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Many points are made when discussing the green energy agenda’s infeasibility. It has been noted that wind and solar can’t provide our energy needs, that powering the United States with wind would require an area three times California’s size. It has further been asserted that electric-car production and use actually cause more pollution than the gasoline status quo. It’s not just that electric vehicles’ manufacture creates massive releases of CO₂ (not a pollutant, mind you), either; it’s also that the mining of the metals and minerals required for their production causes environmental damage. Yet there’s a kicker here, too, a point seldom made:

Even if we could more cleanly and efficiently mine the materials in question, there simply aren’t enough of them to make green energy a reality.

That’s the conclusion of a geological study that, not surprisingly, hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. CounterPunch has reported on it, however, writing that the research

puts a damper on the prospects of phasing out fossil fuels in favor of renewables. More to the point, a phase out of fossil fuels by mid century looks to be a nearly impossible Sisyphean task. It’s all about quantities of minerals/metals contained in Mother Earth. There aren’t enough.

Simon Michaux, PhD, Geological Survey Finland[,] has done a detailed study of what’s required to phase out fossil fuels in favor of renewables, to wit:

“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls. Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this seminar addressing these issues.” (Source: Simon P. Michaux, Associate Research Professor of Geometallurgy Unit Minerals Processing and Materials Research, Geological Survey of Finland, August 18, 2022 — Seminar: What Would It Take To Replace The Existing Fossil Fuel System?)

Michaux’s “comprehensive study found that the current estimated metal reserves are woefully deficient in almost every category,” American Thinker’s Robert A. Bishop added on Saturday. “The table below lists base and rare earth metals requirements to build the new grid and E.V.s. Deficits are yellow-highlighted. For example, copper is an integral part of a high-voltage grid system, coming up short by a shocking 3.7 billion tons. Can we dig enough open mile-deep ore pits to meet that shortfall? Improbable.”

Bishop continues, writing that below “is the study’s table estimating the years to produce the required metals at the current production rates. For example, lithium would take almost 10 millennia to achieve. In addition, these scarce minerals must be mined, transported, and processed, relying exclusively on fossil fuels, which would create more carbon emissions and deplete hydrocarbon reserves.”

“Petrochemicals from oil and natural gas make over 6,000 everyday products indispensable to modern society,” Bishop also points out. “There are no known alternative substitutes for hydrocarbons. Yet the climate change fanboys catastrophically ignore petrochemicals that provide many indispensible [sic] goods.”

Reality has a way of intervening, however (it’s just a matter of how much pain is required to penetrate deaf ears). As to this, the Ukraine war has had at least one positive byproduct. That is, “Europe’s embargo of Russian oil and natural gas, along with the terroristic sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, is exposing the myth of green energy,” Bishop further states. “As a result, Germany, the poster child for green energy, has resorted to heresy by reactivating its mothballed coal-fired power plants.”

“The math doesn’t support the net zero activist movement’s rhetoric,” Bishop concludes. “Eliminating indispensable fossil fuels, as Germany is experiencing at an accelerating rate, without replacing it with the equivalent of alternative energy, would quickly collapse modern society. Think of it as the ‘Jonestown Massacre’ on a global scale.”

Far from an exaggeration, this alarm has been sounded before. For example, former Greenpeace figure Patrick Moore warned in 2019 that if the Green New Deal were instituted globally, it could “result in the death of nearly all humans on Earth.” But before they met their miserable end, he pointed out, they’d cut down every tree for fuel and kill every animal for food.

That trying to artificially transform a worldwide economy with a big-government cudgel would have a devastating effect is not surprising: It has happened before. For example, in the 20th century, communist dictators such as the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin, China’s Mao Zedong, and Cambodia’s Pol Pot instituted agricultural collectivization schemes that caused the deaths of more than 60 million people.

The lesson is simple, too: If the market doesn’t justify a program or course of action, be more than hesitant to pursue it. This isn’t because the market is perfect (hey, it gives us the Kardashians!), but because it’s democracy as applied to economics; that is, every time hundreds of millions of people make purchases, they’re casting “votes” on what goods and services will prevail.

Echoing what Winston Churchill famously said about political democracy, the market is the worst system in the world, too — except for all the rest. It certainly was a better guide than Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and their brain trusts. And what of today’s would-be economy-steering oligarchs, climate kid Greta Thunberg, extraterrestrial John Kerry, software-glitch-man Bill Gates, et al.? Do you want to bet they’ll be history’s first economic puppeteers whose collective wisdom will surpass that of the market’s invisible hand?

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Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.

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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***

Evidence continues to mount of serious health and environmental impacts from the derailment and explosion of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this month, raising concerns for local residents.

Despite releasing more details about air and water contamination resulting from the crash, regulatory agencies like the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have continued to affirm that it is safe for residents to return to their homes after they were initially evacuated. But they have been cautioned not to drink the water.

The EPA said Monday night that it “has not yet detected any concerning levels of toxins in the air quality that can be attributed to the crash,” ABC News reported. The agency continues to screen individual homes in close proximity to the site.

“I think it’s beggar’s belief when you look at those astonishing pictures from that burn-off that happened earlier last week that there could be a safe environment for people to return to their homes,” NewsNation Washington Bureau Chief Mike Viqueira told Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave on a recent episode of The Hill’s “Rising.”

While lawmakers in Washington and the mainstream media were slow to respond to the disaster, environmental groups, rail workers and local residents have been calling out the corporate interests profiting from disasters like these.

Ross Grooters, a member of Railroad Workers United and city council member for Pleasant Hill in Iowa, tweeted, “It’s time to take back our rail system from greedy profiteers”:

Do not let this thing be normalized. It’s time to take back our rail system from greedy profiteers who externalize risks and reap profits at our expense. https://t.co/GqboaNC8LJ

— Ross Grooters (@RossGrooters) February 6, 2023

What happened?

On the night of Feb. 3, 50 cars of a freight train derailed and burst into 100-foot flames in East Palestine, Ohio, a small town of approximately 4,700 people about 50 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.

Investigators said a broken axle caused the cars to go off the track.

Twenty of the cars, operated by Norfolk Southern, were carrying toxic chemicals and combustible materials, including carcinogenic vinyl chloride, that triggered a fireball and cloud of thick black smoke over the town when the train crashed.

Residents on both sides of the Ohio-Pennsylvania border were ordered to evacuate, as Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio raised alarms about a possible explosion. Officials carried out a “controlled release” of toxic chemicals to neutralize burning cargo inside some of the train cars.

State and local officials told residents they could return to their homes on Feb. 8, given that, “Air quality samples in the area of the wreckage and in nearby residential neighborhoods have consistently shown readings at points below safety screening levels for contaminants of concern,” according to a press release by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

Fears of a wider health and environmental disaster are growing, after a 150-car freight train operated by Norfolk Southern derailed and a so-called controlled burn released toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.https://t.co/eWmbGh09q1

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 14, 2023

Hazardous chemicals killing animals and making residents sick

Since returning to their homes, some residents have complained of feeling ill. Others reported the death of wildlife and pets. Residents living as far as 10 miles away have found dead chickens in their yards. Residents also reported a strong lingering chemical smell in the area. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported at least 3,500 fish have died within a 7.5-mile radius of the crash site.

Then, on Friday, the EPA sent a letter to Norfolk Southern Railway Co. citing additional hazardous chemicals that “either are known to have been and continue to be released to the air, surface soils and surface waters.”

The chemicals were found through water sampling in the Ohio River — which provides drinking water for more than five million people — in storm drains and in soil.

Chemicals include ethylhexyl acrylate, an eye, skin and respiratory irritant that’s toxic to aquatic life; ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, a carcinogen that can be absorbed through the skin and cause liver and kidney damage; butyl acrylate, an extremely flammable chemical that can burn skin and eyes and cause permanent lung damage; and isobutylene, a highly flammable compound that can irritate eyes, nose and throat, and cause coma or death at high levels of exposure, Environmental Health News reported.

On Tuesday, 11 days after the crash, officials told residents to use bottled water until testing could confirm whether the local water supply was safe to drink because the Ohio EPA confirmed the presence of chemicals, including butyl acrylate, in the Ohio River Basin, potentially affecting up to 25 million people.

Ohio EPA Chief Tiffani Kavalec reported Tuesday that a chemical plume is moving down the Ohio River toward West Virginia.

Ohio EPA Chief Tiffani Kavalec:

"We know that their is a plume moving down the Ohio River…We think it's on its way around Huntington, West Virginia." pic.twitter.com/o3cLEE62tH

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) February 14, 2023

Some residents concerned about the health effects filed a lawsuit against Norfolk Southern, NPR reported.

An eco-horror caused by corporate abuse

“The fiery train crash in East Palestine is just the latest in a series of preventable tragedies,” Food & Water Watch Pennsylvania Director Megan McDonough said in a statement.

Food & Water Watch Pennsylvania is one of several organizations and analysts pointing to the power the chemical and transportation industries hold over government policies as the root cause of the crash and calling for policy change.

Rail Workers United, an inter-union alliance of rail workers, argued last week that the crash “was a predictable consequence of Wall Street-backed policy decisions that have hollowed out the industry’s workforce, pushed remaining employees to chronic exhaustion, and sacrificed safety for profits,” Common Dreams reported.

When current transportation safety rules were first created, the federal government sided with industry lobbyists limited regulations governing the transportation of hazardous compounds, allowing trains like the one in Ohio to haul dangerous materials without being subject to stringent safety requirements, according to The Lever.

Norfolk Southern paid top executives millions, spent billions on stock buybacks and decreased the size of its workforce, which increases safety risks. It also blocked a shareholder initiative that would have required it to mitigate the risks of transporting hazardous materials.

Industry-friendly policies over the last decade led to a major uptick in derailments, forcing the Obama administration to propose improved safety regulations. But the Obama measures were watered down after industry pressure.

The Trump administration, which received more than $6 million from the rail industry, then rescinded some of those watered-down rules, including one that would have required a better braking system on the Ohio train.

The Biden administration, with Pete Buttigieg as transportation secretary, made no move to reinstate the rules.

“Norfolk Southern’s environmental disaster is the latest in a long string of corporate malfeasance committed right under the secretary’s nose,” according to Revolving Door Project Executive Director Jeff Hauser.

But it wasn’t just the failure to regulate the rail industry that created this crisis. McDonough also placed responsibility for the disaster on the growing petrochemical industry in the region. She said:

“Community groups, grassroots organizations and public health experts have been warning for years that the fracking and petrochemical polluters in our area pose serious health dangers to our communities. Yet lawmakers from both parties have encouraged the growth of pipelines, petrochemical plants, and new fracking wells dangerously close to our homes and schools. Expanding these dirty energy networks means transporting hazardous and even potentially deadly chemicals by pipeline, truck and train — putting millions of us at risk every single day.”

Other experts allege the decision to sacrifice human and environmental health to corporate interests also continued after the crash.

Environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who represented more than 30,000 indigenous people in their case against Chevron for polluting their land, alleged that the dangerous decision to do a “controlled release” of hazardous chemicals was made in order to open the railways.

Ohio train disaster is an eco-horror caused by corporate abuse. Norfolk Southern detonated the fireball below to "dispose" of cancer-causing chemicals because it was cheaper and the rails could open faster.

They "nuked" a small town for profit.https://t.co/SaCbXGcQsO pic.twitter.com/qTB40Eu05a

— Steven Donziger (@SDonziger) February 15, 2023

Two Wall Street analysts — Bank of America and Cowen — published reports Tuesday indicating that Norfolk Southern won’t see a major hit to its bottom line following the train disaster, FreightWaves reported.

Bank of America’s Ken Hoexter said the company will likely have to pay a $40 to $50 million “casualty charge.”

But, “as rail service is restored, rail shares have historically not seen a material impact from accidents on a 3-month horizon,” Hoexter wrote.

In 2022, Norfolk Southern generated $12.7 billion in revenue and $3 billion in profits.

Media and politicians more concerned with Chinese balloons than East Palestine

Viqueira, who has been covering the story closely, told hosts Gray and Soave on a recent episode of “Rising” that he thought the political fallout from the lack of response by Washington was going to be significant.

Gray agreed. “The news seems to be very transfixed on the Chinese balloons and not at all seem to be wanting to dedicate much time to this ongoing environmental crisis,” she said.

Viqueira said that part of the reason the story hadn’t been covered was political. He said that there are people asserting there is “apathy because these folks are a working-class community in eastern Ohio. That’s [what people are saying] on the left.”

“On the right people are blaming the administration for not caring just on the basis of electoral politics because that area in that particular county — Columbiana County — in eastern Ohio voted I think 45 in favor of Donald Trump,” he added.

Buttigieg has come under significant fire for ignoring the train derailment.

Former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner tweeted this:

He jokes about balloons while ignoring East Palestine, OH.

We deserve better than this. pic.twitter.com/tAcNniSPMQ

— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) February 13, 2023

Buttigieg made his first comments about the derailment ten days after the event and only after he had been slammed in the media.

Viqueira continued, “What I think is a serious concern is a relative lack of attention to what is most obviously an environmental catastrophe… [and] an economic catastrophe for the people of Eastern Ohio.”

“Locally they’re putting the cart before the horse and sending people back before they’re even sure themselves are authorities whether or not it is a safe environment,” he said.

Gray said this was just one of many times where people have been told there is nothing to be concerned about, when in fact there is. She gave the example of the first responders during 9/11 who later got cancer at alarming rates, of the water in Flint Michigan and of soldiers exposed to hazardous chemicals in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“People have been taught by history not to believe these kinds of claims,” she said.

Gray also commented on the long history of corporations evading responsibility for environmental and human disasters they cause:

“So often unfortunately what happens when these corporations deal with hazardous materials and there are accidents like these they’re either judgment proof [where] the cost of actually making people whole, the value of all of those lives, the harms of the environment is so big that it would bankrupt the company and courts tend to be protective of companies and keeping them in business. …

“Or they’re able to shield themselves from liability or actually having to pay the judgments, the way that Chevron has been able to do with that historically large … $9 billion lawsuit that was won for their polluting in the Amazon.”

Watch a discussion of the Ohio disaster on “Good Morning CHD” here.

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Brenda Baletti Ph.D. is a reporter for The Defender. She wrote and taught about capitalism and politics for 10 years in the writing program at Duke University. She holds a Ph.D. in human geography from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s from the University of Texas at Austin.

Featured image: @blckndgldfn/Twitter (left); @StrictlyChristo/Twitter (right)

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 the village of East Palestine, on a late Friday evening, a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed on the Ohio side of the Pennsylvania border, causing tanker cars to rupture and catch fire, releasing thousands of tons of hazardous chemical compounds into the surrounding land and atmosphere. At the time of the crash, the known chemicals aboard included the highly toxic vinyl chloride and hydrogen chloride. An EPA document dump on February 12 revealed additional carcinogenic chemicals were aboard too, as well as some highly flammable solvents and gases. Public documents reveal that four tank cars containing vinyl chloride were stacked together.

Responding before the reveal of the cargo’s manifest, Jason Trosky, a resident of East Palestine, told the Prospect:

“A $56 billion corporation knows where every one of its assets is at any given time … The reason [Norfolk Southern] didn’t show us the manifest is because the train was overloaded.”

Twenty miles earlier, grainy security footage from an equipment plant in Salem, Ohio, showed flashes of white rising from the train tracks, sparks and flames—a possible indication of fire or malfunction. Before the derailment, Michael Graham, a spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), said the crew on board was notified of mechanical failure, prompting them to activate the emergency brakes, which caused the derailment. At time of writing, it was not known whether the hotbox detector, a device used to assess the parts of a rail car, in Salem or the one in East Palestine alerted the crew on board.

In the following days, reporting from The Lever detailed how Norfolk Southern lobbied against transportation safety rules designed to prevent the exact sort of disaster that happened in East Palestine. They spent big to block new rules requiring rail companies to replace conventional air brakes with electronically controlled pneumatic brakes on cars carrying volatile or dangerous material. The new technology is far more effective at braking—unsurprising given that air brakes were designed in the 19th century—but the upgrades would have cost money.

Ben Ratner, a resident of East Palestine, recalled the immediate moments after the freight train derailed to the Prospect. He and his family arrived home from his daughter’s basketball game. The phones buzzed and sirens rang overhead. From the Ratner home, the train tracks are visible from the backyard. He looked outside and saw flames. “I wasn’t fully sure what was going on for our family and friends who live over there.” So he stepped outside and walked toward the smoke and flames until he was stopped by firefighters. “I tried getting over to my friend’s house and they weren’t letting me cross the intersection,” he said, solemnly, “I was very close to their house, but they were actually getting ready to leave as well.” He then returned home.

By midnight, Ratner and his family decided they’d shelter in place. “Some people were leaving town, but our kids were getting ready for bed. We didn’t know how serious it was.” The following morning, Ratner relocated his family to his mother-in-law’s house, just over two miles away from the crash site, as he went to work for the day. His wife called him, telling Ratner that evacuation for children was mandatory, citing alleged potential charges for child endangerment. Ratner described frantically running around town, being stopped from entering East Palestine, and eventually picking up the family’s dog. By Sunday, his family had rented an Airbnb next to the family-owned coffee shop in Salem. At the time of the interview, he said his house was on a wait list for air quality testing and he was unsure of returning. He said: “Our kids are supposed to return to school on Monday.”

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At 4:17 a.m. on February 6, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 21,000 people in what was the deadliest earthquake seen worldwide in more than a decade.

The Biden administration announced on Monday, soon after the quake struck, that it was coordinating any and all needed assistance with Turkish officials, deploying quickly to support Turkish rescue efforts, and sending a USAID disaster response team into Turkey.

Team Biden was much more muted with regards to Syria, stating that “U.S.-supported humanitarian partners are also responding to the destruction in Syria.”

These comments made clear the Biden administration’s refusal to work with the Syrian government, which has been the target of a U.S. regime-change policy since the early 2000s.

The humanitarian groups to which Biden is referring are NGOs operating in areas outside the control of the Syrian state, which may yet exclude the rest of the country from any such aid, including the badly hit city of Aleppo, which is under Assad government control.^[1]

State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters:

“I will make the point that it would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now—gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured.”

These statements are callous, misleading and hypocritical.

Callous because of the desperate need for aid to reach Syria to save lives regardless of politics.

Misleading because Price suggests that the Assad government gassed its own people using chemical weapons when strong scientific evidence suggests that these alleged chemical gas attacks, if they actually took place, were carried out by Syrian rebel forces backed by the U.S. and Turkey.

And hypocritical because Washington supports many governments that brutalize their people—including Turkey, which a) has a ghastly record of terrorizing the Kurds; b) supported ISIS in Syria; c) supports Azerbaijan in its assault on Nagorno Karabakh; and d) has adopted increasingly autocratic measures toward dissidents at home under Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But Turkey has been a U.S. ally for decades and a NATO member, and hosts the large Incirlik Air Base.

The Syrian government under Bashar al-Assad, by contrast, humiliated the U.S. by defeating a U.S.-backed uprising over the last decade with Russian assistance. Assad’s government has also allied with Iran and stood up to Israel, while resisting U.S. designs to build an oil pipeline that would have undercut supply routes from Russia.^[2]

The Biden administration appears to see the earthquake as an opportunity to advance its regime-change agenda by exacerbating the suffering of the Syrian people and eroding the legitimacy of the government that cannot properly save them.

Erdogan’s government by contrast will gain in legitimacy from a strong response to the quake.

Flight tracker shows the absence of any aircraft in Syrian air space after dealing with the devastating earthquake while almost all aid and rescue teams are heading to Turkey. [Source: english.almayadeen.net]

EU Countries and NATO Follow U.S. Lead

Mimicking the Biden administration, NATO Chief Jens Stoltenberg voiced “full solidarity” with ally Turkey, saying he was in touch with Turkey’s top leadership and “NATO allies are mobilizing support now,” completely leaving out Syria.

British Foreign Minister James Cleverly said the UK was sending Turkey a team of 76 search and rescue specialists, equipment, and rescue dogs as well as emergency medical teams.

Cleverly left out Syria, similar to other Western allies like Germany, Poland and even Greece, Turkey’s historic enemy, which pledged “immediate assistance” to President Erdogan, though not Syria’s Assad—even though Assad issued an international appeal for humanitarian aid.

Of the aid that is getting through, the majority is coming from the Global South. Transport planes from the U.A.E., Iran, Oman, Egypt, Iraq, Armenia, China, India, Pakistan, and Russia have landed in Syria loaded with aid; Lebanon has made its sea and airports available for aid shipments Syria, and even Palestine has sent a rescue team.

Great Difficulties

A surgeon from Aleppo, Mohamed Zitoun, who spent years treating casualties from the Syrian war, said that he has never experienced anything like the number of injured and the scale of their injuries from the earthquake, and that the hospital’s emergency teams where he worked at Bab al-Hawa near the Turkish border were running out of antibiotics, sedatives, surgical supplies, blood bags, bandages and drips.^[3]

Syria is facing special difficulties responding to the earthquake because a) the only crossing between Syria and Turkey that is approved by the United Nations for transporting international aid into Syria is not functioning, according to UN officials, because of earthquake damage to roads around it; b) Damascus International Airport is still undergoing repairs and maintenance following an Israeli air strike on the facility on January 2, which hinders the landing of humanitarian aid; and c) because of the ravages bred by Syria’s 12-year war and the brutal economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and EU, which are not being lifted.

Al Mayadeen, a pan-Arabist Lebanese journal, reported on February 6 that, “due to the war that weakened the infrastructure in Syria, the draconian Western sanctions imposed on the country, the U.S. occupation of some Syrian land, as well as the looting of billions of dollars of its resources, Syria is unable to fully respond to the tragic catastrophe. As a result, the number of victims of the 7.8-magnitude earthquake is rising.”

U.S. Sanctions and the Caesar Act—an Instrument of Regime Change

The Carter administration first imposed sanctions on Syria in 1979 when it designated Syria as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

New rounds were imposed in 2004 and 2011 when the U.S.-backed uprising against Assad began and he was accused of human rights abuses.

In December 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Caesar Act, under which anyone doing business with the Syrian authorities potentially became exposed to travel restrictions and financial sanctions while vital medicines and foodstuffs were blocked from entering the country.

The Caesar Act was named after a government defector, Caesar, who leaked thousands of photographs alleging torture of civilians by Assad’s security forces.

Nearly half the photos actually showed government soldiers who had been killed and victims of car bombs and other war-related violence, and many others showed soldiers who had died in combat—not government torture centers.

Caesar’s identity was also unclear and he was suspected of being in the employ of the CIA.

CNN show discussing Caesar’s “torture” report that was a basis for expanded sanctions. [Source: mondialisation.ca]

Lift Your God Damned Sanctions

Independent journalist Vanessa Beeley posted a report from a northern Syrian resident, Bashar Murtada, on her Telegram channel:

“International cargo planes are unable to land at Syrian airports as a result of the U.S. blockade, and countries require Syrian airlines to transport aid on board their civil planes!!! As is well known, the so-called Caesar Act comes in the context of practicing economic terrorism and it is considered one of the most dangerous types of crimes against humanity.”

Beeley posted another statement from Aleppo businessman and former MP Fares Shehabi:

“Lift your God damned sanctions so we can open our airports to receive international aid! In Aleppo alone more than 50 buildings have been destroyed resulting in more than 160 deaths so far and thousands of injuries. Thousands of families are now without shelter! What kind of evil governments pose economic & travel sanctions on earthquake devastated nations?!”

So Sanctions May Not Turn into a Crime Against Humanity

Shehabi’s response was echoed by the Middle East Council of Churches (MECC), which called for the immediate lifting of sanctions imposed on Syria, charging that the current blockade has prevented their organization from carrying out relief operations for the earthquake throughout the country.

“We urge the immediate lifting of sanctions on Syria and allowing access to all materials, so sanctions may not turn into a crime against humanity,” said the attendees of the Council in a statement.

Three prominent Christian leaders in Syria released a statement to similar effect, as did the UN Resident Coordinator in Syria, Mostafa Benjamilh, and the President of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Khaled Hboubati, who said during a press conference in Damascus that

“the evacuation process and rescue operations are restricted due to obstacles resulting from the severe sanctions. We have shortage in heavy machines and equipment needed to lift the rubble. I don’t mean trucks or bulldozers, I mean specific machines that lift rubble without injuring people trapped under the rubble…. Now, with this natural disaster, it’s time to lift the sanctions.”

John X, Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and all the East, Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East and Supreme Head of the Universal Syriac Orthodox Church, and Youssef Al-Absi, Patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church of Antioch, Alexandria and Jerusalem, make plea to end the sanctions and embargo imposed by the U.S. and other countries on Syria because they are hindering earthquake relief efforts and costing Syrian lives. [Source: mecc.org]

A Most Barbaric Response to Human Tragedy

Colonel (Ret.) Richard Black, who flew 299 combat missions in Vietnam and served in the Virginia State Senate as a Republican from 2012 to 2020, has been one of the few former high-ranking military officers or government officials to speak out against U.S. military intervention in places like Syria and Ukraine.

A day after the earthquake, Col. Black characterized the Biden administration’s response as “an act of vengeance against Syria’s rejection to submit to the U.S. regime-change war and sanctions imposed on their country for the past 12 years.”

Col. Black continued:

“I have got to tell you, I have never seen such a barbaric response to a tragedy where you literally have people in Aleppo city, Syria who are looking up at piles of concrete, their lives are coming to an end, they’re freezing in the cold. They’re there without food, without water, and they’re dying. Meanwhile, the State Department takes that opportunity to re-emphasize the fact that we are bitter because we could not impose our will on the Syrian people.

“It was in 2020 that the United States imposed the Syria sanctions out of anger at the fact that Syria had driven back the ISIS and al-Qaeda terrorists that the United States had supported, and was trying to overwhelm the government with. So, now the State Department looks at this as an opportunity to simply ratchet up the regime of starvation and freezing that we have imposed on Syria through the cruel Caesar sanctions.

“I’m quite disgusted by the actions of the United States State Department. It is really unbecoming of any civilized nation that they would choose this moment to take out their vengeance on the poor suffering people of Syria.”

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

Notes

1. Some of these organizations were infamous for staging false attacks to implicate the Syrian government in crimes it had not committed. Special advisor to Syrian President al-Assad, Bouthaina Shaaban charged that the West provides assistance to support terrorists in areas outside the control of the Syrian state, primarily concerned with protecting Daesh “ISIS,” “Jabhat al-Nusra” and the “White Helmets,” and isn’t interested in areas where most Syrians live.

2. Bashar’s father Hafez had allied with Nasserist Egypt and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. 

3. According to U.S. News & World Report, the hospital where Zitoun works is in an opposition-held enclave in northwest Syria, an area which bore the brunt of Russian and Syrian bombing during the country’s conflict, which killed hundreds of thousands, and where the towns are heavily populated with those who fled other areas of Syria. “The first massive wave of patients surpassed the ability of any medical team,” said the surgeon. The outpatient clinic was turned into a ward and mattresses were laid on the floor as the rooms filled with victims and despairing family members. “This is a huge calamity. I lived through shelling and survived massacres. This is totally different, terrifying and horrific.” 

Featured image: Rescuers carry a victim on the rubble as the search for survivors continues in the aftermath of an earthquake, in rebel-held town of Jindires, Syria, February 7, 2023. [Source: usnews.com]

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***

We urgently need to spark a mass mobilization antiwar movement in North America. There have been good antiwar demonstrations in recent months, but they have been very limited.  We need to rapidly expand tenfold.

The Rage Against the War Machine initiative, which is organized by a diverse group of anti-war forces,  could do just that. The demands and overall speaker list are very good.

For example Demand 1 is “Not one more penny for War in Ukraine”. They explain

“The Democrats and Republicans have armed Ukraine with  tens of billions of dollars in weapons and military aid. The war has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and is pushing us toward nuclear WW3. Stop funding the war.”

Demand 2 is “Negotiate Peace.” They explain,

“The US instigated the war in Ukraine with a coup on its democratically-elected government in 2014, and then sabotaged a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine in March. Pursue an immediate ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war.”

The speakers list contains many eloquent voices for peace and against a militarist foreign policy. There are former members of Congress including Cynthia McKinney, Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. There are peace activists such as Anne Wright and David Swanson. There are journalists such as Chris Hedges, Garland Nixon, Scott Horton, Max Blumenthal, and Kim Iversen. Former Green Party candidate Dr Jill Stein will be there. So will Dan McKnight from the veterans group “Bring our troops home.”  And there are many more speakers.

Most of those who support the Rally believe it is crucial to broaden the movement and that means allying with others who may have different views on other issues.

The Rage rally focus is on ending the Ukraine war, disbanding NATO and stopping the slide toward nuclear Armageddon. Should they have included other issues such as abortion, trans rights, gay rights, immigrant rights?  I have helped organize rallies where those issues were included, but believe it is a mistake to insist on this. The antiwar movement needs to quickly reach way beyond the Left.  That means vastly broadening our reach and uniting with some people who think differently about other issues.

The capitalist system is flexible. Having women, people of color and nonconforming gender individuals in key positions does not threaten the system. The war machine continues, as does the grotesque income inequality, severe poverty and institutional racism.

To challenge the war machine, we need a mass movement that is broad and inclusive. Agreeing on all issues should not be required.  To make this a demand, and to de-platform anyone who does not agree, is counterproductive. It weakens the antiwar movement and keeps us isolated.

We need to advance our common cause by working together with people who think differently on some issues. We can probably learn from them as they learn from us.

The ruling elite is content when the mass of working people are divided and fighting over racial, cultural and social issues.  What threatens the ruling elite is the possibility of a mass movement demanding a change in US foreign policy of aggression, sanctions and wars. What threatens the ruling class are demands for improvement in the lives of all working people.

The Occupy Movement demand to support the 99% against the 1% was clear, accurate and uniting. Similarly, the demand to change US foreign policy and dramatically reduce the military budget has the potential to appeal to a broad majority of Americans.

The current slide toward a catastrophic war between the US and Russia makes it urgent to build a broad movement to oppose  militarism and the war machine.

There needs to be  a resurgence of energy and activism across the country.  Let’s make this weekend’s Rage Against the War Machine as big and successful as possible and do more in the coming months.

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Rick Sterling is a journalist and activist based in the SF Bay Area. He can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

At a time the entire world community should unite to provide aid to all victims of the massive February 6th earthquakes which devastated south-eastern Turkey and north-western Syria, politics is dividing East from West — once again. Scores of rescue teams, tonnes of material aid and millions of dollars have poured into NATO member Turkey, the epicentre of the first 7.8 magnitude quake, the strongest in the region for four decades.

There has been wide publicity about the terrible conditions faced by civilians in Syria’s northwest Idlib province, where local “White Helmets” civil defence teams have been solely responsible for rescuing people buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings. Heavy digging equipment, tents, medical supplies and food were not initially delivered through Turkey’s Bab Al Hawa crossing due to quake damage on access roads.  This state of affairs has made Idlib a constant focus of global media which report the area is under the control of “rebels”. The “rebels” are rarely identified as Al Qaeda offshoot Hay’at Tahrir Al Sham (HTS) which was branded a “foreign terrorist” organisation by the UN and US.

Instead, the US and European Union continue to sanction Syrians who live in the 70 per cent of their country held by the government of President Bashar Assad. While Western powers claim sanctions do not impede food, medical supplies and humanitarian assistance, this is a lie. Since fighting in the civil conflict and proxy war in 2016-17, Syria has been prohibited by sanctions from accessing funds and material to reconstruct infrastructure, public buildings, schools and hospitals destroyed or damaged by warfare. In the last three years, sanctions have deprived the majority of Syrians of fuel, essential foodstuffs and life-saving medications as foreign firms are afraid to deal with the Syrian government because of the US Caesar Act of 2019 which punishes individuals and entities dealing with the government.  Ahead of the quake, deprivation had driven 90 per cent of Syrians below the poverty line.

The quake drove Assad to apply to the European Union for assistance under the bloc’s Civil Protection Mechanism and $3.7 million was allocated “shelter, water and sanitation, and various health items” as well as support of search-and-rescue operations. Germany then announced aid valued at $28 million. There has even been a positive response from the bitterly anti-Assad Biden administration which has waived sanctions for 180 days on Syrian imports of medicine, food, tents and other supplies for quake victims.

Assad has agreed to the delivery of aid to Idlib via government-held territory.  If politics did not intervene this could be a simple matter as the airports at Latakia and Aleppo are close to Idlib. He also ordered the opening of two crossings into Syria from Turkey. However, HTS — which is also sanctioned by the US-barred deliveries to Idlib from government-controlled areas. An HTS source told Reuters last weekend, “We won’t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping.” It is not clear whether HTS chief Abu Mohammed al-Julani upholds this ban.  Perhaps he does not need to since two other channels from Turkey are set to open.

While the world has focused on quake devastation in southern Turkey and Idlib, some information is trickling out about deaths and destruction inflicted on Aleppo, Latakia, Tartous and Hama. An estimated 200,000 people have been rendered homeless. Al Mayadeen’s correspondents have reported that more than 50 buildings — in addition to those which collapsed — will have to be demolished in Aleppo where the local search and rescue mission has ended and the authorities are shifting to finding shelter, food, clothing and schooling for survivors. At least 4,000 homes have been damaged in Hama. Urgent aid for Syrian victims has been largely provided by Arab rather than Western governments which have rushed search and rescue teams, equipment and material aid to Turkey. As in every situation there are double standards and double talk.

Turkey has said the cost of post-quake reconstruction at $50 billion; a Turkish business group put that figure at $84 billion. Having secured some notice for the plight of Syrians, Assad has urged the US and Europe to lift sanctions on reconstruction of war devastation and quake damage.  The UN has estimated the cost of rebuilding war damage alone at $250 billion, a small proportion of this huge sum is to be covered by a reconstruction tax levied for years on Syrians living in government-held areas. Syria’s Western sanctioned allies, Russia and Iran, cannot contribute massively and the US and Europe have not only maintained but also tightened sanctions despite calls from humanitarian agencies and UN officials to revoke sanctions.

Following a visit to Syria last November, UN special human rights rapporteur Alena Douhan stated, “I am struck by the pervasiveness of the human rights and humanitarian impact of the unilateral coercive measures imposed on Syria and the total economic and financial isolation of a country whose people are struggling to rebuild a life with dignity, following the decade-long war.” She urged, “The immediate lifting of all unilateral sanctions that severely harm human rights and prevent any efforts for early recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction.”

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Featured image: A person walks through rubble and toppled buildings in the Afrin district of Aleppo, Syria. Photograph by Omer Alven / Anadolu Agency / Getty 

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***

There has been a flood of anecdotal reports on social media of thyroid dysfunction and new thyroid diseases following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination, for both Pfizer and Moderna.

A new Japanese study by Morita et al., of 70 healthcare workers showed increased thyroid auto-antibodies following 2 Pfizer jabs as well as booster shot (click here).

These effects were long-lasting (> 32 weeks). The increase of thyroid auto-antibodies (TRAb) after 2 jabs and after booster jab can be seen in the graph below:

The authors conclude:

“SARS-CoV-2 BNT162b2 (Pfizer) vaccine not only disrupted the steady state of Graves’ Disease, but also newly induced the disruption of thyroid autoimmunity. These findings support previous cases and series that showed the relapse or even new onset of Graves’ Disease potentially associated with the SARS-CoV-2 BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine.”

Types of thyroid dysfunction post mRNA vaccination:

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines can significantly worsen thyroid function (increase or decrease it). These effects are usually permanent, resulting in a need for medication for life. Symptoms usually appear in 10-15 days following mRNA vaccination.

Subacute thyroiditis – thyroid inflammation, mostly in women (click here). Seems to be the most common thyroid disease reported after mRNA vaccination, with symptoms developing on average 10 days after 1st or 2nd dose. Treated with NSAIDs or steroids (click here).

Graves Disease is the most commonly reported autoimmune thyroid disease post mRNA vaccination which can cause new onset Graves’ disease or a relapse of Graves’ Disease hyperthyroidism (click here), also about 10 to 15 days after 1st or 2nd jab.

Hashimoto’s Disease (decreased function) is also starting to show up (click here)

Thyroid storm – a severe case of thyroid inflammation requiring hospitalization has been reported in the literature (click here).

Thyroid cancer – these are most concerning stories of all. People develop strange lumps in the neck following mRNA vaccination and sometimes these turn out to be malignant.

My Take…

This is yet more evidence of immune system damage and dysfunction following COVID-19 mRNA vaccination.

This new Japanese study of 70 healthcare workers shows an increase of thyroid auto-antibodies after every Pfizer mRNA dose. The authors suggest it may be due to “molecular mimicry of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines encoding proteins that may cross-react with thyroid antigens”, which results in auto-antibodies being produced against your thyroid gland.

Thyroid problems following mRNA vaccination seem to be increasing in frequency and anyone experiencing unusual symptoms in the first few weeks after mRNA vaccination, should have their thyroid function checked by their doctor.

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***

Eccentric billionaire Elon Musk promised to prevent Ukraine’s use of the Starlink network from escalating the conflict. The SpaceX, Twitter and Tesla owner initially supported Ukraine with the satellite internet constellation system, however, he finally limited support despite receiving a lot of criticism in the West.

“Starlink is the communication backbone of Ukraine, especially at the front lines, where almost all other Internet connectivity has been destroyed. But we will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3,” Musk wrote on Twitter on February 13.

Earlier, SpaceX announced that it had restricted Ukraine’s access to Starlink’s satellite communications to control drones as the network was “never intended to be weaponised.”

Musk likely believed that he would boost his and SpaceX’s image and reputation by providing services to Ukraine. In the West, it undoubtably did. However, the moment Musk realised that the Ukrainian military were using his technology to increase their combat capabilities, it was inevitable that Kiev would be cut off as it would negatively affect the company’s long-term business prospects, particularly when trying to expand into non-Western markets.

Now, the Twitter boss is facing an avalanche of criticism for limiting the use of Starlink in Ukraine, but from the point of view of his commercial interests, it is a pragmatic decision. In fact, it was the tweets by former NASA astronaut Scott Kelly that prompted Musk to comment once again on Starlink’s use in Ukraine.

Kelly on February 11 called on Musk to “restore the full functionality of your Starlink satellites.”

“Defense from a genocidal invasion is not an offensive capability. It’s survival,” tweeted Kelly, whose twin brother, Mark Kelly, is unsurprisingly a Democratic US senator from Arizona. A day later, Musk tweeted that “Starlink is the communication backbone of Ukraine,” before saying that SpaceX “will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.”

“We have not exercised our right to turn them off,” Musk stressed in a separate tweet.

The Twitter exchange came after SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said that the company has been “really pleased to be able to provide Ukraine connectivity and help them in their fight for freedom” but that Starlink “was never intended to be weaponized.”

