2022. And not all of that was depositors’ or investors’ inflow. SVB also borrowed heavily from the Fed taking up the latter’s long term Treasury bonds that were virtually cost free given the zero rates of interest. About $150B of SVB’s asset base was depositors money. And more than 90% of that $150B was individual deposits in excess of the $250,000 limit guaranteed by the FDIC in the event of a bank failure.

So lots of deposits on hand at SVB but most of the $200 billion asset base locked into long term treasuries and other bonds. In other words, a poorly structured financial portfolio. Should a crisis emerge, and depositors and investors started leaving, the bank could not give them their deposits since they were locked up in long term bonds. A classic long term asset vs short term cash structure. That was a serious financial mismanagement problem ‘enabled’ by SVB management.

Then the Fed started raising rates in March 2022. Because rate hikes result in corresponding bond price deflation, SVB’s balance sheet quickly fell into the red. The corporate rating agency, Moody’s warned of a rating cut for SVB. The bank’s stock price began to fall. Investors and the bank’s savvy depositor base made note.

SVB management tried to rectify its bond deflation and now higher borrowing costs by selling off some of its own bonds in order to raise money capital to offset its deflating assets. But with bond prices continuing to fall (as Fed continued to accelerate its rate hikes), it was like ‘catching a knife’, as the saying goes. SVB lost nearly $2B on its attempted bond sale. Moody’s and investors took further note.

Now desperate, in the days immediately leading up to its collapse SVB management arranged with Goldman Sachs bank to sell more of its stock. But that act really grabbed the attention of its VCs, investors and depositors. During the week before its collapse, the VCs reportedly started telling their start ups with money deposited at SVB to get their money out and move it elsewhere. As VCs and tech companies started withdrawals, the word quickly got out in the silicon valley tech community and general depositors began withdrawing their cash as well. Given how fast the events were occurring, SVB didn’t have time to obtain a bridge loan. Or to sell some of its better assets to raise cash. Or find a partner to buy in or even acquire it. The rapidity of events is a characteristic of today’s bank runs that wasn’t a factor as much even back in 2008.

All this happened at near financial ‘lightspeed’, made possible by (ironically) technology. In bank runs in the past, depositors typically ran down to the bank before its doors opened the next day once rumors spread. But today they don’t. They simply get on their smart phone and enact a wire transfer to another bank—at least until the bank shuts down its servers.

To sum up: the SVB ‘template’ is a classic bank run event. The bank had over-invested and poorly structured its assets into mostly long term securities. As the broader tech bubble in general began to implode in late 2022, investors and depositors got nervous about the bank’s exposure to long term securities and the likely slow down of cash flow into the bank by VCs and wealthy tech sector individuals. Like the tech sector in general, the bank’s stock price also began to fall which further exacerbated the loss of potential cash on hand. Bad and failed moves by SVB management to raise capital, more warnings by Moody’s, and the VCs communicating to their start ups with deposits in SVB to exit quickly consequently resulted in an accelerating outflow of deposits needed for the bank to continue servicing its debts. The FDIC stepped in to save what was left of depositors funds.

But, as previously noted, the FDIC guaranteed only $250k per investor and depositor. And of the roughly $174B in deposits at the bank, more than $151B involved more than $250K.

Regional US Banks Contagion

The processes that led to SVB’s crash a week ago continue to exist throughout US tech and the US banking system—especially in the smaller regional banks and in particular in those regionals serving the tech industry.

Caught between the Fed’s fundamental, long term and shorter term contributions to the current crisis, SVB’s CEO and senior team mismanaged their bank’s assets—i.e. enabled its collapse. But the Fed’s policies made that mismanagement possible, and indeed likely. And not just at SVB but throughout the regional banking sector.

Another institution, Signature Bank in NY, failed just days before the SVB’s collapse. Other banks approached failure last week and remain on the brink in this week two of the emerging crisis.

Most notable perhaps is the First Republic Bank of San Francisco, also exposed to the tech sector. It’s stock price plummeted 80% during the last two weeks as it was the next target for withdrawals. To try to stem the collapse of First Republic, a consortium of the six big US commercial banks (JPMorgan, Wells, Citi, BofA, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley), arranged by the Fed and US Treasury, pledged by phone to put $30 billion into first Republic. The following day after the announcement of the $30 billion, however, another $89B in withdrawals from First Republic occurred. Clearly, $30B was not near enough. It is unlike the big six will up their ante. The Fed will have to throw more into the pot to save First Republic from SVB’s fate.

Following SVBs collapse, the Fed and the US Treasury also announced a new Bank Bailout Facility, the first such since 2008, funded by $25B by the government. Reportedly the facility planned to make available to banks a new kind of loan from the government, issued ‘at par’ as they say (which means the value of the money would not deflate).

The Fed also simultaneously announced it would open it’s ‘discount window’, where banks can borrow cheaply short term in an emergency. During the first week no less than $165 billion was borrowed by the regional banks from the discount window and the $25B new facility.

The question remains, however, whether the Fed next week will continue to raise interest rates which can only exacerbate depositors and investors’ fears about their regional banks’ stability and likely accelerate withdrawals.

But the Fed is between ‘a rock and hard place’ of its own making. If it doesn’t continue to raise rates it undermines its legitimacy and claims it will raise them until inflation is under control, which means moving decisively lower toward the Fed’s official 2% inflation target. But if it does raise rates, the move could exacerbate withdrawals and regional banks’ stability. Which then will it choose: inflation or banking stability. This writer is willing to bet bank stability comes first, inflation second (and employment and recession a distant third if at all).

The most likely event is the Fed will raise rates just a 0.25% one more time in March next week, and give ‘forward guidance’ it won’t raise rates further should the bank situation not stabilize. Also highly likely is the Fed will announce a hold on its ‘Quantitative Tightening’ so-called policy by which it recalls some of the $8T plus liquidity it formerly injected into the economy. QT has the effect of raising long term rates, which the Fed cannot afford until stability returns to the banking sector. Even longer term, this writer predicts the Fed will try to reconcile its contradiction of ‘reducing inflation by rate hikes with halting rate hikes to stabilize the banks’ by raising its current 2% inflation target to 3% or more later this year.
It was already clear that even the rapid hike in rates of nearly 5% by the Fed in 2022-23 hasn’t had much impact on slowing prices. From a peak of 8.5% or so in the consumer price index, prices have abated only to around 6%. Most of the current inflation is supply side driven and not demand driven and even the Fed has admitted it can’t do anything about supply forces driving up prices.

This writer has also been predicting for more than a year—and since 2017 in the book, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes’—that in this the third decade of the 21st century the Fed can’t raise interest rates much above 5% (and certainly not 6%) without precipitating significant financial market instability.

The Fed and US Treasury will almost certainly have to up their bailout measures in the coming week should more regional US banks weaken. That weakening may be revealed in further bank stock price declines, in rising withdrawals from the banks, or in a sharp further increase in the cost of insuring investors in the event of a bank failure by means of credit default swaps securities.

