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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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***

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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.

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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.

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***

Proponents of COVID-19 mass vaccination acknowledge that similar disastrous outcomes occur with both SARS-CoV-2 infection and the COVID-19 vaccines (myocarditis, blood clots, neurological problems). They position a tradeoff and suggest you should risk it with the vaccine in hopes its lower than that of the infection. Since 94% of Americans have had the COVID-19, its water under the bridge for the infection. Early therapy reduces the invasive systemic manifestations of the illness and markedly reduces hospitalization and death including from complications. With vaccination its a different story, the full force of engineered Spike protein is felt in the body with each shot and per case, the severity of the side effect is far worse than that with COVID-19.

Tu, et al illustrated this principle while analyzing central venous thrombosis which is a blood clot in the major vein of the brain which is a medical emergency requiring, hospitalization, intravenous or subcutaneous blood thinners, serial imaging, observation and in some cases surgery. Tu attempted to divide cases by large denominators to minimize risk; that is invalid in safety research since not all cases can be found particularly fatal ones without an autopsy. The important findings from Tu are in the tables. Central venous thrombosis after vaccination was a catastrophe with more cases, greater need for therapy, more brain surgery, and higher degrees of neurologic impairment at discharge for those who took the mRNA vaccine.

 

Tu TM, Yi SJ, Koh JS, Saffari SE, Hoe RHM, Chen GJ, Chiew HJ, Tham CH, Seet CYH, Yong MH, Yong KP, Hui AC, Fan BE, Tan BY, Quek AML, Seet RCS, Yeo LLL, Tan K, Thirugnanam UN. Incidence of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection vs mRNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination in Singapore. JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Mar 1;5(3):e222940. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.2940. PMID: 35297971; PMCID: PMC8931554.

Under no circumstances could someone accept a blood clot in the brain with the vaccine in the hopes of not getting COVID-19. That tradeoff is untenable and yet another reason why vaccine promoters have lost trust from a discerning public.

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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Source

Tu TM, Yi SJ, Koh JS, Saffari SE, Hoe RHM, Chen GJ, Chiew HJ, Tham CH, Seet CYH, Yong MH, Yong KP, Hui AC, Fan BE, Tan BY, Quek AML, Seet RCS, Yeo LLL, Tan K, Thirugnanam UN. Incidence of Cerebral Venous Thrombosis Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection vs mRNA SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination in Singapore. JAMA Netw Open. 2022 Mar 1;5(3):e222940. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.2940. PMID: 35297971; PMCID: PMC8931554.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

Piotr Hofmański, “President Judge” of the so-called International Criminal Court, tweeted the following statement on the arrest warrants against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Commissioner for Children’s Rights in the Office of the  President of the Russian Federation.

#ICC President Judge Piotr Hofmański on recent arrest warrants against Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova in the context of the situation in #Ukraine
More info: https://t.co/5OMC7Xuuy5 pic.twitter.com/45bT4mHqIs

— Int'l Criminal Court (@IntlCrimCourt) March 17, 2023

First, this will go nowhere. Russia is not a party to the ICC, so Putin will not be arrested unless travels to a signatory country. The move is symbolic, nothing more than additional war propaganda.

International Criminal Court’s decision to issue an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin is legally “void” as Moscow does not recognise the Hague-based court’s jurisdiction — Kremlin pic.twitter.com/EszjXUwXBc

— Naija (@Naija_PR) March 17, 2023

Second, the ICC has interpreted (no doubt at the insistence of the USG, EU, and NATO) the flow of refugees from Ukraine to Russia as a mass abduction, calling it “unlawful deportation of population (children)… from occupied areas of Ukraine.” This statement ignores history and human nature—civilians have for centuries become refugees attempting to escape war zones.

Third, we can only assume the ICC expected the civilian population to stay put and endure merciless artillery shelling by the AFU and its murderous ethnic cleansing neo-nazis. This aspect of the refugee crisis is, of course, ignored by the ICC, the USG, EU, and NATO. It was ignored for more than eight years.

Fourth, the ICC is a corrupt and biased organization. In 2021, it decided to drop investigations into USG war crimes in Afghanistan. In 2020, the ICC decided to close a preliminary examination of the UK’s role in Iraq without opening an investigation.

Recall the geopolitical bumbler Donald Trump saying the ICC investigation of USG war crimes in Afghanistan posed a national security threat. Then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions would be imposed on ICC special prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and her top aide. This included American citizens who may have offered “material support” to the ICC.

Finally, “evidence” of Russia allegedly kidnapping children arrives from the Ukraine Conflict Observatory, a USG Department of State outfit designed to further demonize Putin and the Russians.

A report published by Yale University & the State Dept. Conflict Observatory program said that at least 6,000 children from Ukraine were being held in a total of 43 camps in Russia. The NIB of Ukraine said as of early March it could be more than 16,000.https://t.co/4jtVmRNt50

— genzingg (@GenZingg) March 13, 2023

In other words, more USG propaganda, amplified by the NYT and the rest of the war propaganda media.

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

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The 20th anniversary of the war criminal US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq in 2003 will fall on about 20 March 2023. On this occasion mendacious and racist Western media will at best remember the Iraq War as a US policy mistake. However decent people will remember the carnage. From 1990 onwards Iraqi deaths from US-imposed violence and deprivation have totalled about 5.0-5.5 million, similar to deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million).

(A) Some important prefatory comments on violent deaths, avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation, and culpability.

One notes that “holocaust” implies a large number of deaths whereas  “genocide” is precisely defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the UN Genocide Convention) thus:

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [1].

Further, deaths in war and occupation come from violence and from imposed deprivation. Whether a child dies from violence (bombs, bullets or bashing) or from being deprived of life-sustaining requisites (food, potable water and medicine), the death is just as final, and the culpability of the perpetrator just as real. However while deaths in war from violence are often hard to assess, avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation can be estimated from comparative demographic data (that have been provided for the years from 1950 onwards by the UN Population Division). The methodology used to estimate avoidable deaths from deprivation is described in detail  in my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” [2].

Culpability for avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation is set out by Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention ( the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons In Time of War) that state that the  Occupying Power  is obliged to supply the conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it”.These key injunctions of International Law have been grossly violated by the US and its degenerate and serial war criminal allies (notably the UK, Apartheid Israel, France and US lackey Australia) in the post-9/11 US War on Muslims [3, 4].

Scrupulously ignored by mendacious Mainstream media (M3) journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes is the horrible reality that the ongoing Iraqi Genocide and Iraq Holocaust actually commenced 109 years ago with the British invasion of Iraq in 1914 for oil and imperial hegemony [2, 5]. The deaths in the various stages of the 109-year and ongoing Iraq Holocaust are succinctly set out below.

(B) Deaths from violence and deprivation in the ongoing, 109-year Iraqi Holocaust.

(1) British rule or hegemony (1914-1950): 4 million.

British interest in invading and conquering Iraq came from discovery of oil in adjacent Iran in 1908. Western violation of Iraq commenced with the British invasion for oil and imperial hegemony a mere 6 years later, in 1914 during WW1.  Churchill had forced the Ottoman Empire (1517-1924 Ottoman Caliphate) into WW1  by seizing British-built battleships that the Turks had already paid for. Assuming excess mortality of Iraqis under British rule or hegemony (1914-1950) was the same as for Indians under the British – interpolation from available data indicate Indian avoidable death rates in “deaths per 1,000 of population per year” of 37 (1757-1920), 35 (1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950) –  one can estimate from Iraqi population data that Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation under British occupation and hegemony from 1914-1950 totalled about 4 million [2, 4-7].

(2) Gulf War (1990-1991) and Sanctions period (1990-2003): 1.9 million.

Violent deaths and avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation in the Gulf War (1990-1991) and the Sanctions period (1990-2003) totalled  0.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively. During the Sanctions period the US, UK an Israeli air forces relentlessly bombed Iraqi infrastructure with consequent huge avoidable deaths from deprivation. On May 12, 1996, Madeleine Albright (US UN Ambassador and later US Secretary of State) defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a “60 Minutes” segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” Madeleine Albright replied “We think the price is worth it” [6]. This was a singular instance in which the US admitted to its genocidal carnage. Back in 1990 eminent Australian medical scientist  Professor Fred Mendelsohn (his industrial chemist father Oscar Mendelsohn befriended and employed my Jewish Hungarian refugee father,  Dr John Polya, in about 1940) argued for peace and warned in a letter published by The Age (Melbourne) that huge numbers of children would die in the looming Gulf War. This wonderful and inspiring pro-peace humanitarian  was right – Iraqi under-5 infant deaths under Sanctions totalled 1.7 million, a massive crime against Humanity.

(3) Iraq War (2003-2011): 2.7 million.

The US Just Foreign Policy organization estimated, based on the data of expert UK ORB analysts and top US medical epidemiologists, 1.5 million violent deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011). UN Population Division data  indicate a further 1.2 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in this period. In 2003-2011 Iraqi deaths  from violence (1.5 million) and imposed deprivation (1.2 million) totalled 2.7 million [2, 4-7].

Iraqi deaths from violence (1.7 million) and war-imposed deprivation (2.9 million) in the period 1990-2011 totalled  4.6 million.

(4) Post-Iraq War (2011 onwards): 0.4 million.

The US ostensibly withdrew from devastated Iraq in 2011 but returned in force to the region with a vengeance in 2012 to help Syria, Iraq and Iran deal with ISIS  in Syria (2012 onward)  and  thence in Iraq (2014 onwards) that has been associated with about 0.1 million violent Iraqi deaths, most notably in devastated Mosul (40,000 killed)  and in  twice US-demolished Fallujah [8-10]. One notes that the ruthless and barbarous ISIS subverted and took over the Sunni insurgency in Iraq against the corrupt, violent, US-installed Al Maliki Government, and similarly ISIS came to dominate the US Alliance-backed Sunni insurgency against the Assad Government in Syria. UN data indicate about 0.3 million avoidable Iraqi  deaths from deprivation in the period 2011-2020. Just as the US backed Islamists in Afghanistan  from 1978 onwards, so the US and its allies covertly supported ISIS Islamists in Iraq and Syria with the realized aims of a permanent  US presence in both countries, and the  Balkanizing of Iraq and Syria in the interests of Apartheid Israel. Only Russian support enabled the Syrian Government to survive.  Professor Michel Chossudovsky: “The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham: An instrument of the Western Military Alliance…In August 2014, Obama launched a so-called “counter-terrorism operation” against the ISIS which was firmly entrenched in Mosul. This “fake” counter-terrorist operation was launched against terrorists who were supported and financed by the US, UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Israel (among others)” [11]. The Syrian and Iraqi Governments have demanded US withdrawal to no avail [12]. The Iraqi Genocide and Iraqi Holocaust continues.

 (5) Iraqi Holocaust deaths 5 million (1990 onwards) and 9 million (1914 onwards).  

Ignoring Iraqi deaths associated with the US-backed Iraq-Iran War, one can estimate about 9 million Iraqi deaths from UK or US violence and  imposed deprivation in the century after the 1914 invasion of Iraq by Britain, this constituting an Iraqi Holocaust,  and also an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide [1].

Consideration of (c) and (d) above indicates post-1990 Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation totalling 4.6 million + 0.4 million = 5 million [2, 4-7].

The huge avoidable deaths from deprivation of Iraqis under the British, Americans and the US Coalition is evidence of gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that state unequivocally that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-preserving food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [3, 4].

(6) Check: an alternative 2023 estimate of 5.5 million Iraqi deaths from violence and deprivation from 1990 onwards.

An alternative estimate of Iraqi deaths from violence and imposed deprivation from 2003 onwards in the period 2003-2023 can be made as follows:

(i). Violent deaths totalled 1.5 million (2003-2011) as determined by Just Foreign Policy based on direct polling surveys by US epidemiologists and the UK polling organization ORB. However the Americans and their allies did not completely leave in 2011 and indeed rejected demands of the Iraqi Parliament for them to do so [12].  The renewed violent killing in response to the Sunni ISIS (ISIL, Daesh) rebellion includes 40,000 killed in the destruction  of the western part of  Mosul alone [10], and one can accordingly estimate  a further circa  0.1 million violent Iraqi deaths from 2011 onwards. Thus violent deaths have totalled about 1.6 million in the period 2003-2023.

(ii). Avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation in the period 2003-2023 can be estimated from  UN Population Division demographic data [2]. Thus in 2003 under-5 infant deaths totalled 114,400. Using impoverished and sanctioned but nevertheless well governed and peaceful Cuba  as a baseline, the corrected Iraqi under-5 infant mortality in 2003 was 111,752 [2]. Likewise the corrected Iraqi under-5 infant mortality in 2020 was 27,889 [2]. The average under-5 infant mortality in the period 2003-2023 was 69,821 and  totalled 69,821 per year x 20 years = 1,396,420 for 2003 onwards. For impoverished Global South countries total avoidable deaths from deprivation are about 1.4 times the under-5 infant mortality [2], or 1,396,420 x 1.4 = 1,954,988 or about 2.0 million.

Accordingly Iraqi deaths from violence and imposed deprivation total 1.6 million + 2.0 million = 3.6 million (2003 onwards), 1.9 million + 3.6 million = 5.5 million (1990 onwards), and 4.0 million + 5.5 million = 9.5 million (1914 onwards).

(7) Comparing the Iraqi Holocaust (5.0-5.5 million deaths) with the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5.1-5.8 million deaths) and about 70 other genocides and holocausts.  

As outlined above, estimates of deaths from violence and imposed deprivation are of 5.0-5.5 million such Iraqi deaths from 1990 onwards and 9.0 -9.5 million such deaths from 1914 onwards. How does this compare with deaths in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust?

Eminent Jewish British historian and fervent  Zionist, Professor Sir Martin Gilbert (fellow of Merton College, Oxford, author of 88 books, and expert on Winston Churchill, WW1, WW2 and Jewish history) [13] estimated  5.1 million WW2 Jewish Holocaust deaths in his “Jewish History Atlas” (1969)[14], and 5.8 million in his “Atlas of the Holocaust” (1982) [15].

Deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the 1990 onwards Iraqi Holocaust (5.0-5.5 million) are commensurate with those in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million), the WW2 Polish Holocaust (6 million), and the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death for strategic reasons in Bengal, Bihar, Assam and Odisha by the British with food-denying Australian complicity), but much fewer than in the WW2 European Holocaust (30 million mostly Russian and other Slavic victims as well as Jewish and in Roma victims), and the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (35-40 million Chinese deaths from violence and deprivation under the Japanese, 1937-1945).

For detailed listings of about 70 genocides and holocausts see “Report Genocide” [16]  and  my books “US-imposed post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide” [4] and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” [17]. The Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide [2, 4-7] was part of a wider 21st century Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide in which (as determined in 2015) 32 million Muslims died from violence (5 million) and imposed deprivation (27 million) in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9/11 false flag atrocity in which about 3,000 innocent Americans perished [18-20].

(8) Holocaust ignoring  and genocide ignoring by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) that is largely composed of US Alliance members including  the major  perpetrators of the Iraqi Holocaust.

The major perpetrators  of the Iraqi Holocaust (the US, UK and Australia) are  among the 35 members of the all-European, anti-Jewish anti-Semitic, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, pro-Apartheid, genocide-ignoring and holocaust-ignoring IHRA. Of these 35 soiled, pro-Apartheid  countries: (1) all are European; (2) the 5 located outside Europe (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Apartheid Israel, and the US) were all created based on the genocide of the Indigenous People; (3) 9 members were part of the genocidal WW2 Nazi Germany Alliance; (4) 4 (the US, UK, France and Apartheid Israel) are nuclear terrorist states; (5) 28 belong to the 30-member nuclear-armed NATO that accepts  mass incineration of billions of men, women and children as an acceptable military strategy; (6) 14 were notably involved in the brutal conquest and genocide of Indigenous non-European people over 5 centuries; (7) only 2 (Austria and Ireland) have had the moral decency to sign and ratify the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW); and (8) all but 4 shockingly voted No to the annual UNGA Anti-Nazi Resolution in 2022 that condemns Nazism, neo-Nazism and related racist obscenities [21, 22].

The IHRA Definition of “antisemitism” lists 11 false examples of assertions (e.g. criticism of Apartheid Israel, Nazi-style Israeli policies and hugely disproportionate Zionist influence) that it regards as anti-Jewish anti-Semitic. All 11 examples can be shown to be utterly false assertions  designed to damage and defame anti-racist Jewish and non-Jewish critics of genocidally racist Zionism and of Apartheid Israel and its ongoing Palestinian Genocide. The IHRA Definition of anti-Semitism is anti-Jewish anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish critics of Apartheid Israel as anti-Semites) , anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by falsely defaming anti-racist Palestinian, Arab and Muslim  critics of Apartheid Israel as anti-Semites) and holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring  (by ignoring all WW2 holocausts and genocides other than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and indeed ignoring 70 other holocausts and genocides) [21, 22].

Holocaust-ignoring and genocide-ignoring are far, far worse than repugnant holocaust denial and genocide denial because the latter can at least permit public refutation and public discussion, subject, of course, to censorship by the  mendacious Mainstream media (M3) presstitutes who dominate public life and public perception of reality in the Western Corporatocracies and Murdochracies. Not surprisingly, the racist and mendacious IHRA Definition has been condemned by scholars around the world and by over 40 anti-racist Jewish organizations [23]. However the IHRA holocaust ignoring has made great strides in Zionist-subverted US, UK and Australia, the major perpetrators  of the Iraqi Holocaust. Thus, for example, in Australia the  Australian Labor Government,  the Coalition Opposition, the Labor Government of South Australia,  the Labor Government  of Victoria, and 5 out of Australia’s 43 universities (Melbourne, Wollongong,  Macquarie, Monash, and Sunshine Coast Universities) have all adopted the egregiously false, racist, anti-Semitic and genocide-ignoring IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism [21, 24- 26]. This attack on academic and societal  free speech  and Truth is just as bad in the Zionist-subverted UK and in the  Zionist-subverted US (notwithstanding  the First Amendment of the US Constitution that guarantees free speech for Americans).

Final comments

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the illegal and war criminal US Alliance  invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003 decent people will pause to reflect on the devastation inflicted on Iraq. Iraqi deaths from violence and war-imposed deprivation totalled about 5 million for the period 1990 onwards. The killing continues in US-devastated Iraq. In 2020, for example, the under-5 infant deaths as a percentage of total population for Iraq was 52 times greater than that for Japan, and 14 times greater than that for impoverished and sanctioned but peaceful Cuba [2, 27]. However this appalling and continuing carnage is resolutely ignored by the mendacious Mainstream media (M3) journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat  presstitutes of the countries that perpetrated the ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide.

Decent anti-racist  folk around the world will demand truth-telling and justice for the devastated people of Iraq and will impose Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on the perpetrators  just as BDS is applied to the Apartheid Israel and all its supporters complicit in the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (2.2 million deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and deprivation, 2.1 million, from  WW1 onwards) [28-30].

In 2005, when first expert reports on the growing carnage in Iraq were emerging,  anti-racist Jewish British writer Harold Pinter in his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech stated: “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading as a last resort all other justifications having failed to justify themselves as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice” [31]. 5 million? Surely enough, I would have thought.

*

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This article was originally published on Countercurrents.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”. He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2022) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2023). He has recently published “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), and “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/

Notes

[1]. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf 

[2]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, 2nd edition, Korsgard Publishing, Germany , 2021

[3]. “Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”, 12 August 1949: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.33_GC-IV-EN.pdf 

[4]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed, Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide”, Korsgard Publishing, Germany, 2020

[5]. Gideon Polya , “20th Anniversary Of Huge Demonstrations Against Impending Iraq War”, Countercurrents, 15 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/20th-anniversary-of-huge-demonstrations-against-impending-iraq-war/?swcfpc=1  

[6]. “Iraqi Holocaust Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ 

[7]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ 

[8]. Gideon Polya, Review: “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” – Ongoing Iraqi Genocide”, Countercurrents, 30 January 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/review-the-sacking-of-fallujah-a-peoples-history-ongoing-iraqi-genocide/ 

[9]. Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn, “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History”, University of Massachusetts Press, 2019

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Mosul Massacre latest in Iraqi Genocide”, Countercurrents, 24 July 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/mosul-massacre-latest-in-iraqi-genocide-us-alliance-war-crimes-demand-icc-bds 

[11]. Professor Michel Chossudovsky, “The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Third War against Iraq initiated by Obama”, Global Research, 16 March 2023: https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-destruction-and-political-fragmentation-of-iraq-towards-the-creation-of-a-us-sponsored-islamist-caliphate/5386998 

[12]. Gideon Polya, “US, UK,  Australia, Canada & Germany Reject Iraqi Parliament’s Quit Iraq Demand”, Countercurrents, 16 January 2021: https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/us-uk-australia-canada-germany-reject-iraqi-parliaments-quit-iraq-demand/ 

[13]. Gideon Polya,  “UK Zionist Historian Sir Martin Gilbert (1936-2015) Variously Ignored Or Minimized WW2 Bengali Holocaust”, Countercurrents, 19 February 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya190215.htm 

[14]. Martin Gilbert, “Jewish History Atlas”, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1969

[15].  Martin Gilbert “Atlas of the Holocaust”, Michael Joseph, London, 1982

[16]. “Report Genocide”; https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/home 

[17].  Gideon Polya,  “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, 3rd edition, Korsgaard Publishing,  2023

[18]. Gideon Polya, “Paris Atrocity Context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm

[19]. “Experts: US did 9/11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ 

[20]. Gideon Polya, “Lying Mainstream Media Ignore Expert New 9/11 WTC7 Demolition Report”, Countercurrents, 22 August 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/08/lying-mainstream-media-ignore-expert-new-9-11-wtc7-demolition-report/ 

[21]. Gideon Polya, “Melbourne University Adopts Anti-Semitic & Holocaust-Ignoring IHRA Definition Of Anti-Semitism”, Countercurrents, 5 February 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/02/melbourne-university-adopts-anti-semitic-holocaust-ignoring-ihra-definition-of-anti-semitism/ 

[22]. Gideon Polya, “Zionists & Pro-Zionist, US Lackey Australian Government Threaten Australian Academic Free Speech”, Countercurrents, 7 March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/zionists-pro-zionist-us-lackey-australian-government-threaten-australian-academic-free-speech/?swcfpc=1 

[23]. Jewish Voices for Peace, “First ever: 40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel”, 17 July 2018: https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english 

[24]. Gideon Polya, “85 Ways Zionist Australian Labor Government Betrays Palestinian Human Rights & Humanity”, Countercurrents, March 2023: https://countercurrents.org/2023/03/85-ways-zionist-australian-labor-government-betrays-palestinian-human-rights-humanity/?swcfpc=1 

[25]. Michael Bradley, “Does being anti-Israel mean you’re anti-Semitic?”, Crikey, 14 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/14/anti-israel-anti-semitic-university-ihra-definition/  

[26], “Criticising the nation of Israel is justified. Demonising Jewish people is not”, Crikey, 17 March 2023: https://www.crikey.com.au/2023/03/17/anti-semitism-israel-jewish-people-ihra-definition/ 

[27]. Richard Hil and Gideon Polya, “Imperial power: The Iraq war, 20 years on”, Pearls & Irritations, 16 March 2023: https://johnmenadue.com/iraq-and-imperial-power-20-years-on/ 

[28]. BDS – Boycott Apartheid Israel: https://sites.google.com/view/bdsopinions/home 

[29]. “Palestinian Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/

[30]. 2023, 75th Nakba Anniversary: 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) & Palestinian Genocide:https://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/1948-nakba-catastrophe-palestinian-genocide 

[31]. Harold Pinter, “Art, Truth And Politics”, Countercurrents, 8 December, 2005: https://countercurrents.org/arts-pinter081205.htm

Featured image is from Countercurrents

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***

This idea is based on the distinguished journalist Irfan Hashmi’s suggestion to prevent the imminent civil war and loss of millions of lives in Pakistan, including lives of those in power now who are violating the country’s laws and subjecting Pakistan’s people to unprecedented cruelty. What is the fault of the country’s 80% population?

They are supporting Imran Khan. Why do those in power now want to kill him? Because he keeps on winning every election. The ruling junta, 65% of whom are on bail for one crime or another, are so used to be in power that they cannot tolerate anyone else to replace them. Now that they know they cannot win the elections, they want to kill Imran Khan. There have been many attempts to kill him. He barely and miraculously survived an attempt on his life in which he was severely injured.

To Imran Khan:

“Your enemies have decided that there will be no elections.

They are bent on killing you and have almost succeeded twice, as you yourself said in your latest address to the nation today, March 19, 2023.

Please request the Supreme Court Chief Justice to apply the law that calls for restoration of the provincial governments that were in power when the assemblies were dissolved if provincial elections are not held within 90 days after the dissolution.

It is evident that the current government and Establishment are focused on arresting and killing you, not on elections, which they know they will lose. Legally mandated restoration of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governments is the only way to save you from murder and prevent civil war and bloodshed in Pakistan that is inevitable if the current criminal government assassinates you.

Your courage and fearlessness has no parallel, but the nation would like to continue benefiting from your leadership, which can happen only if you are alive. Your supporters prevented you from surrendering to the police when the police unlawfully and in defiance of the Lahore High Court’s orders attacked your house and rained down tear gas shells on your house. You wanted to surrender voluntarily just to prevent bloodshed, even though you knew well that you might be killed if you surrendered. Your supporters prevented you from surrendering because they do not want to lose you.

The criminal police mafia’s latest action was in the form of an attack on your house and family when they knew you were on your way to appear before the High Court in Islamabad.

They terrorized your wife, beat up your domestic helpers and guards, and ransacked your house. This cowardly and shameful action has no precedent in Pakistan’s history. Since you are truly concerned about Pakistan and its people, please accept the fact that you cannot fight the corrupt and power-wielding elements in the government, in the army, and all bureaucratic machinery.

With your government in Punjab and KP restored in accordance with the law, you can continue your mission of having fair elections and can drive out the cowardly criminals at least from those two provinces.”

*

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Prof. Abdul Jabbar is the first and longest-serving Pakistani-American academic in the United States, having taught Literature, Islam, and Global Politics for more than half a century.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

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The arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for Russian President Vladimir Putin came at an opportune moment.  It was, if nothing else, a feeble distraction over the misdeeds and crimes of other leaders current and former.  Russia, not being an ICC member country, does not acknowledge that court’s jurisdiction.  Nor, for that matter, does the United States, despite the evident chortling from US President Joe Biden.

Twenty years on, former US President George W. Bush, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Australia’s own John Howard, the troika most to blame for not just the criminal invasion of a foreign country but the regional and global cataclysm consequential to it, remain at large.  Since then, Bush has taken to painting; Blair and Howard have preferred to sell gobbets of alleged wisdom on the lecture circuit.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by the US-led Coalition of the Willing was a model exercise of maligning the very international system of rules Washington, London and Canberra speak of when condemning their latest assortment of international villains.  It recalled those sombre words of the International Military Tribunal, delivered at the Nuremberg war crimes trials in 1946: “War is essentially an evil thing.  Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone but affect the whole world.  To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

The invasion of Iraq defied the UN Security Council as the sole arbiter on whether the use of force would be necessary to combat a genuine threat to international peace and security.  It breached the UN Charter.  It encouraged instances of horrendous mendacity (those stubbornly spectral weapons of mass destruction) and the inflation of threats supposedly posed by the regime of Saddam Hussein.

This included the unforgettable British contribution about Saddam’s alleged ability to launch chemical and biological weapons in 45 minutes.  As Blair declared to MPs in September 2002: “It [the intelligence service] concludes that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes.”

Putin, not one to suffer amnesia on this point, also noted this fact in his speech made announcing Russia’s attack on Ukraine.  Iraq, he noted, had been invaded “without any legal grounds.”  Lies, he said, were witnessed “at the highest state level and voiced from the high UN rostrum.  As a result, we see a tremendous loss of human life, damage, destruction, and a colossal upsurge of terrorism.”

In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the infrastructure of the country was ruined, its army and public service disbanded, leaving rich pools of disaffected recruits for the insurgency that followed.  The country, torn between Shia, Sunni and Kurd and governed by an occupation force of colossal ineptitude, suffered an effective collapse, leaving a vacuum exploited by jihadis and, in time, Islamic State.

Since the invasion, a number of civil society efforts have been undertaken against the dubious triumvirate of evangelist warmongers.  The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, convened over four days in November 2011, invoked universal jurisdiction in finding Bush, Blair and their accomplices guilty of the act of aggression.

Despite its unmistakable political flavour – the original body had been unilaterally established by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad – its reasoning was sound enough.  The invasion of Iraq could not “be justified under any reasonable interpretation of international law” and threatened “to return us to a world in which the law of the jungle prevails over the rule of law, with potentially disastrous consequences for the human rights not only of the Iraqis but of the people throughout the region and the world”.

The Sydney-based SEARCH Foundation also resolved to submit a complaint to the ICC in 2012, hoping that the body would conduct an investigation and issue a warrant for Howard’s arrest.  In September 2013, a complaint was filed by Peter Murphy, Secretary of the Foundation, alleging, among a range of offences, the commission of acts of aggression, breaches of international humanitarian law and human rights, and crimes against peace.  The effort failed, leaving Howard irritatingly free.

In two decades, the United States still finds itself embroiled in Iraq, with 2,500 troops stationed in a capacity that is unlikely to stop anytime too soon.  That said, the parallels with Afghanistan are already being drawn.  In 2022, the outgoing head of US Central Command, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, trotted out his dream about what would happen.  “You want to get to the state where nations, and security elements in those nations, can deal with a violent extremist threat without direct support from us.”

Ironically enough, such violent extremist threats had more than a little help in their creation from Washington’s own disastrous intervention.  Eventually, the Iraqis would simply have to accept “to take a larger share of all the enabling that we’re doing now.”

The calamity of Iraq is also a salutary warning to countries willing to join any US-led effort, or rely on the good grace of Washington’s power.  To be an enemy of the United States might be dangerous, but as Henry Kissinger reminds us, to be a friend might prove fatal.

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

Featured image: At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.” (Source: Consortiumnews)

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In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we repost this article first published in March 2018.

Read Part I and II:

How Many Millions of People Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 20, 2023

How Many People Has the U.S. Killed in Its Post-9/11 Wars?

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 20, 2023

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In the third and final part of his series, Nicolas JS Davies investigates the death toll of U.S. covert and proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen and underscores the importance of comprehensive war mortality studies.

In the first two parts of this report, I have estimated that about 2.4 million people have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, while about 1.2 million have been killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.  In the third and final part of this report, I will estimate how many people have been killed as a result of U.S. military and CIA interventions in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

Of the countries that the U.S. has attacked and destabilized since 2001, only Iraq has been the subject of comprehensive “active” mortality studies that can reveal otherwise unreported deaths. An “active” mortality study is one that “actively” surveys households to find deaths that have not previously been reported by news reports or other published sources.

These studies are often carried out by people who work in the field of public health, like Les Roberts at Columbia University, Gilbert Burnham at Johns Hopkins and Riyadh Lafta at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, who co-authored the 2006 Lancet study of Iraq war mortality.  In defending their studies in Iraq and their results, they emphasized that their Iraqi survey teams were independent of the occupation government and that that was an important factor in the objectivity of their studies and the willingness of people in Iraq to talk honestly with them.

Comprehensive mortality studies in other war-torn countries (like Angola, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda) have revealed total numbers of deaths that are 5 to 20 times those previously revealed by “passive” reporting based on news reports, hospital records and/or human rights investigations.

In the absence of such comprehensive studies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen, I have evaluated passive reports of war deaths and tried to assess what proportion of actual deaths these passive reports are likely to have counted by the methods they have used, based on ratios of actual deaths to passively reported deaths found in other war-zones.

I have only estimated violent deaths.  None of my estimates include deaths from the indirect effects of these wars, such as the destruction of hospitals and health systems, the spread of otherwise preventable diseases and the effects of malnutrition and environmental pollution, which have also been substantial in all these countries.

For Iraq, my final estimate of about 2.4 million people killed was based on accepting the estimates of the 2006 Lancet study and the 2007 Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey, which were consistent with each other, and then applying the same ratio of actual deaths to passively reported deaths (11.5:1) as between the Lancet study and Iraq Body Count (IBC) in 2006 to IBC’s count for the years since 2007.

For Afghanistan, I estimated that about 875,000 Afghans have been killed.  I explained that the annual reports on civilian casualties by the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) are based only on investigations completed by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), and that they knowingly exclude large numbers of reports of civilian deaths that the AIHRC has not yet investigated or for which it has not completed its investigations.  UNAMA’s reports also lack any reporting at all from many areas of the country where the Taliban and other Afghan resistance forces are active, and where many or most U.S. air strikes and night raids therefore take place.

I concluded that UNAMA’s reporting of civilian deaths in Afghanistan appears to be as inadequate as the extreme under-reporting found at the end of the Guatemalan Civil War, when the UN-sponsored Historical Verification Commission revealed 20 times more deaths than previously reported.

For Pakistan, I estimated that about 325,000 people had been killed.  That was based on published estimates of combatant deaths, and on applying an average of the ratios found in previous wars (12.5:1) to the number of civilian deaths reported by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) in India.

Estimating Deaths in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen

In the third and final part of this report, I will estimate the death toll caused by U.S. covert and proxy wars in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen.

Senior U.S. military officers have hailed the U.S. doctrine of covert and proxy war that found its full flowering under the Obama administration as a “disguised, quiet, media-free” approach to war, and have traced the development of this doctrine back to U.S. wars in Central America in the 1980s.  While the U.S. recruitment, training, command and control of death squads in Iraq was dubbed “the Salvador Option,” U.S. strategy in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen has in fact followed this model even more closely.

These wars have been catastrophic for the people of all these countries, but the U.S.’s “disguised, quiet, media-free” approach to them has been so successful in propaganda terms that most Americans know very little about the U.S. role in the intractable violence and chaos that has engulfed them.

The very public nature of the illegal but largely symbolic missile strikes on Syria on April 14, 2018 stands in sharp contrast to the “disguised, quiet, media-free” U.S.-led bombing campaign that has destroyed Raqqa, Mosul and several other Syrian and Iraqi cities with more than 100,000 bombs and missiles since 2014.

The people of Mosul, Raqqa, Kobane, Sirte, Fallujah, Ramadi, Tawergha and Deir Ez-Zor have died like trees falling in a forest where there were no Western reporters or TV crews to record their massacres.  As Harold Pinter asked of earlier U.S. war crimes in his 2005 Nobel acceptance speech,

“Did they take place?  And are they in all cases attributable to U.S. foreign policy?  The answer is yes, they did take place, and they are in all cases attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.  It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.”

For more detailed background on the critical role the U.S. has played in each of these wars, please read my article, “Giving War Too Many Chances,” published in January 2018.

Libya

The only legal justification for NATO and its Arab monarchist allies to have dropped at least 7,700 bombs and missiles on Libya and invaded it with special operations forces beginning in February 2011 was UN Security Council resolution 1973, which authorized “all necessary measures” for the narrowly defined purpose of protecting civilians in Libya.

But the war instead killed far more civilians than any estimate of the number killed in the initial rebellion in February and March 2011, which ranged from 1,000 (a UN estimate) to 6,000 (according to the Libyan Human Rights League).  So the war clearly failed in its stated, authorized purpose, to protect civilians, even as it succeeded in a different and unauthorized one: the illegal overthrow of the Libyan government.

SC resolution 1973 expressly prohibited “a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.”  But NATO and its allies launched a covert invasion of Libya by thousands of Qatari and Western special operations forces, who planned the rebels’ advance across the country, called in air strikes against government forces and led the final assault on the Bab al-Aziziya military headquarters in Tripoli.

Qatari Chief of Staff Major General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya, proudly told AFP,

“We were among them and the numbers of Qataris on the ground were in the hundreds in every region.  Training and communications had been in Qatari hands. Qatar… supervised the rebels’ plans because they are civilians and did not have enough military experience. We acted as the link between the rebels and NATO forces.”

There are credible reports that a French security officer may even have delivered the coup de grace that killed Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, after he was captured, tortured and sodomized with a knife by the “NATO rebels.”

A parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee inquiry in the U.K. in 2016 concluded that a “limited intervention to protect civilians drifted into an opportunistic policy of regime change by military means,” resulting in, “political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Isil [Islamic State] in north Africa.”

Passive Reports of Civilian Deaths in Libya

Once the Libyan government was overthrown, journalists tried to inquire about the sensitive subject of civilian deaths, which was so critical to the legal and political justifications for the war.  But the National Transitional Council (NTC), the unstable new government formed by Western-backed exiles and rebels, stopped issuing public casualty estimates and ordered hospital staff not to release information to reporters.

In any case, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, morgues were overflowing during the war and many people buried their loved ones in their backyards or wherever they could, without taking them to hospitals.

A rebel leader estimated in August 2011 that 50,000 Libyans had been killed.  Then, on September 8th 2011, Naji Barakat, the NTC’s new health minister, issued a statement that 30,000 people had been killed and another 4,000 were missing, based on a survey of hospitals, local officials and rebel commanders in the majority of the country that the NTC by then controlled.  He said it would take several more weeks to complete the survey, so he expected the final figure to be higher.

Barakat’s statement did not include separate counts of combatant and civilian deaths.  But he said that about half of the 30,000 reported dead were troops loyal to the government, including 9,000 members of the Khamis Brigade, led by Gaddafi’s son Khamis.  Barakat asked the public to report deaths in their families and details of missing persons when they came to mosques for prayers that Friday. The NTC’s estimate of 30,000 people killed appeared to consist mainly of combatants on both sides.

The most comprehensive survey of war deaths since the end of the 2011 war in Libya was an “epidemiological community-based study” titled “Libyan Armed Conflict 2011: Mortality, Injury and Population Displacement.”  It was authored by three medical professors from Tripoli, and published in the African Journal of Emergency Medicine in 2015.

The authors took records of war deaths, injuries and displacement collected by the Ministry of Housing and Planning, and sent teams to conduct face-to-face interviews with a member of each family to verify how many members of their household were killed, wounded or displaced.  They did not try to separate the killing of civilians from the deaths of combatants.

Hundreds of refugees from Libya line up for food at a transit camp near the Tunisia-Libya border. March 5, 2016. (Photo from the United Nations)

Nor did they try to statistically estimate previously unreported deaths through the “cluster sample survey” method of the Lancet study in Iraq.  But the Libyan Armed Conflict study is the most complete record of confirmed deaths in the war in Libya up to February 2012, and it confirmed the deaths of at least 21,490 people.

In 2014, the ongoing chaos and factional fighting in Libya flared up into what Wikipedia now calls a second Libyan Civil War.  A group called Libya Body Count (LBC) began tabulating violent deaths in Libya, based on media reports, on the model of Iraq Body Count (IBC).  But LBC only did so for three years, from January 2014 until December 2016.  It counted 2,825 deaths in 2014, 1,523 in 2015 and 1,523 in 2016. (The LBC website says it was just a coincidence that the number was identical in 2015 and 2016.)

The U.K.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project has also kept a count of violent deaths in Libya.  ACLED counted 4,062 deaths in 2014-6, compared with 5,871 counted by Libya Body Count.  For the remaining periods between March 2012 and March 2018 that LBC did not cover, ACLED has counted 1,874 deaths.

If LBC had covered the whole period since March 2012, and found the same proportionally higher number than ACLED as it did for 2014-6, it would have counted 8,580 people killed.

Estimating How Many People Have Really Been Killed in Libya

Combining the figures from the Libyan Armed Conflict 2011 study and our combined, projected figure from Libya Body Count and ACLED gives a total of 30,070 passively reported deaths since February 2011.

The Libyan Armed Conflict (LAC) study was based on official records in a country that had not had a stable, unified government for about 4 years, while Libya Body Count was a fledgling effort to emulate Iraq Body Count that tried to cast a wider net by not relying only on English-language news sources.

In Iraq, the ratio between the 2006 Lancet study and Iraq Body Count was higher because IBC was only counting civilians, while the Lancet study counted Iraqi combatants as well as civilians.  Unlike Iraq Body Count, both our main passive sources in Libya counted both civilians and combatants.  Based on the one-line descriptions of each incident in the Libya Body Count database, LBC’s total appears to include roughly half combatants and half civilians.

Military casualties are generally counted more accurately than civilian ones, and military forces have an interest in accurately assessing enemy casualties as well as identifying their own. The opposite is true of civilian casualties, which are nearly always evidence of war crimes that the forces who killed them have a strong interest in suppressing.

So, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I treated combatants and civilians separately, applying typical ratios between passive reporting and mortality studies only to civilians, while accepting reported combatant deaths as they were passively reported.

But the forces fighting in Libya are not a national army with the strict chain of command and organizational structure that results in accurate reporting of military casualties in other countries and conflicts, so both civilian and combatant deaths appear to be significantly under-reported by my two main sources, the Libya Armed Conflict study and Libya Body Count.  In fact, the National Transitional Council’s (NTC) estimates  from August and September 2011 of 30,000 deaths were already much higher than the numbers of war deaths in the LAC study.

When the 2006 Lancet study of mortality in Iraq was published, it revealed 14 times the number of deaths counted in Iraq Body Count’s list of civilian deaths.  But IBC later discovered more deaths from that period, reducing the ratio between the Lancet study’s estimate and IBC’s revised count to 11.5:1.

The combined totals from the Libya Armed Conflict 2011 study and Libya Body Count appear to be a larger proportion of total violent deaths than Iraq Body Count has counted in Iraq, mainly because LAC and LBC both counted combatants as well as civilians, and because Libya Body Count included deaths reported in Arabic news sources, while IBC relies almost entirely on English language news sources and generally requires “a minimum of two independent data sources” before recording each death.

In other conflicts, passive reporting has never succeeded in counting more than a fifth of the deaths found by comprehensive, “active” epidemiological studies.  Taking all these factors into account, the true number of people killed in Libya appears to be somewhere between five and twelve times the numbers counted by the Libya Armed Conflict 2011 study, Libya Body Count and ACLED.

So I estimate that about 250,000 Libyans have been killed in the war, violence and chaos that the U.S. and its allies unleashed in Libya in February 2011, and which continues to the present day.  Taking 5:1 and 12:1 ratios to passively counted deaths as outer limits, the minimum number of people that have been killed would be 150,000 and the maximum would be 360,000.

Syria

The “disguised, quiet, media-free” U.S. role in Syria began in late 2011 with a CIA operation to funnel foreign fighters and weapons through Turkey and Jordan into Syria, working with Qatar and Saudi Arabia to militarize unrest that began with peaceful Arab Spring protests against Syria’s Baathist government.

The mostly leftist and democratic Syrian political groups coordinating non-violent protests in Syria in 2011 strongly opposed these foreign efforts to unleash a civil war, and issued strong statements opposing violence, sectarianism and foreign intervention.

But even as a December 2011 Qatari-sponsored opinion poll found that 55% of Syrians supported their government, the U.S. and its allies were committed to adapting their Libyan regime change model to Syria, knowing full well from the outset that this war would be much bloodier and more destructive.

The CIA and its Arab monarchist partners eventually funneled thousands of tons of weapons and thousands of foreign Al-Qaeda-linked jihadis into Syria.  The weapons came first from Libya, then from Croatia and the Balkans. They included howitzers, missile launchers and other heavy weapons, sniper rifles, rocket propelled grenades, mortars and small arms, and the U.S. eventually directly supplied powerful anti-tank missiles.

Meanwhile, instead of cooperating with Kofi Annan’s UN-backed efforts to bring peace to Syria in 2012, the U.S. and its allies held three “Friends of Syria” conferences, where they pursued their own “Plan B,” pledging ever-growing support to the increasingly Al-Qaeda-dominated rebels.  Kofi Annan quit his thankless role in disgust after Secretary of State Clinton and her British, French and Saudi allies cynically undermined his peace plan.

The rest, as they say, is history, a history of ever-spreading violence and chaos that has drawn the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, Iran and all of Syria’s neighbors into its bloody vortex.  As Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies has observed, these external powers have all been ready to fight over Syria “to the last Syrian.”

The bombing campaign that President Obama launched against Islamic State in 2014 is the heaviest bombing campaign since the U.S. War in Vietnam, dropping more than 100,000 bombs and missiles on Syria and Iraq. Patrick Cockburn, the veteran Middle East correspondent of the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, recently visited Raqqa, formerly Syria’s 6th largest city, and wrote that, “The destruction is total.”