“Ukrainians have leveraged it in ways that were unintentional and not part of any agreement, so we have to work on that at Starlink,” Shotwell said, speaking at a space conference in Washington on February 8.

Shotwell stressed that using Starlink as a communications system “for the military is fine, but our intent was never to have them use it for offensive purposes.” She made reference to reports about Ukraine using Starlink “on drones.”

“I’m not going to go into the details; there are things that we can do to limit their ability to do that … there are things that we can do and have done,” she added.

It was Elon Musk who put himself between a rock and a hard place by becoming involved in the Ukraine conflict. As said, it was likely an impulsive decision in the belief that it would boost SpaceX’s image, but then cold hard economic factors have forced a humiliating partial withdrawal from Ukraine.

Musk first responded to the appeal for aid made by Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov in early 2022 by dispatching 20,000 SpaceX Starlink terminals to the country. Due to Russia’s effectiveness in knocking out Ukraine’s telecommunications infrastructure with missile strikes, the country relied on SpaceX’s technology for uninterrupted and secure internet access.

“Over 100 cruise missiles attacked energy and communications infrastructure. But with Starlink we quickly restored the connection in critical areas. Starlink continues to be an essential part of critical infrastructure,” Fedorov tweeted on October 12.

Despite the endless praise, Musk expressed his reservation on January 31 about the Ukrainian military using Starlink to fly drones carrying anti-tank grenades over Russian positions. He emphasised that he would “not allow” the practice to continue.

“SpaceX Starlink has become the connectivity backbone of Ukraine all the way up to the front lines. However, we are not allowing Starlink to be used for long-range drone strikes. This is the damned if you don’t part,” he tweeted.

Mykailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, attempted to pressure Starlink in Kiev’s usual arrogant manner by issuing an ultimatum:

“Either they are on the side of Ukraine & the right to freedom, and don’t seek ways to do harm. Or they are on RF’s side & its ‘right’ to kill & seize territories. SpaceX (Starlink) and Mrs Shotwell should choose a specific option.”

However, Musk has made his position clear, tweeting on September 16: “Starlink is meant for peaceful use only.” This is also aligned with Starlink’s terms of service, which states: “Starlink is not designed or intended for use with or in offensive or defensive weaponry or other comparable end-uses.”

It is recalled that in October, Musk sparked controversy in the Western world when he tweeted his proposal to bring peace, which included territorial concessions to Russia and for Ukraine to be neutral.

“Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people,” Mr Musk said. “Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). Water supply to Crimea assured. Ukraine remains neutral. This is highly likely to be the outcome in the end – just a question of how many die before then. Also worth noting that a possible, albeit unlikely, outcome from this conflict is nuclear war.”

It is here that we first see Musk try to back out of the mistake he committed by involving his company in the war. By deciding to unnecessarily involve himself in a major geopolitical and military issue, he is now receiving criticism and condemnation from all across the Western World for restricting support to Ukraine, whilst having set in stone mistrust for any potential future clients from the non-Western world.

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

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***

US President Joe Biden‘s administration relented last Thursday and finally lifted sanctions on Syria. The change of policy came after four days of relentless and shocking footage from the disaster zone in southern Turkey and northern Syria caused by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

It seems as if Washington felt it could no longer sustain its embargo when tens of thousands of bodies were being exhumed from the rubble and millions more were struggling with cold, hunger and injuries.

The US could not afford to look like the odd man out faced with a global wave of concern for the devastated populations of Syria and Turkey.

Under the new exemption, the Syrian government will be able to receive earthquake relief for six months before the embargo locks back in.

But no one should be fooled by this apparent change of heart.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the State Department’s first reaction was to double down on its policy. Spokesman Ned Price dismissed the possibility of lifting sanctions, arguing it would be “counterproductive … to reach out to a government that has brutalised its people over the course of a dozen years now”.

The truth is that the sanctions regime imposed by the US and its allies in Europe, Canada and Australia was a criminal policy long before the earthquake struck. The brief and belated exemption – under international pressure – does not fundamentally alter that picture.

Western claims of humanitarian intervention in the oil-rich Middle East were always a lie. It just took an earthquake to make that crystal clear.

Collective punishment

Sanctions are a form of collective punishment on the wider population. The West has been punishing Syrians for living under a government they did not elect but one the US is determined to bring down at all costs.

The West’s embargo was imposed in parallel to a civil war, which rapidly transformed into a western proxy war, that ravaged most of the country. The US and its allies fuelled and inflamed the war, sponsoring rebel groups, including jihadists, that ultimately failed to oust the government of Bashar al-Assad.

Many of those extremist groups flooded in from neighbouring countries, where they had been sucked into the vacuum left in the wake of the West’s earlier “humanitarian” regime-overthrow operations.

To avoid the fighting, many millions of Syrians were forced to flee their homes, resulting in endemic poverty and malnutrition. Even as the fighting abated, Syria’s economy continued to sink – not only because of western sanctions, but because the US and others had seized Syria’s oil fields and its best agricultural lands.

This entirely man-made catastrophe preceded and compounded last week’s earthquake. Already destitute, hungry and isolated, Syrians now have to cope with further calamity.

Ghoulish policy

The supposed logic of the West’s decade-long policy to immiserate Syria, fashioned to a template Washington regularly rolls out against official enemies, was simple. Desperate Syrians would be incentivised to rise up against their leaders in the hope of better things.

But the project visibly failed – just as it has done so often before in official enemy states such as Cuba and Iran. Nonetheless, the programme of suffering continued to be enforced in the name of humanitarianism.

When Syria was hit by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake last week, Washington’s insistence that the sanctions remain in place shifted the policy from the simply inhumane to the positively ghoulish.

But rather than assume US benevolence for temporarily lifting sanctions, the focus should be on why they are there in the first place.

The logic of the West’s position was this: lifting sanctions requires recognising the Assad government, which in turn would be an admission of defeat in the battle to unseat him. Protecting the collective ego of Washington officials has taken precedence over the protracted torment of millions of Syrians.

That in itself gives the lie to any pretence that, in their fight to topple the Assad government, the US and Europe ever really cared about the Syrian people.

It also offers a revealing counterpoint to Ukraine’s treatment. Apparently, no price is to be spared to save the “European-looking” Ukrainians from Russia’s invasion, even if it risks a nuclear confrontation. But darker-skinned Syrians will be abandoned to their fate as soon as crumbling masonry is no longer on our TV screens.

When did this kind of racist discrimination qualify as humanitarianism?

No, it isn’t compassion motivating the West in arming Ukraine – any more than, earlier, it was compassion motivating the West in sponsoring a Syrian opposition that quickly came to be dominated by the very groups the West labelled as terrorists elsewhere.

Battle for supremacy

The West’s supposed humanitarian instincts can only really be understood by digging deeper. Much deeper.

Helping Ukrainians by arming them with tanks and jets, while depriving Syrians of bare essentials, aren’t positions quite as opposed as they first appear. The inconsistency doesn’t even qualify as a double standard, viewed from western capitals.

Both policies advance the same goal, and one that has nothing to do with the welfare of ordinary Ukrainians or Syrians. That goal is western supremacy. And more or less visible in the background in both cases is the very same official enemy the West wants to see decisively “weakened”: Russia.

The Syrian government has been one of the last in the Middle East to stand by Russia, including by giving the Russian navy access to the Mediterranean via the Syrian port at Tartus. That was one of the chief reasons why the West was so keen to see Assad’s government smashed, and why Moscow propped up Damascus militarily against western-backed rebels, frustrating those efforts.

Ukraine, meanwhile, was gradually being transformed into an unofficial forward base for Nato on Russia’s doorstep – a reason why Russia wished to see Kyiv cowed and why the US is so keen to prop it up militarily.

Punishing Syria isn’t an ethical foreign policy. It is rationalised by viewing the world and its peoples through one lens only: how they can serve the naked interests of western and, primarily, US power.

As ever, the West is playing its colonial Great Game – power intrigues to line up its geostrategic chess pieces in the most advantageous arrangement possible. And those interests include global military dominance and control over key financial resources like oil.

Supreme crime

As Syria struggles to deal with the earthquake, the first instinct of the US and its allies was not how to relieve the suffering of its people. It was to play a game of switch and bait. Damascus was blamed for failing to allow aid to reach some of the northern regions hardest hit by the earthquake. These include areas still in rebel hands.

Mark Lowcock, the former head of UN humanitarian affairs, complained: “It is going to require Turkish acquiescence to get aid into those areas. It is unlikely the Syrian government will do much to help.”

The first shipments arrived through a crossing from Turkey last Thursday. The Syrian government also approved the delivery of humanitarian aid to areas not under its control in the earthquake-hit northwest of the country. In response, a spokesman for the HTS militant group, which controls much of Idlib, told Reuters it wouldn’t allow aid in from government-held parts of Syria because “we won’t allow the regime to take advantage of the situation to show they are helping”.

But whatever the western narrative, the blame game over getting aid to northern Syria isn’t simply the result of bloody-mindedness from Damascus.

Today, the Assad government may have secured a majority of Syrian territory, but it is far from in control of the Syrian nation. The US has helped carve out a large, autonomous north-east corner for the Kurdish population, and other chunks of the north are in the hands of an alliance of extremist groups, dominated by al-Qaeda off-shoots, as well as the remnants of the Islamic State (IS) group and Turkish-backed fighters.

This fragmentation is proving a massive obstacle to the relief effort. By their nature, governments wish to assert sovereignty over their entire territory.

But the Assad government has additional cause for concern. There are severe dangers for it in letting the local al-Qaeda franchise and other rebel groups take any credit for dealing with the emergency. This isn’t just a public relations battle. If al-Qaeda is seen to bring succour to desperate communities in northern Syria, they stand to win hearts and minds among ordinary Syrians – and Arabs further afield.

Allowing al-Qaeda to be in charge of the relief operations is a recipe for Damascus to lose authority with large sections of the local population. That could serve as a prelude to reviving Syria’s civil war and plunge Syrians back into fighting and bloodshed.

‘Evil of the whole’

The point is not that no blame can be attached to Assad and his government. It is that, whatever western orthodoxy proclaims, meddling by outside powers to topple governments is never likely to lead to humanitarian outcomes. That is true even if a regime-overthrow operation can be achieved quickly – in contrast to the protracted impasse in Syria.

It was largely for that reason that the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after the Second World War declared aggression against another nation’s sovereign territory as the “supreme international crime” and one that “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”.

Attacks on sovereign states lead to a loss of the glue that binds a populace together, however imperfectly, and produces its own, usually unpredictable, consequences.

The West’s 20-year occupation of Afghanistan created a crony state, where corrupt local officials siphoned off US funds meant for state-building and served as puppets for regional warlords. The violent chaos unleashed by Washington paved the way for the Taliban’s return.

The US and UK’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, and then the disbanding of the Iraqi police and army, did not realise any of Washington’s promises of “freedom and democracy”. Instead, it created a vacuum of authority that tore the country apart and led to Iran and extremist groups vying for power.

The West’s 2011 toppling of Muammar Gaddafi’s government resulted in Libya becoming a country of slave markets, as well as a sanctuary for extremists and a conduit for arms trafficking to other conflict zones, such as Syria.

Now we see in Syria the legacy once again of the West’s humanitarianism. Debilitated by years of a proxy war and a western sanctions regime, Damascus is far too fragile and fearful to risk ceding any of its residual powers to opponents.

Those who will suffer once again – this time from the earthquake – are not governments in Washington, Europe’s capitals or Damascus. It will be ordinary Syrians – the very people the West claims it wants to save.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

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***

The region of Xinjiang, located in north-western China, has in recent decades assumed ever greater significance for China, a country whose influence continues expanding internationally. Xinjiang contains about 25% of China’s oil and natural gas, along with 38% of the nation’s coal reserves; while Xinjiang serves as an entry point to neighbouring Central Asia, a mineral-rich region itself where natural resources, from states like Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, are sent along pipelines through Xinjiang across the remainder of China. 

Xinjiang holds geological and climatic extremes. Summer and winter temperatures can entail differences of more than 100 degrees Celsius, from soaring heat to bitter cold. In late November 2022, a temperature of minus 48 degrees Celsius was recorded in northern Xinjiang, resulting in several deaths among workers. (1)

Due to Xinjiang’s mountain ranges, deserts and arid climate, in which most of its land receives a mere 6 inches of annual rainfall, the human population of Xinjiang has not exploded. Xinjiang is presently home to nearly 26 million inhabitants, out of a total population in China of 1.4 billion.

China’s principal rival on the global scene, the United States, has for years attempted to capitalise on separatist tendencies in Xinjiang, so as to suit its own ends. Washington has believed, by encouraging secessionism in regions like Xinjiang, that it could serve to dislodge the territory from Beijing’s control.

Were Xinjiang to become detached from China, it would be a severe blow to Chinese power. On top of its mineral wealth, there is also Xinjiang’s vastness at over 1.6 million square kilometres in size, making it slightly bigger than Iran. The strategic importance of Xinjiang has increased this century, as it is a fundamental part of China’s international-scale Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a series of infrastructural projects.

The possibility of Xinjiang’s separation from China remains a very slim one; but Washington has not given up on such efforts, disguised under the old pretexts of concern over “human rights and the rule of law in China, including in the ethnic minority regions of Tibet and Xinjiang” (2). Scarcely pointed out is that Xinjiang, like Tibet further south, has a generations-long attachment to China. In modern history, Xinjiang was incorporated to China in the mid-18th century, when the Qing dynasty of China defeated by military force the Mongol Dzungars.

A professor of Chinese history, Gardner Bovingdon wrote, “The Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong conquered the region now known as Xinjiang in 1759, at great expense and after a long, bloody campaign. He did so not principally out of territorial ambition, but in order to rid the Qing empire of threatening Mongol neighbors”. (3)

Mongol states from the 14th to the 17th centuries: the Northern Yuan dynasty, Four Oirat, Moghulistan and Kara Del (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Chinese had a deeply embedded fear of attack from Mongol armies. In the decades from 1759, Beijing’s control of Xinjiang was not fully secure, and there were competing claims to the region between the Qing dynasty and the Russian empire. Not until 1884 was the area officially bestowed with the title “Xinjiang”, which translates to “New Frontier”, as intended by the Qing government. It was also, in the 1880s, that easily the largest indigenous Muslim group in Xinjiang were first widely referred to as Uyghurs.

After a long period of internal instability, the Qing dynasty in 1912 utterly collapsed, an empire which had lasted for nearly 3 centuries. The Qing dynasty’s fall was mainly as a result of the predatory actions of the Western imperialist nations in China, during the 19th and early 20th centuries. From 1912, until the 1949 communist revolution led by Mao Zedong, Xinjiang went through a phase of de facto independence from China. (4)

Mao Zedong, who believed it was vital to regain control over the country’s historical territories, sought to properly reintegrate Xinjiang to China. Mao had not forgotten the policies of states such as America and England relating to China – when the Western powers exploited the Chinese nation financially, in effect breaking the country into pieces, maintaining China’s weakened condition for American and western European benefit.

By 1940 the Muslim population of Xinjiang had risen to around 3 million, whereas there were 190,000 Han Chinese living in the region that year (5). In order to “fill out the borders” of Xinjiang and help to secure it to China, Mao’s government promoted the migration to Xinjiang of Han Chinese, who currently consist of 1.3 billion out of China’s 1.4 billion population.

A 1953 census by the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang revealed there were 4.87 million people living there, 75% of whom were Uyghurs, with Han Chinese making up 6% of Xinjiang’s populace. Another census in 1964 showed that the Han Chinese population in Xinjiang had increased sharply to nearly 2.5 million, making up a third of the region’s 7.4 million inhabitants in 1964, as opposed to 4 million Uyghurs. (6)

By 1982, 40% of Xinjiang’s residents were Han Chinese with Muslim groups, chiefly the Uyghurs, making up almost all of the remaining 60% of the region’s populace. These later percentages have been stable through to today.

Image: Close to Karakoram Highway in Xinjiang. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 se)

Beijing has sought to develop Xinjiang, economically and industrially, while there have been notable improvements in the inhabitants’ living standards. In 1949, the average lifespan of a Xinjiang resident was 31 years; by 2008 life expectancy had more than doubled to 72 years. This development is not so surprising when considering that, by 2008, there were 93,600 hospital beds in Xinjiang for a population then of just over 20 million.

To break it down, in 2008 there were 36 hospital beds in Xinjiang for every 10,000 people (7). Whereas in the United Kingdom (UK), a much wealthier place than Xinjiang, there were 24 hospital beds for every 10,000 people in 2020. The impressive healthcare results in Xinjiang would not have been possible, without the extensive funding that Beijing has poured into the area through the decades. None of this receives a mention, when Beijing is accused by Western politicians of committing human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Before the revolution over 70 years ago, there were a meagre 54 medical centres across Xinjiang; in 2001 there were more than 7,300 healthcare centres in the province, including 1,357 hospitals. By 2008, the number of hospitals in Xinjiang rose further to 1,629. (8)

Following the Chinese governments’ construction of large numbers of schools in Xinjiang, the literacy rate has grown rapidly to over 96% by 2021 (9). A study published with Global Media Journal in England outlined that “by the 2000’s the situation in the autonomous region [of Xinjiang] has changed. So the number of primary schools has increased to 6,220… the number of universities increased to 21, and the number of students was 110 thousand people… Also for the national minorities, special courses were opened. According to official data, the number of illiterates among the young and middle-aged people dropped to 2%”. (10)

Shortly after the revolution, in 1951 a group of Uyghur leaders in Xinjiang proposed the founding of a “Republic of Uyghurstan”, and which would be led by the Uyghurs outside of Beijing’s influence (11). The Chinese government, alarmed by this, convened a meeting to rebuke the notion, and to state that Xinjiang’s independence from China would not be tolerated.

If diplomatic efforts or persuasion failed, and if Mao Zedong felt there was a genuine threat to China and its territorial integrity, he was prepared to use military means to safeguard his goals. This was evident in the autumn of 1950, when Beijing sent tens of thousands of troops into Tibet in south-western China, in order to dismantle the Tibetan independent forces, and to hammer home the point that Tibet would be returned to China. Mao further chose military action to overcome the March 1959 Tibetan uprising, which had been encouraged by the US and India.

In the meantime Mao, the leader of China until 1976, continued with the reforms in Xinjiang. Bovingdon wrote, “The economic priorities of the Mao era brought considerable benefits to Xinjiang. Boons to the region included significant growth in gross domestic product (GDP), nascent industrialization, and infrastructural improvements… Moreover, the party placed an emphasis on hiring large numbers of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other non-Hans. To integrate Xinjiang more tightly with China proper, the government expanded the network of roads, rail, and airports. Economic growth also brought general, if modest, improvement in living standards”. (12)

Over the past 3 decades US governments, and the CIA, have been active in stoking unrest in Xinjiang (13). Prior to the 1990s, Xinjiang was quite simply out of reach for the CIA, because of the region’s direct proximity to the rest of China and the USSR. The latter’s fall in 1991 enabled the Americans to penetrate ex-Soviet republics like Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, each of which has frontiers with Xinjiang; though US influence in the Central Asian states has decreased in recent years, as Russia steadily recovers its power this century. The CIA had been able to conduct covert operations in Tibet from the early 1950s; because Tibet shares borders with India and Nepal, US allies at the time.

Among Washington’s aims in Xinjiang is to open up the area’s fossil fuels for exploitation by Western energy corporations (14).

Image: Statue of Mao Zedong in Kashgar (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

The CIA, with the assistance of foreign insurgents, attempted to destabilise Xinjiang, promote separatism among the Uyghurs and create armed rebel groups to fight against the Chinese forces. This was all within the CIA’s remit of severing Xinjiang from China.

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an Uyghur extremist organisation, was founded in the late 1980s and sponsored by the CIA (15). The ETIM has also had ties to Al Qaeda and received training and funding from its ally. Between 1990 and 2001, the ETIM committed over 200 terrorist attacks, which included the assassination of Chinese government officials, bomb attacks against market places and vehicles such as buses. In 2007 Chinese troops destroyed the ETIM training camps in Xinjiang.

Beijing’s Ministry of Security linked the ETIM to the World Uyghur Congress, which is based in Munich and previously presided over by Rebiya Kadeer. Of Uyghur ethnicity from northern Xinjiang, Kadeer is also a former president of the Uyghur American Association, created in 1998 and headquartered in Washington. Both the World Uyghur Congress and the Uyghur American Association have received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is bankrolled primarily by the US Congress. The Chinese are well aware they are among the primary targets of those formulating policies in Washington. (16)

The World Uyghur Congress was established in April 2004 by Xinjiang-born Erkin Alptekin, a former adviser to the CIA. Alptekin, who resides in Munich, has worked closely with Kadeer. The latter lives in the state of Virginia in the US, and she has visited the White House where she spoke to then president George W. Bush in July 2008. Kadeer had already met Bush during a visit to the Czech Republic the year before. The meetings between Kadeer and Bush were condemned by the Chinese government. Kadeer may have had influence over the bloody uprising that occurred in July 2009 in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang. (17)

The revolt in Urumqi was looked upon favourably by Uyghur independence groups in the US and Europe. According to Brazilian author Moniz Bandeira “there was no doubt that the riots were prepared outside of China by separatist Uyghurs, who wanted to stir animosity against the Han Chinese in the hopes of advancing a conspiracy for the secession of Xinjiang” (18). During this rebellion, up to 200 people were killed and many hundreds injured. The majority of those who lost their lives were Han Chinese. The revolt was a dismal failure with the Chinese authorities subduing it with ease.

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky.

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

Notes

1 News directory 3, “Cold Wave of –48 degrees Celsius in Xinjiang, China… 7 workers frozen to death”, 2 December 2022

2 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer 1st edition, 23 June 2017) p. 72 

3 William A. Joseph, Politics in China (Oxford University Press; 2nd edition, 11 April 2014) p. 430 

4 Ibid., p. 433 

5 Ibid. 

6 Stanley Toops, “Demographics and Development in Xinjiang after 1949”, East-West Center, May 2004, p. 5 of 45 

7 D.V. Buyarov, A.A. Kireev, A.V. Druzyaka, “Demographic Situation in Xinjiang-Uigur Autonomous Area in the Last Quarter of the Twentieth Century”, Global Media Journal, 24 June 2016

8 Ibid. 

9 Statista, “Illiteracy rate in China in 2021, by region” 

10 Buyarov, Kireev, Druzyaka, Global Media Journal 

11 Politics in China, 2nd edition, p. 434 

12 Ibid., p. 437 

13 “An old enemy: The regressive tendencies of American foreign policy”, Georgetown Environmental Law Review, 4 January 2022

14 Ibid. 

15 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 68 

16 Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance (Penguin, 1 January 2004) p. 227 

17 Bandeira, The Second Cold War. p. 70 

18 Ibid., p. 71

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Last week, renowned investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published an article claiming that the US was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline transporting natural gas to Germany from Russia. He spoke to Jacobin about the allegations.

On September 26, 2022, the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany was largely destroyed by several explosions in the Baltic Sea. Last week, the award-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh published an article, based on information from a single anonymous source, arguing that the Biden administration and the CIA were responsible.

Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for the role he played in breaking the story of the Mỹ Lai massacre, an incident in which US soldiers killed between three and five hundred unarmed civilians. He spoke to Fabian Scheidler for Jacobin about the allegations he made in his most recent article and the influence that the CIA and the national security state has on American foreign policy.

FABIAN SCHEIDLER: Please start to lay out your findings in detail. What happened precisely according to your source, who was involved, and what were the motives behind it?

SEYMOUR HERSH: What I’ve done is simply explain the obvious. It was just a story that was begging to be told. In late September of 2022, eight bombs were supposed to go off; six went off under the water near the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, in the area where it is rather shallow. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 and 2.

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Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report on how the United States government blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea last September continues to generate rippling geopolitical waves all across the spectrum.

Except, of course, in the parallel bubble of U.S. mainstream media, which has totally ignored it, or in a few select cases, decided to shoot the messenger, dismissing Hersh as a “discredited” journalist, a “blogger”, and a “conspiracy theorist”.

I have offered an initial approach, focused on the plentiful merits of a seemingly thorough report, but also noting some serious inconsistencies.

Old school Moscow-based foreign correspondent John Helmer has gone even further; and what he uncovered may be as incandescent as Sy Hersh’s own narrative.

The heart of the matter in Hersh’s report concerns attribution of responsibility for a de facto industrial terror attack. Surprisingly, no CIA; that falls straight on the toxic planning trio of Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland – neoliberal-cons part of the “Biden” combo. And the final green light comes from the Ultimate Decider: the senile, teleprompt-reading President himself. The Norwegians feature as minor helpers.

That poses the first serious problem: nowhere in his narrative Hersh refers to MI6, the Poles (government, Navy), the Danes, and even the German government.

There’s a mention that on January 2022, “after some wobbling”, Chancellor Scholz “was now firmly on the American team”. Well, by now the plan had been under discussion, according to Hersh’s source, for at least a few months. That also means that Scholz remained “on the American team” all the way to the terror attack, on September 2022.

As for the Brits, the Poles and all NATO games being played off Bornhom Island more than a year before the attack, that had been extensively reported by Russian media – from Kommersant to RIA Novosti.

The Special Military Operation (SMO) was launched on February 24, almost a year ago. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 blow up happened on September 26. Hersh assures there were “more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to ‘sabotage the pipelines’”.

So that confirms that the terror attack planning preceded, by months, not only the SMO but, crucially, the letters sent by Moscow to Washington on December 2022, requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security” involving NATO, Russia and the post-Soviet space. The request was met by a dismissive American non-response response.

While he was writing the story of a terror response to a serious geopolitical issue, it does raise eyebrows that a first-rate pro like Hersh does not even bother to examine the complex geopolitical background.

In a nutshell: the ultimate Mackinderian anathema for the U.S. ruling classes – and that’s bipartisan – is a Germany-Russia alliance, extended to China: that would mean the U.S. expelled from Eurasia, and that conditions everything any American government thinks and does in terms of NATO and Russia.

Hersh should also have noticed that the timing of the preparation to “sabotage the pipelines” completely blows apart the official United States government narrative, according to which this a collective West effort to help Ukraine against “unprovoked Russian aggression”.

That elusive source

The narrative leaves no doubt that Hersh’s source – if not the journalist himself – supports what is considered a lawful U.S. policy: to fight Russia’s “threat to Western dominance [in Europe].”

So what seems a U.S. Navy covert op, according to the narrative, may have been misguided not because of serious geopolitical reasons; but because the attack planning intentionally evaded U.S. law “requiring Congress to be informed”. That’s an extremely parochial interpretation of international relations. Or, to be blunt: that’s an apology of Exceptionalism.

And that brings us to what may be the Rosebud in this Orson Welles-worthy saga. Hersh refers to a “secure room on the top floor of the Old Executive Office Building …that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board”.

This was supposedly the place where the terror attack planning was being discussed.

So welcome to PIAB: the President Intelligence Advisory Board. All members are appointed by the current POTUS, in this case Joe Biden. If we examine the list of current members of PIAB, we should, in theory, find Hersh’s source (see, for instance, “President Biden Announces Appointments to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the National Science Board”; “President Biden Announces Key Appointments”; “President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions”; “President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions”; and “President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions”.

Here are the members of PIAB appointed by Biden: Sandy Winnefeld; Gilman Louie; Janet Napolitano; Richard Verma; Evan Bayh; Anne Finucane; Mark Angelson; Margaret Hamburg; Kim Cobb; and Kneeland Youngblood.

Hersh’s source, according to his narrative, asserts, without a shadow of a doubt, that “Russian troops had been steadily and ominously building up on the borders of Ukraine” and that “alarm was growing in Washington”. It’s beggars belief that this supposedly well informed lot didn’t know about the massing of NATO-led Ukrainian troops across the line of contact, getting ready to launch a blitzkrieg against Donbass.

What everyone already knew by then – as the record shows even on YouTube – is that the combo behind “Biden” were dead set on terminating the Nord Streams by whatever means necessary. After the start of the SMO, the only thing missing was to find a mechanism for plausible deniability.

For all its meticulous reporting, the inescapable feeling remains that what Hersh’s narrative indicts is the Biden combo terror gambit, and never the overall U.S. plan to provoke Russia into a proxy war with NATO using Ukraine as cannon fodder.

Moreover, Hersh’s source may be eminently flawed. He – or she – said, according to Hersh, that Russia “failed to respond” to the pipeline terror attack because “maybe they want the capability to do the same things the U.S. did”.

In itself, this may prove that the source was not even a member of PIAB, and did not receive the classified PIAB report assessing Putin’s crucial speech of September 30, which identifies the “responsible” party. If that’s the case, the source is just connected (italics mine) to some PIAB member; was not invited to the months-long situation-room planning; and certainly is not aware of the finer details of this administration’s war in Ukraine.

Considering Sy Hersh’s stellar track record in investigative journalism, it would be quite refreshing for him to elucidate these inconsistencies. That would get rid of the fog of rumors depicting the report as a mere limited hangout.

Considering there are several “silos” of intel within the U.S. oligarchy, with their corresponding apparatuses, and Hersh has cultivated his contacts among nearly all of them for decades, there’s no question the allegedly privileged information on the Nord Stream saga came from a very precise address – with a very precise agenda.

So we should see who the story really indicts: certainly the Straussian neo-con/neoliberal-con combo behind “Biden”, and the wobbly President himself. As I pointed out in my initial analysis, the CIA gets away with flying colors.

And we should not forget that the Big Narrative is changing fast: the RAND report, the looming NATO humiliation in Ukraine, Balloon Hysteria, UFO psy op. The real “threat” is – who else – China. What’s left for all of us is to swim in a swamp crammed with derelict patsies, dodgy cover stories and intel debris. Knowing that those who really run the show never show their hand.

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Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Indian Punchline

Crimea and the Final War

By Kurt Nimmo, February 15, 2023

In January, Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations, posted “The Case for Taking Crimea: Why Ukraine Can—and Should—Liberate the Province.” The article was re-posted by the “Center for Defense Strategies in Ukraine,” a post-coup government bureaucracy where former USG general Wesley Clark and Phil Jones, of the British Ministry of Defense, are board members.

Post COVID mRNA Vaccination: Immune System Dysfunction, Neuropathic Symptoms

By Dr. William Makis, February 15, 2023

Why does Eric Clapton’s story matter? He may have been injured by two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, but this is not just an “AstraZeneca issue”.

New Israeli Regime Moves Toward “Cleansing” All Palestinians From Palestine

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, February 15, 2023

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s religious Zionist coalition, which was sworn in on December 29, 2022, declared in its manifesto that Jews have the “exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel.”

Celebrity Privilege and Modern Decadence

By Dr. Gary Null, February 15, 2023

Today’s award ceremonies are clearly representative of the decay in American consumer culture.  And over the years award ceremonies’ visuals have become more inane and grotesque. Therefore when award-winning journalist Celia Farber recently wrote that singer Sam Smith’s 2023 Grammy awards looked like a “satanic ritual,” I was compelled to watch the clip.

Man Is Good, But Irritated

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 15, 2023

When we look around in the world, we see that people are good, but psychologically irritated. No human being can solve his problems in marriage, with the children or in social life. We beat the children and wage murderous wars.

“Palestinians are being attacked by Israeli settlers, and weapons are replacing stones.” Interview with Dr. Stephen Sizer

By Dr. Stephen Sizer and Steven Sahiounie, February 15, 2023

The West Bank of Palestine is under military occupation of Israel, and there is no international ‘road map for peace’ being pursued. The Occupied Territories of Palestine are demanding their freedom, democracy, and human rights. Groups of resistance fighters are growing in momentum in the West Bank, especially Jenin.

Don’t Bow Down to a Dictatorial Government. America Is a Prison Disguised as Paradise

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, February 15, 2023

The government wants us to bow down to its dictates. It wants us to buy into the fantasy that we are living the dream, when in fact, we are trapped in an endless nightmare of servitude and oppression. Indeed, with every passing day, life in the American Police State increasingly resembles life in the dystopian television series The Prisoner.

EU Wants to Use Frozen Russian Funds to Pay for Ukraine’s Reconstruction

By Dave DeCamp, February 15, 2023

Sweden’s prime minister on Tuesday said the European Union is creating a group to look into using frozen Russian funds to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, a potential move with no precedent.

The Largest Environmental Disaster in US History? The Entire Ohio River Basin Is Affected, 30 Million People

By Alexandra Bruce, February 15, 2023

With all of the Chyna balloons and UFOs going around, unless you live in East Palestine, Ohio or if you consume a lot of independent news, you probably don’t know that the US is currently experiencing what may be the largest ecological disaster in its history.

Ukrainian Purges Deepen. State Structure Breaks Down. Ministries of Defense, Interior, Governors of Key Regions

By Karsten Riise, February 15, 2023

After the purge of Defense Minister Oleksii Rezhnikov, two Deputy Defense Ministers Ivan Rusnak and Oleh Hayduk will now be purged. Earlier, another Defense Deputy Vyacheslav Shapovalov was fired on 24 January 2023 and arrested on 2 February 2023. And a “helicopter crash” on 18 January 2023 removed Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin, State Secretary Yurii Lubkovych and 6 others in the helicopter including the pilot.

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is urging the Canadian government to take immediate action against Israel’s decision to authorize nine new illegal settlements and construct ten thousand new settler units in the occupied West Bank. On February 14, Canada’s foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly issued a statement saying that Canada is “concerned” by Israel’s decision and that it “strongly opposes the expansion of settlements.” This followed similar statements from the United States and several European countries. However, CJPME believes that concrete action is necessary to stop Israel’s settlement plans, including sanctions against the Israeli officials who are responsible.

“As Israel openly plans to commit war crimes, Canada’s words of ‘concern’ are simply not enough,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “To stop Israel’s settlement expansion, Canada must ban all trade with Israel’s illegal settlements and sanction the war criminals in Israel’s far-right government,” added Bueckert.

CJPME notes that Israel’s far-right government has vowed not to listen to criticism over its settlement plans. In response to statements of concern from Canada, the US, and European countries, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the extremist Jewish Power party, said that “nine settlements are nice but it’s still not enough, we want much more,” and asserted that “this is our mission, this is our doctrine.” At the end of last year, Israel’s governing coalition published a statement of principles which expressed blatantly supremacist views, claiming that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel,” including the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT). The coalition has also promised to expand Jewish settlements in all areas under its control and is committed to advancing the “application of sovereignty” – a euphemism for annexation – over the occupied West Bank.

Since 1967, Israel has established at least 132 settlements on stolen Palestinian land according to the Israeli NGO Peace Now. Every settlement is illegal under international law, as the Fourth Geneva Convention strictly prohibits Israel as an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into occupied territory. These settlements are in direct violation of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, therefore constituting a war crime. Meanwhile, Canada extends preferential benefits to illegal settler businesses under the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA), providing an economic incentive for ongoing illegal settlement activity. CJPME urges Canada to end its complicity by banning trade with Israel’s settlements and to impose targeted sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for settlement policy. CJPME has also been calling on the Canadian government to respond to the rise of Israel’s far-right government by boycotting diplomatic relations and expelling Israel’s ambassador.

*

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

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***

Why does Eric Clapton’s story matter? He may have been injured by two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, but this is not just an “AstraZeneca issue”.

Click here to view the video

This is a spike protein issue – regardless of the platform that delivers the spike protein into your body (Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, AstraZeneca, Novavax, Sputnik, Covishield).

Internationally renowned DJ, composer, songwriter Tyson Illingworth suffers Moderna vaccine injuries (click here).

“In October that same year (2021) I received my first vaccination (Moderna). Within days I started to feel severe and unbearable shooting pain and paralysis in my hands and feet”

“Over time my condition worsened; I asked the doctors at the hospital if I would ever walk ‘properly’ again, and they would not give me an answer”

“Shortly after the second shot my injuries were further exacerbated and I was unable to move, my hands felt like they were on fire…I was rushed to hospital once again, and I thought my life was over”

“I continue to suffer severe ongoing pain due to Neuropathy and neurological nerve damage due to the Moderna Spike Vax….neuropathy was not listed on any of my consent forms”

“In Australia doctors are investigated and disciplined if they confirm in writing that a COVID vaccine has caused a patient injury. I had 5 different doctors confirm that my condition was caused by the vaccine, and they all said they cannot go on record.”

NIH Study (Safavi et al): Neuropathic symptoms with SARS-CoV-2 vaccination

23 patients were studied with new neuropathic symptoms within 1 month post vaccination (12 Pfizer, 9 Moderna, 1 J&J, 1 AstraZeneca). 21 were women (click here).

“All participants reported moderate to severe, distal predominant paresthesias and/or burning sensations in both their upper and lower limbs; 9 also had involvement of the face, mouth, and scalp.”

“52% (12/23) of patients had objective evidence of small-fiber peripheral neuropathy”

 

2023: Pfizer mRNA vaccine causes small fiber neuropathy with auto-antibodies (click here):

Yet another case of immune system dysfunction and damage post Pfizer mRNA vaccination. This patient ended up with an autoimmune condition.

I am willing to bet that no one had these discussions as part of their “informed consent” before receiving COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

---

The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page. 

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This article was translated from German, to consult the original version published by Junge Welt,

click Junge Welt.

The “Manifesto for Peace” presented on Friday by left-wing MP Sahra Wagenknecht and feminist Alice Schwarzer is meeting with steadily growing support. Around 400,000 people had signed the online petition by Tuesday. The petition calls on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to “stop the escalation of arms deliveries” in light of the threatening expansion of the Ukraine war into a possible nuclear or world war.

He said the chancellor should “take the lead at both the German and European level in a strong alliance for a cease-fire and peace negotiations.”

For Feb. 25 – one day after the anniversary of Russia’s attack on Ukraine – Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, along with retired Brigadier General Erich Vad, are calling for a large rally in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. The right-wing conservative general, who was military advisor to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is also among the 79 initial signatories of the manifesto, some of whom are prominent. They include such diverse personalities as theologian Margot Käßmann, singer-songwriter Reinhard Mey, MEP and chairman of the satirical party Die PARTEI Martin Sonneborn, CSU politician Peter Gauweiler and former EU Commissioner Günter Verheugen.

The co-chairman of the AfD, Tino Chrupalla, who last week had presented a “peace initiative” of his parliamentary group, which was nationalistic in its core but similar in its demands, professed on Friday on Twitter to have also signed the petition. For Wagenknecht’s NATO-friendly opponents, both inside and outside her party, this was a welcome opportunity to smell a “cross-front”.

Motions to support the manifesto and the peace rally came from various currents and branches of the Left Party. In two motions to the Berlin state executive committee and the executive committee in Saxony, which have not yet been dealt with, extra-parliamentary activities of the peace movement have recently taken place “mostly without the support of our party”. The rally on February 25 offers

“the perhaps unique opportunity to achieve an important success for the peace movement in our country with a nationwide mobilization and a very high number of participants.”