And in its latest announcement this past Sunday, March 19, 2023, the Fed has said it will immediately provide currency swaps with other central banks in Europe and Japan to enable dollar liquidity injections into offshore banks. Central banks are now fearful the bank runs and instability may well spread from regional US banks to weak banks abroad.

Credit Suisse Bank Implodes: Which EU Banks Are Next?

As regional banks shudder and weaken in the US, in Europe the giant Credit Suisse bank (CS) crashed this weekend. Over the weekend banks, central banks and their government regulators have been gathering to try to figure out how to stem the crisis in confidence in their banking systems. In Europe the focus has been Credit Suisse, which was forced to merger with the second large Swiss bank, UBS. The arrangement of that merger may just precipitate further financial market instability in Europe. Already two other unmentioned EU banks are reportedly in trouble.

The ‘deal’ arranged by the Swiss national bank forcing CS to merge with UBS involved an unprecedented action: instead of shareholders losing all their equity and bondholders getting to recover some of their losses by the bank’s sale of remaining assets, as typically occur when a bank or a corporation collapses, the opposite has happened in the CS-UBS deal. The holders of CS junk (AT1) bonds worth $17B will now be wiped out and receive nothing—while shareholders of CS will receive a partial bailout of $3.3B.

The fallout of restoring some shareholders while bond holders are wiped out may result in subsequent serious financial consequences. That ‘inverted’ capital bailout—i.e. shareholders first and nada for bondholders—has never happened before. Bondholders in Europe will now worry and take action, perhaps provoking financial instability in bond markets. Contagion at the big banks may be contained by the CS-UBS deal (emphasize ‘may’), while contagion in the Europe bond markets may now escalated and exacerbate.

The Swiss National Bank is also providing UBS with a $100B loan and Swiss government another $9B guarantee to UBS. In exchange for the $109B UBS pays only $3.3B for CS. Why then is another $100B loan being given to UBS if it’s paying only $3.3B? Does the Swiss Central bank know something about UBS’s liquidity and potential instability it’s not saying?

Another curious element of the CS-UBS ‘deal’ is the $3.3B UBS is paying for CS is almost exactly the same amount that CS stockholders are getting reimbursed in the deal. Could it be that the $3.3B for shareholders will go to the main stockholders and senior managers of CS, a kind of legal ‘bribe’ to get them to go along with the forced merger? Or is $3.3B for $3.3B just a coincidence?

Bottom line, in Europe the stability of the $275B bank junk bond market is now a question. So too are the stability of the rumored two other major EU banks. To backstop both these potential instabilities is why the Fed and other EU central banks now agreeing to a dollar currency swap.

Watch for Europe bank stock prices to fall noticeably in coming weeks. They’ve already fallen 15% in the past week. (US regional banks stock prices have fallen 22%). More bank stock price decline will now occur. Withdrawals will move from weaker to stronger banks. CDS insurance contracts will rise in cost. As unstable as this picture may be, certain segments of the Europe bond market may fare even worse in the week ahead.

A Few Conclusions and Predictions

The collapse of SVB and other regional banks in the US represents a classic run on commercial banks not seen since the 1930s. Some argue it’s not a bank run but of course it is. When depositors withdraw half or more of a bank’s available cash assets and the bank cannot raise immediate additional cash to cover withdrawal demands—that’s a bank run!

The process is also classic in its dynamics: the bank over-extends making risky lending and loads up on long-term assets that can’t be quickly converted to cash. General economic conditions result in a reduction of cash inflow. It can’t raise cash to cover debt servicing. Its financial securities on hand deflate, exacerbating further its ability to service debt and satisfy withdrawals. It can’t obtain roll over loans or financing from other banks or lenders. Its lenders won’t restructure its current debt. And it can’t get another partner to invest in it or buy it. The only option at that point is bankruptcy or government takeover and the distribution of its remaining assets to bondholders and stockholders get wiped out. (Except as noted in the case of CS-UBS where the bailout is reversed).

It’s almost inevitable now that further contagion will result from both the US regional banks’ crisis and the Credit Suisse affair in Europe. Bank regulators, central banks, and governments will scurry around to provide liquidity and bail out funding to try to convince investors and shareholders and depositors that the banks are ‘safe’. This means raising the funding of the special ‘bank facilities’ created by the Fed and other banks. Making the ‘discount window’ borrowing terms even below market costs. Providing currency swaps among banks. And for depositors, quickly raising the FDIC $250,000 guarantee to at least $400K or even $500K.

The central banks and regulators have moved at a record pace to construct their bailouts. But depositors and investors still can move more quickly given current communication technology. And fear moves even faster across capitalist financial markets in the 21st century.

But ultimately the problem of the instability lies with the Fed and other central banks that have fueled the tech and other industry bubbles in recent decades—and especially since March 2020—with their massive liquidity injections.

Not much has changed since 2008-10.

The Fed never ‘recalled’ the $4T in excess liquidity it injected into the banking system to bail out the banks (and shadow banks, insurance companies, auto companies, etc.) in 2008-10.

Nor did the ECB from 2010-14. That money injection flowed mostly into financial asset markets, or abroad, fueling financial price bubbles and making big tech and financial speculators incredibly rich in the process—a process that resulted in a weak, below historic averages, real GDP recovery after 2010. Following that weak real economic recovery, the dynamics of financial crisis resumed.

The Fed attempted briefly to retrieve some of the liquidity in 2016-17 but was slapped down by Trump and returned to a free money regime. Fiscal policy then joined the process after 2017 with the Trump $4.5T in tax cuts for investors and businesses. Both the tax cuts and Fed largesse resulted in more than $3.5T in stock buybacks and dividend payouts to investors in the F500 US corporations alone! More liquidity. More tax cuts. More flowing into financing the tech bubble and financial asset inflation in stocks, bonds, derivatives, forex and other asset markets.

Then the Fed and other central banks tried pulled out the free money rug and raised rates to try to check accelerating inflation. Its results in that regard were poor. Inflation continued but the rate hikes began to fracture the banking system just as the tech boom itself began contracting. Tech centric regional banks began to implode.

The Fed, FDIC and US Treasury may yet ‘contain’ the contagion and stabilize the creaking US and global banking system in the short run by throwing more record amounts of liquidity and free money into the black hole of financial asset deflation and collapsing banks.

But that ‘short term’ solution is the ultimate source of the longer term problem and crisis: excess liquidity in 21st century capitalist now for decades has largely flowed into financial asset markets making financial speculation even more profitable—all the while the real economy struggles and stumbles along.

The Fed and central banks’ solution to periodic banking instability in the short run is the problem creating that same instability in the longer run.

But some capitalists get incredibly rich and richer in the process. So the excess liquidity shell game is allowed to continue. The political elites make sure the central banks’ goose keeps laying the free money golden eggs.

The latest scene in that play has is now being acted out. Subsequent commentary and analysis by yours truly will thus continue.