“In other Syrian cities bombed or shelled to the point of oblivion there is at least one district that has survived intact,” Cockburn wrote. “This is the case even in Mosul in Iraq, though much of it was pounded into rubble. But in Raqqa the damage and the demoralization are all pervasive.  When something does work, such as a single traffic light, the only one to do so in the city, people express surprise.”

Estimating Violent Deaths in Syria

Every public estimate of the numbers of people killed in Syria that I have found comes directly or indirectly from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), run by Rami Abdulrahman in Coventry in the U.K.  He is a former political prisoner from Syria, and he works with four assistants in Syria who in turn draw on a network of about 230 anti-government activists across the country.  His work receives some funding from the European Union, and also reportedly some from the U.K. government.

Wikipedia cites the Syrian Centre for Policy Research as a separate source with a higher fatality estimate, but this is in fact a projection from SOHR’s figures.  Lower estimates by the UN appear to also be based mainly on SOHR’s reports.

SOHR has been criticized for its unabashedly opposition viewpoint, leading some to question the objectivity of its data.  It appears to have seriously undercounted civilians killed by U.S. air strikes, but this could also be due to the difficulty and danger of reporting from IS-held territory, as has also been the case in Iraq.

SOHR acknowledges that its count cannot be a total estimate of all the people killed in Syria.  In its most recent report in March 2018, it added 100,000 to its tally to compensate for under-reporting, another 45,000 to account for prisoners killed or disappeared in government custody and 12,000 for people killed, disappeared or missing in Islamic State or other rebel custody.

Leaving aside these adjustments, SOHR’s March 2018 report documents the deaths of 353,935 combatants and civilians in Syria.  That total is comprised of 106,390 civilians; 63,820 Syrian troops; 58,130 members of pro-government militias (including 1,630 from Hezbollah and 7,686 other foreigners); 63,360 Islamic State, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra) and other Islamist jihadis; 62,039 other anti-government combatants; and 196 unidentified bodies.

Breaking this down simply into civilians and combatants, that is 106,488 civilians and 247,447 combatants killed (with the 196 unidentified bodies divided equally), including 63,820 Syrian Army troops.

The SOHR’s count is not a comprehensive statistical survey like the 2006 Lancet study in Iraq.  But regardless of its pro-rebel viewpoint, the SOHR appears to be one of the most comprehensive efforts to “passively” count the dead in any recent war.

Like military institutions in other countries, the Syrian Army probably keeps fairly accurate casualty figures for its own troops.  Excluding actual military casualties, it would be unprecedented for SOHR to have counted more than 20% of other people killed in Syria’s Civil War. But SOHR’s reporting may well be as thorough as any previous efforts to count the dead by “passive” methods.

Taking the SOHR’s passively reported figures for non-military war deaths as 20% of the real total killed would mean that 1.45 million civilians and non-military combatants have been killed.  After adding the 64,000 Syrian troops killed to that number, I estimate that about 1.5 million people have been killed in Syria.

If SOHR has been more successful than any previous “passive” effort to count the dead in a war, and has counted 25% or 30% of the people killed, the real number killed could be as low as 1 million.  If it has not been as successful as it seems, and its count is closer to what has been typical in other conflicts, then as many as 2 million people may well have been killed.

Somalia

Most Americans remember the U.S. intervention in Somalia that led to the “Black Hawk Down” incident and the withdrawal of U.S. troops in 1993.  But most Americans do not remember, or may never have known, that the U.S. made another “disguised, quiet, media-free” intervention in Somalia in 2006, in support of an Ethiopian military invasion.

Somalia was finally “pulling itself up by its bootstraps” under the governance of the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), a union of local traditional courts who agreed to work together to govern the country.  The ICU allied with a warlord in Mogadishu and defeated the other warlords who had ruled private fiefdoms since the collapse of the central government in 1991.  People who knew the country well hailed the ICU as a hopeful development for peace and stability in Somalia.

But in the context of its “war on terror,” the U.S. government identified the Islamic Courts Union as an enemy and a target for military action.  The U.S. allied with Ethiopia, Somalia’s traditional regional rival (and a majority Christian country), and conducted air strikes and special forces operations to support an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia to remove the ICU from power. As in every other country the U.S. and its proxies have invaded since 2001, the effect was to plunge Somalia back into violence and chaos that continues to this day.

Estimating the Death Toll in Somalia

Passive sources put the violent death toll in Somalia since the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006 at 20,171 (Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) – through 2016) and 24,631 (Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project  (ACLED)).  But an award-winning local NGO, the Elman Peace and Human Rights Centre in Mogadishu, which tracked deaths only for 2007 and 2008, counted 16,210 violent deaths in those two years alone, 4.7 times the number counted by UCDP and 5.8 times ACLED’s tally for those two years.

In Libya, Libya Body Count only counted 1.45 times as many deaths as ACLED.  In Somalia, Elman Peace counted 5.8 times more than ACLED – the difference between the two was 4 times as great.  This suggests that Elman Peace’s counting was about twice as thorough as Libya Body Count’s, while ACLED seems to be about half as effective at counting war deaths in Somalia as in Libya.

UCDP logged higher numbers of deaths than ACLED from 2006 until 2012, while ACLED has published higher numbers than UCDP since 2013.  The average of their two counts gives a total of 23,916 violent deaths from July 2006 to 2017. If Elman Peace had kept counting war deaths and had continued to find 5.25 ( the average of 4.7 and 5.8) times the numbers found by these international monitoring groups, it would by now have counted about 125,000 violent deaths since the U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion in July 2006.

But while Elman Peace counted many more deaths than UCDP or ACLED, this was still just a “passive” count of war deaths in Somalia.  To estimate the total number of war deaths that have resulted from the U.S. decision to destroy Somalia’s fledgling ICU government, we must multiply these figures by a ratio that falls somewhere between those found in other conflicts, between 5:1 and 20:1.

Applying a 5:1 ratio to my projection of what the Elman Project might have counted by now yields a total of 625,000 deaths.  Applying a 20:1 ratio to the much lower counts by UCDP and ACLED would give a lower figure of 480,000.

It is very unlikely that the Elman Project was counting more than 20% of actual deaths all over Somalia.  On the other hand, UCDP and ACLED were only counting reports of deaths in Somalia from their bases in Sweden and the U.K., based on published reports, so they may well have counted less than 5% of actual deaths.

If the Elman Project was only capturing 15% of total deaths instead of 20%, that would suggest that 830,000 people have been killed since 2006.  If UCDP’s and ACLED’s counts have captured more than 5% of total deaths, the real total could be lower than 480,000. But that would imply that the Elman Project was identifying an even higher proportion of actual deaths, which would be unprecedented for such a project.

So I estimate that the true number of people killed in Somalia since 2006 must be somewhere between 500,000 and 850,000, with most likely about 650,000 violent deaths.

Yemen

The U.S. is part of a coalition that has been bombing Yemen since 2015 in an effort to restore former President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi to power.  Hadi was elected in 2012 after Arab Spring protests and armed uprisings forced Yemen’s previous U.S.-backed dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to resign in November 2011.

Hadi’s mandate was to draw up a new constitution and organize a new election within two years.  He did neither of these things, so the powerful Zaidi Houthi movement invaded the capital in September 2014, placed Hadi under house arrest and demanded that he and his government fulfill their mandate and organize a new election.

The Zaidis are a unique Shiite sect who make up 45% of Yemen’s population.  Zaidi Imams ruled most of Yemen for over a thousand years. Sunnis and Zaidis have lived together peacefully in Yemen for centuries, intermarriage is common and they pray in the same mosques.

The last Zaidi Imam was overthrown in a civil war in the 1960s.  In that war, the Saudis supported the Zaidi royalists, while Egypt invaded Yemen to support the republican forces who eventually formed the Yemen Arab Republic in 1970.

In 2014, Hadi refused to cooperate with the Houthis, and resigned in January 2015.  He fled to Aden, his hometown, and then to Saudi Arabia, which launched a savage U.S.-backed bombing campaign and naval blockade to try to restore him to power.

While Saudi Arabia is conducting most of the air strikes, the U.S. has sold most of the planes, bombs, missiles and other weapons it is using.  The U.K. is the Saudis’ second largest arms supplier. Without U.S. satellite intelligence and in-air refueling, Saudi Arabia could not conduct airstrikes all over Yemen as it is doing.  So a cut-off of U.S. weapons, in-air refueling and diplomatic support could be decisive in ending the war.

Estimating War Deaths in Yemen

Published estimates of war deaths in Yemen are based on regular surveys of hospitals there by the World Health Organization, often relayed by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).  The most recent estimate, from December 2017, is that 9,245 people have been killed, including 5,558 civilians.

But UNOCHA’s December 2017 report included a note that,

“Due to the high number of health facilities that are not functioning or partially functioning as a result of the conflict, these numbers are underreported and likely higher.”

Even when hospitals are fully functioning, many people killed in war do not ever make it to a hospital.  Several hospitals in Yemen have been struck by Saudi air strikes, there is a naval blockade that restricts imports of medicine, and supplies of electricity, water, food and fuel have all been affected by the bombing and the blockade.  So the WHO’s summaries of mortality reports from hospitals are likely to be a small fraction of the real numbers of people killed.

ACLED reports a slightly lower figure than the WHO: 7,846 through the end of 2017.  But unlike the WHO, ACLED has up to date data for 2018, and reports another 2,193 deaths since January.  If the WHO continues to report 18% more deaths than ACLED, the WHO’s total up to the present would be 11,833.

Even UNOCHA and the WHO acknowledge substantial underreporting of war deaths in Yemen, and the ratio between the WHO’s passive reports and actual deaths appears to be toward the higher end of the range found in other wars, which has varied between 5:1 and 20:1.  I estimate that about 175,000 people have been killed – 15 times the numbers reported by the WHO and ACLED – with a minimum of 120,000 and a maximum of 240,000.

The True Human Cost of U.S. Wars

Altogether, in the three parts of this report, I have estimated that America’s post-9/11 wars have killed about 6 million people.  Maybe the true number is only 5 million. Or maybe it is 7 million. But I am quite certain that it is several millions.

It is not only hundreds of thousands, as many otherwise well-informed people believe, because compilations of “passive reporting” can never amount to more than a fraction of the actual numbers of people killed in countries living through the kind of violence and chaos that our country’s aggression has unleashed on them since 2001.

The systematic reporting of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has surely captured a larger fraction of actual deaths than the small number of completed investigations deceptively reported as mortality estimates by the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan.  But both of them still only represent a fraction of total deaths.

And the true number of people killed is most definitely not in the tens of thousands, as most of the general public in the U.S. and in the U.K. have been led to believe, according to opinion polls.

We urgently need public health experts to conduct comprehensive mortality studies in all the countries the U.S. has plunged into war since 2001, so that the world can respond appropriately to the true scale of death and destruction these wars have caused.

As Barbara Lee presciently warned her colleagues before she cast her lone dissenting vote in 2001, we have “become the evil we deplore.”  But these wars have not been accompanied by fearsome military parades (not yet) or speeches about conquering the world. Instead they have been politically justified by “information warfare” to demonize enemies and fabricate crises, and then waged in a “disguised, quiet, media free” way, to hide their cost in human blood from the American public and the world.

After 16 years of war, about 6 million violent deaths, 6 countries utterly destroyed and many more destabilized, it is urgent that the American public come to terms with the true human cost of our country’s wars and how we have been manipulated and misled into turning a blind eye to them – before they go on even longer, destroy more countries, further undermine the rule of international law and kill millions more of our fellow human beings.

As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism,

“We can no longer afford to take that which is good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion.  The subterranean stream of Western history has finally come to the surface and usurped the dignity of our tradition. This is the reality in which we live.”

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

Nicolas J.S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapter on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

All images in this article are from the author.

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

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In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we repost this article first published in March 2018.

Read Part I:

How Many Millions of People Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 20, 2023

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The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001 have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies, in part two of his series.

In the first part of this series, I estimated that about 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the illegal invasion of their country by the United States and the United Kingdom in 2003. I turn now to Afghan and Pakistani deaths in the ongoing 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. In part three, I will examine U.S.-caused war deaths in Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.  According to Ret. U.S. General Tommy Franks, who led the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in reaction to 9/11, the U.S. government does not keep track of civilian casualties that it causes. “You know, we don’t do body counts,” Franks once said. Whether that’s true or a count is covered up is difficult to know.

As I explained in part one, the U.S. has attempted to justify its invasions of Afghanistan and several other countries as a legitimate response to the terrorist crimes of 9/11. But the U.S. was not attacked by another country on that day, and no crime, however horrific, can justify 16 years of war – and counting – against a series of countries that did not attack the U.S.

As former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz told NPR a week after the terrorist attacks, they were crimes against humanity, but not “war crimes,” because the U.S. was not at war. “It is never a legitimate response to punish people who are not responsible for the wrong done.” Ferencz explained. “We must make a distinction between punishing the guilty and punishing others. If you simply retaliate en masse by bombing Afghanistan, let us say, or the Taliban, you will kill many people who don’t believe in what has happened, who don’t approve of what has happened.”

As Ferencz predicted, we have killed “many people” who had nothing to do with the crimes of September 11. How many people? That is the subject of this report.

Afghanistan

In 2011, award-winning investigative journalist Gareth Porter was researching night raids by U.S. special operations forces in Afghanistan for his article, “How McChrystal and Petraeus Built an Indiscriminate Killing Machine.”  The expansion of night raids from 2009 to 2011 was a central element in Barack Obama’s escalation of the U.S. War in Afghanistan.  Porter documented a gradual 50-fold ramping up from 20 raids per month in May 2009 to over 1,000 raids per month by April 2011.

But strangely, the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported a decrease in the numbers of civilians killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2010, including a decrease in the numbers of civilians killed in night raids from 135 in 2009 to only 80 in 2010.

UNAMA’s reports of civilian deaths are based on investigations by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), so Noori Shah Noori, an Afghan journalist working with Porter on the article, interviewed Nader Nadery, a Commissioner of the AIHRC, to find out what was going on.

Nadery explained to Noori,

“…that that figure represented only the number of civilian deaths from 13 incidents that had been fully investigated.  It excluded the deaths from 60 other incidents in which complaints had been received, but had not yet been thoroughly investigated.”

“Nadery has since estimated that the total civilian deaths for all 73 night raids about which it had complaints was 420,” Porter continued. “But the AIHRC admits that it does not have access to most of the districts dominated by the Taliban and that people in those districts are not aware of the possibility of complaining to the Commission about night raids.  So, neither the AIHRC nor the United Nations learns about a significant proportion – and very likely the majority – of night raids that end in civilian deaths.”

UNAMA has since updated its count of civilians killed in U.S. night raids in 2010 from 80 to 103, still nowhere close to Nadery’s estimate of 420.  But as Nadery explained, even that estimate must have been a small fraction of the number of civilian deaths in about 5,000 night raids that year, most of which were probably conducted in areas where people have no contact with UNAMA or the AIHRC.

As senior U.S. military officers admitted to Dana Priest and William Arkin of The Washington Post, more than half the raids conducted by U.S. special operations forces target the wrong person or house, so a large increase in civilian deaths was a predictable and expected result of such a massive expansion of these deadly “kill or capture” raids.

The massive escalation of U.S. night raids in 2010 probably made it an exceptional year, so it is unlikely that UNAMA’s reports regularly exclude as many uninvestigated reports of civilian deaths as in 2010.  But on the other hand, UNAMA’s annual reports never mention that their figures for civilian deaths are based only on investigations completed by the AIHRC, so it is unclear how unusual it was to omit 82 percent of reported incidents of civilian deaths in U.S. night raids from that year’s report.

We can only guess how many reported incidents have been omitted from UNAMA’s other annual reports since 2007, and, in any case, that would still tell us nothing about civilians killed in areas that have no contact with UNAMA or the AIHRC.

In fact, for the AIHRC, counting the dead is only a by-product of its main function, which is to investigate reports of human rights violations in Afghanistan.  But Porter and Noori’s research revealed that UNAMA’s reliance on investigations completed by the AIHRC as the basis for definitive statements about the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in its reports has the effect of sweeping an unknown number of incomplete investigations and unreported civilian deaths down a kind of “memory hole,” writing them out of virtually all published accounts of the human cost of the war in Afghanistan.

UNAMA’s annual reports even include colorful pie-charts to bolster the false impression that these are realistic estimates of the number of civilians killed in a given year, and that pro-government forces and foreign occupation forces are only responsible for a small portion of them.

UNAMA’s systematic undercounts and meaningless pie-charts become the basis for headlines and news stories all over the world.  But they are all based on numbers that UNAMA and the AIHRC know very well to be a small fraction of civilian deaths in Afghanistan.  It is only a rare story like Porter’s in 2011 that gives any hint of this shocking reality.

In fact, UNAMA’s reports reflect only how many deaths the AIHRC staff have investigated in a given year, and may bear little or no relation to how many people have actually been killed. Seen in this light, the relatively small fluctuations in UNAMA’s reports of civilian deaths from year to year in Afghanistan seem just as likely to represent fluctuations in resources and staffing at the AIHRC as actual increases or decreases in the numbers of people killed.

If only one thing is clear about UNAMA’s reports of civilian deaths, it is that nobody should ever cite them as estimates of total numbers of civilians killed in Afghanistan – least of all UN and government officials and mainstream journalists who, knowingly or not, mislead millions of people when they repeat them.

Estimating Afghan Deaths Through the Fog of Official Deception

So the most widely cited figures for civilian deaths in Afghanistan are based, not just on “passive reporting,” but on misleading reports that knowingly ignore many or most of the deaths reported by bereaved families and local officials, while many or most civilian deaths are never reported to UNAMA or the AIHCR in the first place. So how can we come up with an intelligent or remotely accurate estimate of how many civilians have really been killed in Afghanistan?

Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the “War On Terror”, published in 2015 by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), a co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, estimated deaths of combatants and civilians in Afghanistan based on UNAMA’s reports and other sources.  Body Count’s figures for numbers of Afghan combatants killed seem more reliable than UNAMA’s undercounts of civilian deaths.

The Afghan government reported that 15,000 of its soldiers and police were killed through 2013.  The authors of Body Count took estimates of Taliban and other anti-government forces killed in 2001, 2007 and 2010 from other sources and extrapolated to years for which no estimates were available, based on other measures of the intensity of the conflict (numbers of air strikes, night raids etc,).  They estimated that 55,000 “insurgents” were killed by the end of 2013.

The years since 2013 have been increasingly violent for the people of Afghanistan.  With reductions in U.S. and NATO occupation forces, Afghan pro-government forces now bear the brunt of combat against their fiercely independent countrymen, and another 25,000 soldiers and police have been killed since 2013, according to my own calculations from news reports and this study by the Watson Institute at Brown University.

If the same number of anti-government fighters have been killed, that would mean that at least 120,000 Afghan combatants have been killed since 2001.  But, since pro-government forces are armed with heavier weapons and are still backed by U.S. air support, anti-government losses are likely to be greater than those of government troops.  So a more realistic estimate would be that between 130,000 and 150,000 Afghan combatants have been killed.

The more difficult task is to estimate how many civilians have been killed in Afghanistan through the fog of UNAMA’s misinformation.  UNAMA’s passive reporting has been deeply flawed, based on completed investigations of as few as 18 percent of reported incidents, as in the case of night raid deaths in 2010, with no reports at all from large parts of the country where the Taliban are most active and most U.S. air strikes and night raids take place. The Taliban appear to have never published any numbers of civilian deaths in areas under its control, but it has challenged UNAMA’s figures.

There has been no attempt to conduct a serious mortality study in Afghanistan like the 2006 Lancet study in Iraq.  The world owes the people of Afghanistan that kind of serious accounting for the human cost of the war it has allowed to engulf them.  But it seems unlikely that that will happen before the world fulfills the more urgent task of ending the now 16-year-old war.

Body Count took estimates by Neta Crawford and the Costs of War project at Boston University for 2001-6, plus the UN’s flawed count since 2007, and multiplied them by a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8, to produce a range of 106,000 to 170,000 civilians killed from 2001 to 2013.  The authors seem to have been unaware of the flaws in UNAMA’s reports revealed to Porter and Noori by Nadery in 2011.

But Body Count did acknowledge the very conservative nature of its estimate, noting that, “compared to Iraq, where urbanization is more pronounced, and monitoring by local and foreign press is more pronounced than in Afghanistan, the registration of civilian deaths has been much more fragmentary.”

In my 2016 article, “Playing Games With War Deaths,” I suggested that the ratio of passive reporting to actual civilian deaths in Afghanistan was therefore more likely to fall between the ratios found in Iraq in 2006 (12:1) and Guatemala at the end of its Civil War in 1996 (20:1).

Mortality in Guatemala and Afghanistan

In fact, the geographical and military situation in Afghanistan is more analogous to Guatemala, with many years of war in remote, mountainous areas against an indigenous civilian population who have taken up arms against a corrupt, foreign-backed central government.

The Guatemalan Civil War lasted from 1960 to 1996.  The deadliest phase of the war was unleashed when the Reagan administration restored U.S. military aid to Guatemala in 1981,after a meeting between former Deputy CIA Director Vernon Walters and President Romeo Lucas García, in Guatemala.

U.S. military adviser Lieutenant Colonel George Maynes and President Lucas’s brother, General Benedicto Lucas, planned a campaign called Operation Ash, in which 15,000 Guatemalan troops swept through the Ixil region massacring indigenous communities and burning hundreds of villages.

CIA documents that Robert Parry unearthed at the Reagan library and in other U.S. archives specifically defined the targets of this campaign to include “the civilian support mechanism” of the guerrillas, in effect the entire rural indigenous population.  A CIA report from February 1982 described how this worked in practice in Ixil:

“The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor [the EGP] and eliminate all sources of resistance,” the report said. “Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed.”

Guatemalan President Rios Montt, who died on Sunday, seized power in a coup in 1983 and continued the campaign in Ixil. He was prosecuted for genocide, but neither Walters, Mayne nor any other American official have been charged for helping to plan and support the mass killings in Guatemala.

At the time, many villages in Ixil were not even marked on official maps and there were no paved roads in this remote region (there are still very few today).  As in Afghanistan, the outside world had no idea of the scale and brutality of the killing and destruction.

One of the demands of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), the Revolutionary Organization of Armed People (ORPA) and other revolutionary groups in the negotiations that led to the 1996 peace agreement in Guatemala was for a genuine accounting of the reality of the war, including how many people were killed and who killed them.

The UN-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission documented 626 massacres, and found that about 200,000 people had been killed in Guatemala’s civil war.  At least 93 percent were killed by U.S.-backed military forces and death squads and only 3 percent by the guerrillas, with 4 percent unknown.  The total number of people killed was 20 times previous estimates based on passive reporting.

Mortality studies in other countries (like Angola, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda) have never found a larger discrepancy between passive reporting and mortality studies than in Guatemala.

Based on the discrepancy between passive reporting in Guatemala and what the U.N. ultimately found there, UNAMA appears to have reported less than 5 percent of actual civilian deaths in Afghanistan, which would be unprecedented.

Costs of War and UNAMA have counted 36,754 civilian deaths up to the end of 2017.  If these (extremely) passive reports represent 5 percent of total civilian deaths, as in Guatemala, the actual death toll would be about 735,000.  If UNAMA has in fact eclipsed Guatemala’s previously unsurpassed record of undercounting civilian deaths and only counted 3 or 4 percent of actual deaths, then the real total could be as high as 1.23 million.  If the ratio were only the same as originally found in Iraq in 2006 (14:1 – before Iraq Body Count revised its figures), it would be only 515,000.

Adding these figures to my estimate of Afghan combatants killed on both sides, we can make a rough estimate that about 875,000 Afghans have been killed since 2001, with a minimum of 640,000 and a maximum of 1.4 million.

Pakistan

The U.S. expanded its war in Afghanistan into Pakistan in 2004.  The CIA began launching drone strikes, and the Pakistani military, under U.S. pressure, launched a military campaign against militants in South Waziristan suspected of links to Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.  Since then, the U.S. has conducted at least 430 drone strikes in Pakistan, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and the Pakistani military has conducted several operations in areas bordering Afghanistan.

Map of Pakistan and Afghanistan (Wikipedia)

The beautiful Swat valley (once called “the Switzerland of the East” by the visiting Queen Elizabeth of the U.K.) and three neighboring districts were taken over by the Pakistani Taliban between 2007 and 2009.  They were retaken by the Pakistani Army in 2009 in a devastating military campaign that left 3.4 million people as refugees.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that 2,515 to 4,026 people have been killed in U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, but that is a small fraction of total war deaths in Pakistan.  Crawford and the Costs of War program at Boston University estimated the number of Pakistanis killed at about 61,300 through August 2016, based mainly on reports by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) in Islamabad and the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) in New Delhi.  That included 8,200 soldiers and police, 31,000 rebel fighters and 22,100 civilians.

Costs of War’s estimate for rebel fighters killed was an average of 29,000 reported by PIPS and 33,000 reported by SATP, which SATP has since updated to 33,950.  SATP has updated its count of civilian deaths to 22,230.

If we accept the higher of these passively reported figures for the numbers of combatants killed on both sides and use historically typical 5:1 to 20:1 ratios to passive reports to generate a minimum and maximum number of civilian deaths, that would mean that between 150,000 and 500,000 Pakistanis have been killed.

A reasonable mid-point estimate would be that about 325,000 people have been killed in Pakistan as a result of the U.S. War in Afghanistan spilling across its borders.

Combining my estimates for Afghanistan and Pakistan, I estimate that about 1.2 million Afghans and Pakistanis have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

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Read Part III:

How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 20, 2023

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

Nicolas J.S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapter on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

Featured image: U.S. Marines patrol street in Shah Karez in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on Feb. 10. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Staff Sgt. Robert Storm)

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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Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, we repost this article first published in March 2018.

The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001 have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies.

How many people have been killed in America’s post-9/11 wars? I have been researching and writing about that question since soon after the U.S. launched these wars, which it has tried to justify as a response to terrorist crimes that killed 2,996 people in the U.S. on September 11th 2001.

But no crime, however horrific, can justify wars on countries and people who were not responsible for the crime committed, as former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz patiently explained to NPR at the time.

“The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the U.S. Invasion” which I co-wrote with Medea Benjamin, estimates the death toll in Iraq as accurately and as honestly as we can in March 2018.  Our estimate is that about 2.4 million people have probably been killed in Iraq as a result of the historic act of aggression committed by the U.S. and U.K. in 2003.  In this report, I will explain in greater detail how we arrived at that estimate and provide some historical context.  In Part 2 of this report, I will make a similar up-to-date estimate of how many people have been killed in America’s other post-9/11 wars.

Mortality Studies vs Passive Reporting

I explored these same questions in Chapter 7 of my book, Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq, and in previous articles, from “Burying the Lancet Report… and the Children” in 2005 to “Playing Games With War Deaths” in 2016.

In each of those accounts, I explained that estimates of war deaths regularly published by UN agencies, monitoring groups and the media are nearly all based on fragmentary “passive reporting,” not on comprehensive mortality studies.

Of the countries where the U.S. and its allies have been waging war since 2001, Iraq is the only country where epidemiologists have conducted mortality studies based on the best practices that they have developed and used in other war zones (like Angola, Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda).  In all these countries, as in Iraq, the results of comprehensive epidemiological studies revealed between 5 and 20 times more deaths than previously published figures based on passive reporting.

Body Count: Casualty Figures After 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror’ , a report published by Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in 2015 found that the 2006 Lancet study was the most comprehensive and reliable mortality study conducted in Iraq, based on its study design, the experience and independence of the research team, the short time elapsed since the deaths it documented and its consistency with other measures of violence in occupied Iraq.  That study estimated that about 601,000 Iraqis were killed in the first 39 months of war and occupation in Iraq, while the war had also caused about 54,000 non-violent deaths.

In the other countries affected by America’s post-9/11 wars, the only reports of how many people have been killed are either compiled by the UN based on investigations of incidents reported to local UN Assistance Missions (as in Iraq and Afghanistan), or by the UN or independent monitoring groups like the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Iraq Body Count (IBC) and Airwars based on passive reports from government agencies, health facilities or local or foreign media.

These passive reports are regularly cited by UN and government agencies, media and even by activists as “estimates” of how many people have been killed, but that is not what they are.  By definition, no compilation of fragmentary reports can possibly be a realistic estimate of all the people killed in a country ravaged by war.

At best, passive reports can reveal a minimum number of war deaths. But that is often such a small fraction of actual deaths that it is highly misleading to cite it as an “estimate” of the total number of people killed. This is why epidemiologists have instead developed scientific sampling methods that they can use to produce accurate estimates of war deaths through statistically valid mortality studies.

The huge disparities epidemiologists have found between the results of mortality studies and passive reporting (between 5:1 and 20:1) have been consistent across many different war zones all over the world. In countries where Western governments are not responsible for the state of war, there has been no political controversy over these results, and they are regularly cited by Western officials and media.

But Western politicians and media have dismissed and marginalized the results of mortality studies in Iraq for political reasons. The U.S. and U.K.’s responsibility for the state of war in Iraq means that the scale of the slaughter is a serious matter of political and criminal responsibility for senior officials who chose to ignore legal advice that the invading Iraq would be “a crime of aggression”.

In 2006, British officials were advised by Sir Roy Anderson, the Chief Scientific Adviser to the U.K.’s Ministry of Defense, that “The (Lancet) study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to ‘best practice’ in this area…”

The BBC obtained copies of emails in which British officials admitted that the study was “likely to be right,” and “the survey methodology used here cannot be rubbished, it is a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones.” But the same officials immediately launched a campaign to discredit the study. President George W. Bush publicly declared, “I don’t consider it a credible report,” and the subservient U.S. corporate media quickly dismissed it.

In “Playing Games With War Deaths” in 2016, I concluded, “As with climate change and other issues, UN officials and journalists must overcome political pressures, come to grips with the basic science involved, and stop sweeping the vast majority of the victims of our wars down this Orwellian “memory hole.”

Some have argued that it is not important to know whether our wars have killed tens of thousands of people or millions, since all deaths in war are a tragic loss of life and we should just mourn them, instead of quibbling over numbers. But as the authors of Body Count noted,

“The numbers relayed by the media should in themselves be terrifying enough… But apparently they are still perceived as tolerable and, moreover, easy to explain given the picture of excessive religiously motivated violence.  The figure of 655,000 deaths in the first three war years alone, however, clearly points to a crime against humanity approaching genocide.”

I agree with the authors of Body Count that it makes a difference whether our wars kill millions of people or only ten thousand, as most people in the U.K. and the U.S. seem to believe according to opinion polls.

Most Americans would say that it matters whether Germany’s role in the Second World War led to millions of violent deaths or only ten thousand. Suggesting the latter is actually a crime in Germany and several other countries.

So American politicians, journalists and members of the public who say it doesn’t matter how many Iraqis have been killed are consciously or unconsciously applying a morally untenable double standard to the consequences of our country’s wars precisely because they are our country’s wars.

A War That Keeps Killing

While the 2006 Lancet study of post-invasion mortality in Iraq is recognized by independent experts like the authors of PSR’s Body Count report as the most accurate and reliable estimate of war deaths in any of our post-9/11 wars, it was conducted nearly 12 years ago, after only 39 months of war and occupation in Iraq. Tragically, that was nowhere near the end of the deadly and catastrophic results of the U.S. and U.K.’’s historic act of aggression.

The 2006 Lancet study documented ever-increasing violence in occupied Iraq between 2003 and 2006, and many other metrics indicate that the escalation of violence in Iraq continued at least until the end of the U.S. “surge” in 2007. The tide of mutilated bodies of death squad victims overwhelming morgues in Baghdad did not peak until late 2006 with 1,800 bodies in July and 1,600 in October. Then there was a five-fold increase in the U.S. aerial bombardment of Iraq in 2007, and January 2008 was the heaviest month of U.S. bombing since the invasion in 2003.

This pattern gives credibility to a survey conducted by a respected British polling firm, Opinion Research Business (ORB), in June 2007, one year after the Lancet study, which estimated that 1,033,000 Iraqis had been killed by that time.

The Lancet study estimated that 328,000, or more than half of the violent deaths it counted, had occurred between May 2005 and May/June 2006.  So, if the ORB’s estimate was accurate, it would mean that about another 430,000 Iraqis were killed in the year after the 2006 Lancet study was conducted.

While the figure of a million people killed was shocking, the continuing increase in deaths revealed by the ORB survey was consistent with other measures of the violence of the occupation, which continued to increase in late 2006 and 2007.

Violence in Iraq decreased in 2008 and for several years after that.  But the Special Police death squads recruited, trained and unleashed in Iraq by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, U.S. occupation forces and the CIA between 2004 and 2006 (rebranded as National Police after the exposure of their Al-Jadiriyah torture center in 2005, then as Federal Police in 2009) continued their reign of terror against Sunni Arabs in the North and West of the country.  This generated a resurgence of armed resistance and led to large swathes of Iraq accepting the rule of Islamic State in 2014 as an alternative to the relentless abuses of the corrupt, sectarian Iraqi government and its murderous death squads.

U.K.-based Iraq Body Count (IBC) has compiled passive reports of civilian deaths in Iraq since the invasion, but it had only counted 43,394 deaths by June 2006 when the Lancet study found an estimated 601,000 violent deaths, a ratio of almost 14:1.  Just Foreign Policy (JFP) in the U.S. created an “Iraqi Death Estimator” that updated the Lancet study’s estimate by tracking deaths passively reported by Iraq Body Count and multiplying them by the ratio between the mortality study and IBC’s passive reporting in 2006.

Since IBC is based mainly on reports in English-language media, it may have undercounted deaths even more after 2007 as the the Western media’s interest in Iraq declined.  On the other hand, as it became safer for government officials and journalists to travel around Iraq, its reporting may have improved.  Or perhaps these and other factors balanced each other out, making JFP’s Iraqi Death Estimator quite accurate. It may have become less accurate over time, and it was discontinued in September 2011. By that point, its estimate of Iraqi deaths stood at 1.46 million.

Another mortality study was published in the PLOS medical journal in 2013, covering the period up to 2011. Its lead author told National Geographic its estimate of about 500,000 dead in Iraq was “likely a low estimate.”  The study had a wider margin of error than the 2006 Lancet study, and the survey teams decided it was too dangerous to work in two of the 100 clusters that that were randomly chosen to survey.

The most serious problem with the PLOS study seems to be that so many houses were destroyed or abandoned and so many families wiped out or just disappeared, that nobody was left to report deaths in those families to the survey teams.  At the extreme, houses or entire blocks where everyone had been killed or had fled were recorded as suffering no deaths at all.

After the extreme violence of 2006 and 2007 and several more years of lower level conflict, the effect of destruction and displacement on the PLOS study must have been much greater than in 2006. One in six households in Iraq was forced to move at least once between 2005 and 2010. The UNHCR registered 3 million refugees within or outside the country, but acknowledged that many more were unregistered. The authors added 55,000 deaths to their total to allow for 15% of 2 million refugee households losing one family member each, but they acknowledged that this was very conservative.

The authors of Body Count calculated that, if only 1% of houses surveyed were empty or destroyed and each of these households had lost two family members, this would have increased the PLOS study’s overall mortality estimate by more than 50%. Ignoring the two clusters that in effect represented the most devastated parts of Iraq must have had a similar effect. The cluster sample survey method relies on the effect of surveying a cross-section of different areas, from the worst affected to many that are relatively unscathed and report few or no deaths. Most violent deaths are often concentrated in a small number of clusters, making clusters like the two that were skipped disproportionately important to the accuracy of the final estimate.

Map of Iraq. Kurdish territory is in the northeast.

Since 2011, a whole new phase of the war has taken place. There was an Arab Spring in Iraq in 2011, but it was ruthlessly suppressed, driving Fallujah and other cities once more into open rebellion. Several major cities fell to Islamic State in 2014, were besieged by Iraqi government forces and then largely destroyed by U.S.-led aerial bombardment and U.S., Iraqi and allied rocket and artillery fire.  Iraq Body Count and the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq have collected passive reports of tens of thousands of civilians killed in this phase of the war.

Former Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari told Patrick Cockburn of the U.K.’s Independent newspaper that Iraqi Kurdish intelligence reports estimated that at least 40,000 civilians were killed in the bombardment of Mosul alone. Zebari said that there were probably many more bodies buried in the rubble, implying that the reports he saw were of actual bodies found and buried up to that point.

A recent project to remove rubble and recover bodies in just one neighborhood of Mosul yielded another 3,353 bodies, of whom 20% appeared to be IS fighters and 80% were civilians. Another 11,000 people are still reported as missing by their families in Mosul.

IBC has now updated its death count for the period up to June 2006 to 52,209, reducing its ratio to violent deaths in the 2006 Lancet study to 11.5:1. If we apply the method of JFP’s Iraqi Death Estimator from July 2007 to the present using that updated ratio, and add it to ORB’s estimate of 1.03 million killed by June 2007, we can arrive at a current estimate of the total number of Iraqis killed since 2003.  This cannot possibly be as accurate as a comprehensive new mortality study.But, in my judgment, this is the most accurate estimate we can make based on what we do know.

That gives us an estimate of 2.38 million Iraqis killed since 2003, as a result of the criminal American and British invasion of Iraq.

Minimum and Maximum Range  

With significant uncertainty underlying this estimate, it is also important to calculate a minimum and a maximum number based on possible variations in the numbers involved.

To arrive at a minimum and maximum number of people that may have been killed in Iraq, we can start with the minimum and maximum numbers of violent deaths that were each established with 97.5% probability by the 2006 Lancet study, which were 426,000 and 794,000. ORB in 2007 gave a narrower range for its minimum and maximum based on its larger sample size, but ORB was not considered as rigorous as the Lancet study in other ways.  If we apply the same margins as in the Lancet study to the ORB study‘s main estimate, that gives us a minimum of 730,000 and a maximum of 1.36 million people killed by June 2007.

To update those minimum and maximum figures to the present time using a variation of Just Foreign Policy’s method, we must also allow for changes in the ratio between IBC’s tally of deaths and the actual number of people killed. The ratios of the Lancet study’s minimum and maximum figures to IBC’s revised count for June 2006 are about 8:1 and 15:1 respectively.

These ratios are well within the ratios between comprehensive mortality studies and passive reporting found in other war zones around the world, which have varied from 5:1 to 20:1, as I noted earlier. But maybe IBC has counted more or less of the actual deaths since 2006 than than it did before. It must surely have tried to keep improving the scope of its data collection. On the other hand, in the most recent phase of the war, many people were killed by U.S.-led bombing and shelling in areas ruled by Islamic State, where people were punished or even executed for trying to communicate with the outside world.  So IBC’s data for this period may be more fragmentary than ever.

To arrive at a realistic minimum and maximum, we must allow for both these possibilities.  IBC’s 8:1 ratio to the Lancet study’s minimum number killed by 2006 may have fallen closer to the historic minimum ratio of 5:1, or its 15:1 ratio to the Lancet study’s maximum number in 2006 may have risen closer to the historic maximum of 20:1. Using a ratio of 6.5:1 to arrive at the minimum number of deaths and 17.5:1 for the maximum allows for a lower minimum and a higher maximum than in 2006, without equaling the most extreme ratios ever seen in other conflicts. That gives us a minimum of 760,000 Iraqis killed since July 2007, and a maximum of 2.04 million.

Adding these figures to the minimums and maximums we calculated for the period up to June 2007 gives us total minimum and maximum figures for the entire period since the U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq in 2003.  We can estimate that the number of Iraqis killed as a consequence of the illegal invasion of their country must be somewhere between 1.5 million and 3.4 million.  As is generally the case with such statistical ranges, the actual number of people killed is likely to be closer to our main estimate of 2.38 million than to either the minimum or maximum end of this range.

Call for a New Mortality Study in Iraq

It is very important that the public health community provide the world with accurate and up-to-date mortality surveys of Iraq and other post-9/11 war zones.

A new mortality study for Iraq must find a way to survey even the most dangerous areas, and it must finally develop realistic procedures to estimate deaths in cases where entire families have been killed, or where houses or apartments have been destroyed or abandoned.  This factor has been identified as a potential flaw in every mortality study in Iraq since 2004, and it is one that only becomes more significant as time passes.  This cannot be ignored, and neither should compensating for it be left to guesswork.

Survey teams could compile records of empty and destroyed homes within the clusters they are surveying, and they could ask neighbors about empty or destroyed houses where large numbers of people or entire families may have been killed. They could also survey refugees and internally displaced people to estimate deaths among these populations.

Epidemiologists have overcome very serious dangers and difficulties to develop techniques to accurately measure the human cost of war. Their work must continue, and it must keep developing and improving. They must overcome powerful political pressures, including from the guilty parties responsible for the carnage in the first place, to politicize and discredit their incredibly difficult but noble and vital work.

On the 15th anniversary of the illegal invasion of Iraq, the Center for Constitutional Rights in the U.S. renewed its call for the U.S. to pay war reparations to the people of Iraq. This is one way countries that are guilty of aggression and other war crimes have traditionally fulfilled their collective responsibility for the death and destruction they have caused.

In Blood On Our Hands, I concluded my account of the U.S. war in Iraq with a similar call for war reparations, and for war crimes prosecutions of the senior U.S. and U.K. civilian and military officials responsible for the “supreme international crime” of aggression and other systematic war crimes in Iraq.

Coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative for the people of Iraq, the United States, the United Kingdom, and for the whole world. The world will never hold major American and British war criminals accountable for their crimes as long as the public does not understand the full scale and horror of what they have done. And the world will not know peace as long as the most powerful aggressors can count on impunity for “the supreme international crime.”

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Read Part II and III:

How Many People Has the U.S. Killed in Its Post-9/11 Wars?

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 20, 2023

How Many Millions Have Been Killed in America’s Post-9/11 Wars?

By Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 20, 2023

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Nicolas J.S. Davies is the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He also wrote the chapter on “Obama at War” in Grading the 44th President: a Report Card on Barack Obama’s First Term as a Progressive Leader.

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“We weren’t there to kill human beings, really. We were there to kill ideology.” (Lt. William Calley)

Officially termed an “incident” (as opposed to a “massacre”), the events of March 16, 1968, at My Lai — a hamlet in South Vietnam — are widely portrayed and accepted to this day as an aberration. While the catalog of U.S. war crimes in Southeast Asia is far too sordid and lengthy to detail here, it’s painfully clear this was not the case.

In fact, on the very same day that Lt. William Calley entered into infamy, another U.S. company entered My Khe, a sister sub hamlet of My Lai. That visit has been described as such:

“In this ‘other massacre,’ members of this separate company piled up a body count of perhaps a hundred peasants — My Khe was smaller than My Lai — ’flattened the village’ by dynamite and fire, and then threw handfuls of straw on corpses. The next morning, this company moved on down the Batangan Peninsula by the South China Sea, burning every hamlet they came to, killing water buffalo, pigs, chickens, and ducks, and destroying crops. As one of the My Khe veterans said later, ‘what we were doing was being done all over.’ Said another: ‘We were out there having a good time. It was sort of like being in a shooting gallery.’”

Colonel Oran Henderson, charged with covering up the My Lai killings, put it succinctly in 1971: “Every unit of brigade size has its My Lai hidden someplace.”

Of the 26 U.S. soldiers brought up on charges related to My Lai, only Calley was convicted. However, his life sentence was later reduced to three and a half years under house arrest.

Never forget, my friends: This is what we’re up against.

But let’s also never forget the actions of a man named Hugh Thompson.

Hugh Clowers Thompson, Jr. wanted to fly choppers so badly that after a four-year stint in the Navy, he left his wife and two sons behind to re-up into the Army and train as a helicopter pilot. Thompson arrived in Vietnam on December 27, 1967, and quickly earned a reputation as “an exceptional pilot who took danger in his stride.”

In their book, Four Hours at My Lai, Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim also describe Hugh Thompson as a “very moral man. He was absolutely strict about opening fire only on clearly defined targets.”

On the morning of March 16, 1968, Thompson’s sense of virtue would be put to the test.

Flying in his H-23 observation chopper, the 25-year-old Thompson used green smoke to mark wounded people on the ground in and around My Lai. Upon returning a short while later after refueling, he found that the wounded he saw earlier were now dead.