According to Junge Welt, corresponding motions are to be introduced in other state associations.

At the meeting of the federal party executive committee on the weekend in Berlin, there were six motions on the agenda item “Stop the war in Ukraine”.

For example, the Federal Spokespersons’ Council of the Socialist Left had called for support for the initiative of Wagenknecht and Schwarzer. The federal speaker’s council of the Communist Platform (KPF) tabled a motion – without reference to the manifesto – according to which the party must reject sanctions against Russia as well as arms deliveries “in any direction”.

The Left Party should call on the German government to “take diplomatic steps that will help bring about renewed negotiations between the warring parties and, first of all, a cease-fire.” Ellen Brombacher, a member of the KPF national spokesperson council, justified the motion, saying that it was necessary to end the situation in which right-wing demagogues can make people believe that the AfD is the German peace party. “It can’t be that a Mr. Chrupalla dictates to us with a stroke of his pen how we relate to peace policy initiatives.”

The discussion of the motions took place in closed session on Sunday, Junge Weltlearned from the KPF. The three proposers who were not members of the party executive, including Brombacher, were therefore unable to participate. Since a motion of the party executive board, which had been voted on first, had found a majority, the other five motions – including two on the peace rally on February 25 – had not even been dealt with. The executive committee motion had not yet been published at the time of jW’s editorial deadline.

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Vorwort

Verehrte Leser! Als Bürgerinnen und Bürger haben Sie ein Anrecht darauf, richtig aufgeklärt zu werden, psychologische Menschenkenntnis zu erwerben und die Wahrheit zu erfahren, auch wenn vieles zunächst unverständlich erscheint.

Der therapeutische Nachlass meines geschätzten Lehrers Friedrich Liebling veranlasst mich immer wieder, meine Stimme zu erheben und der Wahrheit die Ehre zu erweisen. Aufgrund seiner lebenslangen Suche nach Frieden und Humanismus ist dieser große Psychologe und Psychotherapeut auch unter die allseits bekannten Friedenskämpfer einzureihen (1).

Gemäß seiner Schülerin, der Schweizer Psychotherapeutin Gerda Fellay, wies Friedrich Liebling alle seine Mitarbeiter an, „den Humanismus zu erproben und den Beweis zu erbringen, dass die Menschheit sozial sei, gut und fähig, ohne Waffen und Kriege zusammenzuleben. (2) Dann fügte er hinzu: „Wenn ihr euch einig bleibt in der Forschung, werdet ihr ein Loch in die Welt schlagen.“ (3)

Sein psychologisches und psychotherapeutisches Vorgehen nannte Liebling „Denken lernen“, im Gegensatz zum Glauben. Hierzu schreibt Fellay in ihrem Buch über sein Leben und Werk:

„Glauben an Gott, glauben an die Wissenschaft, glauben an die Autoritäten, glauben an die Eltern usw. verhindere das Denken. Dieses Vorgehen Friedrich Lieblings, seine Schüler und Patienten „Denken zu lehren“, wurde innerhalb der „Lehre von der vernunftgemässen Denkweise“ in der therapeutischen Beziehung in den kleinen und großen Gruppen unterrichtet. Dieses Vorgehen basiert auf der grundlegenden Erkenntnis: ‚Der Mensch ist nicht krank, er ist nicht richtig aufgeklärt.‘

• Die Menschen sind nicht ‚krank‘, man braucht sie nicht zu heilen, man soll sie aufklären.
• Wenn der Mensch die Methode der vernunftgemäßen Denkweise kennt, ist er befähigt, mit anderen in Verbindung zu treten, sich mit ihnen verbunden zu fühlen, und damit wird er fähig, sein Leben in Freiheit zu gestalten.
• Er wird sich seines irrigen Verhaltens bewusst werden, seiner Neurosen und ihrer Verwurzelung in den mystischen Vorstellungen seiner Erziehung. Damit wird er zu Veränderungen fähig.
• Haltungen verändern sich nicht von einem Tag auf den andern.“ (4)

Einleitung 

Wenn wir uns in der Welt umsehen, stellen wir fest, dass die Menschen zwar gut sind, jedoch psychisch irritiert. Kein Mensch kann seine Probleme in der Ehe, mit den Kindern oder im gesellschaftlichen Leben lösen. Wir schlagen die Kinder und führen mörderische Kriege.

Da die Menschen von allen Institutionen programmiert werden – angefangen von der Erziehung zuhause und in der Schule bis hinauf zur Rekrutenschule und das „Feld der Ehre“ – hat man es schwer, sie auf ihre Probleme aufmerksam zu machen und ihnen zu helfen.

Die Menschen werden so programmiert, dass sie dann alles machen, was die Machthaber von ihnen verlangen. So hat das deutsche Volk von ungefähr 100 Millionen Menschen – ein Volk der Dichter und Denker – Adolf Hitler zugejubelt und zugestimmt. Alle sind mit ihm mitgegangen – angefangen vom Papst, von der katholischen Kirche und den anderen Kirchen bis hin zu allen Gelehrten, den Philosophen und Psychologen und allen Arbeitern und Sozialisten. Sie wurden so gut programmiert, dass sie sich in den Tod führen ließen.

Deshalb ist es unsere Aufgabe, allen Menschen das psychologische Wissen über sich selbst und die Mitmenschen zu vermitteln, damit sie ihre persönlichen Probleme lösen können und beginnen, die Welt in eine friedliche Bahn zu lenken. Eine friedliche Welt kann nur durch die Änderung der Menschen und eine Änderung der gegenwärtigen sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse entstehen.

In diesem Sinne weise ich weiterhin auf die große Bedeutung der Aufklärung hin und versuche zu erklären, was unter der Psychologie zu verstehen ist. Da der Standpunkt der humanistischen Psychologie relativ neu und noch nicht gründlich erarbeitet ist, ist sie schwer vermittelbar und nicht im Interesse der Herrschenden.

Doch ohne Psychologie wird die Welt nicht weiterkommen!

Zur Bedeutung der Aufklärung

Da die Politik in den Köpfen und Herzen der Menschen vorbereitet wird, handeln die Menschen morgen so, wie sie heute denken. Deshalb kann die Bedeutung der Aufklärung nicht hoch genug eingeschätzt werden.

Der Sinn der aufklärerischen Bemühungen ist die Reinigung des menschlichen Bewusstseins von individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteilen. Die Beseitigung von Vorurteilen bedeutet mehr als ein bloßes intellektuelles Unterfangen. Der „aufgeklärte Verstand“ ist fähig, gesunde Lebensziele ins Auge zu fassen.

Die Zukunft unserer Kultur wird wesentlich davon abhängen, ob es genug „Aufklärer“ geben wird, die imstande sein werden, der Bevölkerung jene Vorurteile zu nehmen, die der ideologische Hintergrund der Menschheitskatastrophen sind. Intellektuelle haben dabei eine große Verantwortung, denn ihre Pflicht wäre es, für andere Menschen zu denken (Romain Rolland) und mit der Freiheit des Denkens die Freiheit überhaupt zu proklamieren.

In einer Zeit, in der die Bedrohung durch die Atombombe die Selbstvernichtung der Menschheit als möglich erscheinen lässt, bedürfen wir mehr denn je der „freien Geister“, die uns lehren, was Wahrheit und was Lüge ist.

Paul-Henri Thiry d‘Holbach schrieb bereits in seinem 1878 erschienenen Buch „Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier. Kritische Gedanken über die Religion und ihre Auswirkung auf die kulturelle Entwicklung“ über den Ursprung der Vorurteile:

(Orthographie, Interpunktion und Satzstellung wie im Original)

„Das menschliche Gehirn ist besonders in der Kindheit wie weiches Wachs, das jede beliebige Eindrücke bereitwillig aufnimmt. Die Erziehung überliefert dem Menschen fast alle seine Meinungen, zu einer Zeit, in welcher er selbst noch keines Urtheils fähig ist. Man glaubt wahre und falsche Ideen von der Natur oder bei der Geburt eingefangen zu haben, welche doch in einem zarten Alter unseren Köpfen eingeprägt worden sind; und diese „Reservation“ ist eine der Hauptquellen unserer Irrthümer.

Das Vorurtheil bestärkt in uns die Meinungen Jener, die sich mit unserer Belehrung beschäftigt haben. Wir glauben, dass sie uns überlegen sind und halten sie von dem überzeugt, was sie uns lehren. Wir setzen das grösste Vertrauen in sie. In Folge der Sorge, die sie für uns hatten, als wir noch nicht im Stande waren, für uns selbst zu sorgen, halten wir sie für unfähig, uns betrügen zu wollen. Heute finden wir die Beweggründe, welche uns tausend gewichtige Irrthümer aufbürden, ohne einen andern Grund als den des schändlichen Wortes Jener, die uns erzogen haben; selbst das Verbot, über das nicht nachzudenken, was sie uns gesagt, vermindert unser Vertrauen nicht und trägt vielmehr oft noch bei unsere Achtung für sie zu erhöhen.

Die Lehrer des menschlichen Geschlechts sind so klug, ihre religiösen Prinzipien den Menschen einzupflanzen, ehe sie noch im Stande sind, das Wahre vom Falschen zu unterscheiden, oder die rechte Hand von der linken. Es würde eine ebenso schwere Aufgabe sein, dem Verstande eines Menschen von vierzig Jahren die verkehrten Begriffe, welche man uns über die Gottheit gibt, einzuprägen, als diese Begriffe einem Menschen zu entziehen, welche er in der Kindheit eingesogen hat.“ (5) 

Die Wissenschaft der Psychologie

Die Psychologie ist eine Wissenschaft über den Menschen, über die menschliche Natur: wie er wird, wie er heranwächst, wie er sich im Leben zurechtfindet. Seine Erfahrungen werden ihm vor allem von den Eltern und den Lehrern vermitteln. Es ist dann das Produkt seiner Erlebnisse und Eindrücke in der Kindheit.

Bereits in den ersten Lebensjahren – mit fünf bis sechs Jahren – hat das Kind einen Kompass. Wenn es in den Kindergarten kommt, weiß es bereits, wie es sich zu verhalten hat. Auch hat es eine Meinung über das andere Kind, den Vater, die Mutter und die Geschwister. Es hat bereits seine Charaktereigenschaften und kennt seine Stellung in der Welt.

Die wissenschaftliche Psychologie will dieses geistige und seelische Leben des Menschen erforschen: seine Gedanken, seine Gefühle und seine Erlebnisse. Wenn man die Gefühle und Reaktionsweisen des Menschen einmal erkannt und verstanden hat, wie er heranwächst, dann versteht man sich selbst, den anderen, die Gesellschaft und die ganze Welt.

Auch die Medizin ist erst vorangekommen, nachdem sie die Funktionen des Körpers untersucht und erkannt hatte. Zunächst durfte der Mensch den Menschen – seine Organe und sein ganzes Inneres – nicht kennen lernen, nicht studieren. Die Kirche war aus bestimmten Gründen dagegen, dass man den Menschen erforscht. Erst als man die Notwendigkeit erkannt hatte, sind Leichen gestohlen worden und die Mediziner sind darangegangen, den Menschen zu erforschen.

Wenn wir den Menschen verstehen lernen, dann verstehen wir auch das Problem des Krieges, weil wir die Handlungsweisen und Taten des Menschen einschätzen können und verstehen, was in ihm vorgeht. Wir finden dann eine Antwort auf die Frage: Sind es Menschen wie wir, die die Kriege auslösen oder sind es ganz andere Menschen?

Alle Fragen unseres Lebens, unserer Gedanken, unserer Gefühle, unserer Erlebnisse sind zu erklären, wenn wir den Menschen verstehen, seine Rektionsweisen und Gefühle kennen und wissen, wie er heranwächst, wie er die Welt sieht und was in ihm vorgeht. Wir besitzen dann eine andere Art des Denkens und Fühlens.

Lassen wir uns also darauf ein und gehen den Weg, psychologische Menschenkenntnis zu erwerben.

Teil II:

Kein Mensch ist. Er wird…!

Gesunder Menschenverstand versus magische Weltanschauung.

Krieg ist ein gutes Geschäft und die Glorifizierung der Gewalt.

Lesen Sie Teil II und III:

Eine friedliche Welt entsteht einzig und allein durch menschliche Entschlüsse

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 25, 2023

Der Mensch ist nur darum unglücklich, weil er die Natur verkennt

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 26, 2023

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

Noten

1. Fellay, Gerda (1977). Friedrich Liebling. Leben und Werk – eine Einführung. New York, Paris, Bern, S. 187

2. a. O., S. 55

3. a. O.

4. a. O., S. 51

5. D’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry (1976). Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier. Kritische Gedanken über die Religion und ihre Auswirkung auf die kulturelle Entwicklung. Zürich, S. 19. Original 1878.

Das Bild stammt von Public Discourse

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I usually try to avoid watching television award ceremonies and their regalia of visual spectacles sanctifying celebrities in the film and music industries.

Today’s award ceremonies are clearly representative of the decay in American consumer culture.  And over the years award ceremonies’ visuals have become more inane and grotesque. Therefore when award-winning journalist Celia Farber recently wrote that singer Sam Smith’s 2023 Grammy awards looked like a “satanic ritual,” I was compelled to watch the clip. Indeed, the hell-themed performance should have been deeply offensive to most Americans, certainly for the majority of Americans who continue to have religious sensibilities.

The only reason for watching award ceremonies is to be better educated about hypocrisy.

Last year’s Academy Awards had the highlight of Will Smith jumping on stage to slap Chris Rock, only later to receive a standing applause after receiving the Oscar for Best Actor. Yet there was no audience boos for his earlier non-acting performance to humiliate Rock. There was no policing or effort to escort Smith out of the theater for unprovoked physical assault.

Similarly, celebrity narcissism was exhibited at the 2009 MTV video awards when Kanye West jumped on stage to disrupt Taylor Swift‘s acceptance speech for the Best Female Video Award. Again, there were only crickets in the theater audience, no boos, no notable reaction. West would go on to become a multi-billionaire, and in the eyes of his fans and corporate partners he had no limits to inappropriate behavior.

It would seem there are no limits to some creative and artistic personalities’ freedom to act out as they please and comatose fans that fail to recognize they are simply human beings with all the same foibles as themselves.

What we are witnessing in the larger community is a behavioral cancer metastasizing through society. It now permeates sports, Wall Street, the business community and our body politic. Its mantra is that owning more is always better.

Whatever a person achieves in life is never enough. Those who reach the apex of personal achievement rarely use the freedom their success bestows to continue to develop themselves in areas of their lives where they are deficient — to become a more grounded, compassionate and humble human being. True authentic humility is rarely found in highly successful people. Instead living an extreme lifestyle of competing to be at the center of the spotlight is the acceptable norm.

Admittedly, there are the few who are not similarly afflicted. There are notable exceptions in the celebrity class who use their successes to help others but this is not newsworthy for the paparazzi’s headlines.

Yet there is nothing particularly new except for the fashion of the day in this cyclic trend. It was pervasive in Weimar Germany when Berlin was the capital of European decadence. Celebrity exceptionalism has been part of Hollywood’s DNA since the beginning. The entertainment world, which thrives on the creation of illusions, and often deranged hallucinations, perceive themselves as exceptional, wealthy and powerful, while their paying audiences are not.

The psychology of hedonic impulses and addictions are based upon how we engage with pleasure in our lives. At one end of the spectrum are the simple pleasures that bring satisfaction to our lives: a nice meal, a roof over our heads, friends and family. Some hedonic pleasures can be awe inspiring such as experiencing a vibrant sunset and appreciating its momentary beauty which overwhelms our senses.

But the all-pervading hedonic pleasures of postmodern America are the need to prove our relevance in the eyes of others, even after we have achieved a high degree of success. Competition among the rich and famous is more intense than the average social media addicted person who devotes an extraordinary amount of wasted time to increase their “likes” and emojis on TikTok and Facebook.

On the other hand, for the high achievers it is a crass Darwinian struggle for the preservation of fame as to whether a person will walk the red carpet or appear on the cover of Vogue and other imbecilic magazines. In the perverted Darwinian scheme of superficial plastic Western culture, once a person is possessed with the illusion they are uniquely different, gifted and talented beyond measure, the simple pleasures in life are no longer satisfying and sufficient.

Rather personal indulgence, often at the expense of others’ well-being is a permissive goal to pursue.

Decadent hedonic pleasures, boorish sexual appetites, drugs and the objectification of people as props to be exploited are part of the inner sanctum in every profession’s culture of a “deep elite”.

These smaller communities within the larger professions are the basilicas built with the bricks of greed and egoic ignorance upon which the Will Smiths, Kanye Wests and Jeffrey Epsteins of society believe they have earned the divine right to act and say as they please. They view their behavior as wholly acceptable by the clique of deep elite.

Will Smith would never attend a Carnegie Hall performance and rush to the stage to smack a ballerina or the lead violinist. He would not be in his zone; he would be outside Hollywood’s inner sanctum where his admirers would turn a blind eye. For Kanye West, his sense of being exalted to freely attack Jews led to his losing $2 billion in commercial endorsements and business deals. Despite stepping out of his comfort zone, he remained unapologetic. We witnessed this indecent behavior staged at the Grammy’s followed by the ecstatic cheers of support by an audience who hold membership to Hollywood’s inner sanctum. It was not simply decadent but repulsive and demeaning.

In a recent Bill Maher commentary he suggested that the reason why as a collective we do not care for the preservation of the environment and efforts to reduce our carbon footprint is because everyone would fly in a private jet if they could afford it. His conclusion is that we are fundamentally not good people and therefore nothing fundamental will change. We will continue en masse towards our own self-destruction because we are incapable of surrendering our egoic cravings that fuel bad habits. Yes, many people, especially those who regard themselves exceptional, are grossly selfish and deep down insecure because they live superficial lives that feed off of others admiration. However, there are far more people who do not need to find personal fulfillment and satisfaction in what they simply have or earned. They don’t engage in extreme exhibitionism in order to project themselves as relevant to the world. They simply live normal lives and find deep satisfaction and meaning by doing so.

For this reason, I don’t watch award shows, whether it is the Oscars, Emmys, Golden Globe or Grammys. They don’t represent the ideals of our civilization nor the original values it was owned upon.

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Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Grammy Awards trophy (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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Foreword

Dear readers! As citizens you have a right to be properly enlightened, to acquire psychological knowledge of human nature and to learn the truth, even if many things seem incomprehensible at first.

The therapeutic legacy of my esteemed teacher Friedrich Liebling always prompts me to raise my voice and pay homage to the truth. Because of his lifelong search for peace and humanism, this great psychologist and psychotherapist is also to be ranked among the universally known peace fighters (1).

According to his student, the Swiss psychotherapist Gerda Fellay, Friedrich Liebling instructed all his co-workers to “try out humanism and prove that humanity is social, good and able to live together without weapons and wars.” (2) Then he added: “If you remain united in research, you will punch a hole in the world.” (3)

Liebling called his psychological and psychotherapeutic approach “learning to think”, as opposed to believing. On this Fellay writes in her book on his life and work:

“Believing in God, believing in science, believing in authorities, believing in parents, etc., prevent thinking”. This approach of Friedrich Liebling to “teach his students and patients to think” was taught within the “teaching of reasoned thinking” in the therapeutic relationship in the small and large groups. This approach is based on the fundamental realisation: ‘People are not sick, they are not properly enlightened.’

– People are not ‘sick’, they do not need to be cured, they should be enlightened.

– When man knows the method of rational thinking, he is enabled to relate to others, to feel connected with them, and thus he becomes capable of shaping his life in freedom.

– He will become aware of his erroneous behaviour, his neuroses and their rootedness in the mystical ideas of his upbringing. With this he becomes capable of change.

– Attitudes do not change from one day to the next.” (4)

Introduction

When we look around in the world, we see that people are good, but psychologically irritated. No human being can solve his problems in marriage, with the children or in social life. We beat the children and wage murderous wars.

Since people are programmed by all institutions – starting from education at home and school up to the recruit school and the “field of honour” – it is difficult to make them aware of their problems and help them.

People are programmed in such a way that they then do whatever those in power ask them to do. This is how the German people of about 100 million people – a people of poets and thinkers – cheered and agreed with Adolf Hitler. Everyone went along with him – starting with the Pope, the Catholic Church and the other churches, to all the scholars, the philosophers and psychologists and all the workers and socialists. They were so well programmed that they allowed themselves to be led to their deaths.

Therefore, it is our task to give all people the psychological knowledge about themselves and their fellow human beings so that they can solve their personal problems and begin to lead the world into a peaceful path. A peaceful world can only come about by changing people and changing the present social and economic conditions.

In this sense, I continue to point out the great importance of enlightenment and try to explain what is meant by psychology. Since the standpoint of humanistic psychology is relatively new and not yet thoroughly elaborated, it is difficult to communicate and not in the interest of the ruling class.

But without psychology, the world will not progress!

On the importance of enlightenment

Since politics is prepared in people’s minds and hearts, people will act tomorrow as they think today. Therefore, the importance of the Enlightenment cannot be overestimated.

The purpose of Enlightenment efforts is to purify human consciousness of individual and collective prejudices. The elimination of prejudice means more than a mere intellectual endeavour. The “enlightened mind” is capable of envisaging healthy life goals.

The future of our culture will largely depend on whether there will be enough “enlightened minds” capable of removing from the population those prejudices that are the ideological background of humanity’s catastrophes. Intellectuals have a great responsibility in this, because it would be their duty to think for other people (Romain Rolland) and to proclaim freedom in general with the freedom of thought.

At a time when the threat of the atomic bomb makes the self-destruction of humanity seem possible, we need more than ever the “free spirits” who teach us what is truth and what is a lie.

Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach already wrote in his 1878 book “The Common Sense of Father Meslier. Critical Thoughts on Religion and its Effect on Cultural Development” about the origin of prejudice (spelling, punctuation and sentence order as in the original):

“The human brain, especially in childhood, is like soft wax, readily absorbing any impression. Education hands down to man almost all his opinions, at a time when he himself is not yet capable of any judgement. We believe that we have caught true and false ideas from nature or at birth, which have been imprinted on our minds at a tender age; and this “reservation” is one of the main sources of our errors.

The prejudice reinforces in us the opinions of those who have occupied themselves with our instruction. We believe that they are superior to us and hold them convinced of what they teach us. We place the greatest confidence in them. As a result of the care they had for us when we were not yet able to care for ourselves, we consider them incapable of wanting to deceive us. Today we find the motives which burden us with a thousand weighty errors without any other reason than that of the shameful word of those who educated us; even the prohibition not to think about what they told us does not diminish our confidence, and rather often contributes to increasing our respect for them.

The teachers of the human race are so wise as to implant their religious principles in men before they are yet able to distinguish the true from the false, or the right hand from the left. It would be as difficult a task to impress upon the mind of a man of forty the perverse notions which are given us about the Deity, as to withdraw these notions from a man which he imbibed in childhood.” (5)

The science of psychology

Psychology is a science about man, about human nature: how he becomes, how he grows up, how he finds his way in life. His experiences are imparted to him above all by his parents and teachers. It is then the product of his experiences and impressions in childhood.

Already in the first years of life – at the age of five to six – the child has a compass. When it comes to kindergarten, it already knows how to behave. It also has an opinion about the other child, the father, the mother and the siblings. It already has its character traits and knows its position in the world.

Scientific psychology wants to explore this mental and spiritual life of the human being: his thoughts, his feelings and his experiences. Once you have recognised the human being’s feelings and ways of reacting and understood how he grows up, then you understand yourself, the other person, society and the whole world.

Medicine, too, only progressed after it had studied and recognised the functions of the body. At first, man was not allowed to get to know the human being – his organs and his whole interior – not to study him. The Church was against studying the human being for certain reasons. It was only when the necessity was recognised that corpses were stolen and doctors began to study the human being.

If we learn to understand man, then we also understand the problem of war, because we can assess man’s actions and deeds and understand what is going on inside him. We then find an answer to the question: Is it people like us who cause the wars or is it completely different people?

All the questions of our life, our thoughts, our feelings, our experiences can be explained if we understand the human being, know his ways of reaction and feelings and know how he grows up, how he sees the world and what is going on in him. We then have a different way of thinking and feeling.

So let’s get involved and go the way of acquiring psychological knowledge of human beings.

Part II:

No man is. He will be…!

Common sense versus magical worldview.

War is good business and the glorification of violence.

Read Part II and III:

A Peaceful World Is Created Solely Through Human Decisions

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 25, 2023

“System of Nature”: Man Is Only Unhappy Because He Misjudges Nature

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 26, 2023

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.

Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist (Dr. paed.) and psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). After his university studies, he became an academic teacher (professor) in adult education: among other things, he was the head of an independent school model experiment and a trainer of Bavarian counselling teachers and school psychologists. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in private practice. He was rapporteur for Germany at a public hearing on juvenile delinquency in the European Parliament. In his books and articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education and an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.

Notes

(1) Fellay, Gerda (1977). Friedrich Liebling. Life and work – an introduction. New York, Paris, Bern, p. 187.

(2) op. cit., p. 55

(3) op. cit.

(4) op. cit., p. 51

(5) D’Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry (1976). The common sense of the priest Meslier. Critical thoughts on religion and its impact on cultural development. Zurich, p. 19. Original 1878.

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***

The current government of Israel is the most right-wing and extremist in the last 70 years.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, elected for a sixth term, had previous scoffed at the Jewish fanatical parties, but now finds himself allied with them to hold on to power, and stay out of jail for corruption.

The West Bank of Palestine is under military occupation of Israel, and there is no international ‘road map for peace’ being pursued. The Occupied Territories of Palestine are demanding their freedom, democracy, and human rights. Groups of resistance fighters are growing in momentum in the West Bank, especially Jenin.

Because of the American veto in the UN Security Council, Israel is never held accountable for their crimes against the Palestinian people who have been deprived of all human rights and civil rights, for 70 years.

In an effort to understand some of the issues today in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Dr. Stephen Sizer.

Dr. Stephen Sizer is the founder and director of Peacemaker Trust, a registered charity dedicated to peacemaking, especially where minorities are persecuted, where justice is denied, human rights are suppressed or reconciliation is needed.

Sizer is chair of the Convivencia Alliance, a cross-faith, international initiative for a just peace in the Middle East, and in particular, a just coexistence in Palestine/Israel based on equal rights in One Democratic State (ODS).

*

Steven Sahiounie (SS):  Recently, the Mayor of Barcelona, Spain suspended relations with Israel. The Spanish city had a twin-city pact with Tel Aviv, but the Mayor has called Israel an apartheid state, recalling the UN report. Do you think more cities, groups, or countries may follow this lead?

Stephen Sizer (SSizer):  I am sure other cities will follow as Israel becomes more and more explicitly an apartheid regime and as the momentum for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) grows. The challenge is to counter attempts by Israel to deflect criticism by associating BDS with antisemitism through the discredited IHRA working definition of antisemitism.

SS:  Jake Tapper of CNN interviewed Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and asked about whether Israel had any peace plans for the Palestinians. Netanyahu responded that he saw no reason to make any peace deal. In your opinion, when western citizens hear that response, do they care? And, should they care?

SSizer:  Israel has not made a single concession since 1967 because you cannot concede what is not yours. If I stole your property and then offered to give you back 80%; is that a concession? The Zionist agenda is to annex all the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan. That has always been the plan.  Netanyahu does not need to negotiate with Palestinians. The Israeli government are given every incentive by the US administration and other sympathetic countries. Trade with Israel is more important that international law. Most people are still largely convinced that Israel is a democracy and therefore its security interests trump any negotiation of land for peace. Nine out of ten Zionists are Christians especially in the USA – Somewhere between 20 and 509 million at least. That is a powerful support base that ensures the US administration continues to back Israel unconditionally.

SS:  Netanyahu has said his two most important goals for his new administration are to build more settlements and to sign more Arab normalization agreements, referring specially to Saudi Arabia. In your opinion, do you think Arab countries should be doing business with Israel in light of the fact they have no plans for Palestinian rights?

SSizer:  No, Arab states should not, but then neither should Western governments. We have to lead by example. Most Arab states do not care about Palestinian rights any more than they do for their own citizens. They all want to trade with Israel. Saudi Arabia and Israel have a lot in common. Ethno-religious nationalism gives both a measure of security – as a Jewish State and a Muslim State. That is why Trump was so popular in Israel but not with American Jews because as a racist he believed the USA is a Christian nation and if Jewish people in America didn’t like that they should go and live in their state.

SS:  The Geneva Convention assures the right of resistance to military occupation, and even armed resistance, as long as civilians are protected. In your opinion, do you see the resistance movement in the West Bank gaining supporters from western citizens?

SSizer:  Very unlikely. In the West, we suffer from cognitive dissonance and Manichean dualism – there are good guys and bad guys. The Ukraine are Europeans seeking freedom from the Russian Bear – our long standing Communist enemy so we support them. Israelis are seen in a similar vein – especially since so many trace their roots to Europe and the USA. The Arabs on the other hand are not. So we tend to pick one side against the other in any conflict and colour, expediency, self-interest and economic incentive are much more significant factors than justice or human rights.

SS:  The second Intifada (uprising) ended in 2005, but the burning issue of lack of human rights, and property rights for 6.8 million Palestinians has been smoldering, and seems to be gaining momentum.  In your opinion, could we see the Third Intifada erupting?

SSizer:  Yes – like living on an earthquake fault line –  it’s just a question of when. Many would argue the third intifada has begun. It is escalating in the Palestinian ghettos as violent attacks by Israeli settlers are increasing and in response, weapons are replacing stones.

*

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

Originally published on Global Asia in 2016.

This article presents the most detailed description of a constitution of information. I published it in the mainstream Global Asia in 2016 in an effort to go beyond complaining about the misuse of information and propose some real solutions. Since that time, I have increasingly come to feel we must simply pull back from the use of the internet and computers overall in order to save energy and preserve a healthy culture.

*

The world has been rocked in recent weeks by reports of rampant fake news stories circulating through social media that have the potential to completely disrupt the political process and undermine the international standards for transparency and accountability that we have come to take for granted. So serious has the problem become that Face – book has proposed a new system to identify doubt ful news reports and tag them for readers, as well as to limit the circulation of such stories. However, in the case of Facebook, the third party assigned to confirm the accuracy of reports is a fact-checking network established by Poynter, a nonprofit school for journalism in St. Petersburg, Florida, in collaboration with ABC News, Politifact, Fact Check, Snopes and the Associated Press.

But is Poynter’s “fact checking network” the best place for Facebook, or anyone else, to turn for a determination of what is accurate? After all, many of those media organizations have themselves been caught passing questionable stories in the build up to the Iraq War and other recent incidents. All this comes on top of the divisive dispute concerning the massive hacking of the emails of the Democratic National Committee in the United States by Wikileaks, an act which has been attributed to Russian intelligence as part of explicit Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Assuring that information in the media is accurate, or that email is secure, is no longer a personal issue.

False information, in increasingly realistic formats, can be profoundly disruptive to the international order. Moreover, the exponential evolution of technology suggests that these current crises are but part of a far more serious transformation of our society that we have yet to address directly. We will face devastating existential questions in the years ahead as human civilization enters a potentially catastrophic transformation driven not by the foibles of man, but rather by the exponential increase in our capability to gather, store, share, alter and fabricate information of every form, coupled with a sharp drop in the cost of doing so. Such basic issues as how we determine what is true and what is real, who controls institutions and organizations, and what has intellectual and spiritual significance for us will become increasingly problematic.

In the case of the US, the emerging challenge cannot be solved simply by updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 to meet the demands of the present day;1 it will require a rethinking of our society and culture and new, unprecedented, institutions.

A change in human life itself

The International Data Corporation (IDC) estimates that there were at least 4.4 zettabytes (4.4 trillion gigabytes) of digital data in 2013 and that the total will rise to an astounding 44 zettabytes by 2020.2 The explosion in the amount of information circulating in the world, and the increase in the ease with which that information can be obtained or altered, will change every aspect of our lives, from education and governance to friendship and kinship, to the very nature of human experience. We need a comprehensive response to the information revolution that not only proposes innovative ways to employ new technologies in a positive manner, but also addresses the serious, unprecedented challenges that they present for us. The ease with which information of every form can now be reproduced and altered is an epistemological, ontological and governmental challenge for us.

Let us concentrate on the issue of governance here. The manipulability of information is increasing in all aspects of life, but the constitutions — whether in the US or elsewhere — on which we base our laws and our government has little to say about information, and nothing to say about the transformative wave sweeping through society as a result. Moreover, we have trouble grasping the seriousness of the information crisis because it alters the very lens through which we perceive the world.

If we rely on the Internet to tell us how the world changes, for example, we are blind to how the Internet itself is evolving and how that evolution impacts human relations. For that matter, given that our very thought patterns are molded over time by the manner in which we receive information, we may come to see information that is presented online as more reliable than our direct perceptions of the physical world. The information revolution has the potential to dramatically change human awareness of the world and inhibit our ability to make decisions if we are surrounded with convincing data whose reliability we cannot confirm. These challenges call out for a direct and systematic response.

There are a range of piecemeal solutions to the crisis being undertaken around the world. The changes, however, are so fundamental that they call out for a systematic response. We need to hold an international constitutional convention through which we can draft a legally binding global “constitution of information” that will address the fundamental problems created by the information revolution and set down clear guidelines for how we can control the terrible cultural and institutional fluidity created by this information revolution.

The process of identifying the problems born of the massive shift in the nature of information, and suggesting workable solutions will be complex, but the issue calls out for an entirely new universe of administration and jurisprudence regarding the control, use and abuse of information. As the American writer and novelist James Baldwin once wrote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

An information constitution

The changes cannot be dealt with through mere extensions of the US Constitution or the existing legal code, nor can it be left to intelligence agencies, communications companies, congressional committees or international organizations that were not designed to handle the convergence of issues related to increased computational power, but end up formulating information policy by default.

We must bravely set out to build a consensus in the US, and around the world, about the basic definition of information, how information should be controlled and maintained, and what the long-term implications of the shifting nature of information will be for humanity. We should then launch a constitutional convention and draft a document that sets forth a new set of laws and responsible agencies for assessing the accuracy of information and addressing its misuse.

Those who may object to such a constitution of information as a dangerous form of centralized authority likely to encourage further abuse are not fully aware of the difficulty of the problems we face. The abuse of information has already reached epic proportions, and we are just at the beginning of an exponential increase. There should be no misunderstanding: I am not suggesting a totalitarian Ministry of Truth that undermines a world of free exchange between individuals. Rather, I am proposing a system that will bring accountability, institutional order and transparency to the institutions and companies that already engage in the control, collection, and alteration of information.

Failure to establish a constitution of information will not assure preservation of an Arcadian utopia, but rather encourage the emergence of even greater fields of information collection and manipulation entirely beyond the purview of any institution. The result will be increasing manipulation of human society by dark and invisible forces for which no set of regulations has been established — that is already largely the case.

The constitution of information, in whatever form it may take, is the only way to start addressing the hidden forces in our society that tug at our institutional chains. Drafting a constitution is not merely a matter of putting pen to paper. The process requires the animation of that document in the form of living institutions with budgets and mandates. It is not my intention to spell out the full parameters of such a constitution of information and the institutions that it would support, because a constitution of information can only be successful if it engages living institutions and corporations in a complex and painful process of deal-making and compromises that, like the American Constitutional Convention of 1787, is guided at a higher level by certain idealistic principles.

The ultimate form of such a constitution cannot be predicted or determined in advance, and to present a version in advance here would be counterproductive. We can, however, identify some of the key challenges and the issues that would be involved in drafting such a constitution of information.

Threats posed by the Information Revolution

The ineluctable increase of computational power in recent years has simplified the transmission, modification, creation and destruction of massive amounts of information, rendering all information fluid, mutable and potentially unreliable. The rate at which information can be rapidly and effectively manipulated is enhanced by an exponential rise in the capacity of computers.

Following Moore’s Law, which suggests that the number of microprocessors that can be placed on a chip will double every 18 months, the capacity of computers continues to increase dramatically, whereas human institutions change only very slowly.3 That gap between technological change and the evolution of human civilization has reached an extreme, all the more dangerous because so many people have trouble grasping the nature of the challenge and blame the abuse of information on the dishonesty of individuals or groups rather than on the technological change itself.

The cost for surveillance of electronic communications, for keeping track of the whereabouts of people and for documenting every aspect of human and non-human interaction, is dropping so rapidly that what was the exclusive domain of supercomputers at the National Security Agency a decade ago is now entirely possible for developing countries, and will soon be in the hands of individuals.

In 10 years, when vastly increased computational power will mean that a modified laptop computer can track billions of people with considerable resolution, and that capability is combined with autonomous drones, we will need a new legal framework to respond in a systematic manner to the use and abuse of information at all levels of society.

If we start to plan the institutions that we will need, we can avoid the greatest threat: the invisible manipulation of information without accountability. As the cost of collecting information becomes inexpensive, it is becoming easier to collect and sort massive amounts of data about individuals and groups and to extract from that information relevant detail about their lives and activities.

Seemingly insignificant data taken from garbage, e-mails and photographs can now be easily combined and systematically analyzed to essentially give as much information about individuals as a government might obtain from wiretapping — although emerging technology makes the process easier to implement and harder to detect. Increasingly smaller devices can take photographs of people and places over time with great ease, and that data can be combined and sorted so as to obtain extremely accurate descriptions of the daily lives of individuals — who they are and what they do.

Such information can be combined with other information to provide complete profiles of people that go beyond what the individuals know about themselves. As cameras are combined with mini-drones in the years to come, the range of possible surveillance will increase dramatically. Global regulations will be an absolute must for the simple reason that it will be impossible to stop the gathering of this form of big data. In the not-too-distant future, it will be possible to fabricate cheaply not only texts and data, but all forms of photographs, recordings and videos with such a level of verisimilitude that fictional artifacts indistinguishable from their historically accurate counterparts will compete for our attention. Currently, existing processing power can be combined with intermediate user-level computer skills to effectively alter information, whether still-frame images using programs like Photoshop or videos using Final Cut Pro.

Digital information platforms for photographs and videos are extremely susceptible to alteration and the problem will get far worse. It will be possible for individuals to create convincing documentation, photos or videos, in which any event involving any individual is vividly portrayed in an authentic manner. It will be increasingly easy for any number of factions and interest groups to make up materials that document their perspectives, creating political and systemic chaos. Rules stipulating what is true, and what is not, will no longer be an option when we reach that point. Of course, the authority of an organization to make a call as to what information is true brings with it incredible risks of abuse. Nevertheless, although there will be great risk in enabling a group to make binding determinations concerning what is authentic (and there will clearly be a political element to truth as long as humans rule society), the danger posed by inaction is far worse.