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Dr. Rasmus is author of the books, ‘Central Bankers at the End of Their Ropes’, Clarity Press, 2017 and ‘Alexander Hamilton and the Origins of the Fed’, Lexington Books, 2020. Follow his commentary on the emerging banking crisis on his blog, https://jackrasmus.com; on twitter daily @drjackrasmus; and his weekly radio show, Alternative Visions on the Progressive Radio Network every Friday at 2pm eastern and at https://alternativevisions.podbean.com.

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There are two main avenues to a potential US financial crisis.  Such a crisis, because of US financial dominance and because of the interconnections of globalism, which was a huge mistake for humanity, would be international.

One avenue to crisis is the Federal Reserve’s current policy of raising interest rates.  This policy follows many years of nearly zero interest rates in nominal terms, and negative interest rates in real terms. 

During these many years the financial assets banks accumulated on their balance sheets, such as bonds, pay a low rate of interest.  When the central bank (Federal Reserve) raises interest rates, the values of the lower interest rate financial instruments fall, thus shrinking the asset side of banks’ balance sheets but not the liabilities side. 

Thus the central bank’s policy is pushing banks toward insolvency.  When depositors realize  that their deposits could be frozen for some time or lost if over $250,000 in size, as many corporation payrolls and some individual accounts are, they withdraw their deposits. 

The banks cannot meet the withdrawals because their assets have shrunk in value relative to deposits and because as they sell the depreciated assets to meet the withdrawals the prices of the troubled assets fall further.  Silicon Valley Bank had assets heavily weighted with low interest rate US Treasury bonds, the value of which was driven down by the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.  The other two banks were victims of crypto-currency which is too volatile for a bank’s balance sheet.

To prevent the failure of the three US banks from causing a general panic, it was announced that the central bank would provide all banks with sufficient cash to meet withdrawals and that all deposits were insured even if they were higher than the insured amount.  This should prevent panic.

However, if the central bank continues to raise interest rates, the higher rates will push more banks into insolvency.  Central banks make mistakes just like everyone else.  In Europe Credit Suisse, a large international bank, is in trouble, yet the European Central Bank just announced a rise in interest rates.

The second avenue to crisis is the trillions of dollars in derivatives held by the five large US banks, which are international in their transactions. According to published reports, the five largest banks have  $188 trillion in derivative exposure.  This sum is vastly greater than the banks’ capital base.  No one knows what the risk is in these derivatives.  But the dollar amount is much higher than in 2008, so the potential for a worse crisis exists.  A crisis only takes one mistake by one bond trader at a large institution to ignite a crisis.

The derivative crisis that occurred in 2008 (slowly building during 2006 and 2007) resulted from the repeal in 1999 of the Glass-Steagall Act which had prevented financial crisis for 66 years since its passage in 1933.  Advocates of repeal claimed that “financial markets are self-regulating and do not need regulators setting rules.”  They were wrong as became clear 9 years later.

The Glass-Steagall Act separated commercial from investment banking.  Commercial banks that take in deposits and lend on that basis were not permitted  to undertake more risky and speculative ventures as investment banks that at that time were capitalized by the personal fortunes of their partners.  This prevented commercial banks from speculating with depositors’ money.  The repeal of Glass-Steagall let commercial banks use depositors’ deposits, not the banks’ own money, to behave like investment banks.  This is how the large commercial “banks too big to fail” acquired massive derivative exposure.  The derivative risks were not understood either by the banks, the rating agencies, or the regulators and exploded into the 2008 crisis resulting in taxpayer bailouts of banks and a decade of low interest rate policy in order to rebuild the asset side of banks’ balance sheets.  

The public was annoyed  by the bailout.  The result was the Dodd-Frank Act which was misrepresented by politicians, economists, and financial media as a fix of the problem caused by the repeal of Glass-Steagall.  But it was not a fix.  Dodd-Frank created a new problem.  What the Dodd-Frank Act “fixed” was to prevent taxpayer bailouts.  Instead, there would be “bail-ins.”  What this means is that banks in trouble would bail themselves out by being permitted to seize depositors’ money.  In other words, the Dodd-Frank Act created a powerful incentive for runs on troubled banks.  A troubled bank doesn’t necessarily mean, or result in, the bank’s failure.  But because of the Dodd-Frank Act the depositors cannot take the risk, so they withdraw their funds and cause the bank to fail.

To summarize, smaller conservative and prudent banks that invested in “safe” assets such as US Treasury bonds face bank runs. Larger banks with massive derivative risks are one bond trader’s mistake away from exploding the financial system. The 2008 crisis and the potential for more crises rests entirely on the repeal of Glass-Steagall and the enactment of Frank-Dodd.  We are looking at the total, complete failure of intelligence on the part of the US government and economists.  Their handiwork has the capability of collapsing the existing financial system of the world.  It was the work of total idiots.

There is, of course, the question:  Is this real stupidity or is a plot unfolding to collapse the financial system as we have known it in order to “save” us with the introduction of central bank digital currency?  Are we passing from the remnants of democracy and self-government into total tyranny?

A study finds that 200 US banks face the same risk as those that destroyed Silicon Valley Bank.  The Federal Reserve’s higher interest rates are destroying the banks’ solvency.  Yet the Federal Reserve has not backed off its disastrous policy, and with Credit Suisse’s failure looming, the EU central bank raised interest rates!  Yes, people are stupid.  But are they this stupid?  Could this be intentional with a secret agenda in mind such as digital currency? See this. 

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

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The first simple interpretation of the warrant issued by International Criminal Court is that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be arrested in 123 member states around the world. These members are now legally bound to arrest, detain and hand him over to the court.

On 17 March 2023, pre-trial Chamber II of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued warrants of arrest for two individuals in the context of the situation in Ukraine: Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, says the website of ICC.

Generally, the court participates in a global fight to end impunity, and through international criminal justice, the court aims to hold those responsible accountable for their crimes and to help prevent these crimes from happening again.

​​The court does not reach these goals alone. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national courts. Governed by an international treaty called the Rome Statute, the ICC is the world’s first permanent international criminal court.

According to Russian BBC service, citing Kevin Jon Heller, professor of international law at the University of Copenhagen said

“This is an incredibly important event. It’s not every day a sitting head of state is accused by the international court. But of course, the likelihood of Putin being detained any time soon is quite low.

From a legal point of view, any ICC member state is obliged to execute this ruling. If Putin arrives on the territory of this country, it should arrest him and hand him over to the court. But in reality, states don’t always do that.

For instance, serious accusations were made against the President of Sudan, and he visited several ICC member states after that but was not arrested in any of them. So an arrest warrant is no guarantee that Putin will be handed over to the ICC. Yet from a legal point of view, countries are obliged to do that.”

“Yankee, stay away from Putin! All that nonsense from the Hague means that West is hysterical. The papers of the alien Hague court do not apply to Russia,” emphasized Vyacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the State Duma.

According to him, Washington and Brussels have exhausted all possibilities of sanctions and hostile actions.