Thompson’s gunner, Lawrence Colburn, averted his gaze from the gruesome sight.

After bringing the chopper down to a standstill hover, Thompson and his crew came upon a young woman they had previously marked with smoke. As they watched, a U.S. soldier, wearing captain’s bars, “prodded her with his foot, and then killed her.”

What Thompson didn’t know was that by that point, Lt. Calley’s Charlie Company had already slaughtered more than 560 Vietnamese—primarily women, children, infants, and elderly people. Many of the women had been gang-raped and mutilated.

All Thompson knew for sure was that the U.S. troops he saw pursuing civilians had to be stopped.

Bravely landing his helicopter between the charging GIs and the fleeing villagers, Thompson ordered Colburn to turn his machine gun on the American soldiers if they tried to shoot the unarmed men, women, and children.

Thompson then stepped out of the chopper into the combat zone and coaxed the frightened civilians from the bunker they were hiding in.

With tears streaming down his face, he evacuated them to safety on his H-23.

Never forget, my friends: This is how we can choose to live.

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Former Australian PM Paul Keating has eviscerated Australia’s deal to buy nuclear submarines from the U.K. and U.S., saying there is no Chinese threat to defend against, despite the war hysteria stirring in Australia, writes Joe Lauria.

Paul Keating, a former prime minister of Australia, has boldly contested the establishment consensus that Australia needs to spend A$368 billion to buy nuclear submarines as protection against a China Keating bluntly says is not a threat.

The former Labor premier has defied the conventional wisdom, saying the U.S. opposes China only because Beijing has committed “the high sin in internationalism – it has grown as large as the United States,” a fact the “exceptional state” can’t accept.  By subordinating itself, Australia is forfeiting its sovereignty to rely on Britain, which abandoned its former colony years ago, to build nuclear submarines that serve U.S. — and not Australian — interests.

“China does not present and cannot present as an orthodox threat to the United States. By orthodox, I mean an invasive threat,” Keating said in a speech to the Australian National Press Club on Wednesday. He said:

“The United States is protected by two vast oceans, with friendly neighbours north and south, in Canada and Mexico. And the United States possesses the greatest arsenal in all human history. There is no way the Chinese have ever intended to attack the United States and it is not capable of doing so even had it contemplated it. So, why does the United States and its Congress insist that China is a ‘threat’?

The US Defence department’s own annual report to Congress in late 2022 said ‘the PRC aims to restrict the United States from having a presence on China’s periphery’. In other words, China aims to keep US navy ships off its coast. Shocking.

Imagine how the US would react if China’s blue water navy did its sightseeing off the coast of California. The US would be in a state of apoplexy.”

Keating said China is integrated into the international system as a member of the World Trade Organization, the IMF, the World Bank, the G20 and other organizations and has a “vested interest in globalization.”

“China is a world trading state – it is not about upending the international system,” said Keating. “It is not the old Soviet Union. It is not seeking to propagate some competing international ideology.”

The former prime minister said “a sensible American” like Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski would celebrate the fact “you had turned up a co-stabilising power in Asia. … But no. China is to be circumscribed. It has committed the mortal sin, the high sin in internationalism – it has grown as large as the United States.”

“Nowhere in the American playbook,” Keating said, “is there provision for this affront to be explained or condoned for the exceptional State to be co-partnered, let alone challenged.”  Keating is merely quoting the Pentagon itself, whose strategy is to not countenance any power that challenges U.S. “primacy.”

Thus the U.S. didn’t “see itself as the ’balancing power’” in East Asia, he said, but the “‘primary strategic power’. Its geostrategic priority is to contain China militarily and economically.”

This means that if 1.4 billion Chinese do not keep their place, the U.S., “will shut them in – contain them … with the complicity of a reliable bunch of deputy sheriffs, Japan, Korea, Australia and India,” said Keating.

“We are now part of a containment policy against China,” he said. “The Chinese government doesn’t want to attack anybody. They don’t want to attack us … We supply their iron ore which keeps their industrial base going, and there’s nowhere else but us to get it. Why would they attack? They don’t want to attack the Americans … It’s about one matter only:  the maintenance of U.S. strategic hegemony in East Asia. This is what this is all about.”

China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, warned this week the U.S. is heading for “conflict and confrontation” with Beijing because of America’s “suppression and containment.” China has “worked out what the U.S. game plan is,” Keating said. “So, the ball game has begun.”

Just like in Afghanistan and Iraq, if it all goes wrong, he said, the U.S. “will just pull out and leave the mess behind. They will go back to San Diego, 10,000 km, and leave us with the consequences.”

Watch Keating’s full remarks from Wednesday:

Click image to see video

Labor Party Not Spared

Keating went a step further, taking aim at his own party and its leaders. He said scathingly:

“The Albanese Government’s complicity in joining with Britain and the United States in a tripartite build of a nuclear submarine for Australia under the AUKUS arrangements represents the worst international decision by an Australian Labor government since the former Labor leader, Billy Hughes, sought to introduce conscription to augment Australian forces in World War One.

Every Labor Party branch member will wince when they realise that the party we all fight for is returning to our former colonial master, Britain, to find our security in Asia – two hundred and thirty-six years after Europeans first grabbed the continent from its Indigenous people.”

The Labor Party, he said, bought into a “unity ticket” with the right-wing Liberal Party that supports the U.S. “dominating East Asia – but not as the balancing power to all the other states, including China, but as the primary strategic power.” This happened not because the U.S. is “resident in the metropolitan zone of Asia but on a continent of its own, 10,000 kilometres away – the other side of the world.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “thought a gigantic shift of this kind deserved less than twenty-four hours’ analysis – notwithstanding the huge implications for sovereignty, for the budget, for manufacturing and relations with the region – and of course, with China,” said Keating. He added:

“The Prime Minister is proud to buy submarines that will forever remain within the operational remit of the United States or now, of Britain – with technology owned and dependent on US management – in fact, buying a fleet of nuclear submarines which will forever be an adjunct to the Navy of the United States – whether commanded by an Australian national or not.”

Just dropping the word “sovereignty” into every sentence that Albanese utters “like a magic talisman does not make it real,” Keating said. There’s been no White Paper, no major ministerial or prime ministerial statement to “explain to the Australian people what exactly is the threat we are supposedly facing and why nuclear submarines costing more than any national project since Federation were the best way to respond to such a threat.”

Keating said: “Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country – the United States, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance, lunging along behind is not a pretty sight.”  He called Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Defence Minister Richard Marles “unwise ministers” for going along with the bi-partisan submarine scheme.

Australia was playing the sucker regarding that agreement, said Keating.  Monday’s meeting of the U.S., British and Australian leaders announcing the submarine deal was a “kabuki show in San Diego,” he said. “There were three people there but only one payer: The Australian prime minister.”

Joe Biden and Richi Sunak “could barely conceal their joy with A$368 billion heading their way to their defence companies – in the U.K., BAE Systems, in the U.S. its east coast submarine shipyards. No wonder they were smiling, and the band was playing.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at a press event for AUKUS in San Diego, March 13, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

The nuclear subs are designed to attack in China’s waters which are defended with the most sensors, Keating said. “No Australian nuclear submarine could have more than a token military impact against China, using as is planned, conventional weaponry,” he said. “In short, a plan to spend around $368 billion, for nuclear submarines to conduct operations against China in the most risky of conditions, is of little military benefit to anybody, even to the Americans.”

There’s nothing remarkable about Keating’s comments as he’s speaking the plain truth. But in the current political climate, it has unsurprisingly been condemned as heresy.

Keating is speaking in a political culture in which people in public life aren’t required to find out what they really think about an issue and then express it, but only what is expedient to say to advance their interests and careers.  This defines what motivates the politicians and journalists who are condemning Keating.

Attacks a Servile Media

In his hour-long interview Wednesday with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s presenter Laura Tingle, Keating personally attacked mainstream journalists at the press club who have been dangerously ratcheting up tensions with China.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age this month ran a three-part series headlined: “Red Alert: Australia ‘must prepare’ for threat of China war.” Keating had called it “the most egregious and provocative news presentation of any newspaper I have witnessed in over 50 years of active public life.” It was based on the views of five hand-picked China hawks who are promoting a coming war with Beijing.

One of the journalists of the Herald and Age newspaper series, Matthew Knott,  tried to ask a question from the press club to Keating who was in a studio in Sydney. “You have a tremendous skill for invective and criticism; could I ask you now to turn some of that to the Chinese Communist Party and its treatment of Uyghurs … and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. …  Will you be similarly critical of them as you are of your own party and journalists?”

“After what you co-wrote with [Peter] Hartcher last week in that shocking presentation in the Herald… you should hang your head in shame,” Keating responded. “I’m surprised you even have the gall to stand up in public and ask such a question, frankly. You ought to do the right thing and drum yourself out of Australian journalism.”  He added: “The Sydney Morning Herald is a newspaper without integrity. If I were you mate, I’d hide my face and never appear again.”

Regarding the Uyghurs, Keating asked rhetorically what Australia would say if China asked about deaths in custody of aboriginals in Australia’s prison system. “Wouldn’t that be a valid point for them?” he asked. “Great power diplomacy cannot be about reaching into the low social entrails of these states any more than they can with us.”

He then laid into Andrew Probyn of the ABC, telling him: “You can’t impute threat, meaning invasion, with putting a tariff on wine, or maybe you are silly enough to think that? …  China does not threaten Australia, has not threatened Australia, does not intend to threaten Australia. You can have all the commercial rows you’d like.”

He said Probyn’s question lacked context. China imposed tariffs after Marise Payne, the former foreign minister, whom he called “the great non-minister of our time,” said she wanted weapons-type inspections in the Wuhan lab regarding the origin of the Covid virus. “So you can’t put a question without context,” he said. “I mean contexualization may not be your long suit.”

Keating rebuffed a question from Probyn about China conducting cyber attacks. “What, you think the Americans and the Russians aren’t into cyber attacks? Who in the world is not into cyber attacks? Or do you think we are not?” He accused the “dopes” in Australian intelligence of tapping the phones of Australian allies in Indonesia. “This is what states get up to if you let the security agencies, these ning nongs, get control,” he said.

Olivia Caisley of Sky News introduced the idea that Keating was “out of touch” because “unlike present players” he had not had a military briefing on China since the mid 1990s and didn’t see China’s intimidation even when he was in office. “Why are you so sure China is not a military threat to Australia?” she asked.

“Because I’ve got a brain, principally,” Keating responded.

“And I can think. And I can read. I mean why would China want to threaten Australia? What would be the point? They get the iron ore, the coal, the wheat … why would China want to occupy Sydney and Melbourne? And could they ever do it? So you don’t need a briefing from the dopey security agencies in Canberra to tell you that. I know you are trying to ask a question, but the question is so dumb it’s hardly worth an answer. You know Sky News, you’ve got to dust up your reputation and you’re probably doing your best to do that.”

Ben Westcott of Bloomberg asked, “Shouldn’t Australia work with a partner like the U.S. to protect trade in the region?”  Keating told him the U.S. Congress has refused to ratify the U.N.’s Law of the Sea, “so that puts a pretty big hole in that question.” China can’t find an alternative supply of iron ore than Australia, he said.

“You think they don’t want that?  Do you think we need the American military at the Pentagon to make sure our iron ore boats go to China? It’s a wonder they don’t have a welcome for us every day when these damned things turn up. … Why would China want to interrupt their capacity to deal with us? Why would we need some donkey in Washington to help us?”

Jess Malcom of The Australian asked: “Who is being more provocative, Australia or China?”  Keating said: “What the Chinese do in building a fleet is not provocation. Why do you use the word ‘provocation’? That’s the wrong word to be using. They’re a major state, they have an economy bigger than the United States. … So why would you think it is a provocation for a great state like China to build a navy? The question is invalid.”

The Counterattack

U.S. Secretary of State Blinken meets with Albanese and Wong in Melbourne Australia, on Feb. 11, 2022. (State Department/Ron Przysucha/ Public Domain)

In the face of his stinging critique of Australian leaders and journalists for putting the nation at risk with its ill-conceived submarine subservience to the U.S. and Britain, Keating sustained withering counterattacks.  Rather than listen to him as an elder statesman, the way most societies throughout history have listened to their elders, he was condemned as yesterday’s man who had lost touch with the world today.

Wong, the foreign minister, said: “Keating has his views, but in substance and in tone they belong to another time. We don’t face the region of 30 years ago. We don’t face a region that we hope we had. We face the region of today and we have to work to ensure the region we want for the future.”

In an editorial, the Herald likewise said, “The world has changed since Keating was PM. Unfortunately, he hasn’t.” Knox, the Herald journalist who received Keating’s withering criticism at the press club, wrote in an opinion piece that “Ex-PMs’ perks should come with a compulsory vow of silence.”

“I think it is unfortunate that Mr Keating chose such a very strong personal statement against people,” Albanese told an Australian radio interviewer. “I don’t think that does anything other than diminish him, frankly. But that’s a decision that he’s made.” Albanese dismissed as “absurd” Keatings charge that Australia’s sovereignty is at stake.

Another former prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, thinks the submarine deal undermines Australia’s sovereignty too. “While this will, in time, enhance our naval capabilities it will be seen as making us even more dependent on the United States and now the United Kingdom,” he said. “Australian sovereignty will be perceived to have been diminished.”

Keating’s frontal attack against the government’s China policy is splitting the ruling Labor Party. The party’s branch in Albanese’s Sydney district has passed a motion telling the government to get out of the coalition with Britain and the U.S. “AUKUS undermines Australian sovereignty and our relations with our Asia-Pacific neighbours. Australia should also abandon plans for a nuclear submarine fleet,” said the motion.

Two Australian trades unions, the Maritime Union of Australia and the Electrical Trades Union, have come out against the submarine agreement as well.

The fate of the deal may hinge on how the Australian public reacts to the inevitable austerity that will be imposed on it to pay for the submarines.

US & UK Media Reaction

Meanwhile, the establishment media in the U.S. and Britain has almost completely ignored Keatings’ remarks. The Washington Post ran an AP story, The Hill  ran a short piece quoting the AP, The New York Times did not publish a word.  In Britain, the BBC and Financial Times ignored Keating. Both The Daily Telegraph and The Times, unsurprisingly, focused only on his criticism of Britain. The Times wrote:

“’Signing the country up to the foreign proclivities of another country — the United States, with the gormless Brits, in their desperate search for relevance, lunging along behind is not a pretty sight,’ Paul Keating, the combative former Labor prime minister told the National Press Club. …

Keating described Australia’s new reliance on Britain and Sunak for its defence as ‘deeply pathetic’. The UK, he said, is ‘looking around for suckers’ to create ‘global Britain . . . after that fool [Boris] Johnson destroyed their place in Europe’.

‘We’re returning [to] Rishi Sunak, for God’s sake — Rishi Sunak — for Australia to find our security in Asia. I mean, how deeply pathetic is that,’ Keating, 79, added. … He ridiculed President Biden for ‘hardly [being able to] keep three coherent sentences together’.

He added: ‘Let’s remember about the British. They pulled their grand fleet out of East Asia in 1904. They witnessed the capitulation of Singapore in 1942. They then announced their east of Suez policy in 1968 — in other words, ‘You’re all on your own, you Australians, we’re leaving. We’ll leave you with Singapore, New Zealand and Malaysia’.

‘And in 1973, just to make sure we got the message, they say, ‘Bugger you, we are going into Europe? So no wheat, no wool,’ he added, with reference to exports from Australia.”

King of Barbs

Keating has been known for his sharp wit and barbs against his political opponents since he was prime minister between 1991 and 1995.  While he loosened government regulation on parts of the economy during his premiership, Keating was progressive on other matters, including enacting a landmark Native Title Act to enshrine Indigenous land rights.  He also promoted republicanism by setting up the Republic Advisory Committee.

Oh how I miss Paul Keating. When he was PM, I was highly critical – with good reason. Alas, 8 PMs later, he shines like a bright star in the gutter. https://t.co/EphhIB7PFR

— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) March 15, 2023

After more than two decades in the political wilderness, Keating reemerged a year and a half ago to upset the Australian establishment with blunt talk about what’s wrong with Canberra’s relations with China and with the United States.

Keating made his first public appearance in 26 years at the Australian National Press Club on Nov. 9, 2021 and proceeded to challenge conventional wisdom by portraying the United States as an aggressor; saying Taiwan is not “vital” to Australia; and that the media was essentially following the line of the intelligence services.

With tensions already rising between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, Keating boldly said, “Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. We have no alliance with Taipei. There is no piece of paper sitting in Canberra which has an alliance with Taipei. We do not recognize it as a sovereign state – we’ve always seen it as a part of China.” The U.S. has also viewed Taiwan as part of China since 1979.

In 1951, Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. signed the ANZUS Pacific Security Treaty, a mutual defense pact. Keating’s words about Australia’s obligations in the pact seemed lost on the mainstream media at the press club.

“ANZUS commits to consult under an attack on U.S. forces but not an attack by U.S. forces,” he said. “This is a very important point. My view is Australia should not be drawn into a military engagement over Taiwan, U.S.-sponsored or otherwise.”

The concept of the U.S. as an aggressor in a conflict with China is firmly outside the accepted parameters of Western establishment thinking.  It comes as a shock to a “public debate [that] is informed by the spooks,” Keating said. “Our foreign policy debate now in Canberra is informed by the security agencies, so you are not getting a macro view of China as it really is.”

China wants its “front doorstep and its front porch, that is Taiwan, its sea. It doesn’t want American naval forces influencing that,” Keating said. “It wants access out of its coast into the deeper waters of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. That’s what it’s about fundamentally.”

In any case, Keating did not see a military crisis over Taiwan. “The only time the Chinese will attack or be involved in Taiwan is if the Americans and the Taiwanese try and declare a change in the status of Taiwan,” he said.

Nov. 2021 Press Club appearance:

Australia was in his day as prime minister a “go-to” nation in regional diplomacy, he said. But it had “lost its way” seeking to establish its security “from Asia” rather than “in Asia.” In other words, rather than being an independent player in the region, Australia clings to the U.S.

Australia’s most important geo-strategic partner, he said, is Indonesia and its wide archipelago that arches across its northern approaches. Yet subsequent Australian governments abandoned the relationship with Indonesia to run after Washington, he said.

Britain was of even less use to Australia, Keating added.

Some members of the public applauded Keating’s remarks. One commenter on the Sky NewsYouTube channel, which posted the event, said:

“I feel sorry for Mr. Keating for wasting his time and wisdom to this brainwashed bunch. He was trying to educate the people of his country, but the US propaganda machine is too big and powerful, and has gained a powerful grip there, esp. the press, to the point that it is looking at things through US perspective instead of Australia’s … “

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***

It may have been “a Freudian slip of the tongue,” as Russia’s ambassador to Canada called it, but at a press conference on March 10, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mélanie Joly, raised the possibility of regime change in Russia.

Addressing the importance of diplomatic pressure on Russia, Joly said that

“We’re able to see how much we’re isolating the Russian regime right now – because we need to do so economically, politically and diplomatically – and what are the impacts also on society and how much we’re seeing potential regime change in Russia.”

According to reporting by The Canadian Press, Joly “said regime change is indeed the point of sanctions and pursuing accountability for alleged war crimes.” “The goal is definitely to do that,” she said, “to weaken Russia’s ability to launch very difficult attacks against Ukraine. We want also to make sure that Putin and his enablers are held to account.” She added that she “always make a difference between the regime and the people of a given country.”

If it was a Freudian slip, an earlier statement by a Canadian official wasn’t. On April 13, 2022, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, in a prepared speech to Parliament, seemed to call for regime change when she declared that

“Putin’s assault has been so vicious that we all now understand that the world’s democracies – including our own – can be safe only once the Russian tyrant and his armies are entirely vanquished.”

Joly, herself, has made similar remarks before. In the early days of the war, discussing sanctions, Joly said that

“Our goal is to suffocate the Russian regime.”

In the first several months of the war, there were several calls for regime change. The most famous was President Biden’s cry that “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Boris Johnson’s office said the point of sanctions was “to bring down the Putin regime” before retracting the statement. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said “From our standpoint, up until the point the current regime is not in power, the countries surrounding it will be, to some extent, in danger. Not just Putin but the whole regime because, you know, one might change Putin and might change his inner circle but another Putin might rise into his place.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also hinted at regime change, hoping that, before the eventual peace process and the eventual talks, “we would be discussing the issues of who Ukraine will negotiate, with what president of the Russia Federation,” adding that, “I hope that will be a different president in the Russian Federation.”

Joly’s remarks stand out because there has been less of a call for regime change since the early days of the war. In February, French President Emmanuel Macron said “I do not think like some people that Russia should be totally undone [and] attacked on its own soil” and “came down against calls for the West to try to provoke a change of regime in Russia.” The White House walked back Biden’s call for a coup, and in March 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said regime change “is not the objective of NATO.”

Despite what may have been early Western hopes, there has been no sign of regime change in Russia. Daniel Davis has recently said that “[t]here is presently no evidence that the Russian population is close to reaching the point it would turn on the Kremlin, and thus if more troops are needed, Putin appears able to procure them.”

On January 20, POLITICO reported that, though one of the goals of sanctions was the “hope that the resulting economic hardship might persuade ordinary Russians to rebel, or prompt a putsch by Kremlin insiders or oligarchs,” “there are few signs of any significant cracks appearing in what a Russian pollster dubbed a “broad consensus” backing Putin’s war.” It adds that “public support for the war appears to remain high.” On February 23, Bloomberg reported that independent polls show that “the majority of Russians say they are ready to keep fighting.”

A September 2022 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says that public opinion polls in Russia have consistently shown “overwhelming support” of 70% or higher for the war and an increase in Putin’s popularity. When the war began, government approval ratings went up from 71% to 83%.

By January 2023, Putin’s approval rating had hit 82%; in February over 80% of Russians said they approved of the activities of Putin.

Western hopes of a domestic regime change in Russia have not come true. But, even if they had, it is possible that the hope was misplaced. A change in regime may not mean a change in Russia’s policy toward NATO or Ukraine.

In her careful analysis of US-backed coups, Covert Regime Change, Lindsey O’Rourke says that one of the two necessary criteria for Washington to support regime change is the ability “to identify a plausible domestic political alternative to the target regime.” If you are going to remove a leader because of unsolvable policy differences, there must be the promise of a new leader that “share[s your] policy preferences.”

There are more hardline candidates that could replace Putin. In February, Macron pointed out that “all the other options to Vladimir Putin in the heart of the current system seem worse.” Putin has often held back the hardlinerswho could fill his void following a coup.

And hardliner or not, no Russian government is likely to alter the key policies a coup would be intended to alter. It is not just Putin, but every Russian President since the Cold War, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin, who has opposed NATO’s eastward expansion to its borders. And no Russian government, headed by Putin or not, would agree to return Crimea to Ukraine.

Despite the wishes of Joly and the West, they have not catalyzed regime change in Russia. And, even if they had, it is not clear that the consequence would be better, nor that it could not be worse.

*

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Ted Snider is a regular columnist on US foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

 

 

Since the international insanity began three years ago in the Spring of 2020, several compelling theories have emerged regarding those who have used this time to suppress freedoms and control the population.

For example, Debbie Lerman has effectively argued that lockdowns in the US were not about health, but about counter-terrorism. The state response is to control the population, and not let go of those controls once they are in place.

Aaron Kheriaty has effectively argued that we have entered a new realm of the Security State, all our actions monitored, tracked, and controlled.

Most disturbing of all, Jeffrey Tucker has effectively argued that scientific consensus has overwritten individual choice, giving us a vaccine which we all would be required to take, and which naturally leads to eugenics.

In reading these kinds of well-positioned articles, and the reactions to them on social media, it’s easy to get the impression that we have entered a truly Brave New World, one which did not formerly exist, and is an entirely new phenomenon.

The simple fact is that they are not new ideas. Man desires power over man. But even the parts of the recent attacks on humanity that may seem new are not entirely new. As outlined in the articles above, one such idea is that the government and companies have been performing psyops against us, to control our emotions and dictate our actions.

But how do you convince the population that this mode of existence is desirable? You have to change the way they think. Is that new?

In his brilliant documentary, The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis describes how companies and governments used the psychological ideas of Sigmund Freud to manipulate people’s emotions for their own purposes and ends throughout the 1900s.

Edward Bernays, the nephew of Freud, was chiefly responsible for bringing these ideas of mass manipulation to large corporations and the US government. In one example explored in Curtis’ documentary, the taboo against women smoking in public was preventing the large tobacco companies from selling to half of their potential market.

Bernays hired a group of debutantes to appear in the Easter Sunday parade of 1929 in New York, under the guise that they represented the women’s suffrage movement. During the parade all the women smoked cigarettes, referencing the phrase “Torches of Freedom.” Cigarette sales to women began to take off.

What’s key here is that Bernays did not just get the women in the parade, he also alerted the press that it was happening. The press happily took photos and repeated “Torches of Freedom” in articles written for papers around the country. So the press unwittingly (or complicitly) aided Bernays in his campaign to encourage more women to smoke. Sound familiar?

Even as doctors became increasingly aware that cigarettes not only did not promote freedom, but could easily kill you, the song and dance continued. Cigarette campaigns used the medical establishment to give consumers the idea that cigarettes are safe. Again, sound familiar?

Bernays’ work with the US government included what now would be called a color revolution in Guatemala. Guatemala had a dictator who worked well with the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita), procuring bananas for sale in the US. The problem was that the workers were essentially slaves, and they revolted, electing a new leader, Dr. Juan Jose Arévalo, who installed a constitution modeling the US.

He was followed by Jacobo Arbenz, who took the lands away from the banana company. They didn’t like that and went crying to Uncle Sam. Bernays came to the rescue, and staged anti-American pro-Communist rallies, including of course, a healthy dose of violence. No matter that Arbenz did not call himself a Communist or had any ties to Moscow. It didn’t take long for the American people to be frightened of a new Communist threat to the south, and get behind the idea that this new leader was a threat and must go.

Bernays even came up with a new phrase for how he had manipulated the minds of Americans; he called it the Engineering of Consent. And this wasn’t the first time Bernays added a phrase to the lexicon. When he started with big business in the 1920s he thought the word propaganda was so negative, so he came up with a new one: public relations.

Bernays also worked for American politicians, such as Calvin Coolidge, to get them elected. And his work influenced the Nazis. From his 1965 autobiography:

They were using my books as the basis for a destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany. This shocked me, but I knew any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones.

But how did Bernays feel about the people that he so willingly and profitably manipulated? In The Century of the Self, his daughter is interviewed.

She called his techniques “enlightened despotism.” She continues, “People who worked for him were stupid. And children were stupid. If people did things in a way that he wouldn’t have done them, they were stupid. It was a word he used over and over and over. Dope and stupid.”

Antisocial purposes, indeed.

There are many many examples of using these psyop tactics since Edward Bernays. Here’s another one. Remember 9/11 and the Iraq war? There were no WMDs, and we got a brand new government department to go after terrorists: Homeland Security. I admit, I believed it and was completely on board.

Since then, DHS has turned its spying eye on US citizens. Great trick getting a whole new department to go after people whose opinions you don’t like.

But I feel so much safer now that I have to get to the airport 2 hours early and remove my shoes.

What was it that Eddie would say about me? Oh yeah, I’m stupid.

Bernays perceived himself not only as the controller of opinions of the unwashed masses, but as a beneficial force in society, encouraging people to explore their desires and simultaneously bolster the economy and promote the American way.

What he really did was undermine the basic fabric of society and wreck the implicit trust between purveyor and consumer.

What is that economic bond of trust? I am providing something that you need. You are willing to compensate me for my effort.

Psychological manipulation does not enter the equation. In so doing, he removed dignity from human interaction, reducing people to their animal instincts.

This was exactly what Freud warned against in his research of the mind. These forces exist for all of us, and they must be understood so they never get out of hand. Unfortunately his nephew saw this new understanding as a means of personal profit and societal control.

What has happened in the last few years is straight out of the Bernays playbook, but is far more sinister.

The scope is larger: this time the psychological mess included the entire world.

The attempt to control our physical beings has been far worse: global organizations want to tell us what we have to put in our bodies to even participate in society.

The fear generated has been more localized: be afraid of your neighbors, they might get you sick. Rat out the dissenters.

Let’s make a list of what such actors have perpetrated in the last few years:

• Separating society into essential and non-essential.
• Ostracizing and labeling those who dissented from the dominant narrative.
• Utilizing fear to establish a constant surveillance paradigm, where all movements and actions are traced.
• Identifying non-vaxxers as “the others” in order to establish a new platform of biological control .
• Censoring free speech by pressuring the media to shut down clear and honest voices.
• Undermining communities that bind people to each other: closing churches, prohibiting social gatherings, shuttering businesses.

Who are the actors? It’s not entirely clear, but some elements of conspiracy are undeniable.

Take this seriously.

As the terrifying totalitarian regimes used it against their people to foment murderous rage, the same could be in store for us. It’s going to take people who understand they are being manipulated, who understand they are being used, who understand they want their independence and freedom, to engender a peaceful and meaningful life for all.

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Alan Lash is a software developer from Northern California, with a Masters degree Physics and a PhD in Mathematics.

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***

As the war in Ukraine stalls, or moves towards the possibility of a Chinese-brokered peace agreement that would conclusively prove the waning influence of US hegemony, the empire and its provinces seek to renew tensions with an old enemy.

The allegation that China attempted to interfere in Canada’s 2019 and 2021 federal elections is just the latest example of Sinophobic hysteria conjured up by the agencies whose actions remind us that the term ‘military intelligence’ is an oxymoron.

It was just a few weeks ago that the useful idiots of the American military industrial complex were demanding Canada boost defence spending in response to the apparent threat of Chinese spy balloons (Conservative MP Michael Chong thinks the balloon barrage warrants participation in an American-led ballistic missile defense program of dubious utility). The American military had not even proven the first balloon was in fact being used for espionage purposes when it dispatched fighter jets to shoot down several more objects (each with missiles costing $400,000 a piece), all of which are now believed to be weather balloons launched by hobbyists. Information about the first balloon, which was apparently retrieved by the US Navy, remains confidential. American and Canadian efforts to recover the other objects were suspended.

Meanwhile, we are told the COVID-19 pandemic originated in a leak from a Chinese laboratory. This conclusion was made with ‘low confidence’ and comes from new information which remains hidden from the public. The theory that was once popularized by Trump supporters and other conspiracy theorists is now being reported as plausible if not likely by those who had once rejected it. The idea that the virus leaked from a Chinese government lab is no more credible today than it was when far-right politicians and pundits were weaponizing uncertainty for personal gain at the start of the pandemic. But it certainly sounds sinister. Evoking the spectre of a ‘Chinese government lab’ conjures images, either of secret military bioweapons, or lax safety standards and subpar security. The truth of the matter is neither of these things: the Wuhan Institute of Virology is one of the safest laboratories in China, well-known among the global community of epidemiologists and virologists for its work studying coronaviruses, not to mention its collaborations with similar labs in Canada, the United States, and France. There is in fact no new evidence pointing towards the lab leak hypothesis. The likeliest answer is still that the virus made its way to humans through an intermediate host.

Continuing this trend of creeping Sinophobia, we are now expected to believe that China attempted to interfere in the last two federal elections, a claim whose evidence has been withheld from the public but apparently shared widely with the intelligence services of several other nations. The theory—and it is only a theory until much better evidence is made available to the public—suggests that China interfered in our election only enough to ensure Justin Trudeau would be re-elected prime minister, but without a majority government. Thus, the theory suggests, a nominally pro-Beijing leader (and, by extension, party) has been installed with the assistance of the People’s Republic, though without the power of the full confidence of the house or a full term in office.

Here’s where the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) bizarre conspiracy theory begins to fall apart: either we’re expected to believe Trudeau and his Liberal government is a benefit to China or it isn’t. The idea that China favoured the Liberals, but only enough to bring about an unstable minority government that would “keep Mr. Trudeau’s power in check” seems to be both inconsistent, if not inherently contradictory. It is a case of trying to make the actual (and unanticipated) outcomes of the federal elections fit a pre-conceived notion of Chinese interference.

In other words, it looks like CSIS is trying to make facts fit its predetermined conclusion, rather than drawing conclusions from the verifiable fact that two unpopular Conservative Party leaders failed to galvanize sufficient public support to win two separate federal elections, and that Trudeau’s uninspired record as prime minister was equally incapable of delivering him majority governments. It is remarkable to note that Canada has started its ‘election interference’ frenzy just as the Americans are beginning to come around to the reality that ‘Russiagate’ was always mostly nonsense. The Democrats lost the 2016 US election because they ran an unpopular candidate who campaigned poorly. Donald Trump didn’t need any assistance from Russia.

Reporting by the Globe and Mail’s Robert Fife and Steven Chase indicates CSIS believes there was a broad Chinese government-led operation designed to ensure a Trudeau minority government, and to further ensure certain Conservative candidates were defeated. This isn’t a new story, either. In November of 2022 Global News reporter Sam Cooper published an article in which unnamed CSIS agents alleged that as many as 11 federal candidates may have received funding or additional support from the Chinese government prior to the 2019 federal election and that federal candidates may be affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party. They also claimed that the Chinese government had placed agents in the offices of MPs in order to influence policy, “co-opt and corrupt former Canadian officials to gain leverage in Ottawa” and “punish Canadian politicians whom the People’s Republic of China views as threats to its interests.” According to the report, CSIS made Trudeau aware of this as early as January of 2022, but the prime minister took no action. In the same report, Global indicates that while CSIS knows who these people are, the briefings delivered to the prime minister did not include their names. Global’s sources also weren’t able to confirm who had received these briefings, or the specific timing of when that information was shared.

Global’s sources indicate that, whatever intelligence CSIS has, it had not at that point drawn any conclusions about whether the alleged conspiracy had any impact on the 2019 federal election.

A look at the results of that vote seems to confirm this. If there was in fact a concerted effort by the Chinese government to influence the election in favour of the Liberals, it was a spectacular failure. Of the 20 seats lost by the Liberals, most were lost to Conservative candidates in parts of the country where the Chinese-Canadian population is not especially high, such as rural ridings in the Maritimes and southern Québec, or urban ridings in the major cities of the Prairies. According to the Globe and Mail report, CSIS agents allege that the operation focused on 11 mostly Liberal candidates in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The difference between the 2015 results and the 2019 results in the GTA were negligible for either party. But assuming this subterfuge actually helped turn the majority of the seats in favour of the Liberals, this wouldn’t have changed the ultimate result of the election.

The allegation is that, while China preferred Trudeau to lead, they didn’t want him to have the power of a majority government. According to CSIS, an unnamed Chinese consular official and an unspecified Chinese diplomatic mission in Canada said that Beijing “likes it when the parties in Parliament are fighting with each other, whereas if there is a majority, the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour the PRC.”

This also appears to be a contradictory position. Trudeau is alleged to be both a friend to Beijing as well as someone who can’t be trusted with a majority government, as this could result in anti-Beijing policies. As to the bickering between parties, one might argue that this would be the status quo for any Canadian parliament (parties of differing political orientations in a first-past-the-post electoral system tend to aggressively compete with one another rather than form coalitions). But even here, if the aim of the subterfuge was to keep Trudeau in check and Canadian political parties bickering with one another, despite the incredible sophistication of this operation, how is it that the Chinese didn’t realize the possibility of some kind of Liberal-NDP agreement, such as that which keeps the Liberals in a de facto majority position to this day?

Moreover, how could anyone reasonably consider Justin Trudeau to be any friendlier to Beijing than whoever happens to be at the helm of the Conservative Party?

Remember, Canada’s relationship with China has depreciated during Trudeau’s time in office, not least because of the Meng Wenzhou affair, in which his government amply demonstrated it was all too willing to arrest a Chinese national at the behest of the Trump administration. Under Trudeau, Canada’s foreign policy has been materially the same as US policy towards China, and is generally no less Sinophobic.

The idea that China may be meddling in our democratic processes is not new. Back in the mid-1990s, RCMP and CSIS agents produced a joint report called Project Sidewinder that made many of the same allegations currently being peddled by anonymous CSIS agents. The report’s conclusions were dismissed by CSIS managers in 1997 as a “rumour-laced conspiracy theory with little factual evidence.” The idea that we’re threatened by a rising Asian power, and being undermined by Asian people, isn’t new either—these have been hallmarks of official and casual Canadian anti-Asian racism dating back to the 19th century. Most Canadians don’t realize, as an example, that people of Japanese descent were prohibited from voting, and required to carry identification cars, both before the Second World War, as well as after.

In an essay published in the New York Review of Books, Umberto Eco outlined the 14 typical elements of fascist societies, one of which seems amply demonstrated by our present ‘China syndrome.’ Eco wrote that fascist societies portray their enemies as being simultaneously both strong and weak, and this is how China is depicted in the examples offered above. China is held up as having a sophisticated global surveillance network, but one that weakly relies on ‘spy balloons.’ It has a secret, state-of-the-art bioweapons program, but it is run by incompetents who accidentally released one of their less lethal pathogens sparking a global pandemic. Chinese agents have infiltrated our electoral processes and the inner sanctum of a major political party, yet they can’t influence favourable foreign policy or anticipate likely election outcomes. Eco further stipulates that an obsession with foreign plots to undermine the nation’s institutions (as well as a healthy dose of generalized xenophobia) is a hallmark of a society degrading into fascism.

Justin Trudeau has now announced two probes into allegations of Chinese election interference, proving that all that separates a likely lie from a plausible truth is how often the lie is repeated. The federal government will now waste precious resources investigating a mirage, a projection of our insecurities in a rapidly changing world, while bellicose forces within our society and politics use this as an opportunity to further their agendas.

Now is a good time to remember that CSIS (of forgotten briefcases in stadium parking lots fame) didn’t think the far-right occupation of Ottawa was a national security threat.

And that Eco’s warnings weren’t about a possible future, but of how things have been for a very long time.

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Taylor C. Noakes is an independent journalist and public historian from Montréal. In addition to writing regularly for Canadian Dimension, he contributes to the Toronto Star, Jacobin, Cult MTL, The Maple, DeSmog, and the Montréal Review of Books, among others. He holds an MA in Public History from Duquesne University and has worked on the restoration of playwright August Wilson’s childhood home. He is also a frequent contributor to the Canadian Encyclopedia, and once debated several Canadian prime ministers at once on matters of foreign policy.

Featured image: The flag of the People’s Republic of China files at the Embassy of China in Ottawa. Photo from Flickr.

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***

The Trilateral Commission’s 50th anniversary marks the culmination of its self-proclaimed “New International Economic Order”.  On March 12, the Trilateral Commission held its plenary meeting in New Delhi, India to discuss issues relating to globalization. Trilateral Commission co-founder Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “Technetronic Era” has apparently officially arrived.

Amid the new world alliances that are forming as India and China seek to normalize relations and as China just brokered a relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the globalist narrative has opened a new, and possibly final, chapter. According to Nikkei Asia, one unnamed Trilateral Commission member addressed the plenary meeting and stated,

“Three decades of globalization — defined as integrated, free-market based and deflationary — has been replaced by what will be a multidecade period of globalization defined as fragmented, not-free-market-based but industrial-policy based and structurally inflationary. This year, 2023, is Year One of this new global order.”

This reflects Brzezinski’s early strategy to transform the world as he wrote in Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era:

“The nation-state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

Welcome to the “new global order”.

The Trilateral Commission Gives The Signal To the WEF

Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), stated in 2020, “The pandemic represents a rare but narrow window of opportunity to reflect, reimagine, and reset our world”.  This followed my analysis that the so-called pandemic was Technocracy’s coup d’état that had been building up for over 45 years at the hands of the Trilateral Commission. In fact, I have argued consistently that the Commission’s original “New International Economic Order” was nothing more than Technocracy warmed over from the 1930s. It was Brzezinski’s Technetronic Era. It was the United Nations’ Sustainable Development. It was Biden’s Green New Deal – all one and the same and all strategized by members of the Trilateral Commission starting in 1973.

The WEF is thoroughly intertwined with the United Nations and vigorously promotes its Sustainable Development Goals. The WEF website states,

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented its fair share of challenges but has also offered opportunities. The World Economic Forum has assembled physical events for over 50 years, but we now have a unique opportunity to take the experience online.

As part of the Sustainable Development Impact Summit 2020, the World Economic Forum is experimenting with a 3D environment that allows spacial exploration of the Sustainable Development Goals, SDG-specific content discovery, and experiencing the ambience of a physical event from your computer. Watch the video below for a sneak peek of our exploration.

When Schwab says that the WEF is “reimagining the future”, he is flatly misleading. The future was already reimagined by early members of the Trilateral Commission such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Rockefeller, Richard Gardner and, Henry Kissinger (all founding members).

On June 3, 2020, Schwab wrote on the WEF blog,

To achieve a better outcome, the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions. Every country, from the United States to China, must participate, and every industry, from oil and gas to tech, must be transformed. In short, we need a “Great Reset” of capitalism.

Now the Trilateral Commission, acting as quarterback, has relayed the call to the WEF that “This year, 2023, is Year One of this new global order.” In other words, pull out all the stops. The Great Reset has arrived. Execute the battle plan to terminate capitalism and free market economics.

What does this mean for 2023?

As I have written, we are already experiencing a “polycrisis of doom” where multiple crisis are descending upon us at the same time. There is a man-made energy crisis that is warring against coal, oil and natural gas. There is a man-made food crisis that is warring against all traditional food systems. There is a man-made financial crisis that threatens total collapse of the existing financial system. There is a man-made military conflict between Russia and Ukraine that threatens WWIII.

Any one of these pending crisis could be seen as a “scorched-earth” policy where total destruction is possible down the the ground level. If all four are unleashed at the same time, it would be the equivalent of atomic warfare resulting in a literal “dark winter”.  Such a collapsed world would then be ripe for total capture and rebuilding into Technocracy’s dystopia.

Don’t shrug your shoulders

It is unfortunate that hardly anyone has given any credence to the Trilateral Commission over the years. I will say pointedly that the first person to bust them was the late scholar and professor Antony C. Sutton, with whom I co-authored Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II between 1978-1981. Few paid attention back then, just as few pay attention today. We were mercilessly censored back then, just as I am censored today. Nevertheless, our work has stood the test of time and now the endgame is at hand.

If you feel like you are in the dark on this, now is the time to start reading and studying  Sutton’s and my combined works.

Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II are available here and here.

Each of my three books on Technocracy (available here and here) chronicle the Trilateral Commission’s role in creating this new order.

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Patrick Wood is a leading and critical expert on Sustainable Development, Green Economy, Agenda 21, 2030 Agenda and historic Technocracy. He is the author of Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation (2015) and co-author of Trilaterals Over Washington, Volumes I and II (1978-1980) with the late Antony C. Sutton.

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The International Criminal Court at the Hague has issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin of Russia. NPR reports that “The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes involving accusations that Russia has forcibly taken Ukrainian children.”

At the very same time that these charges are being launched against Putin, these stories about forcible taking of children in the US appeared in my newsfeed.

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***

 

Tributes have been paid to a young Irish cricket player who died days after being diagnosed with testicular cancer. (click here)

21-year-old Daniel Donnan was rushed to the Ulster Hospital where he was treated for a bleed to the brain, but medical tests revealed tumors which had already spread to his brain and lungs.

Testicular cancer in young athletes

What is going on?

When a “fact check” vigorously denies something, it is very often true. Sure enough, a fact check denying the link between COVID-19 vaccines and testicular cancer exists (click here).

The fact check says “there is no evidence” but admits: “Grain of Truth: Four football players from the German first league have got testicular cancer since the spring of 2022.”

Except it’s not just 4 German football players (one article claims it’s actually 14). It’s also rugby players, skiers, cricket players, etc.

It’s athletes as well as non-athletes:

Some cases are extremely rapidly progressive, like this one: “late stage less than 2 months from 2nd jab…spread everywhere”.

Or in the case of 21 year old Irish cricket player Daniel Donnan, only a few days from diagnosis to death.

Or the case of VAERS 1232833 – a 32 year old military man who developed testicular pain 4 days after 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA dose and 20 days later was diagnosed with testicular cancer with metastatic spread to retroperitoneal lymph nodes.

What is the link between COVID-19 vaccines & testicular cancer?