What is reality?

When fabricated images and movies can no longer be distinguished from reality by the observer and computers can easily create new content, it will be possible to continue these fabrications over time, thereby creating convincing alternative realities with considerable mimetic depth. At that point, the ability to create convincing images and videos will merge with the next generation of virtual reality technologies to further confuse the issue of what is real. We will see the emergence of virtual worlds that appear at least as real as the one that we inhabit.

If some event becomes a consistent reality in those virtual worlds, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for people to comprehend that the event never actually “happened,” thereby opening the door for massive manipulation of politics and ultimately of history. Once we have complex virtual realities that present a physical landscape with almost as much depth as the real world, and the characters have elaborate histories and memories of events over decades and form populations of millions of anatomically distinct virtual people, the potential for confusion will be tremendous. It will no longer be clear what reality has authority, and many political and legal issues will be unsolvable.

But that is only half of the problem. These virtual worlds are already extending into social networks. An increasing number of people on Facebook are not actual people at all, but characters and avatars created by third parties. As computers grow more powerful, it will be possible to create thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of individuals on social networks who have complex personal histories and personalities.

These virtual people will be able to engage human partners in compelling conversations that pass the Turing Test — the inability of humans to distinguish answers to the same question given to them by machines and people. And, because these virtual people can write messages and Skype 24 hours a day, and customize their messages to what the individual finds interesting, they can be more attractive than human “friends” and have the potential to seriously distort our very concept of society and reality. There will be a concrete and practical need for a set of codes and laws to regulate such an environment.

The rise of fake truth

Over time, virtual reality may end up seeming much more real and convincing to people who are accustomed to it than actual reality. That issue is particularly relevant when it comes to the next generation, who will be exposed to virtual reality from infancy.

Yet, virtual reality is fundamentally different from the real world. For example, virtual reality is not subject to the same laws of causality. The relations between events can be altered with ease in virtual reality, and epistemological assumptions from the concrete world do not hold. Virtual reality can muddle such basic concepts as responsibility and guilt, or the relationship of self and society. It will be possible in the not-too-distant future to convince people of something using faulty or irrational logic whose only basis is in virtual reality. This fact has profound implications for every aspect of law and institutional functionality. And if falsehoods are continued in virtual reality — which seems to represent reality accurately — over time in a systematic way, interpretations of even common-sense assumptions about life and society will diverge, bringing everything into question.

As virtual reality expands its influence, we will have to make sure that certain principles are upheld even in virtual space, to assure that it does not create chaos in our very conception of the public sphere. That process, I hold, cannot be governed in the legal system that we have at present.

New institutions will have to be developed. The dangers of increasingly unverifiable information are perhaps a greater threat than even terrorism. While the idea of individuals or groups setting off “dirty bombs” is certainly frightening, imagine a world in which the polity can never be sure whether anything they see/read/hear is true or not. This threat is at least as significant as surveillance operations, but has received far less attention. The time has come for us to formulate the institutional foundation that will define and maintain firm parameters for the use, alteration and retention of information on a global scale.

You are being watched

We live in a money-based economy, but the information revolution is altering the nature of money itself right before our eyes. Money has gone from an analog system that was once restricted to the amount of gold a government possessed to a digital system in which the only limitation on the amount of money represented in computers is the tolerance for risk on the part of the players involved and the ability of national and international institutions to monitor the system.

In any case, the mechanisms are now in place to alter the amount of currency, or for that matter many other items such as commodities or stocks, without any effective global oversight. The value of money and the quantity in circulation can be altered with increasing ease, and current safeguards are clearly insufficient. The problem willgrow worse as computational power, and the number of players who can engage in complex manipulations of money, increases.

Then there is the explosion in the field of drones and robots, devices of increasingly small size that can conduct detailed surveillance and that increasingly are capable of military action and other forms of interference in human society. The US had no armed drones and no robots when it entered Afghanistan, but it has now more than 8,000 drones in the air and more than 12,000 robots on the ground.

The number of drones and robots will continue to increase rapidly and they are increasingly being used in the US and around the world without regard for borders. As the technology becomes cheaper, we will see more tiny drones and robots that can operate outside of any legal framework. They will be used to collect information, but they can also be hacked and serve as portals for the distortion and manipulation of information at every level.

Moreover, drones and robots have the potential to carry out acts of destruction and other criminal activities whose source can be hidden because of ambiguities over control and agency. For this reason, the rapidly emerging world of drones and robots deserves to be treated at great length within the constitution of information.

Drafting the Constitution of Information

The constitution of information could become an internationally recognized, legally binding document that lays down rules for maintaining the accuracy of information and protecting it from abuse. It could also set down the parameters for institutions charged with maintaining long-term records of accurate information against which other data can be checked, thereby serving as the equivalent of an atomic clock for exact reference in an age of considerable confusion.

The ability to certify the integrity of information is an issue that is of an order of magnitude more serious than the intellectual property issues on which most international lawyers focus today, and deserves to be identified as a field entirely in itself — with a constitution of its own that serves as the basis for all future debate and argument.

This challenge of drafting a constitution of information requires a new approach and a bottom-up design in order to sufficiently address the gamut of complex, interconnected issues found in transnational spaces like that in which digital information exists. The governance systems for information are simply not sufficient, and overhauling them to meet the standards necessary would be much more work and much less effective than designing and implementing an entirely new, functional system, which the constitution of information represents. Moreover, the rate of technological change will require a system that can be updated and made relevant while at the same time safeguarding against it being captured by vested interests or made irrelevant. A possible model for the constitution of information can be found in the “Freedom of Information” section of the new Icelandic constitution drafted in 2011.

The Constitutional Council engaged in a broad debate with citizens and organizations throughout the country about the content of the new constitution, which described in detail mechanisms required for government transparency and public accessibility that are far more aligned with the demands of today than other similar documents.5 It would be meaningless, however, to merely put forth a model, international constitution of information without the process of drafting it because without the buy-in of institutions and individuals in its formulation, the constitution would not have the authority necessary for it to be accepted and to function. The process of debate and compromise that would determine the contours of that constitution would endow it with social and political significance, and, like the US Constitution of 1787, it would become the core for governance.

For that matter, the degree to which the content of the constitution of information would be legally enforceable would have to be part of the discussion held at the convention.

Constitutional convention

To respond to this global challenge, we should call a constitutional convention in which a series of basic principles and enforceable regulations would be put forward that are agreed upon by major institutions responsible for policy — including national governments and supranational organizations and multinational corporations, research institutions, intelligence agencies, NGOs, and a variety of representatives from other organizations.

Deciding who to invite and how will be difficult, but it should not be a stumbling block. The US Constitution has proven quite effective over the last few centuries even though it was drafted by a group that was not representative of the population of North America at the time.

Although democratic process is essential to good government, there are moments in history in which we confront deeper ontological and epistemological questions that cannot be addressed by elections or referendums and require a select group of individuals like Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. At the same time, the constitutional convention cannot be merely a gathering of wise individuals, but will have to involve those directly engaged in the information economy and information policy.

That process of drafting a constitution will involve the definition of key concepts, the establishment of the legal and social limits of the constitution’s authority, the formulation of a system for evaluating the use and misuse of information and policy suggestions that respond to abuses of information on a global scale. The text of this constitution of information should be carefully drafted with a literary sense of language so that it will outlive the specifics of the moment and with a clear historic vision and unmistakable idealism that will inspire future generations, just as the US Constitution continues to inspire Americans.

This constitution cannot be a flat bureaucratic rehashing of existing policies on privacy and security. We must be aware of the dangers involved in trying to determine what is and is not reliable information as we draft the constitution of information. It is essential to set up a workable system for assuring the integrity of information, but multiple safeguards, and checks and balances will be necessary. There should be no assumptions as to what the constitution of information would ultimately be, but only the requirement that it should be binding and that the process of drafting it should be cautious but honest.

Private versus public

Following David Brin’s argument in his book The Transparent Society, 6 one essential assumption should be that privacy will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to protect in the current environment. We must accept, paradoxically, that much information must be made “public” in some sense in order to preserve its integrity and its privacy. That is to say that the process of rigorously protecting privacy is not sufficient, granted the overwhelming changes that will take place in the years to come.

Brin draws heavily on Steve Mann’s concept of sousveillance, a process through which ordinary people could observe the actions of the rich and powerful so as to counter the power of the state or the corporation to observe the individual.The basic assumption behind sousveillance is that there is no means of arresting the development of technologies for surveillance and that those with wealth and power will be able to deploy such technologies more effectively than ordinary citizens. Therefore, the only possible response to increased surveillance is to create a system of mutual monitoring to assure symmetry, if not privacy.

Although the constitution of information does not assume that a system that allows the ordinary citizen to monitor the actions of those in power is necessary, the importance of creating information systems that monitor all information in a 360-degree manner should be seriously considered as part of a constitution of information. The one motive for a constitution of information is to undo the destructive process of designating information as classified and blocking off reciprocity and accountability on a massive scale.

We must assure that multiple parties are involved in that process of controlling information so as to assure its accuracy and limit its abuse. In order to achieve the goal of assuring accuracy, transparency and accountability on a global scale, but avoiding massive institutional abuse of the power over information that is granted, we must create a system for monitoring information with a balance of powers at the center. Brin suggests a rather primitive system in which the ruled balance out the power of rulers through an equivalent system for observing and monitoring that works from below. I am skeptical that such a system will work unless we create large and powerful institutions within government (or the private sector) itself that have a functional need to check the power of other institutions.

Perhaps it is possible to establish a complex balance of powers wherein information is monitored and abuses can be controlled, or punished, according to a meticulous, painfully negotiated agreement between stakeholders. It could be that ultimately information would be governed by three branches of government, something like the legislative, executive and judicial systems that has served well for many constitution-based governments.

Accuracy assurance

The need to assure accuracy may ultimately be more essential than the need to protect privacy. The general acceptance of inaccurate descriptions of a state of affairs, or of individuals, is profoundly damaging and cannot be easily rectified. For this reason, I suggest as part of the three branches of government, that a “three keys” system for the management of information be adopted. That is to say that sensitive information will be accessible — otherwise we cannot assure that information will be accurate — but that information can only be accessed when three keys representing the three branches of government are presented.

That process would assure that accountability can be maintained, because three institutions whose interests are not necessarily aligned must be present to access that information. Systems for the gathering, analysis and control of information on a massive scale have already reached a high level of sophistication. What is sadly lacking is a larger vision of how information should be treated for the sake of our society.

Most responses to the information revolution have been extremely myopic, dwelling on the abuse of information by corporations or intelligence agencies without considering the structural and technological background of those abuses. To merely attribute the misuse of information to a lack of human virtue is to miss the profound shifts sweeping through society today.

The constitution of information will be fundamentally different than most constitutions in that it must contain both rigidity, in terms of holding all parties to the same standards, and also considerable flexibility, in that it can readily adapt to new situations resulting from rapid technological change. The rate at which information can be stored and manipulated will continue to increase and new horizons and issues will emerge, perhaps more quickly than expected. For this reason, the constitution of information cannot be overly static and must derive much of its power from its vision.

The representative system

We can imagine a legislative body to represent all the elements of the information community engaged in the regulation of the traffic and the quality of information as well as individuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). It would be a mistake to assume that the organizations represented in that “legislature” would necessarily be nation states according to the United Nations formulation of global governance.

The limits of the nation state concept with regards to information policy are increasingly obvious, and this constitutional convention could serve as an opportunity to address the massive institutional changes that have taken place over the past 50 years. It would be more meaningful, in my opinion, to make the members companies, organizations, networks, local governments — a broad range of organizations that make the actual decisions concerning the creation, distribution and reception of information.

That part of the information security system would only be “legislative” in a conceptual sense. It would not necessarily have meetings or be composed of elected or appointed representatives. In fact, if we consider the fact that the actual physical meetings of government legislatures around the world are mostly rituals, we can sense that the whole concept of the legislative process requires much modification. The executive branch of the new information accuracy system would be charged with administering the policies based on the legislative branch’s policies. It would implement rules concerning information to preserve its integrity and prevent its misuse.

The details of how information policy is carried out would be determined at the constitutional convention. The executive would be checked not only by the legislative branch but also by a judicial branch. The judicial branch would be responsible for formulating interpretations of the constitution with regards to an ever-changing environment for information, and for assessing the appropriateness of actions taken by the executive and legislative branches.

The terms “executive,” “legislative” and “judicial” are meant more as placeholders in this initial discussion, not actual concrete descriptions of the institutions to be established. The functioning of these units would be profoundly different from branches of current local and national governments, or even international organizations like the United Nations. If anything, the constitution of information will be a step forward towards a new approach to governance in general.

Vision needed

It would be irresponsible and rash to draft an “off the shelf” constitution of information that could be readily applied around the world to respond to the complex situation of information today. Although I accept that initial proposals for a constitution of information may be dismissed as irrelevant and wrong-headed, I assert that as we enter an unprecedented age of information and most of the assumptions that undergirded our previous governance systems based on physical geography and discrete domestic economies will be overturned, there will be a critical demand for new systems to address this crisis.

This initial foray can help to formulate the problems to be addressed and the format in which to do so in advance.

In order to effectively govern a new space that exists outside of our current governance systems (or in the interstices between systems), we must make new rules that can effectively govern that space and work to defend transparency and accuracy in the perfect storm born of the circulation and alteration of information. If information exists in a transnational or global space and affects people at that scale, then the governing institutions responsible for its regulation need to be transnational or global. If unprecedented changes are required, then so be it.

If all records for hundreds of years exist online, then it will be entirely possible, as suggested in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, to alter all information in a single moment if there is not a constitution of information. But the solution must involve designing the institutions that will be used to govern information, thus bringing an inspiring vision to what we are doing. We must give a philosophical foundation for the regulation of information and open up new horizons for human society while appealing to our better angels.

Oddly, many assume that the world of policy must consist of turgid and mind-numbing documents in the specialized terminology of economists. But history also has moments such as the drafting of the US Constitution during which a small group of visionary individuals managed create an inspiring new vision of what is possible. That is what we need today with regard to information. To propose such an approach is not a misguided modern version of Neo-Platonism, but a chance to seize the initiative and put forth a vision in the face of ineluctable change, rather than just a response.

*

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

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***

In January, Foreign Affairs, the mouthpiece of the Council on Foreign Relations, posted “The Case for Taking Crimea: Why Ukraine Can—and Should—Liberate the Province.”

The article was re-posted by the “Center for Defense Strategies in Ukraine,” a post-coup government bureaucracy where former USG general Wesley Clark and Phil Jones, of the British Ministry of Defense, are board members.

The gist of the post centers on revisionist history and the claim Crimea is and always has been part of Ukraine. Thus, according to CFR globalists, it will be entirely legitimate for post-Maidan coup neo-nazis and demented worshippers of the ethnic cleanser Stepan Bandera to kill Crimeans, the majority being ethnic Russian.

The CFR didn’t put it that way, of course.

“Western states are united in their belief that the 2014 annexation of Crimea was, and is, unacceptable. But the United States and its partners have been squeamish about endorsing any plans that would return Crimea to Ukraine,” writes Andriy Zagorodnyuk, Chairman of the Center for Defense Strategies.

For the global elite, preventing the torture, rape, and murder of ethnic Russian is “unacceptable.” However, the wish of Crimeans to secede from book- and people burning neo-nazis, on the other hand, is not acceptable.

Zagorodnyuk, a former minister of “defense,” is a “distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

The Atlantic Council is a NATO influence-peddling “think tank” on the USG State Department payroll.

It also receives money from the US Mission to NATO, “Her [now His] Majesty’s Government,” the Pentagon, the Open Society Foundation, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Palantir, death merchants (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman), banksters (JP Morgan, Bank of America, BlackRock), and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The Atlantic Council and its supporters promote a return to Cold War brinkmanship and manufactured hostility toward competitors.

“Washington and its allies should develop a defense strategy capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating Russia and China at the same time,” is one of the more irrational and eminently dangerous quotes coming out of this billionaire’s war council, according to a February 2022 Foreign Policy article.

The CFR article is replete with lies. For instance, Crimea is not Russia. This omits the fact more than 60 percent of Crimeans are ethnic Russians.

The CFR war propagandists insist Crimea has always been part of Ukraine. In fact, Crimea has experienced over its long history invading nomads, including the Tauri, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Crimean Goths, Alans, Bulgars, Huns, Khazars, Kipchaks, and Mongols. The Kievan Rus’, the cultural ancestor of ethnic Russians, exercised control over Crimea beginning in the tenth century.

An honest evaluation of history makes clear that Crimea should be part of Ukraine, not Russia. It is legally recognized and accepted as Ukrainian territory by the entire world — including, until 2014, by Russia. Crimea has been governed by Kyiv for 60 of the past 70 years, and so most of its residents know it first and foremost as a Ukrainian peninsula.

The above appraisal is predictable. The CFR and the Atlantic Council are all about the primacy of a world-order state and the maintenance of rule by installed client regimes. The desire of the Crimeans is not important. Weakening Russia is the paramount objective, no matter how many innocents must suffer horrible deaths.

Left out of the equation is the indisputable fact ethnic Russians, the majority in Crimea, fear Banderist nazis installed by the USG in 2014. The ultranationalists have demonstrated both in word and deed their hatred for everything Russian. There is ample evidence the ultranationalists in Kyiv are determined to ethnically cleanse ethnic Russians, and short of that, kill every Russian in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia.

Biden, his neocons, and “humanitarian interventionists,” at the behest of the CFR, WEF, and “supranational institutions,” such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are not concerned about the fate of a few million Russians, formerly victims of a nazified Ukraine. Banderist worshippers will have a free hand to torture, rape, humiliate, and kill ethnic Russians if the plan to retake Crimea, Donbas, etc., is realized.

Pentagon, Washington, DC. That's the way to answer the question "Will Ukraine be able to liberate Crimea?"

The infographic shows what a GLSDB is. Soon Ukraine will get these bombs to hit Russian rear and set conditions to liberate all occupied territories, including Crimea.🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/RDkp5Ks4zn

— BREAKING NEWS: UKRAINE (@MrFukkew) February 5, 2023

Following Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s panhandling European tour last week, the British state announced it plans to send Harpoon and Storm Shadow missiles to the ethnic cleansers and Banderist worshippers in Kyiv.

Sun describes how Ukraine will attack Crimea with British missiles.. pic.twitter.com/eFM1MYbxbh

— Geo_monitor (@colonelhomsi) February 12, 2023

UK to send AGM-84 Harpoon missiles to Ukraine to attack Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea

A feature of these cruise missiles is that their range is 240 kilometers, which threatens the base of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Navy in Sevastopol. More… pic.twitter.com/QdvD2wpQoD

— Koba (@Roberto05246129) February 14, 2023

Scaling a Financial Times paywall with a 12-foot ladder, I encountered “Crimea could be Putin’s tipping point in a game of nuclear chicken,” a reckless article tempting nuclear war in response to Russia’s threat to go nuclear if it faces an existential threat. The same logic applies to the USG’s national security.

Putin’s spurious nuclear threats of recent months have begun to lose their potency. In order to be credible, Russia would have to make explicit that an invasion of Crimea constituted a red line. Faced with losing Crimea, Putin might consider this a worthwhile gamble, believing Ukraine (with western encouragement) would blink first. This would be a moment of extreme peril.

How idiotic—and conspicuously propagandistic.

The Financial Times is, at least ostensibly, a British publication (a state-controlled Japanese media company, Nikkei, owns FT). The periodical’s editorial slant is described as “conservative liberalism,” that is to say neocon liberalism. It is yet another subscription-based, paywall-enclosed official propaganda conduit.

Only the USG, under the founder of the national security state (NSC, CIA, Pentagon), President Harry Truman, dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing thousands of innocent Japanese civilians.

Truman, basically a nuclear terrorist, wanted to send a message to Stalin and the Soviet Union. As would be the case in the years that followed, the lives of non-combatant men, women, and children would be sacrificed for USG neoliberal foreign policy objectives. The total of the dead thus far is in the millions.

Winston Churchill, previously a fan of using poisonous gas on restless Kurds in Mesopotamia, urged Truman to nuke Moscow.

The ruling bankster, corporate, and hereditary aristocratic elite, and associated paywall propaganda conduits—FT, the CFR’s Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, the CIA’s Washington Post, et al—are aggressively pushing a final war against the New Hitler, Vladimir Putin.

The oligarchic elite are deluded by their own lies, propaganda, and self-serving myths, most prominently the arrogant assertion the USG is a lone “exceptional nation,” a lighthouse of democracy, the latter an illusion that holds sway over a relentlessly propagandized public.

With enough assistance from the West to credibly threaten the liberation of Crimea, Ukraine can force Putin to the negotiating table, writes @AVindman. https://t.co/R3qKdBO1yd

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) February 12, 2023

This tweet is not difficult to translate: according to the logic of psychopaths, killing innocents in Crimea with ground-launched small-diameter bombs (part of the latest USG $2.17 billion “aid” package) will force Moscow to defend its sovereignty and national security. If Russia concludes it faces an existential threat, it will resort to nuclear weapons, as would the USG in a similar situation.

*

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Adam Rowland had a promising career, working with professional athletes on the PGA Tour and Premiership Rugby, splitting his time between the U.S. and the U.K.

He also was the fittest he’d ever been, Rowland told The Defender — until early 2021, when he received the two-dose primary series of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Today, Rowland, 48, cannot work, cannot lie down, and experiences several conditions affecting everything from his heart health to his vision, including pericarditis, pulmonary embolisms, severe thrombotic vasculitis and vascular neuropathy.

He is now separated from his wife, misses most family events and was repeatedly told by doctors that his severe injuries were “all in his head” — bringing him to the brink of suicide.

He said his discovery of online support groups for the vaccine-injured afforded him a new lease on life.

Rowland, who provided extensive documentation supporting his claims, shared his story with The Defender in an exclusive interview.

‘I was the fittest I’d ever been in my life’

Rowland had worked as a medical sports physiotherapist and stroke consultant for professional golfers for the previous 16-17 years.

“I was absolutely at the top of my career in professional sport,” he said, having worked on the PGA Tour with Jason Day and other high-profile golfers.

“I was working in America when COVID kicked off,” said Rowland, “and living quite a luxury lifestyle. And then, I decided to come back to the U.K. because obviously, I didn’t know when I’d be able to get back to the U.K. if I didn’t go then.”

The U.S. government gave Rowland special permission to return to the country and resume his employment. However, “Once the vaccination program kicked in, you had to be double vaccinated.”

It was during this time — before he got the vaccine — that Rowland said he was “even fitter than when I was 18,” because “any workout program I gave an athlete, I would try it myself” to determine firsthand how physically strenuous it was.

He said:

“So, because of that, I exercised six or seven days a week … I was just so fit, I could row on the rowing machine 18 minutes, something around five kilometers. I could ride a bike 20K in under 30 minutes. At one stage I was running 5K in 21 minutes.”

Multiple injuries and conditions brushed off as ‘anxiety’

Rowland received two doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in February and May 2021. That’s when everything changed.

“Very quickly after being vaccinated, I started to get quite ill,” said Rowland. “I never got back to the U.S.” He continued working for six months after his first dose, but had to take a lot of time off from work because he was in the hospital.

“I’ve never worked since,” he said. “I’ve lost my job and I’m disabled as we speak.”

Rowland’s symptoms began with a “fever like I’d never had before in my life,” he said. “I was in bed for four days.” The fever eventually subsided, he said, “but I felt very virally ill for a number of weeks. I started to notice horrendous pains down my left arm and my left leg. And my wife noticed I started to have fits in bed … they were basically non-epileptic fits.”

The symptoms appeared within a week of his first dose.

Rowland couldn’t get a face-to-face appointment with his doctor because of the pandemic, so he had to settle for a phone appointment. The doctor diagnosed him with “anxiety” and “said it was a panic attack” — not unlike what happened to other vaccine-injury victims, whose conditions also were chalked up to “anxiety.”

Rowland’s condition continued to worsen. “I couldn’t sleep for five days because [the fits] were happening 15 or 20 times a night,” he said. “It got horrendous. I just couldn’t lie down.”

Rowland took six weeks off from work. However, when he spoke to his doctor again, “He said it’s anxiety and depression and put me on antidepressant medication. So, I tried this medication, and it made me even worse.”

Rowland’s doctor then prescribed “three or four” additional antidepressants, but none of them helped. Ultimately, his doctor said, “I don’t know what to do for you, I’m going to send you to a psychiatrist because I believe this is like a mental health [issue].”

“He didn’t think it was anything physical,” said Rowland, “and neither of us … I didn’t think it was a vaccine, because I had vaccines all my life. I didn’t figure it was the vaccine … no one put it down to the vaccine.”

Rowland eventually returned to work.

‘I just got sicker and sicker’

Whatever sense of normalcy Rowland reattained was short-lived. After receiving the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, “That’s when all hell broke loose in my life.”

Rowland told The Defender:

“Immediately after having the second vaccine … I passed out once at work. I passed out at home … I developed chest pain immediately after the vaccine. I developed such chest pain and dizziness, and I was sweating. The pain was horrendous. I couldn’t breathe. I thought I was having a heart attack.”

Rowland was taken to the hospital, where he was told, “We can’t find anything wrong with you. We think it’s just a panic attack,” and he was sent home.

Not satisfied with the diagnosis, Rowland spoke to a cardiologist at his workplace and asked for an electrocardiogram (EKG or ECG). “So, he did a 24-hour ECG … and it basically showed my heart was going into ventricular tachycardia (VT), when I was getting all dizzy. It’s very dangerous and could cause sudden death.”

The cardiologist instructed Rowland to show the results of this exam to the hospital in the event he was to go back.

“Another week went by,” said Rowland, “I was getting tremendous pain and dizziness and I had another episode where I nearly collapsed again.” He showed paramedics the results of his ECG and was taken to the hospital.

But Rowland’s difficulties with doctors didn’t end there.

“I had a high D-dimer, so they started to look for blood clots on my lungs and kept me in hospital, wouldn’t let me move out of the bed.”

He added:

“They still didn’t think it was the vaccine when they couldn’t find blood clots … they sent my ECG to a specialist heart hospital … and got them to look at the ECG. Nobody thought it was the vaccine.”

As a result, Rowland was discharged and told he would be administered an MRI “in a couple of weeks,” with the expectation of finding cardiomyopathy. But the MRI didn’t find anything.

“Doctors were very, very confused about what was causing this VT,” he said. “They thought it was an adrenal problem and then referred me to an endocrinologist, and that’s when my horrible gaslighting and traumatic story really started. Because, again, they couldn’t find the cause of it, so they kept blaming things on anxiety.”

Rowland described what happened next:

“And then … I just got sicker and sicker. I developed blurred vision, face rashes, jaundice and tinnitus in my head. I started to develop neuropathy in my hands … some of my fingers don’t straighten anymore.

“I developed horrendous pain below both my knees … I can’t feel temperature in my lower legs. My toenails have died … I have no pulse in my feet.”

He was discharged from the hospital but returned monthly. Each time, doctors told him, “We can’t find what’s wrong with you.”

In June 2022, Rowland “collapsed with three pulmonary embolisms” in his lungs — but when he went to the hospital, they again told him it was just anxiety.

“So I said, ‘look at my eyes. I’ve lost two stone [one stone = 6.35 kilograms] in weight … I’m not leaving this hospital until you do some more scans and tests. This is definitely not anxiety.’”

So they scanned his lungs, and that’s when they found the three pulmonary embolisms and “a hundred tiny embolisms on my lungs.”

Rowland ended up in the hospital for a month, where he was diagnosed with pericarditis and told he would have died if they hadn’t found the embolisms.

Since then, Rowland said, “I’ve spent four more months in hospital on separate occasions. And I’ve been diagnosed now with severe thrombolytic vasculitis of my blood vessels.”

But that’s not all that’s wrong with his health. Rowland told The Defender:

“My diaphragm doesn’t work properly. Some of my eye muscles and my facial muscles aren’t working properly, and my leg muscles aren’t working properly … They did something called a CPET [cardiopulmonary exercise] test and … found that my cells in my muscles aren’t getting enough oxygen and nutrients.

“I’m waiting to see a vascular surgeon for the blood — it’s not getting to my legs and my muscles. I’m also waiting to see an immunologist and another hematologist because I’m on three blood-thinning medications and they don’t think it’s stopping my blood clotting properly.

“They think my blood is still clotting. They want me to have a special test where they take my blood out, spin it and take the platelets out and then look how my blood is responding to the three blood thinners I’m on, because for some reason it’s not doing its job.”

Rowland hasn’t been able to get that test because under the U.K. healthcare system, “the government won’t pay for it.”

He’s been trying to get the text through private healthcare. Meanwhile, his doctors tell him they can see that he’s really ill, “but we don’t know how to make it better” because they don’t know what’s in the vaccines. They suggested he travel to Germany to receive specialist treatment.

‘You’re the 239th person we have seen with similar symptoms from the vaccines’

Rowland described how he finally got a diagnosis that definitively linked the vaccine to his injuries:

“After I collapsed with the blood clots and they tried to send me home and I said ‘no, I’m not going anywhere, you scammed me, there’s something wrong,’ they finally admitted it was probably the vaccine.

“I was needing a wheelchair and they just discharged me and said, ‘Take this morphine, we’ll see you in four or five months’ time.’ And I was like, ‘I can’t even walk, you know?’ And they were like, ‘well, we can’t help you.’”

Rowland did his own research, locating a specialist hospital and private lung consultant, whom he visited in London, bringing with him the scans from the exams administered at his local hospital.

He said:

“I just said to him, ‘I feel like I’m dying, can you look at my scans and tell me, am I going to die, you know, imminently? I want you to be honest with me so I can tell my children.’ He looked at my scans and he said, ‘I don’t think you’re going to die imminently from your lungs’ … but he said to me, ‘it is 100% vaccine injury.’

“He said ‘you’re the 239th person we have seen with similar symptoms from the vaccines.’ And that was at one hospital in London … He said, ‘I’m more worried that you’re going to die with your heart and I need you to see one of my colleagues urgently.”

So Rowland saw a cardiologist who told him, it’s “completely vaccine injury. You don’t get VT like you developed for no reason. It’s definitely the vaccine with everything that’s happened to you since.’”

The doctor urged him to go to London immediately for treatment. “So they took me down to London for a month and then they diagnosed me … they realized it was in all my organs. So it’s in my heart, my lungs … so they diagnosed me with multisystem inflammatory syndrome.”

“So, at this moment in time, I’m on steroids for the pericarditis in my heart,” he said. “I’m on two different heart medications, another one for pericarditis [and] one for microvascular angina … and I’m on three blood thinners from my clotting, and various painkillers and things like that.”

‘It’s like living in hell’

As for what his life is like today, Rowland said:

“I don’t say these words slightly, but it’s like living in hell. It’s like torture, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”

He said he’s pretty much housebound and struggles to walk because of his breathing issues and chest pain.

Rowland added:

“Because I have fits trying to lie down, I can’t sleep in a regular bed … my bed’s adapted, so it’s at 45 degrees, so it’s like sitting up in a chair because the fits get triggered when I lie down.

“I don’t sleep. I just get these fits. So, every single day, I dread going to bed because the fits are so scary. And my heart sometimes misses a few beats and stops for a split second. And when I get that, it feels like I’m going to die.”

Rowland’s waking hours are not much better. He told The Defender:

“Because of my pain and my vulnerability, I can’t stand up for very long on some days. I struggle to make food. I can make breakfast and maybe lunch if I’m lucky, but I can’t cook myself an evening meal. When I go to the hospital, I never know whether I’m going to be able to walk from the car park to the hospital …

“Some days I can walk very short distances, 50 meters, maybe 100 meters. I’m really, really breathless … the chest pain is so bad that I can’t walk any further. And it does crazy things in my heart, it gives me the heart arrhythmia.”

Rowland also experiences blurred vision and struggles to type and write because of the neuropathy in his hands and because he can’t straighten some of his fingers.

Most days, he has to “live within the four walls of the house,” he said. “And then occasionally, when I’m on a good day, a friend might come and pick me up and take me for a drive to a nearby coffee shop and have a coffee. That’s about the most pleasure I’m getting in my life. I can’t walk my dog anymore. I can’t take my grandson to the park to push him on the swing.”

Rowland said he lost his wife and family because of the strain. “They couldn’t look after me,” he said. “I’ve not had a Christmas dinner with the family in two years because I’ve been too ill.”

As for his prognosis, Rowland said his doctors “don’t know how much I’ll heal or whether I’m just going to slowly die, because since I got injured, I’ve just gotten worse gradually on a linear projection.”

“I haven’t gotten any better,” he said, “so we don’t know what the future’s going to hold.”

‘I got to a point where I was suicidal’

The gaslighting Rowland experienced from multiple doctors, the lack of definitive answers, and the questioning of his mental health, drove him to the brink of suicide.

“Because they didn’t believe me … I felt like I was going crazy,” he said. “And I got to a point where I was suicidal.”

Rowland said many of the doctors he saw wanted him to be “on lots of pain medications: morphine, oxycontin, pregabalin.” He said his local hospital is “quite happy to give me morphine and all these other medications and leave me like that for the rest of my life.”

He doesn’t want to go back to taking lots of medications, he said, noting that morphine “doesn’t work … it takes a bit of the edge off the pain, but it doesn’t get rid of it.”

Rowland told The Defender he “wasn’t someone who watched TV or used social media.” But taking to social media ultimately helped provide Rowland with a new lease on life.

He said:

“I went on Twitter one evening. I don’t know what drew me to do that. This was when I was suicidal. I found a guy called Alex Mitchell in the U.K. who lost a leg [due to vaccine injury]. I started chatting to him and he was like, ‘it sounds like you might have a vaccine injury.’

“He pointed me to a support group, UK COVID Vaccine Family. I couldn’t believe it, that there was — I think at the time in the U.K. there were 600-odd people in this group — and I was like, ‘there’s all these people [with] all the same symptoms as me’ … It just completely opened my eyes.”

“From that moment,” said Rowland, while “it was nice to get the support, I still realized that the doctors didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I think what it did was, it took me from a place of being suicidal [to] where I wanted to fight for my life now.”

Rowland said he started to seek out specialists who were seeing patients with vaccine injuries and “knew it wasn’t all in their heads and knew what sort of tests to do.”

He also “went on Twitter and decided that I needed to speak out, because I thought, ‘well, if I’m going to die’ — and I didn’t realize how bad my story was — I thought, ‘well, I didn’t want anyone else to go through what I’m going through.’”

“I just wanted to warn people that if they do inject you and it goes wrong,” he said, “they tell you it’s safe and effective but there’s nobody there for you to help you.”

He said he’s met some wonderful people “who’ve reached out to me and offered me support.”

“I just take pleasure from speaking to those people and the people who are trying to help me,” said Rowland.

At the same time, Rowland told The Defender he is also “going down a legal route.”

“I want to know … what’s keeping my blood clotting and giving me vasculitis. [Doctors] don’t seem prepared to do that. So that’s the battle I’m on … I want to prove it’s negligence because then the [U.K.] government will have to pay for private treatment for me, even if it’s abroad. So, it’s about keeping me alive,” he said.

He had some words of advice for other vaccine-injured individuals:

“I think the first thing they need to do is, don’t suffer in silence alone … trust your own body and your intuition. So, if people are saying that to you, don’t just accept that if your intuition says otherwise.

“Try a two-pronged approach. Find a support group and question people in that support group. Even reach out and contact me online. That’s what I’m there for. And then also, if your doctor is gaslighting you … print off a lot of evidence. If your doctor is not helping you, you need to find another doctor, which I know is not as easy as that, but do not accept a doctor that’s telling you it’s in your head.”

Rowland encouraged vaccine injury victims to “come out publicly if you’ve got the strength to do that because there’s hundreds of thousands and probably millions of us around the world.”

“We were part of the worst experiment that I believe has probably ever taken place,” said Rowland. “And I think it’s going to be like a dam that’s going to burst by the back end of 2023 … I don’t think they can keep it covered up much longer.”

*

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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”

Featured image is from CHD

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***

“Our Alliance does not want to abolish physical cash,” cries the opening gambit on the website ‘BetterThanCash.org’. It is a UN body, ostensibly pursuing the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ‘financial inclusion’. But it dovetails with a wider phenomenon, the disappearance of physical cash from the economy.

They are an alliance of nation states, corporations and NGOs. They meet under the aegis of the United Nations Capital for Development program (UNCFD). They number about 80 members, of varying influence, ranging from the small states of Equatorial Guinea and the Solomon Islands, up to heavyweight global corporates like Unilever and Coca-Cola. They also receive significant funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID and Visa inc.

Their moniker, “Better Than Cash,” will ring alarm bells for some, who retreat from the digitisation of money. But for many it exemplifies a trend of the last decade. There has been a move away from using cash for day to day transactions in wealthy countries. As payment rails have become slicker, electronic transactions have become commonplace. Since the advent of electronic banking in the 1980s, there have been developments in technology which allow the quick communication in banking necessary to fulfil over-the-counter transactions.

When one pays for a bag of flour in the UK for example, using “contactless”, what they really are doing is: scanning their RFID chipped card onto the shop’s card reader. The reader decodes the bank account details and submits them to the payment provider, usually a middle man like Visa or Mastercard. That provider than runs a check with the customer’s bank, to see if they have adequate funds to cover the transaction. The provider will then pay the bill, and make a demand or reservation from the customer’s bank. The shop owner will have received the payment, and the provider, Visa or Mastercard will submit a demand for payment from the customer’s bank. This can take up to three full days to finalise. Yet, the transaction at the till can take mere seconds because of this complex layering of institutions and technology.

Now I have laid out this summary of a “contactless” transaction for two reasons. Firstly it is to illuminate what to many people is a murky situation. Many millions of people in the UK will use such methods in their day to day lives without looking at the nuts and bolts under the hood of the transaction. I believe that it is something of a duty to educate people on the ins and outs of banking, to better protect people from the more nefarious activities carried out in the financial world. But secondly, and more pertinently to this article, I used this summary to highlight the complexity of the modern retail banking system. Further to this point, it is very difficult to achieve this system in many of the countries that are in the “Better Than Cash” alliance. Where there is little technological infrastructure, it can be hard to provide a stable system of payment technology. Where there is less prevalence of bank account usage, there is less incentive for a shop-owner to invest in said technology. For example: Papa New Guinea, a member of the Better Than Cash Alliance, has about 85% of its population in rural areas with no access to formal financial services, and an estimated 15% of the population have access in some way to the internet. Here, as in many of the less affluent countries of the world, Cash is King.