“They have failed to break the citizens of the Russian Federation and destroy the economy of our country. Washington and Brussels understand that if there is Putin, there is Russia. That is why they try to attack him. Putin’s strength is in the people’s support, consolidation of society around him. We consider any attacks on the President of the Russian Federation as acts of aggression against our country,” added Volodin.

Chairman of the Russian Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has requested providing the legal assessment of German Justice Minister’s statements on arrest of Russian citizens on German territory, the press service of the Investigative Committee said in a statement.

“Chairman of the Russian Investigative has tasked its central office within the framework of the ongoing inspection with providing the required legal assessment of statements by German Justice Minister on fulfilling the International Criminal Court’s unlawful requirement to arrest Russian citizens on German territory,” the statement reads.

German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann said earlier that the country would comply with the demands of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for issuing an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and arresting the Russian leader if he set foot on German soil.

The ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Russia’s Children’s Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova. The court’s statement said they could be responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation.

Commenting on this decision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that Moscow did not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. “We view the very approach to the matter as outrageous and unacceptable. Russia does not recognize this court’s jurisdiction. Hence, any such decisions are null for Russia from the legal standpoint,” he said. In turn, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the decisions of the ICC had no meaning for Russia, with possible arrest warrants legally void.

The ICC jurisdiction is valid in the countries that have ratified the Rome Statute. Ukraine is not party to the Rome Statute, but Ukraine has granted the ICC the right to investigate crimes committed on its territory.

The Rome Statute has been ratified by 123 countries, including South American countries and nearly half the countries of Africa, so they must consider warrants issued by the ICC. China, India, Belarus, Türkiye and Kazakhstan are among the countries that have not ratified the statute. Russia, like the United States, signed the statute but later revoked its signature.

The first head of state in history to be prosecuted by the ICC was Laurent Gbagbo, fourth President of Côte d’Ivoire, in 2011. He was accused of crimes against humanity committed during an armed conflict in the country in 2010-2011. Eight years later, in 2019, Gbagbo was acquitted.

Uhuru Kenyatta, who later became President of Kenya, was accused by the ICC of committing crimes against humanity during the political crisis in Kenya in 2007-2008. The accusations were revoked in 2014 due to the lack of evidence.

Omar al-Bashir, the seventh President of Sudan, is in custody in Sudan and is waiting to be handed over to The Hague. He is accused by the ICC of organising and carrying out a genocide.

The first head of state to be convicted was Charles Taylor, 22nd President of Liberia. He was prosecuted by the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The court found him guilty of assisting in and inciting war crimes and of complicity in crimes against humanity. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison on 30 May 2012.

Former Serbian President Slobodan Milošević died in the UN prison in The Hague before being sentenced. He was prosecuted by a predecessor of the ICC – the Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The International Criminal Court is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal located in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression. The ICC began operations on 1 July 2002.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS) and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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***

On July 2, 2016, shortly after Sierra Lund received her pilot’s license, the 17-year-old was piloting a single engine plane when it lost power. Many seasoned flyboys would have found this emergency—requiring extreme calm and grace under pressure and the ability to make skilled, snap judgements—to be testing in the extreme. The procedure requires keeping the nose pitched down (towards the ground) to maintain airspeed (without power) while simultaneously looking for a decent bit of open space on which to land. Young Sierra handled it with textbook aplomb and landed the plane on a golf course fairway, sustaining no injuries and nothing but a damaged prop and front landing gear.

The Daily Mail reported her sangfroid and piloting skills as a triumphant example of a young woman demonstrating great ability, spirit, and potential. “Local police have praised Sierra for staying calm and collected in a situation that could have shaken many seasoned pilots,” the reporter wrote.

Five years later, Sierra was continuing her upward trajectory in life. And then, in September 2021, she yielded to social pressure (and the desire to travel internationally) to receive a COVID-19 “vaccine.”

At this moment, her greatest passions were solo flying and rigorous physical fitness training. Now she can do neither. Eighteen hours after receiving the injection, she developed intense, unrelenting chest pain, and was shortly thereafter diagnosed with myocarditis and pericarditis. As was just reported in the Epoch Times:

As a daughter of a commercial airline pilot who also flies recreationally, aviation has been a constant in her life. Since her diagnosis, Lund still pilots small planes to keep her skills sharp. But she must always have a second pilot accompanying her; she is no longer medically cleared to fly alone.

Lund’s past schedule of daily gym workouts are also in her rear-view mirror—at least for now.

She tries not to think about all that she is missing.

“If I did, I’d probably be depressed,” Lund said. “I’m trying to figure out how to get better and figuring out how to come up with some sort of normal life in the meantime.”

She now runs her own business as an aircraft broker, keeping her in touch with the aviation community that she loves so much.

In between, Lund heads to medical appointments, including some that require travel from her home state, Georgia. She has spent about $15,000 out-of-pocket trying to get well so far.

I found Sierra’s story especially poignant because my younger brother also fell in love with aviation when he was very young and worked hard to become a pilot. Like Ms. Lund, he also enjoys a physically active life (in his case, windsurfing and surfing). The the mere thought of his life wrecked because he was pressured to receive a fraudulent, useless, and dangerous injection is infuriating. Can you imagine how you would feel if you were Sierra’s parents?

For a long time aviation was largely a male domain, which is one reason why Amelia Earhart’s story was the stuff of Hollywood. I suspect that if the spirited and pretty Sierra Lund had been disabled by ANY other commercial product, her story would have been on prime time news and quickly adapted for cinema.

Now, in our COVID-19 “vaccine” trance, no major American newspaper apart from the splendid Epoch Times has reported her story. The small, privately-owned World Tribune newspaper published a brief report, largely quoting the Epoch Times piece. A Google search for “Sierra Lund pilot” yields many reports of her heroic piloting in 2016, but almost nothing about her life catastrophically affected by the infernal COVID-19 injection in 2021.

Our so-called government and society will some day wake up from its trance and be horrified by what it has done to young people like Sierra Lund. Shame on the public health agencies, politicians, and doctors who have perpetrated this terrible crime.

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Featured image: Sierra today, no longer able to solo fly after vaccine-induced heart inflammation. (Source: CD)

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***

In late February the Group of 20 (G20) held a summit meeting in Bengaluru, India to discuss the economic challenges facing the world.

These states are ranked as the major 19 national economies and the European Union (EU) based upon their gross domestic product, the total sum of goods and services produced within a society.

With the myriad of problems facing humanity after the impact of a pandemic which either curtailed or completely closed down industrial production, service delivery and educational institutions resulting in supply-chain shortages and the emergence of an inflationary spiral not experienced in the capitalist countries since the early 1980s, many people were looking to the G20 summit to provide some answers to the worsening crisis. However, the escalating Cold War between the United States and the Russian Federation overshadowed all other issues.

The situation at the G20 was so strained that it became impossible for the gathering to agree on a joint statement. Antony Blinken, the Secretary of State for the administration of President Joe Biden, insisted upon language which condemned Russia for its special military operation in Ukraine. At one point during the meeting, there were hostile exchanges between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his U.S. counterpart in the personage of Blinken.