As an Oncologist, I ask how and why. Yes, the COVID-19 vaccine spike protein localizes to the testes, according to the Japanese Pfizer Organ bio-distribution study done with rats. But at 48hr, the ovaries get 40x more LNP-mRNA than testes.

Perhaps the more important point is that the mRNA continues to accumulate in the testes with time. How long and to what degree? We don’t know because Pfizer didn’t look beyond 48hr.

More physical activity means more blood flow, with more mRNA delivered to the heart as well as the testes. So if the myocarditis and sudden cardiac death don’t get you…

Truthfully, we have no idea what the COVID-19 vaccine mRNA does after it deposits in the testes, because Pfizer and Moderna did not conduct any carcinogenicity studies to verify safety.

Pfizer/BioNTech have a testicular cancer treatment ready

Coincidentally, Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine partner BioNTech received European approval for new testicular cancer treatment on June 23, 2022, just as testicular cancer cases exploded across the German Bundesliga (click here).

Interestingly, their novel treatment targets heavily pretreated patients with relapsed or refractory advanced testicular cancer. In other words, particularly aggressive (turbo?) testicular tumors that don’t respond to conventional treatment.

Again, it’s almost as if they knew.

My Take…

Wherever COVID-19 vaccine spike protein accumulates, we see a “spike” in cancers: bone marrow (leukemias), lymph nodes (lymphomas), liver, kidney, pancreas, ovaries, testes, breasts, colon, brain, spinal cord, thyroid gland and more.

There is undoubtedly a direct local effect by the vaccine spike protein on the tissues it accumulates in, this is not just a systemic effect of the mRNA circulating and affecting the overall immune system.

Oncologists cannot continue to turn a blind eye to these rapidly progressive cancers, or “turbo cancers” as they’ve come to be known. Sooner or later, doctors will have to face the reality that they may have recommended something unsafe to their patients that was catastrophically damaging to their bodies.

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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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***

When Australia – vassal be thy name – assumed responsibilities for not only throwing money at both US and British shipbuilders, lending up territory and naval facilities for war like a gambling drunk, and essentially asking its officials to commit seppuku for the Imperium, another task was given.  While the ditzy and dunderheaded wonders in Canberra would be acquiring submarines with nuclear propulsion technology, there would be that rather problematic issue of what to do with the waste.  “Yes,” said the obliging Australians, “we will deal with it.”

The Australian Defence Department has published a fact sheet on the matter, which, as all such fact sheets go, fudges the facts and sports a degree of misplaced optimism.  It promises a “sophisticated security and safety architecture” around the nuclear-powered submarine program, “building on our 70-year unblemished track record of operating nuclear facilities and conducting nuclear science activities.”

This record, which is rather more blemished than officials would care to admit, does not extend to the specific issues arising from maintaining a nuclear-powered submarine fleet and the high-level waste that would require shielding and cooling.  In the context of such a vessel, this would entail pulling out and disposing of the reactor once the submarine is decommissioned.

Australia’s experience, to date, only extends to the storage of low-level waste and intermediate-level waste arising from nuclear medicine and laboratory research, with the low-level variant being stored at over a hundred sites in the country.  That situation has been regarded as unsustainable and politically contentious.

The department admits that the storage and disposal of such waste and spent fuel will require necessary facilities and trained personnel, appropriate transport, interim and permanent storage facilities and “social license earned and sustained with local and regional communities.” But it also notes that the UK and the US “will assist Australia in developing this capability, leveraging Australia’s decades of safely and securely managing radioactive waste domestically”.

That’s mighty good of them to do so, given that both countries have failed to move beyond the problem of temporary storage.  In the UK, the issue of disposing waste from decommissioned nuclear submarines remains stuck in community consultation.  In the US, no option has emerged after the Obama administration killed off a repository program to store waste underneath Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.  The reasons for doing so, sulked Republicans at the time, were political rather than technical.

Where, then, will the facilities to store and dispose of such waste be located?  “Defence – working with relevant agencies including the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency – will undertake a review in 2023 to identify locations in the current or future Defence estate that could be suitable to store and dispose of intermediate-level waste and high-level waste, including spent fuel.”

The various state premiers are already suggesting that finding a site will be problematic.  Both Victoria and Western Australia are pointing fingers at South Australia as the logical option, while Queensland has declared that “under no circumstances” would it permit nuclear waste to be stored.  “I think the waste can go where all the jobs are going,” remarked Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.  “I don’t think that’s unreasonable, is it?”

Western Australia’s Mark McGowan, in furious agreement, suggested that a site “somewhere remote, somewhere with very good long-term geological structure that doesn’t change or move and somewhere that is defence lands” narrowed down the options.  “[T]hat’s why Woomera springs to mind.

South Australia’s Premier, Peter Malinauskas, insists that the waste should go “where it is in the nation’s interest to put it” and not be a matter of “some domestic political tit-for-tat, or some state-based parochial thing.”

When it comes to storing nuclear waste, parochialism is all but guaranteed.  The Australian government is already facing a legal challenge from traditional owners regarding a 2021 decision to locate a nuclear waste site at Kimba in South Australia.  The effort to find a site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility intended for low and intermediate radioactive waste produced by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation at Lucas Heights, New South Wales, took three decades.

According to members of the First Nations group opposing the decision, the proposed facility risks interfering with a sacred site for women.  Dawn Taylor, a Barngarla woman and Kimba resident, told the ABC that, “The Seven Sisters is through that area.”  She feared that the waste facility would end up “destroying” the stories associated with the dreaming.

The federal resources minister, Madeleine King, has stated with little conviction that a cultural heritage management plan “informed by the research of the Barngarla people” is in place.  “There are strict protocols around the work that is going on right now to make sure there is no disturbance of cultural heritage.”

Local farmers, including the consistently vocal Peter Woolford, are also opposed to the project.  “We just can’t understand why you would expose this great agricultural industry we have here in grain production to any potential risk at all by having a nuclear waste dump here.”

The Australian security establishment may well be glorifying in the moment of AUKUS, itself an insensibly parochial gesture of provocation and regional destabilisation, but agitated residents and irate state politicians are promising a good deal of sensible mischief.

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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]

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First published on July 11, 2022

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“The guilt for the mass murder is solely that of the political leaders….. I accuse the leaders of abusing my obedience. At that time obedience was demanded, just as in the future it will also be demanded of the subordinate. Obedience is commended as a virtue.”  —Adolph Eichmann, Nazi, at his trial

 

Early in the declared Covid19 Pandemic, America’s medical community —  and this included America’s pharmacies  —  coalesced around a system of outlawing medicines known to be effective, safe and inexpensive, notably ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine  In time, it became obvious that withholding early treatment was crucial for the pharmaceutical industry’s project to vaccinate the world against a claimed Covid19 virus.

Had the effectiveness of inexpensive and available medicines been widely seen, the pretext for ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ of a warpspeed-produced experimental product would have vaporized. With a trillion dollar global vaccination project at stake, that couldn’t be allowed, so the lies of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine being toxic were authoritatively enforced.  

The policy descended (and continues to descend) from administrative networks within the Department of Health and Human Services, (notably CDC and NIAID) to the states. These networks are part of, and fed by, an international complex involving the World Health Organization, itself under the control of international pharmaceutical interests focused primarily on vaccines, as well as on gene manipulations sold under the deceptive banner of “vaccine”.

This multi-pronged, vaccine-focused universe now includes research universities and medical schools, medical societies and fraudulent medical journals showcasing ghost-written “scientific” articles. A key player is the discipline of Public Health, a politicized field posing as objective science, enforcer of official narrative and hurler of the “misinformation” epithet at dissenters. And of course there is the compliant media. And money, endless rivers of it. 

At hospital level, commands from this complex flow through desk-bound administrators, with doctors and nurses induced to follow those commands for fear of losing needed hospital access. Failure to mind can even result in suspension of license to practice medicine. This control system extends to state medical boards under the umbrella of the Federation of State Medical Boards, the guidelines of which require practitioners to use treatments “… supported by the best available scientific evidence or prevailing scientific consensus”. But officially accepted “best available scientific evidence” is now so tightly controlled that one is literally forced toward the “prevailing scientific consensus”. 

The “consensus” referred to is a rigidly enforced story, and divergence from it is immediately attacked from all corners of officialdom as “misinformation”. A key branch of the army protecting the official, lie-riddled storyline has been the burgeoning fact-check industry, succinctly nailed by Dr. Bryan Ardis  “Fact checking is to divert you from the truth and take you back to the narrative you’re being sold worldwide.”

You doctors who have been obedient to an industry-inspired, governmentally-driven protocol have abdicated the doctor-patient relationship. And what is true for doctors in this respect applies to nurses as well. By withholding available treatments and sending sick people home; by injecting a trusting public with an experimental gene-altering technology that has potentially devastating long-range, even trans-generational impacts; by not seeing immediately the criminal idiocy of injecting children, for whom the claimed virus is known to be benign, you have made your patients de facto lab animals. 

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover once wrote “The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.” The Covid19 Pandemic, set up as justification for a global project to inject humanity with a gene-altering death-dealing technology, is certainly monstrous enough to handicap anyone, at least for a time. It is murderous on a scale so immense as to be unbelievable on first exposure. And that alone may have posed too great a barrier for most of the multitude to even want to take a closer look. 

But you medical professionals cannot claim ignorance at this late date, when mere minutes of online search can reveal that outstanding medical figures all over the world have been struggling against censorship and mainstream media vomitings to expose the lie-riddled Covid19/“vaccine” project ( 1, 2, 3…) For their troubles, of course, they continue to be attacked by the media network long known to be rotten to the core. Has your choosing to be obedient within this long nightmare been simply to hold on to a job? Or have you just been too lazy to search out censored information? Or too uncaring? Or are you just stupid? Only you would know for sure. 

Josef Mengele, like yourselves, was a medical doctor. At Auschwitz concentration camp, his grisly medical experiments won him a place in history as Todesengel, “The Angel of Death”. He is supposed to have said “The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” Does that seem familiar, and do your patients still trust you? In any case, you medics who have been so obedient to the vaccine industry’s merciless global project might want to get to know Dr. Mengele. There are even books on the man. After all, he was a soul mate of yours, as you have, eyes wide open, made yourselves, whether by omission or commission, his medical heirs. 

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Bill Willers is an emeritus professor of biology, University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. He is founder of the Superior Wilderness Action Network and editor of Learning to Listen to the Land, and Unmanaged Landscapes, both from Island Press. He can be contacted at [email protected].

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Сви чланци Глобалног истраживања могу се читати на 51 језику тако што ћете активирати дугме Преведи веб локацију испод имена аутора.

Да бисте добили дневни билтен Глобал Ресеарцх-а (изабрани чланци), кликните овде.

Пратите нас на Инстаграму и Твиттеру и претплатите се на наш Телеграм канал. Слободно поново постављајте и делите чланке Глобалног истраживања.

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Београдски форум за свет равноправних подржава званични принципијелни став највиших државних институција да Србија не уводи било какве санкције Русији. Српски народ је 90-тих година прошлог века искусио најтеже неправедне санкције у новијој историји цивилизације чије нехумане последице и данас осећа. Зато, свакоме треба да буде јасно зашто Србија не жели да ишта слично искуси било који народ или земља.

Србија не може против воље свог народа да уводи санкције Русији само зато што је то у интересу водећих земаља Запада – чланица ЕУ и НАТО. Тако нешто не би ни најмање допринело окончању сукоба у Украјини али би свакако било велико понижење за Србију као стару европску државу која је своју принципијелност, моралну чврстину и приврженост миру, исказивала увек када је то било  најтеже за  човечанство, укључујући њен немерљив допринос победи над наци-фашизмом у Другом светском рату.

Санкције Запада против Русије нису засноване на међународном праву, нити их је усвојио Савет безбедности УН који је једино овлашћени орган за предузимање мера принуде. Зато су те санкције једностране и незаконите.

Србија је опредељена за мир дијалогом, правом, истим стандардима и отклањањем узрока сукоба. Санкције нису средство мира већ политике силе, конфорнтације и економско-социјалног изнуривања.

Санкције против Русије и поред огромних притисака њихових носилаца, није прихватило три четвртине чланица светске заједнице, међу којима су и све земље растуће економске и политичке моћи као што су Кина, Индија, Бразил, ЈАР, Египат, Сауди Арабија и многе друге, које су изабрале пут новог, мултиполараног свтског поретка заснованог на демократским принципима суверене равноправности, немешања и мирољубиве коегзистенције.

Србија као суверена, независна, војно неутрална и мирољубива нема традицију нити интереса да послушнички следи било чије дупле стандарде, захтеве, средства и методе који воде конфронтацији, глобалној економско-финансијско-социјалној кризи и продубљивању дестбилизације. Методе новог хладног рата, неоколонијализма и хегемонизма нису прихватљиве народу Србије као ни другим мирољубивим народима света.

Београдски форум сматра да све захтеве, притиске и претње Србији због неувођења санкција Русији треба окарактерисати као апсолутно неприхватљиво мешање у питања суверенитета и независности земље и одлучно одбити. Форум сматра да су циљеви нисилаца политике притисака и уцена: скретсање Србије са пута досадашње политике независности и слободног избора  спољно-политичких партнера; гурање Србије у сукоб са Русијом као сталном чланицом СБ УН,  традиционалним пријатељем, савезником у најтежим временима и стратешким партнером; сврставање Србије уз носиоце геострастратегије ширења НАТО на Исток, хегемонзма, и неокоолонијализма; понижавање Србије у очима партнера земаља Глобалног Југа, односно, несврстаних, посебно, оних земаља које нису признале једнострано, илегално отцепљење Приштине а које чине светску већину; сламање одбране суверенитета и територијалног интегритета у складу са Уставом, Повељом УН и резолуцијом СБ УН 1244 и предаја судбине земље у руке оних који су  одговорни сепаратизам, тероризам и злочиначку оружану агресију НАТО-а 1999., чију 24. годишњицу обележавамо управо ових дана.

Београдски Форум подсећа да су носиоци садашње политике притисака и уцена  ретко када у новијој историји показивали разумевање или поштовање животних интереса Србије и српског народа. Раздробљеност и обесправљеност српског народа и територија; стотине хиљада расељених којима су и данас ускраћена права на слободан и безбедан повратак;  десетине, ако не стотине милијарди долара или евра вредне отете имовине, економских и природних богатстава – тек су део сведочанстава о њиховим намерама, плановима  и мерило поузданости њихових обећања. У садашњим условима глобалних сучељавања њихова грамзива неоколонијална геополитика је толико огољена  – да је потпуно јасно да не постоје ни елементарни услови за принципијелно, праведно и одрживо решење питања статуса Покрајине Косово и Метохија.

Дијалог под окриљем ЕУ и обећање чланства у ЕУ су претворени у механизам за изнуђивање признања једностраног насилног отцепљења. «Нормализација односа Косова и Србије» је провидна скривалица Запада за «међусобно признање». Ултиматум „по моделу две Немачке“, у плашту „Предлога ЕУ, уз подршку САД“ представља покушај историјске преваре. Мирно и праведно и одрживо решење које уважава и мири интересе свих релевантних чинилаца није на видику.

Свако ко захтева  да се Србија удаљи од  било којег провереног пријатеља или савезника, да прихвати одговорност за сва зла на подручју бивше СФРЈ, да амнестира одговорне за агресију и сецесију, да одустане од захтева за слободан и безбедан повратак око 250.000 протераних Срба и других неалбанаца у њихове домове и на њихова имања, да одустане од поштовања резолуције СБ УН 1244 као једине основе и оквира за постизање праведног и одрживог решења Косову и Метохији – очекује, у ствари, да Србија днашњим и будућим генерацијама веже руке – што се не може прихватити. Београдски форум је најдубље уверен да су Устав Србије, међународно право и посебно резолуција СБ УН 1244, једина прихватљива и принципијелна основа и оквир за праведно и одрживо решење у интересу мира, стабилности и развоја.

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Живадин Йованович является президентом Белградского форума “За мир равных”. Он является постоянным автором Global Research.

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***

Liebe Mitbürger! Wir sehen, hören und lesen viel über die Probleme in der Welt, über die Folgen von so genannten Naturkatastrophen (Türkei und Syrien), über den Ukraine-Krieg, die vielen anderen Kriege und über pharmazeutische Verbrechen. Alle Ereignisse berühren unseren Lebensnerv. Was wir bei dieser Flut von negativen Nachrichten gerne übersehen, das sind Anzeichen, die darauf hindeuten, dass sich die Welt trotz anhaltender, noch ungelöster Probleme anscheinend langsam aber sicher zum Besseren verändert. Dadurch kommt Zuversicht auf, die den Glauben an eine lebenswertere Zukunft weckt. Sicher wird es einige Geduld erfordern, bis sich die positiven Veränderungen auch im persönlichen Leben jedes einzelnen Bürgers niederschlagen. Wenn wir jedoch an das Gute im Menschen glauben, werden wir uns nicht verlaufen im Labyrinth von Zukunftsängsten.

So bekam ich vor kurzem das Monatsheft des deutschen Kopp-Verlags ins Haus geschickt mit einer ganzseitigen Werbung für das neue Buch von Robert W. Malone: „Lügen, die mir meine Regierung erzählte und der Weg in eine bessere Zukunft. Mit einem Vorwort von Robert F. Kennedy jr.“ (1)

Weil so eine Werbung bis vor kurzem unvorstellbar war, fand sich ein Anlass, ohne Euphorie über weitere positive Ereignisse zu berichten.

Wahrheit die Ehre erweisen

„Was auch immer sie heute über ihn sagen, Malone wird als Held in die Geschichte eingehen.“ Dieses Zitat des US-amerikanischen Fernsehmoderators Tucker Carlson befindet sich zusammen mit einer Abbildung des neues Buches bereits auf der Titelseite der Broschüre.

Im Vorspann auf Seite 1 heißt es sodann:

„Als Medizinstudent und Doktorand erfand Robert Malone in den späten 1980er-Jahren als Erster die mRNA-Impfstofftechnologie. Damals konnte er sich nicht ansatzweise vorstellen, dass er einmal eine führende Rolle in einer Bewegung spielen würde, welche die Gefahren  von mRNA-Impfstoffen aufdeckt. Milliarden von Menschen wurden sie verabreicht – ohne über die Risiken zu informieren.“ (2)

Die Fortsetzung lautet:

„Dr. Robert Malone wurde von Big Tech zensiert und von den Medien diffamiert, weil er sich gegen die „Mainstream“-Berichterstattung aussprach. (…). Dr. Malone ist die maßgebliche Stimme der Andersdenkenden. Er zeigt die dunkle Seite der Corona-Agenda, er deckt die Rolle der Mainstream-Medien, Zensur, Propaganda und die schöne neue Welt des Transhumanismus auf, die vom Weltwirtschaftsforum und seinen Gefolgsleuten gefördert wird. Wie ist es möglich, dass sich die von den Regierungen verbreiteten Lügen hartnäckig halten und unsere Institutionen es versäumen, sie zu korrigieren? Welche Auswirkungen hatte die Corona-Politik auf Menschenleben, Existenzen und Demokratien?

Dr. Malone geht diesen Fragen auf den Grund und beweist, wie Daten, Nachrichten und Emotionen während der Pandemie bewusst verzerrt und manipuliert worden sind. Die Regierungen haben die Angst der Menschen absichtlich als Waffe eingesetzt, um deren Verhalten zu steuern. Die Medien verleumdeten jeden, der sich gegen die offizielle Darstellung wehrte und zu Wort meldete. Dr. Malone untersucht die perversen Verbindungen zwischen Pharmaindustrie, Regierungen und Medien und sagt uns, was wir dagegen tun können.“ (3)

Menschen erkennen zunehmend, dass sie genötigt sind, einander die Hände zu reichen, um zu überleben

Trotz vieler Rückfälle tastet sich die Menschheit mit instinktiver Sicherhheit immer weiter voran. Einmal heißt es „Du sollst nicht töten!“, ein andermal „Liebe deinen Nächsten!“ Gerade in Zeiten des Ukraine-Krieges und der vielen anderen Kriege und Ungerechtigkeiten sind das wichtige Einsichten.

So fordern nicht nur demonstrierende Bürger, sondern auch realistische Politker weltweit eine diplomatische Lösung des gegenwärtigen Ukraine-Krieges und eine Ablösung der unipolaren Welt des Hegemons, in der nur einer entscheiden kann, hin zu einer multipolaren Welt, in der viele gemeinsam entscheiden können (4).

Die unterschiedlichen Formen des Gemeinschaftsethos der Menschen streben unaufhaltsam vorwärts und haben das Ziel, eine einträchtige Menschheit zu schaffen. Die instinktive Sicherheit, mit der dies geschieht, scheint auf den Arterhaltungstrieb zurückzuführen zu sein.

Eine Veränderung der Welt zum Besseren zeigt sich auch in der Befreiung vieler afrikanischer Staaten aus den Fesseln eines Jahrhunderte währenden mörderischen Kolonialismus‘. So verkündet Frankreichs Präsident schon einmal die Beendigung der kolonialen „France-Afrique Era“ (5). Weitere europäische und US-amerikanische Kolonial-Epochen werden demnächst ebenfalls ein Ende finden.

Hierzu zählt auch, dass sich die kanadische Regierung unter ihrem derzeitigen Ministerpräsidenten bei den Ureinwohnern für den an ihnen begangenen Genozid entschuldigte (6). Eine Entschuldigung ist zwar nur der Beginn einer gerechten Wiedergutmachung dieses Menschheits-Verbrechen – aber ein erster Schritt. Die Indianer als Ureinwohner Amerikas werden diese Geste der kanadischen Regierung genau registriert haben und auf ein ähnliches Signal aus Washington warten (7).

Abschließend stellt sich die Frage, wie sich diese positive Veränderung der Welt zum Besseren auf das persönliche Leben der einzelnen Bürgerinnen und Bürger auswirken wird und warum dadurch der Glaube an eine lebenswertere Zukunft – vor allem für unsere Kinder und Kindeskinder – geweckt wird?

Was eben noch heute auf den Menschen lastet, ist der Mangel an sozialer Durchbildung. Noch leiden viele an der Fiktion der Macht und der Selbstherrlichkeit des Individuums. Deshalb wird auch das Gesetz verkannt, unter dem die Menschheit steht: dass die Menschen zusammenhalten müssen und genötigt sind, einander die Hände zu reichen. Der Kampf um die Erhaltung des Lebens wie auch die Probleme der Sicherung sowie des Fortschritts und der Anpassung können doch durch die Eintracht aller und die gegenseitige Hilfe am besten gelöst werden.

Das kulturelle Erbe ist leider immer bedroht und muß jeden Tag neu errungen werden. Die Kulturentwicklung besteht im Wesentlichen darin, dass sich die Stimme des Menschheitsgewissens mehr und mehr Gehör verschafft und daß der Geist der Verantwortlichkeit an die Stelle der Gewalttätigkeit und der Kriege tritt. Dafür gibt es untrügerische Anzeichen in der Welt.

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Dieser Artikel wurde ursprünglich auf NRhZ-ONLINE veröffentlicht.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler (Dr. paed.) und Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer (Professor) in der Erwachsenenbildung: unter anderem Leiter eines freien Schul-Modell-Versuchs und Fortbildner bayerischer Beratungslehrkräfte und Schulpsychologen. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. Bei einer Öffentlichen Anhörung zur Jugendkriminalität im Europa-Parlament war er Berichterstatter für Deutschland. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.

Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.

Noten

(1) www.kopp-verlag.de, Kopp Aktuell. Bücher, die ihnen die Augen öffnen. Titelseite. März 2023

(2) A. a. O., S. 1

(3) A. a. O.

(4) https://de.rt.com/kurzclips/video/164562-frankfurt-am-main-demonstranten-fordern-diplomatische-loesung/

(5) https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/humanitaere-lustbruecke-der-eu-macron-verspricht-mehr-hilfe-fuer-kongo-18724733.html

(6) https://www.oe24.at/welt/trudeau-entschuldigt-sich-bei-ureinwohnern/310394473

(7) https://www.nzz.ch/international/veruebten-die-usa-einen-genozid-an-den-indianern-ld.1631753?reduced=true

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 19, 2023

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***

“There is great chaos under heaven; [hence] the situation is excellent.” —Mao Zadong

With staunch US support, Pakistan’s unelected “imported government” is trying to arrest former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the most popular politician in the country, to prevent him from running in elections. But protesters are protecting him.

If 2022 was the year of popular uprisings in Pakistan, raising hope for protesters fed up with a thoroughly corrupt and repressive civil-military regime, 2023 seems to be the year when the government is trying every dirty trick in the book to kill that hope.

After a US-backed regime change operation removed elected Prime Minister Imran Khan from power in April 2022, Pakistan witnessed an unprecedented phenomenon in the nation’s history: For the first time, a civilian politician who was ousted from power didn’t simply end up in the dustbin of history, alongside interchangeable corrupt politicians who for decades played musical chairs, competing to plunder the country.

On the contrary, what occurred were massive outpourings of support for Khan and widespread opposition to the ancien régime put in power by Washington’s mercenaries in the military high command.

The enormous popular rejection of the current “imported government”, as Khan calls it, has made Pakistan’s elites increasingly desperate. They want him eliminated.

Assassination was their first method of choice – but they fumbled. At a rally in November, a gunman shot Khan in the leg, injuring but failing to kill him.

In the meantime, Plan B is being implemented: Arrest Khan on bogus charges and disqualify him from politics forever.

The former prime minister has been relentlessly holding peaceful demonstrations, demanding elections. The government knows that Khan would easily win, so it wants to prevent him from running.

A Gallup poll in March found that Khan is by far the most popular politician in Pakistan, with a 61% approval rating, compared to 37% disapproval.

The current, unelected Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has the complete opposite: a 32% approval rating, compared to 65% disapproval.

The figures are clear: Nearly two-thirds of Pakistanis support Khan and oppose the unelected government.

Pakistan’s “imported government” orders the arrest of Imran Khan

Faced with its deep unpopularity, on March 8, Pakistan’s regime initiated Plan B.

Khan was leading a peaceful protest – one of the countless rallies he has organized since the April 2022 regime-change operation.

This time, massive state security forces went on a rampage and tried to arrest Khan. But they could not do it. Standing between them and Khan were tens of thousands of his supporters.

The only way to get to Khan would have been a bloodbath. This was avoided – although one Khan supporter was killed.

Then again, on March 13, Khan called for a rally in the city considered to be the heart of Pakistan: Lahore.

Despite the entire state security machinery targeting him and his supporters, the rally in Lahore was one of the biggest the city has seen.

Khan and the protesters marched confidently and peacefully in every corner of the city, where they seemed unstoppable, greeted with joy by ordinary Pakistanis of all walks of life.

The former prime minister was undeterred, committed to holding demonstrations in the provinces of the Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), in the lead-up to what he hopes will be national elections.

On March 14, the regime escalated its crackdown. Police surrounded Khan’s house in Lahore and tried to arrest him.

In response, thousands of supporters gathered at Khan’s home, protecting him.

The police responded with extreme violence, wounding dozens of protesters.

From his house, Khan symbolically delivered a speech via video stream, sitting with the tear gas canisters that had been fired outside.

The regime tries to ban Khan from public life

Khan’s determination to relentlessly participate in mass mobilizations has led the regime to try to ban him from public life.

Even Western organizations that are often biased, such as Amnesty International, have condemned the unelected Pakistani government’s authoritarian tactics, which have included prohibiting all speeches and rallies by Khan, as well arresting people who criticize the military on Twitter.

There are two main factors preventing an all-out assault to arrest Khan: the wrath of the population that would ensue, and fear that significant ranks within the armed forces would revolt and turn their guns on their superiors, à la Vietnam.

Indeed, it has been because of Khan’s popularity not just among ordinary Pakistani civilians but within the military ranks as well that the former prime minister has survived so far.

Khan’s popularity among some parts of the army is easy to explain. Rank-and-file soldiers and the majority of the junior and mid-rank officer corps are not keen on Washington dictating a War on Terror 2.0. They have always appreciated Khan’s principled opposition, since day one, to any military solution to the militancy in Afghanistan and the northwest of Pakistan.

Throughout 2022, Khan’s political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, the “Movement for Justice”), exponentially rose in popularity, in contrast to the all-too-visible political shenanigans of the coalition of feudal family dynasties and other corrupt forces in power.

If it is true that Khan mismanaged both political and economic governance while in power, then the current lot has engendered a virtual implosion and collapse in the country.

Khan challenges Pakistan’s pro-Western elites

It is difficult to overstate how incensed ordinary Pakistanis are with the political mafias, significant sections of the military top brass, and the chief mafia don: Washington.

One of the most disturbing aspects of what has been happening is the virtual connivance of liberal-left forces and the Pakistani deep state in attempting to eliminate Khan from the Pakistani political scene.

The visceral hatred of Khan by Pakistan’s comprador elites cannot be explained by simply having differences with Khan on various policies – something that Khan’s own critical supporters have as well.

No, for this elite class of the liberal, pro-Western Pakistani intelligentsia, Khan has committed the ultimate crime: socio-cultural class betrayal.

Khan lived abroad for so long during his impressive cricket career. He studied at Oxford, and speaks perfect English. Thus, Pakistan’s ‘Westoxicated’ elites thought that Khan would behave just like them.

Instead, Khan has rejected the condescending attitude that the country’s Western-educated elites show toward ordinary Pakistanis.

Khan has mobilized tens of millions because of his sincerity to reimagine a new Pakistan, prioritizing social justice and an independent foreign policy.

The fact that one small, sectarian leftist party or the other is not being given the credit of leading the revolt against the unpopular regime has made them neurotically envious of Khan.

It is clear for all to see: Khan and the critical supporters both in and outside of his political party have become the most dangerous threat to Pakistan’s status quo.

That is why we have seen very unusual and fast-paced meetings between US officials and Pakistan’s generals and regime officials: Washington’s “friends again”.

Elimination of Khan is absolutely necessary for the troika of these power centers: local comprador political elites, the military high command, and Washington.

Why? Because they know that Khan and his party will sweep any elections that are held.

US encourages Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF”

In the meantime, Pakistan is enduring a deep economic crisis. The country has nearly exhausted its foreign exchange reserves.

The regime is in talks with the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) to save itself from bankruptcy. All of the corresponding policies of austerity and taxing the poor – “structural adjustment” – are to be expected.

CIA officer turned US State Department spokesman Ned Price said in a press briefing on March 8 that Washington wants Pakistan to “continue working with the IMF” to impose “reforms that will improve Pakistan’s business environment”, in order to “make Pakistani businesses more attractive and competitive”.

In other words, the US State Department wants Pakistan to double down on neoliberal economic policies, such as lowering wages and cutting social spending.

If hated before, the current “imported government” is now despised more than ever.

Imran Khan’s independent foreign policy angers the mafia don in Washington

Khan’s foreign policy was anathema to Washington.

He refused to recognize apartheid Israel as a legitimate state.

He improved ties with Russia for straightforward reasons of economic necessity (as well as promoting the geostrategic stability in the broader Central Asian region).

Khan mended ties and cooperated with Iran, even praising its revolutionary “dignity.”

He strengthened ties with China.

At the same time, Khan repeatedly said he desired friendly relations with Washington, proposing that they work together in peacebuilding in Afghanistan and the wider region.

But these other foreign policy aims were utterly unacceptable to the mafia don, which seems to be set on a war path with Beijing (and others).

Pakistan has been a close ally of China since the 1960s. But Islamabad’s intense obsession with pleasing Washington is a flagrant slap in the face of Beijing.

The meetings that top Pakistani military officials, including the powerful Chief of Army Staff, General Qamar Javed Bajwa, have held with officials in Washington and London are not being missed upon by Beijing or Moscow.

Though Pakistan is suffering through some of the worst economic woes in its history – thanks to the robber barons in power – the US still knows that the South Asian nation has one of the most formidable militaries in the world, and is a nuclear-powered country of 230 million.

Washington also knows that it can easily woo the military top brass by reminding them of how only the US and its weapons and fighter jets can allow Pakistan to stay apace with arch-rival India, trying to match its military supremacy in the region.

This is why the US is so keen on Pakistan participating in Joe Biden’s second “Summit for Democracy” in March 2023. (Despite the fact that Pakistan’s current government was not elected, and repeatedly resisted calls for holding a vote.)

As prime minister, Khan respectfully declined the invitation to the first summit in 2021, because he knew exactly what the intention was: A declining empire seeking to muster as many nations as it can to be a part of its “coalition of the willing” against official enemies like China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, etc.

According to leaks by Pakistan’s own ambassador to the US (who has a soft spot for Khan), Washington wants to reestablish its old military base in Pakistan, which was closed down in 2011.

The US is also reportedly dictating to Pakistan which militant groups to go after and which ones should be left alone – such as the anti-China East Turkestan independence movement or the ISIS elements giving trouble to Beijing and the Taliban government in Kabul.

Most importantly, Washington wants to compel Islamabad to do everything possible to significantly reduce or halt any progress on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Moreover, Washington and the Persian Gulf monarchies are having a splendid time in convincing the new favorable military-civilian regime in Islamabad to undertake a political 180 that Khan would never agree to: gradually normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.

Nevertheless, what all of these power centers conspiring against Khan overlook is that they are dealing with a different Pakistani population now. The people’s political consciousness has exponentially risen with the ouster of Khan from power.

Hence, whether Khan is assassinated or somehow arrested or disqualified from politics, the powers-that-be might get a rude awakening, and be surprised that they are dealing with a new Pakistan, with or without Khan – one that will have zero tolerance for their venality, corruption, and subordination to Washington.

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Prof. Junaid S Ahmad teaches Religion and Global Politics and is the Director of the Center for the Study of Islam and Decoloniality, Islamabad, Pakistan.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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

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***

In commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the US-led NATO invasion of Iraq, we repost this article published in July 2003 by Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker. 

The Bush administration initiated the war under the pretext that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which both the US and UK governments knew to be false even prior to the invasion. 

After 20 years, Iraq is in shambles. The continued presence of US military in the country has only caused further suffering and hardship to the Iraqis.

The invasion should teach us lessons about America’s “war on terror” and “humanitarian efforts”.

The article below will remind us of 20 lies that were used to justify the illegal war.

-Global Research, March 19, 2023

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1 Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks

A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi’s contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.

2 Iraq and al-Qa’ida were working together

Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defence Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden’s “aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq”, it added.

Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa’ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.

3 Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a “reconstituted” nuclear weapons programme

The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush’s State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has “separate intelligence”. The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now “under review”.

4 Iraq was trying to import aluminium tubes to develop nuclear weapons

The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.

5 Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War

Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.

6 Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus

Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously.

7 Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox

This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it.

8 US and British claims were supported by the inspectors

According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix “pointed out” that Iraq had 10,000 litres of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq’s chemical, biological and “indeed the nuclear weapons programme” had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix’s reply? “This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction,” he said last September. “If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council.” In May this year he added: “I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not.”

9 Previous weapons inspections had failed

Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had “tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully”. But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: “Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq’s proscribed weapons programmes has been eliminated.” Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors “found no trace at all of Saddam’s offensive biological weapons programme” until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons programme more than a month before the defection.

10 Iraq was obstructing the inspectors

Britain’s February “dodgy dossier” claimed inspectors’ escorts were “trained to start long arguments” with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors’ journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. “We note that access to sites has so far been without problems,” he said. : “In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming.”

11 Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes

This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.

12 The “dodgy dossier”

Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: “We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports.” It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier’s accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organisations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created.

13 War would be easy

Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that “demolishing Saddam Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk”, in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. “This wasn’t the enemy we war-gamed against,” one general complained.

14 Umm Qasr

The fall of Iraq’s southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control – by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain’s defence staff. “Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands,” the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely.

15 Basra rebellion

Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq’s second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth.

16 The “rescue” of Private Jessica Lynch

Private Jessica Lynch’s “rescue” from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major “feel-good” story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed.

17 Troops would face chemical and biological weapons

As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a “red line”, within which Republican Guard units were authorised to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong.

“It was a surprise to me … that we have not uncovered weapons … in some of the forward dispersal sites,” he said. “We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we’re wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen.”

18 Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD

“I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there … once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them,” Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq’s leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin.

19 Iraq’s oil money would go to Iraqis

Tony Blair complained in Parliament that “people falsely claim that we want to seize” Iraq’s oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm “the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people”.

Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq’s oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund.

Far from “all oil revenues” being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq’s oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

20 WMD were found

After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. “We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons,” said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: “Those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons – they’re wrong. We found them.” It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed – and that they were exported by Britain.

*

 

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***

The financial turmoil may be starting to wage war on the planet – all well-planned, of course – simultaneously, worldwide, like covid-clockwork. Financial chaos and banking disasters happen often over weekends when people are distracted. It is possible – not certain, just possible, and not surprising — if as of next week, there would be severe restrictions on withdrawing cash from bank accounts.

This may also be the opportunity to pave the way for the Powers that Be – not benevolent powers, as it were – to preparing the way for introducing Central Bank Digital Money (CBDC), at least starting in the Global North.

As people may begin smelling a rotting fish – or dozens of them – they may cause a run on the banks which would be Step One to a full financial collapse. Just a thought.

Closer to home, Credit Suisse (CS) is in deep trouble. As these lines are written, BlackRock is talking about takeover offers and so is Switzerland’s largest bank, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS).

Philipp Hildebrand, former President of the Swiss National Bank, Vice Chairman of BlackRock, is a member of the BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee. He also oversees the BlackRock Investment Institute.

Hildebrand would be in a prime position to assess CS’s viability and / or liability for a quick takeover. It would be a prestige-loss for Switzerland, seeing one of her flagship financial institutions in foreign hands. Albeit, a bank that has often taken unwarranted risks and was frequently involved in international financial scandals. But it could and can be rescued.

This would be the opportunity for the Swiss government to do something useful and people-oriented with CS.

After having pumped 50 billion Swiss francs (about 54 billion US-dollars) into CS yesterday, Friday 17 March, to salvage the bank, possibly to no avail, it would be a great occasion for the Swiss Government to take over CS even with the intent of “temporarily” nationalizing it for a later private sell off.

Even better would be taking over CS and converting it into a public bank. Switzerland used to have several public banks only half a century back – and they did a lot of good to the Swiss economy. Today, the only quasi-public bank left is Post-Finance, an institution originally attached to the Swiss postal services.

Post-Finance is a noble institution working for the people. Even though it acts like a bank, the Swiss banking oversight commission, FINMA, Switzerland’s independent financial-markets regulator, overseeing banks, insurance companies and other security dealers for some non-transparent reasons does not allow Post-Finance to call itself a bank.

A real public bank, with the financial and banking background of CS, could do wonders for the Swiss economy and for the Swiss public, especially with the projected – maybe – difficult economic times ahead.

In the US, the only public bank is the Bank of North Dakota (BND). It created miracles during the 2008 / 2010 financial crisis. In 2008, the beginning of the last financial break-down, North Dakota’s economy grew by 7.3% (Forbes), more than double the growth of most US States. One of the secrets was its public bank, BND.

As the world may be slithering into a difficult financial period, public banking could be a good way to confront disaster, alleviate the worst to the extent possible.

This applies to the world, and especially the Global North, or West, where a financial meltdown may begin – God forbid – as well as for Switzerland, fully integrated and at the center of the global banking system.

Credit Suisse – from private to public – a thought well worth pondering.

*

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

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

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

Featured image: Credit Suisse, Paradeplatz in Zürich (Switzerland) (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

Introduction by Michel Chossudovsky

Our thoughts today are with the people of Iraq, whose country was invaded twenty years on March 20, 2003. The destruction and loss of life is beyond description. More than a million deaths have been recorded. 

It is important to analyze the political justification of the invasion of Iraq which was presented to public opinion. The evidence is overwhelming. The justification to wage war on Iraq was based on fake intelligence. War crimes committed at the highest levels of government. 

Smoking Guns

The War narrative which unfolded with Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council was that Saddam possessed “Weapons of Mass Destruction”.

The intelligence Dossier presented by Colin Powell to the UNSC emanating from Tony Blair’s cabinet was  fake, confirmed by Dr. Glen Rangwala 

See our earlier article:

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Glen Rangwala, March 18, 2023

 

The Assassination of Dr. David Kelly

Another important event, which occurred in the wake of the invasion was the assassination of Weapons Inspector Dr. David Kelly. 

Dr. David Kelly was Britain’s foremost expert on biological weapons, with direct access to WMD intelligence on Iraq. In the months leading up to his death, he had become increasingly skeptical regarding Iraq’s alleged WMDs. Dr. David Kelly was found dead on July 18th, 2003. The official position was that he had committed suicide as contained in the Lord Hutton report. 

Lord Hutton was confronted by Drs. Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox and  David Halpin, who courageously challenged the official narrative” presented by Lord Hutton on behalf of Tony Blair’s government.

See below the text of the medical doctors entitled “Response to Lord Hutton”. 

The Chronology 

According to  Yassmeen Radif, Matt Roberts and Harry Zacharias in a comprehensive report:

“The basis for this war had been laid out in two distinct dossiers [September 24, 2002 and the February 3, 2003 Dossier]”

The latter was published 2 days prior to Colin Powell’s presentation to the UNSC.

“When he began to raise concerns about the integrity of these documents, he would find himself caught in a political storm. Four months later, Kelly was dead.”

March 2002: Prime Minister Tony Blair commissions an Intelligence Dossier about weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in four countries.

“…His evidence to the committee was that he had not said the things Gilligan had reported his source as saying, and members of the committee came to the conclusion that he had not been the source. Some of the questioning was very precise. The Labour MP Andrew MacKinlay, in particular, used a forceful tone in his cross-examination. … Kelly was deeply upset by his treatment before the Committee (Military History)

17th of July:

Kelly was working as usual at home in Oxfordshire. Media coverage of his public appearance two days before had led many of his friends to send him supportive emails, to which he was responding. …

At about 15:00, Kelly told his wife that he was going for a walk as he did every day. … His wife reported him missing shortly after midnight that night, and he was found early the next morning [18th of July 2023].” (Military History)

The evidence suggests that his alleged “Suicide” was staged.

See statements and analysis of Drs. Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox and David Halpin

The Hutton Report

More than two years later, on November 3, 2006, The Times published a letter by Lord Hutton, in which he attempted to defend his report on Dr. David Kelly’s death.  In the letter, Lord Hutton dwells on the issue of the allegedly “sexed up” intelligence, ignoring the arguably much larger issue of his failure to establish exactly how Dr. David Kelly died.

The inquiry purported to obviate the need for an inquest. Suicide was seemingly assumed from the outset by Lord Hutton, and the Hutton Inquiry descended into establishing who, between the BBC and the Government, was to blame for the suicide of Dr Kelly.  But, crucially, suicide was never proved, either by the Coroner or Lord Hutton, as required by law. 

Whether or not the intelligence was sexed up (itself a serious enough matter) was, as it turned  out, viewed as a side issue.  It was completely missed by the mainstream media that Lord Hutton, who seemingly assumed suicide from the outset, thereby undermining due process, laid himself open to charges of cover-up, by himself “sexing up” his own findings on the cause of Dr David Kelly’s death. 

But, a cover-up of what?  What was so important to hide that such an elaborate cover-up, if that is what it was, was deemed necessary, given the huge inherent risks? 

A response to Lord Hutton’s letter to The Times was hurriedly drafted and submitted to The Times by three distinguished doctors.  However, The Times refused to publish the letter, and declined to give a reason.

We bring to the attention of our readers the text of the letter which the Times refused to publish.

It is important to note that two of the authors of this letter, Drs. C. Stephen Frost and David Halpin (together with Dr Searle Sennett) succeeded in breaking the mainstream media silence on the possibility that Dr David Kelly did not commit suicide, by having a letter published in The Guardian on 27 January 2004 (see link in Annex), the eve of publication of the Hutton Report. 

The letter directly led to the splash headline “Was Dr Kelly Murdered?” in The Evening Standard later the same day, though the doctors had not suggested that. 

Later that evening, despite unprecedentd security to prevent such a leak, the Hutton Report was duly leaked to the Sun.  

Thus, instead of The Evening Standard headline becoming the main story in the mainstream media the next day (the very day on which the Hutton Report was published), the leak to The Sun became the main story. 

Lord Hutton and Tony Blair were said to be incensed by the leak, and an inquiry was immediately ordered to identify the source of the leak. 