The Case Against Cash

Now let us examine the case against cash. If the UN, Coca-Cola and Bill Gates all agree that there needs to be a system Better Than Cash, there must be some problems with cash. Well let us take the sentence from the aforementioned website:

“It also means that governments, companies and international organizations can make and receive payments in a cheaper, safer and more transparent way”

This implies 3 weaknesses of cash: That it is more expensive to use, that it is unsafe or dangerous, and that it is opaque and un-transparent.

The first of these is its expense. It seems to be the weakest of the arguments, as a cash transaction, hand to hand does not cost anything. Likewise it is one of the cheaper ways to interact with a bank, who will often not charge to make a cash deposit. There is a cost associated with the handling of cash, counting and transporting cash securely. Counter to this though is the cost of digital transactions. I can cite numerous small businesses in my local area with signs up saying ‘Cash Preferred’ due to the extortionate charges put in place by middlemen like Visa or Mastercard. They will often lose a percentage cut of every transaction. The local butcher for example had a bumper Christmas, but was then met by a bumper bill from their payment provider. As it is an old-school business, they had factored in all of the costs of running the shop, paying for goods etc. but had not factored in such a huge fee, having only recently adopted a new card-reader. Another store, like many others has a minimum card spend. For a similar reason, that a charge for £1 of goods may cost £1.50 to process with the digitised banking system. Thus the UN backed body’s argument about cheapness must be based on some unclear factor which they do not disclose.

The second argument has more validity. The use of cash can carry some inherent risk. As cash is a physical asset it must be held, carried and transacted in person. This could put the spender or receiver under threat, particularly in areas with less security, policing and higher crime. If one is carrying some sum of cash, or a shopkeeper has a till full of earnings, they are a target for crime. Here one could build some case for the safety argument of digital monetary systems.

The final argument posited is about transparency, or the lack of it. It is probably one of the most common critiques of cash from institutions, that it can facilitate crime, or even worse, terrorism, by din of it being untraceable. A criminal could transact for illicit goods and services outside of the purview of regulators by using cash, as opposed to surveilled systems of digital money. Now there have been studies into this topic, but by its nature it is hard to pin down for certain statistics – as a crime that goes on without being caught in the act does not make it into statistics. However, Europol, the unified institution for crime and policing in the EU puts a conservative estimate that 1.5billion Euros are detected or confiscated by authorities in the EU each year: Which is a phenomenally small sum for a continent the size of Europe – notwithstanding the huge discrepancy of how much crime is successful in evading official seizure or detection. Furthermore we can take the received opinion of Professor Friedrich Schneider that a full ban on cash would not significantly dent levels of crime.

“Professor Friedrich Schneider, one of the most renowned experts in the areas of the shadow economy and tax evasion in Europe, concluded that a cash ban would reduce crime by a mere 10% and organized crime by less than 5%.”

An interesting case study to note here is the case of Sweden. They have, through instituting many anti-cash policies, reduced their cash usage from the EU average of 11-12% in 2009 to about 2% or less today. This is perhaps in response to a series of high-profile cash thefts in the country, culminating in the infamous Västberga helicopter robbery. There was a concerted campaign after this, particularly from trade unions to sideline the use of cash in favour of digital methods. Even though the policy has been successful in reducing crime of cash-theft, it has, admits the Swedish Central Bank, lead to an increase in digital money crime, such as fraud. Although they show that it is not excessively high, and remains at the European average.

I myself have some critiques of cash to add, but they are more heterodox, that is outside of the mainstream school of economic thought. Firstly, I would point to the fact that cash is the paper and metal form of fiat currency. That is to say central banks can mint some amount of currency each year. Currencies used to be tied to real-world assets like gold. But since the de-pegging of currencies in the 1970s, there is technically no limit to the amount that a central bank can print and therefore dilute the supply of money. The more they print, the less it’s worth. Whilst we still rely on the issuance of currency from the nation state and their concurrent central bank, we are at the mercy of their whims in terms of finance.

Secondly as issuance is centrally controlled, it can be the victim of failed policy. I take for example the case of the Central African Franc, which is used by an estimated 160 million people across 14 Central African states, many of whom are in the ‘Better Than Cash’ program. The CFA franc is a colonial hangover instituted by France in 1945 and retained after the broader independence movement in 1960s Africa. It is still controlled by France, its disbursement is decided by the French treasury and there is parity with the Euro. This means at any point the CFA Franc can be exchanged into Euros and out again at 1:1. However this causes many problems and much friction. Why should African states, which are on paper independent of their colonial overlords, still have their financial policy dictated from the former imperial power? It is an unresolved issue that still rears up, in 2019 the 5 star movement in Italy accused France of neo-colonialism through their use of the CFA Franc and argue that the economic instability caused by French policy causes significant migration flows into Italy. The most relevant factor for our debate about cash though comes from the day to day use of the CFA Franc in West Africa. As the notes can be traded 1:1 for Euros, France has to be very tight-fisted when it comes to minting new notes as that could affect the value of the Euro as a whole. Yet, as the African states are clearly viewed as inferior in priority, it is they who have to suffer. So few notes are minted in countries like the Central African Republic that it is common practice to get your change as an IOU signed by the business owner. You would pay for your cup of tea with a 50 CFA Franc note, and receive a piece of paper saying 45 CFA francs with a date and signature. It is then up to the citizen to either redeem, or try and pass on these IOUs at a later date. In this instance, cash has failed due to the post-colonial policy of France, but illustrates one of the pitfalls of centrally controlled currencies – particularly in volatile monetary environments such as those found in the ‘developing world.’

The Case For Cash

I will make no bones about the fact that I see a plethora of policies emerging from international financial institutions seeking to diminish the use of cash. I believe that there is a concerted effort to do this to a certain end, that being control. We can and will continue making arguments for and against cash but the general narrative that cash is bad and digital money is good serves primarily the economic powers that already exist. A digital system of currency is much more easy to surveil. It is much easier for a central authority to control. As currency is one of the main cogs that allows the functioning of the modern industrial economy, it makes sense it is a target for institutional regulation. When an institution seeks to control something, it is out of self-interest. Thus I give short thrift to the arguments that are presented as humanitarian when they involve financial control of the victim, sorry recipient of aid or assistance.

That being said, let us examine a couple of arguments for cash. Firstly, as I alluded to above, it allows some measure of independence from institutional control. As of now, no institution has a chip in the banknote, although the technology does exist and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has put money into promoting the concept of “smart banknotes”. Yet cash is still free to be transacted, which is a massive freedom for the people. One can trade a good or service for cash, thus retaining some value and then transact that cash for another good or service later without being constrained, censored or unjustly restricted as a result. I caveat this with the argument made above that cash, as fiat currency is vulnerable to the whims of central bank policy. However, day to day cash suffices as a good means of exchange outside of institutional control. Here I mention again, institutions as it is not just the nation state that seeks to control the population.

Other groups may seek to exert control for other reasons. One nascent trend is for banks to limit and control their account holders funds for various reasons, Canadian banks froze the assets of hundreds of accounts who were associated with widespread anti-government Canandian Truckers’ protests in 2020 and 2021. Aside from using the congrol of payment gateways to enforcing a political agenda, nother emergent trend is for banks to lead the charge on environmentalism with their championing of ESG, Environmental Social Governance – a broad framework of pro-business, anti-carbon policies. We can extrapolate forward a point in the not too distant future where banks will be policing the Carbon ‘cost’ of a customers purchases and potentially limiting or blocking transactions if the user is too ‘carbon intensive’. In this schema of tighter control and regulation, cash is a pressure valve to carry out the activities which may be suddenly deemed illegal or unpalatable yet are necessary for society to continue.

Let us hear directly from the horse’s mouth. The central bank of the EU, the ECB launched a report in response to the declining use of cash during the coronavirus hysteria. They noted a decline in cash usage where people were paranoid about transmission on currency, yet the WHO maintains ‘There is currently no evidence to confirm or disprove that COVID-19 virus can be transmitted through coins or banknotes’. It was one of the most impactful events on cash usage in recent memory; in the EU cash preference dropped a number of percentage points. The second most impactful event, we note, was an increase in cash usage following the disastrous 2008/9 global financial crisis (often referred to in banking literature by the handy acronym GFC). People had lost faith in banks and decided that holding their own cash was a good idea if retail banks were likely to go insolvent. This is reflected in the passage buried in the ECB report:

“Cash is still the only form of public money that is directly accessible to all citizens, ensuring autonomy, privacy and social inclusion. As a strategic response to various developments having an impact on the availability and acceptance of cash, the ECB adopted a 2030 strategy with the vision to preserve euro cash as a generally available, attractive, reliable and competitive payment instrument and a store of value of choice.”

They acknowledge the power of cash as a transactional medium and store of value. I guess we can rest safe in the knowledge that they have a “strategy with the vision to preserve euro cash” until at least 2030. So we have maybe 7 more years of cash being available from European banks to look forward to.

As a sidenote see this directive from the European Comission in 2016 saying that “Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities… In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored”. Here we have the old threat of terrorism being used to limit cash transactions, without much evidence by way of demonstrating the utility of cash for ‘terrorism’. Yet the anti-cash legislation rolls on unabated, passing into the EU acquis.

Another facet of this increasing regulation is the movement for CBDCs: Central Bank Digital Currencies. These take all of the bad parts of centrally controlled systems – bad actors having too much power, central policy being dictated by the few vested interests and a pursuit of power for power’s sake – and apply those to a currency. As is would be distributed by a central bank there is no retail bank to do the control of loans, there is no private intermediary to interact with. One would have an account with the State, who would distribute or restrict the currency as they see fit. I often tie this idea in with the nefarious social credit system that is blossoming in China and eyed enviously by power hungry elites the world over. Hereby any activity that the state deems as wrongful can be actively policed by restricting the citizen. If there is only a CBDC system for finance, then your money could be turned off, your financial interactions can all be monitored, you can be controlled to a huge degree and that is a dictator’s wet dream, total control over the mind and body of it’s population. That is an impulse we must in my view resist. It leads to the decline of the human condition and eventually leads to catastrophes and great harm. The policy is sold with such meagre pittances as ‘making day to day transactions easier’ but the road is being paved towards a city of panopticon surveillance and total control that is in essence subjugation. In these terms, cash is one outlet for freedom to be asserted, and hence why I believe it is under the crosshairs of central controllers the world over.

Thus let us return to this alliance, the ‘Better Than Cash’ group. Note that they are by no means the prime mover in the anti-cash movement. At best they are a talking shop or useful pawns for the real power brokers. Yet they present us an in-road into the often nebulous and unclear high-policies of international institutions and offer us a leaping-off point into the discussion.

I mention real power brokers and perhaps something can be gleaned from the CV of the leader and progenitor of the ‘Better Than Cash’ Alliance, Dr Goodwin-Groen:

“Dr. Goodwin-Groen also advised leading organizations in the field of financial inclusion including the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, World Bank Group, Soros Foundation, UK Department for International Development…”

So the person who created the alliance and is the name and face of the movement also worked for: 1) The World Bank, who control the debt obligations of nation states, keeping poor states mired in debt whilst their resources are plundered and play a part, alongside the Bank of International settlements in dicatating global financial policy. 2) The Soros Foundation, widely seen as a politically destructive force dressed in philanthropic garb. Linked to colour revolutions across Eastern Europe, fomenting civil unrest in the USA and exerting political control over European elections. 3) DFID, the UK’s Department for International Development; which opens up international aid to private interests and acts as the business arm for the UK’s military and intelligence industries after the recent merger with the Foreign Office. In sum she has the resume of someone who works with big power institutions to broker deals which usually turn out badly for the everyday citizen of countries. So I, myself, have reservations that her initiative is to do with inclusivity and helping out the poor, and more to do with the usual neo-colonial exertion of power and exploitation for material gain. But that’s only my opinion.

We’ve also mentioned the involvement of Coca-Cola, who repackage water, sugar and aspartame to great profit, and Unilever who like to monopolise food and health products the world over. But we shouldn’t ignore in our critique of the ‘Better Cash Alliance’ the UNCFD. As with any UN body there is some corruption, usually stemming from the large swathes of funding being sent from Brussels or New York down to bureaucrats in nation state management positions. As the money is garnered in a sidelong way from the populations through their governments, there is sometimes a failure of oversight. In the UNCFD there is documented widespread fraudulent use of funds in Somalia and Somaliland. This independent research article found that the UN exerts significant political control in Somalia and Somaliland, and that UNCFD funds are routinely used to curry political favour, rather than as the aid for which it was originally intended. They report that their investigation was even hampered by UNICEF and that their reportage of fraud fell on deaf ears.

Now this is one case of many but it represents a trend that I think most will understand as existing inside the UN framework. This is not to say that institutions within the UN are rotten to the core, I assume that many people who work for UN bodies have the best of intentions, and that many achieve good things in global and local politics. But it goes to show that the more we investigate the badges of approval that the ‘Better Than Cash’ Alliance proudly show us on their website, are not so clear cut. We could go through each of their claims too, one by one and dispute them but that would fill another long-form article and to no great avail. I charge you yourself to look at the claims and sources on betterthancash.org and see for yourself how easily they can spuriously present a claim about digital money systems based on a piece of research that has little to do with the actual claim at all. In fact the Alliance don’t propose anything new in their promotion of digital payments. They simply re-vivify the commonplace methods of RFID cards and QR codes and jazz it up with the inclusion of dystopian biometric IDs: which “include fingerprints, hand geometry, earlobe geometry, retina and iris patterns, voice waves, DNA, and signatures.” Nothing creepy about that.

As I have mentioned, the ‘Better Than Cash’ alliance is a mere minnow in the seas of political influence, but as one researches these topics the same conclusions emerge. That being; flashy projects that look good on a website, are presented by well funded international institutions to provide cover for their real agendas. Happy looking Africans using a smart phone are pushed to the fore of a campaign and a nice looking statistic about how many women are empowered by a project make up the headline. But when we dig into the membership, the foundations and origins of these schemes, they often have the same few groups, corporations and financial institutions backing it. It is something of a humanitarian shield for vested interest to carry out their malicious activities behind.

Here we have presented a debate on the fundamental case for and against cash. But it is couched in the international narratives and historical trends which we should not ignore. “As we rush to reap the benefits of digital payments” as the sister organisation to ‘Better Than Cash’ says, we should not let real political debate fall by the wayside. In my opinion, to do so allows the laying of permanent payment rails of control. And that once the railway is laid, it will be hard for the world’s poorest to change track. It is not only through cash that we and they can assert their freedom. But the War on Cash is something that we should dig into and bear in our minds when we are assessing economic affairs.

To end, I will balance the opening quote with one in 2017 from the CEO of Visa, another foundational partner of the ‘Better Than Cash’ Initiative:

“We’re focused on putting cash out of business.”

The war on cash is on.

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This is a rare interview with Moderna CEO Stephan Bancel that took place at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2023.

Click here to view the video

Big pharma is doubling down on failed mRNA technology. There have been significant efforts lately, to bring other mRNA products to market as soon as possible, before the public at large turns against the entire mRNA platform.

“We are working on a lot of vaccines, around 30+ vaccines today” – Stephane Bancel

There are currently three Moderna mRNA vaccines that are in Phase 3 trials: Influenza, RSV, CMV.

There are also several in Phase 2 trials: Zika virus, cardiac ischemia, and cancer.

mRNA RSV adult vaccine

This is the one the media are pushing heavily and may be the next one to hit the market in 2023:

“Moderna intends to submit for regulatory approval in the first half of 2023” (click here)

Several news reports have circulated in the last few weeks about a “3-in-1 Supershot” to combat “vaccine fatigue” which includes COVID-19, Influenza and RSV (click here). This is coming from Australian media.

In another WEF interview in Davos, Stephane Bancel claims that the RSV protein in Moderna’s mRNA RSV vaccine “doesn’t mutate as much as flu or COVID”.

He also claims that all Moderna products “use the same manufacturing process” as the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, including “the same raw material…same lipid”, meaning lipid nanoparticle (LNP).

This is very important information, as the adverse events following COVID-19 vaccination have been linked not just to the SARS-CoV2 spike protein but the LNP delivery mechanism itself, which is highly inflammatory:

“The same dose of LNP delivered intranasally led to similar inflammatory responses in the lung and resulted in a high mortality rate, with mechanism unresolved.” (click here)

In January 2023, Moderna reported Phase 3 trial results in older adults with “83.7% efficacy”. Much more concerning is that “trials of the vaccine in pregnant women and infants are now underway” (click here).

mRNA CMV vaccine

This vaccine against cytomegalovirus is aimed at young healthy men and women of reproductive age (click here). I have seen no media push on this one yet.

mRNA cancer vaccines (melanoma)

This has been described as an extremely expensive personalized treatment for melanoma cancer patients:

“Moderna melanoma vaccine is tailor-made for each patient. Each tumor is unique, and so the vaccine needs to be unique as well. To customize vaccines, researchers first biopsy the patient’s tumor to determine what neoantigens are present. The vaccine manufacturer then designs specific mRNA molecules that encode those neoantigens. When this custom mRNA vaccine is administered, the body translates the genetic material into proteins specific to the patient’s tumor, resulting in an immune response against the tumor.” (click here)

Personalized cancer treatments are another money-making area that the Trudeau Liberal government has been investing heavily into (click here). This was the field of cancer treatments that I specialized in, before my Cancer program in Alberta was shut down and restarted in British Columbia.

This will be a multi-billion dollar industry in the future (click here):

“According to Precedence Research, the global nuclear medicine market size is expected to hit around USD 25.7 billion by 2030”.

mRNA cystic fibrosis in kids

This mRNA vaccine to treat cystic fibrosis in kids is inhaled:

“VX-522 is delivered to the lung through inhalation of a CFTR mRNA encapsulated by a lipid nanoparticle. It is the result of a 6-year-old research collaboration with Moderna.” (click here).

Building a “global manufacturing network”

“We are building a plant as we speak in Canada, one in the UK, one in Australia, one in Kenya…so that in every continent we have plants and we have more capacity” – Stephane Bancel

“In 6 months to develop a vaccine which I think we can do next time…we can make a billion doses” – Stephane Bancel

This builds on my article about the mRNA mega-factory that is being built in a smart city in South Korea (click here).

The groundbreaking ceremony for the Canadian mRNA factory was held in November 2022 (click here):

My Take…

Billions of dollars are being invested into building mRNA factories all over the world. It will be interesting to monitor where these are being built.

I expect the media to continue pushing mRNA vaccines for RSV and influenza for the general population including pregnant women, while CMV will be pushed mainly for women of reproductive age, pregnant or not. The media will try to promote these vaccines as “safer” than the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.

mRNA vaccines for cancers will be prohibitively expensive and will be reserved only for those who can afford them. All cancer treatments will be shifted towards “personalized cancer treatments”, as this is where the big money will be in the future.

Those who can afford these cancer treatments will live for a while, those who cannot, will be offered MAID (medical assistance in dying).

It is interesting to note that the highly inflammatory and toxic lipid nanoparticle (LNP) platform will be used for ALL of these mRNA vaccines, and as we saw with the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, these LNPs will be delivered all over the body: the heart, the brain, liver, kidneys, testes, ovaries; they will continue to cause tremendous inflammation and internal damage.

Moderna has no intention to fix, or abandon the LNP delivery platform.

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“If all that Americans want is security, they can go to prison. They’ll have enough to eat, a bed and a roof over their heads. But if an American wants to preserve his dignity and his equality as a human being, he must not bow his neck to any dictatorial government.”— President Dwight D. Eisenhower

The government wants us to bow down to its dictates.

It wants us to buy into the fantasy that we are living the dream, when in fact, we are trapped in an endless nightmare of servitude and oppression.

Indeed, with every passing day, life in the American Police State increasingly resembles life in the dystopian television series The Prisoner.

First broadcast 55 years ago in the U.S., The Prisoner—described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the loss of freedom, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of human beings to meekly accept their lot in life as prisoners in a prison of their own making.

Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned in a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.

While luxurious, the Village’s inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, all of their movements tracked by militarized drones, and stripped of their individuality so that they are identified only by numbers.

“I am not a number. I am a free man,” is the mantra chanted in each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by Patrick McGoohan, who also played the title role of Number Six, the imprisoned government agent.

Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.

Number Six refuses to comply.

In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two, the Village administrator a.k.a. prison warden. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.

Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s attempts to escape are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.”

Still, he refuses to give up.

“Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”

Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unfunny, unsettling Groundhog’s Day that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.

As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man’s body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”

The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the seemingly benevolent trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and the need to guard against terrorists, pandemics, civil unrest, etc.

As Thill noted, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”

The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State, which is rapidly transitioning into a full-fledged Surveillance State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.

The American Surveillance State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.

Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”

Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be while funding its existence.

Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the mantra of the architects of the Surveillance State and their corporate collaborators.

Government eyes are watching you.

They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between bowing down in obedience to the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.

When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.

However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.

Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.

We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed, corralled and controlled by technologies that answer to government and corporate rulers.

Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency is listening in and tracking your behavior.

This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.

Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies (and more) add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, read your emails, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.

As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”

This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.

It is a prison from which there will be no escape. Certainly not if the government and its corporate allies have anything to say about it.

As Glenn Greenwald notes:

“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic – the hallmark of a healthy and free society – has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”

None of this will change, no matter which party controls Congress or the White House, because despite all of the work being done to help us buy into the fantasy that things will change if we just elect the right candidate, we’ll still be prisoners of the Village.

So how do you escape? For starters, resist the urge to conform to a group mind and the tyranny of mob-think as controlled by the Deep State.

Think for yourself. Be an individual.

As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

You want to be free? Remove the blindfold that blinds you to the Deep State’s con game, stop doping yourself with government propaganda, and break free of the political chokehold that has got you marching in lockstep with tyrants and dictators.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, until you come to terms with the fact that the government is the problem (no matter which party dominates), you’ll never stop being prisoners.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: This image is being used to illustrate the article The Prisoner and is used for informational or educational purposes only.

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***

All of a sudden, UFO mania is sweeping America after the shootdown of some unknown object in Alaska. NORAD says it doesn’t rule out aliens. Washington creates a UFO Task Force to investigate if it was aliens. A top 4-star general in charge of US airspace says he isn’t ruling out aliens. Well, this was unexpected, wasn’t it? Not really.

This writer was watching closely when Trilateral Commission member John Podesta left the Obama Administration in 2015 where he served as Counselor to the President. He is currently Senior Advisor to President Joe Biden for clean energy innovation and implementation; that is, he is in charge of doling out all Green New Deal spending in the United States. Actually, Podesta is credited as being the chief architect of the entire US climate policy starting way back when he served as President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff.

When Podesta exited his stint with Obama in early 2015, Washington Post carried a story, Obama aide John Podesta says ‘biggest failure’ was not securing the disclosure of UFO files. I listened to the interview and heard him say this with his own mouth.

What? The architect of all climate policy and the creator of the Green New Deal policies is worried about UFOs and aliens and having not released the UFO files from places like Area 51 in New Mexico?

This struck me as being completely out of context, out of nowhere. I have scratched my head ever since… until now: The UFO/Alien card is finally being played.

This UFO/alien nonsense has been brewing for a long time and Podesta’s name keeps coming up. In a 2022 article by TMZ, Yep, I Sent Officials To Area 51 In Search Of Aliens, Bill Clinton flatly admitted his search for evidence of aliens:

Former President Bill Clinton made a pretty stunning and important revelation … he said during his time in office he sent federal agents to Area 51 in Nevada to find if aliens were among us.

Clinton told James Corden on ‘Late Late Show’ … he and Chief of Staff John Podesta “sent people to Area 51 to make sure there were no aliens.” He also said he wanted a full briefing on Roswell.

In 2016, Podesta’s email account was hacked. NBC News reported this on October 31, 2o16,

When hackers broke into Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta’s private email account, little did they know they were entering the Twilight Zone.

There, amid the grist and gossip about the inner workings of the campaign — and some pedestrian tidbits about Podesta’s personal life — was irrefutable proof that UFOs were on the radar of one of Washington’s best known power brokers.

Today, this Trilateral Commission operative is in the center of the Biden Administration, rubbing shoulders with fellow Commission member Susan “Benghazi Sue” Rice, who is Biden’s Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

It isn’t too much of a leap to figure that the current outbreak of UFO mania has something to do with John Podesta and Trilateral Commission strategy to conquer the world for Technocracy. Podesta pushed both Clinton and Obama to open up the UFO files, and now he is likely working on the Biden Administration.

The question remains, Why now?

First, it’s a huge slight-of-hand that masks other events taking place; think staging of WWIII, global financial collapse, another WHO-orchestrated pandemic, Great Reset, etc. Second, it conditions the world for a unified, global response to a new, unseen enemy that can only be spearheaded by the United Nations.

The key here is the “unseen” enemy: global warming is unseen; Covid virus is unseen; aliens are unseen.

However, Trilateral Commissioner John Podesta is not unseen, and I would suggest that Technocracy’s war on the world is about to get a lot more intense in 2023.

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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.

Featured image: John Podesta (Source: Technocracy)

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***

On Saturday, February 11, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel arrived in Campeche, Mexico, and was received by his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). Under the leadership of Díaz-Canel and López Obrador, friendship and cooperation between Cuba and Mexico have deepened and reached unprecedented levels in recent years. This was Díaz-Canel’s third official visit to Mexico, including his attendance at the inauguration of President AMLO. The main objective of Saturday’s visit was to continue strengthening bilateral relations.

President AMLO recalled that Mexico and Cuba have always had relations of political brotherhood and called Díaz-Canel a “distinguished and admired guest.” “For more than 60 years, Cuba has defined with the will and support of an indomitable people that the frontiers should always exist between sovereignty and the desire for hegemonic domination. That is why you, President Díaz-Canel, are a distinguished and admired guest for the Mexican government,” said AMLO in his welcome speech for Díaz-Canel.

For his part, President Díaz-Canel thanked AMLO for its solidarity with the Cuban people.

“I once again thank our sister nation for its solidarity with the Cuban people, who have faced tremendously difficult challenges in the last few years and months, due to a combination of the impacts of nature and the effects of the intensified blockade,” said Díaz-Canel.

The Mexican president also thanked his Cuban counterpart for sending doctors to Mexico, some of whom serve in dangerous or remote areas. Over 600 Cuban doctors and specialists are working in 12 Mexican states. López Obrador announced that, during 2023, more Cuban professionals could join this health program.

Meanwhile, the Cuban president explained that in May 2022, during President AMLO’s visit to Cuba,

“we agreed that both countries could send specialists to provide public health services in health units or institutions of our respective nations. In less than a year, we are complying with what was agreed on and there are already results to show.” Díaz-Canel added that the two countries “will analyze new goals in areas of common interest.”

In this regard, he indicated that the export of crushed stone ballast from Cuba’s Cienfuegos province to Mexico for the Mayan Train project, a tourist train that will run around the Yucatan peninsula, could be identified as a new area of ​​the bilateral relationship. “These are beneficial projects for our peoples and are examples of the potential that exists for the development of bilateral ties.”

Mexico demands lifting of the US embargo against Cuba

Later on Saturday, President Díaz-Canel and his wife Lis Cuesta Peraza visited the Edzná archaeological zone and observed the progress of the Mayan Train. Following a visit to one of the stations under construction of the Mayan train, President AMLO awarded President Díaz-Canel with the “Order of the Aztec Eagle,” Mexico’s highest medal of honor for foreigners, for his work in strengthening relations between the two countries.

At the same time, AMLO demanded that the United States government lift the economic, commercial and financial blockade that has been imposed on Cuba for more than six decades. “As a sign of goodwill and that all the countries of the Americas are willing to join forces, I consider and express with respect that the US government should lift, as soon as possible, the unjust and inhumane blockade of the Cuban people,” he stated.

“The US model of relations imposed in the region is completely worn out, anachronistic, it has no future or point, and it no longer benefits anyone. It is time for a new coexistence among all the countries of Latin America. It is time to express and explore another option, to dialogue with the rulers of all countries, especially with the US rulers, to convince them that a new relationship is possible,” AMLO added, opposing the US sanctions against Cuba.

In the light of the same, President AMLO expressed his willingness to lead an international campaign demanding lifting of the embargo.

“Mexico is going to lead a more active movement to unite all countries and defend the independence and sovereignty of Cuba. Nothing to treat them as a terrorist country or put them on the black list of alleged terrorist countries. Cuba is a deeply humane people and government. Long live the dignified people of Cuba!” he announced.

President Díaz-Canel expressed his “deep appreciation for the people of Mexico and their admiration and interest in deepening bilateral ties with our country in the different visits and the broad transformative proposal that they defend.”

“It is a great honor to receive the Mexican Order of the Aztec Eagle, a medal that symbolizes the origin, identity and strength of this beloved nation. I receive it with humility and infinite gratitude, being aware of the fact that the true deserving recipients are the heroic Cuban people,” Díaz-Canel later tweeted.

Un altísimo honor recibir la Orden Mexicana del Águila Azteca, condecoración que simboliza el origen, la identidad y la fortaleza de esta entrañable nación.

La recibo con humildad e infinito agradecimiento, consciente de que el auténtico merecedor es el heroico pueblo cubano. pic.twitter.com/Lw8GIhk2ZI

— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) February 11, 2023

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Featured image: On February 11, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador awarded Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Mexico’s highest medal of honor for foreigners, the “Order of the Aztec Eagle,” for his work in strengthening relations between the two countries. Photo: AMLO/Twitter

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***

Sweden’s prime minister on Tuesday said the European Union is creating a group to look into using frozen Russian funds to pay for Ukraine’s reconstruction, a potential move with no precedent.

“The mandate is to contribute to mapping which funds have been frozen in the European Union … and secondly how to legally proceed to access those funds,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, according to Reuters.

Some of Russia’s central bank funds have been frozen by the EU, which amounts to tens of billions of dollars. Using the money to pay for projects in Ukraine would amount to stealing from the Russian government and would ensure EU-Russia relations won’t be repaired anytime soon.

Kristersson said that it’s “Russian taxpayers, not all other taxpayers, who must bear the cost of the necessary reconstruction work.” Leading the group is Anders Ahnlid, the head of Sweden’s National Board of Trade, a government agency that deals with foreign trade.

“The EU has never before used frozen funds for the reconstruction of a war-torn country, so we are in a sense chartering new territory,” Ahnild said.

The US is exploring similar options but is currently targeting Russian billionaires’ funds, not the central bank. Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered the release of $5.4 million to be given to Ukraine that was seized from Konstantin Malofeyev, a Russian businessman who owns Tsargrad, a Russian Orthodox Christian TV channel.

“Today, I am announcing that I have authorized the first-ever transfer of forfeited Russian assets for use in Ukraine,” Garland said on February 4.

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

Featured image: Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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***

Bankers from JP Morgan Chase visited Ukraine last week and signed a memorandum of understanding with President Volodymyr Zelensky and plan to help raise private capital for a new fund for Ukraine’s reconstruction.

According to Fox Business, JP Morgan, America’s largest bank, discussed with Zelensky the creation of a fund that would start with $20 – $30 billion in private capital to go towards investment in Ukraine. Another idea would be to establish a new bank administered by Wall Street firms that would invest in Ukrainian infrastructure that has been destroyed in the war.

Zelensky’s office said that the Ukrainian leader met with senior members of JP Morgan on Friday. “I understand very well that doing business and investing cannot be beneficial to only one party. We want you to invest in Ukraine and earn money,” Zelensky said.

Besides helping raise private investment for Ukraine, JP Morgan will advise on  financial stabilization, sovereign credit ratings, and economic ties to Europe. The bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, said the “full resources” of JP Morgan are available to Ukraine as it “charts its post-conflict path to growth.”

Ukraine’s reconstruction will have a huge price tag, with the World Bank estimating in December that it could cost between 500 and 600 billion euros ($525 billion-$630 billion). Last July, Ukrainian officials estimated the “recovery plan” will cost about $750 billion. As the war goes on and more of Ukraine is destroyed, the price tag will increase.

Zelensky has also agreed to coordinate Ukraine’s reconstruction with the investment management company BlackRock after meeting with the company’s CEO, Larry Fink. Last month, Zelensky said American corporations would find “big business” in Ukraine.

“It is already clear that this will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe,” Zelensky said in a video address to a meeting of the National Association of State Chambers “We have already managed to attract attention and have cooperation with such giants of the international financial and investment world as BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.”

Zelensky cited US military aid as an example of the business opportunities found in Ukraine. “And everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine. In all sectors — from weapons and defense to construction, from communications to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine,” he said.

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

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo

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***

With all of the Chyna balloons and UFOs going around, unless you live in East Palestine, Ohio or if you consume a lot of independent news, you probably don’t know that the US is currently experiencing what may be the largest ecological disaster in its history.

And I’m not talking about the fake Climate Change catastrophism promoted by the World Economic Forum, I’m talking about the ~100,000 gallons or 1,000,000 pounds of vinyl chloride leaked, spilled and burned, due  to a train derailment in this rural town of 5,000 people, where acid rain and phosgene is expected to decimate a wide swathe of the region’s ecology. The devastation will likely force migrations of people, many of whom will get cancer later on. This is an American Chernobyl.

Dioxins result whenever chlorinated organics like vinyl chloride are burned. Dioxins are degraded slowly in the environment, with a half-life of 25-100 years in the soil. They cause cancers, reproductive harm, damage the immune system and they disrupt hormones.

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***

It’s early in the new Congress, but lawmakers are already hotly debating spending and debt levels. As they do so, they risk losing track of an important issue hiding in plain sight: massive Pentagon waste. At least in theory, combating such excess could offer members of both parties common ground as they start the new budget cycle. But there are many obstacles to pursuing such a commonsense agenda.

Pentagon waste is a longstanding issue in desperate need of meaningful action. Last November, the Department of Defense once again failed to pass even a basic audit, as it had several times before. In fact, independent auditors weren’t even able to assess the Pentagon’s full financial picture because they couldn’t gather all the necessary information to complete an evaluation. In some ways, that should have been devastating, the equivalent of a child receiving an incomplete on an end-of-year report card. No less alarming, the Pentagon couldn’t even account for about 61% of its $3.5 trillion in assets. Yet the last Congress still approved $858 billion in defense programs for fiscal year 2023, a full $45 billion more than even the Biden administration requested.

Spending levels aside, poor financial management has a serious negative impact on both service members and taxpayers. Last month, for example, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that the Pentagon can’t account for at least $220 billion worth of its property, including such basics as ammunition, missiles, torpedoes, and their component parts. For its part, Congress (and so the average taxpayer) doesn’t have the faintest idea how much it’s spent on weapons or their components distributed to contractors for maintenance and upgrades. Worse, the GAO reports that the $220 billion in unaccounted-for equipment and parts is “likely significantly understated.”

Such irresponsible financial management also applies to Pentagon weapons purchases, creating another set of problems. The Department of Defense commits staggering numbers of taxpayer dollars to new weapons programs without doing its due diligence, all too often resulting in dysfunctional systems. The GAO has reported on this issue for 20 years and yet there’s been little discernible change in Pentagon behavior.

There is a better way, though. For example, in its most recent Annual Weapons Systems Assessment Report, the GAO notes that obtaining basic information at critical points in the weapons-buying process produces better cost and delivery outcomes. In defense-speak, this is called “knowledge-based acquisition.” Of course, requiring crucial information about a program before proceeding to its development stage should be a no-brainer. Yet the Pentagon has wasted untold billions of dollars on ill-functioning weaponry like the F-35 combat aircraft by proceeding to the development stage without faintly adequate information.

And the status quo guarantees future disasters like the F-35. According to the GAO, more than half of the major defense-acquisition programs it reviewed in fiscal year 2022 “did not demonstrate critical technologies in a realistic environment before beginning system development.” That’s like buying a house without checking whether the water pressure is adequate or the roof leaks — or, in the case of the F-35, a few thousand houses. An independent assessment of that fighter jet in fiscal year 2021 found more than 800 unresolved deficiencies, six of which are so serious that they may cause death or serious injury to those operating the plane, or critically restrict its capabilities in a combat setting. In the 20 years since the program began, the Pentagon has yet to approve that deeply deficient, wildly expensive plane for full production. Put another way, it has already spent nearly $200 billion on a system that may never actually be fully ready for combat.

Aside from the fact that the F-35’s engine doesn’t work, the main reason the Pentagon hasn’t gone full speed ahead on production is that even its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, can’t assess the aircraft’s performance. Why? Because the company hasn’t finished developing the simulator required to properly test it. Still, the money keeps flowing and, by current estimates, the program’s lifecycle cost will exceed $1.7 trillion, making it one of the most expensive weapon programs in Pentagon history.

Looking Down from the (Capitol) Hilltop

Pentagon waste is, of course, nothing new. Still, the need to trim the fat only grows more urgent as this country faces mounting security challenges ranging from the increasing devastation of climate change to strategic competition with other powers. The war in Ukraine is already straining the Pentagon’s buying system in striking new ways. As the need to get weapons out the door quickly becomes its number one priority, its penchant for wasting taxpayer dollars will undoubtedly only grow worse.

Still, there are reforms that could quickly improve the situation. There’s no need for Congress or the Pentagon to reinvent the wheel, since the steps toward making weapons-buying more accountable have been clear for years — as have the roadblocks along the way.

One of the biggest obstacles to reform is that so many lawmakers have vested interests in a hands-off approach to the Pentagon budget. As a start, striking numbers of them have instant conflicts of interest with respect to the defense industry, since they own stock in major weapons-making firms. Those companies make major campaign contributions to keep the lawmakers in their camp. Open Secrets.org, a group that tracks money in politics, reported, for instance, that, in the 2020 election cycle, the arms sector contributed $50 million to political candidates and their committees.

To mask such obvious conflicts of interest and their wasteful consequences, lawmakers generally prefer to change the subject. When the Pentagon budget is threatened with even modest reductions, they routinely trot out tired arguments about how such enormous sums create jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Forget that the data shows education spending produces more than twice as many jobs, while clean energy and healthcare generate 50% more. In short, taxpayers would be far better off if Congress repurposed significant amounts of Pentagon spending for more productive endeavors.

Beyond long-overdue campaign finance reform and a congressional stock-trading ban, lawmakers have a lot of ground to cover when it comes to making Pentagon spending more accountable. The GAO has clear recommendations for ways to mitigate the risks and challenges of prospective weapons programs before making investment decisions. It has also recommended developing significantly better ways of assessing “military readiness” (the fitness of units to engage in combat). Too often, an alleged lack of readiness is used as another excuse to further pump up the Pentagon budget. The Congressional Research Service has, however, pointed out that Congress doesn’t even have a standard definition of military readiness, so how can legislators begin to evaluate the real-world impact of the hundreds of billions of dollars they routinely authorize for the Department of Defense?

The bottom line is simple enough: Congress needs to cut the Pentagon budget dramatically. It’s not only outrageously oversized, but some parts of it are genuinely dangerous. Take, for instance, the newest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) now being prepared by Northrop Grumman for a prospective $264 billion over its lifetime.  Such missiles will only increase the risk of an accidental nuclear war because a president will have just minutes to decide whether to launch them in a crisis (and once they’re launched, you can’t take them back).