Over the last year, the Biden administration has provided $115 billion to Ukraine aimed at continuing the conflict. The U.S. has sabotaged any efforts to hold substantive negotiations between Kiev and Moscow. Unprecedented sanctions have been imposed on Russia by Washington and its European Union (EU) allies. (See this)

A report by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh documenting that the Biden administration had rendered dysfunctional the Nord Stream pipeline connecting Russia and Germany. Prior to the Russian intervention in Ukraine, many states in Europe were supplied with natural gas and oil by Moscow.

The U.S. has refused to acknowledge the report by Hersh since the corporate and government-controlled media has suppressed the story. When the Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia to attempted to discuss the Hersh findings at the Security Council, the U.S. refused to comment on the question while accusing Moscow of promoting “conspiracy theories.”

Nonetheless, Hersh has never been considered a “conspiracy theorist.” For many years he wrote for established commercial publications in the U.S. In the late 1960s during the Vietnam War, he exposed the details of a massacre of hundreds of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai through the Dispatch News Service International which carried reports about the often hidden crimes carried out by the Pentagon. (See this)

Decades later in 2004, just one year after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, Hersh as a writer for the New Yorker, exposed the torture factory set up at Abu Ghraib by the Pentagon where Iraqi soldiers and civilians were beaten, sexually assaulted and killed. The revelations surrounding these crimes against humanity served to build even more opposition to the occupation ordered by then President George W. Bush, Jr. (See this)

A further cover-up of the actual role of the Biden administration in Ukraine is taking place within the context of the G20 and other international forums. A desperate attempt to win the support of nations and geo-political regions outside of North America and Western Europe has had the opposite effect. The overwhelming majority of governments and its peoples have refused to categorically denounce Russia while seeking to maintain and strengthen relations with Moscow.

The African Union (AU), representing 1.3 billion people across 55 member-states, rejected the appeals by Washington to endorse the war effort by the Pentagon. AU leaders have consistently called for a diplomatic resolution to the escalating conventional war in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. This same position has been echoed by the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) and all of the socialist countries.

G20 Leader Expressed Displeasure over the Stalemate

Since the full G20 Summit in February, there have been two additional ministerial meetings which have been plagued with same problems involving the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. Events unfolding on the battlefield and in the burgeoning air war between Washington and Moscow are also reflected diplomatically during talks over economic policy.

G20 negotiator for India, which holds the rotating presidency for this year, Amitabh Kant, was recently quoted as saying:

“Europe cannot bring growth, poverty, global debt, all developmental issues to a standstill across the world. Especially when the south is suffering, especially when 75 countries are suffering from global debt, especially when one-third of the world is in recession, especially when 200 million people have gone below poverty line. Can that one war bring the entire world to a standstill? Nutrition has been impacted, health outcomes have been impacted, learning outcomes have been impacted, people have become stunted and wasted and we are just concerned with one Russia and Ukraine war. The world needs to move on and Europe needs to find a solution to its challenges.” (See this)

Imperialist War and Economic Turbulence

These concerns are becoming even more pertinent due to the developing financial crisis in the U.S. and Western Europe. During the week of March 6-10 two major banks, Silvergate and Silicon Valley, heavily anchored in the tech and cryptocurrency sectors of the economy collapsed.

After these shocks to the financial system which drove down stock markets in the U.S. and internationally, another bank, Signature, was forced to close by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which guarantees deposits of customers and businesses up to $250,000. In an attempt to calm fears among other bankers and the population as a whole, Biden on March 13, made a statement over the mass media pledging that the Treasury Department in consultation with several financial institutions would guarantee the deposits of individuals and businesses at Signature.

Biden brief comments on March 13 were delivered while no questions from journalists were allowed. These events on March 13 seems to stabilize the markets for that day. However, as the week went on, major sell offs of stocks occurred. By mid-week, yet another bank, First Republic, was deemed to be in danger as well. Several larger banks then pledged to provide $30 billion in liquidity to save the financial institution from collapse.

As if this was not enough, on March 15, Credit Suisse, based in Switzerland, was facing serious problems which threatened its existence. The bank went to the Saudi Arabia National Bank, one of its largest investors, to ask for an increase in liquidity. Saudi Arabia refused to accept the offer saying that increasing its level of investment beyond 10% would place it in a different regulatory category. It appears as if the risk of such a proposition far outweighed its unlikely benefits. (See this)

European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde made her announcement on March 16 to raise interest rates by some 50 basis-point. Since some financial analysts are attributing the rapidly worsening instability in the banking industry to the sharp rise of interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell, many investors were startled at Lagarde’s announcement. Nonetheless, the pledge by Swiss National Bank to bailout the troubled Credit Suisse in all likelihood influenced the ECB position.

Bloomberg website which follows the financial markets noted that:

“The Swiss National Bank has come to the rescue, offering liquidity through a covered-loan facility. Credit Suisse said in the early hours of Thursday (March 16) that it would borrow as much as 50 billion francs ($54 billion)… Following its February meeting, the ECB all but promised a 50 basis-point advance in the deposit rate to 3% this month, saying it will then ‘evaluate the subsequent path’ of monetary policy.”

As early as March 6, Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon, told Bloomberg News that the war in Ukraine and deteriorating relations with China was the major concern of his financial institution and that these issues were of a graver danger than any domestic problem. Such a statement is a clear indication of the connection between the financial downturn and the militarist foreign policy of the Biden administration. (See this)

If these international tensions are troubling to the largest banks in the world, the impact on the working class, farmers and the oppressed are surely devastating. A war is being waged as well against the masses of people in the present period. From France, to Britain to the U.S., austerity measures are being imposed on the workers and farmers. The character of the unfolding situation requires the independent organization of the people to transform the economic crises into opportunities for a protracted struggle to end the capitalist and imperialist system.

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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 is from Countercurrents

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***

The announcement of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow to meet Vladimir Putin is shaking Western war plans. After presenting a peace project, the Chinese government now demonstrates that it is considering Russian interests in the conflict as relevant, which is why the country’s president decided to go to Moscow. As well known, peace and Russian interests are inadmissible points for the Collective West, which is why an important American official has already publicly declared that any Chinese peace proposal must be automatically rejected by Ukraine. The case shows quite clearly that the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev is just a proxy for NATO, not having the capacity to decide sovereignly whether or not to negotiate an agreement.

According to John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, any Chinese ceasefire proposal must be considered unacceptable after Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow. Kirby believes that the Chinese gesture and conversations with Putin in person before Zelensky demonstrate that Beijing is writing a peace proposal that takes into account only Russian interests, possibly seeking to ensure the preservation of Russian territorial gains so far. That, for Kirby, would make any dialogue unfeasible.

More than that, the spokesperson sees the growing Russian-Chinese cooperation as an attempt to end the “rules-based order” and reverse the legacy of post-WWII international society. According to him, Russia and China “don’t like” the order built by the “US and its allies” and want to rewrite the world according to new guidelines with the current partnership being a part of this process.