Some months later, that inquiry’s report was quietly published and was hardly noticed; it said that it had not been possible to establish the source of the leak.  

Not surprisingly, many suspect that the source of the leak was none other than 10 Downing Street itself.  

The original three doctors were subsequently joined by other doctors, and lawyers, and, as a result, five more letters appeared in The Guardian in 2004, and one in The New Statesman (2 May 2005), just prior to the 2005 General Election.  

Below is the Response to Lord Hutton, by Drs. Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox and David Halpin

The original November 3 letter by Lord Hutton to the Times is reprinted in Annex, together with links (in chronological order) to the texts of the letters of Dr. Frost et al. published in The Guardian and The New Statesman. 

We remain indebted to Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox and David Halpin for having revealed the truth regarding Dr. David Kelly. 

Dr. David Kelly’s Legacy will Live.

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 28 November 2008, March 19, 2023

 

Response to Lord Hutton 

by

Drs. Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox and David Halpin

 

Dear Sir

Lord Hutton presided over an inquiry which sought to apportion blame between the BBC and the Government for the “suicide” of Dr David Kelly when no “verdict” of suicide had been (and still has not been) reached.  His report was widely labelled a “whitewash”, because he was perceived to apportion that blame unfairly (given the evidence he had heard), all but exonerating the Government, and placing the blame almost entirely on the BBC.  Now, in his letter published in the Times (3 November 2006), he seemingly seeks to defend his report by setting out his case re the minutiae of the “45 minute claim”.

Lord Hutton misses the essential point. What is more, it appears that he was used by the Government to subvert due process in establishing precisely how Dr Kelly died.

We and several other medical colleagues (and lawyers) attempted in a series of six letters published in The Guardian and one in the New Statesman to inform the public, and the mainstream press, that all doctors learn at medical school that, in order to return a “verdict” of “suicide”, a coroner must prove suicide beyond reasonable doubt (a very high level of proof), including  “intent” to commit suicide, also beyond reasonable doubt. If the Coroner cannot achieve the necessary level of proof, he is required by law to return an “open verdict”, assuming that “foul play” has at the outset been excluded in the proper manner.  Unfortunately, there is some doubt as to whether “foul play” was properly excluded in the case of Dr Kelly.

However, disregarding any such failure in such a high-profile death, it is important to understand that the public was invited to believe that Dr Kelly’s death would be better investigated at the Hutton Inquiry than at a coroner’s inquest, when the exact opposite was the case.

Lord Hutton possessed none of the powers normally available to the Coroner.  He could not (and did not) hear evidence under oath, he could not subpoena witnesses, he could not aggressively cross-examine witnesses, and he could not call a jury.  Not enough with that, his inquiry was an “ad hoc” inquiry, not a public inquiry (as the public and the press were led to believe) subject to the provisions of the Public Inquiries Act !921 (itself quietly repealed last year and replaced by the Inquiries Act 2005).  Lord Hutton was invited (and consented) by Lord Falconer (the Lord Chancellor and the Minister for Constitutional Affairs) to conduct an inquiry on the very day that Dr Kelly’s body was allegedly found.

Later, Lord Falconer, used his powers as Lord Chancellor to invoke Section 17a of the 1988 Coroners’ Act and order the Oxfordshire Coroner, Mr Nicholas Gardiner, to “adjourn indefinitely” his inquest.

But, Section 17a had become law on 1 January 2000, largely, it is believed, at the instigation of Lord Falconer.  Its purpose was allegedly to obviate duplication of inquiry following multiple death scenarios (eg train disasters), when the cause of death could to some extent be assumed.  But, Dr Kelly’s death was a solitary death.

In addition, Lord Hutton’s remit and powers (since it was an “ad hoc” inquiry) were determined by Lord Falconer.  Lord Hutton’s remit was extremely narrow (and Lord Hutton seemingly sought to narrow it further), and his powers were very limited, so limited in fact that Lord Hutton could not prove anything, let alone “suicide”.

After all, Lord Hutton was directed by Lord Falconer to do no more than “inquire into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly”, and it appears that establishing the cause of Dr Kelly’s death was not viewed as a priority.  But, the cause of the death should have been THE priority in an inquiry which eventually purported to obviate the need for a full inquest.

Despite all this, the Coroner, Mr Nicholas Gardiner, on 16 March 2004, thought fit to conclude that there was no “exceptional reason” for him to re-open the Inquest, and even deferred to Lord Falconer by saying that he (Lord Falconer) was happy with the findings of Lord Hutton, and then went on to say  “and so am I”.

Given the obvious “insuffiency of inquiry” re the cause of Kelly’s death over which Lord Hutton presided, he (the Coroner) should not have been sharing in Lord Falconer’s happiness.  In addition,  the Coroner was surely extremely unwise to talk to the Mail on Sunday some weeks before his final hearing in March 2004, saying that he wished to achieve “closure” at his coming hearing, and hinting at that stage that he could see no “exceptional reason” to re-open the Inquest.

Apparently, it is unprecedented for judges to discuss publicly their findings, as Lord Hutton has done, not once, but twice.  But, then, it is unprecedented for the Government to lead the public to believe that a “verdict” of suicide has been reached, and the Inquest “closed”, when no such verdict could be reached, and for that reason the Inquest could not be closed.

Dr David Kelly is the first British citizen to be denied an inquest in such circumstances.  Given the clear “insufficiency of inquiry”, regarding the cause of death over which Lord Hutton presided, the Coroner should have re-opened the Inquest.

There are unconfirmed reports that he (the Coroner) now regrets that he did not do so.  It is our view that if the Coroner is not able at this late stage to reverse his decision, a fresh inquest should be ordered.

 

Yours faithfully

C Stephen Frost,
BSc MB ChB Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology (Stockholm, Sweden)

[email protected]

 
Christopher Burns-Cox,
MD FRCP
 
David Halpin,
FRCS

---

ANNEX:

Text of Lord Hutton’s Letter to The Times

Sexed-up means just what it says and no more

From Lord Hutton

The Times, London, 3 November 2006

Sir,

Your summary (report, Nov 1) of my report into the death of Dr David Kelly was too brief to give an entirely accurate description of my finding in respect of the alleged “sexing up” of the September 2002 dossier.

On May 29, 2003, Mr Andrew Gilligan, the BBC defence correspondent, reported (inter alia) on the Today programme the allegation that “the Government probably knew that that 45 figure was wrong, even before it decided to put it in…Downing Street, our source says, a week before publication ordered it to be sexed up, to be made more exciting and more facts to be discovered”.

He went on to say: “Our source says that the dossier, as it was finally published, made the intelligence services unhappy because, to quote the source, he said there was basically unhappiness because it didn’t reflect the considered view they were putting forward”.

In the evidence to my inquiry the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service and four other members of the Joint Intelligence Committee stated that the dossier was issued with the full approval of that committee. There was no evidence that the very senior figures in British Intelligence who gave evidence to the inquiry had taken part in a conspiracy with the government to mislead the country by inserting intelligence in the dossier which was known or believed to be wrong. Therefore, I found that the allegation reported by the BBC that “the Government probably knew that the 45 figure was wrong even before it decided to put it in” was unfounded.

In paragraph 220 of the report I stated: “The term ‘sexed-up’ is a slang expression, the meaning of which lacks clarity in the context of a discussion of the dossier. It is capable of two different meanings. It could mean that the dossier was embellished with items of intelligence known or believed to be or unreliable to make the case against Saddam Hussein stronger, or it could mean that while the intelligence contained in the dossier was believed to be reliable, the dossier was drafted in such a way as to make the case against Saddam Hussein as strong as the intelligence contained in it permitted. If the term is used in this latter sense then, because of the drafting suggestions made by 10 Downing Street for the purpose of making a strong case against Saddam Hussein, it could be said that the Government ‘sexed-up’ the dossier. However, having regard to the other allegations contained in Mr Gilligan’s broadcasts of May 29 I consider that those who heard the broadcasts would have understood the allegation of ‘sexing-up’ to be used in the first sense which I have described, namely that the Government ordered that the dossier be embellished with false or unreliable items of intelligence…Therefore, in the context of Mr Gilligan’s broadcasts, I consider that the allegation that the Government ordered the dossier to be ‘sexed-up’ was unfounded.”

Brian Hutton

House of Lords

---

Links to Letters by Drs. C Stephen Frost, Christopher Burns-Cox,  David Halpin and Searle Sennett, et al.
in The Guardian and The New Statesman:

Our doubts about Dr Kelly’s suicide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1131833,00.html

Medical evidence does not support suicide by Kelly
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,13747,1146232,00.html

Questions still unanswered over Dr Kelly’s death
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,,1151352,00.html

Reopen the inquest into Kelly’s death
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,,1169514,00.html

New doubts over Kelly
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,,1314212,00.html

Questions over Kelly
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,,1378539,00.html

Due process and the Kelly inquest
http://www.newstatesman.com/200505020027

 

 

This important article was first published by Global Research in February 2019.

Disclosure about 5G — and its considerable risk for humanity — is occurring within the United Nations. This is thanks to longtime UN staff member and whistle-blower Claire Edwards, who recently contacted me with this powerful story which touches all of humanity and our shared future. Watch the interview above, or on YouTube here or on Facebook here. – Josh del Sol Beaulieu

***

The first eight months of WWII with no fighting was called The Phoney War. Using millimetre waves as a fifth-generation or 5G wireless communications technology is a phoney war of another kind.

This phoney war is also silent, but this time shots are being fired – in the form of laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from banks of thousands of tiny antennas^[1] – and almost no one in the firing line knows that they are being silently, seriously and irreparably injured.

In the first instance, 5G is likely to make people electro-hypersensitive (EHS).^[2] Perhaps it was sitting in front of two big computer screens for many of the 18 years I worked at the UN that made me EHS. When the UN Office at Vienna installed powerful WiFi and cellphone access points – designed to serve large, public areas – in narrow, metal-walled corridors throughout the Vienna International Centre in December 2015, I was ill continuously for seven months.

I did my best for two and a half years to alert the UN staff union, administration and medical service to the danger to the health of UN staff of EMR from these access points, but was ignored. That’s why, in May 2018, I took the issue to the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres[transcript]. He is a physicist and electrical engineer and lectured on telecommunications signals early in his career, yet asserted that he knew nothing about this. He undertook to ask the World Health Organization to look into it, but seven months later those public access points remain in place. I received no replies to my many follow-up emails.

As a result, I welcomed the opportunity to join the effort to publish an International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space because it was clear to me that, despite there having been 43 earlier scientific appeals, very few people understood the dangers of EMR. My experience as an editor could help ensure that a new 5G appeal, including the issue of beaming 5G from space, was clear, comprehensive, explanatory, and accessible to the non-scientist. The International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space is fully referenced, citing over a hundred scientific papers among the tens of thousands on the biological effects of EMR published over the last 80 years.^[3]

Having spent years editing UN documents dealing with space, I know that outer space is hotly contested geopolitically and any untoward event involving a military satellite risks triggering a catastrophic response.^[4] Space law is so inadequate – just one example is the complexity of space liability law^[5],[6] – that we could really call the Earth orbits a new Wild West. China caused international consternation in 2007 when it demonstrated an anti-satellite weapon by destroying its own satellite. Space debris is the main concern among space-faring nations, with a so-called Kessler syndrome positing a cascade of space debris that could make the Earth orbits unusable for a thousand years.^[7] Does launching 20,000+ commercial 5G satellites in such circumstances sound rational to you?

I live in Vienna, Austria, where the 5G rollout is suddenly upon us. Within the last five weeks, pre-5G has been officially announced at Vienna airport and 5G at the Rathausplatz, the main square in Vienna, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors to its Christmas market each December and skating rink each January, which are special treats for children. Along with birds and insects, children are the most vulnerable to 5G depredation because of their little bodies.^[8]

Friends and acquaintances and their children in Vienna are already reporting the classic symptoms of EMR poisoning:^[9] nosebleeds, headaches, eye pains, chest pains, nausea, fatigue, vomiting, tinnitus, dizziness, flu-like symptoms, and cardiac pain. They also report a tight band around the head; pressure on the top of the head; short, stabbing pains around the body; and buzzing internal organs. Other biological effects such as tumours and dementia usually take longer to manifest, but in the case of 5G, which has never been tested for health or safety, who knows?^[10]

Seemingly overnight a forest of 5G infrastructure has sprouted in Austria. In the space of three weeks one friend has gone from robust health to fleeing this country, where she has lived for 30 years. Each person experiences EMR differently. For her, it was extreme torture so she and I spent her last two nights in Austria sleeping in the woods. Interestingly, as she drove across southern Germany, she suffered torture even worse than in Austria, while in northern Germany she had no symptoms at all and felt completely normal, which suggests that there has been as yet no 5G rollout there.

There are no legal limits on exposure to EMR. Conveniently for the telecommunications industry, there are only non-legally enforceable guidelines such as those produced by the grandly named International Commission on Non-Ionising Radiation Protection, which turns out to be like the Wizard of Oz, just a tiny little NGO in Germany that appoints its own members, none of whom is a medical doctor or environmental expert.^[11]

Like the Wizard of Oz, ICNIRP seems to have magical powers. Its prestidigitation makes non-thermal (non-heating) effects of EMR exposure disappear into thin air, for taking into account the tens of thousands of research studies demonstrating the biological effects of EMR would invalidate its so-called safety guidelines.^[12] It has bewitched the International Telecommunication Union, part of the UN family, into recognizing these guidelines.^[13] And one little email sent to ICNIRP in October 2018 to submit Professor Martin Pall’s comments on ICNIRP’s new draft guidelines conjured up an immediate explosion of interest in the sender’s online presence – which had hitherto attracted none – from companies and individuals worldwide, one country’s immigration authorities, the office of the Austrian Chancellor (head of government), a firm of lawyers in Vienna and even Interpol!^[14],[15]

I hope that people read and share our Stop 5G Space Appeal to wake up themselves and others quickly and use it to take action themselves to stop 5G. Even eight short months of this 5G Phoney War could spell catastrophe for all life on Earth. Elon Musk is set to launch the first 4,425 5G satellites in June 2019 and “blanket” the Earth with 5G, in breach of countless international treaties. This could initiate the last great extinction, courtesy of the multi-trillion-US-dollar 5G, the biggest biological experiment and most heinous manifestation of hubris and greed in human history.10

People’s first reaction to the idea that 5G may be an existential threat to all life on Earth is usually disbelief and/or cognitive dissonance. Once they examine the facts, however, their second reaction is often terror. We need to transcend this in order to see 5G as an opportunity to empower ourselves, take responsibility and take action. We may have already lost 80 per cent of our insects to EMR in the last 20 years.^[16] Our trees risk being cut down by the millions in order to ensure continuous 5G signalling for self-driving cars, buses and trains.^[17] Are we going to stand by and see ourselves and our children irradiated, our food systems decimated, our natural surroundings destroyed?

Our newspapers are now casually popularizing the meme that human extinction would be a good thing,^[18],[19] but when the question becomes not rhetorical but real, when it’s your life, your child, your community, your environment that is under immediate threat, can you really subscribe to such a suggestion? If you don’t, please sign the Stop 5G Appeal and get active in contacting everyone you can think of who has the power to stop 5G, especially Elon Musk^[20] and the CEOs of all the other companies planning to launch 5G satellites, starting in just 20 weeks from now. Life on Earth needs your help now.

The transcript of my exchange with the UN Secretary-General of 14 May 2018 follows.

Staff member:Mr. Secretary-General

UN staff have repeatedly been told that they are the most important resource of this Organization.

Since December 2015, the staff here at the Vienna International Centre have been exposed to off-the-scale electromagnetic radiation from WiFi and mobile phone boosters installed on very low ceilings throughout the buildings. Current public exposure levels are at least one quintillion times (that’s 18 zeros) above natural background radiation according to Professor Olle Johansson of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

The highly dangerous biological effects of EMFs have been documented by thousands of studies since 1932 indicating that we may be facing a global health catastrophe orders of magnitude worse than those caused by tobacco and asbestos.

Mr. Secretary-General, on the basis of the Precautionary Principle, I urge you to have these EMF-emitting devices removed immediately and to call a halt to any rollout of 5G at UN duty stations, because it is designed to deliver concentrated and focused electromagnetic radiation in excess of 100 times current levels in the same way as do directed energy weapons.

In line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, to “Protect, Respect and Remedy”, 5G technologies MUST be subjected to an independent health and safety assessment before they are launched anywhere in the world.

There is currently an international appeal (https://www.emfscientist.org/index. php/emf-scientist-appeal) signed by 237 EMF scientists from 41 nations urging the UN and particularly the WHO to exert strong leadership in fostering the development of more protective EMF guidelines, encouraging precautionary measures, and educating the public about health risks, particularly risk to children and fetal development.

Mr. Secretary-General, we have a unique opportunity here at the UN Office at Vienna. Since our medical records are digitized, you have the possibility of releasing data on a closed population exposed to off-the-scale levels of electromagnetic radiation to establish if there have already been abnormal health consequences for the UN staff here in the last 28 months.

I urge you to do so and stop any 5G rollout in these buildings immediately.

Thank you.

UN Secretary-General:Sorry, because you are talking to someone who is a little bit ignorant on these things. You’re talking about the WiFi systems?

Staff member:On the ceilings of these buildings, WiFi boosters and cell phone boosters were installed without consultation, without information to staff in December 2015. Now, if you understand electromagnetic radiation, the signal is – if you cannot get a signal from your mobile phone, the signal goes to maximum strength and that then bounces off metal walls affecting the body multiple times at maximum exposure levels. So the situation here is extremely dangerous. I have heard anecdotally of many people who have had health problems. I don’t know if they are related but the Precautionary Principle would dictate that we use our medical records to look into this and that we remove these dangerous devices immediately. Thank you.

UN Secretary-General:Well, I’m worried because I put those devices in my house. [Laughter & applause]

Staff member:Not a good idea!

UN Secretary-General: This I will have to – I confess my ignorance on this but I’m going to raise this with WHO [World Health Organization] – which I think is the organization that might be able to deal with it properly for them to put someone – their staff or organizations to work on that because I must confess I was not aware of that danger – [humorously] to the extent that I put those things in the rooms of my house – in the ceiling.

Staff member:I would suggest that everybody start looking into this issue and particularly into 5G, which 237 scientists from 41 countries consider a threat that is far worse than the tobacco and asbestos threats of the past.

UN Secretary-General:Well, maybe I have learned something completely new. I hope it will be very useful to me but I confess it is the first time I hear about it.

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This article was originally published on Take Back Your Power.

Claire Edwards, BA Hons, MA, worked for the United Nations as Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017. Claire warned the Secretary-General about the dangers of 5G during a meeting with UN staff in May 2018, calling for a halt to its rollout at UN duty stations.  She part-authored, designed, administered the 30 language versions, and edited the entirety of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org) and vigorously campaigned to promote it throughout 2019. In January 2020, she severed connection with the Appeal when its administrator, Arthur Firstenberg, joined forces with a third-party group, stop5ginternational, which brought itself into disrepute at its foundation by associating with the Club of Rome/Club of Budapest eugenicist movement. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Delos, Peter. “The Way to a New Phased Array Radar Architecture.” TechTime: Electronics & Technology News. January 15, 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://techtime.news/2018/01/ 15/analog-devices-phased-array-radar/. “Although there is a lot of discussion of massive MIMO and automotive radar, it should not be forgotten that most of the recent radar development and beamforming R&D has been in the defense industry, and it is now being adapted for commercial applications. While phased array and beamforming moved from R&D efforts to reality in the 2000s, a new wave of defense focused arrays are now expected, enabled by industrial technology offering solutions that were previously cost prohibitive.”

[2] “Electrosensitive Testimonials.” We Are The Evidence. 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. http://wearetheevidence.org/adults-who-developed-electro-sensitivity/. “WATE intends to expose the suppressed epidemic of sickness, suffering and human rights crisis created by wireless technology radiation; elevate the voice of those injured; defend and secure their rights and compel society and governments to take corrective actions and inform the public of the harm.”

[3] Glaser, Lt. Z. “Cumulated Index to the Bibliography of Reported Biological Phenomena (‘effects’) and Clinical Manifestations Attributed to Microwave and Radio-frequency Radiation: Report, Supplements (no. 1-9).” BEMS Newsletter B-1 through B-464 (1984). Accessed January 1, 2019. http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Zory-Glasers-index.pdf. Lt. Zorach Glaser, PhD, catalogued 5,083 studies, books and conference reports for the US Navy through 1981.

[4] “Space Sustainability: A Practical Guide.” Secure World Foundation, 2014, 21. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://swfound.org/media/206289/swf_space_sustainability-a_practical_guide_2018__1.pdf.

“However, as more countries integrate space into their national military capabilities and rely on space-based information for national security, there is an increased chance that any interference (either actual or perceived) with satellites could spark or escalate tensions and conflict in space or on Earth. This is made all the more difficult by the challenge of determining the exact cause of a satellite malfunction: whether it was due to a space weather event, impact by space debris, unintentional interference, or deliberate act of aggression.”

[5] “Space Law: Liability for Space Debris.” Panish, Shea & Boyle LLP. 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.aviationdisasterlaw.com/liability-for-space-debris/. “Filing a lawsuit against SpaceX for space debris is a little different than one against the commercial industry or state-sponsored launch. Since SpaceX is a private company, injured parties can file claims directly against the establishment in accord with the state’s personal injury laws. For the claim to be successful, the plaintiff will have to prove that SpaceX was negligent in some way that caused the space debris collision. Space law is notoriously complex, making it very difficult for injured parties to recover for [sic] their damages in California.”

[6] Von Der Dunk, Frans G. “Liability versus Responsibility in Space Law: Misconception or Misconstruction?” University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Law: Space, Cyber, and Telecommunications Law Program Faculty Publications 21 (1992). Accessed January 1, 2019. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/spacelaw/21/?utm_source=digitalcommons.unl.edu/spacelaw/21&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages.

[7] Kessler, D. J., P. M. Landry, B. G. Cour-Palais, and R. E. Taylor. “Aerospace: Collision Avoidance in Space: Proliferating Payloads and Space Debris Prompt Action to Prevent Accidents.” IEEE Spectrum 17, no. 6 (1980): 37-41.

[8] Morgan, L. Lloyd, Santosh Kesari, and Devra Lee Davis. “Why Children Absorb More Microwave Radiation than Adults: The Consequences.” Journal of Microscopy and Ultrastructure 2, no. 4 (December 2014): 197-204. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.sciencedirect.com/ science/article/pii/S2213879X14000583. Highlights: (1) Children absorb more microwave radiation (MWR) than adults. (2) MWR is a Class 2B (possible) carcinogen. (3) The fetus is in greater danger than children from exposure to MWR. (4) The legal exposure limits have remained unchanged for decades. (5) Cellphone manuals warnings and the 20 cm rule for tablets/laptops violate the “normal operating position” regulation.

[9] Electro Hypersensitivity: Talking to Your Doctor. PDF. Canadian Initiative to Stop Wireless, Electric, and Electromagnetic Pollution. http://weepinitiative.org/talkingtoyourdoctor.pdf.

[10] FCC Chairman on 5G: “We won’t study it, regulate it, have standards for it.” Youtube. June 20, 2016. Accessed January 1, 2019. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bwgwe01SIMc. Notes in video: Ultra-high frequency radiation (24 to 100 GHz or more); aimed and amplified signals; massive deployment of towers; worth billions; no standards, no testing; sharing with satellite and military operations; all areas (including rural areas) to be saturated with radiation; all local deployments to be fast-tracked; everything to be microchipped.

[11] Dariusz Leszczynski, PhD. “Is ICNIRP Reliable Enough to Dictate Meaning of Science to the Governmental Risk Regulators?” Between a Rock and a Hard Place (blog), April 8, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://betweenrockandhardplace.wordpress.com/type/gallery/. “The major problems of ICNIRP are: (1) it is a “private club” where members elect new members without need to justify selection; (2) lack of accountability before anyone; (3) lack of transparency of their activities; (4) complete lack of supervision of its activities; (5) skewed science evaluation because of the close similarity of the opinions of all members of the Main Commission and all of the other scientists selected as advisors to the Main Commission.”

[12] Matthes, Rüdiger. “EMF Safety Guidelines: The ICNIRP View.” International Telecommunications Union Workshop on Human Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields, May 9, 2013. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/climatechange/emf-1305/Documents/Presentations/s2part1p1-Rued igerMatthes.pdf.

[13] ITU Telecommunication Development Sector Study Group 2: Session on Modern Policies, Guidelines, Regulations and Assessments of Human Exposure to RF-EMF. Session 1: Recent Activities on Human Exposure to RF-EMF in ITU and ICNIRP, Geneva, Switzerland. October 10, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019. www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Study-Groups/2018-2021/Pages/ meetings/session-Q7-2-oct18.aspx. “Session 1 will discuss some of the recent activities held in ITU and describe the latest updates to the ICNIRP (International Commission on Non‐Ionizing Radiation Protection) guidelines.”

[14] Martin L. Pall, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences, Washington State University. Response to 2018 ICNIRP Draft Guidelines and Appendices on Limiting Exposure to Time-Varying Electric, Magnetic and Electromagnetic Fields (100 KHz to 300 GHz). October 8, 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019. www.5gexposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/FINAL-Martin-L-Pall-Response-to-2018-Draft-Guidelines-8.10.18.pdf.

[15] Cooperation Agreement Between The International Criminal Police Organization Interpol and The International Telecommunication Union. Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-18) Dubai 29 October–16 November 2018. Accessed January 2, 2019. https://www.itu.int/dms_pub/itu-s/md/18/pp/c/S18-PP-C-0047!!MSW-E.docx. “2. In implementing the Agreement, each Party shall act within their respective areas of competence. More specifically, the implementation of the Agreement by ITU shall not exceed beyond its mandate pertaining to building confidence and security in the use of ICTs, in accordance to Plenipotentiary Conference Resolution 130 (Rev. Busan, 2014) and to its role on child online protection in accordance to Plenipotentiary Conference Resolution 179 (Rev. Busan, 2014), whereas the implementation of the Agreement by INTERPOL shall not exceed its mandate as defined by article 2 of its Constitution which include activities pertaining to cybercrime and online child exploitation”. (emphasis added)

[16] Hallmann C.A., M. Sorg and E. Jongejans. “More than 75 per cent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas.” PLOS One 12, no. 10 (2017): e0185809. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809&type=printable. Accessed January 1, 2019.

[17] Laville, Sandra. “Millions of Trees at Risk in Secretive Network Rail Felling Programme.” The Guardian, April 29, 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/ apr/29/millions-of-trees-at-risk-in-secretive-network-rail-felling-programme.

[18] May, Todd. “Would Human Extinction Be a Tragedy?” The New York Times, December 17, 2018. Accessed January 1, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/opinion/human-extinction-climate-change.html.

[19] Davis, Nicola. “Falling total fertility rate should be welcomed, population expert says: figures showing declining birth rates are ‘cause for celebration’, not alarm.” The Guardian, December 26, 2018. Accessed January 3, 2019. www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/26/falling-total-fertility-rate-should-be-welcomed-population-expert-says.

[20] “Planet Earth: Worldwide 5G Radiation from Orbit?” Letter from Claus Scheingraber, Roland Wolff and others to Elon Musk. June 18, 2018. Brunnthal, Germany. “… We are sure that your satellite project is already at an advanced stage. But even if much money has been invested, one should consider that it is only a matter of time until the fact of damaging health potential of mobile communications – and especially of 5G-mobile communication – can no longer we overlooked. Therefore we emphatically recommend not to implement the satellite project.” (Letter in German) (Letter in English)

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***

First published on September 17, 2021

Personal carbon allowances are being advanced in alignment with the goals of Agenda 2030, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)and the manmade climate change hoax. I have written about this hoax before in articles such as Good Hearts, Fooled Minds: Top 4 Fallacies of the Hijacked Environmental Movement where I have pointed out that humanity is indeed polluting the planet, but that such pollution has absolutely nothing to do with carbon dioxide or CO2, which is a gas of life. Since Operation Coronavirus is a natural outgrowth of the New World Order (NWO) agenda in general, it is to be expected that its pattern of deception would mimic other scams and hoaxes promoted by the cabal. There are many examples of this, but are 2 quick ones: check out the similarities between COVID and 9/11 (the 20th anniversary of which just recently passed), and between COVID and the manmade climate change scam. This article will explore the latter, especially the specific area of personal carbon allowances.

The Technocratic Idea of Carbon Credits

The idea of personal carbon allowances and carbon credits has been around a long time, and has its roots in technocracy, which can be defined as “a government or social system controlled by technicians, especially scientists and technical experts.”

The technocrats want to set up a system where the energy unit of society is under their control, and thus all people, naturally dependent upon energy, would also come under their control. In a way, we have such a system now, where money is energy and that form of energy is under the control of private central banks. But carbon credits take the idea way, way further. Imagine a world where everything people did – eat, drink, travel, use appliances, use electricity in any way, even breathe – was all tied to their personal carbon allowances. And imagine if all carbon credits were controlled and distributed by technocrats. Any dissident could then easily be cut out of the system at the flick of a switch, with devastating real life consequences.

Study Concludes Personal Carbon Allowances Could be Trialled in Climate-Conscious Nations

A study in Nature entitled Personal carbon allowances revisited, published August 16th 2021, analyzes how person carbon allowances could be used to achieve climate goals. To those familiar with the NWO agenda, ‘climate goals’ is an Orwellian term which basically translates to the creation of an artificial limit to human energy consumption (to fulfill the technocratic objective) and the creation of propaganda to make people think they are somehow saving the planet or helping the environment by going along with it. Here are a few quotes from the study:

“Here we discuss how personal carbon allowances (PCAs) could play a role in achieving ambitious climate mitigation targets. We argue that recent advances in AI for sustainable development, together with the need for a low-carbon recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, open a new window of opportunity for PCAs. Furthermore, we present design principles based on the Sustainable Development Goals for the future adoption of PCAs. We conclude that PCAs could be trialled in selected climate-conscious technologically advanced countries, mindful of potential issues around integration into the current policy mix, privacy concerns and distributional impacts.”

This is designed to dictate every little detail of your life:

“the allowance could cover around 40% of energy-related carbon emissions in high-income countries, encompassing individuals’ carbon emissions relating to travel, space heating, water heating and electricity. Allowances were envisioned to be deducted from the personal budget with every payment for transport fuel, home-heating fuels and electricity bills. People in shortage would be able to purchase additional units in the personal carbon market from those with excess to sell. New, more ambitious PCA proposals include economy-wide emissions, encompassing food, services and consumption-related carbon emissions, for example.”

This next quote lets the cat out of the bag. The whole point is that personal carbon allowances are about behavioral modification or behavioral change. This entire scheme is a psychological operationdesigned to change your actions. They want you to perform carbon budgeting which would mean, essentially, becoming OCD about your every act! There is yet another parallel with COVID, which has been encouraging people to be OCD about touching any surface or having human interaction:

“Building on this literature, PCAs are envisaged to deliver carbon-emissions-related behavioural change via three interlinked mechanisms: economic, cognitive and social. Similar to a carbon tax, a policy with which it is often compared, the economic mechanism of PCAs is envisaged to influence decision-making by assigning a visible carbon price to the purchase and use of fossil-fuel-based energy in the first instance, and possibly also to consumption-related emissions in more advanced PCA designs. However, in addition to the economic mechanism, PCAs aim to influence energy and consumption behaviour by increasing carbon visibility, by evoking users’ cognitive awareness of carbon in their daily routines and by encouraging carbon budgeting. Moreover, the shared goal of emissions reduction and the equal-per-capita allocation of PCAs is envisaged to create a social norm of low-carbon behaviour.”

It Worked for COVID, So Why Can’t It Work for Climate Change?

Here is same theme yet again, which goes something like this: it worked for COVID, so why can’t it work for climate change? If the NWO controllers can trick people and propagate mass fear over a bogus virus that has never been proven to exist, why not try the same thing over an imaginary impending carbon apocalypse?

“In particular, during the COVID-19 pandemic, restrictions on individuals for the sake of public health, and forms of individual accountability and responsibility that were unthinkable only one year before, have been adopted by millions of people. People may be more prepared to accept the tracking and limitations related to PCAs to achieve a safer climate and the many other benefits (for example, reduced air pollution and improved public health) associated with addressing the climate crisis. Other lessons that could be drawn relate to the public acceptance in some countries of additional surveillance and control in exchange for greater safety. For instance, in many countries, mobile apps designed for COVID-19 infection tracking and tracing played an important part in limiting the spread of the pandemic. The deployment and testing of such apps provide technology advances and insights for the design of future apps for tracking personal emissions.”

Introducing AI into the Decision-Making Process

Remember the creepy Google video The Selfish Ledger (my analysis here) which outlined a dystopian future where decision-making was surrendered to AI (Artificial Intelligence) in the ultimate act of social engineering? That’s also promoted right here:

“Finally, advances in digitalization and AI for sustainable development promise to shrink implementation costs and logistical challenges for PCAs … An ever-increasing number of decision-making tasks are being delegated to software systems, allowing the presentation of targeted personalized information to future users on their emissions patterns. The latest science on AI for learning, including the use of virtual agents, could help refine the type of information that users are shown to manage and reduce their carbon emissions. To the user, all of the above could be packaged in an easy-to-use smartphone app that presents tailored information and advice on personal carbon emissions and facilitates carbon savings.”

Personal Carbon Allowances: Final Thoughts

Some scams and hoaxes need an injection of new variants to keep the official fear narrative alive. We now have ISIS-K (sounds like a cereal) and the dreaded Delta variant and Mu variant. At some point, after all the new variants, vaccines, boosters and whatever else, the NWO controllers may find it is too difficult to keep up the pretense that there’s an imminent threat. They may then pivot to the decades-old concocted climate change threat and push for personal carbon allowances, riding on the back of COVID or other propaganda. The details of the scam du jour may change, but the patterns of manipulation remain the same. We must remember that the war on carbon is a war on life, since we are carbon-based creatures living in a world of carbon-based life. The dodgy or rather non-existent science behind the official COVID narrative is the same non-existent science behind the manmade climate change narrative. Don’t give up your freedom and rights or sell yourself short by confining your behavior to a carbon scheme that purports to save the environment when it does nothing of the sort.

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Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles, author of the book Cancer: The Lies, the Truth and the Solutions and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and Odysee/LBRY.

Sources

https://thefreedomarticles.com/hijacked-environmental-movement/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/9-11-covid-similarities-16-glaring-parallels/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/eerie-similarities-between-coronavirus-and-climate-change-hoaxes/

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00756-w

https://thefreedomarticles.com/10-reasons-sars-cov-2-imaginary-digital-theoretical-virus/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/selfish-ledger-google-social-engineering/

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

MARZO 2003 – Vent’anni fa, il 20 marzo 2003, gli USA e la Coalizione sotto loro comando attaccavano e invadevano l’Iraq, accusato di possedere armi di distruzione di massa in base a “prove” poi risultate false. Lo stesso Segretario di Stato Colin Powell, che le aveva presentate al Consiglio di Sicurezza dell’ONU, sarà costretto anni dopo a definire il suo discorso del 2003 all’ONU una “macchia” sul suo curriculum. Il 20 marzo il presidente George Bush annunciava:

“Su mio ordine, le forze della coalizione hanno iniziato a colpire per minare la capacità di Saddam Hussein di condurre una guerra. Più di 35 Paesi stanno fornendo un supporto cruciale, fino al dispiegamento di unità da combattimento. Ogni nazione che fa parte di questa coalizione ha scelto di assumersi il dovere e condividere l’onore di servire la nostra difesa comune”.

Della coalizione sotto comando USA facevano parte 30.000 soldati italiani. Iniziava così la guerra che avrebbe ucciso oltre un milione di iracheni e sarebbe costata agli USA, insieme alla guerra iniziata in Afghanistan nel 2001, oltre 14.000 miliardi di dollari. Il fine strategico degli USA era quello di controllare non solo l’Iraq, ma l’intero Medio Oriente.

MARZO 2023 – “L’accordo tra Iran e Arabia Saudita mediato dalla Cina disegna un nuovo Medio Oriente”, scrive il Wall Street Journal, mentre il New York Times scrive:

“L’accordo tra i rivali regionali evidenzia la crescente importanza economica e politica della Cina in Medio Oriente e il declino dell’influenza americana”.

Incapaci di impedire il “declino” con strumenti politici ed economici, gli USA e i loro alleati ricorrono sempre più a quelli militari. In tale quadro rientra il “fondamentale accordo con Australia e Gran Bretagna”, annunciato dal presidente Biden. Esso prevede la costruzione di una nuova flotta di sottomarini da attacco nucleare realizzata da Stati Uniti, Gran Bretagna e Australia. In tal modo l’Australia diventerà di fatto la decima potenza nucleare con il compito di tenere sotto tiro la Cina. La nuova flotta da attacco nucleare opererà non solo nel Mar Cinese Meridionale e nel Pacifico, ma anche nell’Atlantico contro la Russia.

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO :

 

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First published on May 12, 2021

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There are many conspiracy theories – some believe that reptilians are running the US government and others believe that Coca-Cola uses the blood of Christian babies to produce its soft drinks. There are people who have seen “chemtrails” and others who advocate wearing tinfoil hats when watching television to protect from destructive brainwashing waves. Often, the prophecies of Scripture are interpreted as a commentary on some technological discovery or event. But there are also rational facts that it doesn’t make sense to deny because they are documented. These include the existence of the Bilderberg club, the CIA’s MK-Ultra project, and George Soros’ funding of dubious political activities in a number of countries.

The case described below relates to an officially documented fact, although there is something rather biblical about it. Patent WO/2020/060606 was registered on 26 March 2020.

The patent application was filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC, headed by Bill Gates, back on 20 June 2019, and, on 22 April 2020, the patent was granted international status.

The title of the patent is

“Cryptocurrency system using body activity data”.

So, what is this invention that the people at Microsoft decided to patent? The abstract of the patent application online states:

“Human body activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. A server may provide a task to a device of a user which is communicatively coupled to the server. A sensor communicatively coupled to or comprised in the device of the user may sense body activity of the user. Body activity data may be generated based on the sensed body activity of the user. The cryptocurrency system communicatively coupled to the device of the user may verify if the body activity data satisfies one or more conditions set by the cryptocurrency system, and award cryptocurrency to the user whose body activity data is verified.”

In other words, a chip will be inserted into the body that monitors a person’s daily physical activity in return for cryptocurrency. If conditions are met, then the person receives certain bonuses that can be spent on something.

A detailed description of the “invention” provides 28 concepts for how the device could be used.

It also provides a list of countries for which the invention is intended. Essentially, this is all the members of the United Nations and a few regional organisations specified separately – the European Patent Office, the Eurasian Patent Organization, and two African intellectual property protection organisations.

Although inserting microchips into the body is nothing new – the Masonic Youth Child Identification Program has been in operation in the US for a while, and people calling themselves cyborgs exhibit various implants – Microsoft’s involvement is interesting. And why has the patent been given the code number 060606? Is it a coincidence or the deliberate choice of what is referred to in the Book of Revelation as the number of the beast?

Bill Gates’ name is constantly being mentioned these days in connection with his interests in pharmaceutical companies, vaccinations, and WHO funding. Although the globalist media try to highlight Bill Gates as a great philanthropist and protect him from attacks and criticism in every way possible, it is unlikely they’ll be able to conceal a whole web of connections.

Bill Gates’ company is involved in another project – the digital ID project ID2020 Alliance.

On the website’s homepage, it says that the project has been addressing the issue of digital rights since 2016.

In 2018, the Alliance worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Besides Microsoft, the Alliance includes the Rockefeller Foundation, the design studio IDEO.org (with offices in San Francisco and New York), the consulting firm Accenture, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance – a company that actively promotes and distributes various vaccines around the world. The Secretariat for the Alliance is based in New York.

It is telling that Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance mostly covers countries in Africa and Asia. In Europe, the organisation is only active in Albania, Croatia, Moldova and Ukraine, and, in the Caucasus, in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance also has links with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF. These are all listed as founding partners!

Since February 2020, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance has been focusing on the coronavirus pandemic. The organisation’s CEO is Dr Seth Berkley. Although the headquarters of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance are in Geneva, Berkley himself, an epidemiologist by training, is from New York. Since the late 1980s, he has spent eight years working at the Rockefeller Foundation and is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an advisory council member of the New York-based Acumen Fund.

So, yet another link has been found. Theological interpretations of the patent number are probably best left to experts on religion, but it is clear that there are strong links between organisations and companies like the Rockefeller Foundation, Microsoft, the pharmaceutical lobby and the World Bank Group, not to mention secondary service providers.

They are trying to play the role of a supranational government by constantly focusing on the fact that, these days, national governments cannot cope with epidemics, illnesses, famines, etc. single-handed. But, as China has shown, they can.

The West cannot and does not want to acknowledge this, however, largely because it does not want to share power. So, the globalist media will continue their information campaigns, where the blame will be placed anywhere but on the West. It is telling that right now, as additional information on the coronavirus has started to emerge, false stories on China’s role in the epidemic have been stepped up and statistics manipulated.

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Leonid Savin is a geopolitical analyst,  founder and chief editor of Journal of Eurasian Affairs

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Introductory Note

The Chinese document “US Hegemony and its Perils” just came out on 20 February 2023.

It is very important – and says:

“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.”

In five precise paragraphs, China analyses how the US exerts hegemony and abuse of global power in the fields of politics, military, economics, technology, and culture, media, social media as well as censorship.

The Chinese analysis is harsh but accurate – and China must be expected to act upon it.

Beware the timing. The Chinese paper comes exactly the day before Putin’s Federal Council speech and two days before Chinese top-diplomat Wang Yi’s visit to Moscow.

Introductory Note by Karsten Riise

***

It should be noted that this text was released on February 20th, 2023, 4 days prior to the PRC’s statement entitled China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis

Below is the complete text of this important document entitled  US Hegemony and Its Perils released by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

 

Click here to read the full Document 

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

Featured image is from Global Times

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***

Three years ago, on March 16, 2020, the NIH issued a press release titled NIH Clinical Trial of Investigational Vaccine for COVID-19 Begins. Though most Americans didn’t notice it at the time, it announced a project that was already the SOLE focus of the official pandemic response. In Chapter 4 of The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death, Dr. McCullough and I tell the story of this event and its link to the ruthless suppression of early treatment for COVID-19. If you find this chapter interesting, please consider ordering a copy of our book, which has earned over 1,000 5-Star ratings on Amazon.

***

On March 16—the same day that Elon Musk retweeted a reference to the Rigano-Todaro paper [on the efficacy of chloroquine in treating COVID-19]—the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) announced that it was beginning a clinical trial of a new investigational vaccine at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute (KPWHRI) in Seattle.

The vaccine is called mRNA-1273 and was developed by NIAID scientists and their collaborators at the biotechnology company Moderna, Inc., based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) supported the manufacturing of the vaccine candidate for the Phase 1 clinical trial.

“Finding a safe and effective vaccine to prevent infection with SARS-CoV-2 is an urgent public health priority,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “This Phase 1 study, launched in record speed, is an important first step toward achieving that goal.” The investigational vaccine was developed using a genetic platform called mRNA (messenger RNA). The investigational vaccine directs the body’s cells to express a virus protein that it is hoped will elicit a robust immune response. The mRNA-1273 vaccine has shown promise in animal models, and this is the first trial to examine it in humans.