Unfortunately, lawmakers have proven remarkably unwilling to address the issue of Pentagon waste. Take the chair of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, for example. The new incumbent Ken Calvert (R-CA) recently offered this boilerplate response on the subject:

“Despite various reports on budget numbers, while I support reforms that will yield cost savings in any government program, I do not support cuts to national security that would negatively impact readiness or slow our ability to deliver capability to the warfighter.”

Never mind that Congress can’t assess military readiness, his statement obscures the fact that he undoubtedly intends to press for even higher budgets, while threatening to make the search for “waste” a modest sideshow.

Such an approach, of course, directly benefits politicians like Calvert. After all, he was the second-highest recipient of defense-industry contributions in Congress between 2021 and 2022 at $415,850. Only current House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) received more. So don’t expect either of them to go after the F-35, despite its cost overruns and dismal performance, or any other major weapons system.

In fact, last December, Rogers said all too bluntly that his priority this year would be “no cuts whatsoever to defense spending.” In January, he turned around and told a Defense News reporter, “We’re going to start meeting right away about what I see as threats and challenges that we’ve got to meet… because we intend to do some cutting. There’s some legacy systems and fat. There’s a lot that can be taken out.” Count on one thing, though, as with Calvert, Rogers’ idea of what can be “taken out” will not include spending on any of the Pentagon’s costliest weapons programs.

Still, these days even retiring some old weapons programs would count as a modest victory in Washington. Rogers and Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking Democrat on the armed services committee, do appear to agree on the importance of dumping outmoded systems, so maybe they’ll actually trim a little fat.

Thankfully, there are a number of lawmakers across the ideological spectrum who are genuinely interested in broader Pentagon spending cuts. While some progressive Democrats press for a smaller Pentagon budget and refocusing “national security” on people, not corporations, a few on the Republican right argue for military cuts with the debt ceiling in mind. Unfortunately, supporters of such reductions are fighting an uphill battle.

Contractors First, Taxpayers Last

Members of Congress routinely favor major weapons makers over the needs of taxpayers and military personnel. As lawmakers fight for military contracts that will generate revenue in their districts or states, they have become remarkably complicit in the consolidation of the industrial part of the military-industrial complex, which threatens actual national security, in part by reducing corporate competition.

For decades, Congress stood by while weapons companies gobbled each other up through mergers and acquisitions. The result: the five largest contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman — have, in recent years, split a staggering $150 billion-plus in Pentagon funding annually, often in “sole-source contracts” that virtually guarantee overcharging and cost overruns.

In 2015, for instance, Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, acquired Sikorsky aircraft for $9 billion. At the time, the Pentagon expressed some concern about the impact of corporate conglomeration, without actually opposing the deal because, as the Justice Department decided, Sikorsky wasn’t a direct competitor. It manufactured helicopters and Lockheed didn’t. The Justice Department later rebuked Frank Kendall, a Pentagon official who expressed concerns about the deal, while pushing back on his calls for a more formal Pentagon role in potentially blocking such mergers.

Three years later, Northrop Grumman acquired Orbital ATK, then the biggest manufacturer of rocket motors in the country. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) imposed guardrails on the deal because Northrop also made missiles and acquiring a company that produced motors for its missiles could give it an unfair advantage over other missile manufacturers. Still, the merger went through.

In 2019, L3 Technologies and the Harris Corporation combined in a “merger of equals” to create L3Harris, the sixth-largest defense contractor. Both companies were the sole suppliers of critical components for the military’s night-vision equipment. As a result, the Justice Department concluded that the merger would monopolize that technology and required Harris to sell its night-vision business. The company is now, however, trying to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne, the last remaining independent supplier of missile propulsion systems in the United States. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) recently called on the FTC to block the deal, arguing that it would decrease competition in rocket motors.

In 2020, Raytheon and United Technologies combined in the biggest defense merger in decades, valued at about $121 billion. The resulting company, Raytheon Technologies, now an aerospace conglomerate, has established itself as a global supplier of everything from jet engines to missiles. As this country’s second-biggest weapons contractor, only Lockheed Martin outdoes it in annual defense revenues.

It is, of course, long past time for Congress to push back against such merger mania in the arms industry and the wild Pentagon overspending, waste, and poor weaponry that goes with it. Reducing the political clout of the major weapons makers would do more than just save billions of tax dollars. It just might prompt a broader debate about the purpose of a Pentagon budget now rising toward the trillion-dollar mark annually, a sum that would undermine the very concept of defense.

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Julia Gledhill, a TomDispatch regular, is an analyst at the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight.

William D. Hartung, a TomDispatch regular, is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and the author most recently of “Pathways to Pentagon Spending Reductions: Removing the Obstacles.”

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

The big purge in Kiev continues.

After the purge of Defense Minister Oleksii Rezhnikov, two Deputy Defense Ministers Ivan Rusnak and Oleh Hayduk will now be purged. Earlier, another Defense Deputy Vyacheslav Shapovalov was fired on 24 January 2023 and arrested on 2 February 2023. And a “helicopter crash” on 18 January 2023 removed Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky, Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin, State Secretary Yurii Lubkovych and 6 others in the helicopter including the pilot. The top of Ukraine’s coercive Ministeries – the Military and Police – is taken out.

Additional top-Ukrainians were purged in January 2023

• Deputy Prosecutor General Oleskiy Symonenko
• Deputy Minister for Development of Communities and Territories Ivan Lukerya
• Deputy Minister for Development of Communities and Territories Vyacheslav Negoda
• Deputy Minister for Social Policy Vitaliy Muzychenko
• The 5 governors of the key regions Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kyiv, Sumy, and Kherson

See this.

We cannot count the total number of key Ukrainians who are purged lately. They are so many and the reports that surface are only intermittent. Including Zelensky’s former Liar-in-Chief Aleksii Arestovych, who was fired for accidentally once telling the truth (!), we can say that the purged Ukrainian top-officials number more than 17 – but the real number when including lower ranks and lower profiled centers of power is probably several times higher.

As Kiev loses everywhere on the front, the US and its government media like Washington Post continue to spin the unbelievable narrative that the Kiev purge is just about “corruption”. That Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov continues as minister, only in a ministry without coercive powers, is proof that Reznikov did no misdemeanor. The whole point was to replace the mild-mannered Reznikov who was close to Zelensky with the Himmler-like Bodanov as Defense Minister, to keep the Ukrainian killing machine going as Ukraine breaks down. The funny thing about Oleksii Reznikov, that the new ministerial position given to Reznikov will be as Minister of Strategic Industries – yes, little coercive power, but indeed with exorbitant opportunities for Reznikov to enrich himself and others through corruption. Instead of corrupting with millions, Reznikov can now corrupt with billions.

The US resistance to “corruption” in Ukraine is not believable. Nowhere in history has the US ever before had an urge to interfere in the corruption of its client states as long as they obeyed US orders. On the contrary, corruption makes it easier for the US to control its clients with money and threats of revealing. And President Biden and his son Hunter Biden have personally profited enormously from Ukraine’s corruption. The US Congress had to investigate Biden and found, that due to the unfathomable corruption in Ukraine’s Burisma company, “the presence of Hunter Biden on the Burisma board was very awkward for all U.S. officials pushing an anticorruption agenda in Ukraine.” Yes indeed. The US has only for show “pushed against corruption” in Ukraine for more than 8 years, so why do purges just happen now?

For those who can think, it is clear that “corruption” as explanation for the Stalinist purges and show-allegations in Ukraine does not hang together. Not because corruption is not endemic in Ukraine, but rather because it was always so, and not just recently. What is equally clear to people who can think is, that Ukraine in spite of US lies is losing the war, and that this has severe personal consequences for top-people in a more and more paranoic environment in Kiev and the ever more desperate US push to keep Ukrainians fighting – and dying.

Being a US puppet doesn’t always end well.

Just like Zelensky, Georgia’s ex-President Saakashvili was also hailed by Joe Biden (yes) and US media as a hero and “crusader” against corruption. As such, Saakashvili was showered by the US as a “fighting corruption” when he quickly fired the whole police force in a “corruption drive”. Saakashvili’s Georgian purge of the police was also just a ploy to strengthen US power in Georgia. When the Georgians wanted to get rid of Saakashvili, Joe Biden moved his retainer Saakashvili to Ukraine as governor of Odessa. When even the Ukrainians no longer wanted to see the back of Saakashvili, the criminal Saakashvili was sheltered by now-President Joe Biden in the USA but is today jailed in Georgia for abuse of power and … corruption. The US is now trying to get Saakashvili out of Georgia to Poland under the pretext of “bad health”.

President Zelensky, just like the other purged Ukrainians, has also demonstrably stashed a fortune in tax havens – money which nobody knows how Zelensky even as an “actor” has acquired.

Zelensky can fare worse than his friend Saakashvili once the US does not need Zelensky any more…

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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: President Zelensky hailed as a ‘democratic’ leader. Photo supplied

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***

Recently, the US Embassy in Moscow urged Russia-based Americans to leave the country as soon as possible. In the same vein, US residents outside of Russia were discouraged from traveling to the country. Washington’s close allies, such as Canada and France, also joined the measure and issued notes recommending that their citizens leave Russia and Belarus.

The US diplomatic delegation in Moscow published a document on Feb. 12 advising Americans to leave Russia or avoid arriving there. According to diplomats, it is possible that Americans will suffer some kind of hostility in Russian territory due to the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine – and Washington’s support for the Kiev’s side. The Embassy stated that the ability of the American government to help citizens in Russian territory is extremely limited, which is why their stay in the Eurasian country would not be safe.

“Do not travel to Russia due to… the potential for harassment and the singling out of US citizens for detention by Russian government security officials, the arbitrary enforcement of local law, limited flights into and out of Russia, the embassy’s limited ability to assist US citizens in Russia, and the possibility of terrorism”, the Embassy’s document says, adding that “The US government’s ability to provide routine or emergency services to US citizens in Russia is severely limited, particularly in areas far from the US Embassy in Moscow, due to Russian government limitations on travel for embassy personnel and staffing, and the ongoing suspension of operations, including consular services, at US consulates”.

Following the decision of American diplomats, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Canada also joined the provocation. In a declaration, the country’s authorities said that Canadians should leave Russia while commercial flights are “still available”, suggesting that transport blockade measures will begin to be implemented soon. In the same sense, referring to Canadians unable to leave Russia, it was advised that they maintain a “low profile”, avoiding exposure.

“If you are in Russia, you should leave while commercial means are still available (…) [But] If you remain in Russia, maintain a low profile”, the statement says.

On the 13th, France also adopted similar guidelines, emphasizing, however, the need for its natives to leave Belarus. According to the French authorities, the geographical proximity of Belarus to the conflict zone and the close political partnership between Minsk and Moscow pose dangers to the stay of French people in the country. Therefore, they are encouraged to leave as quickly as possible, preferably via the routes of Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland – which are considered “safe” territories due to their ties to NATO.

“Amid the Russian army offensive in Ukraine and the closure of Belarus’ airspace, we strongly advise you to refrain from visiting Belarus (…) [If you are in Belarus now, we advise you] to leave the country immediately by motor transport across the borders with Lithuania, Latvia, and Poland”, the statement says.

In fact, this is not the first time this has happened. Western countries have repeatedly encouraged their natives to leave Russia and Belarus since the beginning of the special military operation. The last occasion on which the American Embassy in Moscow issued this type of alert was on September 28, 2022. As far as Belarus is concerned, on October 4, Washington’s State Department published an alert for Americans to leave the country. In practice, advising nationals of western states to leave Russia and Belarus has become commonplace.

The main arguments for these guidelines have been the alleged “dangers” of harassment, arbitrary detention, terrorism and other types of violence by Russians and Belarusians against foreigners, but there have also been rumors of forced mobilization of non-Russians with permanent residence in the country. Both arguments are absolutely unsubstantiated, considering that there is no report of violence against foreigners in Russia or Belarus, and that troops’ mobilization is obviously restricted to Russian nationals – in addition to taking place voluntarily, not by force.

However, it should be noted that this type of measure also sounds like a threat and blackmail for the residents of the countries in which the alerts are being issued. By discovering that foreigners are being evacuated, some Russians, Belarussians may believe that their country is really threatened, about to be bombed, which tends to generate collective panic.

In this sense, there seems to be a psychological operation that works in two directions: 1- against Western citizens, who begin to believe that they are actually threatened by Russia and Belarus and start to support NATO’s actions; 2- against Russians and Belarusians themselves, who see this type of action as a suggestion that an open war can start at any moment, with the enemy side trying to save their nationals from possible attacks.

The evident reality, however, contradicts any provocative narrative from the West. There is no danger for western people in Russia or Belarus. And the risks of escalation to an open conflict, although they exist, are not so high, depending exclusively on Western goodwill for them to cease to exist, considering that NATO is the provoking side. The best thing for the West to do is stop trying to generate collective panic among ordinary people and engage in effective proposals to reach a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Sy Hersh and the Way We Live Now. “The Propaganda Apparatus that Manipulates and Controls Our Society”

By Craig Murray, February 13, 2023

It is a clear indicator of the disappearance of freedom from our so-called Western democracies that Sy Hersh, arguably the greatest living journalist, cannot get this monumental revelation on the front of The Washington Post or The New York Times, but has to self-publish on the net.

Towards a World War III Scenario: The Privatization of Nuclear War

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett, February 14, 2023

Is the Biden administration committed to the use of nuclear weapons as an instrument of peace? The cost of America’s “peace-making” nuclear weapons program is of the order of 1.3 trillion dollars. The focus of US military doctrine since the Bush administration has been on the development of so-called “more usable nuclear weapons”.

U.K.: COVID Vaccines Increased Risk of Hospitalization, 6-9 Months Following Jab. Surge in Hospitalization Rates Per 100,000

By Igor Chudov, February 14, 2023

UKHSA’s report shows that instead of “protecting” people from Covid-19, Covid vaccines significantly increase the risk of hospitalization in months 7-9 after vaccination.

So Many People Recently ‘Died Suddenly’ – What’s Going On?

By Dr. Brian C Joondeph, February 14, 2023

A new and increasingly popular Twitter hashtag is “#diedsuddenly” in response to a surge of sudden unexplained deaths among mostly young and healthy individuals, including athletes, occurring over the past 2 years. Here are but a few recent news stories.

US Escalating Its WWIII Brinkmanship by Directing Kiev Regime’s HIMARS Strikes

By Drago Bosnic, February 14, 2023

n February 9 the Washington Post published a report claiming that the Kiev regime forces “never launch HIMARS rounds without detailed coordinates provided by US military personnel situated elsewhere in Europe”. This also seems to include other NATO member states, while Washington DC gives the final authorization for any given HIMARS attack.

Jihadists Are Recruited by Washington as Russia Prepares for New Offensive

By Ahmed Adel, February 14, 2023

The US is actively recruiting Islamists for terrorist attacks against Russia according to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR). Undoubtedly, this is another demonstration of Washington’s consistent and persistent strategy of pressuring and provoking Russia.

How We Can Stop the Coming War with Russia

By Rep. Ron Paul, February 14, 2023

The “Rage Against The War Machine” rally promises to be the first large-scale rally against Washington’s aggressive war lobby in many years. I am looking forward to sharing the stage with my good friends and former House colleagues Dennis Kucinich and Tulsi Gabbard, as well as my good friend and fellow libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, and so many more speakers from a broad political spectrum.

Does Israel Seek a “Final Solution for Palestinians?”

By Philip Giraldi, February 14, 2023

Israel’s new government, again headed by the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu, has shifted hard to the right, incorporating as it does the extremist settlers’ movement as well as parties that have spoken casually of forcing the Palestinians out and even of extermination if it comes to that.

The USA Nord Stream “Act of War” and “Profitable” Attack on Europe

By Rodney Atkinson, February 14, 2023

We must bear in mind that these pipelines were jointly owned by Russia’s Gazprom and French, German and Dutch companies and the gas passing through Nordstream 1 and potentially through Nordstream 2 was critical to the entire European energy and therefore industrial market.

How Spin and Lies Fuel a Bloody War of Attrition in Ukraine

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, February 14, 2023

Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda. But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the United States that could escalate into nuclear war.

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***

[Author’s Note: I was going to speak at the Rage against the War Machine rally, scheduled for February 19 at the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. For personal reasons, I will no longer be speaking.

In short, I have decided to take one for the team.

I wish all participants and attendees at this rally to have a very successful event, and hope that it can serve as the start of something even bigger down the road.

This is the speech I was planning to deliver at the rally. I think it would have done the event proud.]

Thank you very much for allowing me the opportunity to address you today.

I speak to you from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a place of history filled with gravitas worthy of the task we have set for ourselves at this time in our collective history: to stand up—no, to rage—against a war machine that has perverted the very definition of what it means to be an American.

We stand here today at the very nexus of this war machine. To our right, just over the Potomac River, lies the Pentagon, a structure built at a time when America called upon its collective might to defeat the scourge of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, but which has since then morphed into the very symbol of evil itself, a breeding ground for weapons and plans that are used by the other partners, in what has become known as the military-industrial complex, to spread malfeasance around a world we once protected, but now enslave through a process of perpetual conflict used to sustain the American war machine.

And who are these other partners? Before us, past the monument to our founding father, George Washington, stands the Capitol of the United States, where the people’s representatives fund, in great secrecy, the nefarious schemes cooked up in the bowels of the Pentagon.

And to our left stands the White House, the seat of Executive authority, where individuals we invest with singular authority betray the trust of those who put them there by conceiving and implementing policies designed to further the Pentagon’s war efforts.

This is the very nexus of evil, an unholy trinity of terroristic madness, which some 61 years ago Dwight D. Eisenhower, an American warrior turned political leader, warned the American people about, cautioning that

“in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

In the history of the United States that has transpired since that speech, no truer words have been spoken by an American president, and no greater wisdom has been disregarded by those whom Eisenhower entrusted with that message—we, the people of the United States.

We stand here today to announce to this terrible trinity, this military-industrial complex, this war machine, that we hear you now, President Eisenhower—we hear you, and we will act on your warning to bring this nexus of un-American conspiracy to an end.

Of all the weapons produced by the military-industrial complex, of all the evil schemes hatched in the minds of the so-called national security experts—most of whom are unelected by, and unknown to, we, the American people—none reek of madness more than nuclear weapons.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” the father of the American atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, said at the time of the first American nuclear test.

Destroyer of worlds.

This is the ever-present reality that we all live in today—that from this nexus of evil we call the military-industrial complex comes the very weapons necessary to bring the words of the Hindu sacred text that Oppenheimer quoted—the Bhagavad-Gita—to life and, in doing so, bring about our collective deaths.

Most Americans, including many of you assembled here today, live in blissful ignorance of just how close the world has come to being destroyed by Oppenheimer’s progeny.

On 26 September 1983, a Soviet Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov, was on duty at a nuclear early-warning station when the system reported that five nuclear armed missiles had been launched from the United States.

Colonel Petrov disregarded protocol requiring him to report this detection as a factual launch, an act that would have triggered a Soviet response, and in doing so bought precious time for the error to be identified, and nuclear war averted.

In November 1983 the United States and NATO carried out a command post exercise code-named “Able Archer 83” which tested the launch control procedures for the release of NATO nuclear weapons against Soviet and Warsaw Pact targets.

The Soviets, believing this exercise to be a cover for a first strike, placed its nuclear forces on high alert. Later, the CIA assessed that the Able Archer 83 exercise brought the US and Soviets closer to nuclear conflict than any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

And on January 25, 1995, the Soviets detected the launch of a Norwegian atmospheric test rocket that mimicked the track of a US Nay Trident submarine-launched nuclear weapon.  Fearing a high-altitude nuclear attack that could blind Russian radar, Russian nuclear forces went on high alert, and the “nuclear briefcase” was delivered to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who had to make a split-second decision whether to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States

These three incidents underscore the razor’s edge we all walk daily when it comes to living in a world where nuclear weapons exist. One mistake, one error or judgement, and the Bhagavad-Gita becomes reality.

We were saved from the inevitability of our collective demise by one thing, and one thing only—arms control. The deployment into Europe by both the US and Soviet Union of intermediate-range nuclear armed missiles in the 1980’s only increased the possibility of a mistake or misunderstanding that could trigger a nuclear conflict. The fact that these weapons could reach their respective target in five minutes or less once launched meant that the 30–40-minute buffer of time that existed regarding the use of strategic nuclear forces was no longer there.

To put it more starkly, if it were not for the implementation of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty in 1988 that eliminated these new and dangerous weapons, the January 25, 1995 atmospheric rocket incident would have more than likely resulted in a general nuclear war, simply for the fact that Boris Yeltsin would have been denied the luxury of time to decide not to launch his missiles.

Everyone standing here today should reflect on this statement and say a quiet word of thanks to those men and women, American and Soviet alike, who made the intermediate nuclear forces treaty a reality and, in doing so, literally saved the world from nuclear destruction.

Scott Ritter will discuss this speech and answer audience questions on Episode 44 of Ask the Inspector.

Arms control, however, is no longer part of the US-Russian dialogue.

The American war machine has conspired to denigrate the notion of mutually beneficial disarmament in the minds of the American public, instead seeking to use arms control as a mechanism to achieve unilateral strategic advantage.

When an arms control treaty becomes inconvenient to the objective of American global domination, then the war machine simply quits. America’s record in this regard is damnable—the anti-ballistic missile treaty, the intermediate nuclear forces treaty, the open-skies treaty—all relegated to the trash bin of history in the cause of seeking unilateral advantage for the American war machine.

In a world without arms control, we will once again be confronted with a renewed arms race where each side develops weapons that protect nothing while threatening everything. Without arms control, we will return to a time where living on the edge of the abyss of imminent nuclear annihilation was the norm, not the exception.

The war machine has allowed the principled position of peaceful coexistence regulated by mutually beneficial treaties governed by the time-tested maxim of trust but verify to be replaced by a new posture defined by a war machine that uses the nuclear weapons establishment, and the billions of dollars it costs to maintain it annually, as a means of buying off politicians at the expense of the population our government is sworn to protect. This is the final corruption of the military-industrial complex—its conversion to the military-industrial-congressional complex, where we the people are excluded from every consideration, whether it be funding or consequence.

The key to sustaining this inherently un-American mechanism is the ability of the military-industrial-congressional complex—the war machine—to generate fear amongst the American people derived from ignorance of the true nature of the threat or threats these nuclear weapons are designed to address.

In the case of US-Russian relations, this fear is produced by systemic Russophobia imposed on the American public by a war machine and its compliant minions in the mainstream media. Left to its own device, the collusion between government and media will only further reinforce ignorance-based fear through a process of dehumanizing Russia and the Russian people in the eyes of the American public, until we have become desensitized to the lies and distortions, accepting at face value anything negative said about Russia.

It is here, in such a situation, that we can turn to scripture, John 8:32, for some guidance:

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

But what truth? The truth as told by the government? As promulgated by the mainstream media? That is no truth, but rather a bodyguard of lies constructed on behalf of a war machine that wants every American to accept without question the legitimacy of weapons the only known utility of which is the destruction of all mankind.

Some 60 years ago, on these very steps, in this very place, a man of peace gave a speech that captured the imagination of the nation and the world, searing into our collective hearts and minds the words, “I have a dream.”

Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic address confronted America’s sordid history of slavery, and the inhumanity and injustice of racial segregation. In it, he dreamed “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

All men are created equal.

These words resonated in the context of America’s desperate internal struggle with the legacy of slavery and racial injustice.

But these words apply equally, especially when taken in the context that we are all God’s children, black, white, rich, poor.

American.

Russian.

You see, I too have a dream.

That the audience gathered here today can find a way to overcome the ignorance-based fears generated by the disease of Russophobia, to open our minds and our hearts to accept the Russian people as fellow human beings deserving of the same compassion and consideration as our fellow Americans—as all humankind.

I too have a dream.

That we the people of the United States of America, can unite in common cause with the Russian people to build bridges of peace that facilitate an exchange of ideas, open minds closed by the hate-filled rhetoric of Russophobia that is promulgated by the war machine and its allies, and allow the love we have for ourselves to manifest itself into love and respect for our fellow man.

Especially those who live in Russia.

Newton’s Third Law, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, applies to the human condition every bit as much as it applies to the physical world.

Love thy neighbor as thyself is applicable to all humanity.

I too have a dream.

That by overcoming the hate generated by systemic Russophobia we can work with our fellow human beings in Russia to create communities of compassion that, when united, make a world filled with nuclear weapons undesirable, and policies built on the principles of mutually beneficial arms control second nature.

I too have a dream.

That one day, whether on the red hills of Georgia, or the black soil of the Kuban, the sons and daughters of the men and women who today operate the Russian and American nuclear arsenals will be able to quote Dr. King, “to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

This is not an impossible dream.

I have lived it. I once was corrupted by the hatred that comes from fear generated by the ignorance about the reality of those whom I was trained to kill.

But I then embarked on a remarkable journey of discovery, facilitated by the implementation of the very same intermediate nuclear forces treaty that ended up saving humanity from nuclear annihilation, where I came to know the Russian people not as enemy, but as friend. Not as opponent, but colleague. As fellow humans capable of the same emotions as myself, imbued with the same human desire to build a better world for themselves and their loved ones, a world free of the tyranny of nuclear weapons.

I too have a dream.

That the people gathered here today will join me on a new journey of discovery, one that tears down the walls of ignorance and fear constructed by the war machine, walls designed to separate us from our fellow human beings in Russia, and instead builds bridges that connect us to those we have been conditioned to hate, but now—for the sake of ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren—must learn to love.

This will not be an easy journey, but it is one worth taking.

This is my journey, your journey, our journey, where we will embark, literally, down the road less travelled.

And yes, it will the one that will make all the difference.

It will take us, as Dr. King once cried out from these very steps, to the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire, the mighty mountains of New York, the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania, the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado, the curvaceous slopes of California…to every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

This is an American journey—a journey of Americans, united in the cause of peace and justice, and a world free from the tyranny of nuclear weapons. Our numbers will grow, from two thousand, to twenty thousand, from twenty thousand to a hundred thousand, and from a hundred thousand to a million or more.

And who knows? Maybe in June of 2024, on the anniversary of the 1982 gathering of a million people in New York City’s Central Park, where they rallied in favor of nuclear disarmament and an end to the nuclear arms race, we can come together and send a similar message to the war machine.

A million people or more demanding that their government act in a manner that preserves and protects the lives and future of all Americans—of all humanity.

The 1982 rally set in motion events that led to the implementation of the intermediate nuclear forces treaty in 1987—a treaty that literally saved the world from nuclear destruction.

I too have a dream.

That together, we can harness the same energy, the same vision, the same passion as those who have gone before us and create a movement of people united in the principles of peace that will lead to a future arms control agreement between the United States and Russia that will preserve our collective futures.

There will be forces that will try to disrupt us, to dissuade us—to destroy us.

We cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated.

We must not go gently into that good night, but instead rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Rage, rage against the war machine.

Rage, rage so that together we may breathe life into the words of President Lincoln inscribed on the memorial behind me:

“…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Let us get to work.

Thank you.

*

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Featured image: The Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C. (Source: Scott Ritter Extra)

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***

Brazil-based reporter and author Brian Mier outlines the strategy of lawfare and how it has been used in Latin America, particularly in the Lava Jato investigation.

“Lawfare is the use of the law as a weapon of war, and it is the newest characteristic of 21st Century Combat.” — Colonel Charles Dunlap

Lawfare is the weaponized use of the law to annihilate a political or business enemy.

Common tactics used in Lawfare include: forum shopping – when public prosecutors transfer a case to a jurisdiction with a friendly judge; excessive use and abuse of coerced plea bargain testimonies which are often the only evidence presented; suppressing evidence beneficial to the defense; and close collaboration with the media to create a public spectacle.

One example of the later tactic is the time Brazilian Java Jato judge Sergio Moro ordered former Economy Minister Guido Mantega to be forcibly removed from his wife’s chemotherapy session and tipped the press off in advance, to create a media circus around his arbitrary arrest on charges he was later ruled innocent of.

There are indications that US DOJ use of Lawfare was piloted in the US before being rolled out through Latin America.

In July, 2008, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it was filing corruption charges against Senator Ted Stevens (R/AK) for allegedly receiving illegal reforms on a vacation property, damaging his reputation and causing him to lose his first election in over 36 years.

Like future cases in Latin America, there was no material evidence presented, just a coerced plean bargain testimony made by a man who was trying to get out of jail. Months after the election, Stevens was ruled innocent, and in 2012 Judge Emmett Sullivan ruled two DOJ officials guilty of proprietorial misconduct. Nearly all of the tactics cited in the kangaroo court persecution of Ted Stevens would go on to be used against Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva within the ambit of the the US DOJ-backed Lava Jato (Car Wash) investigation. Coincidence or not, it is clear that these tactics would soon be exported throughout the Americas and the World, especially through partnerships with local law enforcement officials within the ambit of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA).

What is Lawfare?

As two members of Lula’s defense team, Cristiano Zanin and Valeska Martins wrote with legal scholar Rafael Valim in their 2021 book Lawfare: Waging War through Law it first appeared as a military term in the 1970s, but gained popularity in a series of texts by US Air force Colonel Charles Dunlap starting in 2001, when he wrote,

“Lawfare is the use of the law as a weapon of war, and it is the newest characteristic of 21st Century Combat.”

Originally described as a weaponized use of international human rights law to criticize military campaigns by the US and Israeli governments on human rights issues and to weaken support for things like the war in Iraq, it was alluded to in the in the Pentagon’s March, 2005 National Defense Strategy, which refers to law as “the weapon of the weak who use international legal cases and terrorism to usurp America.”

Soon, however, military strategists began suggesting that Lawfare could be more than just something that the US government had to defend against and that it could also benefit national security, being preferable to expensive and destructive forms of war, and more neutral definitions of the term began to emerge. Dunlap later wrote that Lawfare could be converted into a “strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve military objectives.”

In 2016, Orde Kittre published the book Lawfare: law as a weapon of war and, based on the ideas of Dunlap, tried to perfect the concept of Lawfare by breaking it into two elements: 1) the use of the law to create effects similar to those achieved in conventional military actions; and 2) actions motivated by the desire to weaken or destroy an adversary.

As international attention drew to the kangaroo court procedure initiated against former Workers Party Brazilian President Lula da Silva in 2016, his defense team began referring to it as a form of Lawfare. As Martins told this author in an interview conducted in 2018, “when people say we are politicizing the defense, this is a lie because, in reality, this is a technical diagnosis. When we understand that, technically speaking, there is no material evidence, that the accusations are illogical, that the legal arguments are misrepresented, we come to the unequivocal conclusion that we are dealing with a process of Lawfare.”

As they worked with international human rights lawyers to publicize Lula’s plight, Zanin, Martins and Valim created their own definition of the term: the abuse and misuse of the law in a violent manner to conduct political persecution.

The law was certainly abused during the political persecution of politicians throughout Latin America within the ambit of the Lava Jato investigation, which started in 2014 as collaboration between the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), the Swiss Federal Police and a local district attorneys office and judge based out of the conservative Brazilian city of Curitiba. The investigation crippled Brazil’s national development project, bankrupted many of its largest companies, transferred billions of dollars in fines to the United States and ultimately resulted in the illegitimate presidency of a neofascist former army captain named Jair Bolsonaro who is currently facing genocide charges in the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague. Initially presented to the US media as a legitimate partnership within the ambit of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) through a series of 2016 press releases by the Department of Justice itself, it later came out that investigators violated national sovereignty laws by engaging in secret, bilateral communications,including years of secret meetings between Brazilian prosecutors and a group of 18 FBI agents led by Leslie Bakshies.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) of 1977, is a US federal law that was originally conceived to prohibit US companies from committing acts of bribery overseas. Twenty years later, a modified version of the law was incorporated into an international treaty, the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention of 1997, which enabled the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) to act in any signatory nation in consort with local authorities. At this point, according to the modified terms of the law, these international partnerships enabled US authorities to investigate any foreign company or individual located in a Convention signatory nation that has a US bank account, owns real estate in the US, has stock traded in the US, or even that has ever conducted any type of transaction in US dollars, as long as the investigation is conducted in partnership with local law enforcement officials. It was the FCPA, for example, that enabled FBI agents to raid FIFA headquarters in Zurich in 2015 and arrest several non-US citizens on foreign soil.

In his academic paper, “The uncomfortable truths and double standards of bribery enforcement,” legal scholar Mike Koehler shows how the US government selectively uses the FCPA to advance its own objectives. According to Koehler, uncomfortable truths that weaken the US moral authority to act as international anti-corruption police include: how the US government actively participates in bribery; how the highest levels of the US government knowingly engage in and support private bribery; how the identity of the alleged bribe payer influences the US government’s enforcement of bribery laws; the subtle difference between US government and private sector attempts to influence foreign government action; and how the US government employs overblown and inconsistent rhetoric regarding bribery enforcement.

It’s common knowledge that the CIA gave away bags of money to government officials in Afghanistan. So why would the US Department of Justice (DOJ), the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FBI be so worried about corruption in Latin America that the US government would prioritize the issue in the 2017 National Security Strategy if it isn’t political?

The fact that Brazil signed the Anti-Bribery Convention in 1997 enabled the DOJ to work as a partner—some critics argue it took the lead—in Lava Jato, levying billions of dollars in fines on Brazilian companies in civil cases, generally based in the Southern New York Court District. In 2015, Lava Jato judge Sergio Moro bankrupted Brazil’s five largest engineering and construction companies by refusing to treat them as too big to fail – like the US government did with Goldman Sachs during the subprime mortgage crisis – and paralyzed all of their operations for 6 months due to the alleged actions of a few of their business executives. Studies show that this arbitrary action by a district court judge in Curitiba caused 500,000 direct and 3.6 million indirect job layoffs and a 2.5% drop in GDP growth in 2015, severely damaging the reputation of President Dilma Rousseff during the lead up to the April, 2016 parliamentary coup, which was also helped by Lava Jato Judge Sergio Moro’s illegal wiretapping of a conversation between President Rousseff and former President Lula, which he edited to make her look as bad as possible then shared with Brazil’s largest TV network, O Globo, on the eve of the impeachment vote. The Lava Jato investigation was also responsible for the election-year, arbitrary political imprisonment of ex-President Lula for reforms to an apartment the prosecutors were unable to prove he ever owned or set foot in. Although the signs of judicial and prosecutorial overreach in Lava Jato were crystal clear by 2016, after hacker Walter Delgatti (who is currently facing a 300 year prison sentence) shared leaked Telegram conversations showing illegal collusion between Lava Jato prosecutors and the judiciary with the Intercept, Brazilian Federal Police, the Supreme Court and Lula’s defense team, all doubts about the criminal nature of Lava Jato were put to rest.

Lava Jato started in Brazil, but soon, with support from the US DOJ, it expanded across Latin America and Lusophone Africa and was used used to attack politicians in other countries where Brazilian engineering and construction companies like Odebrecht and OAS operated. Attempts to use it against Venezuelan politicians failed due to the wise decision of that government to never sign the FCPA agreement, but dozens of politicians in other countries were targeted. Here are a few examples:

• Jorge Glas – Ex-Vice President of Ecuador

Arrested in October 2017, Progressive International board member Jorge Glas was sentenced to 6 years in prison by Ecuadoran Lava Jato prosecutors for allegedly receiving bribes from Odebrecht construction company, based on the plea bargain of a single, corrupt business executive, José Conceição Santos, who received a reduced sentence and partial asset retention in exchange for his testimony. He was released on parole in November, 2022.

• Mauricio Funes – Ex-President of El Salvador

In June, 2018, a judge in El Salvador issued an arrest for former President Mauricio Funes and 30 top members of the FMLN, based on coerced plea bargain testimony transcripts supplied by Brazil’s Lava Jato task-force, taken from corrupt businessmen who received sentence reduction and partial retention of their illicit assets in exchange for their testimony. Already living in Nicaragua at the time, they were unable to arrest him and he lives there to this day.

• Rafael Correa – Ex-President of Ecuador

In April, 2020, an Ecuadoran kangaroo court sentenced Rafael Correa to 8 years in prison and barred him from running for office for 25 years based in part on coerced plea bargain testimony from an Odebrecht executive that was shared by the Lava Jato Taskforce. With Ecuador currently in chaos, the former President has been living in political exile in Belgium since 2017.

• Gleisi Hoffmann – President of Brazilian Workers Party

After Lula was illegally barred from running for President in September, 2018, one of the names cited to replace him was Gleisi Hoffmann. A rising star in the PT, the Lava Jato taskforce tried to annihilate her political career by frivolously accusing her of receiving illegal campaign donations from Odebrecht without any material evidence, while using illegal leaks to create a media circus over an arbitrary search and seizure operation in her house in 2016. Since Hoffmann was a Senator at the time, her case was taken directly to the Supreme Court where she was ruled innocent by a vote of 11-0, due to, as in the case of Lula and so many other victims of Lava Jato, a total lack of material evidence in a case that was entirely built on coerced plea bargain testimony by corrupt business executives who changed their story several times before receiving massive reduction of prison sentence, transfer to house arrest and partial retention of millions of dollars in illicit assets.

Lava Jato – an investigation which has now been proven to be critically flawed due to criminal collusion between chief judge and prosecutors – has spread its tentacles all over the world. In Mozambique, it resulted in the arrest of former Transportation and Communications Minister Paulo Zacula, and Lava Jato was also used to accuse prominent politicians of corruption in the Dominican Republic, Panama and Angola. As Lula defense lawyer Valeska Martins emphasizes, Lawfare is a tactic that can be used against any political enemy from across the political spectrum. Three right wing former Presidents of Peru were sentenced to prison due to coerced plea bargain testimonies by corrupt, imprisoned Brazilian businessmen, with former President Alan Garcia committing suicide on the day they were coming to arrest him him.

Conclusion

Although frivolous criminal investigations against politicians and business leaders as tactics to gain an upper hand over rivals has certainly been engaged in as long as politics and business have existed, the concept of Lawfare as a hybrid war tactic really begins in the 21st Century, in actions that seem to have been piloted by the US DOJ within the US itself before being applied selectively to advance US business and political interests abroad.

The US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, initially created in the 1970s a means to reduce the ability of US companies to bribe foreign officials overseas – in theory strengthening sovereignty in countries around the world – has been transformed into a weapon used as justification to arrest foreign political leaders and bankrupt foreign competitors to US corporations. Furthermore, the we can see the toxic legacy of this imperialist strategy in the form of local initiatives, unrelated to the FCPA, that use similar Lawfare tactics to annihilate political enemies such as Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Kirchner. With a new round of electoral victories of the working class left in Latin America, it is more important than ever to develop defense strategies against Lawfare.