“If, coming out of this meeting, there’s some sort of call for a ceasefire, well that’s just gonna be unacceptable, because all that’s gonna do is ratify Russia’s conquests to date. All that’s gonna do is give Mr. Putin more time to refit, retrain, remain and try to plan for renewed offensives at a time of his choosing (…) We hope, and we’ve said this before – that President Xi will call and talk to President Zelensky, because we believe the Chinese need to get the Ukrainian perspective here (…) There’s no question [that Russia and China] are chafing against this international rules-based order that the United States and so many of our allies and partners have built up since the end of World War II. They don’t like that. They’d like to rewrite the rules of the game globally and they have been increasing their cooperation and their relationship, certainly of late”, Kirby said.

It is curious to analyze how Kirby tries to transform simple things into something absurd, illogical and condemnable. Indeed, Russia and China plan to change the current world order – not because they are averse to the idea of a world guided by diplomacy and international law, but because the order that has prevailed in recent decades is essentially unipolar. There are no real “rules” in the prevailing order – there is only the unilateral will of the US being imposed on all nations. This is obviously something the Russians and Chinese want to change, as they plan for their countries to have absolute sovereignty over their territories and preserve a regional zone of influence, without interference from foreign powers.

It is not about “not liking” what the “US and its allies” built in the post-WWII, but critically understanding that since the end of the Cold War the US has acted as a hegemonic power at the global level, with carte blanche to commit crimes, coups d’état, invasions and wars, while all other states have their freedom restricted by what is called “rules” – which are not applicable to Washington. This is something that needs to be changed and indeed Russian-Chinese cooperation works in this direction.

On the other hand, it is interesting to see how the US decides whether or not Kiev should negotiate peace. If Ukraine is indeed a sovereign state, as the West hypocritically claims when it condemns Russia’s reintegration referendums in the east, then it is the Zelensky government that must decide whether or not to accept a ceasefire, regardless of the circumstances and imposed conditions. However, once again it is clear that the Kiev regime is only a proxy in NATO’s war with Russia, having no authority to decide whether or not to continue fighting.

Indeed, it is absolutely rational for the Chinese to pay more attention to Russian interests and talk to Putin before Zelensky. Moscow is winning the war and the winning side naturally needs to have its interests heard first during a peace negotiation. This is a basic principle of diplomacy, but the West insists on ignoring it both because it needs to publicly maintain the “Ukrainian victory” narrative and because it wants the conflict to prolong indefinitely.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Twenty years ago on March 20, 2003, the U.S. and the Coalition under their command attacked and invaded Iraq, which was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction based on “evidence” that later turned out to be false. Secretary of State Colin Powell himself, who had presented them to the U.N. Security Council, would be forced years later to call his 2003 speech to the U.N. a “blot” on his record.

On March 20, President George Bush announced,

“On my order, coalition forces have begun striking to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war. More than 35 countries are providing crucial support, up to and including the deployment of combat units. Every nation that is part of this coalition has chosen to take on the duty and share the honor of serving our common defense.”

The coalition under U.S. command included 30,000 Italian soldiers. Thus began the war that would kill more than a million Iraqis and cost the U.S., along with the war begun in Afghanistan in 2001, more than $14 trillion. The U.S. strategic goal was to control not only Iraq, but the entire Middle East.

March 2023 – “China-mediated Iran-Saudi Arabia deal sketches a new Middle East,” writes the Wall Street Journal, while the New York Times writes, “The deal between regional rivals highlights China’s growing economic and political importance in the Middle East and the decline of American influence.”

Unable to prevent the “decline” with political and economic tools, the U.S. and its allies are increasingly resorting to military ones. This includes the “landmark agreement with Australia and Britain,” announced by President Biden. It provides for the construction of a new fleet of nuclear attack submarines built by the U.S., Britain and Australia. This will make Australia the de facto tenth nuclear power tasked with holding China at gunpoint. The new nuclear attack fleet will operate not only in the South China Sea and the Pacific, but also in the Atlantic against Russia.

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This article was originally published on byoblu in Italian.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: U.S. Army guarding Rumaylah Oil Fields, Southern Iraq, 2003. Photo credit: U.S. Navy via WikiMedia Commons

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***

Evan Lloyd Corson, a 10 year old hockey player from Hamilton, Ontario, died suddenly on March 11, 2023. Evan was in grade 5 at St. Eugene’s School.

“He loved playing ice hockey at Rosedale arena with his team the Kings. While he wasn’t a goal scorer, he played his hardest at every game.” (obituary here)

Source: (click here)

How insane are COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Ontario?

The Hamilton, Ontario “Rosedale Arena” he played hockey in, had two sets of COVID-19 vaccine requirements: (click here)

1. By the City of Hamilton
2. By the Hockey Governing Bodies

COVID-19 Vaccine mandates were for ages 12+ but look at the pressure they put every citizen of Hamilton, Ontario under. Just to get into the Arena: “a city official will be present at the door to check for vaccination certificate and ID”.

What is the City of Hamilton, Ontario pushing today?

When you go on the City of Hamilton webpage, you will see how aggressively they are still pushing COVID-19 vaccines on kids. (click here).

“COVID-19 Bivalent boosters for anyone 5 years of age and older are now available”

“Anyone aged 6 months or older can start or complete their primary series at a Public Health Clinic without an appointment”

“Public Health Mobile Vaccine Clinics (age 6 months & up)

My Take…

Imagine the pressure that the Ontario Hockey Governing Bodies and the City of Hamilton put families of young hockey players under. You can’t even enter the Arena if you’re age 12+ unless you’re fully vaccinated and a city employee won’t let you in unless you show your vaccine certificate and Driver’s License.

And if Hockey Governing Bodies were forcing COVID-19 mRNA vaccination on every hockey player in Canada age 12+, imagine the pressure on 11 year olds, 10 year olds, 9 year olds. I would guess most families would simply have had those kids vaccinated also, without question.

Especially when they were promised by Public Health Authorities and Ontario politicians these COVID-19 mRNA vaccines were safe and effective for use in kids 5-11 years old. Only they never were.

Latest data shows 52% of Canadian kids ages 5-11 had one COVID-19 vaccine dose, that’s 1.5 million kids.

40.6% of Canadian kids ages 5-11 had two COVID-19 vaccine doses, or 1.18 million kids.

9.5% of Canadian kids ages 5-11 had an additional booster dose in the last 6 months, or 275,806 kids.

The rollout of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in children 5-11 years old was a very serious crime that will one day require criminal charges for all involved.

Rosedale Minor Hockey has made a $1000 donation to the family’s GoFundMe to cover funeral costs.

Perhaps instead, they should have said something when it mattered and stood up for their young hockey players when experimental COVID-19 mRNA vaccines with an unknown long term side effect profile were being rolled out in kids who didn’t need them.

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

Featured image is from the author

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***

On March 24th, the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, Generals and Admirals Association of Serbia, Veterans Association SUBNOR of Serbia and some other independent associations and think tanks, will mark 24th anniversary of the NATO aggression on Serbia and Montenegro (FR of Yugoslavia) honoring fallen heroes of the defense of the country as well as all the victims of this illegal and criminal act.