Scientists at NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) and Moderna were able to quickly develop mRNA-1273 because of prior studies of related coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). Coronaviruses are spherical and have spikes protruding from their surface, giving the particles a crown-like appearance. The spike binds to human cells, allowing the virus to gain entry. VRC and Moderna scientists already were working on an investigational MERS vaccine targeting the spike, which provided a head start for developing a vaccine candidate to protect against COVID-19. Once the genetic information of SARS-CoV-2 became available, the scientists quickly selected a sequence to express the stabilized spike protein of the virus in the existing mRNA platform.[i]

Record speed indeed. The causal agent of COVID-19 wasn’t known until Chinese researchers announced they’d identified it on January 7, 2020. A draft copy of the genome was made available to researchers on January 11, and the first reported U.S. case was on January 21 in Seattle.[ii] The WHO did not declare COVID-19 a pandemic until March 11—five days before NIAID and Moderna began their human clinical trial.[iii] Clearly this partnership had been developing their new mRNA vaccine technology against coronaviruses such as SARS and MERS for some time. According to Moderna’s website, the company had been working on mRNA technology for a decade, investing tens of millions in its development. Now it seemed they had an opportunity to deploy it on a global scale.[iv]

NIAID’s March 16, 2020 announcement not only reported a promising new vaccine technology to combat COVID-19, but also a declaration from Anthony Fauci—who assumed the countenance of the nation’s chief public health advisor—that the vaccine his institute had developed (and made a substantial investment in) was an urgent health priority. As long as no drugs were available to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 and prevent the COVID-19 illness it caused, the new vaccine was apparently mankind’s only hope, and therefore justified enormous resources for its development. Dr. Fauci did not mention in the announcement that the NIH (a government research funding institution) had not only invested in the vaccine for promoting public health, but also claimed to co-own the patent and therefore stood to share the royalties from its commercial exploitation.[v]

During the Event 201 Pandemic Simulation on October 19, 2019, several participants believed that a repurposed anti-viral medication was the best hope for immediately addressing the emergency because it would take at least a year to develop a vaccine. However, Dr. Timothy Evans drew his colleagues’ attention to the fact that CEPI—the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations—was already working on a coronavirus vaccine. Now CEPI “supported the manufacturing of the vaccine candidate for the Phase 1 clinical trial.” This was the first step in executing the “Preliminary Business Plan” that CEPI published in November 2016.

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Notes

[i] NIAID. NIH Clinical Trial of Investigational Vaccine for COVID-19 Begins. March 16, 2020. https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news-events/nih-clinical-trial-investigational-vaccine-covid-19-begins

[ii] CDC. First Travel-related Case of 2019 Novel Coronavirus Detected in United States. January 21, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0121-novel-coronavirus-travel-case.html

[iii] CDC. CDC Museum COVID-19 Timeline. https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html

[iv] Moderna. Our Story. https://www.modernatx.com/about-us/our-story?

[v] Tin, Alexander. Moderna offers NIH co-ownership of COVID vaccine patent amid dispute with government. CBS News, Nov. 15, 2021. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/moderna-covid-vaccine-patent-dispute-national-institutes-health/

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

With foresight, this timely article was written by Peter Koenig almost six years ago in July 2017.

“Electronic Money” is currently on the One World Order agenda (OWO)

***

Electronic money, a cashless society, is perhaps the ultimate and most direct means of the New World Order (NWO), also called One World Order (OWO), to control us all via its financial system. A system that the NWO would like to maintain as the world’s financial system, albeit, it has already been reduced to the western world’s financial system.

Why reduced to the Occident? – Because the Orient, China, Russia and the other countries belonging to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and to the Eurasia Economic Union (EEU) have already largely delinked themselves from the western dollar-based system of fraud. They are saved from slavehood.

This reminds of one of the oldest and world’s worst criminal agent against humanity – still alive and kicking – Henry Kissinger:

“Who controls food, controls the people; who controls energy controls entire continents; and who controls money controls the world.”

He is, of course, right on all fronts, and has given us this clue already more than 40 years ago. But nobody has really seriously taken it to heart and acted upon these edicts.

Many, including me, have written about freeing the world from the NWO money control.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/globalization-is-the-demise-of-humanity-towards-an-economy-of-peace-with-an-alternative-monetary-system/5545014.

Deglobalizing would be a first step towards freeing us all from the bloody claws of the Washington implemented, and Dark State directed NWO.

Critics often talk of an overhaul and reform of the system. This monetary system cannot be reformed. It is privately owned and rotten to the core. None of the private owners, the Rothschild, Rockefeller clans et al, would allow interfering with their wealth, usurped of the back of the world’s workers and populace at large. Former attempts (e.g. under JFK)  to bring the FED (Federal Reserve) under national reign, have resulted in failure.

Compare the dollar-based monetary system to the European Union – which cannot be reformed either. Any ‘reform’ is just fiddling at the margins – as is inherent in the term ‘reform’. And that’s not good enough. As we know by now, the EU was not the construct of Europeans, per se, but an idea behind the ‘deep state’, already at the onset of Phase II of the Great Hundred Year War (WWII – September 1939 to September 1945). Phase I (WWI – 1914 – 1918), as well as Phase II were induced to weaken Europe, to make her ready for full domination.

Imagine a ‘Picador’ of a Spanish bullfight, whose job it is to weaken the bull to the point where the torero and matador have a relatively easy task subduing and killing the bull. Well, Europe is the bull. They don’t want to kill Europe altogether, good old Lady Europe, because they need her as a stepping stone for subjugating the rest of the world, for vital trade that helps justifying and generating the unlimited dollar machine – and, as a cushion to the East, where massive military troops and weapons can be stationed in the name of NATO, to eventually launch, what they would like to think, is the final blow on the East, starting with Russia.

For all this the European (non)-Union was created, her Brussels hub, dominated by the non-elected European Commission (EC) which also dictates most of the rules imposed on her 28-member states – and which are all not-so-coincidentally run by neoliberal, some close to neofascist governments. Of course, by adhering to the Brussels dictate, they have become devoid of national sovereignty. That is a must. A sovereign country would not submit to the horrors of police state and militarization that are in the coming. The euro with the Wall Street (Goldman Sachs – GS) run European Central Bank (ECB) is just a logical add-on to the fake EU. By now, many serious scholars have concluded that neither the EU nor the euro are sustainable, but are doomed to collapse sooner or later.

The EU and the euro are a complex construct, largely manipulated and carried forward by the Dark State’s main secret services, CIA, NSA, Mossad, MI6 with close collaboration of Europe’s national secret services. Hence, the creation of a complete political and monetary vassal, the European Union and her currency, equally fraudulent as its master currency, the US-dollar.

***

It is not by chance that today’s western US-dollar based monetary system, with its center, the Federal Reserve (FED), has been created just at the onset of Phase I of the Hundred Year war, i.e. WWI. In 1910, Rhode Island Senator, Nelson Aldrich, with his heart close to the world of bankers, organized a ”hunting trip” for five top Wall Street (WS) bankers to travel in disguise by train to Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia, where they concocted in a few days the concept of the modern FED – which was to become the ‘mother’ of the new dollar-based world monetary system, now reduced to the western monetary system. The Federal Reserve Act was signed into law in December 1913 by President Woodrow Wilson.

On his death bed, in 1924 Wilson apparently declared,

“I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

The FED, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS – also called the central bank of all central banks, manipulating gold prices and currency exchanges), as well as the related dollar-machine are totally privately owned. On top of the owner pyramid are the Rothschild and Rockefeller clans, et al. Henceforth, all international monetary transactions had to transit through a WS bank, be it in New York or London. This is the only reason why the US government, i.e. Washington and its dark handlers, are able to hand out economic and financial ‘sanctions’ as they please, to control those, who do not want to bend to their dictate.

‘Sanctions’ in terms of blocking trade with a Washington-destined country and punishing everyone who does not observe the sanctions, plus, confiscating a country’s foreign assets – are totally illegal before any international court. But there is no international court that is not bought by this sham monetary system. By the same token, this same deceitful banking-monetary scheme induced the last artificial economic ‘crisis’ 2007 / 2008 – and counting, allowing WS to launch a worldwide globalization of banking which de facto, puts worldwide private banking under the oppressive wings of the FED and WS. This, all the more as the World Trade Organization (WTO) a few years earlier made banking deregulation mandatory for any new WTO wannabe member.

How to get out of this slavery before we are totally locked into a system from where to escape may be nearly impossible? The solution sounds simple enough in theory, but of course is much more complex, as it confronts politics, which is controlled by the ‘dark deep state’ of the NWO, or the One World Order which more appropriately describes what we are faced with.

Nations and societies that want to get out of the killer-claws of those who control the NWO, have to start thinking out of the matrix – ‘deglobalizing and de-dollarizing’.

The first step is thinking in a new paradigm. Greece would have had an excellent opportunity to show the world how to become free of those abusive financial vultures, and regain her sovereignty. Hélas, Geece didn’t. She may have not been ‘allowed’ to do so. A huge dark killer sledgehammer was and still is hanging over the country.

“Local production, for local markets, with local money, and local public banking for the promotion of the local economy” is the name of the ‘simple game’.

Beyond this approach, trading between regional friends, culturally similar countries, ‘think-alike’ peoples’ nations, respecting each other’s comparative advantages, would be a normal next step. Trading would become again what the original meaning of the word says: An exchange of goods among equals, where, contrary to the current system, each trading partner is a winner. A good example, still in its infant steps, but progressing, is ALBA (Spanish acronym for Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America; “alba” also means appropriately “dawn” in Spanish). This alliance was launched by Venezuela and Cuba and today comprises some 11 Latin American countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and a number of small Caribbean nations.

The concept of ALBA could be replicated in many parts of the world. ALBA in many ways is a modern barter system which uses a virtual currency, the Sucre. The currency’s value is the weighted average of each member country’s economic output – plus the US-dollar. – Why the US dollar? I was told by one of the member country’s Minister of Finance that keeping the dollar in, would help avoid a massive boycott of the nascent system by Washington. We can only hope he is right. ALBA needs to gain more strength and new members.

Only half a century ago, this type of trading “within neighbors” was common, and it was OK. It was certainly more equal than today’s WTO-led and globalized trading system, where the ‘small’ – i.e. developing countries, always lose out, for the benefit of the domineering west. The US-creation of the expression “win-win situation” is certainly correct for any trade between a western industrialized country and a developing country following the rules of WTO. The “win-winner“ is always the west. And yet, most developing countries are eager to join the ‘club’, lest, they fear, they may become isolated trade-wise. Well, I am not sure. There are alternatives à la ALBA. Unfortunately, many of their ‘leaders’(sic), are buyable.

Stepping forward into the old system, may be unthinkable for today’s generation, as they have not known – and have been brainwashed to think that “Globalization is the best”.

With GREXT, local money and a new public banking system – detached from Wall Street and European BCE-linked banks, Greece would be already on a fast-track to recovery, regaining their strength as a sovereign proud economy, whose philosophers have, after all, offered the world the concept of ‘democracy’ some 2,500 years ago.

Local public banking is key. Just look at the Bank of North Dakota, a state owned public banking institutions which had kept North Dakota out of the 2007 / 2008 crisis. Except for Ellen Brown, President of the American Public Banking Institute, hardly anybody talks about this success story.

Why? – Because it runs counter to what the FED-WS dominated private banking system is doing. This private banking system is NOT working for the people, or for a country’s economy. It is working for private banking profit – and for the wealth of a few – and for eventually dominating the world’s financial system, so as to enslave the population, by totally controlling their financial resources, their livelihood. Case in point is that Germany’s private banks have made a profit of 1.34 billion euros on the Greek misery, just recently admitted by the German Minister of Finance.

That’s the deadlock we have to break. – How? With an ever more propaganda and lie-infested media that ever more controls the populace? – Imagine, the blood-dripping fangs that keep us hostage are not going to loosen their grip, come hell or high water. We, the People, have to break loose, peacefully, non-violently, by thoughtful actions. The deglobalization concept is akin to the concept of “Resistance Economy”.

We have to promote the concept of Resistance Economy by all means we have available; talking and writing about it to as wide an audience as possible; by having alternative media, like RT, Sputnik, TeleSur and others, promoting the idea; and by strongly and firmly always-always thinking that a drastic change is possible, that darkness doesn’t rule the world – that light can and will shine, if we, The People want it – we eventually may make a difference. What We, the People, are still missing is organization and solidarity. Against the dark state’s constant effort to divide to rule, an initiative in solidarity may move mountains, by steering the vessel from the shade into the sun. All is possible. Never give up.

And Light is Peace.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 4th Media (China), TeleSUR, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.  

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization

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First published on February 24, 2023

***

According to Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum, ongoing global warming threatens to destroy humanity. Methane, coming from the belches and farts of cows, is a greenhouse gas (GHG). So, cows are a problem!

Fortunately, Bill Gates has a solution for us, explained in this video. We need to stop growing cattle and switch to lab-grown synthetic beef.

The World Economic Forum expects we will eat “synthetic meat” in 16 years. (the article below was written 4 years ago)

Bill Gates made sizable investments in “synthetic meat” manufacturers, expecting to turn a nice profit.

The CNBC article explains that “lab-grown meat,” that is, cell cultures grown in giant stainless vats, is not the same as “fake meat” made of soy or pea protein:

Vegetarians have long touted the ethical and environmental problems with meat production and consumption. Start-ups such as MosaMeat, JUST and Memphis Meats are tissue-engineering meat in a lab to allow people to enjoy being a carnivore without any of the environmental or ethical hang-ups.

Dubbed clean meat, the efforts are distinct from “fake meat,” like the soy protein “chicken” you can find in your grocery store today. Unlike Morningstar or Boca Burgers, clean meat really is meat; it just grows in a lab instead of being part of an animal.

Okay, but what kinds of cells is that lab meat grown from?

Lab-Grown “Meat” is Made of “Immortalized” Cancer Cells

This excellent Bloomberg article (paywall-free link) clarifies that all lab meat is grown as immortalized tumor cells. As the article explains, these same cells are used to produce traditional vaccines.

Thank the biotech revolution. Under the right conditions, animal cells can be grown in a petri dish, or even at scale in factories full of stainless-steel drums. For decades, companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Johnson & Johnsonhave cultured large volumes of cells to produce vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other biotherapeutics. Now the idea is that we might as well eat these cells, too.

What are these cells?

The big honking asterisk is that normal meat cells don’t just keep dividing forever. To get the cell cultures to grow at rates big enough to power a business, several companies, including the Big Three, are quietly using what are called immortalized cells, something most people have never eaten intentionally. Immortalized cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, precancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.

The article puts a “human face” on some of these cell lines, for example, the “HeLa line” made from the cervical cancer of Henrietta Lacks:

That’s where immortalized cells come in. They’ve been used in medical research since the early 1950s, when the first and most famous immortal cell line—derived from the cervical cancer cells of a woman named Henrietta Lacks—was successfully grown in a lab.

The distinction between pre-cancerous and cancerous cells is relatively minor: cancerous cells, by definition, can float away from the tumor site, travel through the blood or lymph, and start a new tumor (metastases) in another location in the body.

The distinction is important for the clinical outcome of a patient with a newly discovered tumor but involves only a minor bio-cellular distinction.

Don’t worry: Prominent cancer researchers tell Bloomberg Businessweekthat because the cells aren’t human, it’s essentially impossible for people who eat them to get cancer from them, or for the precancerous or cancerous cells to replicate inside people at all. … And cow tumors sometimes wind up in store-bought ground chuck, too. [not true – tumors are NEVER allowed by USDA inspectors – see below – I.C] Of course, the facts might not matter much if ranchers or other players in the traditional meat industry felt threatened enough to declare a public-relations war. It’s all too easy to imagine misleading Fox News chyrons about chicken tumors and cancer burgers.

Not so misleading! The main problem of growing an endless “lab meat” supply is that normal tissue cells cannot endlessly replicate (see above). There is a limit on how many times they will divide.

Vaccine manufacturers already use such immortalized tumor cells to make some Covid vaccines and other vaccines:

Today, AstraZeneca Plc and J&J’s Covid-19 vaccines are grown using immortalized human kidney and retinal cells, respectively.

Thus, “lab meat” and “cell line” suppliers grow meat from tumor cells that are “immortalized”; in other words, their cells can endlessly replicate. This is why cancers never stop growing, after all!

Eat Just Inc. declined to comment for this story. Believer Meats Chief Scientific Officer Yaakov Nahmias says that his company uses immortalized cells in its cultured chicken and that his team has somehow, by means he says even they don’t understand, created immortalized cells that don’t share any genetic signatures with cancer cells.

Are you skeptical of the above? I am. Even Bloomberg author Joe Fassler, to his credit, doubted the above explanation and asked independent biologists who also did not believe Yaakov Nahmias’s BS:

(Two cell biologists I shared his comments with expressed skepticism.)

We can see that so far, all lab meat is made using endlessly-dividing tumor cells.

Our bodies’ immune systems are designed to kill off and fight such abnormal and cancerous cells. Thus, cancers only take hold when immune systems weaken or the cancer cells learn to avoid immune reactions.

Cells become immortal in human bodies all the time, by mutating to bypass senescence—and mutating some more to evade the immune system, which generally tries to kill off such mutants.

The lab meat companies plan to sell those kinds of solid tumor cells to us to eat.

Bon appetit!

USDA Inspectors Screen Out Cancers and Tumors in Animal Carcasses

Despite Bloomberg’s restrained and soothing language, cancers and tumors can never pass USDA meat inspections.

Clarifications

The above story applies to “lab-grown meat”: products made from immortalized animal tumor cells growing in vats.

The “plant substitute” meat replacements, such as Beyond Meat, are based on pea or soy protein. As such, they are NOT related to these lab-grown cancer cell projects. Those plant products are not “meat” in any sense.

In addition, fake news websites are screaming that lab-grown meat (made of tumor cells) will give us cancer. There is no evidence that lab-grown meat will facilitate cancers. There is also no evidence that lab-grown meat will NOT cause cancers. It is simply an unknown. The USDA has a reason to reject tumor-containing carcasses, however. It is best not to make unwarranted claims, and my substack is not about making up sensationalized stuff.

Now They Want to Sell Us Solid Tumor “Steaks” 

• The Bloomberg article explains that all “lab meat” is made of tumor cells.
• At the same time, USDA regulations forbid tumors in meat supply for humans.

I am sure that one way or another, Bill Gates and the WEF will lobby for a change in rules so that they can sell us solid tumors as “lab-grown meat.”

At this point, I am torn: would I rather eat “ze bugz”, or “lab-grown tumor meat.” Or go vegetarian? A tough decision!

What would YOU choose?

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Our thoughts today are with the people of Iraq, whose country was invaded twenty years on March 20, 2003. The destruction and loss of life are beyond description.

The architects of this illegal invasion are “war criminals”. Amply documented the war on Iraq was justified using fake intelligence. Prime Minister Tony Blair played a key role in claiming that Iraq had Weapon’s of Mass Destruction (WMD).

The article first published in February 2007 focusses on the assassination of Whistleblower Dr. David Kelly, who had worked in Iraq as weapon’s inspector under the auspices of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). “It was Dr Kelly who exposed claims by President George Bush, Tony Blair and Colin Powell that mobile biological warfare units had been found in Iraq as false.” (Independent, 25 July 2003)

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 5 2003 presentation to the UN Security Council referred to the U.K. intelligence dossier entitled “Iraq Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation”, published on January 30, 2003. This document pointed without evidence to Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

This report had been read by Dr. David Kelly who expressed his doubts prior to its release.

Following its release on February 5,  2003, it was reviewed by Cambridge lecturer Dr. Glen Rangwala who confirmed that it was not a bona fide intelligence document prepared by British Intelligence. It was copied and pasted from the internet by members of Tony Blair’s staff.

Dr. Rangwala’s report was aired on Channel IV, it was then submitted to the House of Commons which released it on June 30, 2003, more than 3 months after the invasion. It was not an object of parliamentary debate.

Michel Chossudovsky, March 18, 2023

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The British media has become embroiled in yet another set of distortions regarding the death of British government weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly in July 2003. Kelly died in mysterious circumstances in the woods near his home in Oxfordshire.

Kelly was Britain’s foremost expert on biological weapons, with direct access to WMD intelligence on Iraq. In the months leading up to his death, he had become increasingly skeptical regarding Iraq’s alleged WMDs.

According to the Hutton inquiry report:

“Dr Kelly took his own life… [T]he principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body”. (emphasis added)

Suicide was seemingly assumed from the outset by Lord Hutton, and the Hutton Inquiry descended into establishing who, between the BBC and the Government, was to blame for the suicide (rather than the murder) of Dr Kelly.

The inquiry led by Lord Hutton pointed to “suicide” as the cause of death, in contradiction with the results of the autopsy. “Suicide was never proved, either by the Coroner or Lord Hutton, as required by law”. (See Dr. Stephen Frost, et al, Global Research, 28 November 2006)

The inquiry purported to obviate the need for an inquest as well as exonerate the Government of Tony Blair and the Secret Service “of all significant charges”. It was an obvious camouflage. (See the analysis of Rowena Thursby, Global Research, Oct 2006,  see also dr-david-kelly.blogspot.com)

On November 3, 2006, The London Times published a letter by Lord Hutton, in which he attempted to defend his report on Dr. David Kelly’s death. In the letter, Lord Hutton dwells on the issue of the allegedly “sexed up” intelligence, ignoring the arguably much larger issue of his failure to establish exactly how Dr. David Kelly died.

A response to Lord Hutton’s letter to The Times was submitted by three distinguished doctors ( Drs. C. Stephen Frost, David Halpin and Searle Sennett)  The Times, refused to publish the response, which  was subsequently published as an article by Global Research. Drs. Frost et al contributed to breaking the mainstream media silence on the possibility that Dr David Kelly did not commit suicide. 

What was dismissed by the mainstream British media was that Lord Hutton, who seemingly assumed suicide from the outset, had undermined due process, and therefore laid himself open to charges of cover-up, by himself “sexing up” his own findings on the cause of Dr David Kelly’s death. But, a cover-up of what? (See Drs. C. Stephen Frost, et al, op cit).

New British Media consensus

In its “Conspiracy Files” documentary (25 February 2007), the BBC questioned the official version that Kelly had committed suicide, as outlined in the Hutton inquiry report. In this BBC programme, the findings of the Hutton inquiry are refuted through carefully documented research and analysis. It was not suicide, it was murder.

The media consensus regarding the cause of Dr. Kelly’s death seems to have been reversed. Or has it?  While the BBC and the British media have acknowledged  that Dr. Kelly might have have been murdered, they have failed to address two crucial questions:

1. If it wasn’t suicide, who ordered the assassination of David Kelly?

2. Who ordered the cover-up of a criminal act?

Contradicting their own assessment of the evidence, the BBC is suggesting that the government of Tony Blair could not possibly have been involved.

John Morrison, former deputy chief of British defence intelligence, who was interviewed by the BBC’s “Conspiracy Files” programme, states emphatically  that there was “no British secret service plot to kill Dr Kelly.”

Morrison rejected suggestions that Dr Kelly could have been the victim of British agents licensed to kill: “It is indeed complete fantasy that there are agents that are licensed to kill”.  According to Morrisson:

“There are intelligence agencies around the world who do engage in assassinations, there’s no doubt about that. Some of them not very nice people at all….. But we [ in Britain] have never had a policy of assassination to my knowledge in the history of the UK intelligence agencies, and certainly not in the last few decades”. (Source BBC website)

If the U.K government was not involved because The British Secret Service “does not have a policy of assassination”, who then could possibly be behind the murder of David Kelly?

Criminal Investigation

If it was murder rather than suicide, one would expect a full fledged police investigation leading up to trial court proceedings.

One would also expect –as in a bona fide criminal investigation–  that one or more “suspects” would be identified, and that “methods”, “motives” and “intent” would be examined.  Moreover, one would also expect that the issue of alleged government involvement be either confirmed or dismissed in a court of law.

Will a criminal investigation –which could potentially bring down the government– be allowed to proceed?

Or will there be another cover-up, “to cover-up the cover-up”?

BBC Fake News: Saddam did It

Meanwhile, in the interest of “balanced reporting”, the BBC documentary also included an authoritative statement by Richard Spertzel, a former US weapons inspector who worked with Dr Kelly in Iraq. Spertzel believes that “the Iraqis assassinated him” implying that Kelly might have been murdered on the orders of Saddam Hussein and that the defunct Baathist regime’s intelligence apparatus was behind the assassination.

“It has always been obvious that his death was highly convenient for the UK intelligence services but one of Kelly’s former colleagues, Richard Spertzel, an American biological weapons inspector, says that the Iraqi intelligence service may have been pursuing a vendetta against him. Spertzel says both he and Kelly were known to be on an Iraqi hit list.”(emphasis added. Irish independent, 26 Feb 2007)

Contradictory statement: “Convenient for UK intelligence” but it was, according to Spertzel, more likely that the Iraqi Intelligence service was behind the murder.

Qui Buono? Who benefits? Did the murder of Dr. Kelly serve the interests of Iraq. Was it “convenient” for the defunct Baathist regime?

And why the Hutton report cover-up?

If the murder had been ordered by Iraq, why did they need to cover it up? If indeed Iraqi agents had been behind it, this would have been front page news: the reports of the Iraqi sponsored vendetta and murder of a prominent British scientist would have been plastered on Britain’s tabloids. Just imagine the headlines.

Where is the motive? What interest would the post-Saddam Iraqi resistance have in murdering the man who was revealing the lies behind the Iraqi WMD allegations, which served as the main justification for waging war on Iraq. Remember: Dr David Kelly  was the source for a BBC report claiming the government of Tony Blair had “sexed up” its dossier on Saddam’s alleged WMD arsenal. And ultimately, the “sexed up” WMD report was the casus belli, the pretext for waging war on Iraq, which was invoked by the US and its indefectible British ally.

Complicity of the State? “Set the hares running”

Liberal MP Norman Baker, who was interviewed in the BBC programme, outlines the results of his investigation. He states that it was not suicide, but murder.

“I’ve concluded in my mind, beyond reasonable doubt as it were, that it’s impossible for the suicide explanation to hold water. The medical evidence doesn’t support it in any way, the psychological evidence barely supports it either and as it wasn’t obviously natural causes or an accident, then you’re driven to the conclusion that it must have been some sort of murder.” (GMTV “The Sunday Programme”, 25 February 2007)

“Describing his approach as non-sensational and factual, he said he has tested various theories ‘to destruction’. One witness who contacted him recently claimed to “know” that Dr Kelly was murdered. Asked about “complicity of the State”, Mr Baker chose his words carefully, claiming this would ‘set the hares running’. He is pursuing a number of leads”

Norman Baker’s inquiry has reached the conclusion that Kelly was assassinated but he asserts categorically that the British government could not possibly have been involved:

“I don’t believe the Prime Minister, the politicians and the Government were responsible for what happened to David Kelly. I believe they treated him shamefully and I believe they treated him callously in that they deliberately leaked his name to the press and they were quite happy to offer him up as fodder in some sort of Soviet-style Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in order to discredit Andrew Gilligan and the BBC”.

 

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First published by Global Research on April 27, 2022

***

The US has a long History of Confrontation with Russia

This goes way back to the time of Lenin’s revolution in 1917 to replace the Tsar with a communist government. Along with more than a dozen other countries, in 1918 the US sent 13,000 troops to fight Lenin’s Bolshevik forces. Although this was gross interference in another country’s affairs, more than 250,000 foreign troops took part in the war against the Russian forces. The Russian forces fought with patriotic zeal, and the foreign troops made little progress and were forced to withdraw in 1920.

 

US Troops in Vladivostok in 1918

The US finally established diplomatic relations with the USSR in 1933 and an icy relationship has continued to the present. When Nazi Germany attacked the USSR in June of 1941, the US position was revealed by then U.S. Senator Harry Truman when he said:

“If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don’t want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances.”

Primarily through the battles fought by Soviet forces, Nazi Germany was defeated, but instead of gratitude for this historical feat, the US government was persuaded by its embedded faction of Russia-hating officials to embark on a totally different course of action.

This began with the totally unnecessary and criminal decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed and injured at least 200,000 Japanese. Japan had been fully prepared to surrender and because of this, almost all high ranking military officals, including Eisenhower and McArthur, opposed the use of atomic bombs. However, Truman’s inner circle of advisors convinced him to do this. In actuality, this was not to end the war on Japan but to show the USSR that this could happen to them if they wouldn’t follow USA’s dictats.

On September 25, 1975 several previously secret documents from the US War Department, dated September 15, 1945, were declassified.

 

These documents revealed, in stark tones, that the USA had planned a coordinated unprovoked nuclear attack with 204 atomic bombs to destroy 66 major urban areas in the Soviet Union.

This nuclear assault would have been a diabolical and criminal undertaking on human life. Genocide is an understatement. The main document referred to “the number of atomic bombings which should be available to insure our national security”. These documents are discussed further here.

With respect to “insure our national security,” a sane question would be why the US would be so afraid of a USSR devastated by its war with Nazi Germany that the US would still require a further massive nuclear devastation of Russia in order for the US “to be safe.” The real reason is undoubtedly the American desire to destroy the USSR’s socialist-communist system, which was also the same reason for Hitler’s attack on the USSR.

A further report on this issue states that: According to US generals’ estimates, the attack could have resulted in the death of about 285 to 425 million people. Some of the USSR’s European allies were meant to be completely “wiped out.”

How should history judge the USA’s morality in this regard . . . although not carrying out this onslaught, but just seriously even considering such a course of action?

The Soviets became aware of the USA’s plans and developed their own atomic bomb in 1949.  This occurred before the US had their 204 bombs for their attack. And once the USSR had their own bombs, the US realized that if they launched their attack, American cities would be hit as well. The overall result was the ensuing Cold War and a nuclear arms race.

Ukraine History and World War II

With regard to Ukraine, unlike Russia with its more that a 1,000 year history, Ukraine, as a territorial unit, started about 1650 and has a complex historical background. To understand the current conflict, it is important to recall that Russians and Ukrainians once lived in relative harmony, when they were both part of the USSR. This was violently interrupted in 1941, when the Nazis invaded the USSR, by first taking over the territory of Ukraine.

It is important to point out that the vast majority of Ukrainians fought the Nazi invasion, just as the Russians did, and suffered a loss of more than 6 million people, military and civilians. However, it is a historical fact that a portion of the people in western Ukraine supported the Nazis and even formed several divisons of troops to fight the Soviet army. This was done under bizarre delusion that somehow after the war the Nazis would allow them to have an independent state, independent of Russia. Their most prominent leader was Stepan Bandera, a collaborator with Hitler who led the liquidation of thousands of Poles, Jews and other minorities. Ironically, Bandera is now considered a major hero by Zelensky’s government.

In the meantime, on the basis of Nazi racial policy all Slavic people, Jews, Roma and black people were considerd Untermenschen or “subhuman” and “inferior people” who, if at all possible, were to be exterminated in one way or another. Despite this open philosophy of the invading Nazi hordes, a portion of the Ukrainian people in the Galicia region of western Ukraine somehow felt that if they collaborated with the Nazis that after the defeat of the USSR they would somehow acquire an independent Ukrainian state. Total delusion, but a historical fact.

According to John-Paul Himka, a retired professor from the University of Alberta, a quarter of all victims of the Holocaust lived in Ukraine, and Ukrainian ultra-nationalists collaborated with the Nazis in carrying out their horrendous deeds.

As for the invading German Nazi forces, if there were Ukrainians who were prepared to collaborate with them, in a cynical manner, the Nazis accepted them. And in this manner, these Ukrainian Nazi allies proceeded to kill thousands of Polish people in the Lvov area and they participated in killing more then 30,000 Jews whose bodies were then thrown in the Babi Yar ravine near Kiev.

At the end of World War II thousands of these Ukrainian Nazi collaborators managed to retreat to Germany and then somehow managed to get accepted as “refugees” in Canada and the USA. In Ukraine they were dealt with as Nazi collaborators and it’s not certain what happened to them. It’s now 77 years since the war ended, and you’d think the Nazi era is past history, but it seems that some  descendants of these collaborators are are still on the scene as “neo-Nazis.” And unfortunately these neo-Nazis continue to promote hatred and white supremacy and attack racial and ethnic minorities, and in some cases are prepared to live in a fascist state.

Dissolution of the Soviet Union

In the course of the turmoil in the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country on 24 August 1991. At the end of the year, on December 25, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned his post as president of the Soviet Union, leaving Boris Yeltsin as president of the newly independent Russian state.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the USA dominated the world, and it wasn’t until Vladimir Putin took over as President in 2000 that Russia once again began to have some world influence.

The 2014 EuroMaidan Coup and Its Aftermath

As for Ukraine, after its independence it struggled along, but it wasn’t until 2014 that a cataclysmic event occurred which totally changed the course of history in that country. The USA succeeded in staging a coup d’état which replaced a democratically elected president and installed a regime in which neo-Nazis proceeded to have a major role.

Following this, I had three major articles published on this debacle. One of them was immediately translated into French, German and Spanish. In that article I review the whole course of events that then occurred in Ukraine.

Immediately after the coup, Victoria Nuland gleefully bragged how the US spent five billion dollars to enable the coup to take place. She even had a hand in picking out who should be in the cabinet and who should be the new president…. and if the European union didn’t like it, “Fuck the EU”…. all this is on record.

After the coup, two basically fascist and neo-Nazi parties, Svoboda and Right Sector, held prominent positions in the new government–they formed a third of the cabinet. This is despite the fact that Svoboda had only 8 percent of the seats in the Rada and that the Right Sector didn’t have any elected members.  Later the followers of these parties formed the Azov military force, which openly display Hitler’s military regalia.

While the new Ukrainian regime has been busy empowering fascists, they stripped communist parties of their right to participate in elections in 2015 and issued controversial ‘decommunisation’ laws.

These laws ban the display of Soviet symbols and change the status of the May 9 holiday which marked the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War 2. The laws will remove all mentions of ‘the Great Patriotic War’ (a Soviet term for World War 2).  Tens of thousands of streets have since been renamed, along with nearly one thousand cities and villages. Over two thousand statues and monuments have also been removed in this anti-communist cultural project. Despite widespread criticism, the current government has refused to revoke the laws.

In actual fact, the United States has continued to work with Ukrainian fascists in their endless destabilization campaigns against Russia. According to CIA specialist Douglas Valentine, “the CIA has been developing fascist assets in the Ukraine for 70 years.” Nazism and fascism are very real factors in Ukraine, and they have been extensively documented.

Given what has happened, it is hardly surprising that Ukraine was the only country, along with the United States, which voted against the UN General Assembly’s draft resolution “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

The day after the coup government was formed its very first action was to pass a bill to ban the use of Russian in any official capacity and to ban all Russian media in Ukraine. This was done even though one-fifth of Ukraine’s population are ethnic Russians and that about 40% of the population speak Russian.  In fact, the eastern part of Ukraine and Crimea are almost totally ethnic Russians, with a Russian history that goes back more than a thousand years. And suddenly their language was banned!

To put this issue in perspective for Canadians, just imagine if a newly installed government in Ottawa would suddenly ban the use of French as an official language in Canada. How long would it take for Quebec to call for a referendum and then proceed to secede from Canada? In actuality, this is exactly what happened in Crimea, where the bulk of the people speak Russian. They conducted a referendum on March 16, 2014 and with a turnout of 83 percent, there was a 97 percent vote to secede from Ukraine. Since ethnic Russians formed only 58 percent of the population, it means that the bulk of Ukrainians and Tatars in Crimea also voted to secede from Ukraine. Crimea then appealed to Russia to be accepted into the Russian Federation, and Russia proceeded to do this.

Despite the referendum in Crimea to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, Russia is constantly accused of annexing Crimea, i.e., conducting a forcible acquisition of part of Ukraine’s territory, which is a blatant lie. To add to this lie, no one in the West ever refers to Crimea’s referendum, which was monitored by a team of Western observers. In the meantime, with no referendum, Kosovo was detached from Serbia…. with the full approval of the USA. In fact, the US engineered this.

As for Russia’s decision to intervene militarily in Ukraine, the government and the people still vividly remember that the USSR lost 27 million people fighting the Nazis in the 1940s. It was President Kennedy in his memorable speech on June 10, 1963 at American University who stated:

And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland–a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

To make his point vividly clear to the US public, he compared the devastation in the USSR to the USA: a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

So now with neo-Nazis basically in control of Ukraine, as well as having it in their constitution to join NATO and with its president talking of acquiring nuclear weapons, it should be no mystery how Russia feels about this. With nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it would take less than 10 minutes to destroy Moscow …. with no possibility of blocking such an attack. Russia and its people are not prepared to undergo another World War II. That is the long and the short of it.

How did it come to this? After the 2014 coup and the law to ban the Russian language in all legal affairs, the new Kiev regime sent a group of their administrators to take over the government offices in the Russian speaking Lugansk and Donetsk regions.

These administrators were promptly sent back to Kiev and these areas continued with their own people in office. The Kiev regime’s response? ….. a military attack was launched on the Donbass area. A vicious war took place for almost a year. These two areas had their own armed forces and there were no Russian troops involved, as acknowledged by Ukraine’s military commander. After a significant defeat of Ukraine’s army in a major battle in 2015, open warfare ceased.

It was at this point that Ukraine agreed to negotiations arranged by Germany, France and Russia in Belarus at the city of Minsk. They signed a 14-point Minsk Accord, later approved by the UN, for the purpose of resolving the Lugansk and Donetsk issue. Ukraine was to negotiate an agreement with these two areas which would give them a degree of autonomy, similar to that of Canadian provinces or US states.

Although Ukraine signed this document, and although Lugansk and Donetsk were fully prepared to negotiate an agreement, Ukraine refused to negotiate with them….in violation of the UN approved agreement they had signed. Instead, the Ukraine military, headed by the neo-Nazi Azov forces (complete with Hitler regalia) proceeded for the next 7 years to regularly shell the civilian areas of Luhansk and Donetsk causing substantial infrastructure damage . . . hospitals, schools, residential areas . . . and killing more than 14,000 people.

Fast forward to the present . . . People are rightly concerned about civilians being killed in Ukraine, but where were they these past 8 years when Ukrainian forces killed more than 14,000 people in eastern Ukraine? And during America’s wars on Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Serbia, Libya, Syria and many other places where millions of people were killed, did any of these currently outraged people ever compare any of the American presidents to Hitler? So what is going on at the present time??

It amazes me that Russia did not intervene sooner to prevent this awful senseless carnage in the Donbass. It seems Russia was hoping that eventually Ukraine would come to its senses and institute the Minsk agreement, which would keep these areas in Ukraine, but with a degree of autonomy. It also appears that this wasn’t done because the USA never approved of the Minsk proposal. Also this agreement was totally opposed by the Azov-Nazis, and they threatened to kill anyone who would attempt to enact it. As such it appears that President Zelensky was so intimidated that it seems he didn’t dare do this.

As an indication of Azov’s strengths and influence in Ukraine, Azov members proved it about a month ago. Right after the first negotiation meeting that Ukraine had with Russia in Belarus, Azov members killed the Ukrainian negotiator who seriously considered a Russian proposal. When the neo-Nazis found out about this, they abducted him from his Kiev home, tortured him and then shot him and left his body on the street in front of Ukraine’s legislative Rada building.  A clear warning to Zelensky.

For the record, it should be noted that Zelensky won the presidential election in April of 2019 against the incumbent Poroshenko with 73% of the vote. His election platform was based on establishing good relations with Russia and promising to enact the Minsk agreement with Donetsk and Lugansk. Obviously, this is what the bulk of the Ukrainian population wanted. However, Zelensky totally backed off from these electoral promises, seemingly because of threats to his life by the Azov-Nazis. So this shows the power of these reactionary forces.

It should be noted that Wikipedia has stated that Azov’s founding member Andriy Biletsky, leader of the far right Social-National Assembly (SNA), had stated in 2010 that:

“the historic mission of our nation” was to lead the “white races of the world in a final crusade for their survival […] a crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen“, Numerous fighters bear SS tattoos, including swastikas.^[104] In 2014, the German ZDF television network showed images of Azov fighters wearing helmets with swastika symbols and “the SS runes of Hitler’s infamous black-uniformed elite corps”.

Despite this, American and Canadian military instructors have conducted lengthy training sessions of Azov military personnel. When confronted with this, they have tried weasel themselves out of this, but the facts remain.

What brought Russia to finally intervene militarily in Ukraine is information leaked to them by someone in the Ukraine military, and later confirmed by official documents, that in mid-March of this year, about 100,000 Ukraine troops were scheduled to attack Donetsk and Lugansk in a Blitzkrieg manner. The plan was to overrun these two areas in a matter of days, which would have involved killing thousands of these Russian-speaking people.  The Russian government and President Putin decided that the only way to prevent this from happening is for Russia to take military action.

Russia first recognized Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics as separate states and then two days later, on February 24, Russia launched its “special military operation” to “demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.” That day Russia notified the UN Secretary-General that the military action was “taken in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter in the exercise of the right of self-defence,” actually citing the provision of “anticipatory self-defence” or the right of “interceptive self-defence” in light of Ukraine’s planned attack on Lugansk and Donetsk.

In effect, Russia was acting to stop “neo-Nazis and militias” from killing civilians and to prevent a “genocide” of Russians in Eastern Ukraine.

In their military operation, Russian troops were instructed to do the least possible damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and civilian population. As such there has been no bombing of any Ukrainian cities, totally unlike the US “Shock and Awe” campaigns such as in Iraq where within a few days they killed tens of thousands of people….and eventually killed more than 1,000,000 Iraqis. Russian attacks were directed at military facilities, fuel and munition depots, and military communications.  Also, within a few days, they somehow wiped out practically all of Ukraine’s military aircraft and aircraft bases. They surrounded Kiev, not to attack it, but to maintain Ukrainian troops there. In phase 2, their main objective will be to deal with large number of Ukrainian troops in the Donbass area.

The Azov neo-Nazis had their main base in Mariupol and the Russian forces have now finally captured this centre. Unlike other areas, much of this city has been destroyed through artillery fire, but it seems the Azovs may fight to the last neo-Nazi, often using civilians as human shields.

As for the overall war, now approaching two months, the UN has estimated that there have been “4,450 civilian casualties in the country: 1,892 killed and 2,558 injured.”

When it comes to military casualties, this is totally different. On April 16, Russia updated the number of Ukrainian military fatalities to 23,367, which includes the Ukrainian army, Azov forces and foreign mercenaries. As for Russian losses, they reported that 1,351 soldiers were killed and 3,825 wounded.  In the meantime, with no evidence to support his claim, Zelensky is boasting that 20,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, compared to only 2,500 Ukrainian troops.

Russia has also reported that more than 400,000 Ukrainian civilians had been evacuated to Russia from the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

As for the West’s current “Great Hero” Zelensky, he has recently outlawed all left-wing or progressive political parties and openly approves of violent reprisals against the members of these parties. Journalist Max Blumenthal has documented the current political situation in Ukraine.

A few excerpts from Blumenthal’s account are apropos:

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that “there would be consequences for collaborators” indicates that these atrocities have been sanctioned by the highest levels of government.

Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia. Several mayors and other Ukrainian officials have been killed since the outbreak of war, many reportedly by Ukrainian state agents after engaging in de-escalation talks with Russia.

Zelensky has further exploited the atmosphere of war to outlaw an array of opposition parties and order the arrest of his leading rivals. His authoritarian decrees have triggered the disappearance, torture and even murder of an array of human rights activists, communist and leftist organizers, journalists and government officials accused of “pro-Russian” sympathies.

At this stage, Russia has withdrawn most of its forces from Kiev and other places and has concentrated them in the Donetsk and Lugansk areas to confront the bulk of the Ukrainian forces. This will be phase 2 in their campaign, and the single most important battle is to take place shortly.

In my concluding comments, I would like to refer to a speech made by Vladimir Putin a while ago in which he went back in history to the time when the USSR was enticed to reunite East and West Germany and to loosen its control over the east European countries that were attached to the USSR following World War II.

During crucial negotiations in 1990 President Gorbachev was assured repeatedly by the US and other NATO leaders that if he agreed to all these reforms, NATO would not move from its boundaries “by one inch,” With such an assurance, Gorbachev allowed the reunification of Germany, and the USSR then relinquished all controls and alliances with the multitude of countries along its western border.  Instead of honouring its promise to not advance “by one inch” towards Russia, NATO, led by the USA, absorbed all these countries and then tried to incorporate Ukraine and Georgia into its fold. So the West’s promises at that time were nothing more than lies.

Then on February 28, in discussing the sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its intervention in Ukraine, Putin referred to the West as the Empire of Lies. And for good historical reasons, this is how Russia may now view the West. Interestingly, since Putin made this comment, this is how the USA is being referred by a number of commentators.

Since this war started in Ukraine, there has been an amazing amount of censorship in our “freedom loving” West, with not only all Russian media being censored but also anyone in the West who is critical of the USA’s or the West’s portrayal of events in Ukraine. We are indeed living in interesting times.

Much more remains to be said, but this is where I will leave it for now.