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This article, originally published in Kawsachun News, was made possible by Common Frontiers.

Brian Mier is a correspondent for teleSUR English in Brazil, and editor of the book Year of Lead: Washington, Wall Street and the New Imperialism in Brazil. He has lived in Brazil for more than 25 years. Brian is a host of a weekly program on Brasil 247 and he’s an editor of Brasil Wire.

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***

SUMMARY: UKHSA’s report shows that instead of “protecting” people from Covid-19, Covid vaccines significantly increase the risk of hospitalization in months 7-9 after vaccination.

The reports were designed to have several statistical sections meant to highlight vaccine successes. Funnily, many sections had to be discontinued as “vaccine successes” turned into spectacular failures. This happened with case and death rates and the section about pregnancies, which has not been updated for months but shows a 15% drop in UK pregnancies year-on-year.

However, another section of the report allows us to see something interesting. Look at the latest Vaccine Surveillance Report for Week 5, 2023. It shows hospitalization rates for various ages based on how long ago was their last dose. The rates apply to January 2023, which is the most recent data.

The most important fact we see is that for people over 50, the most dangerous period after vaccination is between 6 and 9 months after their last dose.

Their risk of hospitalization is several times higher than before six months or after nine months. The increase in risk far outweighs a small reduction in the first six months.

As a side note, this chart shows that additional boosters outright do not reduce risks for people under 50. However, those have very few hospitalizations, making the data less reliable for those ages.

So, people who take a Covid booster first go through a somewhat reduced hospitalization risk for the first six months, then go through a dramatically heightened risk of hospitalization, then hospitalization rates “return to normal,” with the normal being very high. Does that look like the vaccine provides any benefit? Not to me!

Consider, for example, the 65-74 age group. According to the above chart, for those 6-9 months after vaccination, the hospitalization rate is about 300 per 100,000 for just one month of exposure (this January). This means one out of three hundred Brits aged 65-74 who were 6-9 months after their last booster, was hospitalized for Covid this January.

The hospitalization rate of 300 per 100,000 is enormous!

The last time UKHSA reported hospitalization rates per 100,000 was in week 13 2022 report. (, which showed hospitalization rates for similar age groups (also for a four week period) (click UKSA Report, Table 14, page 45):

The age groups do not exactly match, but you can see that vaccinated people 65-75 years old had a roughly 25 per 100,000 hospitalization rate last March. In contrast, unvaccinated people’s hospitalization rate was about 40 per 100,000 during that period.

Now, people 6-9 months after vaccination have 300 per 100,000 or about 8-10 times greater hospitalization rates than they would have last March.

While the numbers are not directly comparable, their disparity is enormous. It should raise questions about what is going on with vaccines and why they enhance COVID hospitalization rates so much, at a certain time after the last dose.

The overall higher hospitalization rates for all ages suggest that Covid was more severe this January, compared to last March. Again, while being mindful that age groups do not match, you can compare rates on the January 2023 Figure 13 chart with those in the March 2022 table 14. Hospitalization rates per 100,000 for vaccinated people in all age groups seem to have increased by about three times.

Mind you, there were more Covid cases last March than this January, according to the British Covid-counting app Zoe, which is based on symptoms recorded by the Zoe app users, not on official tests:

So,

• there were about half as many Covid infections this January compared to the last March, but
• the hospitalization rates per 100,000 population for January were about three times greater,
• This suggests 3/0.5 = six times greater disease virulence (a rough estimate).

Does this six times greater virulence represent Covid becoming more intrinsically severe (the Geert variant), or are vaccines and/or reinfections contributing to enhanced mortality, perhaps via the IgG4 mechanism? We cannot tell that from these charts.

Some possibilities are discussed here.

I believe we are getting closer to getting answers about what is going on with mortality, as the data coming out narrows the range of possibilities.

What do you think causes all this worsening? Vaccines, new variants, reinfections, or all of the above?

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Inside the beating heart of many students and a large number of learners lies an inner cheat.  To get passing grades, every effort will be made to do the least to achieve the most. Efforts to subvert the central class examination are the stuff of legend: discreetly written notes on hands, palms and other body parts; secreted pieces of paper; messages concealed in various vessels that may be smuggled into the hall.

In the fight against such cunning devilry, vigilant invigilators have pursued such efforts with eagle eyes, attempting to ensure the integrity of the exam answers.  Of late, the broader role of invigilation has become more pertinent than ever, notably in the face of artificial intelligence technologies that seek to undermine the very idea of the challenging, individually researched answer.

ChatGPT, a language processing tool powered by comprehensive, deep AI technology, offers nightmares for instructors and pedagogues in spades.  Myopic university managers will be slower to reach any coherent conclusions about this large language model (LLM), as they always are.  But given the diminishing quality of degrees and their supposed usefulness, not to mention running costs and the temptations offered by educational alternatives, this will come as a particularly unwelcome headache.

For the student and anyone with an inner desire to labour less for larger returns, it is nothing less than a dream, a magisterial shortcut.  Essays, papers, memoranda, and drafted speeches can all be crafted by this supercomputing wonder.  It has already shaken educational establishments and even made Elon Musk predict that humanity was “not far from dangerously strong AI.”

Launched on November 30, 2022 and the creative offspring of AI research company OpenAI, ChatGPT is a work in progress, open to the curious, the lazy and the opportunistic. Within the first five days of launching, it had attained over 1 million users.

It did not take long for the chatbot to do its work.  In January, the Manchester Evening News reported that a student by the name of Pieter Snepvangers had asked the bot to put together a 2,000-word essay on social policy.  Within 20 minutes, the work was done.  While not stellar, Snepvangers was informed by a lecturer that the essay could pass with a grade of 53.  In the words of the instructor, “This could be a student who has attended classes and has engaged with the topic of the unit.  The content of the essay, this could be somebody that’s been in my classes.  It wasn’t the most terrible in terms of content.”

On receiving the assessment from the lecturer, Snepvangers could only marvel at what the site had achieved: “20 minutes to produce an essay which is supposed to demonstrate 12 weeks of learning.  Not bad.”

The trumpets of doomsday have been sounded.  Beverly Pell, an advisor on technology for children and a former teacher based in Irvine, California, saw few rays of hope with the arrival of the ChatGPT bot, notably on the issue of performing genuine research.  “There’s a lot of cheap knowledge out there,” she told Forbes.  “I think this could be a danger in education, and it’s not good for kids.”

Charging the barricades of such AI-driven knowledge forms tends to ignore the fundamental reality that the cheat or student assistance industry in education has been around for years.  The armies of ghost writers scattered across the globe willing to receive money for writing the papers of others have not disappeared.  The website stocked with readily minted essays has been ubiquitous.

More recently, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, online sites such as Chegg offer around the clock assistance in terms of homework, exam preparation and writing support. The Photomath app, to take another striking example, has seen over 300 million downloads since coming into use in 2014.  It enables students to take a picture of their maths problems and seek answers.

Meta’s chief AI scientist Yann LeCun is also less than impressed by claims that ChatGPT is somehow bomb blowing in its effects.  “In terms of underlying techniques, ChatGPT is not particularly innovative.”  It was merely “well put together” and “nicely done.”  Half a dozen startups, in addition to Google and Meta, were using “very similar technology” to OpenAI.

It is worth noting that universities, colleges and learning institutions constitute one aspect of the information cosmos that is ChatGPT.  The chatbot continues to receive queries of varying degrees of banality.  Questions range from astrology to suggest gift ideas to friends and family.

Then come those unfortunate legislators who struggle with the language of writing bills for legal passage.  “When asked to write a bill for a member for Congress that would make changes to federal student aid programs,” writes Michael Brickman of the American Enterprise Institute, “ChatGPT produced one in seconds.  When asked for Republican and Democrat amendments focused on consumer protection, it delivered a credible version that each party might conceivably offer.”

What are the options in terms of combating such usurping gremlins?  For one, its gratis status is bound to change once the research phase is concluded.  And, at least for the moment, the website has a service that occasionally overloads and impairs responses to questions users may pose.  To cope with this, OpenAI created ChatGPT Plus, a plan that enables users to access material even during those rocky fluctuations.

Another relevant response is to keep a keen eye on the curriculum itself.  In the words of Jason Wingard, a self-professed “global thought leader”, “The key to retaining the value of a degree from our institution is ensuring your graduates have the skills to change with any market.  This means that we must tweak and adapt our curriculum at least every single year.”  Wingard’s skills in global thought leadership do not seem particularly attuned to how university curricula, and incompetent reformers who insist on changing them, function.

There are also more rudimentary, logistical matters one can adopt.  A return to pen and paper could be a start.  Or perhaps the typewriter.  These will be disliked and howled at by those narcotised by the screen, online solutions and finger tapping.  But the modern educator will have to face facts.  For all the remarkable power available through AI and machine related learning, we are also seeing a machine-automated form of unlearning, free of curiosity.  Some branches off the tree of knowledge are threatening to fall off.

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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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***

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has just granted $1,977,031 to a physician-researcher in a five-year effort to investigate the incidence of myocarditis associated with COVID-19 mRNA vaccines.  This research will use advanced cardiovascular imaging, including cardiac MRI (CMR) led by Supriya Jain, MD,  a clinical associate professor of pediatrics and of radiology and clinical education liaison at New York Medical Hospital and Called a Broad Agency Agreement (BAA), Jain leads the study depending on a collaborative research network of clinical investigators across 30 academic trial site locations.

This latest important study is based on previous research led by Jain that started with 63 patients under the age of 21 and diagnosed with myocarditis post-COVID-19 vaccination,  enrolled from across 16 hospitals in America.

Dr. Jain has since then helped organize a substantial investigator trial network involving cardiology and advanced cardiovascular imaging expertise across 30 trial site locations and over 300 patients.

Lead Research/Investigator

Supriya Jain, MD, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics and of radiology and clinical education liaison at New York Medical Hospital, director of pediatric cardiac MRI/advanced cardiovascular imaging at Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, a major clinical affiliate of NYMC.

Call to Action: To read more about this important study, see the link.

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***

A new and increasingly popular Twitter hashtag is “#diedsuddenly” in response to a surge of sudden unexplained deaths among mostly young and healthy individuals, including athletes, occurring over the past 2 years. Here are but a few recent news stories.

In Australia, “Fit and healthy 21 year old son dies suddenly in his sleep.” From the University of Arizona, “A recent member of Arizona’s men’s swim team has unexpectedly passed away.” In Detroit, a high school basketball player suffered a cardiac arrest during a basketball game. While they restarted his heart, he hasn’t woken up.

Or this athlete in his early 20’s, “A former Florida Gators offensive lineman died suddenly on Thursday night according to multiple media reports.” From the US Army, “A soldier stationed at Fort Stewart died Tuesday while traveling to California for a training exercise.” Is this some type of black magic? Not likely, “America’s Got Talent magician suddenly dies at just 52.”

Let’s not forget Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin going into cardiac arrest after an unremarkable tackle during a January NFL game. These are anecdotes, and while compelling are not the same as collected data.

Several brave researchers recorded these “sudden” and “unexplained” deaths, as they are described in the media. Here is one report, “An investigation of official statistics has found that the number of athletes who have died since the beginning of 2021 has risen exponentially compared to the yearly number of deaths of athletes officially recorded between 1966 and 2004.”

YouTube screen grab

This trend was quite worrisome, “So much so that the monthly average number of deaths between January 2021 and April 2022 is 1,700% higher than the monthly average between 1966 and 2004.”

Where are the 3-letter health agencies? Why haven’t the FDA, NIH, or CDC offered their own data to refute this alleged increase in sudden deaths? If this is all “misinformation” as big tech and the corporate media describes it, the health agencies should easily be able to disprove it, rather than calling on social media giants to censor or ban anything contrary to their “safe and effective” mantra.

Big Medicine and the media attempt to play this all off as normal but average Americans are noticing and are understandably concerned. Since when is it “normal” for high school and college athletes to have heart attacks and blood clots, often fatal? Why are these daily news stories now compared to years ago when one might hear of only a few cases per year, typically attributed to a previously undiagnosed congenital heart defect? Why are these deaths frequently “unexplained” leaving “doctors mystified”?

America has the best medical care in the world and few medical maladies remain “unexplained” in 2023, other than the recent surge in sudden deaths among the young and healthy.

Are people noticing? Rasmussen Reports asked Americans what they think about all of this. In a national telephone and online survey of 1000 adult Americans published a month ago, four questions were asked.

• Have you received a COVID-19 vaccination?
• How likely is it that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths?
• Do you personally know anyone whose death you think may have been caused by side effects of COVID-19 vaccines?
• Which is closer to your belief, that there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, or that people who worry about vaccine safety are spreading conspiracy theories?

Furthermore, “28% of adults say they personally know someone whose death they think may have been caused by side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.” And “48% of Americans believe there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.”

The 2022 film “Died Suddenly” reinforces the above concerns, despite critics describing the movie as “baseless”, “propaganda”, or “pseudoscience”. Maybe it is, maybe not. If this is all nonsense, it should be as easy to disprove as it would be to dispel the notion that the sun orbits the earth, rather than vice versa.

Why doesn’t the CDC do a simple analysis, as Steve Kirsch has suggested, linking death and vaccination records? Kirsch has even offered a 10X return on a bet anyone wants to make with him disproving his analysis or conclusions. Any takers?

Since COVID-19 began 3 years ago, trust in medical authorities has declined. According to Pew Research, “29% of U.S. adults say they have a great deal of confidence in medical scientists to act in the best interests of the public, down from 40% who said this in November 2020.”

Much of what we have been told over the past few years has turned out to be false. A recent Cleveland Clinic study found that more vaccine doses lead to a greater likelihood of getting COVID-19. Or a Cochrane analysis  concluding that masks in the community made “little to no difference” in COVID-19 infections or deaths. Weren’t we told otherwise by authoritative doctors in white coats? Challenges to the approved party line were met with threats to one’s medical license, job, or reputation.

Someday there will be another public health emergency and it would behoove health authorities to set the record straight, either proving their assertions, or admitting they were wrong and thoughtfully analyzing why. Otherwise, they will have little future credibility, much like the boy who cried wolf.

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Brian C Joondeph, MD, is a physician and writer. He is not “anti-vaccine”, having been vaccinated against COVID-19 and he is not offering any medical advice, which should take place in a discussion between patients and their physicians.

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***

On February 9 the Washington Post published a report claiming that the Kiev regime forces “never launch HIMARS rounds without detailed coordinates provided by US military personnel situated elsewhere in Europe”. This also seems to include other NATO member states, while Washington DC gives the final authorization for any given HIMARS attack.

This effectively means that the political West (particularly the United States) is a party to the conflict in Ukraine and although this was clear from the very start, there was still no conclusive evidence to support such claims. However, the latest reports are an indisputable confirmation that NATO personnel is directly targeting both Russian soldiers and civilians.

According to the Washington Post, at least one senior US and three Kiev regime officials confirmed the reports. This doesn’t only include the HIMARS, but also similar platforms such as the M270 MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system) used by other NATO member states. The unnamed senior US official acknowledged “the key American role in the campaign” and stated that “the targeting assistance served to ensure accuracy and conserve limited stores of ammunition for maximum effectiveness”, further adding that “the United States provides coordinates and precise targeting information solely in an advisory role”.

The conclusion is quite laughable given the fact that the so-called “advisory role” of the political West has been rather decisive and as direct as it could possibly be (short of WW3, albeit this is also now in question). The aggressive US-led alliance is still posing as “not a party to the conflict”, but the level of involvement of both Washington DC and Brussels leaves no doubt that Moscow effectively sees both as direct military threats and that the Eurasian giant is now holding back only due to its desire to prevent direct confrontation which would inevitably lead to a world-ending thermonuclear exchange. Russia is perfectly aware this is the political West’s most important proxy war since World War Two and that the belligerent power pole has been planning this for decades (if not longer).

Washington Post further claims that the US officials consistently declined to comment on how exactly they provide coordinates for the HIMARS attacks, citing “concerns about operational security”, instead “highlighting the limitations of American involvement”. A senior Kiev regime official also stated that their military personnel identifies targets they want to attack, as well as their location, and that information is sent up the chain of command. Senior commanders then relay this to their US counterparts for more accurate coordinates. And while both Washington DC and the Neo-Nazi puppet regime insist that the role of the US is “strictly advisory” and that Kiev could use the HIMARS on its own, they admit they “don’t want to waste valuable ammunition and miss”, so they “usually choose not to strike without US confirmation”.

As previously mentioned, this admission alone should be enough to present the US as a party to the conflict, despite the rather comical attempts to justify and exonerate Washington DC. Worse yet, for nearly a year, the Neo-Nazi junta has been insisting on getting longer-range weapons from NATO, which would enable strikes deeper within Russia. The systems currently fielded by the Kiev regime forces have an official range of up to 80 km, but this too has been called into question, as there is ample evidence that it could be double, since the Neo-Nazi junta has routinely been launching strikes from as far as 150 km. Although neither the US nor Kiev have yet confirmed which type of munitions are being used for these longer-range strikes, various sources indicate that it could be an updated version of the GMLRS guided rockets [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System].

For the time being, it seems the Neo-Nazi junta still hasn’t received the ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) system capable of strikes at ranges of up to 300 km, but given the political West’s propensity toward a “very liberal” understanding of what truth is, such claims are indeed highly questionable.

Various intelligence sources now suggest that the Kiev regime uses not just the standard M30 and M31 munitions, but also the new ER-GMLRS rockets. The US pressed these weapons into service (production began only in early 2022) and then secretly transferred them to their favorite puppet regime. On the other hand, the mainstream propaganda machine is trying to whitewash Washington DC, insisting that the US “consistently refuses to allow the delivery of longer-range missiles to avoid escalation with Moscow and drag us directly into the war”.

As previously mentioned, such claims are hardly taken seriously in Russia given the sheer magnitude of the inconsistency between America’s claims and actions. What’s even less credible is the Kiev regime’s insistence that “it would not use the longer-range missile to strike across the border inside Russia” given the fact that it has already launched several attacks up to 700 km within Russia. Despite ample evidence that the Neo-Nazi junta couldn’t be trusted, it claims it would be limited in longer-range attacks by Washington DC’s will to provide targeting data.

The unnamed Kiev regime official stated that “you’re controlling every shot anyway, so when you say, ‘We’re afraid that you’re going to use it for some other purposes,’ well, we can’t do it even if we want to”, while another senior Kiev official added that targeting Russian forces “goes through an American installation on NATO soil” and described the process as “very fast”.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

The Church of England has announced it will explore alternative words to describe God, after some clergy asked to use more inclusive language in services.

The dominance of masculine language for God certainly matters. As feminist theologian Mary Daly wrote: “If God is male, the male is god”. In other words, talking about the Christian God in exclusively masculine terms privileges men in society and underpins male dominance.

According to a Church spokesperson, the official Christian doctrine is that God has no gender. Yet “He” is described almost exclusively in masculine terms. And since the Church continues to struggle with issues of gender equality, this project is likely to be contentious.

Critics will see this as an attempt to undo the long Christian tradition of calling God “He” and “Father”. But feminine language and imagery has also been part of Church history.

Hildegard of Bingen, a respected abbess (also known as a mother superior) in the Middle Ages, imagined the feminine side of God in her artistry and writings. And in the 1300s, female mystic Julian of Norwich spoke of the motherhood of God.

Modern feminist commentators such as Mary Daly and Joan Engelsman, have argued that God in feminine form has been strategically written out of Christian history.

Initial reports indicate the Church’s project will explore gender-neutral terminology – “Parent” instead of “Father”. But there have been other recent proposals to use feminine language like “She”.

When Libby Lane was appointed the Church of England’s first female bishop in 2014, she called for the mainstream acceptance of feminine names and pronouns for God.

At the same time, the chair of Women and the Church, a group that advocates for gender equality in the Church, stated that the introduction of female bishops would impact women’s lives in the Church “only if God is she as often as she is he – because this is such a formative aspect of our church life, and a real bastion of sexism”. Rachel Treweek, consecrated as bishop in 2015, joined the debate by arguing for the elimination of all gendered pronouns for God.

A genderless ‘Father’?

In my research with women clergy, there are clues that some might be unsettled by moves away from traditional masculine language. One woman vicar described how in a bible study “all hell broke out” at the suggestion that the Lord’s Prayer could begin with “Our Mother”.

The more gender-neutral “Parent” worries Rev Ian Paul, who has commented that such words are not interchangeable and have different meanings. The way words collect gendered meaning is, of course, part of the problem. Feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether argues that even words that seem neutral are not – “God” conjures male imagery.

Complicating this further, I found that sometimes masculine words are forced to mean both male and female. This is awkward and ultimately unsatisfactory. One woman priest, for example, told me that she sees “Father” as the only way of describing God, but “it might be that ideas about fatherhood need to change”.

Another interviewee told me she sees the term “Father” to include male and female. These complications around language and gender suggest that a project exploring gender-neutral language will need to think deeply about what constitutes “neutral”.

Exploring other names for God

While my research suggests there is an attachment to words such as “Father” among some women clergy, several interviewees told me they tried to avoid any gendered language for God. Some mentioned “Godself” as a possible candidate to replace masculine pronouns. One woman told me:

Where I heard ‘Godself’ being used, I quite like that. That is a suggested way. Again, at the moment … [but] within the parishes I think it would draw attention when it’s not necessarily what you want them to focus on.

There’s a sense here that some congregations may not be willing to embrace language change, even if there is a desire among clergy.

The project to look at gender-neutral language to describe God is, at the very least, a recognition that the dominance of masculine language is a problem. Many would welcome the possibility of worshipping in Church without the constant references to “He” and “Father”, given that God is supposed to be beyond gender. A reform of patriarchal language may open the door to tackling other social injustices. Perhaps we are witnessing a sea change in the Church.

But right now the Church of England’s inclusivity credentials are in tatters. It has problems with institutional racism, there is gender inequality in the priesthood and after years of discussion, same-sex marriage is still not recognised. Given the institution’s record on equality, any radical change coming out of this project would be quite miraculous.

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Sharon Jagger is a Lecturer in Religion, York St John University.

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***

The appointment of Richard Sharp as BBC chairman is the latest chapter in the long history of close links between the corporation and the upper reaches of the British establishment, including the intelligence agencies, declassified files show.

The controversy over the appointment of Richard Sharp as chairman of the BBC sheds fresh and intriguing light on Britain’s governing elite and the workings of Westminster and Whitehall.

Sharp, a Tory donor, is an old friend of Boris Johnson and former economics adviser at 10 Downing Street, and of Sam Blyth, a wealthy Canadian businessman and Johnson’s distant cousin. Sharp is also Rishi Sunak’s former boss at Goldman Sachs. Sharp helped put Johnson in touch with Blyth about help over a huge loan for him.

Sharp also introduced Blyth to the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Simon Case, about whether Blyth could act as a loan guarantor for Johnson.

In light of the unresolved controversy, Sharp was summoned on 7 February by the House of Commons culture, media and sport committee to explain his position. He said he told Johnson and Sunak of his ambition to be BBC chair before applying for the job. And he added that he raised with Case Blyth’s suggestion that Blyth help Johnson secure a £800,000 loan, and also told the Cabinet Secretary he was going for the BBC job.

Sharp told the committee: “My involvement was to ensure due process was followed. I was not party to any subsequent events that took place. I gave no financial advice to the prime minister”.

Critical report

In a highly critical report published on Sunday, the committee said Sharp’s failure to disclose, either to the MPs on the committee or to his appointments panel, his role in facilitating Johnson’s loan, constituted a “significant error of judgement”.

Sharp also did not disclose he had told Johnson of his intention to apply for the BBC job.

But questions remain over Simon Case’s judgement. Sharp told the Cabinet Secretary about his role as a go-between between Johnson and Blyth. Case appeared to have said that was fine and neither he nor Sharp needed to pass the information on.

Blyth, meanwhile, had been put forward as a candidate for the post of chief executive of the British Council, though he has said this was unsolicited and he did not discuss the job with Johnson.

When it became clear, despite the government’s best efforts, that the controversy over Sharp’s appointment to the BBC was not going away, Downing Street advisers suggested that the circumstances of Sharp’s appointment should be investigated by the Public Appointments Commissioner, Sir William Shawcross.

William Shawcross

Shawcross had been recommended for that job by Johnson. But it happens that Shawcross’ daughter, Eleanor, is Rishi Sunak’s head of policy at 10 Downing Street.

Shawcross said he should recuse himself from the investigation since he had met Sharp on a number of occasions. He delegated it to Adam Heppinstall KC, a barrister with experience of acting for government departments.

Shawcross has other connections. He is the “independent reviewer” of the government’s controversial Prevent programme that was set up in 2003 and later enshrined in law by the 2015 Counter Terrorism and Security Act, to reduce the threat posed by extremist ideologies.

In a report last week, Shawcross concluded that Prevent had concentrated too much on the far right, and not enough on Islamist extremism.

Shawcross is also a member of the consortium led by Sir Robbie Gibb, former head of communications at 10 Downing Street, that bought the Jewish Chronicle newspaper in 2020.

BBC and intelligence

The Sharp affair is the latest episode in a long history of the close relationship between the BBC and the upper reaches of the British establishment, a relationship that spread, in the utmost secrecy, to the world of intelligence.

MI5 kept a sharp eye on senior BBC appointments. Vetting and blacklisting procedures were stepped up in 1982 when a former Army officer, Brigadier Ronald Stonham, was given the title of “Special Assistant” to the BBC’s director of personnel, Christopher Martin, a former Royal Marine.

Journalists were barred from jobs because of associations which were considered “subversive” only in the minds of paranoid members of the security establishment.

Papers released to the National Archives show how the BBC hierarchy approached the Foreign Office’s Information Research Department (IRD), the government’s secret propaganda unit, after discreet contacts with senior intelligence officials. They began at the time of Harold Wilson’s Labour government.

Charles Curran, the BBC’s director general, wrote to IRD officials on 24 July 1974, stating: “I think that Denis Greenhill [the Foreign Office’s link with MI6] may have told you of the interest which was evident in a recent discussion at our Board of Governors in the activities in this country of movements which would be regarded by most people as subversive”.

He spoke of an “opportunity for discreet discussions” about the distribution of “communist -influenced activities”.

Curran then referred to the possibility of contacting Gwyn Morgan, head of the Labour Party’s Overseas Department (later chief adviser to one of Britain’s first European Commissioners, George Thomson) and Tom McNally, political adviser to the foreign secretary, Jim Callaghan.

Dealing with ‘extremists’

Sir Tom Brimelow, Greenhill’s successor in the Foreign Office, wrote a note dated April 1975 which was copied to Sir Michael Hanley, the head of MI5. Marked “Secret and Personal”, it stated: “I suggest the BBC should put itself in the best possible stance to deal with extremists who still want to grind their axes” – a reference to BBC journalists.

One file, dated a year earlier, in April 1974, reveals an obsession with alleged “subversives” including not only trade union leaders but “Black Power”, the Chile Solidarity Campaign Committee and even the Woodcraft Folk. Hanley was to ensure that “MI5 information” was sent to IRD for the use of officials there.

Hanley’s memo was copied to Sir Leonard Hooper, the head of GCHQ, with a warning to keep their discussions secret ­– if they were leaked, it could lead to “acute embarrassment”.

Another file refers to MI6 chief Sir Jack Rennie’s view that “the threat now was much more of an internal one”. IRD material should be sent to MI5, argued Sir John Hunt, the Cabinet Secretary.

Hunt reminded Harold Wilson that when the Labour prime minister was previously in office in 1968 he had approved “arrangements under which covert and discreet actions designed to expose communist activities in the UK was undertaken by the English section of the FO’s [Foreign Office] IRD” which was “in constant touch with the Security Service [MI5]”.

Planting stories

Many IRD files have been withheld, but some refer to the unit’s attempts, many of them successful, in planting stories in British newspapers and magazines and promoting suitable and useful books.

One was Revolutionary Politics in Modern Britain published by Bodley Head in 1976. It was written by Richard Shipley, whose employment as a Home Office official was kept quiet.

BBC editors and journalists caused the security and intelligence agencies most concern. In a report dated 1 September 1982, titled “Intelligence and the BBC”, a Foreign Office official responsible for liaising with MI6, wrote: “A number of recent BBC programmes have dealt with the operation of the intelligence agencies in a manner which has given rise to serious concern”.

A programme on the Falklands was singled out and led to Sir Robert Armstrong, then Cabinet Secretary, writing to Ian Trethowan, the BBC’s director general. Armstrong is reported to have said that the government “still face a problem in convincing the BBC to be more circumspect in treating these matters”.

The Foreign Office’s top MI6 contact warned “of the need to persuade the BBC’s senior management that they should supervise programme content more closely, and should act more responsibly”.

A year earlier, in 1981, Trethowan had intervened to censor a BBC Panorama programme on Britain’s intelligence agencies.

The following year, in a letter to Armstrong copied to Sir John Jones, then head of MI5, Sir Antony Acland, permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, warned of the need to be “careful not to give the impression (we) are trying to ‘gag’ the BBC”.

Vigilance

The history of the security and intelligence establishment’s meddling in the BBC demonstrates the need for vigilance on the part of the corporation’s viewers and listeners. Not cynicism or suspicion, just vigilance.

The BBC will always be a special target for the British establishment urging compliance on the part of editors.

There have been spectacular BBC disputes with governments, including over interviews with the IRA, Ian Curteis’ play on the Falklands war, and exaggerated claims about Saddam Hussein’s weapons arsenal leading to the death of the government’s weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly.

But the lessons of the past, including files declassified years later at the National Archives, is that successive governments apply pressure on senior BBC executives, often behind closed doors, and with different degrees of subtlety. The Richard Sharp affair should carry a warning.

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Richard is a British editor, journalist and playwright, and the doyen of British national security reporting. He wrote for the Guardian on defence and security matters and was the newspaper’s security editor for three decades.

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***

Text messages between Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla could shed light on billion euro deals to purchase Covid-19 shots. An American newspaper is challenging the European Commission in court to release them.

The New York Times will be taking the European Commission to court over the failure of its president to release the messages between herself and Bourla.

“The newspaper will face off against EU lawyers in the bloc’s highest court, arguing that the Commission faces a legal obligation to release the messages, which could contain information on the bloc’s deals to purchase billions of euros worth of Covid-19 doses,” Politico reported.

The case was lodged on January 25 and published on the European Court of Justice’s public register on Monday, but the NYT declined to comment on the matter. In a statement it said: “The Times files many freedom of information requests and maintains an active docket. We can’t comment at this time on the subject of this lawsuit.”

The Commission has claimed that it did not identify any text messages falling under a request for information since the communication did not “generally fall under its internal criteria for recording in its document register, due to the ‘short-lived’ nature of their content”.

Therefore, “the Commission President’s personal office was not required to identify any text messages”. The Ombudsman subsequently took the view that this constituted maladministration.

The German tabloid Bild had previously filed a series of lawsuits against the Commission seeking the disclosure of documents related to negotiations to purchase the mandated jabs, but information on von der Leyen’s prior contacts with Bourla were not disclosed.

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***

In December, the Palestinian human rights organization, Al-Haq, released a report accusing major corporations of maintaining Israel’s water apartheid on Palestinians living in the occupied territories.

According to Al-Haq, businesses are instrumental in helping Israel restrict water access to Palestinians and destroy Palestinian water infrastructure. Additionally, foreign companies profit from Israel’s system of water discrimination.

Al-Haq’s paper named both Israeli and international companies as:

“Complicit in the violation of the Palestinian right to self-determination and permanent sovereignty over natural resources, as well as the war crime of pillage and inhumane acts of expropriation of natural resources amounting to the crime of apartheid.”

The report detailed the actions of Israeli water companies Mekorot and Hagihon but also included outside firms TAHAL Group International B.V., Hyundai, Caterpillar Inc., JC Bamford Excavators Ltd. (JCB), and Volvo Car Group.

International Companies Complicit in Apartheid

Generally, international companies’ involvement in Israel’s water apartheid is through demolitions of water infrastructure such as cisterns, pipelines, and wells. According to Al-Haq’s research, from 2017-August 2021, Hyundai carried out 24 demolitions of Palestinian water equipment, JCB is responsible for 16, Volvo demolished 14 structures, and Caterpillar executed seven demolitions.

Hyundai is a South Korean multinational manufacturer. Its excavators are often used in home demolitions in addition to razing water equipment. Caterpillar is an American manufacturer heavily involved in Israel’s occupation through demolitions, military agreements, and construction of the settlements and the apartheid wall. The company’s major shareholders include BlackRock, an investment company criticized for fueling climate change, State Farm’s investment group, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.

Volvo is a Swedish multinational company with major shareholders also, including BlackRock and Norges Bank Investment Management, which is owned by the state of Norway. JCB is a British construction equipment manufacturer which helped finance ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s campaign. In return, Johnson promoted the company’s products on the campaign trail.

Machinery used for water infrastructure demolitions documented by Al-Haq field workers between January 2017-August 2021. Source | Al-Haq

Other companies involved in the destruction of water infrastructure include Turkish company Hidromek, Japanese engineering firm Daio, and Chinese construction company LiuGong.

Kardan N.V. is a Dutch company specializing in real estate and water infrastructure. It owns more than 98% of Tahal International Group, which has been involved in water development projects in Israeli settlements, over-extraction efforts limiting the availability of water to Palestinians, and has helped enforce the permit system for the development of wells on Palestinian communities.

Al-Haq reached out to these companies but did not receive a response. Daio was the only company that responded to MintPress News’ requests for comment, stating, ​​”We have not been able to confirm the facts as you have inquired about our group company, Daio Engineering Co., Ltd.”

Al-Haq noted that most of these demolitions are done because the structures lack permits or are located on Israeli state land, meaning Palestinian land confiscated by Israel for allegedly not being cultivated after a number of years. Most Palestinian buildings in Area C of the occupied West Bank, which is under the full control of the Israeli military, often lack the proper licenses because Israeli authorities deny Palestinians permits on the grounds these areas have not been zoned for construction. Yet zoning plans in Area C are also often rejected by Israeli officials.

“This is part of a broader strategy of harassment against Palestinian farmers to stop their agricultural activities,” Al-Haq wrote, describing these demolitions’ effect on Palestinian farming and their overall economy. Without the proper equipment, Palestinian farmers cannot irrigate their land and, thereby are unable to grow produce.

“The World Bank has estimated that out of a total of [about 175,000 acres] of irrigable land in the West Bank and Gaza, only [about 61,000 acres] are irrigated, costing the Palestinian economy as much as $410.70 million…in irrigated agriculture opportunities and 96,000 agricultural jobs,” Al-Haq wrote.

Al-Haq argues that several Israeli and transnational companies are in violation of international law. The authors wrote:

Since the unlimited water supply to Israeli settlements contributes to their expansion (and prolonged occupation), corporate actors, such as Mekorot, Gihon and Tahal Group International, Middle East Tubes Company (B Gaon Holdings), Mehadrin, Minrav Projects, David Ackerstein Ltd., Einav Ahets are complicit in the transfer of Israel’s civilian population into the OPT and East Jerusalem thus acting in blatant violation of Article 43 and 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

It also accused corporations Mekorot, Volvo, Caterpillar Inc, Daio, JCB, LiuGong, Hyundai, and Hidromek of carrying out a war crime for assisting in the destruction and confiscation of Palestinian water infrastructure.

Many of the international companies involved in Israel’s water apartheid have human rights policies on their website, including Volvo, Caterpillar, Daio, and Hyundai.

Kathryn Ravey, a business and human rights legal researcher for Al-Haq and one of the report’s authors told MintPress News that Al-Haq highlighted how these companies are going against their human rights guidelines in their letters to the corporations.

“A lot of them even have it in their core principles that they’re going to do due diligence, not be contributing to unequal situations or situations in which human rights are at fault or liable of being violated,” Ravey said. “And they basically ignore them and act against them. And this is the frustrating aspect of business and human rights.”

A Climate Change Issue

Despite Israel touting itself as environmentally conscious, the water apartheid it imposes on Palestinians is actually contributing to climate change.

“The thing with water is it’s linked to so many other things, like the environment and the economy,” Ravey said. Israel controls 85% of water resources in the West Bank. As previously reported by MintPress News, Israel dominating the West Bank’s water sector diminishes Palestinians’ capability to adapt to climate change. Damage to water infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank — whether through war or direct demolition — reduces its ability to handle heavy rainfall or prepare for droughts and heat waves.

Ravey explained that the diversity of the ecosystem also becomes disrupted when Palestinians are prevented from harvesting various fruits and vegetables because of the lack of water. And soil erosion problems occur when Palestinians are denied permits to fix leaky water pipelines.

Ultimately, these issues lead to a land uncultivated and without the necessary resources for communities to thrive. And with that, it strips Palestinians of their sovereignty.

“A lot of Palestinian communities aren’t able to grow the agriculture that they used to grow. And that also prevents them from profiting off of a lot of agricultural pursuits that they used to live off of,” Ravey said. “And not just profit, but also use from their own land.”

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Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.

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***

In the video below, Romanian senator Diana Iovanovici Sosoaca made a political statement entitled “People had to die, and it’s not over yet”.

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***

The US is actively recruiting Islamists for terrorist attacks against Russia according to the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR). Undoubtedly, this is another demonstration of Washington’s consistent and persistent strategy of pressuring and provoking Russia.

“According to credible reports, special attention is being paid to attracting people from the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia,” the statement says, adding that in January of this year, US intelligence agencies recruited 60 militants in Syria who, after training at the El Tanf base, will be sent to Russia and neighbouring friendly countries to carry out terrorist attacks.

“Particular emphasis is paid to planning attacks on heavily guarded facilities, including foreign diplomatic missions,” the SVR statement adds.

The statement also stressed that the US plans to send small groups of militants to Russia and other former Soviet nations that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

“Such actions put Washington on par with major international terrorist groups,” the SVR statement concludes.

The instrumentalization of jihadists is a constant theme of the American global strategic relationship towards Russia.

Washington is fully aware that jihadism in Russia and its neighbourhood can be disruptive. Ever since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Russia has strengthened its security structures and found resolutions in the Islamic-majority Caucasus region. These actions significantly reduced Islamic terrorism that plagued Russia in the 1990’s and 2000’s despite American intelligence services supporting Caucasian terrorists.

It cannot be forgotten that the US instigated an Islamist uprising in Russia-allied Syria that eventually led to Al-Qaeda’s Al-Nusra and ISIS taking large swathes of territory and terrorising civilians for years.

Given the failure to depose President Bashar al-Assad and Ukraine now being demilitarized at an unprecedented scale, Washington is seemingly so desperate to break Russian unity and bring terror to the civilian population that it is once again recruiting Islamic terrorism to serve its agenda.