At the NATO high level conference held on28-30 of April 2000 in Bratislava, USA representatives had confirmed explicitly to the allies and then-candidate allies, three important motives for the “war against Yugoslavia”: first, to take away Kosovo (and Metohija) from Serbia and make it a separate, independent state; second, to turn it into the Balkans carrier of US troops; and, third, to make precedent for military interventions all around the world without seeking UNSC mandate.

The NATO aggression has been widely understood as the demonstration of unlimited use of force primarily towards Russia. It should also be noted that during the aggression, US planes bombed Chinese Embassy in Belgrade killing three Chinese journalists. NATO explanation was that the bombing of Chinese Embassy was a mistake due to the pilots use of outdated map, but not too many believed in the explanation.

As it is widely recognized, this aggression was undertaken in violation of the basic principles of International Law, including violation of the UN Charter and without authorization of the UN Security Council. Having regard that Yugoslavia was not a threat to any NATO member country, the NATO leadership thus violated even its own founding act while NATO member countries violated their own constitutions insofar that they acted without authorization of their respective parliaments.

While it was falsely presented by the mass media as “humanitarian intervention”, in fact it was the war of NATO/US geopolitical expansion towards East, towards Russian borders, also setting the precedent for other aggressions which followed: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Immediate establishment of the major US military base “Bondstil” near Urosevac, Kosovo and Metohija, was only the first in a long chain of the new US military bases in the central and Eastern Europe: Bulgaria (3), Romania (3), Poland.

Thus NATO did not only bring the first war on European soil but at the same time gave extraordinary impetus to the process of intensive militarization of the Old Continent. All member countries were obliged to meet 2% of their GDP military spending to adapt civilian infrastructure to the new military requirements, to limit sale of major companies to only EU and NATO prospective investors (“for security reasons”), not to import new technologies from “unreliable suppliers” (5G), not to buy gas and oil from from those who use them “to undermine security of Europe”.

Missiles including those with depleted uranium bombs, cluster bombs had definitely been falling on Serbia and Montenegro, killing their citizens and destroying their economy. Serbia still is recovering from immense economic and social losses. Belgrade and other major cities, even in the very central parts, still continue to live with ruins and debris of government and other buildings bombed by NATO. But at the same time, the 1999 NATO aggression on Serbia and Montenegro (FRY) had destroyed the whole security and cooperation architecture of Europe and the world, annulling Teheran, Jalta, Potsdam, Helsinki and other agreements and pillars of the post Second World War Order, thus ushering disorder, insecurity and chaos.

NATO aggression ended by the UN SC resolution 1244 (1999) guaranteeing sovereignty and territorial integrity of FRY (Serbia) and large autonomy for the Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia. The aggression, however, has continued ever since by other means. The objective to take out the Autonomous Province from Serbia got a new framework. While the Province has been under UN mandate and KFOR mostly composed of NATO troops empowered to guarantee equal security for all, about 250,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians have been  purged, their homes burnt, lands usurped. In 2008, former KLA terrorist leadership, proclaimed unilateral secession. NATO & EU countries, with exception of Spain, Romania, Slovakia, Greece and Cyprus, were among first to recognize secession, fully aware that it was contrary to the international law, UN SC 1244 resolution, and Serbia’s Constitution.

Lately, Serbia is under unprecedented pressure from the USA/NATO/EU not to oppose Kosovo’s membership in the international organizations, including UN, to establish good neighboring relations based on equality, mutual respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, to mutually recognize state and national symbols, establish quasi-diplomatic relations.

Under the guise of “normalization of relations” the West, led by the USA, seeks  in fact to oblige Serbia to de facto recognize a new state of Kosovo resulting from the 1999 NATO aggression. Promises of membership to the EU, investments and donations are being exploited to lure Serbia to recognize secession of the part of own state territory, thus renouncing of all the rights based on the international law, UN Charter, UN SC guaranties as well as on own Constitution. All these demands are contained in the so-called “Agreement on the path of normalization of relations between Kosovo and Serbia” presented to Serbia on February 27th, 2023 and confirmed on March 18, 2023, in Ohrid, Northern Macedonia, in the form of an, more or less, open ultimatum. Interestingly, this ultimatum, accompanied with threats of economic, financial and other measures and restrictions in the case of non-compliance, will be confirmed by European Council on March 24th, 2023, the exact date when NATO started bombing Belgrade, Pristine and other cities all over Serbia 24 years ago.

What are real reasons for all these? To make Kosovo eligible to join NATO and even unite with Albania; to establish complete NATO-ionization of the Balkans, encompassing Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina; to push away Russian and Chinese presence from the Balkans; to remove objection of five EU member states (four NATO) to the recognition of unilateral secession of Kosovo, thus reestablishing unity within alliances.

The NATO aggression on Serbia and Montenegro (FRY) in 1999 was the turning point of the Alliance from defensive to aggressive, of Europe partially autonomous to complete submission to the USA in pursuit of globalization of the interventionism and global confrontation with Russia and China. Although, it did appear the peak of unipolar arrogance and USA/NATO hegemony, it was wake up call to everybody who believes in new democratic world order.

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Živadin Jovanović is President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

It is true, western sanctions have failed miserably in destroying Russia’s economy. To the contrary, Russia’s economy has been booming since 2022 and keeps doing well, also projected into the future. Why?

“We have exponentially increased our economic sovereignty”, President Putin commented at a recent meeting with aircraft factory employees in Ulan-Ude, Buryatia. The autonomous Republic of Buryatia is in the south of Eastern Siberia, along the border with Mongolia.

Its territory takes up two thirds of the water area of Lake Baikal (see map below). This just as an idea of the enormous landmass, called Russia, and what lays above and beneath her.

Economic sovereignty, is one of the main reasons for Russia’s economic growth during the time of the worst sanctions any country has ever undergone by the west led, of course, by the US and its puppet Europe. The latter has followed the sanction circus, even though it is self-destructive for Europe. This, indeed, is well known to those who have been put into the position of “leading” – or rather destroying – Europe as an economic force.

Not by coincidence, the two key figures in this scenario are two Germans, the unelected President of the European Commission (EC) Madame Ursula von der Leyen, who calls all the important shorts, almost unquestioned, and the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, who is supposed to be leading the European economic powerhouse to annihilation. Madame von der Leyen is also on the WEF’s Board of Trustees and Olaf Scholz is a graduate of the WEF’s Young Global Leader’s (YGL) Academy.

As usual, it is the European people at large who have been betrayed by their so-called leaders – most, if not all of them, scholars of Klaus Schwab’s school for YGL. By no means have they ever been “infiltrated” to serve the interests of the people, who supposedly “elected” them. The farce and betrayal is so bold, that most people cannot and will not believe it.

That is precisely what the powers of those funding and directing the WEF are banking on. They are helped by decades of social engineering, highly professional mind manipulation, by the bought western main stream media.