*

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John Ryan, Ph.D., Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg.

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The peace movement did a great many things right in the first decade of this millennium, some of which we’ve forgotten. It also fell short in many ways. I want to highlight the lessons I think we’ve most failed to learn and suggest how we might benefit from them today.

1. We formed uncomfortably large coalitions. We brought together war abolitionists with people who simply adored every war in human history but one. We probably didn’t hold a single event at which there wasn’t somebody pushing a theory about 9-11 that required some level of lunacy just to understand. We didn’t put most of our effort into distinguishing ourselves from other peace advocates or seeking to get people canceled; we put most of our effort into trying to end a war.

 

2. It all began to fall apart in 2007, after Democrats had been elected to end the war and escalated it instead. People had a choice in that moment to stand on principle and demand peace, or to kneel before a political party and peace be damned. Millions made the wrong choice, and have never understood it. Political parties, especially when combined with legalized bribery and a subservient communications system, are deadly to movements. The war was ended by a movement compelling George W. Bush to sign an agreement to end it, not by electing Obama, who only ended it when that agreement made him do so. The point is not the idiotic strawman that one should ignore elections or pretend that political parties don’t exist. The point is to put elections second. You don’t even have to put them millionth, only second. But put policy first. Be for peace first, and make public servants serve you, not the other way around.

 

3. A “war based on lies” is simply a longwinded way of saying “a war.” There is no such thing as a war not based on lies. What distinguished Iraq 2003 was the ineptness of the lying. “We are going to find vast stockpiles of weapons” is a really, really stupid lie to tell about a place where you are very shortly going to fail to find any such thing. And, yes, they knew that was the case. In contrast, “Russia is going to invade Ukraine tomorrow” is a really smart lie to tell if Russia is about to invade Ukraine sometime in the next week, because nobody is going to care that you got the day wrong, and statistically practically nobody is going to have the resources to understand that what you’ve really said is “Now that we’ve broken promises, torn up treaties, militarized the region, threatened Russia, lied about Russia, facilitated a coup, opposed a peaceful resolution, supported attacks on Donbas, and escalated those attacks in recent days, while mocking utterly reasonable peace proposals from Russia, we can count on Russia invading, just as we’ve strategized to make happen including in published RAND reports, and when that happens, we are going to load the whole zone up with more weapons than we ever pretended Saddam Hussein had, and we’re going to block any peace negotiations in order to keep the war going as hundreds of thousands die, which we don’t think you’ll object to even if it risks nuclear apocalypse, because we’ve pre-conditioned you with five years of ludicrous lies about Putin owning Trump.”

 

4. We never said one word about the evil of the Iraqi side of the war on Iraq. Even though you may know, or suspect — pre-Erica Chenoweth — that nonviolence is more effective than violence, you aren’t permitted to utter one word against Iraqi violence or you’re accused of blaming the victims or asking them to lie down and be killed or some other stupidity. To simply state that Iraqis might be better off using exclusively organized nonviolent activism, even while you are working day and night to get the U.S. government to end the war, is to become an arrogant imperialist telling one’s victims what to do and somehow magically forbidding them to “fight back.” And so there is silence. One side of the war is evil and the other good. You can’t cheer for that other side without becoming an ostracized traitor. But you must believe, exactly as the Pentagon believes but with the sides switched, that one side is pure and holy and the other evil incarnate. This hardly constitutes ideal preparation of the mind for a war in Ukraine where, not only is the other side (the Russian side) clearly engaged in reprehensible horrors, but those horrors are the primary topic of corporate media. Opposing both sides of the war in Ukraine and demanding peace is denounced by each side as somehow constituting support for the other side, because the concept of more than one party being flawed has been erased from the collective brain through thousands of fairy tales and other content of cable news. The peace movement did nothing to counter this during the war on Iraq.

 

5. We never made people understand that the lies were not only typical of all wars, but also, as with all wars, irrelevant and off-topic. Every lie about Iraq could have been perfectly true and there would have been no case for attacking Iraq. The U.S. openly acknowledged having every weapon it pretended Iraq had, without creating any case for attacking the United States. Having weapons is not an excuse for war. It makes no difference whether it’s true or false. The same can be said of economic policies of China or anyone else. This week I watched a video of a former prime minister of Australia ridiculing a bunch of journalists for not being able to distinguish China’s trade policies from an imaginary and ludicrous fantasy of a Chinese threat to invade Australia. But is there a member of the U.S. Congress who can make that distinction? Or a follower of either U.S. political party who will be able to much longer? The war in Ukraine has been named by the U.S. government/media the “Unprovoked War” — quite obviously precisely because it was so clearly provoked. But this is the wrong question. You don’t get to wage a war if it was provoked. And you don’t get to wage a war if the other side was unprovoked. I mean, not legally, not morally, not as part of a strategy for preserving life on Earth. The question is not whether Russia was provoked, and not merely because the obvious answer is yes, but also because the question is whether peace can be negotiated and established justly and sustainably, and whether the U.S. government has been impeding that development while pretending that only Ukrainians want the war to continue, not Lockheed-Martin stock holders.

 

6. We didn’t follow through. There were no consequences. The architects of the murder of a million people went golfing and got rehabilitated by the very same media criminals who had pushed their lies. “Looking forward” replaced the rule of law or a “rules based order.” Open profiteering, murder, and torture became policy choices, not crimes. Impeachment was stripped from the Constitution for any bipartisan offenses. There was no truth and reconciliation process. Now the U.S. works to prevent the reporting of even Russian crimes to the International Criminal Court, because preventing any sort of rules is the top priority of the Rules Based Order, and it hardly makes news. Presidents have been given all war powers, and darn near everybody has failed to grasp that the monstrous powers given to that office are drastically more important than which flavor of monster occupies the office. A bipartisan consensus opposes ever using the War Powers Resolution. While Johnson and Nixon had to clear out of town and opposition to war lasted long enough to label it a sickness, the Vietnam Syndrome, in this case the Iraq Syndrome lasted long enough to keep Kerry and Clinton out of the White House, but not Biden. And nobody has drawn the lesson that these syndromes are fits of wellness, not illness — certainly not the corporate media which has investigated itself and — after a quick apology or two — found everything in order.

 

7. We still talk about the media as having been an accomplice to the Bush-Cheney gang. We look back condescendingly at the age in which journalists claimed that one could not report that a president had lied. We now have media outlets in which you cannot report that anyone at all has lied if they are a member of one criminal cartel or the other, the elephants or the donkeys. It’s time we recognize how much the media outlets wanted the war on Iraq for their own profit and ideological reasons, and that the media has played the leading role in building up hostility with Russia and China, Iran and North Korea. If anyone is playing supporting actor in this drama, it is government officials. At some point we’ll have to learn to appreciate whistleblowers and independent reporters and to recognize that corporate media as a mass is the problem, not just one part of the corporate meda.

 

8. We never did even really try to teach the public that the wars are one-sided slaughters. U.S. polling for years found majorities believing the sick and ridiculous ideas that U.S. casualties were somewhere near equivalent to Iraqi casualties and that the U.S. had suffered more than Iraq, as well as that Iraqis were grateful, or that Iraqis were inexcusably ungrateful. The fact that well over 90% of the deaths were Iraqis never got through, nor the fact that they were disproportionately the very old and young, nor even the fact that wars are fought in people’s towns and not on 19th century battlefields. Even if people come to believe that such things happen, if they are told tens of thousands of times that they only happen if Russia does them, nothing useful will have been learned. The U.S. peace movement made the conscious choice over and over and over again for years and years to focus on the damage the war was doing to U.S. troops, and the financial cost to taxpayers, and not to make ending a one-sided slaughter a moral question, as if people don’t empty their pockets for faraway victims when they learn that they exist. This was the boomerang result of the spitting lies and other wild tales and exaggerations of mistakes of blaming the rank-and-file troops who destroyed Vietnam. A smart peace movement, its elders believed, would stress sympathizing with troops to the point of not telling anyone what the basic nature of the war was. Here’s hoping that if a peace movement grows again it deems itself capable of walking while chewing gum.

 

9. The United Nations got it right. It said no to the war. It did so because people around the world got it right and applied pressure to governments. Whistleblowers exposed U.S. spying and threats and bribes. Representatives represented. They voted no. Global democracy, for all its flaws, succeeded. The rogue U.S. outlaw failed. Not only did U.S. media/society fail to begin listening to the millions of us who didn’t lie or get everything wrong — allowing the warmongering clowns to go on failing upward, but it never became acceptable to learn the basic lesson. We need the world in charge. We do not need the world’s leading holdout on basic treaties and structures of law in charge of law enforcement. Much of the world has learned this lesson. The U.S. public needs to. Foregoing one war for democracy and democratizing the United Nations instead would work wonders.

 

10. There are always options available. Bush could have given Saddam Hussein $1 billion to clear out, a reprehensible idea but far superior to giving Halliburton hundreds of billions in a campaign to ruin the lives of tens of millions of people, permanently poison vast swaths of territory, predictably generate terrorism and instability, and fuel war after war after war. Ukraine could have complied with Minsk 2, a better and more democratic and stable deal than it is likely to ever see again. The options always get worse, but always remain far better than continuing war. At this point, after openly admitting that Minsk was a pretense, the West would need actions rather than words merely to be believed, but good actions are readily available. Pull a missile base out of Poland or Romania, join a treaty or three, constrain or abolish NATO, or support international law for all. The options are not hard to think of; you’re just not supposed to think them.

 

11. The underlying, WWII-based mythology that teaches people that a war can be good is rotten to the core. With Afghanistan and Iraq it took a year-and-a-half each to get good U.S. majorities in polls saying the wars never should have been started. The war in Ukraine appears to be on the same trajectory. Of course, those who believed the wars shouldn’t have been started did not, for the most part, believe they should be ended. The wars had to be continued for the sake of the troops, even if the actual troops were telling pollsters they wanted the wars ended. This troopism was very effective propaganda, and the peace movement did not effectively counter it. To this very day, the blowback is minimized as so many believe it would be inappropriate to mention that U.S. mass shooters are disproportionately veterans. Slandering all veterans in the hollow minds of those who cannot grasp that 99.9% of people are not mass shooters at all is deemed a greater danger than creating more veterans. The hope is that U.S. opposition to the war in Ukraine may grow in the absence of the troopist propaganda, as U.S. troops are not involved in large numbers and not supposed to be involved at all. But the U.S. media is pushing heroic stories of Ukrainian troops, and if no U.S. troops are involved, and if the nuclear apocalypse will stay within a magic European bubble, then why end the war at all? Money? Will that be enough, when everyone knows that money is simply invented if a bank or a corporation needs it, whereas reducing money spent on weapons will not increase money spent on any enterprise that isn’t set up to recycle chunks of it into election campaigns?

 

12. The wars ended, mostly. But the money didn’t. The lesson was neither taught nor learned that the more you spend on preparing for wars, the more war you’re likely to get. The war on Iraq, which generated hatred and violence around the globe, is now credited with keeping the United States safe. The same tired old bullshit about fighting them over there or over here is regularly heard on the floor of Congress in 2023. U.S. generals involved in the war on Iraq are presented in the U.S. media in 2023 as experts on victories, because they had something to do with a “surge,” even though no surge ever produced any victory. Russia and China and Iran are held up as threatening evils. The need for empire is openly admitted in keeping troops in Syria. The centrality of oil is discussed without shame, even if pipelines are blown up with a wink. And so, the money keeps flowing, at a greater pace now than during the war on Iraq, at a greater pace now than at any time since WWII. And the Halliburtonization continues, the privatization, the profiteering, and the pseudo-rebuilding services. The absence of consequences has consequences. Not a single serious pro-peace Congress Member remains. As long as we continue to oppose only particular wars for particular reasons, we’ll lack the necessary movement to put a plug in the sewer drain that sucks down over half of our income taxes.

 

13. Thinking longer term while trying to prevent or end a particular war would impact our strategies in many ways, not by cartoonishly reversing them, but by significantly adjusting them, and not just in terms of how we talk about troops. A little long-term strategic thought is enough, for example, to create serious concerns about pushing patriotism and religion as part of advocating for peace. You don’t see environmental advocates pushing love for ExxonMobil. But you do see them shying away from taking on the U.S. military and war celebrations. They learn that from the peace movement. If the peace movement won’t demand the global cooperation in place of war that’s needed to avoid nuclear disaster, how can the environmental movement be expected to demand the peaceful cooperation necessary to slow and mitigate the collapse of our climate and ecosystems?

 

14. We were too late and too small. The biggest global march in history was not big enough. It came with record speed but was not early enough. And not repeated enough. In particular it was not big enough where it mattered: in the United States. It’s wonderful to have had such massive turnout in Rome and London, but the lesson mislearned in the United States was that public demonstrations do not work. This was the wrong lesson. We overwhelmed and won over the United Nations. We constrained the size of the war and prevented a number of additional wars. We generated movements that led into the Arab Spring and Occupy. We blocked the massive bombing of Syria and created a deal with Iran, as the “Iraq Syndrome” lingered. What if we had begun years earlier? It’s not as if the war wasn’t advertised ahead. George W. Bush campaigned on it. What if we had mobilized en masse for peace in Ukraine 8 years ago? What if we were to protest the predictable steps toward war with China now, while they are being taken, rather than after the war starts and it becomes our national duty to pretend they never occurred? There is such a thing as being too late. You can blame me for this message of gloom and doom or thank me for this motivation to get into the streets in solidarity with your brothers and sisters across the globe who want life to continue.

 

15. The biggest lie is the lie of powerlessness. The reason the government spies on and disrupts and constrains activism is not that its pretense of paying no attention to activism is real, just the opposite. Governments pay very close attention. They know damn well that they cannot continue if we withhold our consent. The constant media push to sit still or cry or shop or wait for an election is there for a reason. The reason is that people have far more power than the individually powerful would like them to know. Reject the biggest lie and the others will fall like the imperialists’ mythical dominoes.

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This article was originally published on WorldBeyondWar.Org.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk World Radio. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and U.S. Peace Prize recipient. Longer bio and photos and videos here. Follow him on Twitter: @davidcnswansonand FaceBook, and sign up for: Activist alerts. Articles. David Swanson news. World Beyond War news. Charlottesville news.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Outstanding analysis first published in 2004 by author and antiwar activist Richard Sanders. Of relevance to recent developments in Ukraine.

 

 

 

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John Davison Rockefeller (1839-1937), the world’s first billionaire, was America’s most generous philanthropist

Although Rockefeller’s wealth was based largely on a near global control of oil refining, he also had large interests in other monoplies. As Anthony Sutton notes, Rockefeller

“controlled the copper trust, the smelters trust and the gigantic tobacco trust, in addition to having influence in some Morgan properties such as the U.S. Steel Corporation as well as in hundreds of smaller industrial trusts, public service operations, railroads and banking institutions. National City Bank was the largest of the banks influenced by Standard Oil-Rockefeller, but financial control extended to the U.S. Trust Co. and Hanover National Bank [and] major life insurance companies – Equitable Life and Mutual of New York” (Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, 1981).

His incredible rags-to-riches success story owes much to what he learned from his father’s attitudes towards business and respect for the public good. Descended from hardworking German immigrants, his father William Avery Rockefeller was a travelling, snake oil salesman. “Big Bill” excelled as a quack doctor, or pitch man, conning the sick and desperate into buying expensive remedies that were either useless or downright dangerous.

“He would be gone for months and come back with a great roll of money…. He would go to small towns and put up handbills advertising himself as ‘The Celebrated Dr. Levingston.’ He advertised to cure anything, but made a specialty of cancer and kidney troubles” (MacDonald, “Double Life,” New York World, February 2, 1908).

But these were not “Doc’s” only crimes. He was indicted for rape, but was not arrested or tried. He fled the area with family and escaped neighbours who accused him of horse thieving, burglary, arson and counterfeiting. He had two wives, simultaneously, and was a bigamist for 34 years. He met his second wife in Norwich, Ontario, where he sold lumber in 1853, calling himself William Levingston.

William’s example provided ample life lessons to his sons about the business values of duplicity, deceit, and a blatant disregard for public health.

John dropped out of high school in 1855 to take a business course. He worked as a bookkeeper and then teamed up with a friend to start a grain commission business.

In 1863, the Civil War propelled him into the oil business. That year, he – like J.P. Morgan and other rising stars – paid $300 to avoid conscription. It was a small price for them, but unattainable for the thousands who would die.

At first, he sold whiskey at inflated rates to Federal soldiers. Then, he invested his profits in oil refineries. The South had been supplying turpentine to the North for camphene-fueled lights. When the war cut off the North’s access to this fuel, kerosene from Pennsylvania oil quickly took over as the lamp fuel of choice and stimulated his oil business.

In 1865, Rockefeller bought out his partners in the kerosene business for $72,500.

In 1870, he and a few others, organized The Standard Oil Company, with capital of $1 million. He built his company by buying out competitors, price cutting and controlling secondary businesses related to pipelines, trains, oil terminals and barrel making.

By 1880, his monopoly controlled the refining of 95% of America’s oil. In 1885, 70% of Standard Oil’s sales were overseas, largely to northern Europe and Russia. All of its properties were merged into the Standard Oil Trust with an initial capitalization of $70 million, and by 1900 Rockefeller controlled about two-thirds of the entire world’s oil supply. He was also a director of the U.S. Steel Corp when it formed in 1901.

In the 1880s, an oil boom was brewing in Tsarist Russia, around the Caspian Sea town of Baku.

Robert Nobel, the son of Alfred Nobel (originator of Sweden’s peace prize and the inventor of dynamite), was soon competing with the Parisian Rothschilds for control of Central Asia oil treasure.

Their exports threatened Rockefeller’s near global oil monopoly, especially when Marcus Samuel, future founder of Shell Oil, developed tankers to carry the Rothchild’s oil to Europe and Asia.

In 1903, Rockefeller made a deal with the Tsarist government to lease and then buy the Baku oil fields. Besides selling vast quantities of American oil to pre-Soviet Russia, Rockefeller also had millions invested there. Thereafter, seeing an inevitable revolution looming on the horizon, Rockefeller also invested in anti-Tzarist forces to protect this branch of his empire. The Soviets did expropriate the Caspian oil fields from the Nobels and Rothschilds. Rockefeller’s National City Bank also lost assets, thanks to the revolution. Its lawyer, Joseph Proskauer, fought a legal battle to get Rockefeller’s money back. In 1926, Walter Teagle, the president of Standard Oil of New Jersey, successfully negotiated oil concessions in the Soviet Union.

By that time though, Standard Oil’s near global monopoly had been broken up. In 1911, the U.S. Supreme Court decided it was violating anti-trust laws and dissolved it into about three dozen companies. Many of these are now household names like Chevron (Standard Oil California), Amoco (Standard Oil Indiana), Mobil (Standard Oil New Jersey) and Exxon, previously called Esso (Standard Oil New Jersey).

When the U.S. was debating whether to join WWI, a group of so-called “War Hawks,” calling themselves the National Security League, knew that this war would be a major boon to profits.

This League of bankers and industrialists, including Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, Coleman du Pont and H.H. Rodgers of Standard Oil, promoted increases in arms production and universal military training.

By 1917, they had helped build war hysteria to a fever pitch. But not all Americans were on their side. The Woman’s Peace Party, many suffragists and others, strongly opposed America’s entry into WWI. However, the League was successful and the War Hawks’ profits skyrocketed.

Soon after WWI and the Russian revolution, many among America’s wealthy elite felt threatened by rising radicalism, particularly among unions. In April 1919, letter bombs, destined for John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and others, were supposedly discovered in the U.S. postal system.

The media quickly stirred up a massive Red Scare by blaming unions, communists, anarchists and foreign agitators. John Spivak says: “Trade unions were openly disbelieving and denounced with anger the so-called discoveries as a deliberate frame-up to provide excuses for more raids against organized labour” (A Man in His Time, 1967). This incident and others were used as pretexts for the Palmer Raids, during which the government rounded up more than ten thousand activists across the country.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, while the persecution of leftists continued, corporate leaders on the extreme right, continued their criminal rampages in pursuit of profit. Although Rockefeller’s many links to Nazism are too numerous to list here, a few examples are worth noting. In the 1920s, Exxon entered into partnerships with Germany’s top chemical cartel members, BASF and I.G. Farben.

The Bank for International Settlements, which helped fund the Nazis before and during WWII, was created in 1930 by the world’s central banks, including the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. Its creation was inspired by the Nazi government and its bankers. Its first president was Gates McGarrah, a Rockefeller banker formerly of Chase National Bank and the “Fed.”

In 1932, Chevron struck oil in Bahrain and was soon operating in Saudi Arabia.

In 1933, when Hitler seized power, Standard Oil New Jersey supplied Germany with the patents it required for tetraethyl lead aviation fuel. In 1936, the company Schroder, Rockefeller Investment Bankers, included board directors linked to the Gestapo and several European, Nazi-linked banks. It’s lawyers were John Foster Dulles and Allan Dulles, leading Wall Street fascists who drummed up American investments in Germany and elsewhere.

The Dulles law firm represented I.G. Farben and Fritz Thyssen. Thyssen was Hitler’s biggest German financier. The Dulles brothers later became Secretary of State and CIA Director, respectively.

In 1937, John D. Rockefeller died, but his legacy of using oil money to grease the wheels of fascism continued.

That year, as the Spanish Civil War raged, Texas Co. (later called Texaco) fueled Franco’s fascists. (In 1936, Texas Co. and Standard Oil California formed California Texas Oil (later Caltex) to combine Texas Co’s marketing network in the Middle East with Standard’s operations there.) Texas Co. also continued shipping oil to Germany during WWII.

In 1938, Brown Brothers, Harriman, the Wall Street investment firm (with senior partners Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker) was involved in funding the supply of leaded gas for the Nazi Luftwaffe.

Chevron and Texas Co. created Aramco in 1939, to pump Saudi oil for the Nazi war machine. In 1940, Texaco provided an office, in their Chrysler Building, for a Nazi intelligence officer, Dr. Gerhardt Westrick. Executives of Standard Oil’s German subsidiary were “Prominent figures of Himmler’s Circle of Friends of the Gestapo – its chief financiers – and close friends and colleagues of the Baron von Schroder” a leading Gesatpo officer and financier (Charles Higham, Trading with the Enemy). Just before WWII, the Rockefeller’s Chase Bank collaborated with the Nazi’s Schroder Bank to raise $25 million for Germany’s war economy. They also supplied the German government with names and background information on 10,000 fascist sympathizers in America. Throughout WWII, Rockefeller’s Chase Bank stayed open in Nazi-occupied Paris, providing services for Germany’s embassy and its businesses.

In 1943, Roosevelt’s government took control of Rockefeller’s Aramco. It also seized assets of the Union Banking Corp., which Harriman, Bush and Walker had built up by collaborating with Nazi companies that used slave labour. This money was later returned and it launched the Bushes in oil and politics.

In 1953, after an elected upstart named Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil business, a UK/U.S.-backed coup returned the Shah to power. CIA Director Allan Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, were instrumental in this coup. Previously, Iran’s oil had been controlled by the Anglo-Persian Oil Co. (i.e., British Petroleum, BP) but after the U.S. role in this coup, U.S. companies got a 40% share and the top beneficiary was Standard Oil of New Jersey.

The next year, the Dulles boys were at it again orchestrating a coup in Guatemala. This one ushered in decades of fascist military governments that killed hundreds of thousands of innocents. But, it brought great profits for Rockefeller’s United Fruit Co., in which the Dulles were invested. Allen had also been on its Board of Trustees.

John D. Rockefeller would be happy to see the re-merging of his great monopoly. In 1988, Standard Oil merged with British Petroleum. Since then, other mergers have reunited many of his original oil companies. Exxon and Mobil reunited in 1999, to become the world’s top oil business. They made profits of $17.7 billion the next year. BP, merging with Amoco and Standard Oil Ohio, was number two that year and made profits of $12 billion.

J.D. Rockefeller’s philanthropy has been much lauded. Even as a student, he reportedly gave donations to his Baptist church and to foreign Sunday schools. By 1900, he offered to buy a whole church for Baptist preacher Thomas Dixon, a former, southern politician who was then flogging his white supremacist gospel in New York. But from the pulpit, Dixon’s fiery tirades against “creeping negroidism” didn’t reach enough people, so he took up writing respectable, romantic novels about the KKK. He churned out two dozen books. The Clansman, his race-baiting best seller, extolled the Klan’s role in redeeming the South. In 1915, it was made into a movie, called The Birth of a Nation. Endorsed by President Wilson, the film helped revive this dreaded terrorist organization.

Rockefeller’s great generosity was aimed largely at medical education, perhaps because of his father’s career and its peculiar contributions to medicine.

J.D.Rockefeller, being a high school dropout, was not well-suited to his new role as godfather of the country’s centres for higher learning. His philanthropy was permeated with extremely racist views. In 1901, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research was created. In 1902, the General Education Board (GEB) began four decades of tremendously controversial influence over American schools and universities.

That same year, J.D. Rockefeller and Averell Harriman, a business partner of Prescott Bush and George Herbert Walker in Brown Brothers Harriman, gave $11 million to create the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Built on Manhattan property owned by the Dulles brothers, it spawned America’s ground-breaking “eugenics” research and the world’s first “racial hygiene” laws.

By 1907, Rockefeller funding was heavily influencing America’s medical institutions. The Rockefeller Institute created the first genetics lab in 1909. The following year, the Eugenics Research Association and the Eugenics Records Office were founded near Cold Spring Harbor, New York, on land donated by the widow of Averell Harriman. In 1911, John Foster Dulles summed up eugenics, saying that by eliminating “the weakest members of the population” a purer race could be created.

In 1928, Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Eugenics, Anthropology and Human Heredity was created.

Run by Ernst Rudin, Hitler’s foremost “racial hygienist,” the institute’s main financing came from Rockefeller.

Ironically, by 1936 an early psychiatrist at that institute, the half Jewish Dr. Franz Kallmann, had fled Nazism to America. According to Anton Chaitkin, Kallman’s experiments on 1,000 schizophrenics, published by the Freemasons, was used in 1939 to justify the Nazi’s mass murder of

“mental patients and various ‘defective’ people.”

Meanwhile, other Nazi doctors conducted incredibly cruel and vicious experiments on live, captive human subjects. Their body parts “were delivered to [Josef] Mengele, [Otmar] Verschuer and the other Rockefeller-linked contingent at the Wilhelm Institute.”

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Sources

Edward Jay Epstein, Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America, 1977
http://www.mega.nu:8080/ampp/epstein/aof2.html

John D. Rockefeller Page
http://voteview.uh.edu/entrejdr.htm

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http://www.nd-humanities.org/html/rockefeller.html

Destination New Jersey: Sharing With Standard
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All images in this article are from COAT

“Wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or get pinched.” That pretty much sums up the Irish-American “curriculum” that I learned when I was in school. Yes, I recall a nod to the so-called Potato Famine, but it was mentioned only in passing.

Sadly, today’s high school textbooks continue to largely ignore the famine, despite the fact that it was responsible for unimaginable suffering and the deaths of more than a million Irish peasants, and that it triggered the greatest wave of Irish immigration in U.S. history. Nor do textbooks make any attempt to help students link famines past and present.

Yet there is no shortage of material that can bring these dramatic events to life in the classroom. In my own high school social studies classes, I begin with Sinead O’Connor’s haunting rendition of “Skibbereen,” which includes the verse:

… Oh it’s well I do remember, that bleak

December day,

The landlord and the sheriff came, to drive

Us all away

They set my roof on fire, with their cursed

English spleen

And that’s another reason why I left old

Skibbereen.

By contrast, Holt McDougal’s U.S. history textbook The Americans, devotes a flat two sentences to “The Great Potato Famine.” Prentice Hall’s America: Pathways to the Present fails to offer a single quote from the time. The text calls the famine a “horrible disaster,” as if it were a natural calamity like an earthquake. And in an awful single paragraph, Houghton Mifflin’s The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People blames the “ravages of famine” simply on “a blight,” and the only contemporaneous quote comes, inappropriately, from a landlord, who describes the surviving tenants as “famished and ghastly skeletons.” Uniformly, social studies textbooks fail to allow the Irish to speak for themselves, to narrate their own horror.

These timid slivers of knowledge not only deprive students of rich lessons in Irish-American history, they exemplify much of what is wrong with today’s curricular reliance on corporate-produced textbooks.

To support the famine relief effort, British tax policy required landlords to pay the local taxes of their poorest tenant farmers, leading many landlords to forcibly evict struggling farmers and destroy their cottages in order to save money. From Hunger on Trial Teaching Activity.

First, does anyone really think that students will remember anything from the books’ dull and lifeless paragraphs? Today’s textbooks contain no stories of actual people. We meet no one, learn nothing of anyone’s life, encounter no injustice, no resistance. This is a curriculum bound for boredom. As someone who spent almost 30 years teaching high school social studies, I can testify that students will be unlikely to seek to learn more about events so emptied of drama, emotion, and humanity.

Nor do these texts raise any critical questions for students to consider. For example, it’s important for students to learn that the crop failure in Ireland affected only the potato—during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, “Ireland’s was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly.” But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddy’s Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry—food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the “Great Famine,” we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions. Raj Patel opens his book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System: “Today, when we produce more food than ever before, more than one in ten people on Earth are hungry. The hunger of 800 million happens at the same time as another historical first: that they are outnumbered by the one billion people on this planet who are overweight.”

Patel’s book sets out to account for “the rot at the core of the modern food system.” This is a curricular journey that our students should also be on — reflecting on patterns of poverty, power, and inequality that stretch from 19^th century Ireland to 21^st century Africa, India, Appalachia, and Oakland; that explore what happens when food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit.

But today’s corporate textbook-producers are no more interested in feeding student curiosity about this inequality than were British landlords interested in feeding Irish peasants. Take Pearson, the global publishing giant. At its website, the corporation announces (redundantly) that “we measure our progress against three key measures: earnings, cash and return on invested capital.” The Pearson empire had 2011 worldwide sales of more than $9 billion—that’s nine thousand million dollars, as I might tell my students. Multinationals like Pearson have no interest in promoting critical thinking about an economic system whose profit-first premises they embrace with gusto.

As mentioned, there is no absence of teaching materials on the Irish famine that can touch head and heart. In a role play, “Hunger on Trial,” that I wrote and taught to my own students in Portland, Oregon—included at the Zinn Education Project website— students investigate who or what was responsible for the famine. The British landlords, who demanded rent from the starving poor and exported other food crops? The British government, which allowed these food exports and offered scant aid to Irish peasants? The Anglican Church, which failed to denounce selfish landlords or to act on behalf of the poor? A system of distribution, which sacrificed Irish peasants to the logic of colonialism and the capitalist market?

These are rich and troubling ethical questions. They are exactly the kind of issues that fire students to life and allow them to see that history is not simply a chronology of dead facts stretching through time.

So go ahead: Have a Guinness, wear a bit of green, and put on the Chieftains. But let’s honor the Irish with our curiosity. Let’s make sure that our schools show some respect, by studying the social forces that starved and uprooted over a million Irish—and that are starving and uprooting people today.

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Bill Bigelow is curriculum editor of Rethinking Schools magazine and co-director of the Zinn Education Project. He the author and co-editor of numerous publications including Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years and A People’s Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis.

Featured image: The Irish Famine, 1850 by George Frederic Watt. (Source: Zinn Education Project) All other images in this article are from Zinn Education Project.

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***

 

The protest movement directed against Netanyahu’s ultranationalist coalition does not take a stance on the rights of Palestinians.

There were no Palestinian flags in the protest movement against Netanyahu. 

Palestinians are the victims of  both the Netanyahu government as well Israel’s Judicial system which Netanyahu wants to dispel, transforming Israel into what the protest movement describes as a “theocratic dictatorship”.

“In a letter addressed to German and UK envoys, some 1,000 prominent Israeli figures say that Israel is in the midst of the most severe crisis in its history, and that Netanyahu is trying to turn the country into a ‘theocratic dictatorship’

Israel is already a “theocratic dictatorship”. 

The current Netanyahu ultra-nationalist coalition government remains committed to the “Greater Israel” project and the “Promised Land”, namely the biblical homeland of the Jews. 

Benjamin Netanyahu has been pressing ahead to formalize “Israel’s colonial project”, namely the appropriation of all Palestinian Lands. 

The Netanyahu coalition is committed to total appropriation as well as outright exclusion of the Palestinian people from their homeland: 

“These are the basic lines of the national government headed by me: The Jewish people have an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlements in all parts of the Land of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.”  (Netanyahu January 2022)

Under Netanyahu, Israel is currently proceeding with the plan to annex large chunks of Palestinian territory “while keeping the Palestinian inhabitants in conditions of severe deprivation and isolation.”

Israel is a de facto member of NATO following the signing in November 2004  of bilateral protocol agreement.  The “Greater Israel” project including the appropriation of Palestinian lands has been endorsed by US-NATO.

Creating conditions of extreme poverty and economic collapse constitute the unspoken means for triggering the expulsion and exodus of Palestinians from their homeland.  It is part of the process of annexation:

“If the manoeuvre is successful, Israel will end up with all of the territories it conquered during the 1967 war, including all of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and most of the Palestinian Territories, including the best sources of water and agricultural land.

The West Bank will find itself in the same situation as the Gaza strip, cut off from the outside world and surrounded by hostile Israeli military forces and Israeli settlements.” (South Front) 

“Palestine Is Gone! Gone! راحت فلسطين . The Palestinian plight is savagely painful and the pain is compounded by the bafflingly off-hand dismissal and erasure by Western powers of that pain, Rima Najjar, Global Research, June, 7, 2020 

We call upon the leaders of Israel’s protest movement to take a firm stance on the Rights of Palestinians. 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, March 17, 2023

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Below are excerpts from the Ynetnews report.

Our thanks to Ynetnews.

***

Hundreds of Israeli writers, artists, and intellectuals on Tuesday called on Germany and Britain to cancel upcoming visits by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying his plan to overhaul Israel’s judicial system has put the country on a destructive course.

Netanyahu’s coalition, a collection of ultranationalist and ultra-Orthodox parties, has barreled ahead with legislation that aims to weaken Israel’s Supreme Court and give them control over the appointment of the nation’s judges.

They say the plan is a long-overdue measure to curb what they see as an outsize influence by unelected judges. But critics say the plan will destroy Israel’s fragile system of checks and balances by concentrating power in the hands of Netanyahu and his parliamentary majority. They also say it is an attempt by Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges, to escape justice.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets over the past two months to protest the sweeping overhaul. Protests last week were so large that Netanyahu was forced to take a helicopter to the airport in order to catch a flight for an official visit to Italy.

Israeli demonstrations in recent months have escalated as reform legislation proceeds (Photo: Tal Shahar)

High-tech leaders, Nobel-winning economists, and prominent security officials have spoken out against it, military reservists have threatened to stop reporting for duty and even some of Israel’s closest allies, including the U.S., have urged Netanyahu to slow down. Repeated efforts by Israel’s figurehead president, Isaac Herzog, to broker a compromise have not yielded fruit.

To Read Complete Article on Ynetnews Click Here

 

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Featured image: Netanyahu celebrates the bill passing the first of three votes (Photo: The Knesset Channel)

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***

So-called World public opinion probably sees my country, Poland, as one of the most involved warmongers, always on the front line of an aggressive imperialist policy steered from Washington and London. 

It seems to be confirmed also by the present leaks about at least indirect Polish involvement in the terrorist attack on Nord Stream on 6th September 2022. 

As we already know, one of known versions widely discussed in the Western media points to an ‘independent group of friends of Ukraine’ as the perpetrators who, carrying out the act of sabotage, were supposed to travel on a yacht rented from a Ukrainian company registered in Poland. 

The story about freelancers and volunteers does not sound particularly credible, neither explaining how they so freely transported tons of explosives needed to initiate the explosion, nor the sources of the rest of the highly specialised equipment necessary for the entire operation.  However, this is also a preliminary admission of guilt on the part of the pro-Kiev forces, a confirmation that Russia did not blow up the Nord Stream, but on the contrary, that it was an action clearly in the interest of the current Ukrainian government and the policy implemented through them.

Poland’s energy defeats

One way or another, we are dealing with an attempt to involve Poland, as well as Germany (the mysterious sabotage yacht was supposed to operate from the port of Rostock), i.e. the two countries that were actually most affected by the undersea explosion in the Baltic Sea.  And yet Poles are also, and perhaps above all, victims of this extremely dangerous correlation.

Being a peripheral country dependent on the West on all levels, we bear the severe costs of the current global crisis of capitalism, presented as voluntary and inevitable consequences of the energy transformation and alleged climate crisis.  Therefore we have been forced to renounce our natural and hitherto basic energy resource, that means hard coal.

In turn, while participating in the anti-Russian coalition, we cut ourselves off from supplies of Russian natural gas, i.e. the basic transitional resource, thanks to which Europe was to survive the initial stage of transformation, planned for no less than couple decades.  Unfortunately, first we have been subjected to the extremely restricted policy of the European Commission, known as the Fit for 55 strategy.  Complementary we observed speculations on the natural gas options market, which led to a sharp increase in market prices already in autumn 2021.  Finally Ukrainian conflict, combined with the energy blockade and economic war against Russia disturbed the very base of the Polish economy, strongly subsidiary to the Germany interests, including assumed success of the Energiewende, German way of the energy transformation with human face. This face, however, was slapped by the Anglo-Saxons.

Time is running out for Europe

Today we can be absolutely sure, that assumptions of the infamous 10-Point Plan to Reduce the European Union’s Reliance on Russian Natural Gas have been clearly propaganda humbug.  From all of them the only one actually achieved was introducing harsh austerity policy forced by tough pricing policies, loosening of social covers and forcing ordinary citizens to use less energy.  Others, like maximum usage of reserve capacity and rising storage levels, and further transformation towards renewables turned out to be economically unprofitable and technically impossible, at least in a short term. And even if, analytics as e.g. the think-tank Aurora Energy Research, associated with the University of Oxford, warned that all these visions more or less stick together only if the Ukrainian conflict and its consequences last no longer than 2 years.  That means if Russian natural gas continues to flow through Ukraine and the NS2 delay will be no longer than until 2025.  After that time, Europe would have to return to mutually beneficial economic cooperation with Russia.  This is what the Anglo-Saxons had to prevent to.

We know that Americans did it…

From the Polish perspective the American terrorist attack against Nord Stream was undoubtedly the most tragic moment of the current conflict, and it is no coincidence that even mainstream Polish politicians, such as former Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, were among the first to reveal information about American responsibility for this act of energy sabotage in the Baltic Sea.

After all, one of the important goals of American aggressive politics was to increase the energy and thus economic dependence of Central Europe, including Poland, on American and Qatari LNG supplies, as well as gaining a market for American nuclear technologies.  And we must remember that talking about the peaceful use of nuclear energy is a euphemism, because there is no doubt that we are dealing with a desire to quickly resume the nuclear arms race, thanks to the production of a significant amount of fissile material, also in the nuclear plants planned to be built in Poland.

This means that according to the Anglo-Saxons, Central Europe will lose its status of a nuclear-free zone together with relocation of the American and British nuclear weapons directly to the Russian border, what is only a matter of time, rather not long.  And that is not all.  Every day we can predict and even feel other long-term effects of US terrorism against Nord Stream, including wider energy exclusion; draconian increase in the cost of living in Poland and the already felt recession; deepened dependence on foreign energy supplies, and thus lower economic competitiveness of Polish companies.  Above all, the threat of war is growing and the attack in the Baltic only fosters war psychosis, espionage hunting, new Red/Russian Scare and censorship, but not aimed at the real American perpetrators, but against all revealing the truth.

US aggression against Europe

Moreover, the Anglo-Saxons are doing everything to make the peace as difficult as possible also for the Russians too.  This is the same kind of blackmail that was used before 24 February 2022, during almost official Ukrainian (Western) preparations for the invasion against Donbass and Crimea, with a provocative message towards Russia AND WHAT WILL YOU DO?!  However, when it turned out, that Russians were able to DID at least something, sorry for the Ukrainians, the Anglo-Saxons has continued to play this game successfully, not only by supporting the Kiev resistance, but most significantly by blowing up the Nord Stream BECAUSE WHAT WILL YOU DO?!  That flicking Russian open eyes has the same purpose as the tanks sent to Kiev: to keep the war going and provoke Russian reactions.  Although we could reverse that reasoning and ask: how we, the Europeans should react?

For Poles, as for all Europeans, the undersea explosion carried out by American, Norwegian and British terrorists is therefore the first shot of America’s full-blown war against Europe.  We have been attacked, so we must wage our own defence against terror and tyranny to protect our families, homes and workplaces.  Since our real enemies did not hesitate to expose millions of people to death from hypothermia – they will stop at nothing.

This is not the end

What could be the target of the next attacks? For example, TurkStream, and especially the project of its expansion and extension into the entire system supplying southern Europe with Russian gas sent via the Turkish hub.  The existing Anapa-Kıyıköy pipeline is already under sanctions, but since those on the example of Nord Stream turned out to be ineffective, there can be no more ‘independent yachts’ with random commandos with tons of explosives.  We are clearly entering a period in which the transformation of capitalism, its transition into a phase of low-consumption and zero-growth hibernation will also be carried out with the use of military means and acts of terror.

While we know that the American hegemony, carrying out the tasks of the globalist finances, considers China as its main competitor, associated with the declining stage of industrial-consumer capitalism (the post-Fordist model), then it seems to be logical that the Suez Canal or the new Nicaraguan canal planned by Beijing (which would allow bypass US blockades in Panama) could become equally natural targets of attacks.

Let us recall what happened two years ago, in March 2021, after a seemingly minor failure of the Ever Green container ship sailing from the Malaysian port of Tanjung Pelepas to Rotterdam.  At that time, the interruption in communication via Suez lasted only six days, and so it effectively disrupted the supply chain to Europe.  Let’s imagine what if there was an explosion on the scale of Nord Stream and the fastest sea route between Asia and Europe was permanently shut down, just as the wars in Ukraine and Syria effectively block land connections.

Just as in particular Central Europe is deprived of energy, it is perfectly possible to imagine Western consumers being cut off from semiconductors, and thus, most of the hardware and software, electronic devices, cars, as well as other consumer goods, as garments and textiles, the oversupply of which we have become accustomed for successive decades of welfare capitalism.  Decades that are coming to an end with three main turning points of the long Twentieth Century: the energy transformation, the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.  The Anglo-Saxon attack against Nord Stream is only an episode for this breakthrough, but perhaps one with the dimension of Sarajevo and Pearl Harbor.

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Konrad Rękas is a renowned geopolitical analyst and a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

Last week, the Biden administration asked Congress to permit its agents to continue to spy on Americans without search warrants. The actual request was to re-authorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. FISA requires warrants from the FISA Court for all domestic spying. Section 702 is a 2008 amendment to FISA. It expressly authorizes warrantless spying of foreign persons.

The Supreme Court has characterized spying as surveillance and surveillance as a search under the Fourth Amendment. That amendment requires search warrants issued by judges and based upon probable cause of crime demonstrated to the judges under oath and specifically describing the place to be searched or thing to be seized for the surveillance to be lawful.

Since FISA Court warrants — issued by a secret court in Washington, D.C. — are not based on probable cause of crime, and since Section 702 does away altogether with the warrant requirement when foreign persons are even peripherally involved, both FISA and its Section 702 are unconstitutional.

Here is the backstory.

After the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and the full extent of his use of the FBI and the CIA for domestic warrantless surveillance became known, Congress enacted FISA. It proclaims itself to have established the only lawful method for surveillance outside of the Fourth Amendment. This proclamation is a profound constitutional error — an oxymoron — as all surveillance in defiance of the Fourth Amendment is unconstitutional.

That amendment was written in the aftermath of British agents executing general warrants on the colonists. General warrants were not based on probable cause of crime, but rather governmental need. And they did not specifically describe the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

Rather, general warrants — issued by a secret court in London — authorized the bearer in America to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found. The agents ostensibly were looking for proof of tax payments. They were really engaged in spying. They were looking for subversive, revolutionary materials.

After the Revolutionary War was won and the Constitution was ratified, the Bill of Rights was ratified. The Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights protects all “people” from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government — both law enforcement and spies. The courts have interpreted “unreasonable” to mean “without a search warrant.”