Although Moscow disclosed the intentions of the US to once again weaponize jihadism, it was not revealed exactly how they plan to respond to this threat. It can be assumed that Russia’s intelligence and security system will act in a timely manner to prevent any incidences.

According to the head of the Eurasian Security Forum, Retired Serbian Major General Mitar Kovač, the overwhelming majority of Islam is opposed to American foreign policy.

“Many in the world appreciate that only five percent of Islamic countries or Muslims around the world are ready to follow US policy and be abused, while about 95 percent of countries or Muslim movements are on the side of sovereignty, the idea of ​​sovereignty, and hence it is no wonder that most Muslim countries in the world today supports the Russian Federation’s fight against Western aggression and against its national interests in Eastern Europe,” Kovač said. He effectively highlights those jihadists, who mostly serve Washington’s interests, make up a small percentile of Muslims.

The utilization of jihadists come as the head of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, admitted that the alliance has depleted stocks of munitions. This comes at a time when the Russian Army is preparing, according to the NATO chief, to launch a fresh offensive. As Newsweek reported, the fighting has intensified ahead of the first anniversary of the war, “leading to Kyiv using ammunition at an unprecedented rate.”

For their part, the Financial Times reported that the Ukrainian military is firing more than 5,000 artillery rounds each day— “equal to a smaller European country’s orders in an entire year of peacetime. Russia meanwhile, is estimated to be firing four times that amount each day.”

“It is clear that we are in a race of logistics. Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield. Speed will save lives,” Stoltenberg said.

According to him, the new offensive has already started as Russian troops are closing in on the strategic town of Bakhmut in the Donbass region.

“We see how they are sending more troops, more weapons, more capabilities. The reality is that we are seeing the start [of a new offensive] already,” Stoltenberg said.

Although the expected major spring offensive has not yet started, as Stoltenberg claims, it is undeniable that Russia is amassing hundreds of thousands of troops and heavy equipment. Russia is anticipated to launch a new offensive once the snows has melted and the muds have dried.

With Ukraine experiencing manpower, ammunition and supply issues, the US hopes that jihadist attacks within Russia can alleviate some pressure. However, not only will the SVR keep on top of terrorist activities, Russia will not be deterred from completing the demilitarization of Ukraine and the full liberation of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson.

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

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***

This morning, a missile that Russia fired at Ukraine flew over Moldova and came within 22 miles of Romania, which is a member of NATO. If the missile had hit Romania, there would have been immediate demands under NATO’s Article 5, especially within the Ukrainian leadership, for NATO to respond immediately by attacking Russia.

It’s also worth noting that NATO wants to make Moldova a member of NATO, which would bring the total number of countries that the American people are automatically required to defend to 31.

As the Pentagon gets the American people ever-closer to all-out, life-destroying nuclear war with Russia, one cannot help but be reminded of the warning that President Eisenhower issued to the American people about America’s deep state. 

In his Farewell Address, Ike stated:

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Ike wasn’t some leftist peacenik. He was a West Point graduate. He was a former military general — a five-star general to be exact. In fact, he was the supreme allied commander in World War II. He had a deep understanding of the military establishment.

Ike delivered his speech during America’s Cold War with Russia and the rest of the communist world. Thus, when Ike stated, “We recognize the imperative need for this development,” he was pointing out that the Cold War required the massive rise of the American deep state.

I question that justification. I hold that the greatest mistake America ever made was to convert the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which wields many of the same totalitarian-like powers that communist and totalitarian regimes wield, including the power of state-sponsored assassinations. A free nation fights communism with freedom, not with totalitarianism and dark-side deep-state powers. 

Regardless, it is indisputable that the Cold War ostensibly ended in 1989. Therefore, Ike’s justification for a deep state evaporated in that year. All that was left was his warning of the dangers to our way of life posed by this gigantic, permanent military-intelligence establishment in our midst — an establishment that has now gotten us perilously close to nuclear war, just as it did in the run-up to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

This would be a good time for the American people to do some serious thinking and reflection on Ike’s warning to us and to ponder a different direction for our nation — one toward the restoration of America’s founding system of a limited-government republic and the restoration of America’s founding foreign policy of non-interventionism. 

There is no question but that the Pentagon is moving America in the highly dangerous and destructive direction about which Ike warned us. Let’s just hope that the Pentagon doesn’t make the matter moot by succeeding in bringing about an all-out, life-destroying nuclear war before Americans have the opportunity to change the direction of our country. 

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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***

Twenty years ago this spring the US government was finally successful in lying us into war with Iraq. Administration after administration had sanctioned and bombed and even invaded the country, but finally 20 years ago next month the Bush Administration unleashed “shock and awe” to flatten a country that did not and could not threaten the United States.

After eight years of battle in Iraq perhaps as many as a million innocent people died, either directly or indirectly, from Washington’s aggression. No one was brought before a tribunal over the lies and destruction. No one even apologized. Washington’s puppet of the day, Ahmed Chalabi, brushed off the lies about Iraq’s WMDs by proclaiming that the war promoters were “heroes in error.” They got their regime change and that’s all they cared about.

The propaganda machine pushing the Iraq war seemed overwhelming at the time. At that time several fellow Members of Congress began to open communication across party lines to look for way to stop the war. From conservatives like the late Rep. Walter Jones and Rep. John Duncan, to progressives like Rep. Dennis Kucinich and Rep. Jim McGovern, and so many more, we began to organize and strategize.

One tool we used to our advantage was the idea of an “improbable” coalition of left and right uniting to oppose the war. The media may not have been interested in our antiwar views, but they could not help themselves when presented with this “man bites dog” story. Time and again this “unlikely” group held press conferences, introduced various legislative tools, and communicated behind the scenes to try and grow the movement against the Iraq war.

Unfortunately with the 2008 election of Barack Obama, who ran as an antiwar candidate but then launched numerous military attacks abroad, that old coalition fell apart. Some progressives excused Obama’s militarism and lost interest in cooperating with conservatives. Some conservatives were driven by their personal dislike of Obama and lost sight of the target.

Suddenly, as we face the once-unimaginable prospect of a direct military conflict with nuclear-armed Russia over Ukraine, a beyond Left-Right coalition is emerging from its long slumber. This Sunday, February 19th, a broad and very diverse group will assemble in Washington, DC at the Lincoln Memorial to denounce Washington’s sleepwalking into World War III.

The “Rage Against The War Machine” rally promises to be the first large-scale rally against Washington’s aggressive war lobby in many years. I am looking forward to sharing the stage with my good friends and former House colleagues Dennis Kucinich and Tulsi Gabbard, as well as my good friend and fellow libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, and so many more speakers from a broad political spectrum.

Many of us have watched with alarm as the Biden Administration – with the enthusiastic backing of many Congressional Republicans – has continuously escalated involvement in the Russia/Ukraine conflict and now sits dangerously close to a direct, hot war with the largest nuclear superpower on earth.

How did we get here? Where are the sane voices and cooler heads? Just when it seemed they were nowhere to be found, here we are! I hope as many people as possible will join us and continue to come together for this important cause. We must join together while we still can. No war with Russia!

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***

This is starting to spiral out of control:

• On February 6, 2023, 17 year old William Caron-Cabrera (Laval, QC) died in his sleep following a cardiac arrest (click here).
• On February 4, 2023, 17 year old Tyree Rogers (Chestermere, AB) died in his sleep (click here).
• On January 11, 2023, 17 year old Noah Bouzane (Paradise, NL) died in his sleep (click here).
• On January 6, 2023, 19 year old Jayden Lopez (Edmonton, AB) died in his sleep (click here)
• On December 30, 2022, 18 year old Theo James Gibbs (Regina, SK) died in his sleep (click here)

All deaths occurred suddenly and unexpectedly during sleep:

Latest COVID-19 Vaccine uptake in this age group:

My take…

Something is very wrong here. Healthy teenagers ages 17-19 shouldn’t die in their sleep. And certainly not at this high frequency.

Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway have halted booster shots in healthy teenagers under 18. Canada must do the same. Immediately.

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***

There is what passes for a sick joke among those who watch the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians with increasing shock over what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his thugs have been allowed to get away with. It goes something like this: Israel has succeeded in killing or driving out the remaining three million or so Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza, describing them as “terrorists.” President Joe Biden, his cabinet and virtually all of Congress respond afterwards by saying how the move was unfortunate but “Israel has a right to defend itself.”

Such is the power of Israel as manifested through its Lobby in the US, and the saddest part of the joke is that it reflects quite likely exactly what would happen. The Palestinians have no constituency in the United States, where Israel and its friends rule the roost. But one of the real ironies of watching a genocide being carried out now in the twenty-first century is that the killers come from a group that constantly flaunts its claimed status as history’s perpetual victims. This duality is a convenience, to be sure, providing as it does immunity from its own crimes as it also escalates the criminal policies that might lead to the genocide of a whole category of potential “enemies.”

Israel’s new government, again headed by the monstrous Benjamin Netanyahu, has shifted hard to the right, incorporating as it does the extremist settlers’ movement as well as parties that have spoken casually of forcing the Palestinians out and even of extermination if it comes to that. Half of Israelis are comfortable with the Arabs having minimal civil rights even if they are Israeli citizens and many accept the desirability of forced expatriation of the Palestinians to neighboring states like Jordan or Lebanon. Arab residents of Israel have only limited legal rights and, contrary to the US domestic Israel Lobby’s constant assertion that the Zionist entity is a “democracy,” Israel in reality became an apartheid state by law when it in 2018 declared itself to be legally the nation state of the Jews with “exclusive right of self-determination.”

More recently Netanyahu has made clear exactly what his government stands for. In late December, he stated that “the Jewish people have an exclusive and inalienable right to all parts of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop the settlement of all parts of the Land of Israel.” He was explicit that “all parts” was intended to include the West Bank and even Gaza, which have long been the presumed to be the basis of a future Palestinian state. With Washington’s support, they presumably will become part of Eretz Israel, which will stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

To be sure, Israel and its powerful US lobby know very well that the constant claim of victimhood combined with labeling its perceived enemies as antisemites and holocaust deniers to discredit them is little more than a tool employed in part to excuse war crimes and human rights violations committed by the Israelis. In 2002 a former Israeli government minister Shulamit Aloni revealed in an interview how labeling a critic as an antisemite to discredit what is being is little more than “a trick.” She said “Well, it’s a trick, we always use it. When from Europe somebody is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country [the US] people are criticizing Israel, then they are antisemitic.” She added that there was an “Israel, my country right or wrong” attitude and “they’re not ready to hear criticism”. Antisemitism, the holocaust and “the suffering of the Jewish people” are used to “justify everything we do to the Palestinians.”

Indeed, there is every indication that Prime Minister Netanyahu will be taking a much harder line not only with the Palestinians, but as well with its foreign “enemies” the Syrians, Iranians and Lebanese. And there is every sign that he has drawn the United States into his web. President Joe Biden, a self-declared Catholic “Zionist”, is politically too weak to take on the Israel Lobby even if he wanted to, and he has in any event surrounded himself with Zionist Jews as a foreign policy and national security team that would consider any weakening of ties with Israel to be unimaginable. Quite the contrary. Jewish power in the US demands unconditional military, financial and diplomatic support for Israel, even as its government moves to the right and becomes more dangerous regionally, threatening to involve the United States in new wars. Seemingly blind to what is developing, the US last month proceeded with the largest wargames ever involving the Jewish state. The games simulated an attack on Iran and could be a model for a series of pointless conflicts initiated by the more hawkish Israeli government.

Israeli warplanes attacked hundreds of towers and civilian ‘targets’ in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

And there is almost certainly much more to come, including a bill in the Knesset that will make it nearly impossible for Arab citizens to organize political parties. The new government in Israel has also placed police under the control of ultra-nationalist Jewish Power party head Itamar Ben-Gvir as National Security Minister. He is exploiting his position to already call for a war to destroy Hamas in Gaza. Meanwhile, the shoot to kill policy vis-à-vis Palestinians has increased the number of deaths already in 2023, totaling twelve on January 25^th and 26^th alone when a refugee camp at Jenin on the West Bank was raided by the army and two teenagers elsewhere were shot dead. Another shooting a week later took 5 Palestinian lives. Many more Palestinians were wounded in all the army attacks and the Israelis, as is their practice, routinely deny them any access to medical help. The army’s Chief of Staff has declared that its policy on using firearms will not be changed in spite of the large number of civilian deaths. Israeli soldiers and policemen who kill Palestinians, who are routinely described as “terrorists,” are almost never investigated or prosecuted and have been, in some cases, praised in the media and promoted.

And Ben-Gvir is not the only fanatic who has surfaced as a worrisome character in the new government. Another is Bezalel Smotrich, the leader of the Religious Zionism party and now finance minister, who has called for Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and the imposition of citizenship requirements that would make Jewishness a prerequisite for inclusion.

Smotrich’s party aspires to make Israel a theocracy governed by the racist Talmud, and both he and Ben-Gvir have support the expulsion of Arabs who fail to agree that “the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people.” Smotrich has stated that his immediate plans include authorizing dozens of new and completely illegal West Bank outposts to include continuing the demolition of what he claims are unauthorized Palestinian homes there. Smotrich is also enthusiastically racist when it comes to the Palestinians, asserting that new Jewish mothers in hospitals should be separated from new Palestinian mothers. “[My wife] would not want to sleep next to someone who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby in twenty years.”

Zvika Fogel, another prominent right wing Israeli member of parliament, has called for genocide in his promotion of a “final war” against the Palestinians to “subdue them once and for all,” saying in an interview that Israel’s policy of going to war with Palestinians “every two or three years” was no longer good enough and that there should be one last war to “subdue them once and for all. It would be worth it because this will be the final war…”

"It's time to subdue them (the Palestinians) once and for all, and to make it the final war" – Zvika Fogel a member of the Knesset and the ruling coalition, from the "Jewish Power" party, interviewed on Channel 12, a mainstream Israeli TV channel.
This is Judeo-Nazism. pic.twitter.com/azvyupRG5U

— Barak Mayer (@ireallyhateyou) January 3, 2023

Home demolitions, property seizures, checkpoints and other round the clock harassment of Palestinians also are increasing in frequency as the Israelis accelerate their expansion into areas that are nominally Palestinian. Palestinians who marry foreigners are not allowed to enter the country with their spouses while the Palestinian flag has now been declared illegal. The possibility that the Arabs will stage a general uprising increases daily, leading to more demands from some Israelis that remaining Palestinian centers of resistance be utterly destroyed.

To be sure, many young Jewish Israelis have recently been demonstrating against their own government’s shift rightwards. And in the United States many liberal Jews are concerned at developments, though they are critical of what is happening for all the wrong reasons. An increasing number of American Jews believe that Israel is indeed an apartheid state and that its treatment of the Palestinians is inhumane to say the least. But they, at the same time, oppose doing anything to punish the Israeli government to make it draw back from its most brutal and dangerous policies. They argue that the Netanyahu government is risking a confrontation with the US government, and the Jewish community will splinter over Israeli human rights abuses, weakening political support in Washington for a strong and enduring relationship with the Jewish state. In a sense the power of the Jewish diaspora both in the US and elsewhere thereby becomes the enabler of Israeli bad behavior even as it disapproves of what is taking place.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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***

Apparently, the western military alliance is already preparing for the hypothesis of an open and direct conflict against Russia. According to reports recently published in the media, NATO is expected to advise its members to significantly expand stocks of arms and ammunition. Sources familiar with the matter say that NATO members will be becoming militarily weakened in the near future, with their stock almost depleted due to the policy of military aid to the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.

Some Western media outlets have expressed concern about Western countries’ ammunition reserves. Military informants have been consulted by journalists, notifying that the Atlantic alliance may formally request that all member states start stockpiling more ammunition as soon as possible. This possible attitude seems to be an emergency measure to remedy the military shortage, which is becoming an increasingly serious problem in the West.

The main reason for this crisis is the conflict in Ukraine. The irresponsible policy of systematically sending weapons has been implemented in an anti-strategic way, without taking into account the production and supply capacity of the NATO’s countries. Weapons have been exported faster than they have been produced, culminating in empty stocks for the armed forces of the exporting countries, which puts them in a vulnerable situation.

As expected, the items with the biggest shortages are 155mm shells, HIMARS missiles, and ammunition for air defense systems such as IRIS-T, Patriot, and Gepard – which are precisely some of those Western equipment most used by Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.

The sources said that in an eventual direct war against Russia, the European states would not be able to maintain the fighting for more than a few days, due to the low amount of ammunition. In this sense, it is possible that, by saying this, the informants are suggesting that NATO is indeed preparing for an open war scenario in the near future.

Informants, however, were skeptical about the possibility of the problem being resolved quickly. According to them, while the conflict lasts in Ukraine, the systematic sending of military aid by the West will prevent the reserves from being kept in safe quantities. Furthermore, it is necessary to mention that the western defense industry is severely affected by the global shortage of semiconductors and some other types of raw materials essential for the production of heavy weapons.

“If Europe were to fight Russia, some countries would run out of ammunition in days (…) I don’t necessarily think that within the next year our stockpile levels will increase massively. Any additional stockpiles we will have will be heading to Ukraine”, a source said.

More specific decisions, such as establishing precise production and stockpile objectives, are expected to be officially announced at the next NATO summit, scheduled to take place in July in Lithuania. But the most likely possibility is that some emergency measures will be implemented in advance, before the summit, in order to boost the defense industry in the countries of the alliance.

Indeed, this is not the first time that military advisors have reported on the crisis in NATO’s ammunition stockpiles. Previously, Tobias Ellwood, head of the UK’s Parliamentary Defense Committee, had already said that the British army is “in a dire state” of reserves – despite the multi-billion-dollar investments in defense made by the country in recent years.

Although the conflict in Ukraine is essentially responsible for the drastic decrease in domestic ammunition supply, some experts believe that the problem predates the start of Russia’s special military operation. Particularly among European states, accustomed to decades of “protection” under the American military umbrella, there was a belief that wars of attrition would be a “thing of the past”, unfeasible in the contemporary era – where forms of warfare would only be hybrid and asymmetrical. This has led many countries to maintain minimal reserves of arms and ammunition. Obviously, with the beginning of the aid to Kiev, the resources started to run out, resulting in the current scenario.

These factors are just one more evidence of the unfeasibility of the Western support to Kiev. The correct thing to do is the immediate interruption of the supply of arms, allowing both the restructuring of the defense capacity of the European countries and the reduction of tensions, leading to the end of the risks of escalation. NATO seems “concerned” with how its members would deal with a possible situation of open war against Russia, but it is NATO itself that can prevent such a scenario from becoming real. Instead of starting an arms race, it should just stop promoting anti-Russian war machine and adopt a responsible and diplomatic stance.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo

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***

Alberta became the second province after Saskatchewan to decline participation in any type of national healthcare “digital ID” program as a condition to receive funding for health care from the federal government.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith made clear to Albertans this past Friday that their personal medical information would not be shared with the federal government.

“I agree and stand firmly with @PremierScottMoe in protecting Albertans’ private health information,” Smith tweeted.

“I will ensure that any agreements with the Federal Government do NOT include the sharing of any such personal information with the Feds or third party. #cdnpoli#abpoli.”

Smith included in her tweet an open letter written by Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe that was released publicly over a week ago.

I agree and stand firmly with @PremierScottMoe in protecting Albertans’ private health information. I will ensure that any agreements with the Federal Government do NOT include the sharing of any such personal information with the Feds or third party. #cdnpoli #abpoli pic.twitter.com/PfXXboyflo

— Danielle Smith (@ABDanielleSmith) February 10, 2023

In Moe’s letter, he wrote that the

“Government of Saskatchewan is not creating a digital ID, nor will we accept any requirements for the creation of a digital ID tied to healthcare funding.”

In Canada, as per the constitution, health care falls 100 percent under the authority of the provincial governments. However, some federal money is transferred to provinces, but this amount has declined in recent years.

There has been some talk that future federal funding could be tied to a sort of national healthcare “digital ID.”

An online campaign urging people to call Smith’s office to get her to oppose a federal digital ID had been growing over the past week.

Last week, all of Canada’s premiers met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to try and hash out a funding deal for health care with the federal government.

Canada’s premiers collectively asked the federal government to live up to its end of the bargain in healthcare funding, after the total amount dropped from 35 percent to 22 percent in recent years.

The meeting resulted in Trudeau offering a lower amount than the premiers had asked for in healthcare funding.

When it comes to digital IDs, the federal government under Trudeau has been actively open to the idea.

Last year, through an Inquiry of Ministry, Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) MP Leslyn Lewis demanded information from the Trudeau government and Transportation Minister Omar Alghabra over its participation in the World Economic Forum’s “Known Traveler Digital Identity (KTDI)” pilot program.

Through this action, it was reported that the Trudeau government has a $105.3 million contract with the WEF to create a digital ID system for travel.

The provinces of Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and New Brunswick have already forged ahead with pushing a digital ID on the public and are all listed on the Digital ID and Authentication Council of Canada (DIACC) as members.

It should be noted that Alberta has had a form of its own optional provincial digital ID for a few years now.

Saskatchewan did at least temporarily pause implementing its own local digital ID system last year after a public outcry.

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***

Things are getting rather bizarre at the US Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).  Its increasingly prominent commanding chief, one General Glen VanHerck, has abandoned any initial sense of frankness in discussing the destruction of an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4.

Since that disproportionately violent event, more public relations than sense, three other objects have also been destroyed.  “We’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason,” the general said cryptically in remarks made on February 12.  The briefing came in the aftermath of the downing of an octagonal-shaped object over Lake Huron on the US-Canada border.

Cultures of paranoia and suspicion approach such statements the way crops take to manure.  The line between extra-terrestrial fantasies and human-made balloons can become grainy.  Tinfoil hats become charged; fear finds a funnel to travel through.  The suggestion from the general that “the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out” signalled an avalanche of speculation.  This was given further impetus by VanHerck’s assertion that he “hadn’t ruled out anything” to a question on whether aliens featured in the mix.  “At this point, we continue to assess every threat or potential threat unknown that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.”

On February 13, the White House was left to deal with the excitement caused by the Pentagon’s speculations.  Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was given the bucket to dampen the enthusiasm.  “I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no sign, again no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”

John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council in the White House, was also adamant in his briefing: “I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens with respect to these crafts, period.”  Hardly reassuring to those glued to such reports as that from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June 2021, which refused to rule out the possibility that 144 unidentified aerial phenomena might have extra-terrestrial provenance.

The bafflement over these objects has added some zest to the already exaggerated China threat.  It is a throwback to the Cold War, which was characterised by ill-educated second guesses about performance, capability, and awareness about an inscrutable enemy.  Foes, drunk with threat inflation, jousted in the dark and groped in the wilderness, finding a mirage of reality.

With the latest belligerent undertakings by the US government, an escalation is being encouraged by the hawks in Congress.  Kirby, wishing to add a sting to the China effort, told the press that Biden, on coming to office, directed the US intelligence community to conduct a broad assessment of Chinese intelligence capabilities.  “We know that these [Chinese] surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners.”

This is hardly a unilateral game.  Having accused Beijing of such airborne surveillance present and past, the Biden administration is now facing accusations of its own.  According to the PRC, the US has conducted its own exercises in flying high-altitude balloons in its airspace – no fewer than 10 times last year.  To that can be added hundreds of reconnaissance missions.  “It’s very common that the US intrudes [into] others’ airspace,” remarked Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin, citing 657 sorties made by Washington in 2022 and 64 aircraft flights in January “over the South China Sea alone”.

Kirby was cocksure in denying such claims, even those alleged missions that might apply to Taiwan or the South China Sea.  “There is [sic] no US surveillance aircraft over Chinese – in Chinese airspace.”

The Balloon Affair has also tickled the interest of Washington’s allies.  Object fever is catching.  The United Kingdom, that reliably unquestioning transatlantic appendage of US power, is hopping on the bandwagon.  The country’s transport minister, Richard Holden, did not even care to cite any evidence of “Chinese spy balloons” making their way through British airspace.  What mattered was that it was “possible” and “that there will be people from the Chinese government trying to act as a hostile state.”

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace further suggested, with forced graveness, that, “The UK and her allies will review what these aerospace intrusions mean for our security.  This development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse.”  Blame it on those objects.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak also reminded the good people of Britain that the country is ever vigilant to any incursions from hot air objects or anything similar to them.  “We have something called the quick reaction alert force which involves Typhoon planes, which are kept on 24/7 readiness to police our airspace, which is incredibly important.”

Tobias Ellwood, Conservative chairman of the Commons defence select committee, swallowed the suggestion that those sneaky Orientals were “exploiting the West’s weakness” with their mysterious aerial instruments.  At least there was no mention of aliens, but that is increasingly becoming a distinction without a difference.

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

Featured image is from Andrew Korybko

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***

South Korea claims a 85.8% fully COVID-19 vaccinated rate, with over 130.6 million doses administered (Pfizer 62%, Moderna 20%, AZ 16%, JJ 1%) (click here).

It is a model of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine failure.

South Korea’s COVID-19 booster rollout appears to have driven ever increasing waves of COVID-19 infection and death throughout 2022 and into 2023 (click here).

Doubling down on mRNA vaccine failure: 

On Feb.8, 2023, Korean news reported that SK bioscience will invest $258 million to build a manufacturing facility “aiming to become a key player in the vaccine industry” (click here)

“SK bioscience cooperated with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to develop SKYCovione, Korea’s first domestically-developed COVID-19 vaccine.

The facility is not only for the vaccine but also cell and gene therapy and mRNA technology”

It gets more interesting:

Fierce biotech reports (click here): “SK bioscience…plans to invest $261 million in a R&D hub designed to establish it as a leading force in the global response to new infectious diseases”

“The South Korean company put the planned global research and process development center in Songdo, a so-called smart city 18 miles from Seoul”, at the heart of the strategy…total outlay of $261 million to support the creation of a vaccine/biopharmaceutical hub on the 320,000 square foot site.

“Completion is scheduled for the first half of 2025. Once the site is ready, SK bioscience will relocate its headquarters…to help the company preemptively respond to emerging infectious diseases.

“The establishment of the R&PD Center will be a crucial milestone for us to advance the entire vaccine and biopharmaceutical industry beyond Korea to the world”

“SK bioscience manufactured COVID-19 vaccines for AstraZeneca and Novavax”

Making new mRNA vaccines within 100 days with Gates Foundation:

SK Bioscience press release Nov.2022 (click here): “Through securing the mRNA technology, product development, and platform expansion, SK bioscience plans to establish a system that can develop vaccines against new infectious diseases within 100 days and supplies them within 6 months with global partners, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, CEPI, and Hilleman Laboratories.”

“SK bioscience also operates ‘Glocalization’ project which transfers vaccine development, manufacturing, and production capabilities to each government and partner companies in the world to establish a vaccine manufacturing infrastructure for the needs in each region”

Tripling of cancer cases in Korea since mRNA rollout?

There seems to be some controversy around alleged tripling of cancer cases in South Korea in 2022 “due to COVID-19 vaccines” (click here)

A Facebook post showed a photo of a datasheet titled: “Massive spike in patients diagnosed with cancer after Covid vaccinations”.

The datasheet is credited to South Korea’s Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service (HIRA), a government agency responsible for reviewing and evaluating healthcare costs and services.

The document says there were between 1.2 million and 1.5 million new cancer cases every year between 2016 and 2021, but that this shot up to more than 3 million new cancer cases in 2022 — the year after South Korea began its Covid-19 vaccine roll-out in February 2021.

While South Korea’s government health insurance agency denies the claim, they don’t deny the increased numbers, only what those numbers mean:

“The numbers seen in this chart represent the number of patients who filed health insurance claims related to cancer each corresponding year, not the number of new cancer patients,” the spokesperson told AFP on February 3.”

“A claim may be recorded each time a person visits the hospital to be treated for cancer, and a patient may visit the hospital several times a year,” they added.

“data for 2021 and 2022 would be released towards the end of the year.”

My take….

It is clear that no matter how much mRNA fails, big pharma continues to invest 100s of millions of dollars building new mRNA facilities.

This one is straight out of a dystopian novel. A 320,000 sq ft mRNA factory located in a “smart city” that can produce new mRNA vaccines within 100 days in partnership with Gates Foundation against “new infectious diseases”?

That should concern everyone.

Also, the tripling of cancer related insurance claims isn’t adequately explained by Korean government officials. I suspect cancer cases are skyrocketing and the Korean government is holding back the 2021 and 2022 data on “number of new cancer patients” for a good reason.

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After a year of incessant propaganda about the Kiev regime’s supposed military successes, NATO leadership seems to have started accepting the reality and finally relaying it to the public. On February 13, the aggressive US-led alliance’s Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg held a briefing and warned that the political West is now essentially in an arms race with Russia, with the task of getting as much equipment and ammunition as possible to supply the Neo-Nazi junta forces. He further stated that a “race of logistics” was also underway, with Russia “currently having the upper hand”. Stoltenberg thinks that Russia already launched its next large-scale offensive.

“The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions and depleting allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production. This puts our defense industries under strain,” he said. “It is clear that we are in a race of logistics. Key capabilities like ammunition, fuel and spare parts must reach Ukraine before Russia can seize the initiative on the battlefield… …If Putin wins in Ukraine the message to him and other authoritarian regimes is force is rewarded. That would make the world more dangerous and all of us more vulnerable.”

The admission that the belligerent alliance, by far the largest in the world, spending approximately $1.2 trillion a year is being outproduced by Russia with a military budget nearly 20 times smaller might seem quite shocking to many, but is hardly surprising to most military experts. NATO has been outsourcing ammunition production for years, with much of its supply chain depending on other countries, including China, which is also being targeted under the aggressive alliance’s new doctrine. And while Stoltenberg called for NATO member states to ramp up production, this might prove problematic, to say the least, as the level of manufacturing in Western countries has fallen dramatically as labor costs increased over the last several decades.

As for Stoltenberg’s claim that if Russia wins this would somehow be “dangerous for the world” as it would show that “force is rewarded” then the political West should look no further, as the US-led NATO has been conducting a comprehensive aggression on the world since its very inception. The belligerent alliance’s most powerful members all have a history of brutal colonialism and have waged wars on all continents while trying to preserve their colonial empires. And to this day, this format has survived through the establishment of numerous clients, including the Kiev regime, which is “shedding blood for a NATO mission”, according to the Neo-Nazi junta’s own admission.

Stoltenberg lamented that “NATO has a challenge”, stating: “Yes we have a problem… …but we have a strategy to tackle that.” He also admitted that despite the political West’s tens of billions in weapons, ammunition and other supplies, the Kiev regime’s logistics issues are “acute”, as it is still completely outgunned by Russia, with some estimates going as far as 10:1 in Moscow’s favor. The Neo-Nazi junta is estimated to be spending more than 5,000 artillery shells each day, while the Russian military is firing up to 6 times more. Once again, it should be noted that this is quite different from last year when the mainstream propaganda machine presented Russia as supposedly losing to the Kiev regime forces.

The NATO chief also stated that “what Russia lacks in quality, they try to compensate in quantity.” Such statements are certainly laughable to anyone familiar with the situation on the ground. With the latest reports on the casualties on both sides showing that the Kiev regime is suffering losses orders of magnitude greater than Russia, it’s quite clear which side lacks in quality and tries to compensate for this in quantity. Stoltenberg also admitted that NATO is now faced with a severe problem, as current waiting times for large-caliber ammunition have grown from 12 to 28 months. This is causing logistics issues not just for the Neo-Nazi junta, but also for NATO members themselves.

With such issues affecting the political West, the Kiev regime’s prospects are rather grim. Volodymyr Zelensky’s recent “fighter jets tour” ended with more promises of arms deliveries, but not much more as major NATO members are now trying to “toss the hot potato” to each other. And while Stoltenberg’s claim that Russia’s large-scale offensive has already started is questionable, most military experts expect it will start soon, which will certainly further exacerbate the Neo-Nazi junta’s already precarious position. However, they have only themselves to blame, as Moscow has been trying to find a peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian conflict for approximately a decade. The political West is now admitting that the negotiations with Russia were only an attempt to stall while preparing the Kiev regime for war. It seems they should have prepared much better.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from Stop the War Coalition

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***

Having asserted at the time on Freenations that the USA was responsible for blowing up the Nordstream pipelines, I am pleased that the veteran US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has confirmed (with enormous detail from insiders) what I wrote then. A Pulitzer prize winner cannot be easily dismissed. 

If you say you are going to do something (as Biden and Nuland had said about the pipelines) then it happens and then you rejoice at your success – then you did it. As I wrote at the time (October 2022):

There is no serious doubt about the fact that it was the USA which sabotaged the two pipelines Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 bringing gas from Russia to Germany not least because President Joe Biden, Russophobic State Department official Victoria Nuland and Republican Senator Ron Johnson are all on the record demanding the Nord Stream pipelines be taken out.

As Sea Power Magazine reported on June 14th, the US Navy’s 6th Fleet Task Force 68 was running underwater explosives removal drills in the exact area where these sabotage explosions took place.

Sputnik has analyzed Flightradar24 data showing that US and German navy aircraft regularly circled over the sites of future explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines during the NATO Baltops 22 exercise last summer.

And indeed – according to Hersh – it was precisely under cover of such naval exercises that the USA and apparently Norway organised the attack. 

This Profitable Attack on Europe

We must bear in mind that these pipelines were jointly owned by Russia’s Gazprom and French, German and Dutch companies and the gas passing through Nordstream 1 and potentially through Nordstream 2 was critical to the entire European energy and therefore industrial market.

Not only did a small clique of US politicians (acting without Congressional authority) blow up the pipelines but they then profited by replacing those supplies with LNG shipped from the USA. Equally the enormous profits accruing to US Defence contractors from the Ukraine war are mimicked at a lower level by British Defence industries which may now contract Ukraine to produce British defence products in Ukraine! (Sunday Telegraph 12th February). Biden profits from much lower US gas prices together with subsidies designed to tempt European corporations to re- locate to the USA.

Russia has not yet retaliated for the pipeline destruction. For the moment they have other fish to fry. But they can afford to wait to see:

• the build up of German anger,
• the continued massive losses in Ukraine,
• the denuding of western weapons stocks,
• the blatant American profiteering from the sale of their LNG resulting from their criminality,
• the alienation of the global south who have either stayed neutral or condemned western attacks on Russia through Ukraine and
• the rising revulsion by European electorates at this totally unnecessary war and the tragi-farce of the devastating effect on Europe of sanctions designed to harm Russia.

And all this rather than make peace on the basis of devolution in Eastern Ukraine, a neutral Ukraine and the recognition of Crimea as the historical, military (since 1783) and cultural territory of Russia. Crimea and its naval base there is far more legitimately Russian than Guantanamo Bay is a military base for the USA in Cuba! See this.

The question now is the extent of the international response to a blatant international crime and act of war and the domestic US consequences of acting illegally without congressional approval.

But since Republicans were equally gung ho about removing Russian gas from Europe, their neocon ideology might “trump” (appropriately given his stance) their willingness to attack Biden on this illegal act of war. The USA has become a very dangerous place.

The Hersh Report

Hersh writes,

The Biden administration planned the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines well in advance of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine knowing that if it were traceable to the USA Government it would be an act of war.

Biden had already said he would shut down the pipeline if Russia dared to defend Russians in Ukraine (as US armed and trained Ukrainians, mainly Nazi units, shelled them) The unit selected to carry out the destruction was the U.S. Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center in rural Panama City which had expertise and a track record of “blowing up foreign oil rigs, fouling intake valves for undersea power plants, destroying locks on crucial shipping canals.”

Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines.

“SPOKESPERSONS” for the White House and the CIA said that Hersh’s report was false and fiction! They were bound to. But it is significant that no high office holder denied the report – only functionaries! Hersh writes significantly:

The divers were Navy only, and not members of America’s Special Operations Command, whose covert operations must be reported to Congress and briefed in advance to the Senate and House leadership

The planning and implementation of the attack was carried out by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy—who together in different roles at the time worked on the Maidan coup in Ukraine. Also involved was of course the CIA’s William Burns according to Hersh.

USA Previously Attacking and Surrounding Russia

I have previously on Freenations detailed the extent of NATO and American military bases surrounding Russia (see this) and contrasted them with the lack of any equivalent proximate Russian threat to the USA.

When there was such a threat in the Cuba missile crisis in 1963 it was of course the USA which threatened nuclear war rather than see Russian missiles in Cuba. Those missiles would have been some 1100 miles from Washington whereas a nuclear armed NATO member Ukraine would have been about 300 miles from Moscow.

Other examples of the extent to which the modern USA and NATO have been threatening, surrounding and even attacking Russia has been revealed by Hersh.

Apparently the naval unit involved in the Nordstream destruction had some years ago carried out a successful operation to tap a Russian undersea cable in the Sea of Okhotsk. It worked for a decade until betrayed by a Russian speaking US National Security Agency  technician Ronald Pelton.

Equally significant and demonstrative of the recent anti Russian aggression by NATO/EU has been the greatly expanded US military presence in Norway. Hersh writes:

The Pentagon has created high paying jobs and contracts, amid some local controversy, by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade and expand American Navy and Air Force facilities in Norway. The new works included, most importantly, an advanced synthetic aperture radar far up north that was capable of penetrating deep into Russia 

A newly refurbished American submarine base, which had been under construction for years, had become operational and more American submarines were now able to work closely with their Norwegian colleagues to monitor and spy on a major Russian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Peninsula.America also has vastly expanded a Norwegian air base in the north and delivered to the Norwegian air force a fleet of Boeing-built P8 Poseidon patrol planes to bolster its long-range spying on all things Russia.

Pipeline Destruction Downgraded to Bypass Congress

Hersh ASSERTS THAT following the public remarks by leading US politicians including Biden about the aim of stopping the Nordstream pipelines, the plans to destroy them were in effect no longer covert – so: 

“The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret”

On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.

For decades the USA has spied on (even European allies) undermined and “changed regime” all over the world but never has it so blatantly attacked NATO allies as in the case of the destruction of these gas pipelines. The West in general and the USA in particular have lost allies and sympathy all over the world with its 20 year attack on Russia through Ukraine and its exploitation and distortion of the international banking and payment systems to attack other nations.

The Nordstream pipeline affair could be the straw that breaks the back of what little international sympathy remained. As one of the insiders in this affair remarked to Hersh:

“The only flaw was the decision to do it.”

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This article was originally published on Freenations.

Featured image is from Freenations

And Into The Fire

Fascist elements in post war Europe and the development of the European Union

By Rodney Atkinson

With contributions from William Dorich and Edward Spalton

Publisher: ‎ GM Books; 1st edition (July 25, 2013)
Publication date: ‎ July 25, 2013
Print length: ‎ 164 pages

Click here to view this and other titles by Rodney Atkinson.