The masterminds behind social engineering are Tavistock, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a Pentagon-linked think tank, and others, using most sophisticated technologies for bending people’s minds into directions they never wanted, but they have no saying.

Only once we recognize it, admit our laisser-faire “victimhood”, we may be able to react and resist. See this.

Paraphrased, “We are proud of having been able to infiltrate countries around the world with our YGLs”, is one of Klaus Schwab’s infamous sayings.

The point of these sanctions is much more to harm Europe than to destroy Russia. The prime objective is to cut Europe – primarily Germany – off the flow of cheap energy, gas from Russia, thereby ruining and possibly as much as deindustrializing Germany and by association Europe. The deliberate destruction by the US / NATO of the Nord Stream Pipelines is vivid testimony.

President Putin elaborated on the exponential success of Russia in the face of western sanctions,

“After all, what did our adversary count on? That we would collapse in two or three weeks or in a month? The expectation was that enterprises would cease due to our partners refusing to work with us, the financial system would collapse, tens of thousands of people would be left without work, take to the streets, protest, Russia would be shaken from the inside and collapse. That was their intention, but this did not happen”.

President Putin did, however, not explain one of the key underlying factors for Russia’s blooming rather than wilting, namely the almost complete dedollarization that Russia’s Central Bank has managed to carry out under top Russian economist and President Putin’s economic adviser, Sergey Glazyev’s guidance.

V. Putin and S. Lavrov

Through dedollarization which brings along in parallel a sizable de-euroization, Russia’s economy has grown stronger, more autonomous, and is now even closer linked to eastern economies, notably China.

A Ruble-Yuan swap agreement between Russia and China has been in force for many years and has been steadily expanded for mutual protection – thereby also extending Russia’s relation with other Asian economies, especially those within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), covering almost half of the world population and about a third of the world’s GDP.

This means sanction-free trading with half the world – a friendly rather than a belligerent world. That alone is a significant advantage compared to dealing with the west – which always expects that their “partners” dance to their tune.

Russia plays a major role within the BRICS-plus, meaning Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, with the plus standing for Iran and many western countries having expressed interest in joining the group, with the ultimate expectation to integrate sooner or later into the “Eastern Fold”, mainly represented by the SCO.

Amazing, but given the above background, not surprising, is Russia’s significant trade surplus of over US$ 330 billion equivalent. Despite western Ukraine-related sanctions, Russia’s exports surged by nearly 20% in 2022.

Much of the trade surplus is driven by grain exports. Russia produces almost 12% of the world’s wheat, all non-GMO (2022/2023 est.). Total world wheat production for this period is estimated at about 781 million tons.

The combined BRICS-plus Iran output is almost half of global production. That of China (18%), India (13%), and Russia (12%), account for a combined 43% of total world production. Almost half of one of the world’s key food staples is produced by just three BRICS countries.

This fact is important – signaling that food leverage is not handled by the west.

Russia’s overall trade increased by 8.1% in 2022 over 2021, to US$ 850.5 billion equivalent. The bulk of Russia’s exports were energy products, gas and petrol, amounting to about two thirds of all exports, US$ 384 billion equivalent.

This is an almost 43% annual increase despite western sanctions. Moscow redirected energy that the west refused (sanctions) to China, India, and other Asian partners, at prices higher than the special low tariffs Germany and Europe benefitted from – and thus, made Europe’s economy more competitive worldwide. For details, see this.

The deliberate suicide attempt in Europe’s leadership (sic) against the will of the people, or rather by betraying the European population, becomes more than evident.

This trend is set out in the WEF’s Great Reset and UN Agenda 2030 – utmost possible destruction of the current mostly western economic system, so that it may be rebuilt according to WEF’s concept of a One World Order (OWO) which also includes massive population reduction. This may be precipitated over the coming years through the poisonous injections that were coerced upon the globe’s 8 billion people in the past two years. An estimated 70% were injected.

These jabs or “vaxxes”, with a variety of poisonous contents, were planned to bring death and infertility. The proof is slowly but surely seeping out. Now many even western politicians are no longer silent, as they are confronted with skyrocketing over-mortality and infertility.

With these overall plan and objectives of the WEF and its diabolical handlers from the shadows, it also becomes evident, that Russia and China become key targets for take-over, as the new planned OWO will need their energy and food – aside from a myriad of other life-supporting natural resources Russia and China possess.

What the Russian booming economy – because of the “sanctions” – and ever-growing trade surplus signals, is a more stabilizing independence of the east from the west, a shift in world leadership. The warmonger hegemon is gradually but ever more visibly fading. A new concept of peaceful multi-polarity is taking over. – That is humanity’s hope.

However, we must not forget that this concept of a constant western mode of aggression to govern the world, was designed already a century or more ago. It has been perfected by creating several weapons of mass destruction that may be used simultaneously worldwide – like the covid-scare and totalitarian measures, as long as the media-duped world sleeps. Alternatively, these weapons of mass destruction may be applied individually and by targeting specific countries and regions, to disguise their wanton damaging intent.

Other than a potentially all-destructive nuclear war – which may not be in the interest of those intending to run the world – there are a few other weapons of mass destruction:

(i) Artificial weather and climate modification which also includes triggering of deadly earthquakes – Environmental Modification Techniques, or ENMOD, which comprises the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, or HAARP system, as well as other DARPA developed technologies, see this and this. 
These technologies are fortunately not a western monopoly, but are also in control of Russia and China, and at least partially by a few other countries. This, despite Klaus Schwab’s (WEF) arrogant phantasy expressed during the recent World Government Summit in Dubai, that a small elite should control these world commanding technologies – see this;

(ii) The pharma-assault on the world, as we have witnessed with the covid-crime, where harming and deadly medication is forced upon the population; see this – and the impending all-nations overriding WHO supremacy with the revised International Health Regulations (IHR), of which the new Pandemic Treaty will be an integral part – tyrannizing the world with health measures that supposedly no government can oppose.
Though, police and military enforcement is foreseen, it is unlikely to hold against the power of the people. See this. The easiest and most effective answer is – EXIT WHO IMMEDIATELY; and

(iii) The global financial meltdown – which is largely and deliberately a derivative-based “financial weapon of mass destruction”. It may have started with the recent collapse of California’s Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), followed by the NYC Signature Bank – and the latest Credit Suisse (CS), just barely saved by the Swiss Central Bank with a US$ 54 billion equivalent lifeline credit. CS is one of the “Too Big to Fail” (TBF) banks. It may be just a matter of time, before the TBF banks will become too big of a tax-payer liability – and they must be dropped.
For details of the looming Financial Tsunami, see this and this.

These are but a few of the weapons of mass destruction that the west may want to use to maintain its Washington-led hegemony.

It is amazing but no coincidence, how the dots connect when analyzing the Russian booming economy, despite – NO, BECAUSE of western sanctions.

Aggressions, lies, deceit, deliberate killing are low vibrating deeds or behaviors. Sooner or later, they will succumb to higher spirituality, emitted by an awakened, an aware and a conscious society – We, the People.

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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.