The amendment’s drafters’ intentional employment of the word “people” makes it obvious that the amendment protects every person from every search and every seizure by anyone from the government without a warrant. It is not limited to Americans or adults or good people or people the government likes; rather, it protects all people.

In a linguistic effort to accommodate the warrant requirement and its probable cause pre-condition, the congressional drafters of FISA required that the FISA Court may issue warrants for surveillance based on probable cause, not of crime, but of being a foreign government agent. The FISA Court then, on its own, morphed foreign agency into foreign personhood, and then morphed that into communicating with a foreign person.

So, if you text or email or call your cousin in Geneva or an art dealer in Florence, you become a target for a FISA surveillance warrant — merely by communicating with a foreign person.

Even this loosening of Fourth Amendment protection by the Orwellian re-definition of probable cause was not enough to satisfy the rapacious appetite of the government to spy. Thus, President George W. Bush ordered the National Security Agency — the federal government’s 60,000-person strong cadre of domestic spies — to engage in warrantless spying, in defiance of FISA, and on a scale vastly greater than that which Nixon had ordered of the FBI and CIA in the 1970s.

When Congress learned of the warrantless spying, rather than defunding it, it enacted Section 702 as an exception to FISA, and thereby made warrantless spying on foreign persons in America legal. In a direct affront to the Fourth Amendment, Section 702 permits the NSA and its cousins in the 16 other federal spying agencies to spy without warrants on all communications involving foreign persons.

What happens when a foreign person communicates with an American? Section 702 permits warrantless surveillance of Americans who communicate with foreign persons, permits the NSA to maintain a database of all such American persons, permits the FBI to search those databases without a search warrant, and if the NSA learns of evidence of criminal behavior without a warrant, requires it to share that evidence with the FBI.

It gets worse.

Since Department of Justice lawyers have persuaded the FISA Court to issue warrants to spy on Americans who communicate with foreigners out to the sixth degree of communication, the NSA has contended that Section 702 also permits it to spy out to the sixth degree.

How many persons can be spied upon if the NSA’s interpretation of 702 is lawful? Call your cousin in Geneva and NSA can spy on everyone with whom you speak and everyone to whom they speak, and so on, out to the sixth level of communication.

The FBI reported that in 2021, it searched 3.4 million names in the NSA database of Americans who communicated with foreigners. If you take those 3.4 million out to the sixth degree of their American communications, the number grows exponentially. You will have reached 330 million Americans before completion of the process.

Stated differently, the Biden administration, the DOJ, the NSA and the FBI all claim the lawful authority to spy on all persons in America — American and foreign — without a search warrant, without probable cause, without articulable suspicion; and these deep state denizens want that lawful authority congressionally extended beyond its expiration date at the end of this year.

Any member of Congress who votes to do so is unfit for office. Such a vote would be an assault on the Constitution.

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a

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“One year ago the world finally recognized true horror Putin and the Russian Federation planned for #Ukraine and the Ukrainian people – a complete genocide of the people and culture. However, he miscalculated. Ukraine fought back. Ukraine will triumph.” [1]

 – Heather McPherson, Member of Parliament and NDP Foreign Affairs critic

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As it stands right now, not a single member of the House of Commons, in government or in opposition, objects to major support by Canada to the Ukrainian government in its war with Russia. Not one![2]

The elected party in opposition historically most likely to oppose the war drive especially as it diverts resources from health care, education, climate policy, housing and other social policies is the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP). Yet today, as indicated by their Foreign affairs critic Heather McPherson, the reigning party, the Liberals, are not hawkish enough![3]

Enter Ethnorama News Winnipeg, a community newspaper in the city of Winnipeg at the centre of Canada. It claims to highlight the views of the new voices from various ethnic groups that is not heard or reflected in the mainline press. In August and September of last year, it ran a two part article entitled Long History of US-Russia Confrontation. Analysis of Ukraine-Russia Relations. It was a reprint of the story written for Global Research about two months after the invasion took place.

Somehow, the story got the attention of the NDP, both provincially and federally in Ottawa. NDP officials or some other authority spoke to two NDP MPs in the city, Leah Gazan and Daniel Blaikie, people who generally support progressive community projects such as this one. After their meeting, they were either coerced, cajoled or outright ordered to remove advertisements from the newspaper, denying them hundreds of dollars for production purposes. The reason was based on them publishing the above article, which they refer to as “disinformation.”

What’s more, the author of the article is a former Geography Professor and Senior Scholar at the University of Winnipeg by the name of John Ryan. He and his work were smeared without actually going over his material point by point. (You think this was war by NATO? You are nuts!)

Since this view tries to expand the picture of the war and get some context which is missing in mainstream media discourse, attacks of this nature are a warning not only to Ethnorama but to any journalistic organ daring to ask daring questions and scrutinize details of a war, expensive in financing and Ukrainian lives!

It seems as if any deviation from the position that “Ukraine is good, Russia is evil” is harmful propaganda!

Can Ethnorama manage to survive and hold up their journalistic principles and be able to survive financially as two members of Parliament, and perhaps other influential people, withdraw sponsorship? Answering these questions goes to the heart of this chapter of the Global Research News Hour.

In the first half hour we speak to the author of the article, Dr John Ryan, about the factual content on which it was based and the problems from his point of view with the NDP for appearing to convince the two individuals to wash their hands of the magazine based on one article.

Then we speak with Ethnorama editorial collective members Marianne Cerilli and Glenn Michalchuk about their defence of the article and their critical view of US-NATO’s role in the war, and also of the fund-raising event scheduled for the 31st of March at the Ukrainian Labour Temple. (Tickets are $20 each and can be purchased by emailing [email protected])

John Ryan, Ph.D. is a Retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar, University of Winnipeg. His two Ukraine war related articles for Ethnorama can be found here and here. Professor Ryan has also written about his journey to Afghanistan in 1978. His write-up in 2006 got.the respectful attention of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh!

Marianne Cerilli is a parent, educator, former member of the Legislative Assembly and community development aficionado. She sits on Ethnorama’s editorial board.

Glenn Michalchuk is chair of Peace Alliance Winnipeg and the president of the Winnipeg branch of the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians.

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

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CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

1. https://twitter.com/HMcPhersonMP/status/1629141816372076545?lang=en
2. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/house-vote-ukraine-genocide-1.6433212
3. https://twitter.com/HMcPhersonMP/status/1629141816372076545?lang=en

 

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***

State Department spokesman Ned Price answered a question on North Korea diplomacy today, and his answer unwittingly demonstrated the folly of the U.S. approach:

On your first question, it unfortunately is a purely hypothetical question. It’s an academic question, because we have been clear and consistent in conveying publicly and through all channels available to us that we are prepared and willing to engage in constructive diplomacy with the DPRK towards what is the goal we share with our allies and partners of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula [bold mine-DL]. And I say it’s hypothetical and academic because at every turn the DPRK has failed to engage meaningfully on these offers. But were that to be the case, were the DPRK to take us up on this, we would look to see if we could devise practical steps that could help to advance what is that longer-term objective of the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The goal of the complete denuclearization of the peninsula is at odds with engaging in constructive diplomacy with North Korea. As long as this remains the goal of U.S. policy, there is not going to be constructive diplomacy. When “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” means nothing more than North Korea’s unilateral disarmament, North Korea isn’t going to “engage meaningfully” with a demand for its own capitulation. Of course North Korea has “failed to engage,” because they have no incentive to entertain the terms that the U.S. has set.

Their government isn’t going to engage in a process where the end result is the dismantling of an arsenal that they have spent almost two decades building up. The U.S. and its allies can acknowledge this reality and adjust their goals accordingly, or they can sit back and watch as North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and missile program continue to advance and expand. If the U.S. and its allies want a different outcome, they will have to change what they have been doing and modify their demands.

Biden administration officials love to say that “the ball is in their court” when talking about their inability to make any diplomatic progress with other governments. The Biden administration took this line with North Korea early on, and it is not a coincidence that ever since then North Korea has continued building up its forces and testing its missiles in record numbers. Saying that “the ball is in their court” lets the administration pretend that the deteriorating situation is entirely the fault of the other party. It is how they excuse their own lamentable neglect of the issue. This passivity and unwillingness to take the initiative are debilitating for U.S. diplomacy, and it is no wonder that the U.S. has so few major diplomatic achievements in recent years.

The U.S. is the more powerful and secure state, and it has the luxury of taking the first step to revive negotiations if it wishes to negotiate. Because it is much more secure, the U.S. has greater flexibility and freedom of action than North Korea, and that means that the U.S. is in a position to break the current impasse. It cannot do that if it remains wedded to maximalism and coercive tactics.

Van Jackson explained in his new book, Pacific Power Paradox, what is needed to manage the problem with North Korea and its nuclear weapons:

Similarly, the North Korea problem will never be resolved through pressure attached to demands for unilateral disarmament [bold mine-DL]; the only solution lies in living with the Kim regime’s need to gird itself against ingrained perceptions of external threat while making a serious bid to change the relationship of rivalry that fuels that perception.[1]

This solution will be difficult to realize, but at least it has some chance of working and reducing instability in the relationship with North Korea. The current approach is guaranteed to produce more failures and it will almost certainly lead to more North Korean missile and nuclear tests. If the U.S. wants North Korea to engage meaningfully, it has to be willing to offer their government a reasonable compromise instead of issuing an ultimatum and threatening more economic warfare.

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Note

[1] Jackson, Pacific Power Paradox: p. 204.

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Alberta woman’s COVID-19 vax injury vindicated by federal compensation

Carrie Sakamoto was a healthy woman two years ago. First, she received an AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination, and followed up with Pfizer’s version in July of 2021. She was never well again. (click here)

“I got sick that evening, but it was just like regular flu symptoms…then by day ten, I was in the hospital.” Bell’s Palsy was setting in, causing Sakamoto’s brain to swell, causing “really bad” vomiting. Her 5-ft 4-ins. frame shrunk to 100 lbs.

“I wasn’t able to eat because I had all these flu symptoms. By the time I got to hospital, I was in pretty bad shape. I had to learn how to walk with a walker because my balance was gone. I had to learn to chew and swallow, which I couldn’t do. I had a feeding tube too, because I kept aspirating on the food I was trying to chew.”

Sakamoto was diagnosed with Bell’s Palsy that causes her facial paralysis and dizziness. She now has a hearing aid in her right ear due to 35% hearing loss that ensued. She also suffers with trigeminal neuralgia”

On March 1, 2023, she received compensation of “less than $100,000” from Canada’s Vaccine Injury Support Program.

How common are COVID-19 vaccine audiovestibular injuries?

As of March 16, 2023, WHO’s VigiAccess database recorded 140,995 Adverse Events involving “Ear and labyrinth disorders” following COVID-19 vaccination: (click here)

Most notable are:

• Tinnitus: 57,630
• Vertigo: 49,824
• Ear Pain: 17,731
• Deafness: 5,858
• Sudden hearing loss: 3,237

Tinnitus

Tinnitus is an otologic symptom characterized by a conscious perception of sound without an external auditory stimulus.

One study that reviewed the VAERS database found: “COVID-19 vaccines were associated with statistically significant increases in the incidence of vertigo, tinnitus, hearing loss and Bell’s palsy of 1877, 50, 12 and 14 cases per 100,000.” (click here)

The cause remains unknown. Another study speculates: “Conceivable that mRNA entered the cochlea via hematogenic spread, thrombosis of a cochlear vein occurred, there was isolated neuronitis of the cochlear nerve, there was focal encephalitis, or thrombosis of cerebral veins had occurred. It is also conceivable that immunologic reactions against the virus secondarily affected cochlear structures or the cochlear nerve (click here).

Although many patients suffer terribly with post COVID-19 mRNA vaccine tinnitus, most published studies downplay it, and doctors offer nothing to treat it.

Tinnitus Treatment

There is a very recent paper from China that offers acupuncture as one option to seek some relief for post COVID-19 vaccine tinnitus (click here).

As for Quercetin and NAC, both have spike protein binding and inhibiting abilities.

“Molecular docking studies have highlighted that quercetin, a natural polyphenol belonging to the flavonol class, inhibits 3CLpro, PLpro and spike (S) proteins.” (click here)

Proteomics data showed that N-acetyl cysteine (NAC), an antioxidant and mucolytic agent been widely in use in clinical medicine, forms covalent conjugates with solvent accessible cysteine residues of spike protein that were disulfide bonded in the native state. In silico analysis indicated that this covalent conjugation perturbed the stereo specific orientations of the interacting key residues of spike protein that resulted in threefold weakening in the binding affinity of spike protein with ACE2 receptor (click here)

Vertigo

Vertigo is the sensation that you, or the environment around you, is moving or spinning.

One study found that the mean time to onset of vertigo/dizziness following vaccination is 10 days (click here)

A Japanese study examined 378 patients who presented at the vertigo clinic, and found that “vestibular neuritis should be recognized as one of the side effects of BNT162b2 (Pfizer) COVID-19 vaccination” (click here)

Hearing Loss

WHO admits: Pfizer vaccine potentially linked to hearing loss (click here)

“What has been heartbreaking about this, as a seasoned physician, are the emails I get from people that, this has affected their life so badly, they have told me they are going to take their own life”

“The WHO reported 367 cases of tinnitus and 164 cases of hearing loss among the 11 billion vaccines administered — with onset ranging from a few minutes to 19 days, but most commonly within a day of the jab.”

“The most reported COVID-19 vaccines in these cases were Pfizer/BioNTech” the WHO bulletin stated, making up approximately 80 per cent of the cases. Researchers noted hearing loss is not included as an adverse reaction on the product labelling for COVID-19 vaccines”

Many of these cases are treated with 2 weeks of oral steroids, sometimes with addition of ASA, and severe cases with local steroid injections (click here)

My Take

There are 10,000s of cases of post COVID-19 vaccine tinnitus, vertigo and hearing loss reported to VAERS, Eudravigilance, Vigiaccess, UK Yellow Card, etc.

The causes are the usual: autoimmune reactions, blood clots (vascular), blood vessel inflammation (vasculitis).

After reading dozens of studies, I was disturbed by what lengths the medical literature has gone to, to minimize these debilitating audio-vestibular side effects of COVID-19 vaccines, which were most prevalent with Pfizer mRNA.

The JAMA hearing loss study by Formeister excluded 75% of the 2170 VAERS reports and concluded that there was no link between COVID-19 vaccines and hearing loss. (click here)

A follow-up JAMA study by Ulrich admitted that Israeli data had shown a higher risk of hearing loss after vaccination compared to expected rates but that this had “minimal impact with regard to public health” (click here)

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) has been one of the most corrupt journals throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

It appears that some relief from these injuries is possible with Quercetin, NAC or other compounds that bind the spike protein and inhibit its action.

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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 Monday, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published its latest report of global arms sales, which shows that European states’ imports of major arms over the five years between 2018 and 2022 increased by 47 percent compared with that of the 2013-2017 period, while the global arms transfers decreased by 5.1 percent.

During the stated period, arms imports in Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and the Middle East fell by 40 percent, 21 percent, 7.5 percent and 8.8 percent respectively.

In the meantime, European North Atlantic Treaty Organization states increased their arms imports by 65 percent mainly due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The report also said that the U.S. dominance of the global arms trade increased, as its share of global arms exports surged from 33 percent to 40 percent while Russia’s share fell from 22 percent to 16 percent.

Who were the top 10 exporters of major arms in 2018–22?

1) USA🇺🇸
2) Russia🇷🇺
3) France🇫🇷
4) China🇨🇳
5) Germany🇩🇪
6) Italy🇮🇹
7) UK🇬🇧
8) Spain🇪🇸
9) South Korea🇰🇷
10) Israel🇮🇱

New SIPRI data out now ➡️ https://t.co/qnHO6QwBNV pic.twitter.com/Dz8gERaZS7

— SIPRI (@SIPRIorg) March 13, 2023

In the Asia-Pacific region, South Korea, Japan and Australia’s arms imports soared 61 percent, 171 percent and 23 percent respectively, with the U.S. as the main supplier to the three countries. In the Middle East, the largest arms supplier is also the U.S., providing 54 percent of the region’s arms imports.

As a result of military aid from the U.S. and many European states following the crisis in February 2022, Ukraine became the 3rd biggest importer of major arms during 2022.

“Even as arms transfers have declined globally, those to Europe have risen sharply due to the tensions between Russia and most other European states,” said Pieter D. Wezeman, senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms Transfers Programme.

Russia-Ukraine conflict: business for the arms industry #Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/SsDGcoqXl0

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) March 13, 2022

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Featured image: Soldier fires a missile. | Photo: Twitter/ @Kyivtodaycom

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The Cuban socialist healthcare system is internationally recognized as one of the best in the world.¹ It is innovative, preventative, people-oriented, comprehensive, community-centered, internationalist, and, of course, de-commodified—treating healthcare as a human right, not a profitable commodity. However, in spite of its extraordinary successes, the United States’ sixty-year long blockade has tremendously detrimental effects on Cuban life in general, and their healthcare system in particular. As Amnesty International reported, the US blockade “limits Cuba’s capacity to import medicines, medical equipment, and the latest technologies, some of which are essential for treating life-threatening diseases.”²

The intentions behind the US blockade on Cuba have always been clear. As Lester Mallory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in 1960:

Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy [blockade] is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government . . . the only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.³

The blockade is thus aimed at making the material conditions of Cubans as difficult as possible, creating fertile soil for discontent in the Cuban revolutionary process to arise. However, the United States doesn’t leave the arrival of discontent to chance. As Tracy Eaton from the Cuba Money Project has shown, the United States, through regime change fronts like the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. State Department, has spent more than one billion dollars funding Cuban opposition groups and media within and outside of the country.⁴ This combination of blockade and opposition funding is a central component of the hybrid warfare against Cuba (as well as other victims of US imperialism).

Notwithstanding the formidable aggression bearing down on Cuba, the island has been able to achieve remarkable success in the fields of medicine, education, sustainable development, sports, etc. In this article, I will briefly highlight how the Cuban healthcare system functions, some of its successes, and how the blockade has affected Cuban medicine and stifled medical development both within Cuba and in the United States.

Cuba’s Socialist Healthcare System

Speaking to Cuban militias a few months after the revolution, Che, himself a physician by training, would say that

Medicine will have to convert itself into a science that serves to prevent disease and orients the public toward carrying out its medical duties. Medicine should only intervene in cases of extreme urgency, to perform surgery or something else which lies outside the skills of the people of the new society we are creating.⁵

“Such a profound social change demands,” he would argue, “equally profound changes in the mental structure of the people.”⁶ Socialist society could not limit itself to creating changes in institutions and the material foundations of society, it is equally vital, as he famously says in Socialism and Man in Cuba, “to build the new man and woman.”⁷ In the field of medicine, this required the formation of a new type of doctor, “a revolutionary doctor, that is to say a [person] who utilizes the technical knowledge of [their] profession in the service of the revolution and the people.”⁸

In the same year, Fidel Castro would remark that “the future of Cuba will be a future of [people] of science.”⁹ This visionary statement was uttered on the heels of a massive exodus of professionals, where half of the doctors, as well as many of the teachers, had left the country. For instance, “only 12 of the 250 Cuban teachers at the University of Havana’s Medical School remained.”¹⁰ For all the factors pointing otherwise, Fidel’s 1960 proclamation would become true, as today Cuba is the country with the most doctors per capita. This was not a coincidental development. Since 1959, the revolution reorganized the 1909-founded Ministry of Health and Welfare into the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP), which created “a single, national, state-run health system that sets short, medium, and long-term policies.”¹¹ With its goal of training generations of humanistic medical professionals dedicated to the revolutionary process, Cuba eliminated university tuition, made textbooks free, developed various scholarship plans, and constructed networks of universities which created dozens of schools capable of educating professionals in every province of the country.¹² Universal education and universal healthcare went hand in hand – the development of one was the condition for the development of the other.

Cuba’s emphasis on universal education and healthcare within the socialist model allowed the country which lost half of its medical (and other) professionals to develop a surplus which participates in various internationalist missions, almost half of which are done for free (for the poorest countries of the global south), and the other half at a sliding scale.¹³ Thanks to these internationalist missions (which have been ongoing since the first years of the revolution), millions of human beings from the poorest corners of the planet can say that “they owe their health, if not their lives, to Cuban professionals and the government which trained and sent them.”¹⁴

By the middle of the 1970s, after several generations of doctors had been developed within the revolution, Cuba would institutionalize the polyclinic model, a staple of their innovative, community based, socialist healthcare. As Helen Yaffe writes,

A new model of community-based polyclinics was established in 1974 to deliver comprehensive care to residents in their neighbourhoods. Polyclinics gave Cuban communities local access to primary care specialists such as obstetricians, gynaecologists, paediatricians, internists and dental services. Training and policy emphasised the impact of biological, social, cultural, economic and environmental factors on patients.¹⁵

Far from the reductive and deterministic frameworks often found in Western capitalist medicine, Cuban healthcare emphasizes the dialectical relationship of the individual and their community and of the biological and the social. Such an integrative and relational framework allows for a more comprehensive approach to treatment. With the polyclinics and the 1984 “family doctor” programs, the integration of doctors within the individual’s “everyday environment” allowed, as Che hoped, for the preventative and communal dimension of healthcare to thrive.¹⁶

The most interesting dimension of Cuban healthcare, in my view, is its emphasis on prevention. The emphasis on prevention stands as a pinnacle of medical practice, one which would seem like lunacy in the US. When profits are in command, why would anyone do something which might prevent more profits from being realized in the future? When people are what matters, like in Cuba, the goal of medical practice is almost self-destructive, in the sense that the aim is to destroy the conditions, i.e., the sicknesses, which make medical treatment necessary in the first place. The opposite is true when health care is subjected to the same logic as everything else under capitalism. Instead of its natural tendency for self-abolition, the tendency here is towards proliferation, i.e., towards developing more conditions for which treatment is required. The more treatment needed, the more profit there is to be made.

This puts the for-profit health care system found in the United States—the only developed country in the world without socialized medicine—in an irreconcilable antagonism with what the essence of medical care entails. It also creates fertile ground, as we saw with regards to the COVID vaccines, for a large portion of the population to develop medical and scientific skepticism. After all, if it is the same pharmaceutical industrial complex that, in collaboration with the US government, proliferated the criminal but profitable opioid crisis which kills seventy thousand Americans yearly, it does not seem irrational for a portion of the population to lack trust in the same pharmaceutical industry’s handling of the pandemic.¹⁷ This absence of trust in medical institutions does not exist in Cuba, where people know that medicine′s first and only goal is to serve the people. As Hippocrates (from whom we get the Hippocratic oath that is ingrained in every medical trainee in the United States) argued, “a physician’s aim in dealing with any illness . . . should be to halt the conditions that promote its flourishing.” It shouldn’t be that, as for-profit health care promotes, those conditions are sustained or metamorphized into others so that profitable treatment may continue.¹⁸

Cuba’s innovative, preventative, community-centered, and holistic approach to healthcare is the reason why, in spite of the tremendous material difficulties the blockade creates, Cuba is considered to have one of – if not the – most efficient healthcare system in the world. After sixty years of socialism, Cubans are amongst the healthiest and longest-living people in the world, living on average three years longer than Americans.¹⁹ Besides the sixteen year increase in life expectancy the revolution has achieved since 1959, it has also had the largest reduction in infant mortality, from 6 to 0.41 percent, the lowest in the whole Western hemisphere.²⁰ “Infectious and contagious diseases like polio, malaria, neonatal tetanus, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps, whooping cough and dengue,” which are frequently found in the poorest parts of the world, “have been eradicated.”²¹

Cuban medical sciences, thanks to the importance and investment the state affords it, has made prodigious inroads in cancer, diabetes, HIV, and other areas of medical study.²² With regards to lung cancer, perhaps the “best-known innovation is the CimaVax vaccine, created by researchers at the Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM), which acts on the growth factor of cancer cells to prevent the disease from spreading.”²³ The most common cancer death is lung cancer, which killed around 1.8 million people worldwide in 2020.²⁴ With the US blockade in place, thousands of Americans are deprived of the prolongation and enhancement of their lives which the CimaVax vaccine would provide.²⁵ While clinical trials and collaboration had begun during the Cuban thaw, when Obama partially lifted the blockade, the full reinstatement of the blockade with Trump, and its continuation and proliferation with Biden, has once again removed the hope the Cuban vaccine could bring to the hundreds of thousands of Americans with lung cancer.²⁶

Along with CimaVAx, Racotumomab and VSSP are “promising cancer drugs invented by CIM.”²⁷As Cuba Debate reported,

Racotumomab targets a molecule that scientists believe is found in all cancer cells, meaning the drug could one day be effective against leukemia and the tumors that accompany lung, breast, colon and prostate cancers. VSSP, originally designed as a compound to activate the immune response to vaccines, also appears to stimulate the immune response against cancer.²⁸

Recent research into VSSP has shown that it “significantly reduce[s] myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) among people with advanced kidney cancer,” paving “the way for a new treatment” for the disease.²⁹

In addition to its successes in cancer research, “in 2015, the World Health Organization recognized Cuba as the first country to eliminate the transmission of HIV from mother to child.”³⁰This is a feat that Dr. Margaret Chan, at the time the Director-General of the WHO, said was “an important step towards having a generation free of AIDS.”³¹

Cuban medical sciences have also succeeded in developing what has been called the diabetes miracle treatment, Heberprot-P. As Cuba Debate reports,

When uncontrolled diabetes damages the nerves and blood vessels in a person’s foot, it can cause one of the disease’s most debilitating complications: diabetic foot ulcers, capable of penetrating the bone. These ulcers can even become gangrenous and, in the worst case, cause the amputation of a finger, foot or even a leg. Since 2006, Cuba has had a medicine for ulcers called Heberprot-P, which avoids the need to amputate. Its inventors, scientists from the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Havana, describe this treatment as “an epidermal growth factor” that is injected next to the affected area and can accelerate the skin’s healing process, closing the wound in about three months.³²

Heberprot-P has shown nearly an 80 percent  success rate in preventing amputation, an incredible fact considering that up to 60 percent of amputations lead to death within five years, and up to 80 percent within ten years.³³ In the United States, diabetes is the seventh most common cause of death, affecting more than one in ten adults, and prediabetes affecting one in three. Each year 1.4 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes, and more than one hundred thousand die from the disease.³⁴ Nonetheless, Heberprot-P, a treatment which, according to Manuel Raíces, the Communications Executive at the Cuban Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), could reduce the risk of US amputations in half, saving tens of thousands of lives a year, is prevented from being used in the US because of the blockade.³⁵

Hardships of the Blockade

Image: Cuban doctors and nurses getting ready to travel abroad, Havana, Cuba, April 2020. | Photo: Twitter/ @AlmaCubanita

For thirty consecutive years the United Nations General Assembly has voted in favor of lifting the US blockade on Cuba.³⁶ In the recent vote in November 2022, 185 countries voted in favor of lifting the blockade, and only two countries, the United States and Israel, voted in favor of sustaining the blockade.³⁷ It is estimated that the last sixty years of the US blockade has cost Cuba 1.3 trillion dollars.³⁸ It is impossible to overestimate how difficult this has made the construction of socialism in Cuba, and the development of their healthcare system and medical sciences in particular.

As Cuba’s Ministry for Public Health reports,

[Cuba] is denied the right to acquire technologies, raw materials, reagents, diagnostic means, medicines, devices, equipment and spare parts necessary for the best functioning of its National Health System, which must be obtained in geographically distant markets or through a third country, with an increase in costs.

Technologies from the United States or with more than 10 percent of components from that country cannot be acquired by the Island, which has a negative impact on healthcare.

In some cases, it is necessary to send patients abroad at a much higher cost than doing the procedure in national territory, if the technology were available.³⁹

There are a plethora of examples to point to where the blockade prohibits Cuba from accessing medicine, technologies, equipment, etc. that it would need to save or improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of Cubans. American companies and manufactures with more than 10 percent of American capital backing it frequently ignore, and sometimes explicitly reject, Cuba’s requests for purchasing their products. For instance, as Cuba reported to the United Nations:

From January to July 2021, the Medical Products Import and Export Company (MEDICUBA S.A.) contacted 65 US companies to inquire about the possibilities of importing medicines, equipment, devices and other supplies necessary for the care of the Cuban people through the national health system. Of these, 56 did not respond to the requests of the Cuban entity, and three responded negatively (OWENS & MINOR, INC., MERCURY MEDICAL and ELI LILLY).

The OHMEDA, GENERAL ELECTRIC and HEWLETT PACKARD Companies were asked for multipurpose mechanical ventilators for newborns and infants, as well as multipurpose cardiomonitors (which include blood pressure monitoring, among other parameters). Its acquisition has yet to be made possible.

In the same way, the ONE-LAMBDA Company was asked for kits for HLA typing, essential to determine the compatibility of a kidney transplant candidate with possible donors; they could not be acquired either.⁴⁰

“Some 158,800 Cuban patients,” the report argues, “are harmed by the impossibility of accessing technology for the implantation of percutaneous aortic valves (TAVI)” which would, through a “small surgical procedure,” greatly improve people’s quality of lives and prevent more complex surgeries and longer hospitalizations.⁴¹ American companies such as EDWARD LIFESCIENCE (Edwards-SAPIEN valve) and MEDTRONIC (CoreValve valve) have control over the TAVI valves and, because of the blockade, prohibit Cuba from access.

Likewise, “if Cuba could access the drug Nusinersen, produced only by the US multinational company BIOGEN,” more than half of its children who struggle with infantile spinal atrophy could survive much longer and attain a better quality of life.⁴²

The IQ 577 Laser System model, produced by the US company IRIDEX CORPORATION, could treat “retinal disorders and glaucoma” for dozens of Cuban babies born with retinopathy from prematurity who are at risk of going blind; because of the blockade, those Cuban babies will not be able to receive that treatment.⁴³

In many instances, additional licenses are required to sell to Cuba, even when the companies are not American and have less than 10 percent of American capital. As the Cuban Ministry for Public Health reports, shortages were caused in blood bags because the usual supplier, UNFAMED, “reported that the company Terumo BCT of Japan had its bank account blocked, since they must have an Additional License that allows them to sell to Cuba products that are not produced in the United States.”⁴⁴

The “US’s exploitation of the pandemic to increase pressure for regime change” also affords a variety of examples for how the blockade affects Cuban healthcare.⁴⁵ For instance, at the height of the pandemic, while WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked for countries to put their sanctions “in quarantine” because “thousands of lives are at stake,” the US company Vyaire Medical bought ventilator manufacturers IMTMedical and Acutronic, immediately banning all sale of ventilators to Cuba.⁴⁶ Around the same time, Jack Ma’s foundation tried to send Cuba one hundred thousand facemasks, ten Covid diagnostic kits, ventilators, and gloves, all of which was stopped by Avianca, a Colombian Airline whose “major shareholder is a U.S.-based company subject to the trade embargo on Cuba.”⁴⁷ Similarly, the donations from Swiss solidarity organizations MediCuba-Suiza and Asociación Suiza-Cuba to help Cuba fight COVID where refused to be transferred by the Swiss banks UBS, Cler, and Cantonal Bank of Basilea.⁴⁸

While Cuba was helping the world fight COVID-19 through the Henry Reeve Brigade (for which it was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize), the United States was busy preventing the world from helping Cuba, banking on the pandemic-blockade dual force to fulfill the conditions Lestor Mallory proposed for regime change.⁴⁹ Despite the difficulties, Cuba was able to develop five viable vaccines, vaccinating over 90 percent of its population, and delivering hundreds of millions of doses to the global south free of charge.⁵⁰ However, because of the US blockade, the early days of the pandemic saw Cuba lacking access to the syringes needed to effectively vaccinate its population with the vaccines it developed.⁵¹

The internationally denounced blockade on Cuba by the United States is a gross violation of human rights, one which affects both Cubans and the hundreds of thousands of Americans who would have better quality of lives, and even their lives saved, had the United States not prevented their people from having access to novel treatments in cancer, diabetes, and advances in other fields of research developed by Cuban scientists. The spirit of science and scientific inquiry is nourished with openness and collaboration. The US blockade prevents this from occurring, stifling scientific progress.

However, if there is something the last sixty years have demonstrated, it is that the Cuban people are committed to their revolutionary process and unwilling to compromise their socialism and sovereignty. Lestor Mallory’s hope for the blockade would not bear fruit.  Even in the periods where the US warfare on Cuba has produced the most formidable of challenges in attaining the necessary materials to ensure the subsistence of the Cuban people, the mass of Cubans have brazenly defended the revolutionary process, with the slogan of their Bronze Titan Antonio Maceo engraved on their chest: “Whoever tries to take over Cuba will only collect the dust of their blood-soaked soil, if they do not perish in the fight.”⁵² With the initial goal of the blockade unable to concretize, the only reason for its proliferation is to perpetuate senseless suffering, both of Cuban and American people. As those who recognize the emancipatory potential of science and believe that science should serve the people, we have a duty to stand in solidarity with the Cuban people and mobilize to #EndtheBlockade on Cuba.

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Carlos L. Garrido is a Cuban American PhD student and instructor in philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale (with an MA in philosophy from the same institution). His research focuses include Marxism, Hegel, early nineteenth century American socialism, and socialism with Chinese characteristics. He is an editor of the Marxist educational project Midwestern Marx and the Journal of American Socialist Studies.

Notes

1. Salim Lamrani, “Cuba’s Health Care System: A Model for the World,” HuffPost, August 8, 2014, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cubas-health-care-system_b_5649968.
2. Amnesty International, The US Embargo Against Cuba: Its Impact on Economic and Social Rights (Amnesty International, London: 2009), https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/amr250072009en.pdf.
3. “499. Memorandum From the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Mallory) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs (Rubottom),” US Department of State, April 6, 1960, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499.
4. Iroel Sánchez, “Con Tracey Eaton: Rastreando los millones para cambiar a Cuba,” Cuba Debate, June 26, 2015, http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2015/06/26/con-tracey-eaton-rastreando-los-millones-para-cambiar-a-cuba/.
5. Ernesto Guevara, Che Guevara Reader: Writings on Politics and Revolution (New York: Ocean Press, 2003), 114.
6. Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 115.
7. Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 217.
8. Guevara, Che Guevara Reader, 113, https://www.marxists.org/archive/guevara/1965/03/man-socialism.htm;
9. Helen Yaffe, We Are Cuba: How a Revolutionary People Have Survived in a Post-Soviet World (Great Britain: Yale University Press, 2020), 124.
10. Yaffe, We Are Cuba, 125.
11. Juan Vela-Valdéz et al., “Formación del capital humano para la salud en Cuba,” Pan American Journal of Public Health 42, no. 33 (2018), https://doi.org/10.26633/RPSP.2018.33.
12. Valdéz, “Formación del capital humano para la salud en Cuba,” 2.
13. Manish Rai, “Cuba Has 9 Doctors Per 1000 Citizens, Highest in Its History,” teleSUR, July 23, 2019, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/cuba-cuban-doctors-highest-number-in-history-20190723-0009.html; Yaffe, We Are Cuba, 68–69.
14. Yaffe, We Are Cuba, 173.
15. Yaffe, We Are Cuba, 127.
16. Aviva Chomsky, A History of the Cuban Revolution (West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2015), 50.
17. Scott E. Hadland et al., “Association of Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing of Opioid Products With Mortality From Opioid-Related Overdoses,” JAMA Network Open 2, no. 1 (2019): e186007, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2018.6007; Jonathan H. Marks, “Lessons from Corporate Influence in the Opioid Epidemic: Toward a Norm of Separation,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiries 17, no. 2 (2020): 173–189, https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11673-020-09982-x.
18. Philip Wheelwright, The Presocratics (Indianapolis: The Odyssey Press 1975), 266.
19. “Esperanza de vida en Cuba asciende a 78,45 años,” Cuba Debate, May 26, 2015, http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2015/05/26/esperanza-de-vida-en-cuba-asciende-a-7845-anos/; Rob Minto, “Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans,” Newsweek, September 02, 2022.
20. Fidel Castro, “Cuba’s achievments and America’s Wars,” May 01, 2003, Marxist Internet Archive, https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/2003/05/01.htm;  “Cuba: Infant mortality rate from 2010 to 2020,” Statistica.
21. Castro, “Cuba’s Achievments and America’s Wars.”
22. “Con homenaje a Fidel, clausurado Universidad-2016 (+ Fotos y Video),” Cuba Debate, February 19, 2016, http://www.cubadebate.cu/noticias/2016/02/19/con-homenaje-a-fidel-clausurado-universidad-2016/.
23. “Tres grandes logros de la medicina cubana,” Cuba Debate, April 09, 2016, http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2016/04/09/tres-grandes-logros-de-la-medicina-cubana/.
24. “Cancer,” World Health Organization, February 03, 2022, https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cancer.
25. “Governor Cuomo Announces First-Ever Biotech Venture Between U.S. and Cuba to Research and Develop New Cancer Treatments,” Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, September 26, 2018, https://www.roswellpark.org/newsroom/201809-governor-cuomo-announces-first-ever-biotech-venture-between-us-cuba-research.
26. “Governor Cuomo Announces First-Ever Biotech Venture Between U.S. and Cuba.”; Dylan Manshack, “Americans could beat lung cancer if U.S. lifted blockade of Cuba,” Peoples World, December 16, 2022, https://peoplesworld.org/article/americans-could-beat-lung-cancer-if-u-s-lifted-blockade-of-cuba/.
27. “Tres grandes logros de la medicina cubana,” Cuba Debate.
28. “Tres grandes logros de la medicina cubana,” Cuba Debate; Mariano R. Gabri et al., “Racotumomab for Treating Lung Cancer and Pediatric Refractory Malignancies,” Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy 16, no. 4 (2016): 573–78, https://doi.org/10.1517/14712598.2016.1157579.
29. Pavel López Lazo, “Roswell Cancer Center praises Cuba´s VSSP cancer drug effectiveness,” Prensa Latina, October 06, 2022, https://www.plenglish.com/news/2022/10/06/roswell-cancer-center-praises-cubas-vssp-cancer-drug-effectiveness/.
30. Victor Román, “Los aportes científicos más importantes que Cuba le ha dado a la medicina,” N+1, April 21, 2018, https://nmas1.org/news/2018/04/22/medicina-cuba-ciencia#:~:text=Los%20aportes%20cient%C3%ADficos%20m%C3%A1s%20importantes%20que%20Cuba%20le,…%203%20Bajas%20tasas%20de%20mortalidad%20infantil%20.
31. Victor Román, “Los aportes científicos más importantes que Cuba le ha dado a la medicina.”
32. “Tres grandes logros de la medicina cubana,” Cuba Debate; Jorge Berlanga-Acosta et al., “Heberprot-P: A Novel Product for Treating Advanced Diabetic Foot Ulcer,” Medicc Review 15, no. 1 (February 10, 2013), https://doi.org/10.37757/MR2013V15.N1.4.
33. “Treatment For Diabetic Foot Ulcer Utilizing Heberprot-P,” Cuba Heal, December 11, 2018, https://www.cubaheal.com/2018/12/11/treatment-for-diabetic-foot-ulcer-heberprot-p/; Bernard Pac Soo et al., “Survival at 10 years following lower extremity amputations in patients with diabetic foot disease,” Endocrine, 69, no. 1 (July 2020): 100–106, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12020-020-02292-7.
34. “Type 2 Diabetes Statistics anAge of Onset for Type 2 Diabetes: Know Your Riskd Facts,” Healthline; Chad Terhune and Robin Respaut, “Exclusive: U.S. Diabetes Deaths Top 100,000 for Second Straight Year,” Reuters, January 21, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-us-diabetes-deaths-top-100000-second-straight-year-federal-panel-urges-2022-01-31/.
35. “Cuba Has a Diabetes Treatment That Could Save Tens of Thousands of Lives, But the US Is Blocking It,” Breakthrough News, December 13, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWTzgqRRMAU.
36. Manish Rai, “185 Countries Pass Resolution Against US Blockade of Cuba,” teleSUR, November 3, 2022, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/185-Countries-Pass-Resolution-Against-US-Blockade-of-Cuba-20221103-0009.html.
37. Owen Schalk, “Global Community Condemns US Blockade of Cuba for 30th Time,” Canadian Dimension, November 4, 2022, https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/global-community-condemns-us-blockade-of-cuba-for-30th-time.
38. Vijay Prashad, “Washington Beats the Drum of Regime Change, but Cuba Responds to Its Own Revolutionary Rhythm: The Twenty-Ninth Newsletter (2021),” Midwestern Marx Institute for Marxist Theory and Political Analysis, July 23, 2021, https://www.midwesternmarx.com/articles/washington-beats-the-drum-of-regime-change-but-cuba-responds-to-its-own-revolutionary-rhythm-the-twenty-ninth-newsletter-2021-by-vijay-prashad; Carlos L. Garrido, “Anti-Government Protests in Cuba Provoked by U.S. Embargo Has Right-Wingers Salivating at the Prospect of Regime Change,” CovertAction Magazine, August 12, 2021, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/08/12/anti-government-protests-in-cuba-provoked-by-u-s-embargo-has-right-wingers-salivating-at-the-prospect-of-regime-change/.
39. “Bloqueo estadounidense provoca cuantiosas pérdidas al sector de la salud,” Ministerio de Salud Pública de la República de Cuba, July 01, 2021, https://salud.msp.gob.cu/bloqueo-estadounidense-provoca-cuantiosas-perdidas-al-sector-de-la-salud/.
40. “Salud pública cubana: impacto negativo del bloqueo para su Desarrollo,” Representaciones Diplomáticas de Cuba en el Exterior, February 10, 2022, https://misiones.cubaminrex.cu/es/articulo/salud-publica-cubana-impacto-negativo-del-bloqueo-para-su-desarrollo-0.
41. “Salud pública cubana,” Representaciones Diplomáticas de Cuba en el Exterior.
42. “Salud pública cubana,” Representaciones Diplomáticas de Cuba en el Exterior.
43. “Salud pública cubana,” Representaciones Diplomáticas de Cuba en el Exterior.
44. “Bloqueo estadounidense provoca cuantiosas pérdidas al sector de la salud,” Ministerio de Salud Pública de la República de Cuba.
45. Garrido, “Anti-Government Protests in Cuba Provoked by U.S. Embargo.”
46. “US blocks sale of ventilators to Cuba after acquiring medical companies,” Morning Star, https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/w/us-blocks-sale-ventilators-cuba-after-acquiring-medical-companies.
47. Michael Weissenstein, Cuba: US embargo blocks coronavirus aid shipment from Asia,” AP News, April 3, 2020, https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-global-trade-cuba-united-states-jack-ma-2858fbaa2dd5460fa2988b888fc53748.
48. “Bloqueo estadounidense provoca cuantiosas pérdidas al sector de la salud,” Ministerio de Salud Pública de la República de Cuba.
49. Socorro Gomes and Thanassis Pafilis, “Nobel Peace Prize nomination for the ‘Henry Reeve’ International Contingent of Doctors,” World Peace Council,  September 22, 2020, https://www.wpc-in.org/statements/nobel-peace-prize-nomination-henry-reeve-international-contingent-doctors.
50. “Cuba’s COVID-19 vaccine success could serve as global model: report,” Harvard School of Public Health, November 03, 2022, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/cubas-covid-19-vaccine-success-could-serve-as-global-model-report/; Sam Meredith, “Why Cuba’s extraordinary Covid vaccine success could provide the best hope for low-income countries,” CNBC January 13, 2022, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/13/why-cubas-extraordinary-covid-vaccine-success-could-provide-the-best-hope-for-the-global-south.html; “Despite U.S. Embargo, Cuba Aims to Share Homegrown Vaccine with Global South,” Democracy Now, January 27, 2022, https://www.democracynow.org/2022/1/27/cuba_beat_covid_despite_us_embargo.
51. Chris Agee, “Under Pandemic, United Nations Votes to Condemn Cruel and Illegal U.S. Blockade of Cuba—But There Is A Twist,” CovertAction Magazine, June 24, 2021, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2021/06/24/under-pandemic-united-nations-votes-to-condemn-cruel-and-illegal-u-s-blockade-of-cuba-but-there-is-a-twist/.
52. Carlos L. Garrido and Edwards Liger Smith, “Pioneers for Communism: Strive to Be Like Che,” The International Magazine Issue 25, 18.

Featured image: Rural health care in Cuba (Photo by Carol Foil, 2009).